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

Ashley Fox 0:00 If we fix what's on the inside, the outside will be a manifestation of your inside. And I think when I fixed my money problems, when I fixed my, my habits, how I saw myself, how I looked at money, the money just started to come. I, I actually worked less to create more, but I had to get rid of whatever was slowing me down internally. I had to let it out.

Calum Johnson 0:23 And you know what? Here's where I want to begin, 'cause I was on your Instagram this morning-

Ashley Fox 0:28 Okay. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 0:28 ... looking through, reading your captions.

Ashley Fox 0:30 Okay.

Calum Johnson 0:32 And there was something that you said on a recent post. You said, "What many people don't know is that ever since I quit my Wall Street job to become an entrepreneur, I wake up scared. You go from hoping to make payroll as an entrepreneur, to then hoping to make your first million, to then trying to lead and grow a team. So not only am I here for you, I do my best every day to lead my team. I have insecure days as a CEO, but every day I do it scared. Every day I do it scared." So, so here's where I wanted to begin. What is your mission and why do you do what you do?

Ashley Fox 1:12 I was touched by that caption. I didn't, who, who's the author?

Calum Johnson 1:15 [laughs]

Ashley Fox 1:15 Um, so our mission at Empify, which we're a fintech startup that's revolutionizing how adults and children are learning how to build wealth, and it's the merging of the word empower and modify. And so our mission is to educate, empower, and modify the mindset of every individual, inspiring them to achieve career, life, and financial success.

Calum Johnson 1:34 Hmm.

Ashley Fox 1:34 And the goal is to do just that. How can we show the world that you deserve to have wealth, you can build wealth, and we'll show you how to get it done, and we'll be by your side as you do it. And I think coming from a Wall Street background, I saw money. I saw a lifestyle. I saw, I saw a lot. But it's like this, I wouldn't call it a secret, but it's like this way of life that 99% of the world doesn't get exposed to. But when I was there, I felt like, "I want that life. I deserve that life. Who do I have to become to create that life?" And so I took, I took my Wall Street experience, the trials and tribulations that I've been through, the mistakes that I've learned, and I turned it into a company. And as I grow, Empify grows. As I heal, Empify heals, and I shed that on the world.

Calum Johnson 2:23 Hmm. I love that. As you heal, Empify heals. You know what? There was a, there was this, a statistic that I read.

Calum Johnson 2:30 So according to the Economic Policy Institute, the top 1% on average make 142 times what the bottom 99% make. Basically everyone else.

Ashley Fox 2:40 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 2:41 And so I think for most people, when they hear that, it like, it builds resentment. It also builds this feeling of like, "I work so hard. Like I, I turn up to work every day and I put so much into it, and I leave every day and I'm tired, and still I'm not, I'm not even close to reaching that level." And so I'm interested kinda given your experience on Wall Street and dealing with super high net worth individuals, what is one mindset, belief, thing that they're doing that's allowing them to make that much more income than everyone else?

Ashley Fox 3:24 So just hearing the words that you said, if someone says that, you're playing the victim. "I'm doing this. I'm working hard. I don't have this. I can't have this." You're playing victim. And I think one of the biggest things that I learned being around wealthy people is they believe that they have power, and they will do everything to keep it, protect it. And it's not an option, it's a standard. Wealth is, "I deserve it. I'ma have it, and I'ma work for it." And I think that mentality shift is what's different. Because we all have the same 24 hours, but it does feel like the people who work the most have the least, but it's because all we're doing is thinking we're only supposed to work. Wealthy people don't think like that. It's how can I value my time to create more and to have more and to do more, but I'm working smarter. Because if you think about it, you're taught to go to school, get a job, get a job, pay for school. And then they tell you to buy a house. But there's so many people that have that and they still aren't wealthy. And we, because that's all we see, that's the cycle that's repeated. But if someone in your family becomes a millionaire, you have a different blueprint. Someone in your family becomes a billionaire, you have a different blueprint. So because 99% of the world is following the same blueprint, they're going to produce the same results. And sometimes the unlearning of those results are the biggest challenge because the re- it's not what you're doing that has to change, it's how you're thinking that changes how you're operating that has to change. And so I remember just when times were like I didn't have money, all I thought was I was the victim. "I'm this. I can't do this. It's hard." Or people say, you know, their race plays a role, their gender plays a role, and it's kinda like, but what if I knew I was amazing? What if I knew that my race is what put me 10 steps ahead of you? What if I knew that my gender made me just as powerful as you? So if we change the way we see things, we'll start to create different habits, different actions that lead to a different life.

Calum Johnson 5:32 Mm.

Ashley Fox 5:32 And so one of the things that I noticed on Wall Street, they read different, they travel different, they surround themselves differently. And yes, they already are wealthy, but who do they have to become to create the wealth? And let's say they came from money. It's one thing to make the money, and it's another thing to retain it and sustain it. So while yes, a lot of wealthy people, not all, but some, came from money, it's a lot harder to keep it generation after generation. Um, and so I think mentality was the biggest thing, and that's why Empify is not about money. It's about the shifting of the mindset. We just so happen to teach you money.

Calum Johnson 6:09 Mm.

Ashley Fox 6:09 I always tell people the, the sugar is the finance stuff. The medicine is the intangibles that I'm embedding in your mind, in your thought process to make you believe you can do this. Once the belief is there and the mentality is shifted, you can give the mind whatever it wants. And so we target the heart.

Calum Johnson 6:27 Mm.

Ashley Fox 6:27 And then we get your mind to operate and think differently.

Calum Johnson 6:30 Yeah. You know what, it's, it, it's so good, but it's so, it's such a difficult thing to do.

Ashley Fox 6:36 But just that alone.

Calum Johnson 6:37 Mm.

Ashley Fox 6:37 What if it w- what, what if we just said it was easy? I'ma figure it out.

Calum Johnson 6:41 Mm.

Ashley Fox 6:42 I'ma do whatever I gotta do. 'Cause just thinking it's hard, you're gonna move like it's hard.

Calum Johnson 6:46 Mm.

Ashley Fox 6:46 But go ahead. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 6:47 That's a good, no, that's a good point. That's a good point that you make. And you know what? I li- I liked what you said about it's like, um, what's your blueprint, what's your standard.

Ashley Fox 6:55 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 6:55 And you know what? Later on in the episode, we're gonna get into how people can start to change their beliefs and how to start kind of taking on almost, like, these wealthy habits, um, and build passive income as well. But f- here's where I wanna, I wanna

Calum Johnson 7:10 start.

Ashley Fox 7:10 Okay.

Calum Johnson 7:10 I wanna go to your early context.

Ashley Fox 7:14 Okay.

Calum Johnson 7:14 And understanding what was your blueprint?

Ashley Fox 7:17 Mm.

Calum Johnson 7:17 What was your standard growing up? Like, if I wanted to kinda understand your beliefs, your goals around money, what would I need to know from kinda your early years?

Ashley Fox 7:28 So mine was actually very unique because I always wanted to be the best. So have the best grades, be the best on the basketball court, on the tennis court. Like, I had to be the best. And it was very unhealthy because my desire to be the best came from my belief that I wasn't enough. So I achieved and I achieved hoping that I got approval, essentially from both my parents. And what we don't realize that a lot of who we become has been created by the life s- that we lived as kids, and we grew up with that mentality. And so my father worked really, really, really hard. Like, I don't remember seeing my dad take a day off. He had the same set vacation, but he worked all the time, whether he wanted to, whether he was sick. So I naturally had this work ethic embedded in my mind because of what I saw. And my father, he also was the head of the household. He was a provider in, in both the immediate and extended family. So he was the king.

Calum Johnson 8:33 Mm.

Ashley Fox 8:34 And I always wanted his approval. So subconsciously as a kid, I'm going to work hard and do what he did because he is successful, because I want the successful king's approval. And year after year I'll be successful, and as I got older, I became more and more unhappy. But I didn't know this at the time. I'm just an achiever. So to the world, I'm so successful. I've got it all figured out. But on the inside, I didn't know it, but I was broken. And went to Howard, majored in finance 'cause I had to make the most money. I had to have the best job. I had to have the best grades. Got all A's, graduated with honors, and had four internships. Like, you could not stop me. And got to Wall Street and got one of the best highest paying jobs out of school, making six figures in my 20s, and I didn't want it anymore. And so I s- and I was confused as just, as, as a woman. I did everything I could to get there and didn't want it anymore. It's like I did the inevitable. Left Wall Street because I wasn't happy. Not at the job, but I wasn't fulfilled internally because I was always chasing money. I had to have the most money. The issue was I had one of the highest paying jobs out of school, so amongst my peers I'm good.

Calum Johnson 9:58 Mm.

Ashley Fox 9:58 I look great on paper. I got nice clothes now. I travel different. But when you're around millionaires and billionaires, I say, "I want that money." And if I stay that this job for 10 years, I wouldn't have that money.

Calum Johnson 10:09 Mm.

Ashley Fox 10:10 So what did they do differently? And I realized they all invested in their own idea or somebody else's idea. And I left, and I started to fi- well, prior to that, I forgot to mention this. I started reading books. [laughs] So I would read all the books that I saw all our clients read. So I would, like, Google, I mean, like, I could type in certain people's names and see their money. And I w- and I would find this commonality how they invested, how they travel, and so I would do what they did. So, like, wealthy people like to travel to the south of France. Guess what I did? I went to the south of France. They rent yachts. I rented, I had a smaller yacht, but I rented a yacht too. [laughs] Like, success leaves clues. I'm gonna follow the blueprint because I want that next big thing. And so years as I, after I left, felt, now at this point I lost everything because now I have this conditioning to work on Wall Street. I have this money. I have this life. Those habits still carried with me as I decided to create this thing. 'Cause at the time I called it "it" in my journal. Empify the word came about months later after I left, but it was "it" that I was chasing and I was looking for. And I read this book called The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. It's one of Oprah's favorite books and one of Jay-Z's favorite books, so, like, I'ma read it. I read this book, and it forced me to think about how everything falls into place and there's no such thing as a coincidence. So I started to put the pieces together. So anyway, I end up leaving Wall Street, fall flat on my face. Got kicked out my apartment in Harlem, maxed out credit cards, negative bank accounts, and I had to go back to my parents' couch on Wall Street. So to my father and to my family, you know, like, how could you go from making all this money to now you don't even, you're living back here in my house? So psychologically it broke me because how can I teach a subject, money, try to expose the world to Wall Street and help them make money, and I don't have any of it myself. But I could not unsee what I saw on Wall Street. So the, the possibility of what I could achieve, I saw, I, I knew I could do it because I saw it. And so as time progressed and Empify started to ... make sense in my head because for a while it was just a feeling. It was something I wanted the world to have, but I didn't, it didn't exist, so I didn't know what to call it. So I made up the word, and I went on t- started going television. So years later I started going television, um, and I realized I didn't, I, I wasn't, I got on, I went on TV and then, and I realized I couldn't last in the public eye. I would have anxiety attacks. It was just a lot for me. And between that experience and losing everything on Wall Street, who are you if you don't have the Wall Street, the money, the bags, the clothes? Like, it, it was like a sense of my identity was taken from me, and I had nothing. And I had to kinda start over. And when I started over and built Empify, I was still a broken woman. So now I'm successful, I'm making money again, but now I'm drinking. Now I'm unhappy. Now I push love away from me. I'm just, I'm just this unhappy being, but I'm successful, and I'm making money now. And when I went on TV, that's when I realized I couldn't do it, and I was, "I need help." And so I went to therapy. So I went to therapy, and I was very nervous, very scared, but at that point I had no, I didn't know where else to go or what to do, and I didn't have answers. So I went to therapy, and I have this rule, and this is for anybody listening too. When you go to therapy, I have, you have three sessions. I give you a shot, and I have to feel some sort of turning point within our sessions for me to continue on. If not, I go to the next person. And I was getting, I got down to my third session with my therapist, and she made me cry. And I remember when I first started, um, 'cause I was a financial advisor before I went full-fledged into Empify, I mastered the art of not crying as a woman. Like, I would cry every day, then I would cry every week, and then I would cry once a month. And then I ma- I would, I literally, like, programmed myself to be firm and to just succeed. And when she made me cry, I said, "Oh, lady, you're good." Like, [laughs] "You broke me." And so I started going to therapy, and through therapy I got clarity on all the younger things Ashley went through, how it created this big armor around her heart, and this mask that she wore, but nobody could see past the mask because the mask was so successful. Like, I was successful. And I realized I couldn't live like that. And I think the deeper that I got, the more I started to learn really who I was without the mask, and I got more comfortable exposing who I am to the world. So when it comes to money, my desire to obtain it was to be perceived a certain way, not because that's who, truly who I was. And when I got down to that, and I was around, of course, wealthy people, it's like, how do I combine who I've become, who I now choose to be, not subconsciously, but consciously now, take what Wall Street gave me, and redefine what money looks like in my life?

