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The Calum Johnson Show

Ex Wall Street Millionaire: How To Build Wealth Without Leaving Your Job (The GENIUS Method!)

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Ashley FoxguestCalum Johnsonhost

Sep 30, 20241h 35mWatch on YouTube

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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

Mission, Empify, and Why the Mindset Matters
Calum opens by reading Ashley Fox's Instagram caption about doing it scared as a CEO and asks about her mission. Ashley explains Empify, a fintech startup that teaches adults and children to build wealth, and how her Wall Street background shaped it.
- •Empify merges 'empower' and 'modify' and aims to shift mindset around career, life, and financial success
- •Ashley says she saw a way of life on Wall Street that 99% of the world never gets exposed to
- •She built the company from her Wall Street experience and her mistakes
- •In her words, as she heals, Empify heals
How the Top 1% Think About Money
Calum cites the statistic that the top 1% earn 142 times what the bottom 99% make and asks what mindset sets wealthy people apart. Ashley says wealthy people believe they have power and treat wealth as a standard, and that the victim mindset and the inherited blueprint hold others back.
- •Ashley says playing the victim keeps people stuck, while wealthy people expect to have and work for wealth
- •The school, job, and house cycle repeated by 99% of people produces the same results
- •Wealthy people read, travel, and surround themselves differently, and keeping wealth is harder than making it
- •At Empify the finance is 'the sugar' and the mindset shift is 'the medicine'
Chasing Approval: Ashley's Childhood and Wall Street Career
Calum asks about Ashley's early context and the blueprint she grew up with. She describes striving to be the best out of a belief that she wasn't enough, her father's work ethic, her path through Howard to a six-figure Wall Street job she no longer wanted, and the fall that followed.
- •Her drive to be the best came from believing she wasn't enough and seeking her parents' approval
- •Her father worked constantly and was the provider for his family, which embedded a work ethic in her
- •She followed the habits of wealthy clients, then left Wall Street, lost everything, and moved back to her parents' home
- •After losing her identity and struggling with TV anxiety, she went to therapy and began removing her mask
Seeking Her Father's Approval and Learning to Live for Herself
Calum asks for stories of trying to win her dad's approval. Ashley recalls her father's pushing comments, the moment when his reaction to her TV appearance left her feeling there was nothing more to do, and the decision to stop living for others after turning down a school opportunity in DC.
- •Her father was a great provider but not emotionally expressive, and his comments pushed her to the next goal
- •Her therapist asked if she had ever told herself she was proud of herself
- •She declined moving to DC to build a school and began doing what she wanted
- •Calum raises the idea of being driven versus dragged, and Ashley says leaving Wall Street was the start of being guided by what feels right
Observing Your Thoughts and Working on the Inside
Ashley says fixing her inner world led money to follow and describes the support she invests in. She explains the practice of watching and monitoring her thoughts, and Calum compares it to how meditation works for him.
- •Ashley says she worked less to create more once she cleared what was slowing her down internally
- •She keeps executive coaches, a therapist, a spiritual advisor, and Qigong, and says she must come first
- •She separates the thinker from the watcher and tracked her feelings in a notebook
- •Calum says meditation is observing thoughts rather than having none
The Window Moment: Leaving Wall Street
Calum asks what gave her the conviction to quit at 25. Ashley describes a defining moment looking out of her 27th-floor window, realizing her colleague felt 'regular' while she felt different, and deciding she wasn't there to keep rich people rich.
- •She felt trapped looking at the people outside but on top of the world imagining the floor as her own building
- •She saw that seeing how wealth works made it feel possible for her
- •She had wanted to be a teacher but chose Wall Street for the money
- •She left without knowing what she would do next
The Winding Road to Building Empify
Calum asks what she did in the days and months after that moment. Ashley credits The Celestine Prophecy, a job with athlete-investing startup, a financial advisory business, and teaching kids for free, leading to Empify's first revenue in 2017.
- •She had $30,000 and a real estate license as a safety net when she quit
- •Things went downhill, she was evicted, then built a financial advisory business
