Podcast Episode - Suze School: Lessons From My Father

For this Father’s Day 2025 Suze School, we get a Suze Story.  Suze recalls more valuable lessons she learned from her dad and how they directly influenced her life’s decisions. 

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Podcast Transcript:

Suze: June 15, 2025. Welcome everybody to the Women and Money Podcast as well as everybody smart enough to listen. Suze O here, and today is Suze School. But because today is a special day, we're going to do a Suze Story.

Now, why is today a special day? Well, truthfully, for two reasons. Number one, it is Father's Day, and for all of you fathers that are smart enough to listen to the Women and Money Podcast, we wish you a very, very happy Father's Day. And even if you aren't listening and your spouses are listening, you can tell them, everybody, that Suze and KT wished them a happy Father's Day.

Today is also special, by the way, because it is KT's mother's 97th birthday if she had been alive. She died 15 years ago, and I have to tell you, we called her Mamma T—Anne Travis. And out of all the mothers—my mother, my aunt, all the mothers really I've ever met in my lifetime—Mamma T was maybe one of the greatest, greatest of them all.

She had six children. She raised them with hardly any money at all. KT's father would bring in money, she would take care of it. And when she died, we found her ledger. She kept track of every penny, and there were so many times that her balance, it was down to literally $50, and that's all she had. But somehow she made it work, and she really did raise six extraordinary kids that all loved her so much, I can't tell you. But obviously I got to know her for a number of years. She died in 2010, and remember, I met KT in 2001.

So for all those nine years, I got to become close with Mamma T. And she would always say to me when we were alone, she would say, "Suze, does Kath drive you crazy?" And I'd say, "Sometimes, Mamma T, but it's worth it." She goes, "I just don't know how you do it. You must have the patience of a saint."

And the reason she would say that is that KT is a little bit of a control freak in case you don't know. And whenever we would go to visit her mom, or KT would go on her own to visit her mom, KT would always rearrange all of Mamma T's drawers and all these things, and Mamma T would just sit there and go, "Kath, I like how everything is." But KT did it anyway.

But we miss you, Mamma T, so much. Happy, happy birthday, and just know we celebrate you every day, not just on your birthday. All right.

As I said earlier, today is Father's Day, and it did dawn on me that so many of you write me and you tell me how much you love when I talk about my mom, and you love that. And of course you do, because most of you listening are women. Most of you listening are probably mothers, and there's nothing more than a mother loves than hearing stories about a daughter who loves her mother, in the hopes that their daughters or sons love them as much as well.

But what's interesting is I think about all the podcasts we've ever done, and KT and I really, really don't talk much about our fathers. Now what's interesting is that my father happened to die on Father's Day all the way back when I was like 31 years of age and he was 71. So Father's Day always is a very interesting day for me because it is a celebration of him and also a remembrance of his death.

But when I think about my father, what I want all of you to know is that from the bottom of my heart, I really, really believe—and I know without a shadow of a doubt—that I am who I am today because of the lessons he taught me when he didn't even know he was teaching them to me.

One of the lessons he taught me was you didn't have to have a lot of money to be interested in learning about stocks. He subscribed to something back then called Value Line. Remember there weren't computers or anything, and the only way that you could get information about stocks in depth then was through certain services, and there was a service called Value Line that put out, I think it was weekly, this yellow kind of little tiny pamphlet about all the stocks that they were covering that week.

And you would take that and put it in a binder, and his binder was really about 12 inches thick, and they renewed it every single year. But he would go through those yellow pages—it was yellow—and he would go through them and he would study them and he would take notes. And I would watch and I would say, "What are you doing, Daddy?" And he said, "I'm learning about stock, Suze." And I said, "What are stocks?" and he said, "Well, stocks are something that you need to know about one day." And that would be his answer.

Shortly after that, he started something with a group of his friends called the Mint Club. And the Mint Club would meet once a month, and they would each put in about $15 or $20 a month and they would gather that and they would invest it in stocks. And every month one of the members of the Mint Club would have to host all the other members, and I used to love when my dad and mom had to host. And by the way, my mom was involved with it too. All the wives came to learn, which I loved as well, 'cause it wasn't just for men.

I used to love when it was at our house, and they would all crowd into this little living room and they would all discuss which stocks they should buy that month. As time went on, the neighborhood changed. We lived on the south side of Chicago, and the Mint Club members—the majority of them—all moved to the north side. So the Mint Club dispersed, but my dad never stopped. He kept putting little by little into the stock market of stocks that he was getting through Value Line.

