Everyone wants to save money and invest wisely, but not many have the necessary tools and understanding to even make the courageous first step – that is, until you meet Tanya Taylor. Her story alone is one to aspire towards. Arriving in America as a lone undocumented immigrant from Jamaica at 16, she had an uphill battle from day one. Through perseverance and overall tenacity, she has managed to create fruitful relationships with individuals and families who have never had someone in their corner for money management, investment strategies and support.
Her journey as a a Certified Public Accountant to motivator and teacher has been littered with experience that cannot be overlooked. These achievements contributed to her creating ‘Grow Your Wealth’, a financial education platform that allows everyday Americans who are struggling to make ends meet to take control of their finances and begin growing generational wealth.
Tanya graciously took the time to answer a few of our questions surrounding her own journey, her platform, her ambitions, as well as breaking down the changes to her platform post-COVID.
Hi Tanya, what was the primary motivation behind starting Grow Your Wealth?
I have an audacious goal to help one million families transform their finances and create generational wealth.
My motivation is very simple. I grew up very poor in Jamaica. At age 16, I came to America alone to find the American Dream. As an undocumented teen, I faced tremendous obstacles. One thing that was consistent then, and still is now, is that many families in America were also living in poverty, sometimes a paycheck away from homelessness, regardless of their income.
I created the Grow Your Wealth platform to equip these families with implementable strategies to overhaul their lives, financially. Many people today believe that based on their current financial situation, there is no room for change. I want to turn that myth on its head and show them how.
I have had bad credit, high interest credit cards, and no savings. I recall on several occasions having to choose between buying basic necessities or eating and having to go hungry. The fact is that I have been there, and I know that it doesn’t feel good. But I also know that there are tools that can create change once you are motivated to change.
These are some of the same tools that allowed me by age 25 to graduate college debt free, own my first home, and co-own a small business. Those tools are now allowing me to live the life that I dreamed of. I want others to be able to do the same.
What is your career background? Were you always in the finance space?
Professionally I am a CPA and I also hold an MBA in Strategic Management. I have grown up on Wall Street, starting my career in public Accounting over 23 years ago. I have since worked for a rating agency investment bank, insurance company and as a financial regulator. In these roles I have worked with traders, wrote, and analyzed financial statements as well as write accounting and regulatory policies. I have read and interpreted the tax laws and opined on some of the largest financial transactions of the world’s largest financial institutions. My experience in the corporate world has given me deep knowledge of the financial service industry, and how much of their decision making and products translates to our daily lives.
Within the personal finance space, I am a Certified Financial Education Instructor and a Board-Certified Credit Counselor. I have been obsessed with learning and teaching personal finance for over 2 decades. Shortly after graduating college, I co-founded an investment club which I ran for several years. When I hired a Financial Advisor and saw the investment fees I was paying and the paltry results, I promptly fired this planner and began managing my own money, while immersing myself in learning wealth building and tax planning strategies. This also led to my husband and I starting a tax practice.
Staying true to my core belief of helping others, I volunteered my time with various organizations educating students, adults and small business owners on topics ranging from building credit, demolishing bad debt, investing, tax planning, wealth protection and so much more. I also created a children’s financial education club, where I taught both children and adults about these personal finance topics and took them on annual excursions to Wall Street.
What kind of services do you currently offer?
I know that every individual or family is on a very different financial journey. Therefore, I created a platform to meet each person exactly where they are, using my three-prong Membership Program.
The first prong, The Wealth Trifecta, is for someone who may have no financial knowledge, negative credit, large amounts of debt, and no budget. Once those areas are manageable, we move to the second prong – Invest and Grow. Here they will learn how to invest in the stock market, how to start a business to generate multiple streams of income – from idea generation, to legally structuring and getting business funding.
Lastly, wealth building and tax minimization are key. Therefore, in this third prong, Wealth Protection, they are implementing tax planning strategies to pay the minimum taxes legally permissible and ensuring that the right wealth building tools are in place, including the performance of stress testing of their investment and retirement portfolios. The objective is for them to be positioned to meet or exceed their financial goals within the timeframe established.
The Grow Your Wealth platform empowers anyone, regardless of their income or education level to make wise financial decisions and take control of their finances.
What is your process for working with a new client?
It may come as no surprise that many people have a negative mindset towards money, regardless of their income. Whenever a new client comes on board, there is always a mix of excitement, anxiety, and the big question – Can I Do This? And of course, the answer is Yes. You Absolutely Can!
Each membership program has a slightly different onboarding process, however the first recommendation is for the client to create a personalized roadmap, so that there is clear guidance about what the learning path will look like. Because everyone’s situation is different, two people entering the program at the same time may have a completely different path, regardless of how similar their end goal is.
Once they have created the roadmap, I usually have them begin with the Mindset Project. I have found that this removes a lot of the anxiety, and within that very short timeframe, a level of confidence emerges. The transformation is truly incredible!
The courses are online and self-paced, so everyone will go at the level that they feel most comfortable. My team and I are there, however, to guide them. The coaching sessions are a great way for them to not just engage with others on a similar path, but to also answer or clarify questions or concerns.
You also offer some free training; can you please tell us more about them?
Over the past 2 decades that I have been teaching people about personal finance, my goal has always been to help them make wiser financial decisions. That is still my mission today. I recognize, however, that not everyone is able to immediately commit to my program.
For these individuals, I offer free training in several different ways. My Grow Your Wealth Youtube Channel covers a number of personal finance topics. I also offer free training within my Facebook Community.
The Art Of Wealth Creation is a four-part training on the 6-step roadmap that I used to grow my retirement income to 7 figures and my children’s college portfolio beyond the half million-dollar mark. It is jam-packed with implementable strategies, to immediately start taking action, even before completing the training.
I am all about taking action that will get you one step further away from your current financial situation by providing more clarity about how to make positive changes financially.
We noticed that you offer several e-books, one of them is “The 5 steps to investing in the stock market”. What do people expect after reading this e-book?
Investing in the stock market requires a structured and systematic approach. The 5-Steps To Investing In The Stock Market lays out the action step required for anyone to begin investing. I created this guide to weed through some of the confusions that many first-time investors have about getting started.
Included within this guide is also a list of Brokerage Firms and Apps which charges no fee and generally do not have a minimum investment requirement. In some instances, a person can start with as little as $5.
Has COVID impacted your services and/or the expectations or needs of your clients?
I began creating The Grow Your Wealth financial education platform immediately before Covid and at the time my mission was to work exclusively with black women to teach them how to use the stock market as a wealth building tool to plan for retirement and create generational wealth.
During the beginning of Covid, when there were volumes of data showing the toll this pandemic was having on families, and even more jarring, the fact that many families didn’t have $400 in emergency savings, I realized that my mission and goals needed to be expanded. The big question I had was what do families need the most? I began speaking with many people on social media and performing formal and informal polls across different income brackets and demographics. The truth was quite simple.
Not only are many people fearful of investing, but they have negative credit, high debt, no budget and no extra cash. They needed a bridge that takes them from their current reality, to be able to invest.
With that knowledge, I changed my program in two ways. First, I expanded the program to all women, small business owners, and families of marginalized communities. Second, I wanted the platform to be able to meet a person where they are, and therefore created the three prongs – The Wealth Trifecta, Invest and Grow, & Wealth Protection. I am confident that with these changes, this platform will transform lives for many generations, regardless of a person’s present fincial situation or income.
Thank you Tanya for your time!
You can follow up with Tanya Taylor at:
Website: growyourwealth10x.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/groups/159747151787213
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/growyourwealth10x/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/GroURwealth
