Episode 93 – Coffee N5 – Don’t Work for Money – Make Money Work for You with Kiana Danial

On this episode of Coffee N°5, Lara sits down with finance guru Kiana Danial of Invest Diva. Kiana is an award-winning CEO and best-selling author who specializes in wealth management, investments, and demystifying the stock market. She sits down with Lara to discuss the difference between trading and investing, how to master the market like a pro, and why no one should “play” the stock market.

What you’ll learn:

  • Kiana explains why the phrase “playing the market” is inaccurate. You don’t “play with” your money; you manage and invest it responsibly. 
  • You’ll learn the three components of risk tolerance when investing.
  • She discusses how the crypto market is cyclical and how that relates to the importance of diversification. 
  • Kiana explains the first thing she invests in and why that’s her go-to investment.

Kiana Danial, CEO of Invest Diva, is an award-winning Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author. An internationally recognized personal investing and wealth management expert, she has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Forbes, Kiplinger, Business Insider, TheStreet, Nasdaq, Fox Business, CNN, Yahoo! Finance, and Cheddar. Kiana is a highly sought-after commentator, professional speaker, and executive coach who has reported on the financial markets directly from the floor of NYSE and NASDAQ. Using her Diva Wealth Ecosystem, she built a $7M net worth within three years. A six-time author, Kiana’s books include WSJ bestseller Million Dollar Family Secrets: Make Your Money Work for You to Create Generational Wealth, bestseller Cryptocurrency Investing For Dummies (published by Wiley in 2019), and the co-authored Million Dollar Moms, which achieved #1 status on Amazon in eight different categories in 2020. Kiana also won the Two Comma Club Award from ClickFunnels in 2021 and has spoken at the same stage as Tony Robbins. Kiana’s mission with Invest Diva is to empower and educate moms to take control of their financial future by investing in the online financial markets and building a wealth ecosystem.

To learn more about Kiana, follow her on Instagram and LinkedIn or visit her webpage.

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Lara Schmoisman  0:03  

 

This is coffee number 5, I’m your host Lara Schmoisman.

It’s all about you, and I want you to succeed. Download today, my exclusive Insider’s Guide to generating business relationships that last and turns into sales

 

Hey, you guys, welcome back to coffee number five, here sipping my, my coffee. And as always, I’m thinking about money. Money is a powerful world money is power has a power of make us feel miserable because we don’t know what to do without money. But then when we have money, we don’t know how to what to do with that, either. So I feel like a lot of people that I meet in different places in the world, they are like, depends of their economy, and depends of where they’re standing in life. They don’t need to know how to prepare for what it comes and how to protect their money. We’re always talking about protecting our assets, having insurance in the house is something happened. But many times we don’t know how to protect and take care of our money and how to make it grow. Why not? So today, I am super excited about the days because I brought a woman who has a very similar background as mine, but in from different parts of the world. We come back and we meet here in the middle of the world, or somewhere in between. And I mean, I want to hear more about your journey. So welcome. Kiana Danial, I think I said it right. Right.

 

Kiana Danial  1:23  

you did.

 

Lara Schmoisman  1:24  

You also Welcome to Coffee. Number five. I’m super excited to be here. I know you’re us today best selling outdoor you been? I mean, your trajectory is. It’s crazy. I mean, you want Japan to to learn engineering, if I’m not wrong, right?

 

Kiana Danial  1:43  

Yeah, that’s correct. But that’s not what I do any right now I did, I did engineering because of the family expectations, because they expected, I come from a traditional family that they think you have to either become like a doctor or a lawyer. And then an engineer was next. And I cannot become a doctor. Because Because I hate blood. And then lawyer was just too much for me besides engineering, and I sucked at that one, too. But yeah, that’s what I did for seven years in Japan. But that didn’t make me any money. So I do not practice engineering right now. So

 

Lara Schmoisman  2:15  

how can you find out that this is not making me money, so I will move into something else.

 

Kiana Danial  2:20  

So what happened is 2008 market crash, it was selling Japan. And when the markets were dropping, I became fascinated about like the dollar moving and things like that I’d accidentally participate. I like I didn’t accidentally participate. But I decided to kind of see where this is going. I accidentally made a ton of money from me at the time. $10,000 were a lot of money. I made that much money in a month when the market was crashing. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is a lot of money. Like there is a lot of money to be made in the finance in the financial markets. So that’s when I became very fascinated about the whole system, about economy, about finances about money. I did first try to go and give my money to a money manager to manage it for me. But they screwed me over. Now I know why? Because many managers don’t have your best interests, interests at heart. So then after that, I was like, Okay, this is it. I really want to learn all about this, and take the matters in my own hands. So that’s what happened. Now. Here we are.

