Full Transcript:

I might be fangirling a bit throughout this interview, so bear with me because I am interviewing an icon, like a legend.

That makes me sound old.

No. A legend. I’ve been watching this woman's career since I was in my early twenties, back when I first met her on Wall Street, and she was on a panel at my company, and I immediately fell in love with her. I was like, “Who is this woman?” She had this aura, energy, and magnetic force that made me think, “Who is she?” Of course, I went and started stalking your life and found out more about who she was. I fell more and more in love with her accolades, her presence, what she represented, the example that she in the community for Latinas and all the things. Bear with me because I am going to fan girl because it is truly an honor to have none other than Ms. Soledad O'Brien.

Thank you for having me.

I am so honored to have you here as a mentor, as a role model, as a badass, as a MILF, as all the things. You are all the amazing things. I'm excited to have this conversation with you because I think this was the time that we were supposed to have this conversation. I did meet you when you were on CNN because you spoke at my company. Had I met you when you were on CNN, I mean us build a relationship and had this show at that time, perhaps there would have been too many chefs in the kitchen for us to have the type of candid conversation.

I think it gets hard when your kids are younger. It's very hard to be a mentor or spend a lot of time with people. For me, it was hard. I have four kids. When they were little, I couldn't do the stuff that I get to do now because they're a little bit older.

I'm sorry, four kids? You wonder why. That makes a lot of sense, which goes to some of what we're going to talk about because I want to talk about how you build relationships with ultra-successful chaos superstars like yourself. Before we get into all of that, we like to start our show with some tea. Tell us, give us some tea. What's going on here?

I have a very extremely boring life, but I am obsessed with Anita Baker, the songstress. We are working on a project together. We spent a little time in LA. I love her. She would always break into song in the place where I was chatting with her. That's coming down the pike, but that's like the only exciting thing that I have done. I would break into song to sit around and drink wine with Anita Baker, but nobody wants to hear it. That was fun. That's like my fun tea.

I feel like, as an entrepreneur and a mom, I don't get to do a lot of crazy, fun things. My mom used to say everybody gets the same 24 hours, and then you have to decide how you spend them. My boys are looking at colleges, so I do a lot of the driving around. Everybody's getting ready to go back to school, so I do a lot of that driving around and then running my company. It's a little bit of a constant jog on the treadmill every single day.

I think you're being so modest because who casually says, “Drinking wine with Anita Baker. My life is so boring.” You come across a lot of pretty iconic people. You've also had the pleasure of interviewing literally legends, historical figures. How do you prepare for those conversations? How do you not fan girl like I am right now? I'm literally shaking. I do fan girl shaking.

Building An FU Fund: One of the most important things you can learn in business, whether you're working for a company or for yourself, is knowing what makes you comfortable and what you need to be at 100%.

Singing To Anita Baker. It's nothing more embarrassing for me to do that. I think one of the most important things you can learn in business, whether you're working at a company or you're working for yourself, is what makes you most comfortable. What do you need to be at 100%? For me to do an interview with someone, whether I love them or despise them, I need to be prepared.

I think that has always felt like it's my little magic piece. I am not good at winging things. I don't like it. I don't like to go in like, “I spent the last six minutes googling you.” I don't do it. I'm a good student, and I think that, in a lot of ways, it makes for a better interview. Knowing myself over the years, I know prep is everything that I need. I think that's what I do. I try to understand the topic and understand what I'm trying to get to.

 

Let's talk about you interviewing people that you're not necessarily fond of, that you need to research. Usually, you have to say, “That's not true. Let's go back to the actual data.” How do you remain unbiased in those conversations?

 

Bias is a very weird word because you've invited someone in. I think part of the job in an interview is to call bullshit on people. If they're lying to you, whether it's a politician or anybody, your responsibility is like, “That's the job.” I don't know that it's bias. I try to be very transparent and clear about why I want to talk to someone. I don't want to ever have anybody feel like they were ambushed. They didn't know what they were being asked.

