ep143 – Anna Manukyan

Show Notes

Welcome to another episode of Headcases! Today’s guest is uniquely qualified to help beauty professionals build financial confidence. She’s a certified financial educator, licensed fiduciary, licensed hairdresser, and she has spent more than 20 years leading education, artistic development, and business strategy for some of the world’s top beauty brands. Along the way, she discovered a common problem: talented professionals know how to earn money but have never been taught how to build wealth. Now, as the founder of Beauty Finance Group and Beautiful Wealth, she’s on a mission to help all of us create financial freedom, stability, and lasting legacy. Let’s get into this week’s Headcase with my good friend, Anna Manukyan.

1:52 Building a Legacy in the Beauty Industry

9:56 The Learning to Earning Curve

18:38 Financial Literacy and Business Acumen

24:55 Overcoming Financial Fear and Building Wealth

Chris Baran 0:00
How great would it be to get up close and personal with the beauty industry heroes we love and admire, and to ask them how did you learn to do what you do? I’m Chris Baran, a hairstylist and educator for 40 plus years, and I’m inviting all our heroes to chat and share the secrets of their success. Well, welcome to another episode of Headcases, and I’m really excited about today’s guest because she is a certified financial educator, she is a licensed fiduciary, and also a licensed hairdresser, and she spent over 20 years as a beauty industry executive, where she led education, artistic development, and business strategies for some of the world’s leading beauty brands. And after years of working closely with salon professionals and entrepreneurs, she recognized that there was a reoccurring problem. Many talented professionals knew how to generate income, but had never been taught how to build lasting financial security and wealth. And today, as the founder of Beauty Finance Group and Beautiful Wealth, she’s dedicated to making financial education more accessible, relevant, and empowering for the beauty industry. Like the song says, we work hard for the money, and she’s helped people like you and me better understand how to keep more of it and make it work for us. And I love her mission, which is to help beauty professionals create careers that not only generate income, but build freedom, stability, and legacy. So let’s get into this week’s headcase, my good friend Anna Manukyan. Anna, it is a pleasure to have you on head cases. We’ve had so many times together, and now we can actually have some face-to-face time. So, welcome to Headcases. Great to have you. Thank

Anna Manukyan 2:07
you, thank you, thank you. We’re looking forward to this conversation. It’s been such a nice thing to see you start this podcast years ago, and you know, as you said, we’ve known each other for years, and so excited for today’s conversation.

Chris Baran 2:18
Yeah, and you know, just for everybody, whether you’re watching or listening right now, I mean, you know, it’s always fun to to have a conversation with somebody when you have spent time with them for. I mean, we’ve we’ve we’ve had times where we’ve been educational sessions together. We’ve had times where the whole team was together and and partying in the evening at you know after the sessions, which got a little wild, but that’s for another day, another time. But Anna, we had we were talking the other day, and and and while you I know that you have these multiple areas of expertise that you have. Have you been involved in education? You’re teaching on wealth building. You’re teaching on on on success planning, etc. and and I think the thing that that really got me was when we talked about how about building a legacy, and I found that somehow you know when you think of wealth building and and building a legacy in the same sentence, it’s really interesting how they both can have that kind of similar vibes, where you’ll say you can say, you know, I I want to you know I want to make it happen. I want to you know make my legacy or my wealth happen, or I want to. Some people will say, you know, the like just what happened, or you know, it’s I’m waiting for it to happen, and I find that’s the same when it comes to wealth and to building a legacy. And when we had that conversation, I said, “That’s exactly what I think that our industry needs is to hear about is is building a legacy for yourself. So, can you just top line that for us? What’s involved? What does it mean if you say to somebody that’s especially starting out, you know, wherever they’re at, what would you say to somebody if you had a top line? What is building a legacy? I

Anna Manukyan 4:10
mean, I think ultimately for me is looking at this as a 30-year, 30-plus-year career, and really looking at what are the small, consistent steps because legacies are not built over weeks; they’re not built over months, and I think being intentional with what the end result is of what is it that you want to be known for when you are no longer doing the hair, when you’re longer servicing, when you’re no longer servicing clients, when you reflect back on 20 years or 30 years of a career, what is it that you want to be really proud of, and really planting the seeds along the way of you know consistent behaviors of really having focusing on client connection and being able to take care of yourself financially of creating generational wealth for you know for your family and really being really having your name stand for something because you know so much of our industry whether you’re in an. Commission salon, whether you’re an independent booth renter, whether you’re you know in in a suite, you essentially are always a brand within a brand. And so when you think about you know what is it that your your clients, your business references, your your your city, your your brand that that you’re part of, what is it that you want to be known for consistently that you can actually then build off of as well because you know we talked about this earlier as well as so many people that you know had the opportunity to travel the globe internationally

Chris Baran 5:28
yeah

Anna Manukyan 5:28
you know very few have actually you know think about Bajasasu and think about Sambia yourself in that you know in that in that arena is where people that are you know 18 years old know who those people are and so when we think about true greatness, oftentimes we don’t think about that until it’s too late, and yet everybody can really look at what is it that I need to do from day one, from year one, to plant behaviors to start small those small action steps where your character, your name, your brand actually carries weight.

Chris Baran 5:59
Yeah, and you know it’s funny that because it’s interesting. I think that there’s probably so many people like I use that analogy of, you know, they want to make it happen or they’re waiting for it to happen or just saying what happened. Is you don’t often think about it that way. I know I never did. You know I always said I failed my way to the top, but I think it was maybe it was a little more than that. I you know I just found things that I love doing, and I shifted as I evolved with

Anna Manukyan 6:25
it. Yeah.

Chris Baran 6:25
And and is how much of that is would you say is the evolution of where you move to versus just sitting on waiting for things to happen? Yeah. Or how much of it would you say is actually a is it is it a secession plan?

Anna Manukyan 6:39
There’s you know, there’s a concept of moving strength to strength of depending on the time of your life, depending on the the where you are, what you’re physically capable of, what you’re mentally capable of. You know, this is one of the few industries where the longer you’re in it, the less money we tend to make, unless we’re able to evolve. Yeah. And you know, one of the things that is also always so painful to me is when I see people leave the beauty industry to go into real estate or to get their nursing degree or things like that, where I’m like, this is such a lucrative business if you’re able to do what it is that you are fully capable of. If you have enough guidance to, you know, to take the fear out of some of these decisions, because it’s also a scary thing to evolve. One of my favorite sayings, you know, by Charles Darwin is the species that survives is not the smartest or the strongest; it’s the most adaptable to change. And so, keeping a part of that and keeping consistent with the changes of your physical ability, of what your clientele is doing, of social trends, of you know what the economy is doing, and being able to adjust to them and get ahead of those things will help you so much along the way.

Chris Baran 7:44
You know when you were talking about that, Anna, it sparked something in my brain because you know how it’s always the figures we hear, and and I never know if you know I I’m not the kind of guy that will go in and research when I hear a thing like the mortality rate with the hairdressers are five years, but that’s the figure that I heard, and I don’t mean dying. I just mean the length of time that they, from they start into our career till that some people leave. When you average it all out between that, those of us have been around for I’m going to say five years, for a long time, and for the ones that just come in and leave right away, the average that they said was five years. And I’ve even heard recently that it’s dropped to three.

Anna Manukyan 8:21
Yeah, it’s even shorter than that.

Chris Baran 8:23
So how do how do you and and I think that it’s what would you attribute that to why why is it that in your opinion do you think that that’s people are leaving quicker?