Calum Johnson 15:00 Mm.

Ashley Fox 15:01 It doesn't have to be you working all day, every day. It doesn't have to be you push love away. What if it, what does it look like to you? And I started to realize I, I created my life. Not my family, not the school system, not Wall Street. It's like, who does Ashley wanna be? Because if I'ma create a company that the world has never seen before, let me become a woman I've never been before. And that's how I look at life. That's how I look at money. And so at this point you can't tell me I can't do anything, because I've done the inevitable. I've removed the mask and walk in my authentic true self, and I don't care if you love her or not because now I love the person in the mirror.

Calum Johnson 15:39 Mm.

Ashley Fox 15:39 And I don't think I loved the person in the mirror for a very long time in my life.

Calum Johnson 15:41 Mm. You know what? I wanna, I wanna go deeper, and we're gonna, we're gonna talk more about, um, how someone can ... 'Cause I think, I think there's a lot of people that, like, when they really reflect, when they have those real, like, introspective moments and conversations, there's a feeling that there's something broken.

Ashley Fox 16:00 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 16:01 And it's like I al- you almost have to build it from the ground up. You have to build it from scratch. But you know what? I wanna, one of the areas I wanna go deeper, I think one of the things I've realized doing this show is, like, the significance of those childhood years.

Ashley Fox 16:16 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 16:16 The importance of those childhood years. It's almost like you could see someone's whole life-

Ashley Fox 16:21 Yep

Calum Johnson 16:21 ... just if you could understand-

Ashley Fox 16:23 For sure

Calum Johnson 16:24 ... their initial years.

Ashley Fox 16:24 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 16:25 Those early years. And so even when you explain the story, it feels like there was this constant pattern of almost chasing some sort of approval.

Ashley Fox 16:37 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 16:38 And, and it, it's funny because even when I reflect on my own life is in a way we're all sort of performers. Like, we do this performance. Maybe it's the grades that we were getting growing up or certain achievements, certain accolades. We keep doing the performance just hoping to get a bit of that approval, and then s- every now and then you get it, and you're still empty.

Ashley Fox 16:58 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 16:59 And so I'm curious 'cause it seems like the first, the first kind of reason that you were performing was for your, your dad's approval.

Ashley Fox 17:08 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 17:08 And so what are some of those ... Are there any stories that come to mind of, like, even just as a kid, some of the things that you would do to try and get your dad's approval? Okay, quick break. So one of the things that I've been thinking about for months and months and months is that I want to make a product for you guys, something that represents the journey that we've been on, something that is meaningful, that strikes to the mission of what this show is. And I'm very excited to announce our first product, and it's the Stay Delusional T-shirts. And just a quick story. In November of last year, I was sitting at my mom's house. I was living in the guest bedroom there. I'd been working at this channel for years, for two years at that point, and we had 600 subscribers, posting every single week. And now sitting before you today, I have over 100,000. But let me tell you this. I had many moments When I was living at my mom's house, where I felt completely delusional, I felt idiotic, I felt impatient, I felt like a fool, and now I'm in a place where it's started to work and it's started to build traction. But the one thing that's remained is that I have stayed delusional. I have stayed fixated, focused, obsessed on this visualization that I had in my mind. And so that's the message of the brand. For you that's listening, I want you to stay delusional on what your dreams are, and what your goals are, and what your targets are. And so here's what we're gonna do. Go to the link in the description, calum.bio. Sign up to our launch list. For the first print run, we're doing an extremely limited drop. And so the deal that I'm gonna make with you is that if you sign up to our launch list, you will get updates and exclusive access so that you are one of the people that get these T-shirts. And without further ado, let's get back to the episode.

Ashley Fox 19:09 Subconsciously, it was everything. It was, it, it was ... I wanted the world's approval. Like, "Hey, I'm successful, successful. Do you see me? Tell me you're proud of me." 'Cause my dad was, my dad was a great provider. He wasn't an emotional lover, and everybody loves their different ways. My dad was a phenomenal provider, but he wasn't the, "I love you. You're beautiful, Ashley. I'm proud of you." That wasn't ... He, he was ... That just wasn't his personality. And I think as a girl, you want that because you're not taught to give it to yourself. And I had to learn that my cup was empty, and it was no man, no parent, no society. It wasn't their job to make me feel whole. It was my job. So I had to learn, how does Ashley love Ashley? I remember my, like, my first day of therapy, sh- I went in there, and she was like, "Did you eat today?" And I was like, "No." She was just like, "You don't even take care of yourself." And I, I just, I never looked at it like that. I'm, I, I'm working. I don't ha- care if I eat. I don't care if I sleep. I'm working hard. I'm successful. But it's like, "How don't you take care of yourself?" And then she said, "Have you ever told yourself you're proud of you?" And I said, "No." She's like, "So why do you expect anybody else to do it, and you don't do it for yourself?" And so when I started to love Ashley and cherish Ashley, it taught the world how I deserve to be loved. And I think from getting good grades in school to, like, I remember getting all As, and then I got, like, a B, and my dad's like, "Well, why you didn't get all As?" Or, like, I graduated with honors. It was always like, "You better go to college." Got into college. Went to Howard. "You better finish. You better get a job." Four internships. Graduated with honors. "You better keep your job." It was always a ... And I, I don't know how or why he did it, but as a girl, it, by those comments in, versus saying, "I'm proud of you," it forced me to go to the next thing because what I had already achieved wasn't enough. So because it wasn't enough for you, it wasn't enough for me. So I'm just gonna keep chasing, chasing, chasing. And I remember this point in life where I was ... At this point, I moved out my parents' house. I'm making money at Empify. I'm on TV. I'm featured in the news. And I remember this time I had said something like, "Daddy, I'm on TV." Um, I remember exactly, I remember exactly where I was in the house. I'm like, "I'm on TV." But whatever it was, he just kinda brushed it off, and it was like ... And as a, as that little girl Ashley, it was a feeling of like, [sighs] like, "I don't know what else to do now." Like, I left the Wall Street job. I make the money. I'm on TV. I'm successful. What else do you want from me?

Calum Johnson 21:41 Mm.

Ashley Fox 21:41 There's nothing else I can do to ... 'Cause, 'cause my dad wasn't the biggest fan of me leaving Wall Street to go quit my job and start a business. That also wasn't a thing back in 2013. The way people are entrepreneurs now and, like, wanting to do things, that wasn't the sexy thing to do. So me leaving Wall Street because of my feelings and just figuring it out, that's not cool, especially for our parents' generation.

Calum Johnson 22:02 Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fox 22:02 And in that moment, I realized that there was, there was nothing more that I could do to show you that I am successful. And I remember going to therapy. So at that moment, I remember this. I was, I was asked by a, a, a very wealthy family to build a Empify school. Nobody really knows this, to build a Empify school in DC. And I always wanted to build a school, but at that time, I was struggling financially. Like, I was making money, but I wasn't thriving. I'm still trying to figure out how to survive, but we're better than nothing. And I contemplated moving to DC because they were gonna give me a lot of money to build this school, and it takes usually three to four years to prove a school is successful, and I'm up for the challenge. But I had to sit there, and I'm just like, "Do you wanna leave because you're tired of building? Because you don't have the money and you're just tired? Or can you stay a little longer, build a little longer, make enough money, and do it the LeBron way and build your own school after you made money?" And in that moment, I had realized was ... I was still going to therapy at the time. I had realized that I had no desire to be successful anymore, and I was stuck trying to figure out, like, I done did everything. I hadn't done all my dreams, but I had done the inevitable, and it still wasn't approved. So in that moment, it made me feel like, "Well, what am I doing this for?" Or, "What was I doing this for? Was this for me? Was this for my family? Was it for the world?" And I went to therapy, and that's when I realized all these years I achieved hoping someone saw me, until I had no reason to achieve anymore. And that's when I had to rewire my mind to think about, what does success look like for you? Like, and, and all the stories, all the patterns, all the relationships, all the friends, I started to just see a pattern, and that came from me. So at this time, I'm going to therapy, and I have a spiritual advisor, and all the pieces were coming together. And I would just see a pattern, and I'm just like, "This, I don't wanna live like this. Like, I don't ... This isn't even my story. This is what came with my life that I've held onto, but what if I let go, you know?" And so in that moment, I decided not to move to DC to build a school. I focused on the business, Empify. Um, but I started to do what Ashley wanted to do, not what I thought my dad would approve, not what I thought my mom would approve, not what I thought my friends would like. It was like, how about we just do what works for you? Because this whole time you've been subconsciously living for other people. And it took me a really long time to realize that.

Calum Johnson 24:32 Hmm. Why do you think? 'Cause there, there's different ways that it kind of manifests, I think, as a kid. Why was it about being successful? I, I saw a quote actually that you said on another, on another show. You went, um, "Growing up I just wanted to be rich and look good."

Ashley Fox 24:48 Yeah, that's all I wanted.

Calum Johnson 24:49 Why, why, why was, why specifically was that the success? 'Cause there's so many different things it could've been, right? But, like, why was it specifically so much about success, about money, about being rich? Why was that so important?

Ashley Fox 25:03 Um, the success part was because my dad was successful, and in my mind my dad had money. I mean, as I got older I realized we were middle class, but in that moment my dad had money and he was successful. I wanna be like him. Like, but then also certain parts of me wanted to be better than him because he didn't push me in a loving, positive, go ahead daughter kinda way. He pushed me by motivating me to work harder because I wasn't doing enough, versus, "You did good today, Ashley. I'm proud of you." It was like, "Did you g- how many, what, what grades you get today? Did you get the job? How many jobs did you get?" You know, like, think something like that. But I feel like, I don't know. Like, it just was ... I don't know. I don't know. It was, it was a I'ma do this regardless, and I deserve to do this, and I wanna do this. But it was, it was definitely a challenge. Um, but I don't have, I don't, I don't have any regrets. I don't know.