And I just have this image of him sitting at the table with his Value Line brochures around him or pamphlets or whatever you call them, reading the newspaper, looking at the current stock quotes. What was fascinating about that is that when he did die in 1981, he had amassed $700,000 worth of stocks that he did leave my mom. So that was fabulous. But the lesson I learned there is that you have to have knowledge even if you don't have money. You have to think things are for you even when you can't afford them.

So it was interesting because if I think about my own trajectory and how I started at this—remember, everybody at the Buttercup Bakery gave me $50,000 to open up my own restaurant. I gave it to a broker at Merrill Lynch to hold it for me, and within three months, all of it was lost. But even though it wasn't my money, the lesson my father taught me by watching him was, "Suze, you better learn what that broker is doing with your money."

And that's when I became like my father, and I started to read Barron's and I watched Wall Street Week every Friday night with Louis Rukeyser. And every day I would look at the Wall Street Journal, and my whole bedroom was plastered—seriously—with newspapers with the stock quotes, option quotes, and I had learned more in those one or two months than I think my financial adviser knew when it came to investing in options.

Because the reason all $50,000 was lost was because Randy Koch—which was what his name was and probably still is—was investing in the options market. I didn't know what that was at the time. He made it look like I was a very sophisticated investor, which I obviously was not. I was a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery, and buying options is the most speculative thing you can do. Ninety percent of people lose their money.

And I seriously started to like... I didn't like that I lost the $50,000, but I liked learning, and I got that I could understand it. And it was with that knowledge—understanding that this could be for me—I went and interviewed with Merrill Lynch. They hired me obviously to fill their women's quota.

But that was the start of Suze Orman, and that start started way back when with me watching my father learn about things that at the time he could not afford. So I found that very fascinating. Next thing I learned from my father was that money was more important than life itself.

You all know the story about my dad had this little tiny place called Chicken A Go Go that was on the corner under these railroad tracks. It was like 400 square feet. And you could get fried chicken, you could get ribs, you could get all these things there. And my mom and I drove up to pick him up one day, and we saw him standing outside and the entire place was aflame. It was burning, and all of a sudden my father runs back into the building to get the cash register, 'cause every single penny we had to our name was in that cash register.

And back in those days the cash registers were metal. And he picked up that register, went outside. It was scalding hot, dropped it on the ground, and with that all the skin on his arms and his chest came with it. So he had third-degree burns to try to save the money. And from that he got emphysema.

But what was interesting is after that little store burned down and he had recovered, he really didn't have any money to start a new place. But because of the relations that he made with his vendors—David Berg, the bread people, everybody—they all gathered together, and they gave him the money to open up a new little store, and this time he called it Maury's Deli on 55th Street in Hyde Park.

Now the lesson that I learned there was that if you're good to the people that you do business with, you treat them with respect, you're kind, you somehow develop a relationship with them—because you're all just trying to make a living—those are people that one day might just come back and save you, like they did with my father and therefore our family.

So from there I learned that no matter who you were, what your position was in life, treat everybody with respect. Treat everybody as if they were you. And on some level treat everybody and see them really as if they were God's creation, which in fact they are.

So that was a very important lesson for me because it really came to play throughout my whole life. And everybody I have ever worked with—my producers, my everybody—because we were never a hierarchy with anything I created, we were all equals. And we all loved one another, and we were all there for one another. And therefore the end product that we created was created out of love and respect for each other, which you could feel as you listened or watched the Suze Orman Show or read my books. You could feel it.

From there I learned another lesson, which was—as I just said—he contracted emphysema from that fire. And I would hear my father every single night cough and cough and cough, and he had all these machines next to his bed. You'd hear the machines giving him all that medicine that he would inhale. But every single morning, absolutely no matter how sick he was that night, he would get up and go to work because he had responsibility in his mind to support his family. My mother also went to work every day, but she would just look at me and she would say, "I don't know how he does it."

And that's where the saying: "An Orman never gives up" came from. And this didn't just go on for a week or two or three—it went on for the rest of his life until literally he could no longer even get out of bed.

So from that I learned, there isn't an excuse big enough to keep you from doing that which you are meant to do. And so many times, all of us—including me when I was younger—"Ah, I'll do it tomorrow. It's OK. I don't feel like it." That's not how I operate my life because of what I saw my father do. I always do what I need to do in the moment I need to do it. I don't put it off. I really don't wait till the last minute. I cannot do anything else if I know I have not completed the task at hand.