Anna Manukyan 8:35
I think the you know we are so much more used to instant gratification now than we were, you know, than we were when we were starting out. You know, the expectation I remember when I was first entering this industry was I knew I was going to find a reputable salon that really focused on education, and I knew that I needed to assist for two years before I was able to get on the floor to really build my own clientele, so that I can learn all of the ropes of running a successful business behind a chair. You know, properly connecting with clients, learning color, and everything else. And I think while social media and you know online learning and everything else has helped us so much, I think where it’s really created a hindrance is there’s not good things don’t happen overnight, you know. And I think even the expectation of well, I’m just going to go rent my own suite or I’m going to go. You know, be an independent contractor. It’s a hard reality around people are not necessarily knocking down your door, or if they are and they’re having a negative experience because you’re not able to accommodate a you know color to color correction, or you’re not able to have the human connection to do a really thorough consultation with them, or technical skill, soft skill, whatever that might be, rejection like that is really hard. And if you’re not looking at all right, how do I? What muscles do I actually need to build in order to be able to you know run this marathon of a career? It’s super easy to get burned out, and that’s what we see happening so much.

Chris Baran 9:56
Yeah, you know what’s hitting me is is. What you know? I think we’ve. I I like to think. I always try to think in simple terms. Like, you’re. I always call it in our industry. There’s a learning to earning curve, and the more you learn, the more you earn. But it’s. And I think maybe this is a part of it. Is that when I’m going to say my era when we got into it, you knew that it was a long haul, and you knew it was a while to get you there, and and if you and if you kind of graphed it out, and if it looked, if you can imagine your x and your y curves, and the more you learn, the more you earn, and your your earning runs horizontally, your learning runs vertically, and and people will get to a point, and their learning is minimal at the beginning, so their earning stays flat, and then there’s this magic part where when you you all of a sudden it kicks in, and the learning turns to understanding,

Anna Manukyan 10:50
yeah,

Chris Baran 10:51
and that’s when it pushes, and you’ll see that curve go along. It sort of flatlines for a little bit, for maybe six months, a year, whatever you do before you get that understanding, that understanding, and then it goes through the roof. So, you know, that’s I know that’s one of the key areas in when you talk about building a legacy. So, I’d like to jump into that more. And if you had to say, like, if what were the things that if you had to put it simply first, and somebody said it was these 10 things, these four things, these three things. What would you put that down to?

Anna Manukyan 11:26
I think you know, for me, it comes down to four key cornerstones, right? The first one, cost of entry. In order to be successful, is you have to be technically good, you have to be technically sound. So, technical expertise, mastering this craft is you know that’s step one, and there’s so much education, as we both know, that’s incredible to be able to really, really take your craft seriously, learn from the best, both in person, both online. Like there’s an abundance of that education. So first, get good technically. Two is you know we are in the business of people, and so being able to have the soft skills, I call them being able to not only you know communicate with clients but also have the difficult conversations. One of the things that’s so interesting is you know I’m sure you’ve heard this this quote before. It’s 80% of stylists say they always do a consultation. 80% say they always do one. 80% of clients say they’ve never got a professional hair consultation. And so you know, I thought about this for years because I’m like, where is the disconnect? And then a while ago, interestingly enough, I was at a nail salon getting my nails done, and you know, I didn’t think much about it. And so I was like, have I ever gotten a professional nail consultation? And I can honestly say I’ve never gotten a professional nail consultation. And so I started talking to my nail tech about it, and I was also listening to the people, you know, to the people next to me. And the two questions that the nail techs always ask is same color or pick a color and what shape? Pick a color and what shape? And so the nail techs think that they’re doing a professional consultation every single time because it’s what color do you want and you know what shape do you want? How is that different than somebody behind the chair asking a client, “What are we doing anything different today? Are we going lighter or darker? How much do you want me to take off? Yeah, that’s not a consultation. Yet a lot of people like you know. Of course, I asked her what I what she wanted or she or he wanted. And so, you know, the other thing that’s super interesting at this point is we are so attached to our phone with AI. Everything is so incredibly customized for our user experience, so that you you and I can have be in the same room, we can literally be sitting next to each other and have completely two different realities every single time we pick up our phone. And so, people, clients are you getting more and more used to hyper personalization of the experience in the world, especially when it comes to consumerism, especially when it comes to, you know, what am I being served up? So, if you, you know, one of the exercises that I like to challenge people to do in a classroom is pull out your phone, act as a client would, ask ChatGPT. Funny enough, Claude doesn’t actually do this, but ask ChatGPT to give you a professional consultation as if we were a stylist. Chris, you’re going to get the most thorough consultation in your life. It will put any professional that I’ve ever seen mostly to shame, because it’s like your cheekbones are this, the color is this, go a little lighter. No, your ends look a little dry. You need this. I mean, it is like the most thorough consultation in literally three seconds of time. And for me, the challenge is is that’s what your what your clients are looking for. Asking, are we doing the same thing? Is now going to cut it, and the people that are just entering this industry because they’ve never known a time without being able to escape into their phone for answers or for connection, that one-on-one human interaction is going to be exceptional. I actually, you know, you can quote me for saying this, but I really truly believe that human connection and human services will be the luxury in the next five years. Like human first is going to be what you know what is actually considered to be luxury, and then you know with that, then is how are you actually marketing yourself?

Anna Manukyan 14:51
Because the importance of connecting with people, but really branding and marketing your expertise are are right there. The third. Pillar is, or the third cornerstone for me is really the business acumen is understanding how do you read a P and L. If you’re whether you know, regardless of your compensation structure, whether you’re in a commission salon or whether you’re in a booth rent or a suite, how much is your return on the investment of your time per hour? Like, what is your average ticket? What’s your product cost? What is all of your overhead expenses? Are you taking taxes into consideration for that? So when you look at, you know, there’s a saying of like, not everything that glitters is gold. So you know, for if I’m bringing in $1,000 a day, of that $1,000 how much is actually yours to keep?

Chris Baran 15:36
Yeah.

Anna Manukyan 15:37
And a lot of us, you know, we kind of look at the big number and we think, oh, that’s what what I need to get to. That’s what I need to hit. But we’re not actually looking at the true cost of doing business. So that’s key because we’re not doing this as a hobby. We have to do this, you know, consistently for decades to come and live a very healthy life doing it. And then ultimately, it’s also financial acumen because you know the reason I got into into finance, and I know it’s a little bit of a strange intersection, is I’ve been working with salons and stylists and teams and artists, you know, across the United States for the last 20-seven years of my life. And regardless of whether somebody was a global platform artist or an editorial rock star or a multi-location salon owner or an independent contractor, you know, in a small salon in the middle of nowhere, what so many of those people had in common, regardless of the level of success, was nobody knew what to do with the money that they were making, and so you would see people that were, you know, legends in the industry literally like scour away at the end of a 30-year career and and be struggling because no one taught them how to invest because you assume when someone’s doing well like they know it, but the thing is, is that there’s so much shame around not knowing certain things. There’s so much shame around, well, you didn’t do that earlier. You don’t know how compound interest works. You don’t. What do you mean you don’t know how taxes work? So much of us are so scared to ask those questions. And by the way, that’s set up on purpose because when we know better, we do better, and the less interest we pay, the more interest we earn. So, you know, it’s such a system for where there’s such a need for that financial literacy. And again, if you you know are understanding a how to technically be sound, how to make sure that you’re doing killer services. One, two is connect with clients, market yourself. 2b, or three is again the business acumen. Are you understanding what this job is actually earning you versus costing you, and then what are you doing with the money that you are making? If you’ve got those four covered, you’re good.

