Women in nineteen eighty one really weren't on Wall Street. I mean, I had Abby Joseph Cohen speak for me. I've had a lot of great women speak for me, but they had a tough time. It was a male dominated industry. However, after my first few years, the industry truly embraced what I was doing because I was educating investors. And at that time, traders were really unheard of. You know, in the early eighties, program trading only came in in nineteen eighty seven. So I was then in a place where I was embraced by experts that were seeing the results of our sense of purpose and education, and really reached out and raised the bar for me. Welcome to Self Equity, the podcast that dives into the inspiring journeys of founders, entrepreneurs, athletes and entertainers. I'm your host, Jolene Tepedino, Authorized officer and team business manager for the Tzelniker Dorfman Car and Heritage Group at UBS. On episode twenty two of Self Equity, we're joined by Kim Geisler, founder, chair and CEO of Moneyshow. Since nineteen eighty one, Kim has built Moneyshow into a leading platform for investor education.
From reading the New York Stock Exchange Bell to being named one of Florida's most influential leaders, her journey is a powerful example of turning vision into impact. Joining me today is co-host is Scott Zarnegar, managing director with the Tzelniker Dorfman Car and Heritage Group. Hi Kam, great to see you today. Well thank you. It's great to be here. And thank you for inviting me. It's our pleasure. Thank you for joining us on our Self Equity podcast. We are so excited to hear your story. You are founder and CEO of Moneyshow, co-founder of Financial Advisor magazine. A veteran of the financial services industry with over forty years of experience, you've built your impressive career on the belief that knowledge is power. Educating millions of investors, traders and financial advisors through your conferences and content. If you can tell our listeners a little bit about the origin story of Money Show, how did you get started back in nineteen eighty one and what is Money Show? Money show is a financial media company. We do about seven hundred hours of content a year. We have right now in a library for master classes, about three hundred and eighty master classes where we have the greatest experts in the world come in and teach our retail investors, traders and financial advisors all about the markets. We will celebrate our forty fifth year next year. I started my company in nineteen eighty one. I obviously was in my early twenties, but I met a man by the name of Louis Rukeyser, who at that time was just getting started with Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser, who was really the first Jim Cramer. And I will share with you that I heard him speak.
I went over to him and said, I'd love to do something, and he and I ended up being great friends. He used to call me his fourth daughter. I did a closing bell for him when he did pass, sadly, of bone cancer, but we kind of started the company together. He was my initial credibility and I was very impressed with his economic knowledge. So that's how I started. So, Kim, you were ahead of your time back then, nineteen eighty one, very male dominated industry. Did you have specific challenges to cracking in the business or in the business world in general at that time. You know, I did obviously, Lou Rukeyser certainly helped me. He was the credibility piece that got me started with many of the experts, because they all wanted to be on Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser. I also became his event producer, so I did my own events and we shared a lot in common. But as a woman, I will share with you. I was asked many times if either I was his secretary, or if I actually was the assistant to one of the speakers when I was having dinner with him. Yes, it was a tough time because women in nineteen eighty one really weren't on Wall Street. I mean, I had Abby Joseph Cohen speak for me. I've had a lot of great women speak for me, but they had a tough time. It was a male dominated industry. However, after my first few years, the industry truly embraced what I was doing because I was educating investors, and at that time, traders were really unheard of. You know, in the early eighties, program trading only came in in nineteen eighty seven. So I was then in a place where I was embraced by experts that were seeing the results of our sense of purpose and education, and really reached out and raised the bar for me. So for that, I was very grateful. A lot of wonderful economists, a lot of great portfolio managers, you know, that were with Warren Buffett or Peter Lynch or with fidelity. Many, many people helped me over the years when they really recognized our sense of purpose. And they do to this day. So, Kim, you allow a lot of other people to tell their story.
