PERSONALITY PROFILE
L.TIA BLOUNT
Networking with former clients
TAPYOUR ASSETS Emerging from ‘Prison’ to Becoming an Entrepreneur, Investor, and Savings Passionista
L. Tia Blount is a force to be reckoned with. I met Tia a few weeks ago after I had been eavesdropping on the conversation she was having sitting next to me and she immediately had me in awe. In the course of the 26 years that I have been associated with the Old Town Crier, I have had the opportunity to meet an assortment of fascinating people who have wonderful stories to tell. When I approached Tia about being a candidate for a Personality Profile, little did I know where it would lead. I asked her to send me some more info about herself as resource material but when I got what you are reading in this month’s column I decided no one could tell her story better than she. This was first published in Amazon best seller “Desire, Discipline & Determination: Lessons from Bold Thought Leaders”. Enjoy the read. – Lani Gering, Co-Publisher
“When I grow up, I want to be visible.”
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trange coming from a five-year-old girl. Typically, at that age, thoughts turn to becoming a doctor, lawyer, or even a princess. I was born in the late 70s and raised by a single parent in a lowincome household in southeast Washington, DC. During those days—many fell victim to the crack cocaine epidemic in the District—either becoming users or dealers, an inevitable fate that didn’t appear to be open to revision, and where both sides were met with disastrous ends. My mother worked tirelessly to move us out of “the projects.” Those long work hours often translated into nights, or even weeks, at my grandmother’s house. My beloved grandmother was a mother of 14 children, a devoted missionary, and a pillar in the community. Under her roof, there were always people coming and going. They’d come to experience powerful, soulstirring sermons from the Top: Tia and former classmates small, makeshift church in her headed out to zipline in Costa Rica. basement, and often leave with Bottom: Tia (next to last) with friends bags filled with clothing, toys, at Carnival in Nassau, Bahamas and other supplies received as 4 | February 2020
donations for her nonprofit. With so much movement in and out of my grandmother’s home, I often went unnoticed, and so did my sexual abuse. My environment reflected my mental and emotional outlook—underdeveloped and poverty-stricken. Inside my grandmother’s home, family often slept three or four to a bed, roach infestations were common place, and food was boxed, canned, and scarce. Outside, the spattering of gun shots, the ruckus shouts of drunkards stammering home, and the ballet of police sirens created an obnoxious urban symphony that made it impossible to sleep. Those long nights and silent cries were met with a burning desire for freedom from my environment and from undetected molestation at the hands of an older male relative. With what little resources I had at my disposal, I eventually learned to tap into two of my earliest known ASSets: imagination and writing. Armed with a pen, paper, a vivid imagination and visualization—I would sit up for hours writing and constructing my future. I literally wrote my way out of this mental prison, out of my environment, into college, and into a career in global health communications.
I’d go on to visit nearly 30 countries to experience the very images I had imagined during my childhood “time travels,” a coping mechanism I unwittingly adopted to disassociate or minimize the emotional pain. Early in my career I spent time building clinical trial networks and extending communications capacity across some of the most remote villages in Africa. I worked for two large NGOs whose missions were to accelerate the development of prevention technologies for HIV/AIDS and malaria respectively. My time outside of work was devoted to learning about personal finance, real estate, and investing. Having no formal education except for the in-home stock market courses taught by my dogged Vietnamese investment coach Hai Nguyen, I was determined to save (and eventually invest) every dollar I could. Tapping the ASSets of discipline and determination, I studied and crunched numbers, assembled and disassembled budgets, studied spending patterns, and learned to control unhealthy emotions around spending. Through monthly budget development and weekly tracking, I created a budgeting system that took me from $1 in savings to over $1500 a month.
With the savings created, I began dabbling in the stock market, mostly through trial and error, and investing in several other ASSets including mutual funds and real estate. Taking a slow, steady, and systematic approach, I grew $1 in savings to over a quarter of a million in ASSets in less than 10 years. I knew this was the kind of money and system that could change lives, particularly those who grew up in similar neighborhoods. I shared my system and created hundreds in monthly savings for individuals, couples, families, women’s groups, and churches. I became a savings passionista (one with a passion and skill for savings), an avid investor, and a budget coach. I found an uncanny parallel in my ability to help organizations save time and money extending into the millions, on marketing and business solutions. I believe it was partly my ability to develop strategies, map critical paths, dissect budgets, and evaluate what was critical and what was fluff. After a prosperous nine-year climb up the corporate ladder and establishing a home-based business devoted to budget coaching and debt elimination, PERSONALITY PROFILE > PAGE 5
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