Calum Johnson 26:06 Mm.

Ashley Fox 26:06 I don't know.

Calum Johnson 26:07 Mm. You know what? I was, um, I heard this in

Calum Johnson 26:10 a clip and the, the speaker goes, he says, "Are you being driven or are you being dragged?" And there's, like, so many times-

Ashley Fox 26:18 Mm.

Calum Johnson 26:18 There's so many times in our life where, like, we're doing something, and even maybe we feel like the pinnacle of motivation. We feel so motivated to do this thing.

Ashley Fox 26:26 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 26:26 And it, like, goes back to that same question, are you being driven or are you being dragged? Are you being ... Is there some sort of inspiration that's driving you towards this goal?

Ashley Fox 26:35 Right.

Calum Johnson 26:36 Or are you being dragged? Is it what your parents said to you growing up?

Ashley Fox 26:39 Right.

Calum Johnson 26:39 Is it what the kid at the playground said? Is it this person doubted me when I was younger? And I think for so many of us, and definitely for me and my story, so much of the time it's we're being dragged.

Ashley Fox 26:51 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 26:51 Feel like we have to.

Ashley Fox 26:52 You know what's so inter- so I like that because part of it, I always use constructive feedback, and whether you wanna call it positive or negative reinforcement, that drove me to be successful. Because I still had a tunnel vision. I think when I got to Wall Street and I made the decision to leave, that was the beginning of me not being dragged or driven, but being guided. Because something outside of me said, "This is not it. I'm not happy. I don't know what happy is, but this is not it. There has to be something more out there in life for me, and I'm going to figure it out." And that's interesting. That's actually what The Celestine Prophecy is about. He literally goes through Peru trying to find answers and, and find these insights in life. I'ma find the answers. I don't have to have the end result. I'm just going to be guided.

Calum Johnson 27:39 Mm.

Ashley Fox 27:39 And then, and that's how, that's how I decided to start Empify. That's how I dec- decided to move to Paris. I lived there for a summer. That's how I decided to live in Atlanta. I don't operate off logic anymore because my logic is driven through narratives and stories of me feeling safe, secure, and/or fear, or having fear. Where guided is some- it just feels right. It's, it's whether, whether, whether you're spiritual, religious, your gut feeling. It's what feels right.

Calum Johnson 28:06 Mm.

Ashley Fox 28:06 This doesn't feel right, I'm not doing it. And that's why I'm, it's interesting now 'cause I'm not driven by money. You could give me $100 million right now and I would not stop doing what I do.

Calum Johnson 28:15 Mm.

Ashley Fox 28:15 Because money was never the reason I started. Money was the reason I went to Wall Street, which is probably why I left, because it wasn't something internal that was pushing me. It was something external that was driving me. For me, I operate off of what feels right, which is an internal thing.

Calum Johnson 28:29 Mm.

Ashley Fox 28:30 Um, but yeah, for a long time I would just, yeah, I, I don't know. This is a very deep conversation, forcing me to think. But I was living for the external, but my internal was broken, and it's like w- if we fix what's on the inside, the outside will be a manifestation of your inside. And I think when I fixed my money problems, when I fixed my, my habits, how I saw myself, how I looked at money, the money just started to come. I, I actually worked less to create more, but I had to get rid of whatever was slowing me down internally. I had to let it out, which is very scary 'cause you have to relive certain things. You have to have conversations that are uncomfortable, and you have to confront the darkest pieces of your life. I am not afraid to go deep. If I find something that is off with Ashley, I literally have two executive coaches, a therapist, a spiritual advisor. I go to Qigong. I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on me because I know what it means to work on Ashley, and I can't let a day go by where I don't come first. Because if I don't work on Ashley, then nothing on the outside of me is going to work. So it's, it's, it's a standard now. Like, not going to get help is, like ... And again, you're always an e- evolving being. There's always more to learn. But I've seen what has come from letting go of what has been holding you back on the inside to then freeing yourself to create all the things you say you want. But now I walk in alignment with what I say because it reflects how I feel on the inside.

Calum Johnson 30:01 Mm-hmm. Nice.

Ashley Fox 30:02 This is a very deep conversation. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 30:05 [laughs] It makes sense. That's what we do here.

Ashley Fox 30:06 [laughs]

Calum Johnson 30:07 It makes sense. Um, you know what? It's like, um, it's an interesting almost, like, dynamic of life that- We spend so much time in pursuit.

Ashley Fox 30:18 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 30:18 And, and a lot of the times it's like the, the pursuit is logical.

Ashley Fox 30:22 Yep.

Calum Johnson 30:22 Like, there's all of these logical reasons, and you can, like, plot perfectly the path. Like, if I achieve, if I get the Wall Street job and then I get the promotion, and then I do this and then this and then this, it's, like, perfectly mapped out to where you should reach this end goal where you're just-

Ashley Fox 30:35 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 30:35 ... happy and everything makes sense. And I think it's so ... It's, like, funny even hearing it in your story. The one moment where you felt it in those, I don't know what it was, that first 25 years, was when you threw out all the logic.

Ashley Fox 30:52 Mm, I did. Yeah.

Calum Johnson 30:53 You made the decision that was purely guided by how you feel.

Ashley Fox 30:57 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 30:57 But I think one of the things that I'm aware of, even in my own story, is that taking that first step of, like, no longer looking for someone else's approval or, like, an external approval and purely just going off what feels right to you, doing that for the first time can be like-

Ashley Fox 31:17 Scary

Calum Johnson 31:17 ... yes. Like, just scary.

Ashley Fox 31:18 It's, it's actually scary every day, though.

Calum Johnson 31:20 Mm.

Ashley Fox 31:20 Because you can't, you can't also unsee what your mind has ... Your mind is just a bunch of experiences piled together to form a thought.

Calum Johnson 31:27 Mm.

Ashley Fox 31:28 So it's like, I always tell people, "Okay, there's two of me. There's the one that is doing the thinking, and there's the one that's watching. That ... Th- there's the one that's saying the, saying the thoughts in your mind, and there's someone listening. You have to be the one that's watching and listening, not the talking." So I could go on stage and I'm nervous, I can't do this and I'm scared, but I can hear those thoughts. So who's listening and who's talking? You get what I'm saying?

Calum Johnson 31:56 Yeah.

Ashley Fox 31:56 So in my mind, I got good at being so still that I could hear my thoughts. I can n- I can literally hear my thoughts 24/7. Sometimes I'll be around people and I'll, they'll think I'm thinking or making these faces at them, and i- I'm not even paying them any mind. I'm monitoring what I'm saying in my mind because I know my mind is driving my actions. So if I'm telling myself I'm not good enough, or I'm scared, or I can't do this, I'm going to operate and act that way. That can't happen as a CEO of a business. I have to be so present and aware of my fears. And what happens is when you get really good at that, you start to see you repeat the same stories over and over and over again. So if I'm going on stage and I'm feeling like I'm not good enough, or what if I can't do this, these, and all these feelings come, like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Th- you're okay. They're like, "I got you. We're good. Relax. I know where these thoughts come from. I know why you think you're not good enough. We went all the way back to childhood. We know why, but I'm telling you, you are. You know you are. Let's talk about all the great things that you did." And sometimes I have to coach myself and stop listening to myself to be able to act in that present moment. And I got really good ... A- and when, it was funny, when I first started my spiritual advisor, I used to have this notebook, and she'd had me write down all the feelings that would pop up throughout the day. And, like, I would count how many times fear popped up, how many times jealousy or worry or anger popped up. And I s- and so w- I got really good at monitoring what is going on in my head. And when you can monitor what's going on in your head, you then have the power to change it. So it's like, hey, hey, hey, I see, I see you, you're scared. We got this.

Calum Johnson 33:29 Mm.

Ashley Fox 33:30 And then you walk in as a different person. You move as a different person. But those thoughts don't disappear. You just get, you just get louder than the thoughts that are driving you to be scared and to have fear and to think you're not good enough. B- but now it's like, hey, I know where I got that from.

Calum Johnson 33:43 Mm.

Ashley Fox 33:44 It's not true. It's just a story you told yourself that you're now choosing to believe. How about we choose to believe this instead? Because I have factual information as to why you are good enough. And, but it takes power and time to get that good as to stop the thinking. 'Cause sometimes you just go down a rabbit hole, and I do, too.

Calum Johnson 34:01 Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fox 34:01 But if you can catch yourself before you get there, you can start to operate differently. And when you operate different, you attract different, you create different, you move different. You have a different circle. Um, but I think I got really good at listening to Ashley and all the thoughts that go in my head. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 34:15 Yeah. Yeah. You know what? It's actually, um, I had the experience through meditation.

Ashley Fox 34:21 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 34:21 And so, like, when I, when I ... I'd heard for years, I'd heard these different entrepreneurs that would swear by meditation. They meditate every day, and it's, like, the reason for their success. And so I would try and do it, and I would just fall asleep. Like, I would just take naps-

Ashley Fox 34:33 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 34:33 ... basically. And the reason why it didn't work for me initially is I was trying to shut off my mind.

Ashley Fox 34:39 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 34:39 Like, I was trying to have zero thoughts. That's what I thought meditation was. It's actually really what you just described, which is you have these thoughts, and then you observe them, and you're aware of them.

Ashley Fox 34:50 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 34:51 And you let them pass. And it develops this practice, this ability to, like, just observe your own mind.

Ashley Fox 34:57 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 34:58 Because I think otherwise, our thoughts are so real, and the fears and the emotions feel so real that it feels like it's just an objective fact.

Ashley Fox 35:07 Yep.

Calum Johnson 35:08 Not that it's just, like, a thought that you had in a moment.

Calum Johnson 35:11 But you want to ... One thing that I want to, I want to understand, and we spoke about, we spoke about how scary it can be to make almost, like, that first bet on yourself.

Ashley Fox 35:24 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 35:25 The first bet of doing something because Ashley wants to do it, not because the world is gonna give me validation or my father's gonna like it. And so take me back to that moment of you being 25. You have the perfect job. You're earning six figures. You're living in New York. You're working on Wall Street. What is it that happens? What is it that you see in your reality that gives you the conviction of like, "Okay, I need to quit this Wall Street thing and do my own thing"?

Ashley Fox 36:03 So there was a defining moment. I was on ... I, so I sat on the 27th floor. And after a while, by this point, I got more joy out of learning how our clients built their wealth versus helping them keep it. So I would ... dig deep, like, how did you get this money? Like, how did this family become so wealthy? Who was the first one? And I would just do research. But I was, I was at my desk, and I was talking to a really good friend of mine, and I had on a headset 'cause a geek at Wall Street. Had on a headset, and he was like, "Look outside. Walk outside." I mean, no, he's like, "Look. Go to the window. Look outside." So I looked outside, and I looked down. He's like, "Look at all the people." And he was like, "How do you feel?" And I was like, "If I'm being honest, I feel trapped." And he was like, "Okay, I want you to turn around, look at the floor, close your eyes, and envision that this floor is empty and this is your entire building. How do you feel now?" And I was like, "I feel on top of the world." And I don't know what that did to me, but it did something to me. I walked out. I had to go take, like, a break. I walked outside, and I was like, this is when Twitter was in, so I'm, like, tweeting these thoughts. So then I go upstairs back to my desk, and I go to my colleague. I'm like, "Look outside. Look outside." And he's like, "Okay." I said, "How do you feel?" He's like, "I feel regular." I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Look outside. How do you feel?" He's like, "I feel regular." And that's when I knew I was different.