That's part of the platform you give people. I've been fortunate enough to be one of them. You were talking about education. Is there a passion behind it. Was there a reason that you got into financial literacy and education way back then? I mean, today everyone's doing it, but back then you were a pioneer. What was the what was the purpose? Basically, I started in the business and I was in the hotel business in Miami. And Terry from McGraw-Hill was at a CEO summit. And Terry said to me, Kim, you know, I'm going to share with you that I've got business week. Our family does. And he said, I think there's a tremendous need that will be coming to educate investors. And that's when I discovered Louis Rukeyser's opportunity. It was a conference I went to in New Orleans. And when I saw that, I was incredibly impressed. But I will also share with you that my father actually went through a very bad bear market in real estate, and he lost everything. It broke his heart. It broke his spirit because he had been an entrepreneur all of his life, and he lost everything because he was highly leveraged. When the FDIC took over all the savings and loans, you know, I was passionate because when you have money and you lose money, why did you lose it? What happened? Did you not recognize that cycle? Did you not see that coming? Did you not understand the policies? Did you not understand the leverage? So that was a part of my passion. But I have remained incredibly passionate and purposeful. Meaning I have never aligned with any financial firm other than allowing them an independence at our shows. So we are an independent forum of experts that basically give incredible advice. And we allow you, as the investor or trader to select who is most important to them as a result. So I feel that independence in advice and counsel for a financial education type of environment is probably the best way to go. Now, obviously, I also will share with you that I feel that people like yourself, people that are financial advisors on the UBS platform or the Morgan Stanley platform or any of the other platforms that we work with, are incredibly lucky to have the kind of research at their fingertips. So you all have a tremendous research and you give great advice to your clients, but it's very important for your clients to also understand the advice you're giving them and where the research is coming from.
So that's what we've always done. We've basically created wonderful advice with great experts, and we allow our attendees to, in essence, select what they're looking for. I think that people make a big mistake when they get emotional about the markets, and that is one thing that is very important that you also talk about, and that is that the pendulum is going to swing. Wall Street will always swing. There will always be that, you know, pessimism and optimism. But if you stay in the center of the rope and you constantly just dollar cost average into the market, you will outperform the market all the time. You don't get in with these swings. You don't get emotional now. Yes. Do you purge certain things and move certain industries and move into a different, possibly sector? Yes. That's not the point. The point is you don't get out. I have several people call me and they say I'm very worried about the market. It's gone down six hundred points. What do I do? And I say stay long. Line we use a lot is stay the course doesn't mean do nothing. Right. But for the sake of of of our listeners, a lot of people are going to look for business advice. This is a company you've run for quite a few years. Can you talk about the business side of it? You know, when I started in eighty one, part of our issue was having enough capital. However, I have always done what we call robbing Peter to pay Paul in the first few years.
And what that did for me was it allowed me to keep more of my company. Because when you leverage yourself in a business and you have to pay debt, it's difficult. And when you take money from private equity, they take a lot of your company and they also want to drive your company. So in the beginning years it was difficult. And of course there was a lot more float back in nineteen eighty one. Today it's very different. So from my perspective, you know, starting a company, you got to have that sweat equity. You have to work hard and you have to go to family and friends. Family and friends will help you get through. I would say the biggest benefit I've ever had in my life, and still have to this day, are mentors and relationships. Relationships are incredibly important in any business that you do, and I would say today it is a much easier thing to do than it has been because of social media, because of the connections that are provided to you through the electronic media. Also, research is a lot easier for you to do, but you have to be very cautious about the research. When I started in the business, I started on a royal typewriter with badges. I used to, uh, literally do so many things, not through a computer. So, you know, when we started, we really started in the direct mail business. We started with one or two conferences. We started with speakers bureaus. But the relationships are really what's important. So I would say that that has been my single most important initiative, as well as the relationships have to be across all sectors in the financial side. So I'm talking about people with the Chicago Merc or the options exchange. When I started in the business, really options trading wasn't there. So actually I helped to kind of create and educate through the Options Industry Council and the Chicago Board Options Exchange. In fact, after this podcast today, I'll be talking to the Chicago Merc as they're changing. So relationships are very important across many, many different types of businesses. I'm very active in what I would call the newsletter business. I'm very active in what I would call the ETF business, a financial advisory business, and it's very important to take all of those opinions and to synthesize that opinion and or what they're doing in order to future your company. You know, right now, I'm in the process of a completely redesigning our company for twenty twenty six. And I would tell you that I used to redesign it about every ten years.
I went from being in the face to face conference business to then being in the, you know, Hotmail, which was webcast business, to then being in the actual virtual business, to then being in a more of a virtual business today. And now I'm getting into what I would call we're one of the largest YouTube channels out there in terms of shorts, and we are going to be getting into major courses across the board and circulating them globally. As a money show brand, my whole life is dedicated to educating the individual investor and trader and financial advisor with the best experts in the world and to basically raise the bar of that education as much as I possibly can. Because in essence, once you do that, I have people that say to me, Kim, because of your conferences, because of the people I've met, you know, I can give money to my grandchildren. My portfolio is valuable because experts like yourself, Scott, and experts like Ed Yardeni, who speaks for me, Charles Payne, who's coming on the show, Maria Bartiromo. When you have the chance to educate yourself with some of the best out there, you will do incredibly well. There's no question about it. You touched on one of the one of the next questions I was going to have, which was twenty twenty Covid.