Chris Baran 17:27
Yeah, you know it’s interesting because you when you mentioned that people in our industry that they get to where mid and whatever, and that they’re they’re visual because we’re you know everybody says we’re visual and we’re highly emotional, highly visual industry, and you know even in the fact I’ll give you a thing and now I’m I’m I don’t know if I’m going to use this anymore because fortunately in our family Rita my wife she’s the numbers person so we have a saying in our household that we say if it’s got a picture visual, you give it to me. It’s got a number, you give it to Rita. And I wonder if that visual side, that emotional side, is where the disconnect happens, where we feel that we’ve got a in our industry. And I realize I’m putting a blanket statement out of there, and maybe that’s not fair. But I just wonder how much of that stigma that got us into it-we got in because we want visual. We got into because we don’t want to spend time on those stupid numbers. You know that we talk ourselves out of it, and then we wait till the end, and then it’s not there.

Anna Manukyan 18:38
Well, I think you know. I think you can still be visual. I think where the where the concern comes in is, you know, how many times have you heard somebody say one of these things? I’m just a hairdresser. I I don’t do numbers. I’m I’m creative. I don’t do I don’t do numbers. Right. I don’t want to do sales because I’m I’m an artist. Right. Those are the things. And I think because so many of us came into this industry because it was a path for survival or a path for you know creative expression, and and you know for me I think I told you the story when we were first when we had this conversation about about being on when I told my dad that I was going to beauty school and I was so excited about it I was so in love and I was so enthusiastic about you know what my future was going to be, his direct words to me was with you know disappointment and disdain, and he said, “We brought you to this country so you can cut hair. How dare you embarrass the family? And you know so many people I think have that similar response or that similar reaction when they tell their parents, or they, and they tell their family, like this is the career choice that I’m making. Of, it’s it’s a bit of a what you can’t do anything else. Why would you like the beauty school dropout concept, right? Of success is often seen as an expect as an as an exception, not an expectation, and so then we’re shamed to feel like. You know we’re less than from the very very beginning, and because we are so creative and because we are so people driven that you know the system of finance, quite honestly, Chris is is not set up for the masses to understand. Right, it’s just not because when you know how again you know you could either be paying the bank compound interest at a very very high rate, or you could be earning it. It is not to the banking benefit for the majority of the United States to know how these things work, and so certain things are put up in in place to be confusing, to be fearful, to be scared. If you look at even something as you know common as credit card debt, and it is there’s so much shame around it, there’s so much disillusion around it that people are like, I don’t even want to deal with it. It benefits the larger systems of finance for people not to want to deal with it. And you know, one of the reasons that I got into finance, you know, after being in the beauty industry for so many years, was I got really tired of a couple of things: of a seeing people that worked incredibly hard, literally taking care of other people for their the majority of their careers, lose everything because there was one bad day where they get into a got into a terrible accident, or they had a health crisis, or they didn’t know this along the way, and you know they’re they could not long either no longer physically do hair, or they got laid off, or their brand contract was up, and they were left with like I don’t know what to do after 20 something years of dedicating their their life to this craft and to their clientele, and then also when you think about you know then I started looking for resources to bring into the lands and the the brands and the teams that I was leading, and every time I went to look to talk to a financial advisor or anybody in that world, even as like a successful executive, so to speak, for my you know, and I say this loosely because you know in quotation marks because even when you look really successful on paper, I would go and talk to those people, and I felt completely handicapped with fear and with shame for the things that I didn’t know. And so much of it was like, you know, like you don’t know this.

Anna Manukyan 21:59
I felt so little because a lot of it just comes off super condescending, and so it’s like, well, if I feel this way, how does again that you know small town independent contractor hairdresser that’s buying her shades of you today for her color for her client tomorrow? How is she ever going to be in a position where she feels confident having these conversations? And so that’s why I got headfirst into finance and got my certifications and got my accreditations, and became you know licensed certified financial educator, licensed fiduciary to really be able to be the translator. Because if you can do a super complicated color correction, if you can hold a client’s hand while they’re transitioning and dealing with a health crisis, you can understand how compound interest works. What we do is oftentimes so much more emotionally complex, is so much more emotionally taxing, and oftentimes, like, is you know, is very is very tricky mentally as well that we discredit ourselves so much by being like, oh, I you know, I can’t do math. It’s like it’s a lot easier than you actually think it is if we can get out of our own head about

Chris Baran 22:58
it. You know, and it’s interesting because I, you might have really you’re you’re really hitting stuff in my brain right now and making things click together. That number one were visual. Number two, I can’t speak for everybody else, but I can tell you that my background came from had nothing. Our family had nothing, and and so we had no business acumen whatsoever, and it was just about getting a job. And I know when my wife and I got married, I’m I’m proud of this now and where I am. But when I know where I came from, you know, my take-home pay was 189 a month. It was a number of years ago. I’ll leave that all alone. But it was still nothing at that time, and I and and when I I moved and my my wife and my daughter at the time, my son wasn’t born yet, but we had making $189 a month, and we were it was literally, you know, hand to mouth on everything we did, and and I know, and I went. What happened then was, I felt that everything that you spent and on was took away from something, might have taken away food from our family, and you develop that that thought process, and now you’re saying, wow, if I ask my client to buy something, I’m actually doing them harm. And for a while, that was when people said, “Well, the way that you make money is by making sure you do your technique, but you also have the opportunity to recommend and to sell. And that sell became a four-letter word, and and and they and you think that you’re doing harm to people when you’re not. It’s actually taking away from what you do. Tell me, tell me how you like. Do you find that that fits in with a lot of people that you talk to when it comes to wealth building? That their mindset needs a shift. The

Anna Manukyan 24:55
mindset is the mindset is the biggest. That’s actually you know in my class. Into my programs, that’s the first thing that I talk about. Is and it’s also the idea of, you know, I’ve asked this question to several 1000 people at this point. If what does wealth mean to you, or what does financial freedom mean to you? And only one time, one time out of probably six or 7000 at this point, did somebody say it’s a garage full of cars. One time, 99.9% of the time, the answers are: I don’t want to worry about losing my job. I want to make sure that I am able to provide for my family if I get hurt. I want to make sure that I am able to retire. I want to feel comfortable. I don’t want to be stressing every time I open up my banking account. Like the question. question raises the you know raises the fact that people actually what it is that truly people want to feel like no I’m good is you know essentially comes down to when you look at Maslow’s pyramid of human of human human needs it’s the baseline level of I want to make sure my food is I’ve got enough to eat my foundation my home is paid for like I’m secure, and then it’s everything else. And when we start to really identify, no one one time has said it’s a you know skyscraper penthouse with a personal helicopter pad. Not one time. Not one time did somebody say it’s a yacht in the middle of the Pacific Ocean next to Jeff Bezos. Like people don’t identify that with something that they’re necessarily wanting as as part of their wealth, that’s like oh, that’s for other people, and so when we look at putting a number on, you work really hard. What you want should actually be yours, but you know if you’re scared of, if you’re terrified of of the deep ocean, and if I offer you a all the expense paid trip to go scuba diving, you’re going to be like no no I’m good. I’m going to keep my my feet on the ground, and so because so many of us are so terrified of this elusive word of money or finance or numbers or math or investments, that’s the equivalent of going scuba diving. If you’re terrified of the devotion, like I don’t even want to play over there. You know, it’s interesting because if you invested $1,000 in, let’s say, I’ll give you, I’ll give you a couple of scenarios. If you had $1,000 back in 2000 back in 2020 21 years ago now, $1,000 If you were to look at like, all right, this company named Apple is, people are lining at the door. There’s lines. People are spending the night to get the newest product, they’re doing all sorts of technology. Apple Music is rocking like, and people are loving this. If you invested $1,000 into Apple 20 years ago, you would have had roughly 150-$6,000 just from that. Just from that. From that $1,000 If you are like, you know what? Listen, there’s Nokia. There’s BlackBerry. Company is going. Come, I don’t trust any of this. I’m going to take that $1,000 and put it into the S&P 500, which is the S&P 500 is basically SNP&P Standard and Poor 500. That’s what it stands for. It’s considered to be the broadest snapshot of the U.S. economy. So it’s all of the like large Fortune 500 companies, and it’s a it’s a combination of those.

