What Happens When You Invest in Your Own Backyard with Angela Barbash

Angela Barbash grew up watching her parents file for bankruptcy over and over, and as a young adult, she made a lot of the same money mistakes because no one had taught her differently. After spending years in traditional finance, she kept running into the same wall: clients asking how they could invest locally, and firms telling her she couldn't talk about it. So in 2013, she started Revalue, an investment firm that helps everyday people align their investments with their values. We talk about her start in financial services, what it takes to build a marketplace from scratch, and why she refuses to turn anyone away.

Meet Our Guest

Angela is a mom, anthropologist, entrepreneur, and an unabashed challenger of the status quo. She has dedicated over 20 years in service as an investment advisor in the Metro Detroit region, including founding Revalue as a values-driven investment firm in 2013. Angela has contributed countless hours to field building, public education, and infrastructure development to help build a more compassionate industry centered on solidarity economy principles. You will often find her educating on the topics of financial resiliency, community capital, and conscious business management. When she's not sleeping and breathing regenerative finance, she can be found playing with her husband and two kids, enjoying the fresh air of the outdoors, or playing D&D with her family.

Highlights

How clients asked Angela to help them invest locally instead of Wall Street—and why traditional finance had no answer
Why four different firms told Angela they loved her work but she couldn't talk about local investing or holistic wealth
Crying and leaving a regional meeting where advisors talked about golf while clients were losing everything
Building Revalue as an employee-owned cooperative where seven of ten team members are owners
The network of activists and allies who helped Angela survive the brutal first five years of building her business
Why community investing is more relational and human-centered than Wall Street—and why that's actually a good thing
Three strategies Revalue uses to help non-accredited investors access community investments
Breaking out of intergenerational poverty cycles
Angela's unwavering commitment: serving anyone who comes to Revalue, even with just a thousand-dollar Roth IRA

Resources

ReValue
LinkedIn
National Coalition for Community Capital
Workforce Intelligence Network
Kingscrowd
Honeycomb Credit
Republic
We Funder

Keywords

#CommunityInvesting #LocalEconomy #ValuesAlignedInvesting #FinancialAccessibility #RegenerativeFinance #EmployeeOwnership #SolidarityEconomy #IntergenerationalWealth #CommunityCapital #WealthBuilding

Click here to watch our interview on Youtube

Angela Barbash appears here as a guest, not a client of Natural Investments. No compensation was exchanged in connection with this episode. Angela and Diana are colleagues in the values-aligned investing space — that professional relationship is disclosed as a potential conflict of interest.

Diana Gisel Yañez is an Investment Advisor Representative of Natural Investments PBLLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. All the Colors is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments. See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.