When I knew you back then, it was a big face to face. You did a lot of seminars, presentations, big gatherings as a business owner. Now, what was the feeling like when you realized, oh, my major pivot coming? How did you navigate that? How were you prepared for lack of a better term? I just was in shock. The first thing I thought about was my team. You know, I always call my show babies. We have little, you know, everybody's here and they have babies, and we raise babies and we do lots of wonderful things as a culture and a team. We've had people twenty five, thirty years. And so I cried because I said, My God, the entire economy globally is shut down. I mean, we're, you know, cash flow stops. We had ten conferences scheduled, schedule. Uh, when you're in the conference business, you're three years to five years out with contracts for hotels, and I just, I, I basically took the president of our company and my son and I said, we've got to figure out our plan. And we were on the phone with obviously the SBA. Um, we were on the phone for hours and we kept getting disconnected.
However, immediately what we did is we went back to the content that we had, and we went back to take the what I would call the virtual platform that was on an application. We reworked it in six weeks, and we made it a web based application for zoom, and in six weeks we launched that event and had twenty one thousand people log on. And Steve Forbes was one of them. Now it was a team approach. Uh, we immediately all, you know, sunk our teeth in and got everything organized. And then we produced twenty three events that year. And so that's how we survive. And obviously, from a cash flow perspective, when you don't have face to face events, you have a much larger margin gross, you know, net margin from your gross revenue. So that kind of saved us. We had about a ninety percent gross margin because there were really no expenses other than what we had already endeavored with our payroll and things like that. So we survived. Well, Wall Street changes. You really have to stay on your game. There's always a new product. Wall Street is the largest exporters of financial products in the world. You know, you're moving from, you know, mutual funds to ETFs, you know, options and futures and crypto and SPACs. And, you know, you're always moving, you're always educating. You're always looking for that next expert. And now, of course, there's a lot of influencers out there I would caution people about influencers. I always look for a track record. So I said, Scott, you're amazing. Uh, because you you want that track record. You want that person that has experience. You want that person that's been through several different downturns, and you want that person that goes out on a limb and takes what I call skin in the game.
If you don't have skin in the game, then you don't have the experience. We start a lot of our presentations, particularly the ones we do with you, similar to what you just said, a lot of changes on Wall Street, but one thing that stays the same is the volatility and the shift and the market cycles. And it does take a lot to get clients to understand that. You just touched on another thing that I was going to ask you about, and you mentioned your son. He said you sat down with your CEO and your son at the time. So you now have a multi-generational business. And for our listeners that are thinking about it or, you know, trying to figure out how to make that work, because I know it's been very successful to you. Can you share a little bit about that? Like what? What made you think about bringing him in? Were you scared at all? And how did you do it in such a way that it works for everybody? You know, I, I would say that as you have touched upon Scott, it's it's not as easy to work with your family, but in some ways it's actually very easy. Meaning they can read your mind. They know what you're going to say. I think the the biggest issue with working with your family on a multi-generational basis is giving them the latitude to take risk. And then I would say the second thing would be to empower them in a way that allows their growth to exceed your own. Is there a moment you could point to where you said, okay, he's got it now, sometime where maybe you didn't see eye to eye and turned out his solution was right. Was there an aha moment? Yes there was. I will tell you that my son, who is probably maybe your son, is a little older than mine, but not by much. He basically said to me after Covid he said, mom, I really respect what you've built, but I'm going to share with you that my generation moves very differently than your generation. And you have people that have been there and they understand systems and processes, but they don't understand how we communicate today. And we are going to have to bring in more of my generation in order to shift this company in a new way. And that was eye opening because I looked around and I loved everybody that was there. And, uh, he was just he was right on. And so I started bringing in a different generation. And that was the millennial and Gen X and the Gen Z, and they think differently. They work differently. Uh, they're much faster in technology. Their communication skills are off the charts. You know, they they they can communicate on multi-levels of communications that at the same time and the way they want to see and experience education is different than the way we want it to.