 

I think if you do a good job, the goal is to educate the audience about something. It's not about my take on a thing. Who cares? Here's an expert who I’ve brought in who's agreed to sit in my living room or my TV living room with our fake plants. They come in and of course, they deserve respect. I want to hear from them. I'm happy to tell people what I think, but it's not why the interview is happening. I do think as a reporter, the job is to say, “Yeah, that's bullshit. That's a lie.” I think that's important.

 

Building An FU Fund: If you do a good job, the goal is to educate the audience about something. It's not about your take on a thing.

 

You and I had the pleasure of drinking wine in your beautiful home. That day was magical for me. I don't think you understand. I'm going to tear up. No, I'm going to keep it together because I'm a professional. It was transformational for me because I was in this beautiful home, absolutely gorgeous. You know what stuck out to me when I asked you about your artwork on the walls, and you said you had a homeless man make this gorgeous painting in your home. It literally drew in so much attention. I thought that was pretty amazing.

 

It was so nice to have you. I enjoy talking to young entrepreneurs and people trying to figure out a path. I'm one of those people. I like having those conversations. It's nice to have you. My art collection, I don't even want to say art. That sounds fancy. It’s not like, “My art collection of Warhols.” It's stuff I like. I was in Cuba and I was hanging out with my family. Most of my mom's side of the family is still in Cuba. You see these amazing artists. It is great to take things that are so moving and then put them on a wall somewhere and support artists. It's never about the inherent value of the painting or the artist or the sculpture. It's like, do I like it? If I like it, then I get it.

 

Your home was full of so much character, and I felt energy and love as soon as I entered the space. It was also great for me to see because you can't be what you don't see. You don't understand the possibilities when you're not exposed. Given that type of access to visualize it, it's not the same when you see it on TV, because it's still fake. You're like, “It's on TV.” We're in person. I'm in Soledad O'Brien's home having wine and talking about real-life stuff. I think it's also normal. There were not people getting the wine for us.

We literally sat on my couch. I got the wine.

 

It wasn't normal for me. I get what you're saying.

 

I think nowadays, especially on social media, there's so much fakery around what something is. I know because years ago, when my sister was in college, we'd lean across someone's Rolls Royce. This is way before social media. You'd lean and be like, “Just me in my car.” I feel like that's social media nowadays. People are doing that a lot. There's a lot of fakery out there.

I think success is very achievable. It's a matter of tracking people down, asking for help, and then getting specific pieces of advice as you try to navigate your way. I do that to people. When I started my production company years ago, I literally sat down, and people would draw on a napkin for me. “Here's the structure of our production company. Here's how we do it.” It was so helpful. I think most people are willing and able to do that. You don't think so?

No, most people, absolutely not. I would say that people do love to talk about themselves. They do love to share their wins. I find that there's information you can get on the internet, and then there's like strategy, like real like strategy. For example, when I was in your home, you were throwing me all types of game, like letting me know the behind-the-scenes, what I should keep an eye on, what I should look out for, the politics of it all. That is only shared when someone genuinely connects with someone else, or they feel like they actually want to help them out.

 

I feel like I’ve met so many people who were helpful and not just helpful to me. We run a little foundation, send girls up to college.

 

There are all these women who I think have a lot of good advice. I think are willing to say, “I know you've been given this advice in the past, but actually, the real thing is this advice over here.”

 

I remember that, years ago, I was on a panel at NABJ, the National Association of Black Journalists. People were talking about how you navigate being a mom and journalist. Everyone's like, “When you get pregnant, tell your manager.” I'm like, “What? Don't do that.”

 

Literally. I was pregnant with my twins, and I’ve always been big. When I'm pregnant, I get a giant.

Were you like Kim Kardashian giant?

 

Absolutely. Not as busty, sadly, but yes. I remember people saying to me, “We have something to say?” I'm like, “No.” I was having twins. They were Seven and a half pounds apiece. They were big babies. Until you're ready, don't share that. There are some real strategies. I think you're right. You don't need someone talking about like, “Here's what I did. Here's what my wins were last week.” It needs to be, “Here's what I didn't do. Here's a strategy that I wish I had put into place. Here's what I learned from this terrible experience so that you don't have to learn a hard lesson. You can skate on the thing that I learned. Why should we both have to deal with it?”

