Transcript, E138: Building wealth with Beatriz Acevedo

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For more on this episode of Hello Monday, check out this article on my conversation with Beatriz Acevedo, and leave your thoughts in the comments.

This episode of Hello Monday, "Building wealth with Beatriz Acevedo," first released on November 29, 2021.

Jessi Hempel: From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel, and this is Hello Monday. It's our show about the changing nature of work and how that work is changing us. By the time Beatriz Acevedo was in her early 20's, she'd already made it as a TV host. She had a prime time show on the Mexican television network Televisa. She was killing it. And then one day, it was canceled and she was completely unprepared:

Beatriz Acevedo: I remember so clearly being in the supermarket and seeing this magazine that was the most popular magazine of the moment, and there I am on the cover with, like, Ricky Martin that month. And trying to pay for a small carton of milk with I- my American Express, and it was declined.

Jessi Hempel: Beatriz hadn't planned. She had no savings, she had very little financial education. It was a bad feeling, one that she never really forgot. Beatriz went on to have a successful media career. She founded the tech media company, Mitú. It really put her on the map. Mitú a powerhouse media brand among young Latinas. But then during the pandemic, Beatriz launched a new company. This time, she has a massive social goal in mind. She wants to help the LatinX community build wealth. On today's episode, Beatriz will give us a look into the financial habits of one of the largest communities in the United States. She'll talk about her own money background, what she learned from her family, and she'll explain how her new company, SUMA Wealth, plans to arm the LatinX community with economic power. Here's Beatriz:

Beatriz Acevedo: I think that, uh, you can't really be what you can't see. And our community, as they continue to massively grow, as we know from the recent census numbers, we continue to decline in every, in every other way. Um, so whether you look at boardrooms, whether you look at, um, venture capital, um, anything that, that you look at the numbers, we go backwards as far as representation. Yet our contributions to the economy, our contributions to population growth, to GDP, to the workforce, et cetera, continue to be incredibly massive.

Jessi Hempel:  Let's stop on that and, like, dig into that a second. Because I'm sure that you've said it so much that maybe you aren't even stopping to realize how astounding that sounds to me listening to it, f- for the first time. That the LatinX population in the United States is, um, making progress in so many ways, and yet moving backwards in so many ways.

Beatriz Acevedo: It's incredibly frustrating. It, it's not enough that there's one outlier or two. Um, our community, for some reason, and I don't know why it really is, just continues to be much more erased as the time goes by, no matter how big their contributions to the, n- why is it? I have a couple of theories. One is change is hard, in anything. In venture capital, in Hollywood, to change a system is gonna be hard. And I feel that because Latinos continue to show up, right, when you think about media and the entertainment, for example, we're consuming 50% of the entertainment if you count video games. Um, that's a big number and we are only represented three percent in media. We are only one percent of showrunners. S- so why is it? It's because we continue to show up. We continue to be the ones who buy the most tickets to movies. We continue to consume more OTT programming. We conti-

So the message we send to Hollywood, I think, is we're happy with it. If it's not broken, don't fix it. Um, and we're still gonna show up even if there's this erasure in our community. And that is just something that we have to change ourselves, as a community. I feel that the immigrant mentality of be grateful for what you've gi- been given, which is very much so of an older generation, of our parents and grandparents, is not serving us now, right? The p- keep your head down, be quiet, that we have a saying called callatida tu ves más bonita, when you're quiet you look prettier, this is what we hear from our moms and grandmas when we grow up. Primarily Latinas, they don't say this to the boys.

Um, just is instilled in you, right? Like just be grateful, whatever it is. We are at the bottom of the bottom of the list in the pay gap, Latina women. And people quickly go to their bias and think, oh, it must be because the jobs that Latina do. No, no, this g- cuts across. You could be a doctor that graduated from Harvard or Stanford, and you're still, um, it's a million dollars, the pay gap that Latinas have versus in, e- everybody else, including Latino men. So there's something in the system for sure, and then there's something on us. On us not using our voice to speak more about it, to say "Basta, enough, this is not gonna be okay, at least for the next generations." And that's a lot of the, the work that I- that I do. Uh, not just in SUMA, with my financial wellness company, but in everything that I do.

Just really encouraging my community, particularly the Latina women, to, to speak up and to not be okay with the way the system is not really working for us today.

