What if the best person to teach you about money was not a guy in a suit, but a woman who has built real wealth, weathered big market shifts, and is willing to tell you the truth about money with zero fluff? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Gokce Donat, a no-fluff financial educator, real estate investor, and host of the Million Elle Podcast. With a background in engineering and finance, a builder’s license, and more than twenty years in business, Gokce shares how confidence, discipline, and clear thinking about risk helped her build wealth in male-dominated spaces.

What You Will Learn:

Personal values often spark the vision that drives major money and career decisions.

Natural leadership tendencies in childhood frequently become entrepreneurial strengths later in life.

Wealth-building opportunities don’t always arrive with a plan attached, yet are still worth pursuing.

Women in male-dominated fields may need credentials to claim authority and protect their role.

Trustworthiness plays a major role in attracting capital and forming solid business partnerships.

Clarity around fixed and variable expenses supports stronger financial decision-making.

Overly complicated offers usually hinder customer follow-through and reduce overall results.

Podcasting provides immediate credibility and creates deeper trust with potential clients.

Seasons of feeling lost often signal the beginning of a new chapter or evolving purpose.

Rising material costs and shifting markets frequently require business owners to pivot.

Stable income streams, such as healthcare, can create opportunities for investing during downturns.

Solid partnerships rely on integrity, transparency, and aligned expectations.

Reconnecting with core passions helps refine the next phase of a visionary’s journey.

Long-term financial empowerment grows through discipline, clarity, and aligned action.

Resource:

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LVP 110 Gokce Donat

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Now here's your host, angel b Hartwell.

Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries Podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time. And provide our listeners with world class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

She's flipping the script on financial literacy, helping women stop avoiding money and start making powerful informed decisions that grow real wealth. I am very excited to have you here on the show today. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. All right. Well Che, I wanna start our time by talking about vision.

Tell us a little bit about your visionary experience. That is such a great question. Um, you know, relative to my professional life and how I chose what to study. Um, I think I did have a vision, um. I've always wanted to be independent. My mother was independent. Um, my mom cooked dinner from scratch, you know, six days a week, five to six days a week, um, but was also in management for a big company.

What I was going to study in college was I thought, okay, well, um, I wanna pay my own bills. I wanna leave the house. How am I going to do that? And engineering. And really today, when it comes to entry level jobs, unless you have a finance job, you know, unless you're in investment banking, um, engineering is still a great entry level, um, position to be in.

And so I'd love to hear your leadership journey. You know, you. Went to college, you know? Then what, tell us about your leadership journey, and maybe also a little bit about your leadership philosophy. You know, the leadership journey, I'm really fascinated with it because I sincerely was born with a load of confidence.

Um, I, I don't know where it came from. Um, from a very young age, I was kind of a natural leader. Um, when I look back, you know, I'm sure my childhood friends who I still keep in touch with. Would tell you I was very bossy, um, even in elementary school. So I think that confidence, um, is something that I was born with and I, when, when it's that way, you, you, there's, you just don't know any other way.

I'm like, no, we're, we're all leaders. But you know, I just kind took over. So, um, I can't really say it was an evolution. It's how I was. And I realized that, and, and it's really served me in life. Beautiful. Well, tell us about your 20 years in business with a builder's license to back it up. I'm kind of curious about that.

Um, and. Where we live. Um, it's actually a very old neighborhood, so if you want to live in our neighborhood and you want a new home, you have to do a full excavation, a demolition, a full excavation. We have basements here. I don't know if you have basements there, um, in New Hampshire, Boston area. But, um, uh, so that's what we were doing.

He was a CFO and these are multimillion dollar houses. Um, you know, he was the CFO of, I don't know, some company. Thought I was the interior designer, which I have so much respect for interior designers, that part of my brain does not work. Mm-hmm. But why would you assume anything, you know, why can't I be the builder?

Um, we, we had a little bit of, of real estate holdings through, um, another vehicle that, that it was a private equity gig that we got. We were, we got access to because no one else really had, nobody had capital back then. Um, but yeah, so it, it was really my entry point into real estate. Well, so let's talk about capital because, um, were you also still working full-time in a corporate position when you started to do the No building and, no, I actually, so my corporate life had ended.

Very similar. I, you know, was in the real estate business then I had an art gallery and a healing arts center, and then I ended up now Oh, that's cool. In the online space and, and so yeah, it's, it's very interesting for those who are listening who have lots of ideas, um. You know, and, and may also be falling into things like for me, I also fell into things as well.

It's a great question. Um, so my husband is, so he's in healthcare and. Depending on where you're at in that niche, um, you know, depression, recession, it doesn't really matter. You know, you're always cash flowing. Um, so it was really because of him that we, well, and our discipline up to that point, um, such that, you know, we did have.

Invest it and multiply it in other ways, which, you know, so many people who have vision may maybe looking for capital. So for somebody who's looking for capital. What kind of deals would you have wanted to invest in? Like back then it was real estate, but you know, when you have capital, you're looking for all kinds of opportunities.

So I'd love to have you just speak a little bit about, you know, like what opportunities would you consider, and for our listeners who are looking for capital, like what would you say to them? Like one thing that you would tell them that they really need to be paying attention to when they're seeking capital?

Um, we didn't have an agreement. It was a handshake and. Some people, especially a lawyer, would look at that and say, wow, you're really dumb. But what good is a piece of paper, if you know? I mean, I'm gonna have to drag him through court for years not to get paid. You have, trust is huge. Um, and do what, what's the saying?

Do what you say. Say what you do mean, what you mean. I mean, you just, you just, you just have to be a, a well-informed, trustworthy person. Yeah. Beautiful. I love it. Well, we're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we're gonna let our listeners know where they can find out more about you right now, though, listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries?