 

I think that is the secret sauce. The surface-level talking points that you hear when someone's on a panel.

 

I'm not good on a panel.

 

You are. This speaks to your character. You're authentic. You keep it real. You also provide the behind-the-scenes. Not everyone is like that, especially now, because everybody's worried about getting canceled. Everybody's worried about saying the wrong thing.

 

People say cancel, and I say reaping the fallout, which is the consequence of your actions. Sometimes being canceled, it's like, yes, you are a racist. There you go, canceled. Reaping the consequences of being a racist. That's what happened. You could call it canceled, but I say consequences.

 

There's some instances where people are guilty until proven innocent. I know, for example, there have been some careers that have been completely tarnished because they were accused of doing something. They go through the process, we realize that it was untrue, but that's it. They’re canceled.

 

I think that's not a new phenomenon. That has happened in time immemorial. That's always been the case. Of course, if you're talking about legal things, journalists certainly try to hold off on it, but it's hard. Especially as news gets more sensationalized generally, you are suddenly covering something and its sensational aspect. No one's ever going to say, “Good morning. We’re not going to cover this because we are going to wait six months until it comes out at trial.” They're not going to do that. You have to navigate, I think, and not everybody navigates it very well.

 

You do because if anybody follows Soledad on Twitter, you're pretty passionate about things that you care about and are very outspoken and talk your shit on Twitter, which I love. Have you ever monitored what you said because you were concerned about possibly being canceled?

 

I never think about being canceled at all. I think the key for me on social media is to make sure you're not misunderstood. There are ways in which you could say something. You're like, “I didn't realize that you would take it this way.” I think that actually happens more often. Some of the more egregious things online right there, the person's antisemitic. It is what it is. You should not be kicking the Latinos out of the park thing. We’ve seen that. I don't worry about being canceled, but I do worry. I wouldn't want anybody to take this the wrong way or think I'm saying this when I'm actually saying that. I try for clarity more than anything or you think you're making a joke about something and it's not funny to some people.

Building An FU Fund: A lot of Latino voices and any marginalized population’s voices are often left out of the conversation.

I think the conversation around that movie Oppenheimer is a great example. People are like, “They tested those bombs on a bunch of Latinos.” They don't seem to be mentioned. There was massive impact on those populations. No one's doing that movie. I think it's important to have the opportunity to say, “Actually, I think this position and this point of view might be valuable to hear from.” I think that would be good.

Thank God for people like me who are on this planet to remind you that you have made history and are a living icon and a living legacy. You earned it. Let your kids know. When they don't want to do something, be like, “Excuse me.” That's the thing with kids, your hubby and your loved ones. They always humble you.

 

I would love to get a better understanding. You've been very outspoken throughout your career, even on networks like CNN, MSNBC, etc.

 

How were you able to walk in with that type of confidence? You can see it. It's clear. What is something that happened in your life that allowed you to become this confident? Did you take spiritual classes? How did you become so badass?

 

I think a lot of confidence can be faked, and it looks the same. Faked confidence and actual confidence. Look the same. When I was younger, I didn't have a lot of confidence. I would never march into a room. I'm a production assistant. I'm one of many. I'm not going to stand up and tell everybody how I feel about a thing. I think a lot of it is understanding your power and when you can leverage it.

By the time you're anchoring a show, you then have the ability to say, “Actually, I have been here a while. I have a certain position. I have something of value to add, and here's what I'm going to say.” You don't have that privilege when you are young and you're new. I try to caution a lot of young people who are in like, “This is not the time. This is the time for getting the lay of the land.”

When you were moving up the ranks, or even when you first started, did anyone try to test your Blackness or Latinidad?

 

It's so funny. I grew up in an all-White neighborhood in Long Island. My mom used to say all the time my mom grew up in Cuba and she came to the United States in the late 1940s, early 1950s. She used to say all the time, “Soledad, don't let anybody tell you you're not Black, and don't let anybody tell you you're not Latina.” I'm like, “That’s crazy. Who's going to say that to me? No one's going to say that to me. It was more like, “What are you?” I always thought she was crazy.