Jessi Hempel: Well and part of speaking up actually is generating wealth. In our society, in our culture, that is the seat of power. That is the true voice. And so when you're teaching people basic financial education, um, I would go so far as to consider it an activist move. You're giving people the tools they need to have a louder voice in our culture, right?

Beatriz Acevedo: Absolutely. The tools that they absolutely deserve, right? And this is why I am ... I really pivot (laughs), uh, my career. And as I was considering what was next for me after my past tech media venture, um, and obviously tech media continues to be, and just media in general, very important for me, for that perception, as perception is reality. And it not only limits, uh, the perception that others have of us, but in our own communities. It limits the way our own children think how big they can dream. So that continues to be a very important part of my work. But the other one is certainly building our wealth. Because without economic power, we will never have any sort of power, right? If, if we had that economic power, we could be funding our own content, we could be funding our own companies, we could have our own VCs, as other communities do, and we don't.

So this is why I thought, from now t- till the rest of my life, this will be my work. Really teaching our community, what does it mean to build wealth? And even if you don't want it for yourself, you can also do a lot of good if you don't want it for yourself and for the next generation. But there's something in our mindset when we grow up that money is of the devil. They, that's how they, our abuelitas, our grandmas, say es el Diablo, right? Like you- you become a very different person if you have money, and money's not a great thing, and I think we need to change that mindset for the next generation. Because for Latinos to not, uh, know how to build wealth, how to at least save for their retirement, uh, h- is going to affect the entire American economy, right? Why is this?

This is not a Latino problem, this is an American problem. When you look at the census numbers that just were released a few weeks ago and you see that this is the demographic that grew 51% population growth, versus everyone else that was 7.4%, this is a massive number, right? And it's not going to slow down because the average age of a Latino kid is 19 years old, who was born in the United States. The growth is not coming from immigration. So when people listen, that 51%, oh my God, it's all the Mexicans coming across the border, that is not a reality. The growth is from nativity, from US-born American children being born in this country. So that is not slowing down.

This is the demo that is young, that is most enrolled in college, as we just saw a year ago, that is entering the workforce faster than anyone else. And if we are the group that spends the most, which that is good for the American economy, that's why we are driving GDP growth, but saves the least, that's going to be a massive problem, right? We saw it with the pandemic, right? Latinos are the demo that have less than $1,000 collectively, as a family, in savings. So when you think about an emergency, a disaster, like what happened with, with COVID-19, we are not equipped, we are not prepared, right? Latinas are the ones who left the workforce in the biggest numbers because we are caregivers. We had to go back to care of our families, of our aging parents, et cetera.

So this is something that needs to be front and center for everyone who wants to see our country continue to thrive, is to really be mindful of supporting Latinos in their own growth when it comes to wealth building, saving, retirement, investing.

Jessi Hempel:  I'm so glad you're touching on, on so much of this. You talk about the sort of family pass down of this idea that money is, is bad, it's of the devil. And there's another piece to this, too, for the LatinX community in the United States, right? Which is that for many people, for very good reasons, they grow up receiving the message that the financial system is not to be trusted. That in, in other countries, the financial system has deeply let people down and they're carrying that information forward. But can you, can you explain how we build the idea that it is okay to even begin to trust the financial system to work in our favor?

Beatriz Acevedo: You know our parents, or grandparents, or even ourselves, myself included as an immigrant but it counts as the older generations, um, have had a lot of hardship, uh, when it comes to the financial system in our countries of origin. And that has carried on to the younger generations. Still, millennials, Gen Zs that have grown up hearing these stories, uh, from their older family members, continue to have this distress. Not only in traditional financial institutions, but also in the new fintechs. We've done a, a lot of studies at SUMA, my new fintech company, where we wanted to see, does that carry on to the millennials and the Gen Zs? And it does, right? Because they were not the ones who lost the wealth two, three, four generations ago maybe.

But the stories that they hear, of why their parents or grandparents had this hardship of coming to this country, sometimes leaving back their professions as doctors, as attorneys, as engineers, coming to clean homes, coming to drive, trucks, whatever it took to rebuild their family and their wealth, it's very deeply ingrained in them. And what we hear from these young generations in the work that I do now, the top two questions we get are who can I trust? And who do you trust, right? And that is very telling because you think on, on one hand, it's a lot of power that the community trusts you with that answer. But then it's a lot of responsibility. Who are going to be our partners? Who are we really trusting and helping our community build this wealth?