- •She realized she preferred education over selling products and began teaching kids in 2016
- •Empify made its first money in 2017 with a Philadelphia school district contract, four years after she coined the word
Everything Happens for You: Failure as Preparation
Ashley and Calum reflect on how imperfect the search for one's purpose is. Ashley explains how missed opportunities led her to asset management and later to teaching, and she describes treating every event as a lesson and a mirror.
- •Calum says high achievers expect to get things right the first time, but finding your purpose is imperfect
- •Ashley says missing an investment banking offer put her in asset management and in front of wealthy clients' accounts
- •Her early advisory work taught her to speak her audience's language, which prepared her to teach
- •She treats emotions as pointing to what is inside her rather than blaming others, and Calum describes his own 'everything is putting me in position' mindset
Fixing Broken Beliefs and Sharing What She Knows
Calum asks how she fixed her broken beliefs and what led her to therapy. Ashley recounts running from TV after a bad first experience, a mentor calling her selfish for hiding, and then describes what she wants everyday people to get from Wall Street's approach.
- •A mentor told her it was selfish to hide what she knows from the world
- •She says loving the person in the mirror comes before the world's love
- •She says wealthy clients have teams for estate planning, trusts, accountants, and attorneys, and everyone needs to think about their team
- •She argues people argue for their limitations and must make wealth a priority, which Empify's environment is meant to cultivate
Step One: Know Your Number and Open a Brokerage Account
Calum asks for the first step for someone living paycheck to paycheck who owns no stocks. Ashley reframes the problem, then lays out steps: define your destination number, open a brokerage account, pay yourself first with a small amount, and list the companies you already pay.
- •Ashley says people spend paycheck to paycheck rather than live paycheck to paycheck
- •Pick a destination number for financial ease, like entering an address into a map
- •Open a brokerage account at places like Fidelity, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, or E-Trade and set aside a comfortable amount, cutting it in half if needed, even $10
- •Make a list of companies you buy from and check whether they are publicly traded, since you could own a piece of them
- •Wealth is about lasting generations, not getting rich quick
Starting Small: Success Stories from the Community
Calum asks for real examples of people who started investing small. Ashley describes the Wealth Builders Community app, members receiving their first dividends, a woman in her 70s with a six-figure portfolio, and the community's collective investment of over $6.1 million.
- •Members open their first brokerage accounts and get first dividends in about three months
- •A woman in her 70s built a six-figure portfolio in about two years and earns more than her advisor does for her
- •Collectively, members have invested over $6.1 million, with goals of 10 million and then 20 million
- •Ashley says people aren't supposed to know how to invest if they never learned it, and she wants to combat limiting thoughts
Building Passive Income with Dividends
Calum asks how to begin building passive income. Ashley explains dividends, growth versus dividend stocks, ETFs and REITs, why dividend income is stable and takes time to build, and dividend aristocrats such as Exxon, Target, and Coca-Cola.
- •Ashley says she is not telling anyone to quit their job; she suggests using your job's income to invest in yourself
- •A dividend is extra money from a company's profits paid to investors, often every 90 days
- •Growth stocks can swing widely, while dividend payers like Walmart, Target, and Coca-Cola are described as boring but predictable
- •Dividend aristocrats have paid and raised dividends for over 25 years, and she mentions $1.66 trillion paid out last year
- •Turning on DRIP and buying more shares grows income over time
Her Father's Legacy and Feeling Whole
Calum asks whether Ashley feels whole after her journey. She says she feels more whole than ever, then describes her father's passing, discovering the generational wealth he left, realizing Empify may be in her DNA, and ends in tears saying she would simply tell him thank you.
- •Her father passed away last year, and she still wanted his approval but accepted he did his best
- •She learned about his community and the financial order he left, which showed her he was proud of her
- •She sees him, a law enforcement worker, as proof that anyone can create generational wealth
- •Asked what she'd say to him, she answers simply 'thank you'

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