Suze Orman is one of the world’s most influential people, according to Time magazine, and the top female motivational speaker in the United States, according to BusinessWeek. She has won two Emmy Awards for her TV talk show and five Gracie Awards for her work in television and radio. She’s written seven consecutive best-selling books and has helped PBS raise more money than any other fundraiser in public television. Clearly, when this certified financial planner talks, people listen.

But the fame and fortune Orman has earned during more than two decades are not what she expected from life. Following a modest childhood, a relatively normal college experience and a seven-year stint as a waitress, Orman’s life was forever changed the day she applied to be a broker for Merrill Lynch. The event that led her to that brokerage firm was something many people can relate to—a crushing financial loss in the stock market.

Learning the Hard Way

Orman, who earned $400 a month as a waitress, had a dream to open her own restaurant. While working at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, Calif., Orman befriended many regular customers. One day, she mentioned her dream to a longtime customer named Fred Hasbrook. She told Hasbrook she’d asked her parents for a $20,000 loan to start a restaurant, only to be reminded that though they would do anything they could for their daughter, they simply didn’t have that kind of money to loan. Hasbrook spoke with several other regular customers. Before leaving, he went up to the counter and handed Orman a personal check for $2,000. Orman was shocked to see that Hasbrook and several other customers had written checks and commitments totaling $50,000. Along with the handful of checks was a note that read: “This is for people like you, so that your dreams can come true. To be paid back in 10 years, if you can, with no interest.”

Unsure of what to do with that much money, Orman took Hasbrook’s advice to invest it in a money-market account with Merrill Lynch. A waitress with a degree in social work, Orman knew nothing about investing at this point—her personal checks were prone to bounce. So when she visited the brokerage firm’s Oakland office and the broker agreed to invest it for her—better yet to help her “make a quick $100 a week”—she signed a blank form that allowed him to handle her money.

At first, things went well. As her investment grew, she picked out a location for her restaurant and began working on building plans with an architect. She also watched the stock market and began learning all she could by reading The Wall Street Journal and watching Wall Street Week on PBS. After three months of increases, the markets soured. Orman says she had told her broker upfront that she only earned $400 a month and could not afford to lose the money—but that’s what happened. She lost everything.

Orman was devastated and angry, but the experience gave her an idea: She could do at least as well as the broker who’d lost her money. So, rather than give up, she applied for a job as a broker at Merrill Lynch. “It was an all-male office except for female secretaries. The manager told me when he interviewed me that he thought women belonged ‘barefoot and pregnant,’ and that in his opinion, I would be out of there in six months,” Orman says. But six months at the $1,500 monthly salary he offered was equivalent to almost two years of waitressing. She realized she would come out ahead even if she lasted only six months.

In the months and years that followed, Orman took that opportunity and created an extraordinary life. She paid back the people who loaned money to make her dream come true, not knowing how that act of generosity would eventually impact millions of people’s lives. Despite the ups and downs she has experienced, she says, “I do not have any regrets. Everything happens for the best. Every ‘no’ leads you closer to the ‘yes’ you were meant to have.”

Through failure and success, Orman learned much about herself and, of course, about money. She has helped shape the way America views female financial advisors, and has influenced the way millions of people—particularly women—save and invest. And through her life’s journey, Orman has discovered and applied three principles that shaped her course: Find your niche and become an expert; do the work; like who you are and what you do.

Become an Expert
The process for becoming a stockbroker took time and training. While still in the training stage, Orman attended weekly sales meetings.

“I’ll never forget: Tuesdays at 1 o’clock. I remember sitting there with the male brokers. They talked about sales ideas, and I thought ‘I cannot believe I’m sitting in this office with all these financial advisors, these people I look up to.’ I got this feeling of wow. I’d been admitted into this elite group of people and I could not believe I was there,” she says. “It was such an extraordinary feeling, and I remember thinking ‘I like how I feel. This is great, this is exciting, and I can really help people.’ ”

Orman says she acquired a thirst for learning. She devoted her time to studying for the stockbroker’s Series 7 exam and learning how to excel in her new career. Once she’d passed that hurdle, Orman found a niche that served her clients well.

“I started to specialize in an investment called single premium whole life,” Orman says. “I loved it!” She describes the product as a legal tax loophole that allowed people to invest with minimal risk and high returns. Then one day, while listening to a radio talk show on KGO in San Francisco, she heard another financial expert answering callers’ questions about single premium whole life. “He was answering them 100 percent wrong. I was outraged,” Orman says.