So you're absolutely right, Jessi, this, uh, post traumatic syndrome has carried on from generation to generation in the distrust that our community has, not only in financial institutions, but also of fintech companies. And it's not a question of them not having the resources, we see that it is Latino millennials and Gen Zs investing in crypto than any other cohort, buying more homes. So the money is there in the younger, more college educated generations. But the trust is not there. And that this the biggest thing that I want to build with the community. We first, we did it in a very (laughs) unorthodox way.

Jessi Hempel: It was really clear to me in my conversation with Beatriz that the way that she thinks about money, in fact really, the way that we all think about money, it's as much inherited as it is learned. And so I asked her to reflect on where some of her ideas first came from.

Beatriz Acevedo: My parents were college educated, both of them, but we never talked about money or finance. Uh, the only time I heard my dad talk about money or people who are wealthy, was in a negative way, right? It's like, oh, this new rich person, right? Like, estes nuevo rico, in a very derogative term. Um, so people who were wealthy, um, who had means, were definitely not something my dad aspired to be. Although unfortunately for him, he built a lot of wealth during his lifetime as-as an attorney, he decided to give it all back to charity to feel like he was whole and clean again. Um, so obviously growing up with that mentality, you don't aspire to- to be that. The aspiration for me and for my family was anything you give, somebody needs it more than you, right? So if you have your basic needs covered, you have your food, your shelter, et cetera, anything extra is to be given away to others and to the community.

And that is very much so the mentality of the Latino community. Others before self. It's, it's very communal, in a way. And it's, it's beautiful in some, some level. But it's not when you think about generational wealth. And when you think about the burden that you put on the next generations, right? The expectation that I took care of my parents, so now you will take care of me. You know, I've heard people say, "My child is my 401k." Which I think it's, it's horrible (laughs), right? Because wow, I mean, there will never be an opportunity for our community to really build that generational wealth. So that's sort of the perception. Whoever has the means needs to give it away to others, uh, because that's the way the community works and that's the way we've- we've been educated.

So I never really had anyone in my family talk to me about the future, you know? Are you saving for the future? Are you investing? Are ... I had no idea. And the way I learned to it was in a really hard way.

Jessi Hempel:  We're gonna take a quick break when we come back. We'll hear about the moment that would change the course of Beatriz's career.

(podcast ad break)

And we're back. When Beatriz started making money for herself, really doubling down on accumulating wealth, you know, there was a lot she had to learn. It wasn't like she had been taught a lot of this while she was growing up.

Beatriz Acevedo: I used to be a TV personality in Mexico. I did really well. I had a lot of prime time shows. And one day, all of my shows were canceled, all at the same time. And I had no savings, I had spent every dollar, everything I made, in my incredible lifestyle that I had, including living in a penthouse in Mexico City. And this is in my early 20's.

Jessi Hempel:  That's terrifying, suddenly you have nothing.

Beatriz Acevedo: Nothing. My parents were, like, "Great, now you can move back home, come back to San Diego." I'm like, "No." And I remember so clearly being in the supermarket, and seeing this magazine that was the most popular magazine of the moment, and there I am on the cover with, like, Ricky Martin that month. And trying to pay for a small carton of milk with I- my American Express, and it was declined. And I remember, like, crying my eyes out outside of that supermarket for hours of, like, oh my God, like what am I gonna ... I could not afford milk. Yet you're like, you know, a personality. That never saved. That never planned for what could go wrong one day. I'm like, what could go wrong? Like I just won three Emmys, I have the highest ratings. I'm the it girl. Like I, I will always have this job.

Guess what? One day they divided, no, everything's canceled, thank you. And that was really hard and difficult experience, but that really taught me the hard way. And I want to, you know, as much as I can now, with what I do, be that trusted family member, that trusted [Spanish], that trusted anyone, voice in my community of you could do this in a very different way and you don't have to wait to lose your job or a pandemic or anything that has that hard- hardship to learn that saving and investing and planning for the future is really, really important. And I think our community, still, is not there yet.

Jessi Hempel:  Well so Beatriz, what did you do next? I just imagine that young you, learning this tough lesson at the store, like not able to afford this basic thing, then what?

