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Go to kajabi.com/girlsatinvest and join the

1:14

creators and entrepreneurs who have

1:16

made over $7 billion. Hello,

1:28

thank you so much for joining me today. Hi,

1:30

Sim. Nice to be here. Thank you for having

1:32

me. I am so excited

1:34

to have you on. You are such

1:36

a special guest for us. But for

1:39

those that are listening, do you mind

1:41

introducing who you are and what you

1:43

do? Absolutely. My name is Upasna Gautam,

1:45

and I live in Austin, Texas with

1:48

my husband, my newborn daughter, and

1:50

our pup Mortimer. My

1:52

9-5 is at CNN where

1:55

I lead the product and engineering team

1:57

for our content management technology. So I work

1:59

with our... your

8:00

first million. Take us through that journey.

8:02

Oh man. I could just

8:04

talk for an hour just about all the mistakes I made.

8:06

And there is a lot to be said about that. I

8:09

think when I first started with things like

8:12

loans and credit cards, I had no idea

8:14

how any of it worked because again, the

8:16

lessons I had been taught were very much

8:18

around saving cash basically, right? I knew how

8:20

to balance a checkbook and that's about it.

8:23

And when you look and really that doesn't

8:25

get you far when it comes to like

8:27

actually building wealth. And so in my

8:30

early 20s, I feel like were the

8:32

years I made a lot of mistakes.

8:34

I stumbled. I mean, there were times

8:36

when I was like constantly in the

8:38

negative in my checking account, right? And

8:40

like, I also was entry level at

8:42

that point in my career. I was

8:44

transitioning into tech, but one thing I

8:46

knew for sure is I had graduated

8:48

with a degree in biomedical sciences thinking

8:50

that, well, I guess I'll go be

8:52

a doctor because that's what I'm supposed

8:54

to do, but I didn't want to

8:57

do it. And I was

8:59

hungry to transition into tech because I

9:01

knew it was the frontier of the

9:03

future. My dad was also an engineer

9:05

and like I could just see the

9:07

growth, but the thing is I was

9:09

already graduating with this degree and I

9:11

had no idea what to do. So

9:14

I took a huge chance and

9:16

this I think was my first stepping

9:18

stone into really understanding the power

9:20

of my own intuition, which was I

9:23

left my home state of

9:25

Michigan. I got a nighttime clinical research

9:27

job at a lab in Dallas while

9:29

I worked an unpaid internship at a

9:32

small web development company during the day.

9:34

Those early twenties have a lot of

9:36

energy so I can work a much

9:38

longer hours. So I was working at

9:41

this unpaid internship because yes, those were

9:43

a thing during the day and I

9:45

would go to the lab at night

9:47

for my job. And after three months

9:50

of working at that web development agency

9:52

as basically like a general data

9:56

strategist, analyst, like analytics

9:59

strategist, I worked

10:01

so hard and then they hired me in three

10:03

months as a full-time employee. I quit

10:05

my lab job and then I never looked back. And

10:07

I was like, okay, I'm in. Like I

10:09

got in. This is, I just needed this chance.

10:12

At that point I was making like $42,000, you

10:14

know, a year. And

10:16

this was 15 years ago. So it's

10:18

not bad, but it's not great. I mean, I was like,

10:21

I'll take it. I was desperate. Like

10:23

at that point, I just wanted the experience. That

10:26

again was, I think the first time

10:28

I took the huge chance on myself.

10:31

I trusted my skills and my intuition.

10:34

And that is a constant that has remained

10:36

over the course of my career through different

10:38

pivots and challenges. From there,

10:42

I worked at that small web development agency

10:44

for two years. And then I moved to

10:46

work in a large digital advertising agency where

10:48

I got to work on really

10:51

big clients, being much bigger rooms

10:53

with bigger people. And I saw

10:55

money in a very different way

10:58

because the expenditures on

11:00

these projects were in the multimillion dollars

11:02

as they would be for clients. I

11:04

worked on like Ford and Dr. Pepper

11:06

and Mars Corporation. And that also is

11:08

when I started to realize I need

11:11

to stop playing so small. But I'm

11:13

also in this point in my career

11:15

where I just need to learn and

11:17

get as much experience as possible. Say

11:19

yes to everything. A

11:21

pivotal thing happened in that career and

11:23

in that job transition. My

11:26

boss at that time told me about the

11:28

importance of building a personal brand. And I

11:30

am so grateful for that. This was before

11:32

social media was a thing. You

11:35

know, Twitter had just come out and

11:38

the way I started doing it was

11:40

through public speaking. And that really

11:42

opened up doors of opportunity for me that

11:45

I didn't know existed because it was like

11:48

another potential source of income that

11:50

I didn't know about. At

11:53

that time, I was doing it all for free.

