In 2021, I was 36 years old, and I had a big year. Thanks to the income streams that grew from my blog and podcast, I started making enough passive income to quit my 9-to-5. 

This financial freedom made me start to think about what other goals I wanted to achieve, starting with what I wanted from my environment.

My family is from the Southern coast of Puerto Rico, about 90 minutes from the capital of San Juan. I’ve always enjoyed visiting, and the more time I spent, the more I realized that I wanted a home there.

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I currently rent a three-bedroom, two-bath house in St. Petersburg, Florida. From 2016 to 2019, I owned a duplex in New Jersey with my ex-husband. A home in Puerto Rico would be the first property I ever bought on my own.

Now that I was my own boss, I had the flexibility and the funds to purchase property in the place I loved so much — and be the first person in my immediate family to own real estate on the island.

Here is how I turned my dream into a reality.

Puerto Rico has many different cities, each with their own perks. I set my sights on the eastern, coastal city of Luquillo. It is a half hour drive to the capital, popular with surfers and beachgoers and it is close to El Yunque, the only rainforest in the U.S. Forest System. 

I knew I would be stressed by the prospect of a single-story home being affected by hurricanes and flooding, so I focused on condos and apartments instead, and stayed at several AirBnBs to get to know the area better.

Since I was conducting the search from my home in Florida, my agent arranged viewings on my behalf, and I would call her on Facetime to tour the properties. 

I realized how difficult it would be to navigate the island’s unique banking, legal and regulatory environment, especially not being able to use common U.S.-based lenders. Being a cash buyer would be a better option than trying to get a loan. 

So I put my search on hold in January 2022, and started looking again in November of that year, to give myself more time to save up enough cash to buy a property outright.

When I was ready, I called my realtor. As luck would have it, she had been contacted by a seller who was ready to say goodbye to an oceanfront condo they had inherited from their parents. 

I saw it virtually before it went on the market, and I scheduled a trip to Puerto Rico. The moment I stepped inside, I fell in love. After that, everything moved quickly. I put in a verbal offer for $180,000 and the owners accepted. 

I filled out a formal offer letter, wired my deposit to the realty company, and worked with my agent to find a good inspector. After a successful inspection, and getting the deed and sworn documents notarized (a legal must in Puerto Rico) I worked with my bank to send the remaining funds to the realty office.

I closed on the property within nine days. It was the fastest I’ve ever spent almost $200,000.

My 760-square-feet, one bedroom, one bath condo was built in the 1970s. My balcony faces the ocean, the building has 24/7 security, a private pool, laundry area and assigned parking.

The balcony takes my breath away. I get a full unobstructed view of the ocean, and because zoning laws have changed, no properties can be built that close to the water anymore.

I pay $157 per month in HOA fees that cover maintenance, pool and beach access, garbage collection and security. For utilities, I pay $130 a month for cable, internet, electricity and water. 

I also pay about $1,800 a year for a property insurance policy that covers general liability, flood, theft and more.

Since this isn’t my primary residence, I’ve used the property as a short term rental on AirBnB and VRBO since May 2023. I never intended to use my condo as an AirBnB, but I decided to do a trial run and see how it went, and it has gone well.

I have a local cleaning crew that I provide my reservation schedule with. They let themselves in using the lockbox. Then they provide time-stamped photos after each cleaning and I pay them via PayPal.

A local contractor I work with can do repairs and maintenance as needed, and sends me photos of the finished product.

My goal was to cover my annual expenses for the condo. If I made a profit, even better.

I made over $7,500 in 2023, more than enough to cover my HOA fees, cleaning fees, maintenance, property taxes and utilities for the year. I’m on track to match or exceed those earnings in 2024. 

Buying a property in Puerto Rico has been an incredible investment, not just financially, but emotionally. Now I have a little slice of paradise that I can call my own and share with my loved ones.

My parents regularly schedule visits to the condo. It’s become their favorite place to vacation. I’ve also welcomed friends and family as guests.

I usually don’t accompany my family, as the unit is a one bedroom, but I personally visit the island up to five times per year, usually for a week at a time.

Whenever I look around my place, I am reminded that I was able to achieve this dream — become the first person in my immediate family to own property on this beautiful island, and buy it on my own — all because I decided to bet on myself.

That has been the most rewarding part of this whole journey.

Jannese Torres is an award-winning Latina money expert. Her mission is to educate marginalized communities on topics like entrepreneurship, investing and financial independence. She is the founder and host of the podcast “Yo Quiero Dinero” and the author of “Financially Lit!” Follow her on Instagram @yoquierodineropodcast.