Beatriz Acevedo: Well listen, I've always been a hustler, right? And I've had the entrepreneurial spirit in me. So I started my own production company. That's the first time I, people were like, "How did you become an entrepreneur?" by necessity. So I remember I, you know, went around town and talked to the record labels in town, where, you know, m- my TV show was entertainment so I knew a, a lot of the heads of the, of the record labels at the time. And I proposed to them that I would be producing these electronic press kits that were very popular in the US, where you would do one interview, and then that would be distributed to all the media. And you know, I started to sign a, a lot of artists that way, and a lot of deals. And that's how I started my production company. And, you know, eventually expanded to the US, and moved here. And started producing a lot of TV shows as well.

Beatriz Acevedo: So it was a scary moment that taught me a lot, but I was able to rebound from it quickly, thank God. But it, it could've gone very, very, very, very bad.

Jessi Hempel: So now, you are in a position where you are probably learning a lot about what people need to be learning. And I'm curious, when people come to SUMA Wealth, it's a, just a host of wonderful tools, lots of opportunities to learn. Wh- what do people need?

Beatriz Acevedo: They need everything. I mean, and we really want to be that brand that meets you at whatever part of your financial journey you are. Um, but sometimes, they need the basics, right? They don't know what a m- what a 401k is, and they're embarrassed to ask. So we want to also be the place where it's okay not to know. Where you see there's thousands of people like you who might not understand and that is okay. We are here for you to explain, for you to have the trust, for you to have community. Which we think it's, it's very powerful. Uh, a lot of people now in Silicon Valley actually say community is the new product, and that's exactly what the philosophy that- that we launch. Not to say we're not launching our own products. We have our MVP out next month.

But still I, I think it's just, the thing that they need te mo- most is the trust. They need to be able to feel safe and comfortable. Trust and fe- feel that they can, uh, ask the questions that they can't ask anyone else, right? And that there is a place that is built by people like them, exactly for them. So from the content, to the tools, to the products, to the recommendations that we make. It's all having that mindset in mind. Because we are all like that. So, um, but yes, I mean, e- everything.

Jessi Hempel: It, y- you know, it, it, it strikes me, um, at, like, I think about the things that I am, like, nervous to ask about. And I think about how intimidated I felt in the beginning, just by the very idea of money. I also, like you, I came from a family where we didn't speak about it. I, you know, I just was one day, like, set loose in the world and expected to understand it, and I didn't. Um, and I had to f- figure out a lot of that, and I was embarrassed to ask. I was intimidated. I think a lot of people are. And so you're looking around, and you're trying to find exactly what you say, like that trusted mentor that you can ask your dumb questions to. But beyond that, there's the massive intimidation that is the financial system, for someone who hasn't grown up to be empowered by it.

Like how do you, how do you begin to help people to feel like investing isn't for, I don't know, like, other people, but for them?

Beatriz Acevedo: That's a great question. And I think that's the most powerful thing you can do for anyone, to really make them feel like they belong, right? And I think that's one of the things that we do best at, at SUMA. We want to make sure that everybody feels that they belong in the money conversation, and they haven't felt like they belong. Forget about it, the money conversation, in their own country for, for so many years, right? Like we said, there's zero representation, or little to none representation, everywhere you like. And if you're a US born Latino kid, um, that does something psychologically to you, right? To never see yourself anywhere. So money is another one of those areas, where, you know, at SUMA, we want to make sure they understand first the contributions that they are making to our country, that are massive. That many of our Latino community don't know.

And then after that to say you belong in this conversation. You, you deserve to build wealth, for you and for your family. And I think the way to do it is really with the younger generations, it's a little bit easier. Because they're so digital native, they're English dominant, they're consuming the content in English. And they are also those influencers and navigators of their families. They've been translating the American ethos literally and figuratively their entire lives, right? So we are hyper focused on that demographic. This is why we are ... And the content that we do, and the tools, and the products we're building, we always say they're in culture, they're not in language.

Yes, we do have them in English and in Spanish. But they are in culture. You know, we never thought that we would have any of our products and content in Spanish. But because they have asked us to do it, for their parents, right? They're like, "Could you do this class again on crypto, but in Spanish so I can enroll my parents, or my grandparents, and they can understand it?" So we think it's interesting that, and we will. We will continue to empower them so they feel less of that pressure, um, to be that navigator in anything that their family does. So yeah. So we're very, very excited about empowering the youth, um, to really make a change for all Latinos.