 

Lara Schmoisman  3:22  

Yeah, well, I see that. I mean, now there’s a big trend in this world that a lot of people want to become entrepreneurs or have their own business, or manage their own business, also doing their own finances and even doing your bookkeeping, but also to play with crypto, I play with all the things that there is all the software, I mean, and it’s hard because you have your day job, or even if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s like a 24 hour job you are going to them so you know. So how do you do it all? How do you run your business at that same time your manage your money, right? So

 

Kiana Danial  3:56  

the managing the money part? So that’s the thing. This is what’s different from what people assume managing money is and what it really should be. You mentioned the word that really triggers me and he said playing this is not playing this is not trading. This is about consistently putting some money away in the markets. I have a $5 million portfolio. It takes me only one hour per month to manage it one hour per month, if even I am not like that is not my job. Even though I teach how to do it. That is my job as an entrepreneur. My whole business is about how to teach people teach people how to invest their money, how to manage their money, and I also teach people how to run their own business. But managing my money. Making my money work for me is not my job is putting my money into work is the opposite of my job.

 

Lara Schmoisman  4:51  

I love that clarification. Yeah. I mean, I used to work plain Well, it was a very choosy word I I chose it because that’s what people told me. I’m going to the market. Yeah. And to me was always like, I don’t want to play with my money.

 

Kiana Danial  5:08  

It’s your hard earned cash, why would you want to play with it. And I mean, even still like that, though, these are the words that we try to eliminate from our students dictionary, the moment they get into our movement is like playing the markets trading news. None of my students watch the news. I do not watch the news, I’m often on the news. And I know somebody who’s often on the news, I’m on the news at least once a week talking about the markets, they only call me when they want to have click baits, when they want to create more hype FOMO, because that is how they make money. They make money by making us fearful if we’re not fearful, like think about the weatherman, the weatherman, everybody’s watching TV, when there’s a hurricane coming. The moment the hurricane leaves, nobody’s watching the weather channel, the same as the financial markets, and they profit from prolonging all these ups and downs and reporting, oh, my gosh, it went to person up, it went to person down, that nobody cares, it doesn’t matter, it does not matter. Do not watch the news. And all it takes, as I said about with investing with low risk, not risking your money not playing with your money, but actually making it work for you, I call it making your money have babies. So what you get your money for every business, you put in your investment account, you calculate your risk tolerance, so that it is absolutely unique to your risk tolerance. And then you go about making money, because that’s where we can actually create value. So that’s that’s basically how I do it. And I’m telling you, if you’re spending any more than an hour per month on your investment account, you’re probably gonna lose money, the less you spend on your on your investment account, a fact is going to be better.

 

Lara Schmoisman  6:53  

So it’s more the less you play, the more you’re consistent.

 

Kiana Danial  6:57  

Yeah, I mean, it’s all about coming up with a number, like the first step that you have to take really is to understand what your risk tolerances, how much money can you be contributing, that is the money that is not necessary for paying your mortgage, or rent or food food. I personally invest all of the money after spent paying for my business paying for my employees, paying for my family’s necessities, and our lifestyle. Like we took like good vacations, everything after that goes to my investment account. But it is automatic, every single month, I contribute a certain amount that I know is right for my family. I I set up the system. And then I go about my day, I don’t turn on the news, I don’t look at the news, unless I’m going to be on the news. And my money is working for me on the background while I’m doing whatever it is that I want to do hanging out with my family doing my business, having interviews so so

 

Lara Schmoisman  7:58  

when you talk about your system, because there’s so many platforms out there, and I think that’s what everyone is trying to sell you something because there is someone taking, like you said advantage for your gain at some point. So how do you choose what’s right for you?