She wrote a scathing three-page letter to the show’s host, Jim Jorgensen, outlining the points the guest advisor had explained incorrectly. A short time later she got a call from Jorgensen who invited her to come on the show and explain the product. “The next Saturday I went down there and did a show. After that, my phone started to ring off the hook,” Orman says. Other radio shows and TV shows requested that she come on as a guest expert. “Everybody all of a sudden wanted me on their show, because at that time, I was the only one who had mastered how this investment truly worked. It was one of the greatest investments around.”

Do the Work—the Results Will Follow
Like other financial advisors, Orman had to be versed in a wide range of investment options and products, but she worked at becoming an expert in particular areas of focus. This strategy served her well when she conducted retirement seminars. “Pacific Gas and Electric came to Merrill Lynch’s Oakland office and asked if any financial advisor there would like to give a seminar to their employees who were going to retire. Nobody wanted to do it,” she says. “Word had gotten out that it was a waste of time. Advisors would go give a seminar, spend all this time and nobody ever retired from PG&E, so they never made any money.”

Undaunted, Orman agreed to give the seminar. She studied the organization’s retirement plan and put together a small booklet explaining it to give to each attendee. “It was a tremendous success. And, of course, nobody retired. But I didn’t care because I had a really great time doing it,” she says. PG&E’s employees were so impressed by Orman’s presentation she was asked to conduct the seminar at locations around the state. “Before you knew it, it took me four full weeks to give all the seminars, and nobody was retiring,” she says. Orman was asked back year after year. Then in 1987 PG&E laid off 10,000 people. “And guess where they all came? I did the seminar for five years and never made a penny. But my reputation kept growing. Before you knew it, the other brokers went to PG&E asking if they could give a retirement seminar and they said sorry, ‘Suze’s our girl.’ ”

Orman opened her own firm in 1987 and used her mastery of single premium whole life to help her new PG&E retirees. “It was the most brilliant thing I’ve ever done, and I made a fortune. And the people made a fortune,” she says.

Those seminars as well as her appearances on radio and TV shows opened doors to new contacts and helped Orman develop her public-speaking skills. The exposure also eventually put her in touch with the people who would help her publish her first book, You’ve Earned It, Don’t Lose It: Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make When You Retire. “That book went on to sell more than 100,000 copies in hardback in the first year,” Orman says. “That was the start of everything.”

Like Who You Are and What You Do
In those early days as a broker trainee, Orman liked what she did. She liked helping people take control of their finances. When her first book sold so many copies, Orman realized the potential that existed for helping people en masse. Up to that point, her goal in publishing a book was focused on impressing and equipping her clients.

While her book was in bookstores, Orman began teaching a class she called The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom. “I started to teach this class, and the women went off the charts with it. I was teaching them the nine steps that I put my clients through,” she says. In 1997, Orman released her second book, The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom. The book became a best-seller, eventually selling more than 3 million copies. “It was at that point that I made the change from being a financial advisor who wanted simply to give a book to my clients to a No. 1 New York Times best-selling author,” Orman says.

She has since written six other best-selling books, including her newest title, Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan: Keeping Your Money Safe and Sound (Spiegel & Gran) which hit No. 1 on The New York Times Best-Seller List three days after its release. “I think at this point, when people see my picture—and I don’t say this egotistically, I’ve worked very hard for this to be true—they know that whatever it is, they can trust that it will help them,” Orman says. That degree of influence is something she takes seriously. “I feel the responsibility of trust on my shoulders. The more trusted I am, the more seriously I take that responsibility. It’s a feeling that I owe it to them to never disappoint them. I owe it to them more now than I ever did,” she says. “Once you’ve earned someone’s trust, the key is to keep their trust and never, ever, ever disappoint them.”

Living with integrity and knowing what she thinks and believes are hallmarks of her success. “Liking who you are and liking what you do can make you an incredibly successful person. That is how I define success. I would not define it financially. You can be a really successful person and never really have a penny to show for it,” she says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Real Estate Tip: How To Hire  A Realtor

If you’ve been any sort of social during the Facebook age, then you’ve trolled on your friends’ Facebook profiles to find photos they took at an event you attended or hosted.