Chris Baran 28:03
Yep,

Anna Manukyan 28:03
that same $1,000 would have grown into roughly $7,800 if you did nothing else to it. If you kept that money in the bank, because so many of us, especially you know your story, my story, where we come from a place of scarcity. If you’re like, I don’t know about any of this. I’m going to keep my money in the bank because we are taught to save and were shamed for not saving. That $1,000 would have been only worth about $600,600 today, because inflation goes up three to 5% every single year. Cash in the bank, which is what most people are taught to do, because the banks are actually using your money to do all the things on their end, is a quickest depreciating asset. Another scenario is if you had a credit card and you’re like, “All right, it’s $1,000 I’m just going to keep paying the minimum payment. What’s $1,000 for the credit card? It’s basically nothing, right? You would have paid the bank $6,000

Chris Baran 28:55
by the end of it.

Anna Manukyan 28:56
By the end of it, right in that amount of time. And so when you look at you know people waiting until they have enough to do something with, life only gets more expensive. Life only gets busier. You know, my biggest thing that I that I also want to just encourage people to to think about differently is instead of being a consumer of things, try to think about things as an investor. You know, one of the things that I talk about all the time is, what’s the hairdresser diet, Chris? What would you say the hairdresser diet

Chris Baran 29:26
is? Sorry, say that one again.

Anna Manukyan 29:28
What would you say is the hairdresser diet?

Chris Baran 29:30
A hairdresser diet. I mean, as in food. At

Anna Manukyan 29:34
some point, what do most people? If you ask the hairdresser, like, what’s what’s your like, what’s your daily diet? What would they say?

Chris Baran 29:40
They’d probably say it. It you know, it’s funny. The first thing that you came up and said with I think of the hair the hairdresser diet when you’re in the salon is probably getting a getting a cheeseburger from whatever fast food, stuffing it in your face, trying to get it down in two bites. Two bites. Back to your client.

Anna Manukyan 30:00
So it’s either a cheeseburger that you’re stuffing down in two bites, correct? Or most common is actually coffee, right? So it used to be coffee and so it used to be coffee and cigarettes or Starbucks and cigarettes, coffee and Red Bull and coffee and Celsius, like it’s coffee and something. And and you know same example of if you were to consume because how many people get their Starbucks every day that they’re going to work, and I’m not telling you not to get your Starbucks by any means. But you get your Starbucks, you work four days in the salon, you get a Starbucks every single day that you go to work, and you do this behavior for 20 years, which sounds wild, but it actually happens. And I think we all know that person that walks in with their coffee every single morning, and if you did that for the last 20 years as well, over that period of time, you would have spent roughly 20-$7,000 which to some of you may be like shocking, like oh my goodness, it’s 20-$7,000 To somebody else, it might be like, listen, it’s 20 years. I guess brings me joy every single morning, regardless of what your idea around that 20-$7,000 is. If you looked at the fact around, like, well, I’m addicted to this. I need my coffee every single morning. All of my friends that are, you know, also having coffee as a part of their diet are doing this every morning. Every time I go to Starbucks, there’s a drive-through line and everything else. Let me see if I could actually invest the same amount in Starbucks in that same period of time, in that with taking the exact same amount as you would have consumed that $27,000 if you invested that, you would have had roughly $158,000 worth of Starbucks stock in your portfolio. You would have invested that same $27,000 and the other 100 and something, you know, almost 200,000 realistically by the time you had said and done 130 something, would have been interest growth because the average 12% return year on year. And this is not an endorsement to invest in Starbucks, but it is an endorsement to start looking at the world differently, because so many of us are looked at, are considered, you know, to come to this industry from a place of survival, from a place of scarcity, and we’re not-we’re taught to work hard. We’re taught to say yes to everything. We’re taught to not ask a lot of questions around our finances. Sometimes, right? Because it’s, oh, you know, we can get to that later. We wind up literally consuming and not having anything to show for it. And it’s time to change that. I get very passionate about this because we work too hard not to have an athlete.

Chris Baran 32:25
I bet we have something in common. I have this love-hate relationship. I hate paying for something that I’m not using. I hate working in a small, cramped box. Yet, I love working in a cool salon that impresses my clients, and I love the culture and synergy of a team, while enjoying the freedom of being my own boss. You too. What if all that was available to you at the salon you rent from? Meet Artist on Go, a game-changing way to rent salon space. With Artist on Go, you only pay for the time you’re behind the chair. You can choose a salon that fits your vibe, location, and amenities. With Artist on Go, you’re a part of a stylist community, not hustling alone. Plus, you get to enjoy perks like clean towels and back bar supplies. Check out Artist On go built for stylists serious about their clients and growing their brand without the hassles of managing a space. Here’s the kicker: you can save more than 50% on your rent. To find out more, go to bit.ly/artistongocb. That’s. That’s b i t dot l y slash artist on go c b. You know, it’s really interesting. As I, you know, I I heard you know like years and years back that they people said if you’re going to invest, take a look at the things that you know, love, and are part of, and invest in that. And it, and I, and I, I think how even at those times, like I think was this came in was told to me like probably I don’t know, 40, 4040-five, years ago, and somebody said if you took $5 a day and just put it, and they said now here was a check. They said, they said put $5 away. The way they said it was $5 a day at 10% interest. If you and I think it was if you had that over your lifetime as a hairdresser that you went into it and you had whatever you’re 20 or 30 or 40 years in, you’d have 1.2 mil that you just put that $5 a day by compound interest. The problem was at those times. I don’t think people were talking about investing. They just said they left it at that, and people could have taken it to just put it in a bank. When you just gave that analogy, that it would have been 1.2 million if you would have invested at 10% But there’s no bank. That’s giving you 10% or 12% interest. Oh

Anna Manukyan 35:04
no!

Chris Baran 35:04
So you got to look at. You have to look at other things you can do, like what is there other either a of what can you you strategize so you invest in another business or you start a franchise or you invest in the stock market or whatever that might be that you can take some of that money and make it money, make money for you while you sleep, and yeah, and we’ve been going on this path of scarcity versus abundance. And I remember we hired a business coach, like, and this was probably about 1415, years ago, and he made us do this exercise of they said if you’re in business together you should have the same values, and and our whole company still have the same people involved and we did our values and they he gave us this assignment you’ve got to take and say what are everybody’s values we all put our values together and we it came down to and we have and I’ll just name a few. It was honesty, family, integrity, imagination, etc. And and he had also had talked to us about one time. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the term BHAG. There’s various various forms of what it is. Is that when you’re planning for your future, you should have a BHAG, which stands for your big, hairy, audacious goal. Meaning you make it so big that, I mean, even if you only got 25% of it, that you’d still be there. And yeah, and we talked our beehag that we had. We said he said make your beehag, and he said we want we want to have our we want to have an island in the Pacific all of our own, just a small island where we can go to. And I said, and then I said yeah, and then we can we can go there and plan our business meetings. And my wife said, “Okay, BHAG has to change. If you’re going to do business there, we have to have two islands and a helicopter because you’re doing your business on the other island, and we’re not having any of that on this island. And so we we had a laugh, but we made that BHAG. But the reality was is that when we were doing our values and we read them out, he said to us, “You have this tremendous bhag and this great energy, but you don’t you don’t have abundance as one of your values. And we went, “Abundance is a value, and he said, “Yeah, you can have abundance in money. You can have abundance in love. You can abundance in faith. You can, and so abundance just does mean a lots of something, and you want to have that. It’s a value, and so the first thing we did is we put abundance into our value system as well. But I think it was a great lesson for us, and I’m hoping it’s a great lesson for other people that no matter where you come from, I came from scarcity, and you have to learn that it’s it’s okay to have abundance, and you’re not taking away from other people. There’s enough abundance. There’s enough abundance for everybody. You’re not taking away from somebody else so you can have it. So, give me your kind of take on that, because I think we’re saying stuff that’s very similar here.