 

Kiana Danial  8:15  

Right? So the system when I talk about the system I’m talking about, I’m not talking about a platform, the platform, as long as you are not handing the you the them your money to manage. It actually doesn’t matter which broker you use it actually, as long as they are secure and they are abiding by the SEC and the Federal Reserve rules and they are insured. They are fine. It doesn’t matter if you go with Robin Hood, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, all these platforms, all these brokers. They’re just a tool. They’re giving you access to the markets. If you’re investing in cryptocurrencies, you can go with Coinbase. And Gemini, it doesn’t matter as long as you are in charge. When I talk about my system, my system is not as not a platform, it is basically the series of steps that I take in order to create an investment strategy. So it’s basically the knowledge system, we call them let’s do a diamond analysis. You analyze your risk tolerance, you analyze the acid, you want to invest in it to see if it matches your risk tolerance. And then what I set up is that I basically tell these platforms again, it doesn’t matter which platform you can, let’s say TD Ameritrade Alright, so I have a huge portfolio and here we are at TD Ameritrade and fidelity. Alright, so you go to fidelity, and there is something called a buy limit order. What a buy limit order is, is a basically it’s kind of like a crock pot. So a crock pot What do you do go and set it. You say Okay, I’m gonna put in all the ingredients and then you set the timer and you forget about it. You go about your day, right? And then you come back food is ready, so bummed or is kind of similar. You tell your broker Hey, I want to buy, let’s say this asset, let’s say I don’t know Apple, Amazon coin, Bitcoin, whatever it is that that what you want to invest in, at this price, right? Once it reaches this low because you don’t want to buy at the price or high, right? So the cool thing is like this is kind of like being able to tell a shop that, hey, I want to buy this Chanel bag, when it’s like Black Friday and the price. Of course, yeah. And then the shop says, Okay, so we’re gonna put this on hold until the price drops to $2,000. And then we’ll buy it for you. So this is how a buy limit order works. And what and basically, all you have to do is to train yourself is to gain the skill to figure out what these levels are, how low the price can go, tell your broker about it, and then go about your day like don’t worry about, oh my gosh, she’s going to each, oh my gosh, you read, I don’t care, I don’t look at my portfolio other than one hour per month that I have dedicated in my calendar to go I’m like, readjust and see where the markets are at.

 

Lara Schmoisman  11:12  

I have a question for you. Where do you start? How many? How many companies you choose? How many were exist? Or is it just,

 

Kiana Danial  11:22  

it doesn’t matter? How many. So the first thing that really matters, which is the reason why well, majority of people don’t do this step. And is the reason why a majority of people lose money in the market. It has nothing to do with what you buy, how many you buy, what price you buy at. The first step is understanding where you stand financially. And I know a lot of people are a little bit like, yeah, I don’t know, like, I have an idea in their head. But majority of times my students come in, I give them my risk management toolkit. And then some people are oh, I have a very high risk tolerance. They put in the numbers. And I oh my gosh, I can’t I actually don’t have a high risk. And then there was the other way, like, oh, I don’t like taking risk. I’m very conservative. They put in the numbers, they actually have a very high risk tolerance. So risk tolerance, when I talk about risk tolerance is not what you have, what you assume you’re playing money is is not where you assume you are financially, there’s actually like numbers you have to put in. You don’t have to do any math, it’s just you becoming aware of exactly how much money is going out how much money’s coming in how much is in your bank account?

 

Lara Schmoisman  12:34  

Let’s clarify what the risk tolerance is for our art. Okay, let

 

Kiana Danial  12:38  

me clarify that actually. So a risk tolerance has three components. Number one, is your willingness to take a risk that is your psychology, that is your personality, and ego for that there was a questionnaire that you have to actually be more than happy to give that question for free for your for your audience. But you take, like 20 questions or like, Oh, all right, based on this results, my willingness to take a risk is medium, high or low. The second component, first component was willingness. Second component is your ability, your ability to take a risk has nothing to do with your psychology, your personality, your ability to take a risk is a combination of where you stand financially, what your income is, what your expenses are, how old you are, what are your goals, how many kids you have, what is your dependency, all the things that come into play, to see what your ability what your real monetary ability to take a risk is. And then that could come out again, based on that. I’ll give you the whole the full result, list, risk tolerance toolkit, risk management will get to your audience. But in fact, they can go ahead and go to invest diva.com forward slash masterclass. There’s this video they can watch. And then at the end of it, though, they can download the risk management toolkit. So they can go ahead and download the risk management toolkit again, it’s invest diva.com For slash masterclass. And then when they download it, they’re gonna see okay, so my ability is this my willingness to learn this is this, sometimes your abilities low your willingness is high, or somewhere in between, and then you can find out how much money you can actually put in that is a lot more important than what you buy, how much you buy. Then there is a third component we talked about number one, willingness number two ability number three is your certainty and your certainty about the assets that you’re investing in. Because then you’re like, oh, I have high risk tolerance. What am I gonna buy the go on Twitter. Elon Musk is talking about Dogecoin or Twitter or whatever, like, Oh, I’m gonna buy what about Elon Musk is saying, so your certainty about what you’re investing in is a lot more is 100% more important than how much you buy? How many different assets you buy? When I talk about certainty, is you actually know that asset you actually know the company. Now you’re like, Okay, how do I find a company that I really know about? So the best way to do that, is I have to go to your credit card statement, and see what are the companies you’re already customer of, you know about those companies, right? You’re a customer, your consumer, there is a reason why you’re a consumer, they’re going to ask yourself questions, am I going to continue to be their customer? Am I happy with what they’re produced? Are they going to be relevant? 10 years, 20 years from now? Right, and research that way. And if you can get five acids, they have a certain amount. That’s where you start.