New York-based Kaptur.com indexes millions of photos across social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Picassa. It works best with Facebook—culling photo tags, captions, event dates and other descriptions of the event. Enter the event date and Kaptur will cull the results. White-label applications are in the works, with electronic music producer and artist David Guetta test-driving the photo collaboration project. http://www.kaptur.com

PostPost is a personalized social search tool for Twitter that allows users to search and discover relevant content from the people they follow. PostPost’s new Timeline Topline surfaces topics, photos, videos and other information that’s trending in your timeline. PostPost also features content filtering by type (e.g. web link, photo, or video), fast search performance, and a variety of ways to share results. http://www.postpost.com

News.Me is a free iPhone app that takes news articles shared by your friends on Twitter and Facebook and delivers them in an easy to read digest of the day’s most “important” features. Now, here’s the caveat. If your friends don’t read very intelligent things, your top story of the day may end up as the most recent eliminee on Dancing With the Stars. http://www.news.me

Summify gathers tweets, comments, snippets and images from all around the Web and puts them into one post. Recently acquired by Twitter, Summify can be used to capture events online, or even ask a question and curate the best answers. The app is closed to new registrations but will become part of Twitter’s app suite in the coming months. http://summify.com

Percolate helps brands create content at a social scale. It is an engine that consumes the world for a brand. It picks up the most interesting stories and makes it easy to comment on those stories and push them out to brands. http://percolate.com

Storify creates stories using social media. It turns what people post on social media into compelling stories. It collects the best photos, video, tweets, and more to build stories. Great for newshounds! http://storify.com

 

 

Ask any smartphone owner and she will tell you that the heart and soul of these amazing little devices are the apps available for download. While most of these lovely bits of software are free, some range from 99 cents to $29.99, while a few very technical apps run into the hundreds of dollars.

There are now more than 500,000 downloadable apps. According to APPAdvice.com, “the average number of apps downloaded for every device sold is 60… with no signs of slowing down.”

Why is our appetite for apps so insatiable? The answer is simple: It’s a mobile world. The world has fallen in love with the freedom and power that come from the ability to access information on the go. Whether it sits on a smartphone, tablet or e-reader, the app that gives users the data they want—regardless of geography—is the app that’s being consumed in a global feeding frenzy.
Check This Out

Get a group of friends together, and one of the first things that seem to happen is a quick comparison of everyone’s favorite app. It’s truly a social phenomenon.

That’s because apps are more than useful; they’re fun. They’re easy to download and a cinch to use. We have them on our phones and our iPads and now they have migrated to our laptops and desktops. Possibly the biggest opportunity to come in the next 24 months will be apps for your television that turn your passive, one-way TV into a true two-way, interactive technology monster.

I like to think of my apps as my team of especially skilled—and very affordable—personal assistants. They help me focus my attention, get where I need to go, and know what to do when I get there. Here are some of my favorite business apps, which can help you save time and money and be more productive every minute of every day.

I won’t waste your time discussing basic apps you should have, including Facebook, Twitter, iTunes and YouTube. Instead let’s look at some apps that can: 1. increase your income, 2. decrease your expenses and 3. save time so you can do more of 1 and 2. Here’s my list of must-have apps to help you manage, meet and beat the countless business challenges of the Information Age.
C’mon, Get App-y

