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Interview: Angel Rich Gives Us Her Best Financial Advice

Financial investor and planner, Angel Rich, is also the owner of The Wealth Factory. They design financial literacy education and technology games. She created an algorithm for the stock market for Goldman Sachs Portfolio Challenge and is the author of the first-ever African American financial experience study. Forbes even named Angel “the next Steve Jobs.” This was all by the time she was thirty. Angel sat down with Glitter to talk about her company, what she does, her time as a global market analyst, her book, and the best money advice we’ve seen so far. Read on to find out more about this entrepreneur that is not only going places but will take us with her.

GLITTER: Can you tell us a little bit about what you do?


ANGEL:
My company is The Wealth Factory. I am the founder and CEO. We design financial literacy education and technology game. Games for people from birth to retirement and twelve interactive games if you will. The first game that we have out on the market is called Credit Soccer. It’s similar to Candy Crush but instead of swiping around candy you swipe around credit types to be able to pay off your debt achieve a high credit score and learn from the multiple-choice questions. It’s been named the best financial literacy product in the country by the White House, the Department of Education, JP Morgan Chase as well as one of the top 10 games in the world for the second year in a row by Google and number one in 14 countries by Apple and top 5 employed.

 

GLITTER: During your time at Prudential Financial as a global market analyst can you tell us how you helped the company save money?


ANGEL:
I’ve helped a few different companies but I guess one of the more famous times was my last year there in which I came up with a better resolution or better strategy if you will for a problem resolution and solving problems in two days as opposed to three days in realizing that customer satisfaction would go up by 70 percent and helped save the company 6 billion dollars and 60 million in bottom line profit.

 

GLITTER: Wonderful. What can you tell us about that experience? I know that you were not really compensated for the work that you did there. Can you just tell us a little bit about that and how you kind of felt as a black woman accomplishing so much for the company but not getting compensated?


ANGEL:
You know, honestly, I don’t really think that denied getting compensated had as much to do with me being a black woman as much as it did with me being a young woman. In part you know definitely black was also thrown in there but they’re there honestly wasn’t many black people at the executive level in that role for me to even be able to compare it to, I think. But having made them so much money and then receiving a 30-thousand-dollar bonus. Yeah, but I would say if I was probably a white woman at that exact age you’re probably yes. That’s true. I hadn’t really thought about it like that though.

 

GLITTER: I worked for Prudential. My first job out of college you know 20 years ago and I was like one of their top claims managers that that was in training and my team was like waiting to have them announce that I was the first and the fastest and it never happened and it was just like a lot of discrimination that happened they had waited for one of the white male trainees to finish which was weeks later in order to announce that they just didn’t want to announce it to the floor that a black woman had kind of finished first. So that’s kind of why I asked you it’s not the same but it was just like yeah it just crossed my mind that that actually had a lot of different incidents like that than looking back on it.


ANGEL:
You know I didn’t even realize how much discrimination I was facing.

 

GLITTER: Yeah actually quite interesting.


ANGEL:
I guess I didn’t quite realize it at the time. There was definitely there was definitely a lot of more blatant moments that happened. I was even called colored once in a meeting. I guess I just was so focused on the mission at hand.

I just really tried not to let it distract me and just try and get the African-American study done but it definitely was the final straw. When I made them six billion and they only gave me thirty thousand on a bonus I came up with the idea for wealthy life and the executives felt like he could make billions of dollars per year. Yet they wanted me to just kind of like what I think they kind of like offer me like a half a million for doing this kind of work for it. That was crazy. And it was actually a black man they said to me that I should sell it to them because they could take it farther than I can. Like you’re crazy.

 

GLITTER: I’m sure many more instances. What can you tell us about your book History of the Black Dollar?


ANGEL:
The History of the Black Dollar is definitely my pride and joy. It goes from slavery to the present day and describes the various economic contributions that blacks have made to the country. Essentially, I wrote it from an unbiased perspective based off of my research that I’ve conducted over the years and my goal is to place everyone on the same page to be able to share a common history in kind of what happened in America as well as in indefinitely what happened in black America. I sort of liken it to everyone understands what happened in the Jewish community as a result of us being required to read The Diary of Anne Frank and there is like one to two museums in every single city throughout America dedicated to the Holocaust. And we all sympathize with the Jewish community and that was a finite period of history whereas we have hundreds of years in pretty much the entire foundation for our country was built off of black history and there is no book that we are required to read from the view of a black person or a slave or black history to every single person across America is required to read in schools. That’s why I wrote the book and my effort is my goal is to get it into the schools across America as well as the libraries and we’re actually actively working on it.

