Schelo Doirin is the founder of Black Women Invest, a group aiming to reduce the percentage of Black women without any investments. With a community of over 13,000 women in Washington, D.C., she has assisted Black women in understanding investment strategies and offered tangible support to start and grow successful investment portfolios.
Attendance at their upcoming Vision of Wealth brunch, set for Sept. 16, will earn each attendee 15 stocks, thanks to MooMoo, and extends an invitation to join the newly launched Black Women Invest D.C. chapter.
Doirin shared her thoughts on how the sense of community aids in building an investment portfolio.
How does community play a role in an investment portfolio?
When it comes to investing[,] it takes a village. For example, I remember [being] first exposed to stocks and investing [in the whole concept] when I was around 14 or 15 years old. I didn’t understand it at all. I didn’t know what this woman was talking about when she came to us, but it was a Black woman at my church. She started talking to some of us teens and having these sessions about investing. Her [initial] thing was, “Why don’t you invest in what you know?” So I’m like, “OK, what do I know? What do I use?” One thing that I used consistently was, I used to consistently drink Arizona Tea. I looked it up and found out the company was private. I would say that that was the seed. As time progressed, many years after, I took that first step and started investing for myself.
What are three investment tips to help us along our journey in business?
The first thing I would say is you have to learn. You have to prioritize your knowledge. I’m not talking about just looking up somebody on YouTube to see what stocks they recommend. That’s completely different. because now you want to know, why am I buying these stocks? What’s going to happen to this company? How can I determine which direction this company is going to go in? What about index funds? I hear mutual funds and index funds thrown around all the time. What are these things? The first and foremost thing is to learn how to learn what these concepts are, what they mean, and how you can implement them in your portfolio. The second thing is to work with what you already have. A lot of people don’t realize that you have the opportunity to be an investor right now through your job. … Number three is probably to focus on consistency through automation. A big issue that people have is, you put money in, and you expect popcorn results. That’s not what investing is about. It’s about you being consistent.