And truthfully, where this lesson really came to play was after the operation that I had back in 2020, when for three years everybody, at night my nerves would fire. I don't think I slept for three years. And I would still get up, and KT would help me get dressed, and I would go to the computer and turn on the videos because those were the years when the pandemic was happening and people wanted to hear from me. And I was on all these shows, and nobody had a clue that it took me an hour and a half to put my jacket on and KT another hour to put my makeup on so that I could do my job.

But I don't think I could have done that if I didn't have the memory of my father doing what he did. So again, Dad, if you're listening up there, I just want you to know you so taught me that.

As time went on, my father could no longer go to work. And he was in the hospital almost all the time. And so that meant that I had to do it. My brothers had to do it. And it was—we had to show up.

So all of those lessons—and I could go on and on and on—but I think you're getting the idea of the role that my father, my father served in making me the Suze Orman that I am today.

Again, I wish you all a very happy Father's Day if you're a father out there. And even if you're not a father out there, wherever you happen to be—whether it's on this earth or up in heaven or wherever—just know all of you, in your own way, have served a role in making us all who we really are to this day.

And before we go, Ms. Travis has just joined me in the studio because both of us do want to wish one incredible father a Happy Father's Day. KT, take it away.

KT: Colo, Happy Father's Day, Poppy. Everyone loves you, especially your three beautiful, beautiful children. And your two furry babies, Toby and beautiful Mia. Happy Father's Day, Colo. We love you so very, very much, my dear.

Suze: All right, that's everything. So until next Thursday when Miss Travis joins us again—are you going to join me, Miss KT?

KT: Suze, they can't live without me, nor can you.

Suze: That's true. I cannot, right? There's only one thing we want you to remember. You tell them what it is, KT.

KT: People first...

Suze: Then money...

KT: Then things.

Suze: Now you stay safe. Bye bye.

The next lesson I learned was that at my dad's deli, Maury's Deli, he always had a line out the door. And it was the favorite place for everybody to come and eat. It was so much fun, really, and it wasn't a place that you could sit down and eat. You could just pick it up—it was a takeaway. And come 12 o'clock, you'd have to get ready 'cause I worked there, and the lines—literally hundreds of people—would come to buy his sandwiches.

One day during the summer, I remember my friends and I went to downtown Chicago, and they all wanted to go to a deli to eat lunch. So we did. And what was fascinating—and we all shared everything 'cause we couldn't really afford a big sandwich on our own—is that the sandwiches at this deli in downtown Chicago were twice as expensive as my dad's and it had half the amount of corned beef on it that my dad's sandwiches had.

So I came home and I said, "Dad, I know how we can make more money." And he said, "And how is that, Suze?" And I said, "Well, it's very simple. Just raise your prices, double them, and cut the amount of meat on your sandwiches by five percent, and profit margin will absolutely go up."

And he said, "Suze, did it ever dawn on you that I'd rather have 50% of something than 100% of nothing?" And I just looked at him. And with that he just walked away.

Now how did that come to play in my life? As my career started to take off, and I started to develop products—besides books, remember, I had the must-have documents and the FICO kit and the insurance evaluator, all these things that I had created product—and I very easily could have manufactured them, created them all by myself, and therefore be entitled to 100% of the profits.

But I'd rather have 50% of something than 100% of nothing. And that is when years ago I partnered with Hay House, who I love so much it's not even funny. But I had them manufacture and create it, and they took all the risks. That gold box that we used to sell on QVC—QVC sometimes would order 20,000 at a time, 100 or 200,000 at a time—and at $20 our cost for that box, that was a tremendous amount of money that you had to put out, but I never had to put that out. That was Hay House's risk.

And we split profits fifty-fifty, just that simple. Now why was that a great thing for me? Because I got to create these products with them, obviously. But I didn't have any risk involved. If they sold, OK. If they didn't sell, OK. But that allowed me to get on television to talk about it without me thinking about, "Oh, we have to make this money back."

I got to talk about why these products were something that you should purchase, how they will help you, how they'll make your life easier—all these things. And I never thought about the money. Because there's one thing interesting about money—you cannot sell it. You can only inspire people to purchase what they need to buy.

And so 50% of something, if you look at my life today, really served me so well it's not even funny.