ROSE OF ROSESHAFA.COM
Armed with a degree in finance, Rose is a former Wall Street trader turned personal finance guru. She is passionate about spreading financial literacy and teaching people how to pick investments based on facts, not emotions. With her knack for explaining complicated financial topics into easy-to-understand steps, her YouTube channel "Investing With Rose" has garnered millions of views.
“If you feel fear, that means you should definitely do it because it means you care and it’s gonna make a difference.”
— Rose Shafa
What inspired you to start investing with Rose?
I think it was about three years ago – I just had this passion for talking about money and investing, and I also realized how intimidating it could be for women to try to think that they could make some progress in a very male dominated field. So when I moved to Denver, I decided to start a local meet-up called “Wealthy Women”: I would just invite people to come learn about little topics here and there about investing; It grew to five hundred plus numbers over a year, and I could see that I could see that what I had shown was important.
[The women] especially valued that it was an all women group. After a year, I realized, if people like Denver are getting so much value, I think there's probably a lot of women all over the world who need this stuff. So I started a YouTube channel to expand my reach and I just called it Investing with Rose. From the YouTube channel, I created an online course. So it really started with me knowing that there was a need and that I could do something about it, and then just started a meetup. So I grew it from something small to something big.
What are some standard investing practices or tips you think all women should know?
So, first of all, it's to get educated, because I think that's the key. I know some women might start investing because their friend tells them to do this or that, but I really think if you're not informed, no matter how much money you have, you'll never actually be financially independent. So the first step is to get educated before you do anything, because there are a lot of ways to invest. It’s also important to just get a lay of the land first before you tackle it. So the first thing is to get educated, because you don't want to invest in anything you don't understand.
The second part really is to make a decision. I think I see a lot of people stuck in analysis paralysis. After you do all the research, it can be a little overwhelming to make a decision. There are so many brokerage platforms, people, and news articles telling you different things, but it's important to just think of it and move forward. At some point, you've got all the research you can add.
If there's a strategy that you understand and believe in, you've got to move forward – actually pull the trigger. Even beyond analysis paralysis, I think recognizing the fear [that comes with making an investment decision]; It's okay to have that fear if you're used to having your money in the bank and not seeing it fluctuate with the market. It's very, very nerve wracking to put your first few dollars into something that goes up and down and can really go up and down a lot. So just recognizing the fear and analysis process, but knowing that you need to move forward anyway because not investing isn't an option either. That's something that I think is really important to understand. It might feel secure to keep your money in a bank, and in comparison it might feel like putting your money into investments is very risky. But keeping money in the bank is also very risky too. So I think it's also understanding that investing is a must.
For some more practical tips, definitely recognize that there are a couple of ways to get started investing. So there are very active types of investing. Like buying real estate properties and renovating and renting it out, there's also picking stocks, then there are those [modes of investing] that require more skill and time.
But the easiest way for anyone to get started is with just passive investing, so investing in index funds. I usually push beginners to start there because at least that gets them started, and there's not as much of a learning curve to get good at that as there are as compared to more active types of investing. So for someone who's never done anything with investing, who barely even knows what a stock is or where to buy a stock, they're better off just starting with index funds because that's the easiest way to get started investing. Once you get the ball rolling on that, you can get fancier and start learning about how to research individual companies, etc.
OK, and what challenges did you face in starting Investing with Rose?
There were probably two major challenges. The first is in starting the meet-up and the channel, I faced a lot of resistance because a big theme about women and investing seems to be confidence; there definitely aren't a lot of women talking about investing. So I thought, well, “who am I to start a YouTube channel?” Just getting over the resistance or fear of putting myself out there and presenting myself as someone who can help others was a big hurdle. I think everyone will have some initial fear if they want to start something that really matters to them, but now that I'm on the other side of that fear, it’s not a problem. I've been doing this for a while and I've seen how much value people get from my work, so now I know that that fear isn't real.
If you feel fear that means you should definitely do it, because it means you care and it's gonna make a difference.
The second challenge was not having people – in the beginning, you don't have the numbers to show for it, and the progress is very slow. There were fifteen people at my first meet-up; it was a pretty good turnout. But all the meetings were small and then it grew; there were a handful of people and then it started being a room full of people. And Same with the YouTube channel for the first year – I only had a couple hundred views, if not less, on all my videos, but each video took 10 to 20 hours before of work. I'm a lot faster now, but 10 to 20 hours of work, putting videos out weekly, and getting very, very few views – essentially crickets, [is disheartening]. But I just kept up the faith that I was doing something worthwhile and I should stick with it.
Name some books you’ve read recently that you would recommend to the CWBS community.
I have so many books that I’d recommend!
My favorite book of all time is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It's like a long fable that sort of reads like a children's story, but it's the story of this boy who goes on this adventure; the whole thing is an allegory for your life. Basically, the message is if you listen to your heart and you follow your dreams, then the universe will support you. That’s like your personal missio, to find out what your dream is and to go on that adventure. I read it after I graduated school, and really, I don't think I'd be here without that book.
Another one is Unshakable by Tony Robbins. It’s basically about keeping your calm in decision making in an investments/financial context; this book will help you when it comes to investing.
Another book I actually just read not too long ago is called Quit Like a Millionaire Bryce Leung and Kristy Shen. It’s a really cool story about this Chinese girl who grew up in abject poverty in rural China, yet managed to retire at 31.
It has some very practical tips about money, how to manage your money. I think this is cool because investing isn't just about having enough money when you're a lot older. If you do it well, if you do it right and aggressively, you could actually retire early, and that's probably everybody's goal. So I like this book as it tells you how to do that and how she did it. She travels the world, you know, retired at 31, which is pretty awesome.
My last recommendation is concrete, but not investing related; I'm reading it right now. It's called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. It’s amazing because we don't learn about very key skills in school, one of them being money, which is the gap that I'm trying to fill, but we also don't learn about relationships and communication. Money and relationships are probably the two biggest things that would make a difference in your happiness, so this book tells you how to communicate with people in a nonviolent way. Meaning, how do you communicate compassionately and kindly? I picked it up for my marriage to improve my marriage, but I could see that it would have improved all my relationships with my coworkers, colleagues; My family life would probably have been very different if I wrote this book a long time ago. So, yeah, I highly recommend this book.
Who is a woman leader that you look up to?
Oprah Winfrey – I think it's amazing how she really came up during a time when it was even harder for women, let alone black women, to succeed in, again, a male dominated media industry. She had a very hard background, but no excuses. She had a dream. I think I think that resonates with me because that's what I am doing right now, or what I’m on the path for doing. She's such a badass, such a role model of possibility, and I'm so grateful to her for that.