11:55

But then slowly over time, just

11:57

like an unpaid internship turns into a

11:59

full. time job, public speaking

12:02

enough, as you know, it turns into

12:04

bigger and bigger opportunities over time. So

12:06

that was a big unlock for me

12:08

at that point in my career before

12:10

social media and whole branding and marketing

12:12

existed was my boss who pushed me

12:15

into that. And that set me up

12:17

for success later on down the line

12:19

to where I am today, working a

12:21

corporate job in tech, in

12:24

a very prominent legacy media

12:26

organization. But the thing

12:29

that really catapulted my

12:31

wealth was the money that

12:33

I was able to make

12:35

from my consulting and my

12:38

public speaking, like these really

12:40

lucrative side projects as I

12:42

expanded my skill sets and

12:44

my expertise that really

12:46

started to add up. I

12:49

put all of that money into maxing out

12:51

all of my tax advantaged accounts at work.

12:54

And then from there, moving on to the

12:56

next part of the order of operations, which

12:58

I like to call it is like my

13:00

own brokerage account. And as you and

13:03

I both know, law of index

13:05

funds, index funds were what took it

13:07

to the next level. And

13:09

I just started dumping money into there. And

13:12

at this point, it's just a well oiled machine

13:14

and it's all set it and forget it. That

13:17

is so inspiring. That gives me goosebumps. So what

13:20

I'm hearing from you is when you started making

13:22

all this extra money from the side things that

13:24

you did on top of your nine to five,

13:26

because you could have gone off and said, this

13:29

is really nice. Let me update my car

13:31

or let me go on a holiday. It

13:33

sounds like you were quite diligent and you

13:35

put it into index funds. Were you able

13:37

to balance having fun and

13:39

putting money away? How did you do that?

13:41

Because so many of our listeners asked, well,

13:43

like, Sim, I want to invest in my

13:46

index fund, but I also want to go

13:48

to Europe. Absolutely. I mean, I became a

13:50

little more intentional with the way I was

13:52

spending money. One thing that helped though is

13:54

I didn't just go

13:57

into tech just because,

13:59

oh my gosh, so passionate about technology. It

14:01

was because I wanted to make bank. And

14:03

I knew that working tech in a corporate

14:06

job would get me very easily. I mean,

14:08

you can walk into an entry-level role at

14:10

150K, right? So

14:12

like, you're already setting yourself up for

14:15

success that way by like

14:17

having a strong baseline.

14:20

So I was building on top of

14:22

that. So that part I think is

14:24

really crucial. That was important to me

14:26

was to make sure that this

14:29

new industry and career

14:31

that I'm moving into at

14:34

that time, I mean, and I moved around a lot

14:36

in tech, but like I knew that that was the

14:38

place I wanted to be because it was

14:41

high income. And I'm not ever gonna lie about that.