 

Lara Schmoisman  15:47  

Yep. That’s a great advice. Let me ask you another question. Because I see a lot of people are like, lately, they invested in crypto, which is great. But crypto went down. Yeah, currently. So what’s your strategy here is like you just wait for them to rebound for you move away and you tried something else?

 

Kiana Danial  16:10  

Okay. So well, cryptocurrency went down. So the stock market. Okay, so the strategy across the board is the same. If you’re certain like I’m not telling you go invest in cryptocurrency, because I told you, so you need to have some understanding, because your level of certainty is going to give you that emotional management when the markets go down. But to answer your question, there is absolutely no strategic advantage in selling at a loss. Absolutely lose if you sell. And this is where again, that certainty part comes back on. If you research about an asset, if you research about Bitcoin, Aetherium Cardona, whatever it is that you want to get involved with. Personally, I’m a Bitcoin fan, but I also have some I have about 20 assets in my crypto portfolio for different reasons, I actually have written the book cryptocurrency investing for dummies. So before you’re getting bothered recommend that you buy it, you read that. But any market, if you’re certainly if you got into it, so that your money works for you long term, to create generational wealth, when the markets go down, it is time to buy. And by the way, we talked about my system, we talked about setting phylum, the orders, once you learn how to identify the prices these assets could drop to because markets are cyclical. Your markets are cyclical, right? So you can always you cannot predict precisely. But I actually predicted like, we can just Google my name, I’ve been quoted all over the place that when Bitcoin was at $68,000, so it’s gonna go back down to 30. And it did, and I had a violin with order of 30. So I bought more money dropped, now could have dropped even more, it probably will. Now that is broken above below that level. But am I scared now? Because I have my personal reasons as to why I have invested in Bitcoin that I don’t want to get into because it’s going to be it’s a different story for a different day. But but that I apply the same exact strategy to all the other assets that I’ve been certain about investing in now. Am I always absolutely correct about all the assets I pick? No. But,

 

Lara Schmoisman  18:32  

but that’s why you diversify, diversify, because you’re not going to always go right. And now he’s going to be white, like, in the same way that business decisions. And that’s what I want to bring this this talk because we are a lot of people are mixing a lot their business decisions and their personal decisions. How do you draw the line and say, I’m not mixing my business with my personnel, but I take this amount from your reinvesting in my business and put it to work.

 

Kiana Danial  19:05  

Okay, so let me clarify your question. Your question is how much money you put back into the business and how much money have you put back in?

 

Lara Schmoisman  19:13  

Is it worth it to how do you make the decision if it’s worth it for you as an entrepreneur business owners to reinvest in your business? Or to put that money to work?

 

Kiana Danial  19:24  

So good, Such a good question. I love that. So you’re investing in your business as much as you can scale. So I personally invested in Facebook ads, a million dollars last year. That is actually more than I invested in in the stock market. I think last year last year I did or maybe maybe similar amount, but I made $10 million, right so but I’m always I’m constantly like they’re two separate things. They’re two absolutely separate things. So I’m investing in my in my business as much as it can scale. I’m not gonna go break even in So in your business, I typically know if I put in $1, in my Facebook ad, if that ad produces mix that into $2, I know that’s a good ad, I’m going to continue with it, if it’s not performing, I’m gonna shut that down, it’s a little bit faster, much faster result reveal than the stock market. My business, the budget that I have allocated to my business is as much as it can scale, like there is no budget as much as it can scale. And I know how much it can scale because I can see it within 30 days, if this person that I hired is performing well, if this amount that I invested in that and in ADS is performing well, and I caught it I adjusted based on that. And your business can can can grow way faster than the stock market, there are completely two different things like my business 10 X’s every single year, whereas my portfolio this year, well the markets are down, so my portfolio is actually down. But my vision for my portfolio is 20 years down the road, whereas with my business, I have to scale every single year. So while being an entrepreneur, it gives you a very, very amazing good insight on how to select a company because as an entrepreneur, you can look at their management we get you can look at their marketing can look at the category that they’re in, like, oh my gosh, this is a good company. So entrepreneurs actually have a very good eye for stock picking, hmm, but two different strategies.