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Before he got married six years ago, Antonio, now 29, was responsible about managing debt. He used credit cards, but paid them off in full each month. 

After he and Emi, 32, got married, he bought her a $3,000 ring, which he says was the first purchase he knew he wouldn’t be able to pay off right away, he told self-made millionaire and money expert Ramit Sethi on a recent episode of his “I Will Teach You to be Rich” podcast. Their last names were not used.

When Sethi asked how long it took him to pay it off, “it snowballed,” Antonio said. “I couldn’t even tell you.”

From there, the couple fell into a vicious debt cycle, racking up thousands on credit cards, paying them off — often with tools like personal loans or other financing options — and then finding themselves back in debt shortly after. They once paid off $77,000 in credit card debt using Emi’s emergency savings.

“The feeling of bad never stopped,” Emi said of the debt cycle. “We never got past it, but I don’t think there has been a day since then that we haven’t talked about finances or stressed about finances or prayed. It’s been a snowball effect since.”

The couple had made huge strides in bettering their financial situation by the time they spoke with Sethi. They’d paid off their credit card debt, but still owed $60,000 in student loans and only had $1,500 in savings. 

Here’s how they wound up in a years-long battle with debt and how they plan to avoid more turmoil in the future.

Like many couples interviewed on Sethi’s podcast, Emi and Antonio have a problem talking about money. Antonio previously handled all the couple’s finances, including paying the bills and keeping an eye on the budget, while Emi said she had her “head in the sand.”

As a therapist herself, Emi has a deep understanding of psychology and how it translates to her behavior. “But when it comes to money, I do not know. I can’t self-analyze,” she said on the podcast. “I can’t figure out why my relationship with money is what it is. There’s a blind spot there.”

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Putting all the financial responsibility on Antonio exacerbated their problems because Emi would continue to spend money Antonio knew they didn’t have.

Speaking with Sethi helped Antonio open up about wanting her to be a partner in their finances. In response, Emi made a commitment to educating herself to feel more empowered about money so she can be a good teammate.

The couple admittedly has an overspending problem. But they aren’t splurging on travel or luxury cars. It’s smaller line items, like going out to eat and buying things for their young daughter, on top of high fixed costs that sent Emi and Antonio into the red.

Antonio said he struggles to say “no” when his family wants things or he wants to do things for them.

“Our track record speaks for itself,” he said. “For one reason or another, even [though] I was in charge of the finances … whether it be my overspending or not making enough, we still ended up in debt again and again and again.” 

Acknowledging all of this out loud helped the couple realize Antonio had a knowledge gap when it came to financial decisions that may not have been the best for their family, such as refinancing their home to pay off credit cards and auto debt. 

After trimming down their fixed costs to as low as they could realistically get, Sethi said their “easy options” are gone. But they both have the capacity to increase their incomes, which Sethi said should be their main objective to help pay down the rest of their debt and boost their savings.

Though they’ve made progress toward getting out of debt, Emi and Antonio fear they’ll fall back into their old ways, the way they have before. Their pattern of overspending has been and will be difficult to break because it’s been sneaky in the past, Sethi said.

“What I see is a series of mundane day-to-day decisions which people make because they’re easy and they don’t understand how to connect today’s decision to tomorrow’s consequence,” he said.

They can make a change, he added, “if the stakes are high enough.”

He asked the couple to consider their daughter and how she might react in a few years down the road if they don’t break their debt cycle. Emi said they would look unstable as a couple. ”‘My parents aren’t good with money,’” Antonio imagined their daughter would think.

“She’ll tell herself that she’s not good at it,” Emi said. “She’ll put her head in the sand. She’ll avoid it. And she’ll say, ‘That’s for my partner. That’s for my dad. That’s not for me.’ And I don’t want that for her.”

The couple left Sethi with plans to make some serious changes to tackle the rest of their student debt and boost their emergency savings. 

“No more avoiding,” Emi said.

Check out the full episode here.

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In functional romantic relationships, it’s psychologically healthy to feel a deep sense of belonging and attachment. However, becoming overly reliant on another person to feel whole, healed and secure is not only harmful to our wellbeing — it can damage relationships over time. 

This behavior is often referred to in mental health circles as codependency. People in codependent relationships develop a strong, unhealthy devotion to their partner, often at the expense of their own needs, because their identity revolves around taking care of and gaining approval from the other person. 