14:43

But I think it's like to everyone

14:45

has their own journeys and their own paths. It

14:47

happens to be, it got me to this point where

14:50

I love my job. And now

14:52

even though it's optional for me, I

14:54

love it even more knowing that I don't

14:57

have to worry about the

14:59

paycheck part of it. But the reason

15:01

I wanted to move into tech was

15:03

because the opportunities are constantly

15:05

growing and evolving and

15:08

the pay is incredible. So

15:11

because that pay is incredible at

15:13

a corporate paycheck level, my consulting

15:15

money, my paid speaking money, I

15:18

mean, those price tags are also

15:20

higher in tech as well. That's

15:22

just the reality of the situation,

15:24

right? And so that's what I

15:26

wanted to capitalize on. And one

15:29

thing I started doing, and this is like a huge

15:32

awakening I had is I

15:35

realized there was a problem in the last five

15:38

years or so especially. We

15:40

talk a lot about like the pay

15:42

gap. And of course there is a

15:44

multi-billion dollar pay equity gap, right? And

15:46

this is across the world, not even

15:48

the United States. And

15:51

I realized the problem was that women

15:53

of color talk about money

15:56

and salary transparency and how much

15:58

we're making in. our own

16:01

circles, mostly. White men

16:03

are talking about it in their own circles. And

16:05

so there is already

16:08

a separation of what

16:11

those pay gaps are. It's

16:13

already established there. So when I'm

16:15

talking to you, Sim, versus talking

16:17

to the executive at Google who

16:19

is a white male, the money

16:22

conversations are very different. So I

16:24

started talking about money with my

16:26

white male colleagues. And guess what?

16:29

We're very open to it. And

16:31

I think one of the best questions you

16:34

can ask, and if there's one thing you

16:36

take away from this podcast, let this be

16:39

it, is calculating your market value and

16:41

how much you can earn. Start by

16:43

asking really smart questions. And one

16:45

of those questions is, what do you think

16:48

someone in my position should be earning? That

16:50

is one of the questions I started asking.

16:53

That way, the other person can use all

16:55

the information they have, but they don't have

16:57

to reveal their own information. And

17:00

we already know that women and minorities make

17:02

less money than white men on average. But

17:04

if you really want to get an accurate

17:06

picture of what kind

17:08

of compensation you should be asking for, we

17:11

have to have these discussions

17:14

outside of our circles

17:16

of comfort, our circles of convenience.

17:19

That is so groundbreaking, because you're right. Like if

17:22

I sit and I talk to all my friends

17:24

about money, that is breaking the

17:26

mold, getting out there. But I'm

17:28

only going to be as wise as my

17:30

friends. And bless them, they're wise. But you're

17:32

right. We need to mix

17:34

and mingle these conversations with other people.

17:36

What else do you ask someone that

17:38

maybe isn't in your community, someone that

17:40

is maybe the white

17:44

male that's the executive at your company? What

17:46

else have you found really helpful to ask

17:48

them? I really think that one question, and

17:50

I will restate it because I think it's

17:52

a really powerful one, is one that keeps

17:55

you in a position

17:57

where you don't feel uncomfortable.

24:00

faced an issue inside or

24:02

outside of the workplace. And

24:04

when you become vulnerable, you become even

24:07

more powerful. And so, again, that is

24:09

something that if you get

24:11

laid off, it cannot be taken away

24:13

from you. So build your own social

24:16

proof through your own personal brand. And

24:18

do you recommend doing that through Instagram,

24:20

having a newsletter, LinkedIn? I like using

24:22

LinkedIn personally, but what have you found

24:24

that's worked? You know, it's crazy. I

24:27

have no strategy, none. People recently have

24:29

started asking me, I'm like, I just

24:31

do it when I'm inspired. I will

24:33

say LinkedIn is

24:35

a goldmine for professional

24:38

opportunity. And to be

24:40

very, very honest, people

24:43

who are on LinkedIn with those

24:45

opportunities also have more money to

24:47

pay you. Instagram is, you know,

24:49

the influencer crowd, that money is

24:51

not as, it's not as lucrative

24:53

as the types of opportunities you're going to get on

24:55

LinkedIn, especially if you're working like in a corporate job

24:58

or if you work in tech. Like I know many

25:00

of my audience members do

25:02

is sharing and being

25:04

engaging on LinkedIn

25:07

is, I mean, I would

25:09

just say if you had to pick

25:11

one place, I agree with you, Sam,

25:13

start there. It's an absolute goldmine. I

25:15

love LinkedIn. I am very happily a

25:17

LinkedIn influencer. I put my hand up

25:19

on that. I completely agree with you.

25:21

I've actually had a lot more speaking

25:23

gigs come through LinkedIn than Instagram in

25:25

hindsight. You're definitely onto something. So

25:28

we're growing our career. It's working well.

25:30

You're reaching new heights. How

25:32

did you manage your money through

25:34

that time? Like what did you do? Did you use, you

25:36

know, a 401k? Did you choose a Roth

25:39

IRA? How did you take what you had?