Anna Manukyan 38:05
I love the I love the the idea of really and prioritizing and being okay with the fact that abundance is a good thing. You know, recently I was having a conversation with someone, and he said, you know, I don’t think I would want to be that wealthy where I have, you know, where I have a yacht and I have this, and and it was like, well, you get to choose though. Like ultimately, then it’s not if you have an immense amount of wealth, an immense amount of abundance, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you then have to be a supervillain that doesn’t, you know, that hoards all the wealth and never pays it back. Like then you get to have options of what it is that you want to do, and so I think there’s two things that come to it, I think people either reject it because they don’t want to be associated with whatever version of you know of what rich or abundant looks like that they may have in a particular way, right? And I also feel like the the idea that that’s reserved for someone else really has to change. You know, when I look at when I look at you know my parents, my mother, for example, she, you know, we came to this country with like we came as political refugees. We literally had every single thing stripped off of us when we came outside of the clothes in our back. Like even my little kid backpack, where I had my journal and my dolls and everything else that I like packed all of my special belongings. Even that was taken, so we literally came here with like $7 and a dream, right, and and hope rather. And so, you know, for for someone like my mother who came from you know a communist country, who came with barely with literally stripped down of any physical belongings, and who grew up in scarcity, she’s never wanted to. When I talk about things like investing, when I try to do insurance investing, to her it’s still a scam. She’s like, “No, no, that’s that can’t be true. Her version of wealth of what it looks to her is having a closet full of clothes that she feels good about being able to go and put on what it is that she wants. Because to her, it’s like I can touch this, I can feel this, I can. Buy this. That to me is good. I don’t trust anyone else with my money. You know, recently I was having a conversation with somebody else too, and they were saying essentially that exact sentiment of, “I’m so scared of losing my money. I don’t know what this. I I don’t trust these institutions. And so there’s so much around that of of of knowing enough to be able to make decisions, to be able to ask the hard questions, so that you can actually break the generational, you know, trauma or mindset around coming out of out of it in a in a strictly survival mode, and the fact that that you know that that wealth, that abundance, is not reserved for other people. It’s yours with the reach as well, and it’s a matter of having the difficult conversation and the mental shift to be okay with wanting it and calling it in and knowing what to do with it or asking the questions so that you can get people to help you.

Chris Baran 40:55
Yeah, and you know, like I was, I think we know some of the same people, and we were. I was talking to Gordon Miller the other day, and we had great conversations about mentors. And I think mentors are great because they can help you on all of those things, right? From you know your technical side, you get to. They can help you with your human connection. They help you with your business acumen. But the you know, and I. But I think there’s still a difference between having a mentor and having a coach, yeah, you know, and I’m taking it. That’s where you’re helping people with. Is that there’s a difference between I can be a mentor to somebody and they can call me up on occasion and ask me a question, but I, you know, I don’t think we our businesses would have never got to where they are if we wouldn’t have had a coach. And we’ve had we’ve had a coach now for I don’t know 13 or 15 years, and and I always say I pay a lot of money, and I and I’m happy to sign that check every time that I do it because I know I’m getting my money about it out of it, and I and we would have stayed a mom and pop business if we wouldn’t have we we would have never grown if we didn’t have

Anna Manukyan 41:59
a

Chris Baran 42:00
coach, yeah. So you know, like, tell me, give your your vibe on on coaching and how you help to coach people, and what does that do, and what made you start in that side of

Anna Manukyan 42:12
it? Yeah, I mean, for me, I think you know the the the origin of my of my career has been in education and around you know around seeing the that transformation within somebody, and so for me, it’s the information. There’s a there’s a saying that I love: is knowledge is potential power. Because we all know you and I can both have a six pack if we did exactly what we knew we needed to do, right? But it’s knowledge taking that knowledge and actually applying it to what it is that we need to do to get there is is I think where the coaching comes in because you know and one of the things that I always say after any education event after any class is unless you’re taking at least two nuggets from what you learned today and applying them later tonight or applying them to your business tomorrow you might as well have gone and seen a movie, or have gone and seen a museum. You would have felt a sense of inspiration by either one of those things, right? And so, for me, it’s really helping people with the accountability of application, of taking the fear out of action, because you know a lot of times it’s it’s really being able to. The beauty of a coach is for somebody to challenge you, to motivate you, and to push you, and to help you hold yourself accountable, than somebody just providing inspiration or motivation.

Chris Baran 43:30
Yeah, and first of all, I love where this is going. And just to bear a little a story, I’m first of all hi. My name is Chris, and I’m a perfectionist. To which everybody goes, “Hi, Chris. But I have these tendency, these perfectionist tendencies that I’m trying to get through, and I’ve been doing it for years. And sometimes your coach, having a coach, is wonderful because they’ll help you, and you’ll go. That was an amazing session. I know exactly what to do, and then they’ll hold you accountable, and you say that’s great. But the other good part of having a coach is that sometimes it’s not so pleasant, yeah. And they they give you what you can call it, you know, hitting you with the with the the velvet hammer. They can call it a love punch. They can call it whatever it is, but it sometimes, pardon my language, but it’s calling you on your own shit. Yeah, and you again having a coach to get you out of your way, and I and I know I’m still working on it. And just the other day, our coach, you know, really busted my chops, and actually our whole company’s chops, because we have a few of us that are creators, and we’d love to create, and we’ll create by default instead of doing the things that’ll move move the needle forward. Simply because that’s what we know we can do, and we do it well. So we’ll avoid doing the things that we we should be doing.

Anna Manukyan 45:00
Yeah,

Chris Baran 45:00
you know, and and I, if you can speak to that about, is there a way when you’re coaching people that you that tell us your thoughts on those love punches and and how you help people with that? What what does that what does that mean to you? What’s your take?