As a Harvard-trained psychologist who frequently works with clients with relationship issues, I have found that healthy relationships of all kinds require trust, vulnerability, and some degree of interdependence, rather than codependence. 

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At its core, interdependence is an understanding that relationships are a collaboration. Hallmarks of interdependence are mutual support, shared decision making, healthy boundaries and honoring each other’s individuality.

Here are 9 phrases healthy, thriving and interdependent couples don’t say: 

People who are codependent in relationships often try to hide, ignore or deny their own internal experiences, focusing all their energy on being there for the other person.

This self-sacrificing behavior is often part of an unconscious attempt to get a measure of control over a situation. But we all have needs.

The interdependent goal is that the needs, desires, dreams and wants of both partners are honored, supported and appreciated — and no one asks the other to give too much of themselves.

Codependency is ultimately a need to maintain a relationship at all costs because a person’s wellbeing and sense of security is based on that relationship.

As such, people in codependent relationships tend to avoid conflict whenever possible. If it emerges, instead of communicating their thoughts, feelings or perspective, they are likely to be passive aggressive or seem detached.

Interdependent couples will share how they feel, what they want, and then will listen to their partner’s response. They know that this practice will build a stronger bond, even when they disagree. 

People in codependent relationships often have a hard time saying “no” or setting healthy boundaries because meeting the needs of others is more important than tending to their own. 

Fear of rejection or ridicule leads them to do what others want even when it’s inconvenient, difficult, enables bad behavior, or is a violation of their personal values.

People in interdependent relationships, however, understand that they can say “no” and set boundaries without fear of retribution. They can acknowledge what the other person wants in a respectful way, and have the freedom to authentically say “no.”  

People in codependent relationships are strongly influenced by feedback from others, so they’re likely to be confused or unsure about their true emotions. They may minimize, deny or alter how they really feel in an effort to maintain the relationship.

It’s normal for any of us to be unsure of how we feel sometimes. However, people in interdependent relationships strive to understand, process and explore their true emotions internally, and then share them honestly. 

It’s very hard for most of us to deal with rejection or criticism — it feels good to have others like us. Yet for people who are in codependent relationships, it can feel intolerable to be disliked or unwanted. 

This leads some to become overly focused on their partners’ opinions of them, often compromising their authentic selves in the process.

In interdependent relationships, while the goal is to hear your partner ’s perspective and respond in a respectful way, there’s also a deep understanding that our value is defined internally. We don’t need other people to like everything about us to be whole, healed and important. 

People who struggle with codependency tend to be incredibly uncomfortable when they’re not in a relationship. 

Being single or without another person to care for doesn’t last long because they will seek out another relationship to fill the void when one codependent relationship ends.

To be in a healthy interdependent relationship means that you know that you are a complete person with goals, interests, and an identity — with or without a partner. Interdependent people embrace their solo time, especially when they are in a relationship.

People who struggle with codependency have a difficult time trusting others. Fears of abandonment is often front-and-center: They try to be everything to another person, by being overly responsive to their needs in an effort to make them stay.

To be in a healthy interdependent relationship means that you understand you can’t control other people. 

While you may fear a relationship will someday end, there’s an appreciation for the present and motivation to build a healthy connection, without controlling their partner. 

Many people in codependent relationships struggle with low self-esteem and an unstable sense of personal value. They can be very critical of themselves and others, often looking externally for self-validation. 

In interdependent relationships, people strive to look within and take responsibility for their own self-worth, while also leaning on loved ones for support when they need help.

People in codependent relationships often seek reassurance from their partner. This can look like asking whether they love them, seeking compliments, wanting constant contact and generally seeming clingy or needy.

In interdependent relationships, there’s a desire to connect with, trust, and bond with a partner. Yet people generally state their needs directly and discuss them in a collaborative and respectful, rather than clingy-seeming, way.

If you feel insecure in your relationship, try saying that directly. Talk about ways to make you and your partner feel loved and appreciated.

The important thing to remember is that people don’t become one when they’re in a relationship. They remain as two unique individuals with their own needs, wants and perspectives, who actively choose to share a key aspect of their lives.

As important as trust, intimacy and vulnerability are to the success of a couple, so is building your own self-esteem outside of the context of that relationship. 

Ultimately, maintaining our autonomy and remembering that we have the same value — with or without other people — is key to developing authentic, meaningful and healthy connections.