Jessi Hempel: I love that, at, sort of example of a surprise that you had, which is that you assumed that the courses should be in English, and then you, you heard, actually, could they also be in Spanish? Um, it's, it's like such a huge cohort of our population at this point. I think the tendency is to fall back on thinking about this group of people as, like, one specific group of people, rather than a whole hosts of different types of people within this massive and growing, uh, population within the United States. And I'm wondering what else that you find people to be wrong about a lot, when they think about the LatinX, uh, community in the US.

Beatriz Acevedo: Yeah. I think that even for myself, you know, I was wrong, as well, in my previous venture (laughs). Really, when you think about Latinos, thinking Spanish, thinking immigrant, thinking older, thinking they're watching, you know, TV soap operas in Spanish. Um, and that is certainly a percentage. But it is the minority. That's a big surprise to me, right? Uh, even when we started to produce a lot of digital media content in my previous venture, we would say why, why is the audience so old? You know, why are they if- 50 plus, so old, just like me, right? Um, why, why (laughs)? If everything that we do is, like, learn how to do- make a smokey eye, things that were very youthful, and we're like, "Why are the 60 year olds wanting to do a smokey eye?"

But the reality was that, you know, youth prefers to consume content in English. And, you know, it was a debate, because you think, well, if it's in English, I think the biggest surprise is that people think, if it's in English, I'm already reaching them via general market. And you are reaching them, but you're not touching them. So that was a big surprise. And the way we learn to fully connect and make them feel like they belonged was to do the, anything that we do. Content, products, services, in culture. Which, it is in English, but there's always something visual, there's something written, there's a saying, there's something there that deeply connects you to the way you grew up. To something that you feel very close in your heart. To something you used to hear your abuela say when you were growing up, your grandma.

Um, and that, that is definitely our secret sauce. Knowing really, really well how to build content, and now hopefully products, as we launched our first MVP, in culture, that really, really deeply connects emotionally with our, with our audience. So a surprise to me was also that. I had to pivot to stop producing content in Spanish and produce, learn how, what in culture meant, and start doing that. And then the company become very, very successful because of that.

Jessi Hempel:  Before we ended our conversation, I asked Beatriz what else she wanted us, the Hello Monday listeners, what she wanted us to consider about wealth builders in the LatinX community.

Beatriz Acevedo: Young Latinos are entering the workforce at the fastest rate, you know? As baby boomers retire, uh, it is this young workforce that is entering the workforce in the biggest rates possible. So it is very, very important for all of us to support their success, to support their educational attainments, to support their wealth building journey, as they will be responsible for carrying on their shoulders retirement, um, all these important things for every other American, and not just of Latinos. So, um, it's important that we think that when you want to future-proof a brand, when you want to future-proof a company, this demo is highly highly critical for the success of all Americans, not just for Latinos.

Jessi Hempel:  That was Beatriz Acevedo, the CEO and co-founder of SUMA Wealth. And this episode, it reminded me that it's okay not to have all the answers when it comes to understanding how money works. But it's important to ask the questions. And by the way, no one's smarter than you about this stuff, so don't be intimidated. Be smart. We're all in the same boat. A lot of us learned through trial and error, and this community is here to help and support each other. So what's the best advice you've gotten about planning for the future? What do you wish you'd known earlier? This week on Office Hours, we'll be talking about our own perceptions of wealth and the financial advice we live by. We'll go live from the LinkedIn news page at 3:00pm eastern on Wednesday.

Or if you want to find us in advance, email us and we'll send you the link at HelloMonday@linkedin.com. As always, I'll ask you to please share this episode with a friend, especially this one. It was an important one. You can also help us a lot by rating and reviewing the episode on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your shows we really appreciate the support. Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn. The show was produced by Sarah Storm, with help from Ali McPherson and Taisha Henry. Joe DiGiorgi mixed our show. Florencia Iriondo is head of original audio and video. Dave Pond is our technical director. Michaela Greer, Giana Prudente, and Victoria Taylor make us wealthy in body, mind, and spirit every day. Our music was composed just for us by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Dan Roth is the editor in chief of LinkedIn.

I'm Jessi Hempel. We're back next Monday. Thanks for listening.