 

GLITTER: You mentioned the credit stacker. What’s your overall goal of the wealth factory?


ANGEL:
To build financial literacy ecosystems across the world and provide equal access to everyone to financial literacy no matter where they are.

 

GLITTER: What do you feel have been some of your greatest achievements thus far?


ANGEL:
No strangely nobody really asks me that. Off the top of my head, I would have to say the White House national STEM tour. I was actually pretty nervous about that one because it’s the White House national STEM tour. They’ve seen everything across the country and for them to come back and tell us like for certain in that we had the best financial literacy product and it almost gets overshadowed because almost in that exact same month we got named the best financial literacy product in the country by the office of Michelle Obama. We were named best literary product twice by the White House. The White House national STEM tour is on the grounds. We actually went out with them in South East wing of the White House. If I had to name another one, it would have to be when I came up with an algorithm for the stock market and one Goldman Sachs portfolio challenge in college and realized that had some financial statistics abilities. Basically, we created the entire future rest of my career.

The third time I would say is when I found out that our game actually improves credit scores. I’m still I’m still in disbelief of that. I’ve had people come up to me to tell me that the app has helped them, and emails as well. When I got that first e-mail with a screenshot of this guy’s credit report and an email where he said that actually playing my game for two weeks had improved his credit score by seventy-five points, I felt like that was miraculous.

GLITTER: We know that many venture capitalists don’t back minority and women-owned companies. How do you think that this can be changed?


ANGEL:
I feel like there is a lot of metrics missing around being able to judge a founder. I think that often times they say that you know we had this whole thing about being a unicorn and being unusual. And yes, you do have to have a lot of different traits. If we were to be able to quantify those various different traits, I believe that there are some at least some basic metrics in different people. I’m not on this you know by shutouts but there are different organizations that have been able to come up with these things. I think you just need to formalize entrepreneurship more and almost like school but not necessarily school is the accelerators are the right path but the accelerators need to be credentialed like schools they need to be accredited. They need to be accredited accelerators. I’m coming up with that right now. I’m going to trademark that.

Once you are an entrepreneur, I’ve been arguing this for years, but this is the first time I’ve heard of that term and so I’ve written papers on it and I think that it’s a government with big knowledge accredited accelerators. Once the entrepreneur becomes a member of an accepted into an accredited accelerator then they are then you know an accredited entrepreneur like you can be an accredited investor. You should be able to be accredited entrepreneur and so that then that puts you in a whole different bucket and separates you from other people and provides you on a path and then you will line the various different accredited investors and what they want to do.

We’re building a website to do this right now called Black Tech matters.org that will be out later this year.

 

GLITTER: What is some advice you have for women on networking and working together?


ANGEL:
Have Confidence and don’t be petty. One of the other things is learning to confidently work together. We’re often told to be the best and the prettiest. So that naturally puts us in competition with everyone, but to be able to learn how to do that gracefully and together you know saying like “Oh you’ve got a cute nose.” “I have a cute face.” “Let’s do this together.” Instead of hating on their nose or their lips, lift each other up, and how we view each other and how we work together. We need to look for opportunities to be able to help each other instead of looking for opportunities to tear each other down and we need to allow each other to be able to live and breathe and confidence.

 

GLITTER: What do you think about being called the next Steve Jobs?


ANGEL:
I actually believe it’s befitting. I’m a pretty humble person. Before they named me the next Steve Jobs, I felt like I was the next Steve Jobs. It was actually ironic and interesting when they named me the next Steve Jobs. I’m a very unbiased person even when it comes to myself. I’m very objective and when I saw the Steve Jobs movie for the first time and I saw it about whenever it came out, I saw it in a movie theater and I watched that movie in awe because I was I had never in my life met anybody or saw anybody that I felt like I could relate to like truly could relate to. And when I saw the Steve Jobs movie I was like “oh my gosh. I’m just like this man. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.” It was amazing to me like I don’t want to be like Steve Jobs, I was actually like Steve Jobs. It was mind-blowing to me and I didn’t have a conversation with Forbes about it. I just woke up one morning and they had named me the next Steve Jobs. It was confirmation. It was wanted and befitting to me all at the same time. It was also humbling and an honor.

