Today we’d like to introduce you to Susan Joyce.
Hi Susan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
As a financial adviser with a Wall Street firm. I noticed that women did not seem as confident in making decisions about their investments as their male counterparts and often would acquiesce to the nearest male—husband, father, son—or me, their financial adviser, for assurance. This seemed strange to me since the women I met with were of high net worth and must have made good decisions on their own in other areas of their lives, so where was this hesitation coming from, I wondered? Once I retired, I formed the Women’s Financial Focus Groups of Minnesota and began to research this aspect about women in earnest. After several years of study and conducting pilot programs I finally had the answer. And it was almost comical. The opposite sex is the opposite sex because it is opposite. Knowing the financial industry as I did, I suddenly understood why women seemed uncomfortable making decisions about their wealth. While I don’t mean to stereotype anyone and with respect to the bell curve and all, I knew I was on to something. Unless someone had a thorough knowledge of how the financial industry markets their products and services, they never would have discovered what I did—no matter how good a researcher they were. The entire financial industry—banking, insurance, investments, tax services, and law—were created by males for the benefit of males. The very environment of any financial institution is counterintuitive to what most females require because it is exactly what most males need. The financial world is counterintuitive to innate female tendencies the same way a mega mall is counterintuitive to innate male tendencies. To put it more aptly, when a woman steps into an office and the door closes, she instinctively reacts physically and mental as though she’s just walked into a dark alley. Whether she is aware of it, or not. Since the financial industry isn’t about to change, women need to. So, I set about developing a method that taps into innate female tendencies that does not require any knowledge about any aspect of finance, yet assures effective and efficient wealth management in all situations and under all circumstances throughout life. My books show women how to manage wealth like a woman and NOT like a man. There are less than 150 pages long. How easier can it get?
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I had all the typical struggles every career parent has, but with regard to career development I feel very fortunate to have had all the right sort of opportunities that caused interesting turns and twists that brought me to where I am today. I realized fairly early in life that all I really wanted to do was write a novel, but life got in the way. The fact I couldn’t make that happen until I retired, was very frustrating, but I wouldn’t say it was a struggle. My life just didn’t allow it until the kids graduated, but then my career was too intense and didn’t allow it. But once I retired and had the time to devote to that dream endeavor, I was elated. For the first four years I happily wrote the novel I always knew was in me to write and when I typed those two little words—THE END—on what I believed to be the next greatest American novel I broke out the champaign! That was a little too presumptuous, however. It took me another six years before I published that novel, talk about struggles–they came bounding. My first struggle was trying to determine exactly what I had written in order to summarize it in a query letter in an attempt to attract an agent and publisher. That was a whole new challenge I never anticipated, but have since learned is what most authors struggle to write. Then, I learned as a new author I needed to provide a novel within a certain word count to even be considered—reasons being every page costs money and there is only so much a publisher is willing to invest in a new author. So, I had to eliminate a third of my story if I wanted to find an agent to represent me. After spending another year reducing the word-count I wound up hating my story. Too much was missing. But then, perhaps it was divine intervention because while I had been struggling to get my story to fit the industry, the publishing industry changed! It became possible for me to hire my own qualified editors and self-publish as a local author which by then had become a niche market for local bookstores. It took yet another couple of years to put my story back together, go through developmental editing and revisions, then grammatical editing and revisions, and finally formatting and revisions, plus getting the cover design and book blurb nailed down. The day for my novel to debut finally arrived. It was March 2020—two days before a worldwide pandemic was declared and the entire world was in lockdown. All my book-signing events were cancelled and it was quite a struggle to launch my first novel—the one I’d waited my whole life to publish. Oh, well, I have two more novels on the burner, so maybe I will have better luck next time.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My career began as a fine artist but when eating regularly became a priority, I took a position as a commercial artist. Now I need to explain to you that my favorite pastime was writing stories ever since I could remember. The reason you need to know this about me is while I didn’t take my love of writing seriously enough to begin my career as a writer, it eventually wound up that way. So, getting back to when I was a commercial artist, I was given an opportunity to start my own advertising arts studio, and did so. To create greater opportunities for the artists I employed, I published a monthly magazine in which we sold advertisements that needed artwork and layout. Since I was an artist and not a writer, but was now the publisher of this magazine, I used freelance writers to write stories about what I chose as the focus of each edition. One month I requested a freelance writer to cover a story on a local foundation. But the writer failed to capture the story I believed was there. So, I wrote it myself. I got a call from someone asking to speak with the author of that piece. I told him I had written it, but that I was no writer. He replied, “Apparently you are.” It was the president of that foundation. He said my feature story captured what their team of writers had been trying to produce for months. Could he hire me to write more? It wasn’t long after that I became a journalist for a daily newspaper and was cranking out more than 30 column inches a day covering local events and writing feature stories. Eventually after several years, the daily deadlines grew old and I took a position as communications director for a national corporation. It was like coming full circle. The position required strong artistic skills and technical writing abilities. Just when I felt I had pinnacled in my career the plot in my career story twisted. This next leg of my career may seem very strange to some, and to make a long story short I will just say it was divine intervention or it never would have happened in a million years had I had any say in the matter—although I tried. After much prayer, I succumbed to the obvious and went to Wall Street to become a financial adviser. I must explain also, that as an artist and writer, I am an extreme introvert. I hate big cities and I love to work alone. Where I was headed was the biggest city where I’d be talking to people daily and giving hundreds of seminars. Not an easy thing for an introvert to face. But I went. Whether it was that I had the eyes and ears of a journalist and the ability to write the truth about what I saw, or the heart of a mother who’d raised three remarkable children by being able to see beyond what they sometimes only wanted me to know and see, or whether it was because it was some sort of test for me is a question only the Lord can answer. All I know is after ten years as a financial adviser licensed in 11 states and meeting thousands of people and witnessing all different attitudes about how they used or misused their wealth I had enough fodder to write until my hearts content. On top of that, my books on wealth management have helped women in ways they have needed for a long, long time, according to what my readers tell me. This made everything I had to go through all worthwhile. My cup runneth over, thanks be to God.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Risk is rather subjective. I have a fear of heights, so risk as far as I am concerned means standing too close to the edge of a cliff. But, I didn’t hesitate to quit a successful career, and leave my home and community, my friends, and family and go to Wall Street when it was the last place I earth I cared to be. If that isn’t risk, I don’t know what is. I had no experience working in finance and the only thing I knew about stocks and bonds at that time was they were in things called mutual funds in my 401(k). But a decade on that roller-coaster provided me the ability to help others and enough fodder to share in lectures and my books for the rest of my life. Taking that risk proved to be worth it. When the potential reward was worth the risk, I took it—even when it is against my own better judgement. And I don’t mean I ever contemplated that it was my career I was willing to risk. The risk I am talking about was a test of my own faith in God. Risk vs. reward. The reward is real. I just pray I never have to sky-jump from a plane or bungy jump.
Pricing:
- Rooked, Wall Street Never Saw It Coming sells on Kindle for $7.99 and Amazon as a hardcopy for $12.00
- Real Women Manage Wealth Financial Security Once and for All and Forever,, sells on Amazon for $17.00
- Personal Finance NOTEBOOK Real Women Manage Wealth Step-by-Step Guide, sells on Amazon for $30
- Personal Finance NOTEBOOK Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Wealth Management, sells on Amazon for $30
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.BooksBySusanJoyce.com