Dr. Cortney S. Warren, PhD, is a board-certified psychologist and author of “Letting Go of Your Ex.” She specializes in love addition and breakups, and received her clinical training at Harvard Medical School. She has written almost 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and delivered more than 75 presentations on the psychology of relationships. Follow her on Instagram @DrCortneyWarren.

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This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Ditching the Degree series, where women who have built six-figure careers without a bachelor’s degree reveal the secrets of their success. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at AskMakeIt@cnbc.com.

In the middle of getting a tattoo, Sess Lee Cannon had an epiphany: She was stuck in the wrong career. 

As a tattoo artist put the finishing touches on her ink — her son’s name, Elijah, scrawled across her left shoulder — he made small talk with Lee (who goes by her middle name professionally) and her friend.

The artist complimented her friend’s haircut, which Lee had given her with a pair of kitchen scissors just hours earlier. 

“He said, ‘Where’s your salon?’ and I told him I didn’t work at one, that I just did hair for fun,” Lee, 37, recalls. “And I’ll never forget, he said, ‘Well, you might want to reconsider what you’re doing for a living. It’s clear you have a gift.’” 

The unsolicited advice gave Lee, then 20, pause. She loved doing her friends’ hair and experimenting with new hairstyles on her curly locks but considered it more of a hobby than a vocation. 

It was 2007, two years after Lee graduated from high school and one year after she dropped out of Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois, after finding out she was pregnant. 

In the months leading up to Elijah’s birth, Lee moved into a small apartment in her hometown of Peoria, Illinois, and found a customer service job she loved at Maui Jim, a sunglasses company. She trained and got promoted to be an accounting clerk within her first year at the company.

“Math always came easy to me, and I thought, by working in finance, I’d never be poor again,” says Lee. 

But something was missing in her corporate career. “I craved the creative freedom I felt doing hair,” she adds. “I guess I just needed encouragement from a stranger to go for it.”

She decided to switch careers on the drive home. “I had no clue if it would work out, but I knew I would regret not trying,” she says. 

By all measures, the risk has paid off: Lee owns Flourish Curls Salon in Arlington, Texas, a business that brought in $1.1 million in revenue last year, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

After deducting business expenses and taxes, Lee’s take-home pay is between $100,000 and $150,000 a year (she declined to share her exact salary).

Here’s how Lee spun her interest in hair into a six-figure career.

The morning after getting her tattoo, Lee stopped at a building she had driven past countless times: Regency Beauty Institute, a cosmetology school in Peoria. 

She registered for classes and quit her job at Maui Jim as soon as she paid her first deposit. The cosmetology program, which took Lee about 18 months to complete, cost $22,000 and required her to be in classes five days a week from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. 

When she wasn’t in school, Lee, who is a single parent, waitressed at a local steakhouse to pay her tuition and other bills. Her grandparents watched Elijah. 

The requirements to become a hairstylist vary by state, but generally, prospective stylists must complete a cosmetology program at an accredited school and obtain a state-issued license by passing a written and practical exam. 

Many states also require prospective stylists to complete an apprenticeship or work as an assistant in a salon first.

Once Lee finished the requirements for her license in 2009, she started taking on clients at home and working part-time at a salon that specializes in natural hair in Peoria.

In her first year as a stylist, Lee made close to $30,000 a year. She continued to work part-time as a waitress for the next two years to cover her bills.

At the time, Facebook was becoming more popular, and Lee decided to take full advantage of the platform’s free advertising opportunities: She created a business page, sent friend requests to potential clients, and started documenting her work with photos and videos. 

She quickly garnered a reputation for working with different curl patterns and clients who were biracial like herself. 

“My mom is white, my dad is Black and I always had curly hair, but my mom had bone straight hair, so she just had no idea how to style it for me growing up,” she says.

That childhood experience inspired Lee to start dyeing, highlighting, trimming and straightening her hair when she was a teenager until she found styles she liked. 

“I wanted to learn how to make my hair look good, feel confident in my own skin, and I want to inspire that same confidence in others,” she says. 

For the next five years, Lee continued to work at the salon and build her following on social media. She says she loved the people she worked with and felt settled in her career.

But in 2015, Lee — then pregnant with her fourth child — started feeling “the itch to move.” 

She had spent most of her life in Illinois and craved a change of scenery and warmer weather. 

A friend invited her to spend a long weekend together in two of Texas’ biggest cities, Austin and Dallas. 