 

It wasn't until I started doing a lot of reporting on communities of color that people would say, “Are you the right person to do this? Should you be doing Black in America? I don't know. Should you be doing Latino in America? I don't know.” By then, I was 40-something, and I had figured it out. I was like, “This is what my mother was talking about. It's happening now, twenty-some-odd years after she told me.

 

It was very helpful to have someone say like, “People don't get to weigh in on who you are. They're going to try. They're going to do it, but it should bounce off of you.” By then, and I think because my parents were very good at constantly telling us who we were, it never upset me. I knew people who were so upset by stuff like that, and I never was one of those people.

 

How would you respond when someone was trying to test you in that way?

 

When we were shooting Latino in America, a guy stood up and he was like, “Soledad, you don't have a Peruvian in your documentary.” I'm like, “No, we do not. You are correct. It is not the story of every individual Latino in America. It's called Latino in America, but it's not about everybody. This is a documentary. I'm a documentarian, and here's the structure and what we were thinking about.” That's what I try to give them. When people say, “What do you say? Do you say you're not Black enough? What's the answer to that?” That's a you problem. That's not a me problem.” There's nothing I can do about it. I'm always like, “Okay.”

 

You're so great with words and literally have been trained with this skillset. Have you ever had to do a professional smackdown where somebody did try to come at you and you had to use your words?

 

No, I don't think so, because I don't like to do that. I don't get a lot of joy out of that. I wish I were like the queen of the witty repartee. I'm not.

 

I used to have a guy who tortured me when I was in local news in Boston. His name was John. He used to always say things like, “You're running on colored people's time.” It was awful. I was a morning producer, so I was always running to the meeting late because we had a show that wrapped. I was always like five minutes late.

 

I'd go home and try to think about something witty to say. I spent so much time and energy on this guy who I never even saw again once I left that station, who was such a jerk. I would be like, “When he says that, then I'm going to say this, and then I'm going to do this and I'm going to.” That didn't work. I would tell people like, “It's so rude.” They'd say, “He's just joking. Get over it.” Nothing worked. I spent so much time and energy of my life trying to manage that, that when I left, it was like, “Why did I waste my time? Honestly, who the fuck cares what this guy thinks? Literally zero.”

 

What would be your advice if someone is going through a situation where they're constantly being tested or they're getting these type of remarks?

 

I think, looking back now, what I wish I had said to him, and I think there are two different categories. There are little things that are annoyances. There are big things where you need to go to HR. We're not talking about the big things that require you to march yourself into HR. We're talking about how this person is annoying you. Cut and pick every day. I would always do what my mother used to say, “Baby, I'm going to pray for you.” It's very effective. I think you need to be like, “This doesn't land on me.” What you shouldn't do is what I did do, which is spend hours and hours strategizing witty comebacks. That was a waste of time for a person who I’ve never seen again.

 

TV news is a small business. I have never seen that dude again in the years that I’ve been in TV. Never again. What a waste of my energy when I could have been working on my career instead of sitting around coming up with witty comebacks to some idiot. For the little annoyances, I think you have to learn to end it. “I'm going to pray for you.” You move on and don't let it sit on you and then you go out with your girlfriends for a glass of wine and you say, “This guy is so annoying.” You can't let it take over your life, because that's what the person wants. They're trying to worm their way into your head when you actually have much bigger fish to fry. You've got other shit to do.

Building An FU Fund: Sitting around coming up with witty comebacks to some idiot instead of working on your career is a waste of energy.

Let's talk about big fish, which you are. At what point in your career did you say, “I'm making money. I'm a big dog. People are going to pay attention to me?”

It doesn't work like that. You always feel lucky. I'm having wine with Anita Baker. That's amazing because I love her and we're doing a project together. That's amazing. I never feel like I'm a big dog. I'm just doing it. I feel like I keep getting these great opportunities, and I try to make sure that I leverage them well, which then leads to other opportunities. I don't know anybody who's like, “I'm a big dog.” That never is a thing.

 

If you have kids, they definitely keep you humble on that.