Anna Manukyan 45:16
I mean, for me, I think it’s you know I often ask I often make the statement of this is a choose your own adventure, you know I can’t want something for yourself. I can’t want something more for you than you want for yourself, and I will help you get there. But that also requires, you know, that also requires being able to have the the the idea of feeling uncomfortable and feeling challenged, and knowing that you’re going to get to where you want to get. It’s not always a linear path. It’s not always a super quick journey, but ultimately, small, consistent steps is what gets you to where you want to go. You know, this it’s a similar idea as if I have a trainer. If I know I’m paying for somebody’s time at six a.m. and I have to get up, even if I go to sleep at you know after a delayed flight and I don’t get home until two a.m. if I know that person’s going to be waiting for me, keeping me accountable. I’m going to get up and go. Whereas, if there’s somebody not waiting, if I haven’t made that commitment to someone else, if I know that no one’s going to call me out on it, guess what? I’m going to hit the snooze button a couple of hours later. And so, it’s also, you know, I like to say that you know we talk about compounding and you know, and money compounds, and all of these things. But I think more importantly, our behaviors compound just as much. And small daily steps to get to your legacy, to get your to your dream, to get to that big plan, is what actually gets you. Very few people win the lottery, or very few people, you know, have instant transformations that are massive and life changing within you know a month period of time. What gets you where you want to go is one difficult small step after another, and before you know it, you’re walking comfortably. And before you know it, when you look back, you’re like, “Holy! I walked a lot farther than I realized I would have. Right, and so it’s um, I think that’s the benefit. Is come on, you can do it. All right, let’s go. And sometimes it’s all right. You know, how’s that journey going for you? Are you are you happy with, with how that decision went? Could you have handled that a little bit differently? And and I think you know the the other fact right now is the importance of discernment, especially when it comes around you know financial behaviors and spending and all of those things, I think you know while that necessarily wasn’t a part of the question, I think we have to be so much more vigilant with ourselves around having discernment because again the world of AI and the world of you know almost I I tend to say that it’s insidious, and I know that sounds very dramatic, but it is very insidious. Of any time you look at your phone, it is so incredibly easy. Everything is so hyper targeted and hyper personalized. It’s one click. It tracks your eye movement. It tracks. I mean, there’s so many things that now like we don’t even know that are happening to us to be able to take that money out of our wallets. That unless we’re almost hyper vigilant with, like, no, I want to keep what I have. I want to invest what I have. I want to have my needs. I want to have my wants, and I don’t want to keep wasting money on the things that are trying to constantly leak leak out of my account. How do I use that money to then fund the life that I really want? The discernment of that is so incredibly important.

Chris Baran 48:23
I know it’s funny. I and when you’re talking about the phone and you’re talking about how it knows how to make you spend your money,

Anna Manukyan 48:31
100%

Chris Baran 48:32
Just the other day, I mean, I was and I love the way, like with Amazon, how it’ll make it’ll says free shipping, but when you order something small, I find that there’s a magic way that they have the numbers, so that when you buy it, it’s always one or two cents short, and so it won’t get free shipping unless you get to this amount. So you buy something else. So I’ll give you a. We we I bought two things that were very minuscule, and it was had to be in my account. I had to get to $25 The two figures added to 20 to to 2498 So I went, honey, what else do we need so I can buy something else? So you know the shipping would have cost me $7.95 to have it shipped. Yeah, but I spent what was it? We said, well, we need this, so I spent another $70

Anna Manukyan 49:21
Hilarious!

Chris Baran 49:22
Another $70 just by the algorithms that they have and what they use to help you spend your money. So to prove your point, if I would have been smart and diligent, I would have said, “I don’t really need this other stuff right now. I’ll pay the $7.90-five cents for the shipping, you know, because it’s still better than me going to the store or whatever, or spend it in gas going down. But I spent another 70 bucks, so it’s it’s just that that beast that we have that we look at, we call a phone. It’s more than a communication device. It’s a it’s a place that will help us to spend money that we don’t

Anna Manukyan 49:56
absolutely instantly instantly. You know, it’s interesting. Because I went to a retail conference a couple two years ago, and it was like the leaders of retail, and so it was you know all of the large giants in the United States, and TikTok shop was actually a part of it, and every single panel, every present, every every single presentation really talked about the future of AI and how you know there’s shows, there’s TV shows, literally crafted now around products. So it’s no longer necessarily product placement in someone’s shower. Like there’s a show around a launch, and you know, and Mattel literally now has a film studio. So I mean, there’s so much that that is changing from that standpoint. But you know, Apple last year, I want to say, patented a AI technology in their in their AirPods, and is AirPods or is it the? I always say it wrong in their in their headphones.

Chris Baran 50:50
Their their AirPods. It

Anna Manukyan 50:51
is AirPods, right? I always get the next step. So it is, and so literally the the future is being able to track your brain activity to how it responds to different things, and if you look at from a user and experience, you know, five years ago it was the joke of, okay, Instagram is always listening. You know, I pick up my phone, we talk about something, then I pick up my phone and like here, you know, my feed is full of that product, right? Of recommendations. Now, what’s interesting, and it’s already starting to happen. Pay attention to especially TikTok, is you’ll be thinking about something and it pops up, and it’s like, how is that actually happening? And it is happening, and so we’re going to be seeing, and that’s not an accident. Like there is technology in place with AI that’s able to track your movements, that’s able to track your facial recognition and how your eyes dilate and everything else, how many point zero seconds you spend on that page, versus it is fascinating, and is that’s why I say it’s so insidious because we have not prepared for that. And when you think about how expensive it is to borrow money now, like credit card interest rates are at the highest that they’ve been in a very long time, consumer debt is at a record high, and when you think about the ease of how instant everything is and how hyper personalized it is. The discrepancy between getting quicker in debt and being able to a get out of it because it is such a quicksand sinking difficult thing to do, and then how easy it is for that money that you work really hard for to be, you know, going into someone else’s account. Like it is such a perfect storm of why, as consumers, as you know, people who work hard for their money, we have to be discerning around what is it that we want to have, how much of what we want, how much of what we make do we actually want to keep, and how do we put to work what it is that we do have? So we’re not constantly on this hamster wheel of of not having enough.

Chris Baran 52:42
Yeah, it’s really interesting conversation, and I’m kind of want to pull this back to the legacy part again because we know those four pillars, which is in essence the tech. Your bottom is that your technical information, and that’s then you’re building human connection. In other words, relationships. How do you build in relationships? And then it’s the combination of your business acumen, so you know what you’re doing, and then building wealth. So, what would you say, like to to a kid starting off that when they’re, you know, my mom always used to say, “I haven’t got a pot to pee in or window to throw it out of, and they haven’t got much money coming in. How how would they start? Like where would they do? What would you advise that person starting out and just started out? And I legacy might not even be anything I think about.

Speaker 1 53:34
But what could I do

Chris Baran 53:35
so I start to do all of those things? What would you tell them?

Anna Manukyan 53:39
I would look at doing two things, I would look at it from literally paycheck. One is I would make a habit of simplest thing. I would make a habit of tracking your expenses, and this sounds tedious and it sounds horrible. It’s not once you get going. So one of the things that I am always a very big proponent of is I work really hard. Listen, we know the schedules that you and I have kept for decades. It is not for the week, right? Like I work too damn hard to not have the things that I want, and so anytime someone’s like, “Oh, you need a diet of financial, of budgeting, and everything else, I’m like, “Oh God, like that’s not that I’m not going to be able to do that for the next five years. Like just I need to figure out my life now. And so, what are the things that I find to be incredibly effective that I know I’ve shared with a lot of people that it just it’s always and I’ll challenge you to do it as well is look at what goes out of your bank account take a take the last month snapshot do yourself a favor and do it in three categories the first one is mark out all of the things that you need right so things that you need so your rent your mortgage payment your gas, your car payment-like literally the things that you need that are your fixed expenses, month after month. A, then you also need to know if you do that. If exactly if everything else fails, that’s exactly how much I need every single month, right? So that’s a good way of like establishing your your baseline life budget. Then two is. Look at all the things that you got that you wanted that were watts. All right, I wanted you know to go to a concert. I wanted that you know cute talk that I got from TikTok shop. I wanted that extra $70 purchase that I you know to get my to get rid of the $7 shipping. I wanted the afternoon Starbucks treat. Anything and don’t be don’t shame yourself. Literally, look at that list and in a different color mark everything that’s a want. Now that that time has passed, so whether it was last week, whether it was last month, now with a different color or a different pen or whatever it is, circle what do you still want?

Chris Baran 55:34
Yeah.

Anna Manukyan 55:35
Like now that a month has passed, do I still love that $70 purchase? Yeah, I do

Chris Baran 55:39
because it’s been

Anna Manukyan 55:39
helpful. All right, great, congratulations, wonderful. Enjoy it. Have the things that you want. What tends to happen is when we start to look at like, oh, that’s actually a waste. Identify the wastes.

