"The Courage to Be Rich: Creating a Life of Material and Spiritual Abundance" (Riverhead Books, 1999) is the latest bestselling financial advice book from Suze Orman. Her first book, "You've Earned It, Don't Lose It" (Newmarket Press, 1995), is in its 21st printing. Her second book, "The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom" (Crown, 1997), is a New York Times bestseller.
Not bad for a University of Illinois student who worked as a waitress throughout college.
Question: Tell us about your work history before you got into finances.
Answer: In 1974, I got a job as a waitress at this place called the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, where I worked for almost seven years. And I thought that's what I was going to do the rest of my life.
Q: That's the part I want you to get into--how you changed careers.
A: Well, when I first got hired it was this tiny place that sat maybe 30 people, if that. I started coming up with these ideas, and before I knew it, it expanded to 105 people. All of a sudden, I was watching me making $400 a month and the people who owned it expanding. So it started with the thought that I could have my own restaurant.
Q: How did you secure the funding?
A: This guy who I'd been waiting on for years came in and said "What's wrong, Sunshine?" I told him the story. He just gave me this look and went back to his jack cheese and ham omelet that I made him every single morning. He came back with a check with a note that I still have that said, "This is for people like you, to have your dreams come true. To be paid back in 10 years at no interest if you can." He said, "I want you to go down to Merrill Lynch and open up an account."
Q: How'd you do your first time investing?
A: At first we were doing great. [The broker] made $5,000 like in the first month, and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. My whole bedroom started to be pasted up with the Wall Street Journal options pages. I was starting to put it together, and then January of 1980 came and the oil stocks which he had been investing in started to crash.
Q: Were you still waitressing at this point?