 

You started as a writer. You finally made $25,000, and that was a big deal. Talk to us about when seven figures started rolling around, what that was like. When did that happen?

 

I think I was making $1 million by the time I was 30. I was always saving. In a lot of ways, social media is a very bad trap because we don't ever have to post great vacations. I went on shitty vacations. We would drive around Seattle. That's a perfectly nice vacation. In terms of Instagramable, it's not. It's not an Italian villa. Sometimes, I feel bad for young people that everything has to be this amazing experience as opposed to like my boyfriend and I drove around Seattle and it was chill and it was fun. We ate good food and we stayed in a cheap hotel because we had no money.

 

We were very interested in saving money because when I was working as a local reporter in San Francisco, I met a guy, a reporter who'd been working in San Francisco, and then they canceled his show and they moved him to San Jose, but he lived in San Francisco. That's a 90-minute commute one way that someone has added to your day just like that. I remember going home and telling Brad, “We need a fuck you fund.”

 

We literally called it that because I want to make sure that if there's ever a time when someone says, “We actually have a new plan for you. I know you're living here in Oakland, but we need you to be way over here,” and they can do that if you're an employee. I want it to be able to be like, “Thank you so much. I actually don't want to do that. I want to do this over here.” I think both my husband and I were both very focused on saving money. We wanted to buy a house. We knew that was going to be expensive in New York City. We were married, living on the West Coast, but we knew we'd go back to the East Coast and wanted the flexibility of, to say, “I don't want to do that. Thanks. Thank you so much. Bye.”

 

Thirty years old, you're a millionaire.

 

No, 30 years old, you're making $1 million, which you well know you are not a millionaire. Let's be clear. If you live in New York City, you're really not a millionaire because that city's expensive. It allowed me to buy my first apartment in Manhattan, which we paid $600,000 for, and I couldn't sleep there. I was so anxious. It was a three-bedroom apartment. By then, we had two kids. By 36, we had two kids. We started buying real estate and figuring out what did we want to do. Aggressively, we were putting that money that I was making and what Brad was making into savings and into investment vehicles.

 

By the way, Brad is hubby, folks.

 

Making $1 million is not being a millionaire. You become a millionaire when you start saving some of that $1 million and packing it away.

 

You started this FU fund. What did you build it to, to know like, “I got FU money now?”

 

It grows. You're like, “$10 million. I'm good,” and then you're like, “Actually, we probably should get to $20 million.” I think that grows. I think that's typical.

 

The pole keeps going further and further.

 

It’s great. I think you also start thinking about probably in the last ten years what do you want to leave your kids. I don't want to leave my kids money. I don't think that's helpful for them. I do want to leave money to charities. What do I want to support? That's an interesting legacy question for me more than work. How do you change somebody else's life who maybe didn't have the advantages like that my kids had or that I had? You start thinking about that in terms of what are you going to do with your money. Certainly, my parents passed away. What do you want the last five years of your life to look like and being prepared and organized for that stuff?

 

Making $1 million at 30. Is that what folks are making when they're an anchor? Where were you at that point?

 

I was anchoring a couple of days a week.

 

Just a couple of days a week, making a quick meal. Big deal.

 

You're still working full-time. You know the anchor job isn't the chunk of time you're on TV. There's work behind it. There's no question. It depends on where you are. For sure, in local news. Absolutely. Especially in the big markets, those can be multimillion-dollar jobs. In network news, as you well know, those are $20 million jobs sometimes on big network shows. There's the entire range of it. People often like to talk about what you make. I'm always like, “Let's talk about what you save. I don’t care what you make.” It does not matter what you make. Tell me what you save because a lot of people have a high burn. With four kids, we did have a high burn. We were always trying to be very aggressive. You're not a millionaire just because you make $1 million.

You come from humble beginnings.

No, very middle-class beginnings. My parents were both immigrants. My mom's family in Cuba was quite poor. My dad's family was pretty solid in Australia. I grew up in a suburb of Long Island. I had five brothers and sisters. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a professor at the local SUNY school, State University of New York. I'd say we were very middle class.