Chris Baran 55:51
Yeah.

Anna Manukyan 55:52
Because it’s like, oh, I, you know, I got that top. It’s still in the box. I still haven’t even opened it. That’s a waste. Yeah, I could have. You know, that was a stupid thing. I didn’t need that third Uber Eats of that day because that was a waste. Okay, that’s fine. Don’t shame yourself. But what is fascinating, Chris, is every single time I’ve challenged anybody to do this exercise, there’s at least, at the very least, two or $300 of pure waste. Yeah. At the very least.

Chris Baran 56:17
Yeah.

Anna Manukyan 56:18
I had a conversation. Oh yeah,

Chris Baran 56:19
I was going to say that had to be minimum, minimum

Anna Manukyan 56:21
easy, easy. the The biggest one that I’ve heard was $1,800 of waste on a monthly basis.

Chris Baran 56:28
On a monthly basis.

Anna Manukyan 56:29
On a monthly basis. And so that’s the thing is that when you you know oftentimes because so much of what we do is I mean granted it’s a lot less cash based than it than it used to be, but because we’re so used to amounts of money coming in, and it’s you know everything is so automated. Is get try to get rid of the waste, and if you get into the pattern of waste causes debt, waste causes stress, waste causes chaos and anxiety for me, I want to have the things I need, and I want to have the things that I want. Let me get rid of the waste, and then make sure that you are either a you know saving that money in a high yield savings account, so you do have some sort of an emergency fund, and start to invest as soon as you can. Again, this is not you know I’m not trying to say give you financial advice of of of you know investing in Starbucks, but what are the places where your money can grow? Here’s a hot tip, or a hot tip rather. There’s an app called the Compound, like Compounder. So Compound Compounder, take a look at, and it’s a free app. It’s not sponsored. It’s just, I just think it’s it’s fun math to do. If you are, oh, I did this the other day, Chris. How about this? Let me let me blow your mind for a second. If somebody is starting this industry and they have 30 years left to go, okay, 30 years. If they take two services a week, two services a week that are add-ons, so it’s a you know shades of cue treatment, it’s a it’s a care, it’s a ABC treatment, it’s a you know whatever treatment it is that you’re doing right, glossing or or something that’s an add-on that’s not causing you a lot of time to be able to do. You take two services a week, roughly you know $80 right? Depending on around $40 a service, and you just invest those. You put them in a separate account and you invest those over a 30-year career. Do you know you’ll have $1.7 million

Chris Baran 58:22
Oh,

Anna Manukyan 58:24
most people in the U.S. don’t have $1.7 million let alone people in this industry. And so, small amounts, especially when you have time on your side, even if it’s $20 a week, and that’s why the Compounder app is so fun. Is say, okay, I’ve got $25 a week, and I’m going to do this for the next 30 years. Look at what that’ll grow to. You want to give yourself about a 10% return, you know, and kind of look at because even if like the S and p5 100 typically typically is about 13% safe will give you or 10% will give you a safe coverage, and look at two things. Look at a how much would you actually be investing over that 20-year period of time or that 30-year period of time? But more importantly, how much of that money is actually pure growth for you?

Chris Baran 59:11
Yeah, yeah.

Anna Manukyan 59:12
And this is why, like, time is so important. Time and how long you’re able to give that money to grow is actually more important than how much you have to do it, and I think that’s one of the biggest tricks. Is people, especially those that are just entering this industry, wait until, all right, I’m going to wait until I’m you know making six figures. I’m going to wait until my college loans are paid off. I’m going to wait until you know I you know finish having kids, or I’m going to wait until I’m fully booked. And it’s like that is you know before you know it, it’s been 10 years. Even if you $50 a week is going to make such an impact if you start earlier. So live in your wants and your needs. Get rid of the waste and invest it as early as you can, and you’re going to be golden.

Chris Baran 59:57
Anna, I think those were great. I just first of all, great advice. People, I hope people listen to it because I know when we were at an event recently, and I did a little like two-minute blurb with you, and I and I remember you were talking about compound interest on there, and you talked about how you know all this time you put that in the beginning, especially if you have the time that it makes it has such a profound difference on your security, huge confidence, and what you have for you and your family at the end game, and and I and I remembered saying to you that I I didn’t do that. I told people you need to do that because I I didn’t do it when I was young, and and and so you have to work 10 times as hard later on. Oh,

Anna Manukyan 1:00:38
absolutely.

Chris Baran 1:00:38
So people, if you’re first of all, for your advice on here, and what I have to ask you this is, if people want to know more about you, if they want to know more about how to get a hold of you,

Anna Manukyan 1:00:51
yeah,

Chris Baran 1:00:53
what do they do?

Anna Manukyan 1:00:54
First thing, I mean, first thing for me is always stay a learner. So I have after you know many many years of learning, many courses, many accreditations, many finance books, and everything else. There is a seven steps to financial mastery that’s available for anybody listening. Literally, download that. Go on the beautifulwealthwealth.com, beautifulwealth.com, and start reading and start learning and see what speaks to you and what questions you need to start asking, and just get the baseline information so that you can feel more comfortable with just anything that you want to do moving forward. It’s one of those things that your future self or generations will thank you for knowing these things. That would be step one. Step two is follow me on Instagram. I do lots of free education. I happen to have you know such a privilege, and I always call it such a privilege of working across this industry on really providing education. And if you are ready for like personal one-on-one of personal work, then you can also book a session with me that way. But you know, first and foremost for me, it’s start learning because no one else is going to have your back the way that you have your back. The most important person in the room, Chris, is never the one who has all of the information. It’s the one who knows how to ask questions. And with everything that I do, my goal is to empower our industry to be able to be to know enough to be able to ask those questions, so that ultimately we can get to where it is that we want to go, and we have autonomy in doing so.

Chris Baran 1:02:20
Yeah, and and for people that are listening right now, I mean, we’ll we’ll bring up your your Instagram handle in the video. But for the people listening, what what is your Insta handle?

Anna Manukyan 1:02:31
Oh, A Manukian,

Chris Baran 1:02:33
and and spell the Manukian for me. So

Anna Manukyan 1:02:35
it’s A M A N U K Y A N. So it’s A Manukian is my personal one. I share so much again, so much financial education on there. There is an official Beautiful Wealth one where you know do Finance Friday. I work around you know with a lot of the industry publications and again on providing more in depth financial education. And then the hub for all of it is BeautifulWealth.com.

Chris Baran 1:02:59
Beautifulwealth.com. I love it, Anna. I loved having you on, and this is the part. I mean, I love all the information, and this is the parts with our rapid fire that I love as well. So you ready?

Anna Manukyan 1:03:10
I’m ready.

Chris Baran 1:03:11
Okay, and in what what turns you on the most in in in the creative process?

Anna Manukyan 1:03:21
Seeing the transformation. Oh my God! So there’s a couple of things. There’s the the idea of collaboration. I think you know, having led many many artistic teams, the idea of where you take a concept and you actually have everyone’s input to execute it and to see the reaction from the audience or to see the you know when it shows up on the screen and you know that chill and that sense of we got to create this. That is that’s such a it’s such a special. I wish I could bottle that feeling.

Chris Baran 1:03:48
And when when in that creative process, what do you find stifles it the most for you?

Anna Manukyan 1:03:53
Overthinking it. Oh yeah, sometimes it’s like just do the thing, right? Just just get out of your way. Bloody

Chris Baran 1:03:59
do it. Yeah. Yep. And in life, what do you in life as a whole? What do you love the most?