Calum Johnson 37:13 Mm.

Ashley Fox 37:13 At that moment, I knew I wasn't here to keep rich people rich. I was a person to show the world that it could be rich, and in that moment, I knew this was ... I couldn't be there for forever.

Calum Johnson 37:24 Mm.

Ashley Fox 37:24 Even though there's, I had contemplated, like, it's again, people kill to work on Wall Street. Like, I could've made millions of dollars. It would've took me some time, but, but it wasn't about money anymore. I did the thing. I did it. I was the Black girl. I did get the grades. I got the job, but I didn't want it anymore. I actually always wanted to be a teacher. They just, in my mind, didn't make Wall Street money, so I didn't go that route. But it was that moment that was like, am I the only one here that wants to be the client?

Calum Johnson 37:54 Mm.

Ashley Fox 37:54 Like, does nobody wanna be the client? Like, are we all okay 'cause we get b- good bonuses? But I wanted to create something. I wanted to be the client, and I think I just saw what was possible, and you can't unsee, and I think that plays a role, too, in our belief when it comes to money. You didn't see money the way I saw it, so I wouldn't expect you to feel like you could have it. If I'm in your bank account, I'm sitting in the meetings with you, I'm talking to the investors who are helping you invest, I'm looking in your trust, I'm watching, I'm seeing what you do, I'd be crazy not to implement it. And it did- I, it didn't intimidate me because, of course, they started with $100 million. I started buying stocks with $100. Like, but if I can get to that, I could work towards that. So because I saw it, it meant it was possible. I didn't care about the color of your skin. I didn't care who you were, what your last name was. If you can do it, Ashley Fox can do it, and I'm gonna figure it out because it was possible. I didn't see that prior to Wall Street. I think I was blessed to create that. I think it's in my DNA from how I was raised and, and the things that my father and my mother and my family represented. But it was that defining moment where it was just like, this isn't it. There, there's some- there has to be something more. Now, I did not know what it was, but I knew Wall Street wasn't it.

Calum Johnson 39:07 Mm.

Ashley Fox 39:08 That's why I left, and I didn't know what I was gonna do.

Calum Johnson 39:09 Yeah.

Ashley Fox 39:09 I just, I left.

Calum Johnson 39:11 You know what? I'm, I'm,

Calum Johnson 39:12 I wanna know what happens next. And when I say I wanna know what happens next, I mean, like, the next, the next day, the next week, the next month, and, and here's the reason why I ask. There's so many people, at least that I've spoken to or I've heard from, that they've kind of had that moment-

Ashley Fox 39:29 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 39:29 ... where they've been in the office, or maybe it's when they get home after work and they're pouring the bottle of wine and they're drinking at the dinner table. They've had the moment of, like, this is not it.

Ashley Fox 39:42 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 39:43 But then it ends there. They go to sleep that night. They go and turn up for work the next day, and it keeps on going, and internally, they know that, like, they should be doing more. It feels like they should be doing more, something different. Like you said, it feels like they're different, but they just keep turning up.

Ashley Fox 40:01 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 40:01 And so I'm interested to know, like, what happened the next day, what happened the next week, what happened the next month, that you actually followed through-

Ashley Fox 40:10 So-

Calum Johnson 40:10 ... on what happened in that moment

Ashley Fox 40:11 ... the Celestine Prophecy happened. So when I read the book, the first 10 pages, he, the first insight is no such thing as a coincidence, so therefore everything happens for a reason, and you never could tell your life going forward, but you can always understand it in retrospect. So it's like, okay, let me... And he goes through Peru trusting, trying to find these insights, and every day, every meeting, every everything leads him to the direction he's trying to go. So I started to pay attention, and so everything fell into place. So at that moment, there was a friend that I had who was really good friends with a basketball player, and he had a business manager, and he helped athletes invest in companies like Empify. And I felt like I didn't really care to work with athletes, but I'm like, I could, athletes don't know anything about money. I knew at that point I wanted to give the world financial education. I needed to take everything I saw on Wall Street, give it to the world. I would tell my colleagues, "I'm gonna do this," and they, they would make fun of me, like, "Oh, Ashley's gonna do this." They were just really making fun of me, and it's just like, "No, you don't understand. Nobody knows this stuff." Like, and I was just excited to do it. And I got connected with the guy. It was a group of guys from Harvard, and they were starting this company helping athletes invest in, like, startup businesses because athletes don't have sustainable wealth. They make money, but they're rich, but it's not sustainable. And so I'm like, "I could do that. Okay." And so he just so happened to say, like, "You know, you wanna come work with us?" And I was like, we talked money. It was less than what Wall Street paid me, but I also had $30,000 when I left Wall Street. So I'm like, and then I also had just got my real estate license, so worst case scenario, I was gonna sell houses in New York. I had $30,000. Worst case, I could go back and get another job. Like, I worked for one of the biggest banks in the world. So I was like, let's just try this out, but this is not it. I don't know what it is ne- what's next, but this isn't it. And I quit, and had this big old quitting my job brunch in Manhattan. All the, I had like 50 people come to this brunch. I was like, I'm never gonna wear stockings again. And, but it was that book. That book, it was, it was like, I met this guy who just so happened to be looking, just started a company. I loved the mission. I felt like that's a stepping stone to give pieces of Wall Street to the world. Let me just do it with athletes. And so I was working with him, and so when I left, I was working with him And then everything went downhill after that. [laughs] Then I got, I got kicked out. Um, it just, I just was still living like I had a job. 'Cause I was, like, traveling, I was traveling still, burning through my $30,000. Like, um, and I had to go back home. But even then, after that, I got connected with a guy, one of, one of my really good friends connected me with a guy who, um, helped me start a financial advisory business. So at this point, I had all my security licenses. So I'm like, "Oh, I could be a financial advisor," but I'm not working with rich people, I'm working with the everyday person. So I had this event in Philadelphia. Still getting kicked out, by the way. I was not, I was getting, I was going through an eviction process in court. And I had an event in Philly, and 100 people showed up, and I was teaching about money, and that's where I started to get all my clients. So at this point, I had the licenses. All I had to do was partner with companies, 'cause I had the, I had access to the products and services. Let me bring the products and services to the everyday person. Because I understand the financial products, let me help the everyday person get to these products. It was like a step down from Wall Street, but we gonna get there for the, for people. And so I built this financial advisory business, and next thing you know, I had a financial advisory business, and I opened a office g- like a year or so later. I was one of the top producers. And then again, this wasn't it.

Calum Johnson 43:39 Mm.

Ashley Fox 43:40 I made the money, and I just, I was working so hard. I w- I was successful, but I'm like, "This isn't it. I'm only talking to 12 people a day, and that's if I kill myself. I need to reach the world." And I also was making a lot of companies a lot of money, and I'm like, "You would never talk to these people if I didn't exist. I am the middleman." I ne- and, but I got more joy out of education versus implementation. So I said, "I wanna teach this. I don't wanna give you a product. I wanna teach you about the products so that you feel safe to talk to these companies on your own." And then we started to teach kids, and that's when Empify became a company. When I let go of being a financial advisor, I taught kids for free, um, in 2016. I was teaching six classes for free. How can I take what I gave these adults and make it in, put it in the education system? And in 2017, we were in the s- we were in 26 schools in the city of Philadelphia. We got a contract with the school district, and that was the first year Empify made money. So I had let go of... It's interesting. I had to let go of Wall Street. I had to let go of being a financial advisor. I came up with the word Empify in 2013, but we didn't, it took me four years to get clear on what I f- what I felt the day I left Wall Street, to be able to actualize it and to turn it into a business. And I think, I didn't force it. I just kinda was just going with the flow.

Calum Johnson 44:57 Mm.

Ashley Fox 44:57 Because it got so, it got to points where I wanted to quit, and my mom was like, "Well, you wanna go back to Wall Street?" And I was just like, "No." She was like, "Well, you gotta keep going." And after a while as an entrepreneur, you go, you're in too deep, you can't get out, and you know too much, you can't go back. So I was stuck. I had to, I, it was, only way I could go was forward. And I always tell people, when you start a business, 'cause it's not for everybody. I know what it feels like to be at a job, to make a lot of money, to like it, to enjoy it. I know what it's like to be in a business, to love it and enjoy it, and I know what it feels like to be at a job and hate it, and run a business and also hate it. It's all about perception. Um, but when you're doing something that is so much bigger than you, it's my duty to do this. I was, I was created to heal so that Empify could change the world. Because as I healed more as a person, Empify got better. That's why it, I, I'm so obsessed with the fact that I have to work on me. Because if I don't, I see the impact. Just the other day, I pretty much had, like, a whole meltdown. But I hadn't talked to my spiritual advisor. I wasn't going to Qigong. I wasn't doing the intangibles to take care of Ashley, and I spiraled out of control. And then, but I'd, I've been there before, so I know what I gotta do to get back. But in that, I saw what happened in my business. I saw how I started to treat people, and it's like, I can't afford not to be the best version of Ashley to do the thing that I wanna give the world, so I have to be the best. So again, my spiritual advisor always says Empify was created for me to heal. It's like my child. I wanna be better for Empify so it works out for both of us, and it works out for the world.

Calum Johnson 46:28 Mm. You know, I think, I think it's such a powerful story, and the reason why, I think there's so many people, and I know this was me a few years ago before I found the podcast, 'cause then it, it's similar. It's actually funny listening to you talk about Empify. It's the same for me with the podcast. Like, to a certain degree, I feel like it saved me.

Ashley Fox 46:45 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 46:45 This is, like, my, my savior doing this, 'cause it was, like, what I was meant to do.

Ashley Fox 46:49 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 46:50 And I remember before I started the show, it was like I was constantly looking for, like, like what's the thing that I'm meant to do? Like, what was I put here to do? What's the thing that it comes easier to me than other people?

Ashley Fox 47:04 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 47:05 Um, and it would always elude me. I would try all these different things, and it wasn't it. And it was the, it's, it's powerful because even in your story, it took so much time, even from the moment that you quit Wall Street, so many attempts of, "Try this thing. No, that wasn't it."

Ashley Fox 47:22 Mm.

Calum Johnson 47:22 "Try this thing. That wasn't it." But each step is bringing you closer-

Ashley Fox 47:25 Closer

Calum Johnson 47:26 ... to ultimately what you were meant to do.

Ashley Fox 47:28 Right.

Calum Johnson 47:28 And so I think sometimes it's like people have that, that same way of thinking, that same psyche that you had of being perfect.

Ashley Fox 47:37 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 47:37 Of trying something, and that's it. It's not even really trying something. It's like you're just perfect. You, you get it the first time. I think especially people that do well in school, or they're, like, super hardworking-

Ashley Fox 47:47 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 47:47 ... they're used to achieving things, accolades. They're used to the feeling of being perfect at something.