 

I would never say we never wanted for anything because my life's dream in Long Island was to have Jordache jeans. I did want for them because my mother's like, “No way. Not happening for you.” We didn't have a fancy lifestyle at all. You got clothes when you went back to school. It was very solid. When I think about the things that I got and I'm grateful for in my family, it was that we had no chaos. There was never a time when I thought, “I don’t know if my mom will have her job next month,” or, “I don't know what's going to happen over here.”

 

If anything, it was so boring. Everybody was chugging along. Everything was very stable. My parents saved their money. They put away for retirement. They bought a home. When we started our foundation, we were trying to give our scholars a sense of like, “College is covered.

 

Every end of the semester, you now don't have to decide if you're going back next month.” That's so stressful. How can you focus on being a good student and, and your, your education and what you want your career to be if you're constantly thinking, “I don't even know if I'm going to be in the classroom next month.” We've tried to give them that boring stability as it pertains to their education because that's what my parents gave me. We were very middle class.

 

Middle class but then you transitioned because obviously you are in a couple of tax brackets up. I know it doesn't feel like a big deal, but it is a big deal. When you break down the numbers, I get exactly what you're saying. What I'm alluding to is you entered a new space. A new world. As you continue to progress in your career and grow as an individual, that money increases, which brings you into new networks of people and new ways, I would assume, of carrying yourself.

 

I'd never thought of my money in that way, and I never thought of it in networking that way. I think my work brought me into new networks.

 

You can enter networks. You don't have to have a bunch of money or a high-powered job. You actually have to be of assistance in some. You have to have value in the conversation, I would say.

 

I think that, to me, more than anything was the way to do it. No one has ever been like, “You can come in because you now make X number of dollars.” It's like, “You understand media. We would love for you to join the sport and be helpful. You do a lot of work in diversity. We would love for you to come. Could you come and talk about that? We're trying to figure that out.” More subject expertise than, “Here, let me show you my bank book.” Nobody's ever asked about that. Meaning that anybody can join a network if they have some expertise and experience to share.

 

Building An FU Fund: You don't have to have a bunch of money or a high-powered job to join networks. Anybody can join if they have some kind of expertise and experience to share. 

 

What are your tips for folks who are growing in their careers, maybe starting or have some sweat equity that they put in, but they want to gain access to new ultra-successful networks of people? What would be your advice? One of the things that I am very mindful of is when I come across people who are of tremendous influence and value. They are often being asked to do things all the time.

 

This is actually advice you could give because I think you do it well. You say, “I have questions I want to ask you. Can we meet at this specific time? Here's what I want to talk about.” It's not a, “Can we hang out sometime?” Is that two hours? Is that eight hours? You find those people who want to be helpful and you ask them to be very tactical. You came with a notebook of questions like, “I have a list of stuff we need to get through, but it makes me realize that you're very serious. You don't want to hang out with me.

 

I do.

 

It's not like I'm going to go to the house and drink wine. It's more like, “Here's what I need to get out of this. I'm getting access to some information, so here's what I need to walk away with.” I think that is the best advice. People go to conferences and events and mixers, and you go up to someone and you say, “I liked your book or I love this article.” It's doing the homework and then saying, “I would love fifteen minutes to pick your brain about X.” It has to be that you want that information. If it's like, “I just want to have a photo with you,” that's great too. Take a photo. I think people respect when you say, “I'm not going to waste your time.” You have to put yourself in those opportunities to rub elbows with those folks, be interesting, and have something to add.

 

Would you say that make sure those questions aren't things that they can easily find out on their own?

 

I’ve never had that issue. I’ve usually had people who are trying to understand something. It's not something that's googleable, as you could have googled that. “What road did you live on when you were in high school?” It's more of a, “How did you navigate this?

 

How should I think about this?” That stuff is not something you can google. I think being very tactical is worth it.

 

Do you think timing plays a role in this? Folks are constantly being asked for information. They want their IP, essentially. Folks have to choose who they're going to give that time to. Ultra successful, busy people, family folks, they don't have time. How do you stand out to actually get them to want to help you?