Lee says she was instantly smitten with the southern hospitality and wide-open spaces. She toured apartments for her and her four children that same weekend. 

The family of five relocated to Arlington, a city between Dallas and Fort Worth, in January 2016. 

Moving to a different state emboldened Lee to chase another dream that had been percolating in the back of her mind: Opening a salon. 

Lee spent 10 months and $50,000 of her savings to open Flourish Curls Salon, which started taking customers in 2017.

To Lee’s relief, word spread quickly about the salon — within months of opening, she had a waitlist of customers.

Lee attributes Flourish Curls’ popularity to the audience she cultivated across Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. 

She started posting hair tutorials, client testimonials, style how-to’s, product recommendations and more online in the early 2000s. Her YouTube channel has nearly 60,000 subscribers. 

“Having a strong social media community helped a lot,” Lee adds. “There’s also not a ton of salons that specialize in curly and natural hair in our neighborhood — many cosmetology schools and salons still don’t train their stylists to work with those textures.”

Flourish Curls’ services include hair cuts, twists, scalp exfoliation and styling that cost anywhere from $150 to $375. Last year, 2023, was the first year Flourish Curls broke $1 million in annual revenue.

The salon has 11 stylists including Lee, who only sees a few clients each month. 

She says building up her staff and hiring two virtual assistants has helped her stave off burnout and resist the urge to “always be on,” a common challenge for business owners. 

Lee front-loads her workweek, taking on meetings and appointments Monday through Wednesday so she can spend more time with her children, now ranging in age from 8 to 18. 

“In my 20s, I thought that to be successful, I’d have to work 50-plus hours a week,” says Lee. “But I’ve been able to build a six-figure career from working three days a week most weeks.”

As an entrepreneur, Lee has enjoyed the autonomy and flexibility of designing her work schedule.

However, the most fulfilling aspect of running her own salon, she says, has been the positive difference she’s been able to make in people’s lives by showing them how to be comfortable and confident with their natural hair — a community she wishes she had access to as an “insecure, frustrated” teenager. 

Adds Lee: “Nothing’s better than helping people feel beautiful.”

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Timothy Armoo is a 29-year-old millionaire who became rich by selling his influencer marketing firm for eight-figures, but the young, Black entrepreneur had to beat the odds to find success.

Armoo, the co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes, hails from what was one of the most impoverished areas in south London and as a teenager lived with his dad on a fourth floor council estate — public housing — on Old Kent Road in the borough of Southwark.

“It was the poorest place,” Armoo told CNBC Make It in an interview. “It was at the peak of when Peckham, Brixton and Old Kent Road were having their beef [British slang for conflict] so it was in the middle of the gang warfare. Between 2005 and 2012 was the peak of the South London gangs.”

Trust for London names Southwark as one of 19 boroughs that have “significantly” higher levels of poverty compared to England as a whole.

Armoo knew he was poor, but he had a keen entrepreneurial spirit and managed to cobble together some money by starting his own tutoring business at 14-years-old.

He taught fellow students math and as more students approached him for help with other subjects, he started connecting them with tutors he knew and took a cut of the fee.

“I remember very specifically the first time I connected these two people,” he said. “Jane needed some help with chemistry, and I connected her to Harry, and Harry helped her, and I got £5 (around $6.6) in commission for connecting them, because [the business] charged £15 an hour.”

It was only when Armoo received a scholarship to go to a private boarding school when he was just 16-years-old to complete his A-Levels — equivalent to the Advanced Placement program in the U.S. — that his entire view of wealth changed.

“I remember one day this kid got picked up in a helicopter,” he recalled. “It opened up my eyes that there is a way to build wealth and you don’t have to be Richard Branson. There’s a whole world of people in between there.”

He started to realize that “money was a tool” to change his life and the fastest way to escape poverty was to start his own business.

“When I was growing up on that fourth floor council estate, I would always say to myself ‘This is temporary. This is temporary. This is temporary,’” he said. “I didn’t get to choose the circumstances I was in at 10 years old … but at least I got to decide what ends up happening.”  

Here’s how Armoo went from living in a council estate to starting his own business and then becoming a millionaire before the age of 30.

Armoo was 17-years-old and still completing his A-Levels when he sold his first business, an online blog called Entrepreneur Express, for £110,000, after only 11 months of running it.

“Everyone’s aspiration was to go to Oxbridge [The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge] and mine was just ‘I want to make money and I want to get out of my s—ty situation,’” Armoo said.