They want shorts. If they want to dive in later, they will. They want to see it on their phone, their iPad. It's a very interesting, uh, experience. But that's that's how it went down for our family. And now he's really involved in driving, uh, our YouTube channel and many of the other things that we're doing for education. And that's a great answer. and I think it's great that our listeners are going to hear it from you, because I talk to business owners all the time about it. And I experienced something very similar to you, and it was coming out of Covid. For the listeners that don't know, my son has been working on my practice for a while now as well, and it was really coming out of that period where we needed to connect with that next generation. And I think, you know, if I was going to give any advice, it's really in line with you, which is pick their brains about connecting with the next generation, because we I'll call us the long timers, not Alzheimer's, but long timers. We don't always see it that way. And I think having that open mind is is huge. Yeah. So what's next for Kim and what's next for Moneyshow? Well, I would say just to give you a parallel, in twenty thirteen, fourteen and fifteen, I was educating in London and I was educating in China face to face. And so when you do a face to face conference, it's very intense. You know, I had all the obviously major media clients in London that bring and deliver the clients to us. And there's always an aspect for that. There's always an important opportunity for the face to face. But I have had so many people say to me that they trust the forty five year brand and the experts that we bring to the table that they'd like me to license content in Saudi Arabia, in various countries, from the content that we do produce with short versions of books and short versions of video, but then it can go into a more in-depth opportunity and then create less of a big three or four day Experience and more of a one day experience, or half a day experience where people can meet and talk and chat. So that shift around the world is going to start to come into play. The other thing I'm in the works with right now and designing. I designed the very first global conference in two thousand and three and four, and the way I identified it was the fact that I saw that the market capitalization for the US market was declining.
So we created a world show, and we brought every country in from Russia to Japan to China. And we created we had about fourteen thousand people there, and it took me about two years to build that conference and huge floor. I will be doing the same thing for Gen X, Gen Z and college kids. I always have done Money Show Academy, but I will do it in a college town, and I will bring ten thousand people there in the next generation, and I'll bring every exchange, I'll bring acorns, I'll bring all the various major companies to meet these young people that they have been in communication with, so that they understand that communication and how important it is to meet people like you in person, to see your integrity, to feel who you are, to experience that and to engage them in the conversation of financial literacy and more importantly, the importance of retiring wealthy, which you can do if you apply yourself. And it's not that hard. So, Kim, it's part of the education process of investing for clients. What are some of the pieces that investors many times overlook? What more than a company's fundamentals moves the needle? What are the big macro themes? Well, I would say in my in my world it was owning a business. It's, it's it's a great thing to do because it gives you an asset to sell. Right. It also gives you great cash flow. I would say diversification certainly in the markets. I also think taking a look at around where you live in your community and being involved in your community, both in philanthropic endeavors, more importantly, opportunities that may exist. So, for example, I've made a lot of money in real estate, uh, primarily buying great properties at a very young age and holding on to them and, you know, paying for them and so forth. So that was good. But I would say one of the big things that I did early on was to read a lot of economists and to listen to them. And more importantly, you really have to understand policy, uh, what government policies are. So government policies you're seeing right now, stocks running in the area of nuclear and energy and data centers and AI.
Um, so I would say reading a lot about where government is throwing their power, right. Less sadly on green, uh, right now. Um, but I would share with you that I think that's a very important part of understanding what is happening policy wise, because that will drive the next few years of returns. Kim, I really admire your entrepreneurial spirit. Trailblazer in the industry. What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs, uh, business owners, especially women? Uh, you know, what advice would you give for anyone trying to enter the business owner space? Is, I would say sweat equity is important, meaning the harder you work, the luckier you get. I would also say surround yourself with amazing mentors that give you advice. I would also say ask a lot of questions of everyone you meet. It's very important. And I would also say never give up and never give in, because if you really had that desire, you can make it happen. I love that never give up, never give in. Kim, you've touched on my favorite phrase several times now in the podcast Sweat Equity. One question we like to ask everyone on our podcast is what does sweat equity mean to you? I would say sweat equity means to me and this is my personal opinion, making a difference, making sure that whatever you're going to enterprise with makes a difference in somebody's life, whether it is a team member, whether it is your end user, you have to feel like there's a win win on both sides.
So I would say that that is important. I would also say when you love what you do or when you have that sense of purpose, you never really work a day in your life. You you enjoy it. Very important part of that sweat equity or that hard work is that you make sure that in the long run, you look back on your life and you make sure that you have not only made a difference, difference in other people's lives, but you have also taken the time to make a difference in your own life. So that sweat equity actually is the time and the energy that you put into something to make it great and you feel good about it. Well said. I love that Kim. Him. Thank you again for sharing your amazing journey with us. I feel like I could talk to you all day and learn so much more about you. Um, it was truly a pleasure having you on. I look forward to seeing you in December at moneyshow, if not before then. And we wish you all the best and continued success and all that you do. Jolene. Thank you so much. And, Scott, thank you. I really appreciate everything that you do to educate investors and certainly create wealth. This podcast is presented for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as investment advice or the basis for making any investment decisions. It does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any specific product or service. UBS does not provide legal or tax advice, and we would recommend listeners to obtain appropriate, independent professional advice.
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