264. Building Investment Skills Without the Risk!

On this episode of CFO at Home, Vince·s guest is Deon Hargrove, founder of Smart Investors, an educational investing platform designed to help people learn, practice, and grow their skills in a risk-free simulation before using real money. Deon shares how starting his investing journey during the 2020 pandemic led to him building a one-stop shop that combines research tools, strategy-based asset recommendations, and virtual portfolios that use real-world market data. He discusses investor mindset shaped by market crashes, the importance of research over ·gambling,· and lessons from the dot-com bubble and today·s AI boom. For more info on the Smart Investors App, visit smartinvestorsapp.com

Key Topics:

01:00 Meet Deon, Learn About his Mission

01:25 Origin Story Pandemic Investing

03:18 Early Wins and Doubts

05:09 Vince’s early investing disaster (PalmPilot!)

08:14 Millennial Investor Mindset

11:51 Dot Com Bubble and AI Parallels

17:36 Research Beats Gambling

19:28 Amazon From Books to Empire

21:17 How Smart Investors Works

23:22 Three Part Learning System

25:46 Fail Safely Before Brokerages

28:04 Financial Literacy Crisis Stats

31:07 401k and Fund Simulations

33:14 Smart Investor Tracks Case Studies

35:07 Getting Started and Pricing

37:20 Wrap Up and Links

Key Links:

• https://smartinvestorsapp.com

• https://www.instagram.com/smartinvestors01/

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/deon-hargrove/

Contact the Host - vince@thecfoathome.com

Want to be a guest on CFO at Home? Send Vince a message on PodMatch, here:

https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628643039567x840793309030672500