Anna Manukyan 1:04:06
Life. I think you know the the the experience of of evolution of change. I’m you know in the last two years have gone through a huge personal transition of where my life is and who’s in my daily life, and and I think you know continuing to go from from strength to strength, as as I always say, and continuing to have the different variety of life experiences, and continue to grow and continue to evolve. I’m into

Chris Baran 1:04:38
and what and and in life as a whole, what do you dislike the most?

Anna Manukyan 1:04:44
When people leave your life that you care about, I think I often say I’m very fortunate to still be in the time of my life where new people are coming in. More new people are coming in that I that will be lifelong, you know, active parts of my life. Right. Whether it’s kids, whether it’s friends, whether it’s you know it’s partners, whoever that might be, I have more people coming in than leaving at this point. And you know, as we get older, there’s there’s a time where we say goodbye to more people. And I know one day that’ll come too. And I’m just forever grateful to to my little tribe. And I love my people very hard.

Chris Baran 1:05:19
I love it. They a person that you admire the most.

Anna Manukyan 1:05:26
Person that I admire the most. That’s a good list. My dad.

Chris Baran 1:05:34
Your dad. It’s funny, you know. The people will say they’re their dad or their mom or they’re somebody in their family. That’s really interesting. Is there is there a a prized possession that you that means something to you that you would cherish the most? A

Anna Manukyan 1:05:53
prized possession. If I’m thinking about possession specifically, it’s my bangles. So I get a I get one every year.

Speaker 2 1:06:01
Oh,

Anna Manukyan 1:06:01
and very rarely am I seen without them. And my goal is, and you know, if if I have a few people that are near and dear to me that have, I’ve literally taken them off and and given them a little piece of myself. And my goal when I’m 80 is to have wrists of abundance that as I am just like, here, here, darling, here you go, here’s a little gold on me. So yeah,

Chris Baran 1:06:19
you can use them like the people that make stretchers, and your your arms will be literally. I

Anna Manukyan 1:06:24
think this wrist is legit a little bit thinner than this one. So yes, that would be my my most pressed position.

Chris Baran 1:06:30
A person living or dead that you wish you could meet.

Anna Manukyan 1:06:36
Ooh, I mean honestly, I’ve got to say Barack Obama. I’m so fascinated by and so inspired by that band. I would love to meet Barack Obama.

Chris Baran 1:06:45
Love it. And something that people don’t know about you. Ooh,

Anna Manukyan 1:06:51
something that people don’t know about me is that I actually hate budgeting. I mean, people are always like, “Oh yeah, you’re so good. You’re so good with the budget. I’m like, oh my god, I’m so type B. It’s ridiculous. I just have to, you know, force myself to do it so I can have the life that I really want.

Chris Baran 1:07:07
Love it, love it. A month off. Where would you go and what would you do?

Anna Manukyan 1:07:12
A month off. I would a. I would finish some of the projects on my house. I love my house and I feel very fortunate to to live in it. So I would finish up some of the projects that I have in my house, and I would love to go to. I don’t know. Maybe it’s everyone on my on my I Instagram feed right now feels like they’re in they’re in Lake Como or somewhere in Italy. So I think I’d love to go back to Italy.

Chris Baran 1:07:37
Italy’s one of my favorite places in the world. Something that terrifies you.

Anna Manukyan 1:07:44
Something that terrifies me. This is really bad, but being a burden,

Chris Baran 1:07:49
being in

Anna Manukyan 1:07:50
a place where I can’t, where I’m fully dependent on someone or something is is a terrifying fact to me. I’ve always have had, and maybe it’s the immigrant child in me of like I’ve got to make it. I’ve got to do it. I have to be self-sufficient, and yeah, being fully dependent on some someone is terrifying.

Chris Baran 1:08:08
Okay, here it comes. Favorite curse word.

Anna Manukyan 1:08:11
Ooh, Kimboy, can I say fuck?

Chris Baran 1:08:13
Sure. You can say anything you want.

Anna Manukyan 1:08:14
Steph bum.

Chris Baran 1:08:16
You, you. We were talking about this the other day, and you said that there’s in your family you have a you have a thing that you say I can’t remember what the it was like. There’s three kind of I think it came from a child or something that said something and we’ll we’ll cut that out. That’s one. Yeah, that’s right. Because I can’t remember it. I should have written it down. Favorite comfort food?

Anna Manukyan 1:08:44
Ooh, favorite comfort food. Something soupy. I’m a big fan of a stew. I’m a big fan of a soup. I cook them a lot, and I always love to love my mom’s cooking. So something like warm and gooey and soupy. Mm-hmm.

Chris Baran 1:09:01
Something in the industry that you have not done so far, but you would like to.

Anna Manukyan 1:09:06
Something in this industry that I haven’t done so far.

Chris Baran 1:09:09
Yeah.

Anna Manukyan 1:09:10
Ooh, that’s a good question. Travel internationally. I’ve been had the opportunity, or teach internationally. I’ve had the opportunity to travel internationally a bit, but I haven’t had the opportunity to teach internationally yet, and

Chris Baran 1:09:25
we’re manifesting it right now. So we’re putting that out there. Now in life, now I tell you what I won’t take on this. When I ask you what about if you had one do-over thing you would do differently, I’ve had so many people say, “Well, I wouldn’t be who I am if I if I didn’t do that, so. But I’m not going to take that. So, but if you had one do over in life, and you had the opportunity to do it, what would it be?

Anna Manukyan 1:09:48
I would. I wouldn’t make myself so small to fit other people’s comfort with who I was.

Chris Baran 1:09:56
Interesting. Very interesting. I think a lot of us. Into that

Anna Manukyan 1:10:00
one, yeah.

Chris Baran 1:10:02
Tomorrow, if you couldn’t be in our industry, you couldn’t talk about finance, you couldn’t do anything on wealth building or anything like that. What would you do?

Anna Manukyan 1:10:14
I would. I think I would continue to go back on the creative side of things. I think that there’s so much beauty in in what we do technically and creatively, and you know, from a from from a technical standpoint, I would go back to that.

Chris Baran 1:10:30
Cool. Yeah. All right. So, just to wrap this up, if you had one wish for our industry, because you’ve been in our industry for a long time, what would that? If you had one wish for the industry, what would

Anna Manukyan 1:10:42
it be? For success to be the expectation and not the exception.

Chris Baran 1:10:49
Oh wow, that’s that’s a good one. That is a really good one, Anna. I I want to thank you so much for your time and your generosity of giving up that time to pass on information, we’ve been friends and partners in crime for education for years, and I just wanted to say it was great to have you on here, and I can’t thank you enough.

Anna Manukyan 1:11:10
Thank you so much, Chris. I’ve so enjoyed your your your time and everything that you’ve done, and I’ve learned so many things from you over the over the decades of knowing you, and so forever grateful, and thank you so much for having me on.

Chris Baran 1:11:22
Thank you. It was absolutely a pleasure, and we will get together one more time. And one time we’ll talk about maybe even on this, we’ll have you back again, and we’ll talk about the the drink fest that our the whole team did at that Mexican restaurant. So that was a very interesting bit, but Anna, one more time, thank you so much. It was absolutely a pleasure.

Anna Manukyan 1:11:44
My pleasure is all mine. Thank you so much.

Chris Baran 1:11:47
Cheers.

Anna Manukyan 1:11:47
Cheers.

Chris Baran 1:11:48
Thanks again for watching this episode, and if you liked what you heard, remember to smash that like or follow button, depending on your preferred platform, and make sure to share it with anyone you know that might be a fellow headcase. Headcases is produced by Cut Action Media with Marjorie Phillips doing the planning parts, Lee Baran on the video bits, and Adrian Taverner mixing the audio jazz.