 

Lara Schmoisman  21:29  

Totally. And also, I mean, there is a lot of risk involved as we discuss in the market, but also there is a lot of risk involved and in intrapreneurship, that there is a lot of people that they are not looking at those rates, like I always say that entrepreneurs who are risk managers, because we always need to be assessing if current a person will bring us that added value. If changing strategy creating that ad is going to bring us or not. So we always try and think so is the same situation as the market. It’s less

 

Kiana Danial  22:03  

know the markets is a one and then thing whereas entrepreneurship entrepreneurship as my full time job. It is way harder than it is way harder investing is the easy part is just what you have to find out for investing is the setup time figuring out how much you’re gonna, you’re gonna allocate every month, set it and forget about it. Entrepreneurship, no, it’s a 24/7 job baby is like it is by far the most time consuming thing. And the most rewarding thing. When it comes to entrepreneurship. The first thing I invest in actually is myself, I’m always always learning new skills. And I’m always like in masterminds and learning new things and being with other entrepreneurs. But when it comes to investing, I shut everything down completely two different

 

Lara Schmoisman  22:50  

things. Okay, that makes sense. So before we go, I want to ask you this last question that I asked each one of my guests here. So that mistake because I do believe that we learn a lot from our mistakes, that thing that he said, I should have done it differently. But you learn so much that it was so worth it for you to have that experience.

 

Kiana Danial  23:16  

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

 

Lara Schmoisman  23:18  

What that story.

 

Kiana Danial  23:20  

So I’m going to tell you a mistake that I made with my investing because I’ve made so many mistakes in my entrepreneurship journey, my training, all the things I’m going to give you, I think this is valuable. The mistake that I made when I first came to New York, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m gonna start investing. So cool, the markets are going up and down. And I actually got a job on Wall Street, I got fired. And then I bootstrap my way up. Finally, I got a gig at the New York Stock Exchange, I was like, Okay, I’m gonna learn on the job at the New York Stock Exchange, surrounded by all of these traders and investors who are making millions of dollars, I’m going to do what they’re doing. I’m not, it’s not, I’m definitely gonna make millions of dollars. So I listened to them. So I was at the New York Stock Exchange reporting on the markets learning from these traders. And because I had this fake confidence that I’m surrounded by all the best of the best, I have put in now $15,000 of my savings into a trading account. And I started listening to people put in the market, and boom, lost all that money, listening to the people on the New York Stock Exchange for I’m like, how is that even but I was super frustrated was like, How is this even possible? That I’m listening to what other people are doing? They make money and I lose money? What’s happening? And what I finally realized, I hope this is like your big takeaway that I take from the segment. There is this person who’s now mom, my mentor guy Spier. He told me Kiana you got to stop trading and you got To start investing and like, what’s the difference and is that trading, if you’re going in with your 15k, you’re not going to make any money. The only people who make a ton of money trading are investment bankers who are making we’re using millions of dollars of other people’s money. In the markets, it’s a full time job, it is super high risk. And you have to be stuck to a screen all day you cannot do anything else. If you’re doing trading, you should be stuck to a screen all day, looking at the markets going up and down. What you want to do, starting with low amounts, even if you start with 500 bucks is investing that is long term. Don’t start your screen all day, and let it grow on its own. And rest assured I went back in now with 500 bucks, I committed to contributing 500 bucks per month to my portfolio at the time. And in three years, it turned into $50,000 and then from there on that $55 million dollars. So that was the biggest mistake that I made that I thought trading and investing are the same thing. And I hope your listeners won’t make that mistake. 

 

Lara Schmoisman  26:01  

That was an amazing Tip. Thank you so much for being here for having coffee with me. I love it. I love all these takeaways and very high, easy explanation for this difficult questions.

 

Kiana Danial  26:17  

I’m glad I was able to give you some guidance there.

 

Lara Schmoisman  26:22  

Thank you so much to you guys. I’ll see you next week for more coffee number five. Find everything you need at larashmoisman.com or in the episode notes right below, don’t forget to subscribe. It was so good to have you here today. See you next time, catch you on the flip side, Chau chau.

 

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