The 29-year-old interviewed high-profile figures for Entrepreneur Express from the likes of Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson, the face of the British TV show “The Apprentice” Alan Sugar and actor James Caan, but making the blog profitable was a challenge.

Initially he had a print version of the blog ready to be taken in by university society groups but as the deadline drew closer, he realized he didn’t have enough advertising to sustain the print publication.

The young entrepreneur then turned his attention to placing advertisements on the online blog. “This is where I had my success,” he said.

He said his “hack” was the distribution of content from the blog via viral social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook such as meme pages and feel-good quote pages.

Armoo would package the articles into social media posts with a hook like “10 quotes to…” and this would drive people from the post to his site.

“The way that we made money was by two things: one was programmatic advertising — so just banner ads, but I would also then sell sponsored slots to tax firms, law firms, and accountancy firms so they could get a direct ROI [return on investment.]”

Armoo said your first business doesn’t need to be “a billion dollar idea.” Instead “your first business should just get you on the first money ladder.”

He echoed the advice of the late investment guru Charlie Munger who said that making the first $100,000 is the hardest “but you gotta do it.”

Armoo agreed saying: “If you optimize for that first £100,000 … you slog, and you go crazy for it, life just becomes easier, because then you know a bit of the playbook… now, at the very least, you have a financial cushion to make choices which are not as risky.”

Armoo considers himself an early pioneer in the burgeoning creator economy industry because he co-founded the influencer marketing firm Fanbytes in 2017 with Ambrose Cooke and Mitchell Fasanya.

Fanbytes’ goal was to connect brands with influencers to create advertising campaigns — a popular marketing strategy at the time as companies transitioned from traditional advertising to using influencers on social media to sell products.

Their strategy worked as Fanbytes amassed a notable roster of clients from Nike, Samsung, Amazon and ITV, Armoo said.

One 2016 study by TapInfluence found that social media influencer marketing was 11 times more effective than banner ads on a website, which is why brands were flocking to influencers, according to CNBC reporting.

“I saw the rise of influencer marketing in the U.S.,” Armoo said and he decided to replicate the idea in the U.K.

You don’t always need to invent something new as an entrepreneur, instead you can “service existing demand,” Armoo advised.  

The company was “raising dribs and drabs,” across different stages before ultimately raising £2 million in funding.

“First ever bit of investment was like 15 grand, then 40 grand, and then 120 grand, and then 300 grand, and then 600 grand,” Armoo said.

His work with Fanbytes landed him on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2021, and soon after in October that year, offers started rolling in from people wanting to purchase Fanbytes.

He then appointed a bank to coordinate deals for the company which went on to find six companies interested in acquiring Fanbytes.

Armoo, who was 27-years-old at the time, and his co-founders sold Fanbytes to Brainlabs, a global digital marketing agency, in an eight-figure deal in May 2022, which made them all multi-millionaires.

“The aim was always to build something that could be sold,” Armoo said. “I spoke to this guy once when I was pretty early on in my journey, and he said that you can make money while running a business, but you build wealth by selling the business.”

Armoo always knew that he didn’t want to run Fanbytes for the rest of his life.

“Fanbytes could have been selling shoelaces to frogs and I still would have been passionate if I thought this is a business we are building and it has the end goal of being something that can achieve financial security,” he said.

Black founders often struggle to raise capital. In fact, Black-founded startups in the U.S. only raised 0.48% of all venture dollars allocated in 2023, per Crunchbase data previously reported by CNBC.

This follows a decline in funding being given to Black-owned businesses since 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and the social justice movement that followed his death.

Meanwhile, 87% of non-white founders said they faced more barriers to fundraising compared with 79% of white founders, according to Atomico’s State of European Tech Report 2023.

Armoo says it was all about perspective and believed that being Black didn’t hold him back.

“Everyone remembered the bearded Black guy in a room full of white people. Everyone remembers that and so for me, it increases how memorable you are,” he said about his experience of going to events to meet investors.

He explained that you can either walk into a room and feel insecure because there aren’t that many people that look like you, or you can believe that that factor will help you standout.

“I never saw myself as a Black entrepreneur. I always just saw myself as an entrepreneur,” he said.

“I think maybe I’m too logical for my own good. I was like ‘investors want to make money. This business is going to make them money. I’m going to show them how it makes them money.’ That’s it. I didn’t really think they cared if it was coming from the mouth of a white guy or a Black guy.”

Now, as a 29-year-old millionaire, Armoo is confident that this world view has “served him well.”