Investor's Business Daily, June 4th, 2007
Suze Orman felt the heat.
She was a popular waitress at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, Calif., and customers lent her money to start a small restaurant.
When she gave the cash to a broker, he lost it all.
Orman could have given up. Instead, she was determined to find a solution.
The loss got her thinking she could do a better job with people's money.
The broker had put her $50,000 in loans in a risky options scheme, even though he knew she couldn't afford to lose it. It was all the money she had. And it wasn't even hers.
To help pay everyone back, Orman decided to apply for a job as a broker at the same firm that lost her funds -- Merrill Lynch MER.
In the few months she had watched her money evaporate, Orman taught herself about the financial markets. She devoured financial papers and watched Louis Rukeyser's "Wall Street Week."
She started to get it. But by the time she realized her investment was in trouble, it was too late.
It wasn't too late for a new career. Merrill Lynch hired her as a broker in its Oakland, Calif., office. It was 1980. She was 29.
Orman, whose 56th birthday is today, went on to become a top-performing broker and one of the most popular self-help financial advisers in America.
Her six best-selling books include "The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom," "The Courage to Be Rich" and her latest, "Women & Money," now in its fifth printing.
She hosts the Emmy Award-winning "Suze Orman Show" on CNBC, writes financial advice columns and is a high-paid motivational speaker. She's written, co-produced and hosted six PBS specials and hosts a show on QVC television.
"She brings firepower on every front," said her publisher, Julie Grau of Random House's Spiegel & Grau, in an e-mail. "She's beyond tireless."
Once Orman joined the brokerage world, she faced more failure.
One problem came during her Merrill Lynch stint. She gladly sold clients an annuity that was pitched by her firm, pleased that it paid nearly 15% in interest.
When the company that sponsored the annuity went under, she was devastated. Clients lost all they had invested (though they later recovered it when another firm took over the debt).
"I realized my true job needed to be to make people as independent from financial advisers as possible," she told IBD. "What I learned is that if I really wanted to be a great financial adviser, I had to have my own clients' interests in mind more than my own."
That meant she needed to do her homework. She eventually studied to become a certified financial planner to help clients handle a broad spectrum of financial issues.
She saw that many of them didn't have a clue about discount brokerage accounts or low-load mutual funds. Nor did they know where to find the best deals on insurance and mortgages or how to go about tax planning, retirement planning and cutting credit card debt.
Orman began to see her work as a mission: to help people overcome a dysfunctional relationship with money.
Until she landed the Merrill Lynch job, making up to $15,000 a month, Orman didn't have much money. And as she grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Orman's family never had much money either.
One day she saw that money was more important than life itself. That's because her father risked his life for it. She was still in grade school when her father's tiny takeout chicken shack caught fire. He ran back into the burning shack to grab the cash register, suffering third-degree burns in the process.
The reality was that money didn't make her happy. After traveling to India and seeking nonmaterial answers, she grasped that happiness is contingent "on your own inner wealth."
"Self-worth intrigued me," Orman said.
She learned that how people handle their money reflects how they feel about themselves.
She didn't always have self-worth. As a child, Orman suffered from a speech impediment, unable to pronounce the letters r, s and t. "So because I couldn't speak well I couldn't read well either. I never got great grades," she said.
Her parents taught by example to never give up. "No matter what came his way he just kept going," Orman said of her dad. Another store burned down, more bad things happened. "He got up every day and he just did it. So did my mother."
Orman said "passion and drive" are key to her success. "I wasn't born with a talent for stocks and money. But I was born into a family that taught me never to give up."
She certainly doesn't now. For her book promotion tour, Orman told her publicist to schedule her seven days a week. Her average workdays are marathons.
Said Grau: "It's not unusual for me to be exchanging e-mails with her after midnight and then to wake up and find e-mails from her sent at 6 in the morning."
Not many people thought Orman would last at Merrill Lynch. Her bosses told her that 90% of brokers the firm hires buckle under the pressure. She lasted.
But after the annuity debacle, Orman decided to quit. Prudential-Bache Securities snapped her up.
She soon became the top insurance broker at Prudential-Bache nationwide. And in 1987 she started her own advisory firm.
"Her sincerity comes through. Suze is not a Vegas act," Cranford said. "She's always pulling for the average person."
Others aren't so sure she's pulling for them in the right way. Orman has been faulted by some critics for her conservative investment style. For example, she's heavily invested in municipal bonds. And she owns her homes -- in South Florida, New York and San Francisco -- outright, explaining, "If I can't write a check, in my opinion I can't afford it."
Orman doesn't advocate that everyone follow her lead. She often instructs people on how to finance or refinance homes to their advantage.
Literary agent Amanda Urban, who didn't handle how-to books as a rule, once recalled how Orman's enthusiasm changed her mind.
"She had such an authentic voice, and that's because she completely cares about what she is doing," Urban told Publisher's Weekly.