Be sure to share this show in your own spirals of influence with the people who you think might benefit from our content. I wanna say a huge thank you to all of our listeners who are downloading, rating and reviewing. We're welcoming thousands of downloads from all over the world. I wanna shout out this week to our listeners in the Detroit area in Michigan, and also to our listeners in Ireland.

The Leading Visionaries Podcast is brought to you by the Creative Age Consulting Group. Are you the one who thinks differently, who is called to create a significant conscious change in the world? Who is seeing and dreaming of a better way for your industry, your community, humanity? Creative Age consulting group is hired to guide leading visionaries just like you who want to break through the static in order to clearly express and confidently enroll support for their vision in a way that makes it inevitable that it will come to pass.

Your word is your wand. And as the leader, your ability to articulate and communicate your vision is essential to its materialization and monetization. Please enjoy with our compliments, a free copy of the book, be Heard By Millions, and Live Your Destiny, which was a number one new release in three categories.

and we are back with Gar. Donut

And, um, I really don't like nickel and dimming, uh, the people that I work with. Um, and, you know, 90% of them don't take advantage, but that 10% in addition to your material cost and, you know, land costs just went through the roof. I mean, you know, the low interest rates for years and years and years didn't help us at all.

I'm not kidding it, you know, we were traveling quite a bit. I was enjoying my life, but I've never been lost in my life, ever. And I was lost and on unhappy. Mm-hmm. Because I didn't have a vision, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, and I use the advice that everyone gives. They say. Do your passion, you know, what, what lights you up?

Uh, but anyway, relative to the government or who knows what I was talking about. But, um. So, I love talking about econ. I love talking about investing. I love making money and as you know, um, most people and especially most women, are not comfortable, um, either because they're too busy. Mm-hmm. Um. Some of them don't have the confidence.

It's, it's a number of factors. Um, and I thought I'm going to start a business. Um, so we have an app and we have classes. I'm actually changing that right now. People do not follow through with the classes. Um, right. Oh my God, it's so hard. Um, so I started the podcast just as social proof. For who I am and what's important to me.

Mm-hmm. Um, so. I love meeting people. I mean, people give me energy, um, and I love learning new things, meeting new people, so it kind of, it all kind of went together. Beautiful. Alright, well for those women listeners out there, you definitely wanna check out Million Elle Podcast and also her website to find out more about how you can learn to be financially literate.

Mm. Just doesn't know what to do. And it's such a foreign concept to me. Mm-hmm. Um, but you know, typically someone in that situation doesn't have debt to pay off. You know, they're looking to invest it versus something else that's common is not knowing how to approach tackling debt just from a psychological perspective.

Mm-hmm. Um, so yeah, I would say those are the two most common. If I depict, yeah. Well, let's talk about tackling debt, because for anybody who's listening to this show, they might be a founder, CEO of a startup, or, you know, even in a growth phase in their business. And so many people have issues around debt.

Um. You just really have to know your numbers and never get too big for your britches and make sure you're planning. I always, I always plan worst case scenario, you know, one year, three years, five years, 10 years. Um, so you have to be analytical. And there is another saying, I'm trying to think of plan for the best, expect the worst, um, because debt.

How to, no offense to interior female body, but because you had a female body you were mistaken for from, for the interior designer. And yeah, what you said was, you don't have an interior design brain, so there are a lot of people that don't have an analytical brain. So from that perspective, when you say be analytical, what if you don't have that kind of brain?

So based on that range, where do you come out? Like if you take on this loan, you know, where do you come out with that? What are the odds? You are going to be able to consistently make your payments. So I am definitely an analytical person, but if your right brain, um, and I wouldn't say initially farm it out to anyone, it's just thinking about what's coming in, what's going out, and tweaking that accordingly, but also looking at the range, right?

It never does. No, it never does. It never does. And oftentimes we get su surprised and delighted in ways that we weren't expecting. Well, and I can give you myself as an example, so a million L is relatively new. Mm-hmm. Um, and I was having the conversation this morning with my husband. I thought, you know, I was so focused on what I wanted to give to my people that I never stepped back and said, well, shoot, this is super convoluted.

Um. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Well, always a surprise in the entrepreneurial space. Always a surprise. So when you think about your vision right now for Millionaire, um, what do you wanna see financially coming out of Millionaire in the next three years? And what do you wanna see impact wise, like both income and the impact from, from this venture?

Relative to income, even though I am so grateful, um, I don't need to make a dime, but I am not used to. Being in the red. So, I mean, you know, I like making money. I am not gonna lie. I like making money. Do I have like financial goals? Honestly, I don't. Uh, I really wanna find what works for my people. Mm-hmm.

I, I just want to help people. Um, I've always had support in my life. I've been so blessed, and a lot of people don't have that. Whether it's hearing my voice through the podcast, connecting on Instagram, um, that's the, that's our main social platform right now. I've been, I've had a very hard time finding the right, uh, people to work with relative to social media, but, um.

Focused on finance, but I do have, like, one of my latest releases, which I loved, um, is Three ways to Ruin your Life. And it's basically, you know, not having gratitude. Mm-hmm. Not, not nurturing relationships. Mm-hmm. Um, and not living in the moment. Um, but I, I, to answer your question, that was a very long story.

I, I just want. To be support for people that don't have it. Sincerely, genuinely. And if you talk to anybody that knows me, they will tell you that. Alright, beautiful. Well, thank you so much. Kirk, it's been wonderful having you here. Hopefully I said that correctly at the end. Thank you. You're so sweet. I really appreciate it.

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