25:41

How did you structure it? And

25:44

then I'd love to talk about the investment

25:46

side as well after that. Perfect. I love

25:48

this conversation because it is actually very black

25:50

and white to me now being on the

25:52

other side of it. The

25:54

thing is they want you

25:57

to think it's confusing. They want

25:59

you. financial

40:00

independence. My daughter came around

40:03

and I was like, okay, I want to set

40:05

her up for success. So it's very much just

40:07

out of a reflection exercise. And then I threw

40:09

it into a LinkedIn post. And I was like,

40:11

once I saw it written, I was

40:13

like, this makes sense to

40:15

me and my journey. When

40:18

it comes to phase one, you know, setting

40:21

yourself up for financial success, what would you

40:23

say? We've started talking on the podcast about

40:25

this a number of enough or having a

40:27

number where you go, okay, once I achieve

40:29

this, this makes me feel

40:32

like I've gotten to my goals. Are

40:34

you comfortable in sharing what that would

40:36

look like for you? Yes, I will.

40:38

Let me start by saying this. I

40:40

love that enough. Knowing when enough is

40:43

happening is so important. For me, it

40:45

was last year. And what happened was

40:48

it was the first time

40:50

my portfolio outperformed my base salary

40:52

that I was getting. And that's

40:54

when I was like, okay,

40:58

I'm good. Like that

41:00

was enough for me. And now

41:02

let me give you an example of like,

41:05

how I put that into practice. On social media,

41:07

as we know, it is

41:09

an amazing place to monetize

41:11

digital products, knowledge, resources, and

41:14

I get lots of well

41:16

intentioned advice to monetize or

41:18

build a product or do

41:20

a class. I have no

41:22

desire to do it. And I'm like, I just am

41:25

so grateful to be in a

41:27

place where I don't need to

41:29

monetize. I have enough. I don't

41:31

need to make another source

41:34

of income and then manage it. And

41:36

then like, I am, I don't want

41:38

to put more time into doing that.

41:40

Time is money also, right? So like

41:43

that to me was like, I

41:45

have reached enough and I don't want to

41:47

monetize like my social media platforms.

41:49

I don't want to build a class. I don't

41:51

want to build a digital product. I just, I

41:54

truly want to use it as a place to

41:56

pay forward the knowledge that I've been so grateful

41:58

to receive from people. who took

42:00

big chances on me when I had nothing. And

42:02

I think that all kind

42:04

of happened at the same time for

42:06

me last year. It all kind of

42:08

clicked. That's also when I realized,

42:11

well, what do you do with this and

42:13

what do I want to do with this? And that's when that

42:16

phase three started to come into

42:18

fruition of helping other

42:20

women in a financial capacity

42:22

is something that you

42:25

see this actually a lot with

42:27

women who have accumulated wealth.

42:30

You see it with people like Mackenzie

42:33

Scott and she was the

42:35

president of Albert Einstein University,

42:38

Ruth Gottesman, who gave

42:40

a billion dollars to cover the cost

42:42

of medical school tuition. Her husband was

42:45

like Warren Buffett's pro jay. It's interesting

42:47

when women have wealth, the amazing things

42:49

that they do and they are goals

42:51

to me. I mean, I don't ever

42:54

need or want billions of dollars and

42:56

also they got it or they inherited

42:58

it and they just give it

43:01

away. And that is goals to me. It's

43:03

like, I know I have more

43:05

than enough where I don't have to worry about

43:07

money for the rest of my life and my

43:09

daughter doesn't and my family doesn't. So now what

43:11

do I do? And it's truly to find

43:14

ways to support the greater good, to

43:16

give it to women who want to

43:18

help themselves, to do cool shit with

43:20

cool women who are making an impact

43:22

on the world in a positive way.