Ashley Fox 47:53 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 47:53 And so a lot of the times, that journey of finding the thing that you were meant to do, like put here to do, it's a very imperfect journey.

Ashley Fox 48:02 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 48:03 It's very much you try this thing. Maybe even it succeeds, but you hate it, and then you try another thing, just a complete failure. And each time you're learning lessons that stack up to the next thing.

Ashley Fox 48:13 Mm-hmm. And you don't know that until it happens. Because what's interesting, I always wanted to work in investment banking on Wall Street. That is the highest paying job. You work the most, but you make the most. And I got an internship my junior year, and I, it was horrible, but they didn't give me an offer back, and I felt like a complete failure. And then I got a career working in asset management. And if I would've never been in asset management, I would've never been in the bank accounts of millionaires and billionaires, because investment banking is mergers and acquisitions and companies issuing debt. Like, it's more company based than hu- per- uh, individual based. And I think back to, like, I'm g- glad I didn't get that internship opportunity to get a full-time job because I wouldn't have been in asset management. And if I wouldn't have been in asset management, I wouldn't have been able to believe it's possible for our community to build wealth. And if I wouldn't have left asset management and became a financial advisor, I wouldn't know how to educate adults. Because when I first started as a financial advisor, I was too smart for my audience. I would be telling them what to do, but no one would listen to me. But I realized I wasn't speaking their language, I just was speaking like a woman who just left Wall Street. And then when I built that financial advisory business, I started to teach kids. So now, if I could teach an eight-year-old and go on TV and teach the, a kid how to buy a stock and help kids buy a stock, I know I could teach an adult. But I had to go through that process to be able to be who I am today. And a- again, this goes back to the self-same prophecy. It's like you're looking for that ... I was always looking for what the s- I was looking for the sign. And so every time something happens to me, nothing ever happens to me, it happens for me. So it's like, "Okay, this is happening for a reason. Why is this happening?" From every employee that comes to my business, to every person I gotta fire or hire, it's like, "Okay, you're here. What am I supposed to get from this?" And, and, and, and I have to prog- process it for it to click, like, "Ah, okay, that's why you're here. This is what I was supposed to get with this encounter, or this experience, or this opportunity to say no or yes." And I became very intuitive. It's like every piece of my life is a story, and every piece is the puzzle. I need to make sure I understand the puzzle. And I might not get it right then and there, but I always, I always can connect the dots. But I intentionally live that way, though. Most people are just living. You, things just happen to you, and it's just like, "Woe is me" or, "This is wrong." And it's like, why is this happening right now? From the president that is in office or who's get- Like, what is this supposed to do for us? What are we supposed to ... How are we supposed to respond? How are we supposed to learn? What are we supposed to feel? Because I always tell people, "Whatever emotions come out is what's on the inside." So if somebody makes me angry, it's just like, "You didn't make me angry. There's anger on the inside of me. Well, where did this come from? Let me get it out. You were put on this earth and this experience for me to release what I need to let go of. If not, you wouldn't be in my life. You're only here to get me closer and closer to who I truly am in my core." So everybody is a blessing, and everybody's here to teach me something. And but that's how I live my life. Because that way I don't play victim, that way I don't blame anybody. That, that way there's always a mirror that I'm holding up on how I can be better as a person.

Calum Johnson 51:15 Mm. You know what's, uh, interesting? So I, I left my job, uh, 18 months ago, and it's kinda similar to your story, actually. When, so when I left, a few months after I left, I went from living in the Lower East Side in Manhattan-

Ashley Fox 51:29 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 51:29 ... to back where my mom lives in New Jersey. And I thought that it would be, like, this short-lived thing, like a couple months. I even told my mom, I was like, "I'll be here for a few weeks till I get back on my feet, and then I'm gonna be out." 'Cause I, I don't like the suburbs, I like being in cities. Um, and so I remember it was just dragging on, and it's like we get into the summer, and then the summer's over, and I've just been working on the business the whole time. And the months keep going and going and going. And it was the one time in my life I've been able to, like, journal consisten- consistently.

Ashley Fox 51:59 Mm-hmm. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 51:59 I can never keep it up. But this time I did, and I remember one of the notes that I made, I kinda had this mindset switch where instead of thinking, like, "When is this gonna be over with?" I wrote down, I said, "Everything is putting me in position."

Ashley Fox 52:13 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 52:13 Everything that happens is putting me in position. It's all preparation. And it's exactly what you mentioned, which is, like, even the, the negative things or things that you perceive as negative, 'cause nothing's really negative, it's always putting you in position for the ultimate win.

Ashley Fox 52:29 Right.

Calum Johnson 52:29 And then when it happened, it's like you're ready for it.

Ashley Fox 52:32 Right.

Calum Johnson 52:32 And so

Calum Johnson 52:33 you know what, where I wanna go? We had a call yesterday. A few days ago we had a call.

Ashley Fox 52:39 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 52:40 And I'm asking you about, um, how did you fix your broken beliefs.

Ashley Fox 52:47 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 52:48 How did you fix your broken beliefs? And you said, "I went to therapy." And I say to you, I say, "Okay, what motivated you to go to therapy?"

Ashley Fox 52:56 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 52:57 And you say it was you went on Jim Cramer's The Street.

Ashley Fox 53:00 No, no, no. So that, I was broken on that. That scared me, and I ran. Years later, they asked me to go back on TV, and I went on Fox News, and I was really good. And I'm like, "Okay, this has happened twice in my life." Like, I tried to run from it. But when I went on Fox, and they were, like, trying to get me to be, like, a normal contributor, and I'm like, "Me? Like, Ashley?" Like, I didn't sign up to be famous. I just wanna teach you finance. And I was just like ... But, but I watched the interview, and I was good. There was nothing wrong. And I'm like, "You're kinda good at this." And I'm like, "TV?" And I just was freaked out. And I was like, "I need help." So yeah, Jim Cramer, I was freaking out, and I hid. And then a few years later, like, I got asked to be on TV again, and I was like, "Okay, this is a sign." But I remember my mentor said to me, "You're selfish to hide who you are from the world knowing what you know." And in that moment, it was like, you're right. My fears are stopping the world from changing because of my insecurities. So how about we get rid of these insecurities 'cause the world needs to know what you know.

Calum Johnson 54:04 Yeah.

Ashley Fox 54:04 There, there, there ... I haven't found anyone, but doing what I do with my experience, my passion, and my purpose, you're not gonna find that, especially in a Black female from Philly. You know? Like, and it's like the world deserves to see that. They deserve to know what's in my mind, what's in my heart, so I've accepted that as my purpose. And I can't hide it. So how do I let my light shine? And I actually like the light shining. I didn't like my light. I was afraid of it.

Calum Johnson 54:31 Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fox 54:31 So I was like, "Okay, clearly you don't like the person in the mirror." So if I don't like the person in the mirror, why would the world love her? And the world will love Ashley when Ashley loves her. And when she loves her, Ashley wouldn't care if the world loved her anyway 'cause she's so busy loving herself. Therefore, your love is extra.

Calum Johnson 54:45 Hmm. I love that. What was the ... You said, um, your mentor said something, that you, you knew something that had to be shared with the world.

Ashley Fox 54:55 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 54:55 And it was almost like it's an injustice that you don't share it.

Ashley Fox 54:59 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 54:59 What, what was the thing? What is the thing that you, that you knew that had to be shared?

Ashley Fox 55:06 Well, I saw on Wall Street what just the money, the life, what they read, how they thought. You just don't see that every day. Like, it was so crazy. It was points where, like, I would be in the bank accounts of our clients, and our team, you had to have at least $25M. So, if you had, like, five, "Oh, they don't have money." It was like, I started to see, like, millions of dollars as like, "Oh, this isn't a lot." You know? Like, and don't let it be like 100,000. That was like, that was equivalent to, like, a penny in my mind. And it was like they just, when you have that much money, you have an entire team to support you. You cannot just walk into a branch and say, "Hey, I got $25M, still growing, still making more. I got three kids, I got businesses, I got houses. I need help." You need an entire team to support you. The same thing goes for the everyday person. We just don't know who our team is, and we don't think we need a team because we don't have a lot of money. While they had an entire estate planning team, you need to go and get a will, and get life insurance, and get a trust, right? While they had investors investing for them, you open a brokerage account and you buy a stock. You know, while they're creating trusts for their kids, you then go open another brokerage account for your kid. You know, like, while they had, uh, accountants and attorneys, like, you, you have to start to think about who is your team. Wealth is like, there is this you incorporated. It's not just I have a job, I make money, and that's it. If we keep living like that, we're gonna keep getting the exact same thing, and we're gonna keep hoping a president or a government is going to save us. The last time I checked, there was no president that saved Ashley Marie Fox. Like, so ... And society is designed to make you dependent on it. That's why America is what America is. But how do we do it the 1% way? How do we understand that our mere existence is the reason why people are wealthy in the first place? Like, if you don't buy the products of the companies that are trade on the stock market, no one has wealth. So, if you ... Now, I'm not saying don't buy things, 'cause I like buying, but what if you would owned a piece of that? You know? So, it was, there was a way of life that we all deserve to have, at least by our own choice.

Calum Johnson 57:19 Mm.

Ashley Fox 57:19 We should have the ability to say, "I want this type of life. I want this wealth." Not, "I can't do it." Not, "I don't deserve it." Not, "It's for, it's not for Black people." No. Wealth doesn't have a color. So, what do you want? You deserve financial clarity, you deserve financial freedom, and you can do that strategically, whether you have a job or not have a job. Like, you might not become a billionaire, but there are some billionaires that had jobs up until certain points. So, it's like, what is your story? Who do you wanna become? And it's so interesting because people say, "Oh, well, they don't teach this to us." Now you can learn everything about finance. There's so many people that teach finance. There's so many things and events and stuff like that. But now it's, "Oh, it's a scam," or, "I'm scared," or, "I don't trust it." It's like we, we argue for our limitations, wondering why we don't have the life that we want, but we spend more time telling ourselves what we can't do or we don't know how to do, and we don't make it a priority. One of the biggest things I s- saw on Wall Street is their wealth mattered. They cared about their money. And, and you can't only care about your money when you have a lot of it. How do you ... Like, if you don't care about your money when you have a little of it, you don't deserve to have it. Start making it a priority. If you don't want your kids to grow up and struggle, then you don't do the same thing that your family did that led you to struggle. But sometimes we can't step outside of our mere existence to see how we're subconsciously living a life with no intention. And it's like, and that's where the therapy, the slowing down, or things like the meditation, you have to understand, you have to stop doing and going about life the way you have been because you're used to it. And sometimes that's hard. And the older you get, the harder it is. That's why I like teaching kids, 'cause they weren't, they weren't there yet. Like, you, you can't change an adult. You can, you can shift a child's mind. You can shift an adult's mind, but it takes a lot of time, and the older you are, the more you're stuck in your ways. And it's like, I can't make you want this, but I can give you an environment that cultivates this. I can show you it on my timeline. I can create classes. I can build an entire company. I can have a app that cultivates the Wall Street environment so that you are immersed in it and realize, "Hey, I can do this." And so Empify is literally about creating that environment. You don't have to go to Wall Street to do what Wall Street did. You just come to Empify, because Empify has created what Wall Street gives its wealthy clients, we give it to the everyday person. But it's being ran by a woman who that was her job. Like, that's what I did for a living. And not only that, what I did for a living is what I do for myself. So, the same thing I preach to the world is the exact same thing I do to myself and for myself because I want, I want that 1% life too. I want that life. I want that structure. I want that generational wealth. I want that, and I deserve that. But you don't know you can have that because you don't even know that exists, so you use me. You don't have to go to Wall Street or you have a Ashley Fox. You don't have to go get a financial advisor or talk to a banker on Wall Street. You just come to Empify, take classes, so you can get the education that the school system didn't give us.