 

I always felt that being a good mentee made you stand out. There's nothing more frustrating than giving somebody advice and they clearly don't take it. If you say to somebody, “I think a good strategy is coming early,” they're still twenty minutes late daily. You're like, “I don't need to have any more conversations with you because this is basic advice.” I like the person who says, “I took your advice and I found this and this and this. Can I now follow up with this meeting?” That actually makes it somebody who's worth investing in.

 

The way to stand out is to be worth investing in.

How do you prove that when you meet someone at a networking event?

I think it's making your ask very small. I’ll give you an example. A young woman wanted to pick my brain about being a filmmaker. I said, “Absolutely.” She had a very interesting job. I said, “My daughter's interested in this. She's in college. Would you chat with her?” She's like, “Absolutely.” She was so helpful and she could have said, “No, I'm so busy,” or, “I don't even like this job,” or whatever. She understood. She's more likely to get into a relationship with me now because she's taking a call from my kid, who's in college trying to figure out what her next steps should be.

 

When I worked in a newsroom, I always liked to make sure that I was helping people so that if the 6:00 news producer needed something, even if it was coffee or whatever, I had a service. I could say, “Could you read my scripts?” You can't march up and ask people favors. In some circumstances, you have to be the person who's helped people out.

 

You’re adding some value.

 

It's harder in networking events when you're meeting somebody cold. I have to tell you, most of the time, I will give people my number. I’ll say, “You should call me. You should text me.” Most people don't.” Almost never. I travel a lot. If I'm traveling, sometimes it's hard for me to keep up with the emails or the texts. I’ll tell them, “If I don't want to talk to you, I literally will tell you to stop calling me. I will say, ‘Never call me again.’ until that moment, you should feel free to text me.” I'm good on text. I'm fast. I'm happy to have that. Someone will say to me, “I was going to,” or, “You didn't answer me back.” I'm like, “I literally have been in Haiti for a week and a half.” That always surprises me.

 

Three mega nuggets. Make sure you're prepared. Do your homework in advance. Have a small ask. See how you can add value off the bat. Make sure you follow up if someone extends their help to you.

Building An FU Fund: Three mega nuggets: make sure you're prepared, have a small ask and see how you can add value, and make sure you follow up.

Follow through. I'm telling you, most people do none of those things. The good news is the way to stand out is to do those things because most people don't. The number of people I’ve given some basic advice, literally the equivalent of, “I found 9:00 start means to be in at 8:30, like be getting your coffee at 8:30 so you are well at your desk by then before your 9:00 start.” It's hard for people to change habits so they don't do it.

We haven't gotten to the Talk That Talk segment, which I don't think we have time for. I know you on a tight schedule. I want to ask this question because I think our audience would be interested in it. What can we learn about Soledad that we cannot google?

 

I am a bee farmer. This is honey from my bees.

 

Not you coming prepared.

 

It's a little sticky because I harvested it myself.

 

You bought me honey?

 

This is for you. Sorry, it's sticky. I wasn't very good at the beginning of the harvesting. I got better toward the end. It's good honey. You didn't know that, did you?

 

I did not know that. Thank you.

 

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. I had to label this jar.

 

I will cherish it forever.

 

No, you should eat it. It's really good.

 

No, I'm definitely going to eat it.

 

I can give you more honey. We got 55 pounds this harvest and probably we'll do it again before the year ends.

 

Are you with the outfit and everything with the bees flying around you?

 

We raised bees as a kid. No, I don't actually do that. My son is very allergic to bee stings. No, I don't, but as a kid, I did, my dad had bees.

 

That is interesting.

 

It's good.

 

I cannot wait.

 

Someone said to me, “Don't give it to her until you put the label on,” because I have these cute labels you can make online. I was like, “No, we're going to do it now.”

 

I love it. I'm so excited. I will definitely text you. Don't give me your number because I'm going to use it good. Yeah, I love it. I can't wait to use it. Thank you so much.

 

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

 

Thank you for being on.

 

My pleasure. Nice to talk to you again.

 

Same here, Soledad. We have to have you back, I hope.

 

Done and done.

 

Soledad will be back on the show. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Make sure to check out the next episode. Until next time.