43:24

That is the phase three I'm figuring

43:26

out right now. And I

43:28

made a reel the other day about like, you

43:31

know, it's like lit a whole new

43:33

fire in me because I'm like, oh,

43:35

I got to invest more. I need

43:38

more money to invest so I can

43:40

compound, so I can invest more and

43:42

be a bigger angel investor. And like

43:44

that's where my head's at now. It's

43:46

very much in the lens of investing

43:48

to pay it forward as opposed to

43:50

investing to just accumulate. I have a

43:53

theory that when people reach their enough

43:55

number or they reach a certain amount

43:57

of wealth, the interest in growing more

43:59

money... that

46:00

you get an even greater 10x,

46:02

100x, whatever return on what you

46:04

put out, but you

46:07

have to be that passionate and believe

46:09

that much in that product that

46:11

you would be okay with never seeing that money

46:13

again. There is much

46:15

higher risk involved with angel

46:18

investing. I

46:20

think that is a really

46:22

different place to operate just

46:24

financially, mentally, emotionally than when

46:26

you put it in a

46:29

backdoor Roth, you know what's

46:31

going to happen. There's

46:33

data to back it up. Angel

46:35

investing is a little bit like gambling. You

46:38

have to trust your intuition. You have to

46:40

know what you stand for. You have to

46:42

go after deeply vetted people and products. Start

46:45

asking questions. That is really helpful. I

46:48

think that so many people are going

46:50

to have so many questions for you

46:52

because you have explained things so well.

46:55

Before we wrap up, I just wanted to ask

46:57

one last piece of advice. If you

46:59

were speaking to someone or if you were speaking

47:01

to your younger self 10 years ago who she's

47:04

working, she's figuring out, yes, she's invested and

47:06

you've got all these systems, but there's always

47:08

that little bit of fear of what if

47:11

it doesn't work out? What if everything that

47:13

I'm building doesn't work? Do

47:16

you have any advice for that younger self that

47:18

didn't know what she knows now? If

47:20

you work hard and you

47:23

are honest, it will always work

47:25

out. That's what I would tell her. That's

47:27

it. Like it does. I've seen it

47:30

happen over and over and over again

47:32

for me when I felt like everything

47:34

was going to fall apart. If

47:36

you genuinely work hard and you

47:38

are honest with yourself and

47:40

other people about what you know and what you

47:42

don't know, it'll work out. And that is exactly

47:44

you think like this is what I would say

47:47

to my 10 year old self. This

47:49

is what I'm going to say to my daughter too

47:51

is truly like there's on

47:53

social media. The word being authentic has

47:55

is used a lot. Right. And

47:58

I was having a conversation with one of

48:00

my friends the other day. about what does

48:02

that mean? What does that even mean? Because

48:04

it's become so it's like a buzzword now,

48:06

right? Be authentic, be authentic. To

48:08

me, it is knowing

48:10

what you stand for and knowing what the

48:13

type of person is you want to become.

48:15

So you said, what would you say to

48:17

your 10 year old self? You know, I

48:20

just want to continue to operate and

48:22

do things that make my 10 year

48:24

old self proud, but also my 80

48:26

year old self proud too. I'm working

48:28

for her as well. So when I

48:30

think about that, it all comes back

48:32

to like core values. What do

48:34

you stand for? What is the type of person you want to

48:36

be and what is the type of person you want to be

48:38

known for? If you work in

48:40

alignment with that, it will

48:42

work out. I am going to

48:44

listen back to this like five times. This is

48:46

so good. I cannot thank you enough. Realistically, everyone

48:48

that's going to listen to this is going to

48:50

be like, I need more of this woman. I

48:53

need to find her. I need her help. How

48:55

can we find you? How can we stay in

48:57

touch? What's the best ways? Please, we would love

49:00

so much for our community to be connected

49:02

to you. It is very easy to find

49:04

me online. I'm pretty sure I'm the only

49:06

upasna Gotham in the

49:08

United States for sure. I think there

49:10

might be a couple in India, but

49:12

a very easy to find online. I

49:14

Instagram, LinkedIn, I want the rides once

49:16

in a while. Shoot me an email,

49:19

shoot me a DM. I try to

49:21

respond to everyone. So far, I've been

49:24

doing a pretty good job of keeping up

49:26

with it as I try to find the

49:28

balance of staying away from social media a

49:30

little bit more, but also staying engaged. But

49:32

I would love to hear what questions you

49:35

will have on any of these topics. Always

49:37

happy to help and support. We will put

49:39

those links in the show notes if you

49:41

want to ever come back and listen to

49:43

them. But thank you so much from the

49:45

bottom of my heart. I have taken away

49:48

so much. I know our community well. We

49:50

have hundreds of thousands of women every single

49:52

month listening. And I promise you hundreds of

49:54

thousands of people are going to be able

49:56

to walk away from this and be like,

49:59

I actually now.