Calum Johnson 1:00:14 Hmm. You know, I wanna, I wanna go, I wanna go deeper into the practical. And I want someone to be able to, to leave this conversation, and they can make the first meaningful step, the first meaningful step to building wealth, to starting to go on that trajectory where they could be in that, in that top 1%. And

Calum Johnson 1:00:36 so to begin, I wanna start with a couple of statistics. So- 78% of people live paycheck to paycheck.

Ashley Fox 1:00:44 Mm.

Calum Johnson 1:00:44 I heard that statistic recently. Another one is 40% of people own zero stocks. They don't own anything in the stock market. And so I'm curious, for that person that they're listening to this and they resonate with it.

Ashley Fox 1:00:57 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:00:59 And so they, they... Let's say even that they're starting that journey of trying to fix their broken beliefs, but when it comes to money specifically and building wealth, I just think that step one is so important. Because once you do step one, once you just make that first movement in the right direction, you start to build momentum.

Ashley Fox 1:01:18 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:01:19 And then it starts to get easier, and then some of those beliefs and your identity and all the things that we spoke about earlier, they start to shift with that momentum. And so to that person that's living paycheck to paycheck, who doesn't invest, doesn't own any stocks, what is step one on their wealth journey?

Ashley Fox 1:01:41 Um, first thing is I don't think people live paycheck to paycheck. I think they just spend paycheck to paycheck.

Calum Johnson 1:01:46 Yeah.

Ashley Fox 1:01:47 So that's the first thing is, is how about we just change the story? You don't live paycheck to paycheck. You're not behind financially. You're exactly where you need to be. Then it's what's your number? Or like, what, what do you want? How much do you want coming in every single month, right? And again, you don't have to be a billionaire. What brings you ease? Every month, if I had this coming in, I would be okay, right? Because you need a destination. We can't sit and build a roadmap if we don't know where we're going. If I put in right now on Google Maps or MapQuest the destination of where I wanna go, the first thing I have to do is know the exact address. If you don't have the exact address, they won't, it won't give you the route to take you there. But once you know the exact address, your destination, it will build a roadmap for you. Even if you turn left when you should turn right, it'll reroute you back to still where you're trying to go. Problem is we don't know where we're going. So where are you going? What do you want? What does it look like? Where are you living? Where are you traveling? What is your circle like? And it's like put yourself into a space of creating that script to the movie that you wanna live. Get really, really clear on that. So what is your number? And, and you have to really think about that. And now, again, not billions of dollars, but for financial ease. The second thing is, or the third thing. Second thing, third thing. The next thing you would do, I would say to f- I don't care who you are, you need a brokerage account. Like, a brokerage account is the easiest way to put as much money as you in or in, in it, or as little money as possible to be able to own a piece of a company. You... The, the only way to truly build wealth is to invest in your own idea or somebody else's idea. Wealth, sustainable, pass it down, give it to your kids, financial ease, you cannot just have a job. That is a way of life that may have worked for our parents, and that's fine. The world is different now. You have to understand your money has to work for you. You wake up, you get paid. You give all your money away. You pay your cellphone bill, you pay your car note, you go out shopping, you go to the bar, you buy food, you take care of your kids, you pay... You take care of everybody, and you wonder why you don't have money. It's because you made them a priority first before you. Then we can go to therapy to figure out why don't you matter. When I started to pay Ashley first, it was as if I was training the universe and the world to say that I mattered. Even when I was going through an eviction, I was investing $10, but I still was worth paying myself. And so you get your brokerage account, which is a simple account. You could use Fidelity, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, E-Trade. Open an individual brokerage account. Pick a number every two weeks that you wanna set aside for you. You don't pick 10% of y- of the money you make, 'cause that's what they say on the internet. You pick what's comfortable for you. So take a second and think about what can I set aside every month or every two weeks that I know I, it pushes me, b- but I feel okay? It's not making my bank account negative. Whatever number pops up, you cut it in half.

Calum Johnson 1:04:38 Okay.

Ashley Fox 1:04:38 I don't care how small it is or how embarrassed you are. I always tell people, "Don't be embarrassed for starting small. Be embarrassed for not starting at all." Pick a number, and if it's $10, you don't want $10 every two weeks, give it to me. I will take $10 every two weeks, because a whole lot of $10 can add up to something. We get so caught up in what we don't have today, wishing we would've learned about this a long time ago, but I remember leaving Wall Street July 12, 2013. Years later, it felt like yesterday I just left Wall Street. Five years is gonna come in, in a matter of time. So it's like, are we gonna sit here and say we're sitting here talking ourselves out of our own greatness, making excuses, and then five years from now still being frustrated robbing the same Peter and the same Paul, living the same paycheck to paycheck because you were embarrassed for not starting small? So, and that's the one thing also with wealthy people. They don't get rich quick. They're not traders. [laughs] Some of their money is what trading equivalent on Wall Street is like a hedge fund. Portion of their money g- is traded, but not all of it. Like, and we have this, "I have to make money quick because I'm so behind." No, you have to do what you can with what you have and build so that it always can sustain itself. Being rich is having a lot of money right now. Being wealthy is having money generation after generation, where your kids' kids' kids are saying, "I want that money, 'cause I've had money and I've lost it. I wanna make sure it, I, it never runs out." And that is why the, like, the Rockefellers or the Walton family can sustain wealth because they're not just trying to get rich quick and have a lot of money. They wanna make sure it lasts forever. That is what we need to think about in our family, and that is not something that is taught. That is caught. You have to be willing to say, "I am the f- person in my family that is going to change our financial legacy. It is my job. I don't care how hard it is. I'm worthy of doing it. I'm the only one who's gonna do it, and I'm gonna do whatever I gotta do to get it done, and I'm gonna trust that it's going to work out." So you get your brokerage account, you pick your number. The next thing I would say do is, is make a list of where you spend money and where you give your time. So from the toothpaste you use to the soap you use, the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the apps you use, the social media platforms, there's a 10 out of 10 chance that a lot of the companies you use are billion-dollar businesses that are publicly traded on the stock market. While you don't have to start a business, you can own a piece of a business by buying stock in a company. When you buy stock in a company, it's like having a slice of a pizza pie. You can buy as many slices of you want, uh, as you want in a pizza, which is a stock, which is a company. I just need you to get one. If you're gonna give your money to trillion-dollar businesses that became trillion-dollar businesses because you're their customer, why don't you wanna own a piece of it? Why? Like, you have companies like Amazon. I bought a shower cap on Amazon the other day. Like, Amazon was not that 10 years ago, but they are today, and they are because I'm consistently spending my money. And I got Amazon Prime. Like, I just... Or Apple or whatever. And I'm not saying people go out and buy these stocks, but it's like you can't get mad at America for having money when you are the reason they have money. You value your spending more than you value your ownership. The difference is wealthy people value ownership more than they value spending and consumption, and that is a complete mental shift. If I taught a class right now teaching people how to spend money, nobody's coming. They're not coming 'cause we've mastered that. But we question, "Can I come invest? Can I do this?" Or, "I'm behind. It's a lot. It's too hard." And we get so caught up in our day. So those are the things that I would say, and once you, once you make that list, you wanna look up the company on Google. Type in the company name and stock. If a chart pops up and that means it's a publicly traded company. That price on the screen is what it costs to own a piece of a company. You have some of the trillion-dollar businesses that exist today that are less than $200, and I guarantee you gave them more than $200 or hours and hours of your time, which led them to be a trillion-dollar business. And then forget trillion. You got billion-dollar businesses. But either way, we, we have to shift how we think. We're so caught up in the day, "I gotta spend, I gotta spend, I gotta spend. I gotta... I'm behind, I'm behind." You keep, you keep thinking about behind, you never can see what's in front of you. And at this point in the economy, it's about time we learn how to invest. There's gonna be another president. Laws are gonna change. The Fed is lowering interest rate. Now's the time. Like, the best time was yesterday. The next best time is today. We have to do something because, again, I don't want people to look up, uh, five years from now, "I wish I would've went to the Empify class. I wish I would've..." We're, we're so busy wishing, but we're not doing. And I think that is one of the major differences with the people I saw on Wall Street. Building wealth was a priority. It was non-negotiable. Like, and, and I, and I understand because that's how I feel. My family is going to be set for the rest of their life because my father did it when he passed away, and Ashley Marie Fox is gonna do it. And guess what? If I decide to have kids, my kids are gonna do it because I've created something now. Not just passing down money, but passing down habits, passing down mindset shifts, and that's what we have to cultivate. And it's very hard to do, but it's possible for us to get it done.

Calum Johnson 1:09:35 Hmm. You know what you said?

Calum Johnson 1:09:36 You said, uh, building wealth must be a priority.

Ashley Fox 1:09:38 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:09:38 You know, I just wanna make it so real for people because even as you're speaking, I can, like... I can hear the excuses. And, and I, and I love what you said about starting small because I can even hear one of the excuses being like, "Oh, what is $10 gonna do?"

Ashley Fox 1:09:55 Yep.

Calum Johnson 1:09:55 Or even where we're at right now in the economy. "Oh, I hear on the news that we might go into a recession," or, "There's an election coming." Like, we come up with so many excuses to delay the action.

Ashley Fox 1:10:05 Hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:10:05 "Oh, it's not a good time to invest in the stock market right now." Can you share some success, some success stories or examples of people that have started investing small, I don't know if it's $10, $15, $20 a month, and what that has led to?

Ashley Fox 1:10:27 Hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:10:28 Because I just, I just really wanna make it real for people because I think sometimes you hear invest $10, and because of where our mindset is and because we tend to think short term, it's like, "What is $10 gonna do?" But then you hear these stories of people that did that over a number of months, years, and where they ended up, and now it becomes real.

Ashley Fox 1:10:47 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:10:48 So can, can you do that? Do you have any examples, success stories of people that have done that?

Ashley Fox 1:10:51 So we have a app called the Wealth Builders Community app, which is thousands of people in over 24 different countries. Literally we're like the Netflix of finance. And they come in opening their first brokerage account, buying their first stock. But consistently learning, consistently taking classes, and consistently being in this environment. And a year, not even a year later, like four or five months later, not even... No, three months, 'cause you get a dividend in 90 days. They're getting their first dividend. Whether it's $5, $10, $20, and they're posting on our timeline, "Oh my gosh, I got my first dividend." And they're excited about the... Here's the thing. We are not excited about the money. People are driven by progress. There's a woman in our app who's in her 70s. Her 70s. Came into our app about two years ago and started investing, and she's built a portfolio, six-figure portfolio, and she also now has a financial advisor. And I had a session with her, and she makes more money for herself than her financial advisor. And she's like, "I don't understand why I have this when I'm making more money for myself than what they did." But instead of trusting that advisor and not knowing what was happening, she trusted herself and knew what she was doing. And this woman's in her 70s, so for the people who feel like they're behind, if this woman is in her 70s and she shows up to, in the app, she comes to all of our events. She's investing consistently. She still works and has money on the side and has her investment accounts, but she's still going. There are people in our app who started with $20. She won the, she won an award at our conference this past weekend, and she's talking about, "I remember when I worked really hard to get my first share of Amazon, and now I have this many shares." And she's just so excited, and all she does is talk about what she's investing in. These types of people are who comes in our app. The people who are afraid- Who've never invested before, who don't have a brokerage account. They're coming in, and in literally less than two years, collectively all of our members have invested over $6.1 million. And essentially what we do is, like, you buy your stock, I buy my stock. We just calculate all of it, and collectively we invested over $6.1 million. And these are people who had no idea what they were doing the moment they got into this app.