 

GLITTER: What’s the best money advice you can give to someone just starting to save?


ANGEL:
Live off of half what you can live off of or as little as you can. One time I had this transition from the New Jersey office to the Connecticut office of Prudential and I was making like eighty thousand a year at that point and I was like twenty-two or around that age. I was saving up for something. I think I was trying to get a new apartment or something like that and I literally made myself live off of McDonald’s for three months. Now, most people would say that’s crazy. Some might say that would be fattening especially somebody that was in the middle of losing 100 pounds but I lived off of water, the dollar salad and dollar yogurt for three months straight. If you are trying to save, anything is possible. You don’t have to sit there and bored out and eat all type of craziness. And that was what I gave myself. I wanted to eat off at three dollars a day. That’s what I did. And I was another dollar with the tax. And so that’s what I did for three months and I was able to save. And the point was I just wanted to be that disciplined living off of as little as possible. And I just had to train myself because people feel like “oh you can’t live off that little,” but I can live off of three dollars a day if need be.

 

GLITTER: What’s a day like for you from morning to night?


ANGEL:
It depends on the day literally every day is different. I heavily rely on my assistant, Bree, who is amazing. Most of the time I’m traveling. I would say 80 percent of the time I’m traveling and I wake up in a different city. When I’m waking up, first of all, I have to figure out what city I’m in by looking at the walls most of the morning then I usually actually order room service because I like to work and check emails while I’m waiting on room service. Then I usually either have meetings or have to go somewhere whether I’m speaking or doing a book signing. If it’s a book signing then I sign books meet and greet people. Then there’s usually some type of after event where business isn’t conducted. It looks like you know people will have to have a happy hour. But you know its business being conducted in networking.

There’s usually maybe two to four more after-party networking events from there where I might not get home to 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning. More and more business and networking are being conducted and then I wake up and do it all over again.

 

GLITTER: How do you stay healthy with such a fast pace?


ANGEL:
I try to eat as healthy as possible. That’s why I do the room service because otherwise if I get up and go, I might not eat at all that day sometimes. So luckily, I’m pretty good at knowing what to eat. I try to take the steps to keep my blood flowing. I try to walk as much as possible when I can. I’ve actually hired a personal trainer recently. I haven’t quite gone to him yet but he has been hired and paid for, but I’m trying to get better.

 

GLITTER: What have been some of your favorite places to travel?


ANGEL:
I really like Florence. Florence is lovely. I love Miami. I have a love like a relationship with LA. I have a love and affection for New Orleans. Also, you can’t go wrong with Toronto, and I’d love to get a house in Beijing.

 

GLITTER: We have this celebrity self-love campaign. We started three years ago and you know hundreds of celebrities and authors and influencers have come on board to do videos on what self-love means to them. We just felt there was you know we’re mainly entertainment publishing. You know we felt there was a huge last three years ago if you know where’s the love online. You know with you know with the bullying. I mean now it’s gotten worse. We tried to do our part in bringing people together to give our readers a sense of self and start looking at themselves and feeling a sense of self-love. What is self-love mean to you if you don’t mind me asking you?


ANGEL:
I would say freedom. I’m definitely a Sagittarius at heart. Self-love means freedom to me. I should have the freedom to be able to do what I want. People need to have self-love for themselves with a work environment. I made a promise to myself that I would only stay for three years at my last job and I literally stayed there three years three months and three days the exact vesting period. That is the best thing, period.

You’ve got to have the freedom to be able to do what you want. What is life without you being able to have freedom of yourself? I don’t understand people have put themselves in situations that they don’t have freedom to do what they really want in life. They’re stuck. I think we would actually have a lot more love and progress in the world if people were free and allowed others to be free and not worry about  other people and what they’re doing.

At the end of the day, be free to live your life and love will come back

 

GLITTER: Finally, what advice do you have for women wanting to follow in your footsteps?


ANGEL:
I would say to dream as big as possible and go after their dreams. Imagination can take you anywhere. Sometimes people limit their dreams when they go off of what skills they have. I encourage women to dream as big as possible and then go chase it.