1. Dropbox. Dropbox is a cloud-based storage site. I use it on my desktop at work, my desktop at home, my laptop and my iPad. I can store files, links, songs or even videos at Dropbox and then access them on any of these devices. FREE (It can cost you if you need a lot of storage space, however.)
2. Invoice2Go. Create, preview and email professional invoices and estimates in seconds. Invoice2go is the fast and easy way to estimate, bill, collect and report. There are more than 20 built-in invoice styles to choose from, so it’s actually fun going through the choices, selecting your template and designing your own. $9.99
3. Instapaper. This app creates a “read later” bookmark for all of your web surfing. You simply click on the “Read Later” button and you get right back to it when you have time. FREE
4. Business Card Reader. This one is so cool, they featured it in an iPhone TV commercial. If you are like me, you often come back from a meeting or trade show with a pocketful of business cards. Getting them into your contact management system isn’t simple—but this app is an instant business card reader. Simply take a picture of a business card; the software will scan it, and its character recognition puts the right info into the right data fields for your phone’s contacts.$4.99
5. Voice Memo. How often do you find yourself in a situation where you need to quickly jot down a memo, but you don’t have a pen? Or you’re driving when you have a great idea or solution, but again, you can’t write it down? I use Voice Memo to record my to-do list and long emails that need to be written. The Voice Memo’s digital recorders turn your vocal notes into a digital file. I send them to my assistant who types and sends them to the appropriate folks. The quality of these recorders is so impeccable that I used the app to deliver a 20-minute recorded speech I was asked to give to 2,500 people when I couldn’t be there in person. 99 cents
6. Flight Status – Live Flight Tracker. This is a no-brainer: live flight tracking! As I’m about to leave for the airport, I log on to this app to see if my flight is on time and the departure gate. I also use it to find other airlines flying the exact same route, just in case I need to move my flight. $4.99
7. GasBuddy. Whether you have a small fleet of trucks or you just want to find the cheapest gas near you, this app is great. It shows you every gas station in your local area and its current prices per gallon. I recently found a savings of 29 cents a gallon. For an average SUV with a 30-gallon tank, that equates to a savings of $8.70 a week. If you buy one tank of gas a week, that’s an annual savings of $452.40—thanks to a free app. FREE
8. GroupMe. Every small-business owner should have this app. It allows you to easily send a group text message to your staff, co-workers or members of a professional association. The messages appear as if you’re in a chat room, so everyone can see and respond to everyone else’s comments. FREE
9. Flipboard. Flipboard collects all of your reading materials and social media interactions and puts them into one beautifully designed page. We’re talking about a single interface , unique to you—your newspapers, magazines, books, favorite websites and your Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds placed into one eye-catching screen. Because it’s already connected to all of your social networks, you can share a newspaper or magazine story right there from within the app. FREE
10. Evernote. We all need to jot down little reminders or sometimes take extensive notes at a meeting or appointment. And often, we use a variety of tools, from Post-its to our smartphones. Evernote is a fantastic app that allows you to write and then access all of your notes in one simple-to-use, easy-to-access location. Write notes on your phone, laptop, desktop or iPad and then find all the notes on any of those devices. FREE
11. Keynote. Ever need to create a polished presentation on the fly? As a professional speaker, I give a lot of presentations around the globe. Keynote is the most powerful presentation app designed for a mobile device. Built from the ground up for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, it makes creating a world-class presentation—complete with animated charts—as simple as touching and tapping. Keynote is powerful but easy to learn. You can create a presentation while traveling or import and work from a PowerPoint piece that needs to be tweaked or updated. This app will make you look like a presentation pro. $9.99
12. Kayak. Every small business needs to save money, and one way is to find the lowest airfares before traveling. Most of us turn to Expedia, Hotwire, Orbits or Travelocity. Kayak is a meta-search website that searches all of these sites at once, delivering the lowest-possible airfare in one simple click. FREE
13. RedLaser. Price-comparison apps are all the rage, and this one is simple. Point your camera phone at a bar code, and RedLaser will find all of the places selling the exact same product. The app displays their prices, allowing you to either negotiate a lower price or buy the item elsewhere. Many people use this app at Best Buy to save hundreds of dollars on electronics. FREE
14. CPI Security Intouch. Do you work at home? Does your small business have a security system? Do you need to monitor your inventory? Although this ties into a CPI security system, these guys have thought it through and taken small business and home security to a new level. Their app allows you to arm and disarm your burglar alarm from your iPhone or iPad; receive email and text notifications when someone enters or leaves the room; control energy sources; monitor who is going in and out of the house; and more. If you set it up with their inTouch Video system, you can see who is going in and out of your home (got teens?), office or warehouse.

What will they think of next?
15. Pandora Radio. Love to listen to music while working? This service creates a free personalized radio station streamed to your iPhone, iPad or PC. Specify your favorite kinds of music and artists, and Pandora will create your very own station that plays only the music you like. FREE
16. World Clockr. Deal with people in multiple time zones? Ever called a client overseas—at, say, 3 a.m. their time—by accident? I have, but not anymore, now that I’m using this app. It can save you a lot of embarrassment and make folks abroad feel you care enough about them to call at the appropriate time. FREE
17. TripIt. I am addicted to this app because I am always traveling. Whenever I book a flight, car rental or hotel, I simply forward that reservation to Plans@TripIt.com. Because the app knows my email address, it automatically puts the data into my TripIt Calendar for one-click access to all of the necessary information for each trip. Here is the amazing part: I got an email about two weeks ago from Tripit saying, “We noticed the price of your Houston-New York trip has come down… and you may be entitled to a refund. Click here to check into a lower fare and obtain a refund.” I did so, and got back $260. What a deal! FREE
18. News apps. The New York Times, CNBC, CNN and National Public Radio all offer amazing details on the current news each day… no, each minute… no, each second. When it happens, your app (and you) will be the first to know. Most are free but the Times is only free for one person per household when you get a paid subscription of their paper version (which my wife got first, so I have to pay $14.99 per month for The New York Times).
19. TrackThis. I like TrackThis, one of many package-tracking apps. Every time your package changes location, the carrier will send you an update. This app supports 13 carriers, including UPS, U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and DHL. 99 cents
20. WordLens. The basic app takes words and shows them backward—kind of goofy, right? But the $9.99 upgrade translates English words into other languages instantly on-screen. It’s a must for any conversation with a foreign client. Go to www.WordLens.com to see a demo.