Calum Johnson 1:13:08 Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fox 1:13:09 Now our race is to 10 million. By next year we wanna do 20 million. At some point we gonna invest a million dollars in a day, because all it takes is for people to believe that they can do it. Once you buy your first stock, and it makes sense. Once you get that first dividend and you realize, wow, my dividend checks are gonna grow every single 90 days because I have DRIP turned on, which is the dividend reinvestment program, and I'm contributing more and more and more, my income is going to rise because I started. And it's like, when you, when you had your first child, you didn't know how to be a mom or a father. You had to grow to become the best version of you and watch your child grow and evolve. But we expect so much of ourselves, and I always tell people, like, you're not supposed to know how to invest. You didn't come from money. You, you didn't work on Wall Street like I did. You, like, why would you think... You didn't learn it in school, so where were you supposed to learn it? What, are you gonna walk outside and walk to a bank and every- So it's like, how much of it is your fault versus the environment that you were brought up in? And it's like, when I let go of the fact I don't know this, it's okay. Times are different. I want different. I deserve different. I'm gonna start. And so there's over 3,000 people on our app, and I could bring any one of them on this show because they didn't come into this app 'cause they had it all together. They came into the app because they needed help, and they knew we could help them get it together. And now they're in an environment of people who's doing it. Are they, is everybody rich? No. But are they on track? Every step you take gets you closer to your destination, but if you sit, sitting there having a conversation about why you can't get to the destination, you're never gonna get anywhere. I'd rather you talk and walk at the same time, step by step, brick by brick, share by share, to create the life that you want. Because I promise you, and it, I would say by the time we had this app for five years, there are going to be people making thousands of dollars a month because they started the moment they hit this app. And I'm always tell people, I don't get you rich quick. So I'm not gonna get you rich quick. But I can make sure, God forbid something happens to you, your kids are gonna be set for the rest of your life. Not because I read it in a book, but because I did it, my daddy did it, and I saw Wall Street do it. And I'm gonna give you the blueprint to get it done, and that's exactly what Empify does. And we are going to do this together. You're not, you're not by yourself. We're by your side with you, guiding you. But if I gotta push you every single day, every single month, and get you excited to buy one share, I'd rather do that for five years, 'cause that'll make a big difference in your life. I'd rather do that for a year or two years. Gonna make a big difference in your kids' life. And that's what people need. You need someone to combat the thoughts in your head. That's me. 'Cause you can't argue for your limitations in front of me. You can't talk yourself out of investing, because your way has only gotten you this far, and if you had the answers, you'd have what you wanted. You have to realize you have to do something different. We all have the pen to write the next chapter in our life. What do we want the next page to look like? You write that. And I think we're just naturally rewriting the same story hoping we're getting different results. We have to write an entire new script-

Calum Johnson 1:16:08 Mm

Ashley Fox 1:16:08 ... with different characters, a different environment to be able to create the life that we want.

Calum Johnson 1:16:12 Yeah. You know, it's, um, it's an interesting vantage point, uh, being on this show and speaking with the guests that we do who have all achieved, like, a certain level of success in what they do. And one of the things, and you even mentioned dividends-

Ashley Fox 1:16:27 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:16:27 ... is

Calum Johnson 1:16:29 people, and this is what I've seen with wealthy people, they get to a certain level of wealth where their money is just making money off of itself-

Ashley Fox 1:16:38 Yep

Calum Johnson 1:16:38 ... and that's actually paying for, like, their lifestyle-

Ashley Fox 1:16:40 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:16:40 ... and their day-to-day. Um, it's like they put their money to work. It's like they're not working hard anymore, it's just like the money's making money of itself. And so I guess passive income. What... If I wanted to start building passive income-

Ashley Fox 1:16:57 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:16:57 ... what are, like, the initial steps of that? Like, what does that process look like, and when can I start doing it?

Ashley Fox 1:17:05 So there's multiple ways you can make passive income. I'll specifically talk about from an investing standpoint, 'cause I'm not telling anybody to quit their job. I'm not telling you to go put all your money in the stock market. I'm saying with what you have available, put it to work. Because you can't get wealthy using a savings account. You're not gonna get wealthy only working. You have to use your job as your investor, take the money they give you, and invest in yourself. They're investing in you, they're giving you money, take that money and invest in you, and don't look for a quick return. Now, when it comes to dividends, and the way, the way y- And you're absolutely right. The, I learned about dividends with working with our clients, but I saw it with their kids. So the trust fund babies, the kids who did not have jobs, I'm looking at their portfolios and they're making 60, $70,000 a year, and they're, like, college kids. And I'm like, "I know this kid doesn't have a job," but that's when I learned, like, oh, they're getting dividends. So when you're saying they have a portfolio but their portfolio is making money for them, they were investing in dividend-paying investments. So whether it's dividend-paying stocks, ETFs, REITs, things like that. The first thing you have to understand is what a dividend is. A dividend is extra money that a company gives its investors that comes from its profits. So the company makes money, it pays their bills, there's money left over. They take a portion of that profit and give it to their shareholders or their investors. The reason these types of companies exist is because you buy a stock to make money. Now, you can buy a fast-growing company. So let's say Empify was a stock. We're not a stock, but let's say you bought Empify. In the past three years, we were just featured on the Inc. 5000 list. We grew 712%. That is insane. You're not gonna... That's insane for the stock market, right? But I'm a fast-growing company. We're not gonna be like this forever. At some point we'll be a Walmart, we'll be a Target. We'll, we'll be sustainable and a staple name in the industry, but we're not there yet. So we're growing fast. That's considered a growth stock. If you invested in Empify three years ago- Our stock would've gr- grown 712%. You would've made a killing, right? At some point, like I s- so, so those are growth stocks. We take all of our money, put it back into our business. That's how we're able to grow fast. After a while, we're gonna mellow out. We might grow, but we're not gonna grow as fast. So dividend-paying companies say, "All right, investors. We've been around for a long time. I'm not gonna grow your money as fast like I did back in those days, but I still want you to invest in us. So in exchange, since our price won't grow as fast, I will give you a piece of our profits and give you income every 90 days or every month." So when you think of the Walmarts, the Targets, the Exxons, the Pepsi, the Coca-Colas, they're like the top in their industry. Their stock is not growing fast. They're, they, they're pretty boring, if I'm being honest, but they share their profits. So now you can invest in this stock and they give you a certain amount of money for every share you own, and it's predictable income. As long as that dividend check comes, you're getting paid every 90 days. You don't have to work at the company. You don't have to do anything, but the, the checks will clear. Now, will it take time to build a portfolio? Absolutely. It's just like if you bought a house and your tenant was giving you $1,000 in rent, but you want $10,000. You gotta buy 10 houses. So with dividends, you don't have to spend all the money it costs to buy a house. You can buy a stock for $50 and get a dividend. So you have to buy a whole lot of shares to be able to have sustainable income or s- income that can replace your current income. So it takes time to build, but this is how people retire. We think about people who get pensions. Where-- the money that comes from a pension is the money are invested in dividend-paying investments, and they just share the profits that they're getting, the, the dividends that they're getting with you. That's why the money can last. Or when people have checks coming in from cases or things like that, they're investing in key things that can produce predictable income. So when you think of that, when-- if you're an investor who wants to retire, you need stable income, not-- like Empify one day could be up 712%, and then we could be up 200% or down. Like, you can't live like that. And not every- not everybody has that risk tolerance. So you have to ask yourself, what kind of investor are you? Do you want the c- want the flip? Do you want... But now that comes with a risk. Just as fast as you could-- just as fast as we grew 712%, Empify could go out of business maybe in two, three years. We probably could last a good three, four years. After that, if we stop, we're not sustainable. We still gotta build the company, build the brand. But whether, whether or not you go shop at Target or not, Target's not going anywhere, right? Like it-- they're not depend- they're, they're, they're so big. You got companies that are making billions of dollars, but also paying out billions in dividends. So the easiest way to think about it is what kind of investor are you? Are you trying to get crazy swing? 'Cause again, like you're trying to make 2, 300%. I'm not a trader. I'm not gonna teach people how to trade. But you can, you can sustain income and make sure you have money for the rest of your life and for your kids by investing in dividend-paying investments. And that's why as you get older, you look for stability, you look for income. You're not looking for fast growth. And again, maybe part of your portfolio is and maybe part of it isn't, but it's a way for you to build income. And the same thing with like REITs, real estate investment trusts. You can invest in a real estate company that owns, operates, and manages commercial real estate. They get rental income. They do all the work, but by law they have to pay you dividends. And so now you can walk into a mall and own a piece of it because you're a part owner of that REIT. You're getting that income. So again, while you might not be getting millions of dollars up front, you can make more money than a savings account is paying you right now. And even now, the feds lower interest rates, you're gonna be making even less in your savings account. So where else do we go? If the savings account interest rates are dropping and they only move at the fluctuation of the economy, you can't depend on that. Our jobs are gonna pay you what they pay you. What are you-- what else are you gonna do? You can go start a business, but it took me years to even-- and I still don't feel like... I still gotta wake up. I work harder in my business than I did in my job. I'm still figuring it out. I don't ever have to question my dividends.

Calum Johnson 1:22:57 Mm-hmm.

Ashley Fox 1:22:57 Because I don't ever have to question the boring old, big old companies that are paying them. You have dividend companies called dividend aristocrats. They paid out dividends. They've been paying them for 25 years. Never missed a payment, and every year they pay you extra money just because they wanna keep you happy. $1.66 trillion of dividends was paid out last year. $1.66 trillion, and it's up 5% from the previous year. You mean to tell me you don't want any of that? And, and remember, the dividends come from the revenue they make. You contributed to that. The way I see it is if I'm gonna pay a Verizon bill and Verizon pays the shareholders dividends, well, Verizon, let my dividends pay my cell phone bill 'cause I've been paying you since I was in the eighth grade. And that's kinda how I look at it. While I still run my business, I still make money other ways, but what if I can let wealthy people, billion-dollar businesses give me some money too, and I can contribute, and I c- that can contribute to my overall you incorporated of the wealth that I'm building for myself and my family.

Calum Johnson 1:23:54 Yeah. No, I lo- I love it when you say you, you might, you have to make wealth a priority, and it's a, it's a good example of that. For people that are interested-

Ashley Fox 1:24:01 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:24:02 ... you said it was the dividends aristocrat?

Ashley Fox 1:24:04 Well, those are the-- so you can-- a dividend stock is a stock that pays a dividend, but a dividend aristocrat, those are companies that's been paying dividends for over 25 years, and every year they've increased their dividend. Like they, they take pride in saying, "I never missed a payment, I never cut my dividend, and I give you extra money every year." There's about like 50, 60 companies. But a lot of companies pay dividends.

Calum Johnson 1:24:24 Yeah.

Ashley Fox 1:24:24 Like tons of companies. Not everybody's an aristocrat.

Calum Johnson 1:24:27 What are some examples of the aristocrats?

Ashley Fox 1:24:29 Uh, you got Exxon, uh, Target. Target's actually been doing it for over 50 years. [laughs]

Calum Johnson 1:24:34 Is it Coca-Cola as well?

Ashley Fox 1:24:36 Coca-Cola is too, yep.

Calum Johnson 1:24:37 Thank you.

Ashley Fox 1:24:37 Yep. Yep. But again, they're not your sexy companies. They're not-- you're not about to double your money in buying Coke.

Calum Johnson 1:24:43 Mm.

Ashley Fox 1:24:43 Like you're gonna get reliable income that you don't have to question. But I mean, at the end of the day, they're just companies you can't live without. Recession or not, somebody's buying a Coke product. [laughs] Like somebody's buying a Pepsi product. You know, you gotta pump gas. You have to buy deodorant or, or dish detergent and things like that. So they're just, there are just some companies that people can't live without. And you have to understand the fact that you're their consumer is the reason why they can pay out billions to their investors. The problem is we are not the investors. We are only the consumers.

Calum Johnson 1:25:12 Mm.

Ashley Fox 1:25:13 And again, you don't have to make a lot, but I'd rather you get something versus telling me you have nothing. I'd rather you tell me, "Ashley, I'm getting $50 a month in dividends for the rest of my life." Cool. What we gotta do to get to the next hundred?

Calum Johnson 1:25:23 Mm.

Ashley Fox 1:25:23 Because if you can get to the first 50, you can get to the next hundred. You got the first $5, let's get to the next $10. And once you understand it, it's like a game. 'Cause the more shares you buy, turn drip on, the income gets bigger. The moment you ... And, and again, you can buy the stock one time and get paid over time.

Calum Johnson 1:25:41 Mm.

Ashley Fox 1:25:41 And never have to buy it again. If y- now, you buy more shares, you get more income. But again, it's like you buy a property, you own that property. As long as that income is coming in, you're getting paid, as long as you own that property. Whether you own a property for one month or 10 years, the income is coming in. That's how dividend stocks work. And the good ones will consistently pay you, and the great ones will pay you more every single year.

Calum Johnson 1:26:03 Yeah. No, I love that 'cause it's so actionable. Like, someone can literally go on their computer, their laptop right now, and just search the dividend-

Ashley Fox 1:26:09 List

Calum Johnson 1:26:09 ... aristocrat stocks, and in- start investing in a selection of those. I think it's so good. Um,

Calum Johnson 1:26:16 okay, here's where I want, here's where I want to end. We kinda started the episode, and I think you made the point that a lot of people, or a lot of the reasons, um, like, the difference between the bottom 99% and the top 1%--

Ashley Fox 1:26:34 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:26:35 ... is that for a lot of people in that b- the kinda more bottom percentiles, there's, like, a victim mentality.

Ashley Fox 1:26:42 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:26:43 Or there's a feeling of, like, this has happened to me. There's something that's missing for them. There's, like, something that's broken. And so I'm curious for you now at the point that you're at, because you've kind of gone through the whole journey, right? Like, you've gone to Wall Street, you've had the six-figure income. You've then given it up to go back to zero, to go to living with your parents. Uh, you've then built it back up again, and obviously you're working on a company that's, like, your passion. The person that you were trying to get approval from in the beginning was your dad.

Ashley Fox 1:27:19 Mm-hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:27:20 And I'm just ... I'm curious just how you, like, reconcile everything now. Like, how do you ... Do you feel, do you feel whole?

Ashley Fox 1:27:35 Every day I work, I feel a lot more whole than I ever been. I think I, you got the best version of Ashley today. You got this, there's no better version of Ashley. Now, in that moment of wanting the approval from my father, learning the, just everything I've learned about myself, my dad passed away last year. And even in that moment, I still wanted approval. Because when you feel like you weren't good enough, you're s- always trying to make sure you are good enough, hoping that your parents see you as good enough. I got to a space where I, I accepted my dad might not ever say that, and that's okay, because he did the best that he could with what he had. But when my dad passed away, my whole world turned upside down. It made me realize that my company was good, but we probably would've lasted about three and a half years, and there would be no more Empify, and I didn't like that. Because I took, I stepped outside my business for six months. And th- I was grateful that we sur- we were okay, but we weren't thriving. And I realized my business needs me to thrive, but I need to build a business that can thrive whether or not I'm m- here or not. And so it forced me to wanna create something that was sustainable without me. But during the time that I was out, and all that I learned, I think I learned more about my dad in his passing than I did when he was alive. Because my dad had hundreds of people at his funeral, [laughs] like, of all walks of life. And it's like, I didn't even know my dad knew this many people. And it made me understand who my dad was to the world, and I learned that I'm, like, the second version of him. Because my dad financially had a normal gov- he worked in law enforcement. He didn't have a fancy Wall Street job. He wasn't making all this money, and he'd been doing that for, I believe, over 30 years. And when I saw what he left us, so much that my family is set, that has money for the rest of our life, and I w- and I, I, I was the one who kinda gathered all the money. Like, I'm the money girl in the family. And you would've thought my dad went to the Empify school all his life. And it made me realize, one, where'd you learn this, and two, maybe it wasn't Wall Street that caused me to build Empify. Maybe it was already in my DNA, because everything that my dad was for the world is what I am for the world. Well, for his community is what I am for the world. And everything he laid out for us made me realize, like, the whole time, oh, you really were proud of me. You really were proud of us. You really did love us. And it was like he did it in his way, not my way. And so when I saw all that he left us, it was like, I gotta do this. I gotta get tighter, 'cause he was sharp. From every account, every ... He had everything in order. But it made me also realize that if he could do it, anybody could do it. Now, you may look at me like she worked on Wall Street, you know, she makes money, regardless if I lost anything or not, but, like, I didn't, he didn't start with a fancy job. He was in law enforcement. You know, like, he didn't, you know, it w- he, and he was, to this day, would've still been in law enforcement. He was about to retire, but you get what I'm saying? So it's like if the everyday Black man raised in the '60s can make sure he provided for his family in his l- while he was living, and in his passing, you can't tell me you can't do this. But now, not only do you have someone ... who is the recipient of generational wealth. You have someone who is also the creator of generational wealth, someone who has worked with millionaires and billionaires, someone who has taught these topics in the prison system, someone who has taught children. There's no aspect of money I haven't seen at this point. And so it's like I got his blueprint, saw how he did it, 'cause I went through all the paperwork, the recipient of his blueprint, Wall Street's blueprint. I can make Empify 100 times better now because now I can't unsee what someone who wasn't a billionaire did to create generational wealth for his family. Let me show you how he did it. And so I wouldn't even change the feelings that I had growing up of feeling not good enough or, because it all made, it makes sense now. Like, and, and, and I can't control how the story panned out, but it was like I became m- much more clearer in who I am as a person because of my dad. You get what I'm saying? So it was like, you can't tell me you can't do this 'cause he did it, and he was raised in the '60s, and he, he's, he, he didn't have a work from home job. He wasn't making money. Like, the world is different now, and it's like if my dad can do it for us, then I'm gonna help you do it for your family. And then, and, and when he passed, it also was like, it's my duty now. Like, you did this for us. I gotta make sure I, I take care of us. I gotta make sure I take care of the world, and I'm going to embody everything that he did. It just so happened to be called Empify.

Calum Johnson 1:32:49 Mm.

Ashley Fox 1:32:50 It just so happened to be this idea that I thought came from Wall Street, but it's like, no, this is, this is in my DNA. There was an Empify in his heart. I just gave it a word, and it turned into a company, and I think that's why I'm here today.

Calum Johnson 1:33:03 Yeah. No, that's, that's special. And, um, you know what? I, I wanna say, first of all, condolences on the-

Ashley Fox 1:33:10 Thank you

Calum Johnson 1:33:10 ... death of your father. Um, and it's special. It's, it's phenomenal what he did, and so here's, here's where I wanna end. If you could almost have, like, one more conversation with him-

Ashley Fox 1:33:24 Mm-hmm

Calum Johnson 1:33:24 ... let's even say he's listening to this right now.

Ashley Fox 1:33:27 Ooh, oh. You're gonna make me cry. We can't cry. Hmm.

Calum Johnson 1:33:32 What would you tell him?

Ashley Fox 1:33:36 Hmm. Okay. I think I would just say thank you. Like, 'cause me and my dad were, like, we were so i-... Oh my God, I'm gonna cry. I can't cry. Do people cry on this show?

Calum Johnson 1:33:51 Sometimes.

Ashley Fox 1:33:51 No.

Calum Johnson 1:33:51 Whatever you want.

Ashley Fox 1:33:53 Um, we were so identical. Oh my gosh, I can't cry. Okay.

Calum Johnson 1:33:59 That's fine.

Ashley Fox 1:34:00 No. Okay. I would say thank... Oh my, I can't do this. Oof. Okay.

Calum Johnson 1:34:11 You're good.

Ashley Fox 1:34:12 Okay. Okay. Oof. Okay. I would say, I would say thank you. Yeah, that's, that's all I can give you.

Calum Johnson 1:34:34 Hmm. That's special. To be honest, that's, that's everything right there. And I think for, um-

Ashley Fox 1:34:40 Mm

Calum Johnson 1:34:40 ... I think for any parent, that's, like, everything, just that your kid would say thank you, they'd be grateful.

Ashley Fox 1:34:50 You're good.

Calum Johnson 1:34:51 [laughs] That's what you said to your therapist, right?

Ashley Fox 1:34:54 Yes.

Calum Johnson 1:34:55 Okay. [laughs]

Ashley Fox 1:34:56 That was in a moment. She made me cry, too.

Calum Johnson 1:34:58 [laughs]

Ashley Fox 1:34:59 Yes. No, that was good.

Calum Johnson 1:35:00 It is.

Ashley Fox 1:35:00 I would say thank you.

Calum Johnson 1:35:04 Hmm. I think that'd mean a lot to him.

Ashley Fox 1:35:07 Yeah.

Calum Johnson 1:35:09 Ashley Fox, very special episode. Thank you so much for coming on. [laughs]

Ashley Fox 1:35:14 I'm crying, guys. Okay.

Calum Johnson 1:35:17 Yeah. Yeah, we're all good. [laughs]

Ashley Fox 1:35:23 Thank you.

Calum Johnson 1:35:24 Thank you.

Ashley Fox 1:35:24 And I have makeup on.

Calum Johnson 1:35:26 [laughs] Thank you so much for watching this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. It's really a dream for me that I get to do this. It's surreal that this is what I do full time and every week. So if you enjoy the content, if you enjoyed the conversation, the stories, please hit that subscribe button. It helps us immeasurably with growing the channel, with getting guests, all of those things. So please hit that subscribe button, and I'll see you next time.