Speaker 1: Power one oh five New York City. En I Hire
Speaker 1: Radio Studios, Lower Manhattan. Charlotta Magne, the guy is one
Speaker 1: third of the Hall of Fame morning show The Breakfast Club,
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting in somebody's office at the radio station
Speaker 1: talking with him about how we amplify our good working
Speaker 1: business as the community. And they're talking about our moves
Speaker 1: and something we should talk about publicly. It's Charlotte main threat.
Speaker 1: The need don't on how we talk about doing good
Speaker 1: work and inspire the next generation to think bigger, to
Speaker 1: think bigger than themselves. It's just like anything else. Right.
Speaker 1: If you're a rapper and you rap about the club,
Speaker 1: and you have about alcohol, and you have about drugs,
Speaker 1: and you have about dealing with a bunch of women,
Speaker 1: that's what you're influencing the people that are listening to
Speaker 1: you to do. Right. So for me, it's like, you
Speaker 1: gotta talk about those type of things. We have to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the moves you make in business,
Speaker 1: you know, because a lot of the movies that I'm
Speaker 1: making business really are things that will better society, especially
Speaker 1: the black community. So it's like, Yo, you have to
Speaker 1: make people aware of those things because you're influencing the
Speaker 1: next generation. So the next generation needs to know that
Speaker 1: you could be more than just you know, in the
Speaker 1: entertainment business, that you can be more than just an athlete,
Speaker 1: you know. I think about what I saw guys like
Speaker 1: Robert Smith, and you see the jay Zs of the world,
Speaker 1: and you see the things that they do. The Tyler
Speaker 1: Perry is like, of course, it makes you want to
Speaker 1: do just more good business, you know. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's that's something that you'll see me show more.
Speaker 1: I'm with Lucas and this is Black Tech Dream Money.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna introduce you to some of the biggest names,
Speaker 1: some of the brightness minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black,
Speaker 1: in building or simply using tech to secure your back,
Speaker 1: this podcast is for you. Tiffany l founder of The
Speaker 1: Budget NISA, is an award winning team Financial Education in
Speaker 1: America's favorite personal finance educator. She's been featuring the shows
Speaker 1: like Good Morning America, NBC News Today, and more. She's
Speaker 1: the author of Getting Good with Money, which is a
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller, the One Week Budget and To
Speaker 1: Live Rich Challenge series. I asked Tiffany with so many
Speaker 1: people just as skilled as she is in finance, but
Speaker 1: in their own verticals, what can they do that she
Speaker 1: did to finally break out and to get the attention
Speaker 1: of the masses. So court thing once I learned to
Speaker 1: like let go and be myself, right, So I used
Speaker 1: to If you look back at any of my old
Speaker 1: YouTube videos from like ten years ago, I was stiff, like, hello,
Speaker 1: money is Tiffany? He said. Now I'm like, girl, your budget?
Speaker 1: What are you doing? You know? And so I So
Speaker 1: what happened was maybe like six or seven years ago.
Speaker 1: I was like doing Alive and I want to ask
Speaker 1: a question, and the real Tiffany slipped through and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, let me people look going back to professional.
Speaker 1: But the comments went crazy easy, like yes girl, yes,
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh yeah, right that okay. I
Speaker 1: turned it up a little more, then a little more.
Speaker 1: Then I saw this it was either a documentary. Maybe
Speaker 1: I read an article where um Quincy Quincy Jones was
Speaker 1: talking about Oprah and said the best um I think
Speaker 1: she said, the best kind of piece of advice or
Speaker 1: compliment that he ever gave her was that what makes
Speaker 1: Oprah so special is this She's exactly the same on
Speaker 1: camera as she is off, and I know it sounds
Speaker 1: like okay, so I want no. I don't think people
Speaker 1: understand when that camera turns one pc of people change
Speaker 1: and are different because you know, you're you're either insecure,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh my hair, do I look right? Do
Speaker 1: I sound right? So there are all these things that
Speaker 1: go through your head. So someone else shows up, it
Speaker 1: shows up differently than how when the camera turns off.
Speaker 1: Then you're like, all right, well so you know, and
Speaker 1: if you can do that, So I worked the last
Speaker 1: five years in particular to be the same Tiffany on
Speaker 1: camera as I am off. And the closer I get,
Speaker 1: I'm still about eight, you know, depending like right now
Speaker 1: this is all to me. But like if I'm doing
Speaker 1: like good Morning America, you know, I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still about like sevent But the closer
Speaker 1: I get, the more opportunities open up. Because human beings
Speaker 1: are attracted to what is real and what is genuine,
Speaker 1: even if they don't feel it on the surface. They're
Speaker 1: attracted to like, you know, like the human and you
Speaker 1: feels the human in me. So if I'm being myself,
Speaker 1: you feel it and you react to it naturally, And
Speaker 1: so that's Number one is I've gotten really close to
Speaker 1: being myself on and off camera. Number two is just
Speaker 1: some consistency. You'd be like, oh, people always ask me
Speaker 1: to mentor them and they're like, oh, you know, I
Speaker 1: just started my business a year ago and it's not
Speaker 1: going as good. I'm like, first of all, sister, you
Speaker 1: just got here. You're literally a year old. That's like
Speaker 1: the baby saying why can't I walk? I mean you
Speaker 1: gotta call And then too, you know, you have a
Speaker 1: blog or you have a podcast and it's supposed to
Speaker 1: drop it every Wednesday, but I haven't heard your podcast
Speaker 1: drop in the last two months. You're just not consistent. Literally,
Speaker 1: some of people are winning only because they do what
Speaker 1: they say gonna they're gonna do, and they do it
Speaker 1: when they say they're gonna do it. That's it. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine eight percent of winning is just do I
Speaker 1: do what I say I'm gonna do? Do I do
Speaker 1: what when I say I'm gonna do it? The vast
Speaker 1: majority of people, quite honestly, they don't either. They overpromise,
Speaker 1: they get overwhelmed. They just don't feel like if they
Speaker 1: lose interest. So I show up consistently, you know, and
Speaker 1: I probably say the last but not least is the
Speaker 1: truth is I try not to take it too seriously,
Speaker 1: meaning like take myself too seriously and allow me to
Speaker 1: be in alignment with how, you know, like with what
Speaker 1: is out there for me. It's very easy to get
Speaker 1: distracted and say I ought to do this because this
Speaker 1: person is doing this, I ought to do that. So
Speaker 1: I really try to stay in my lane because no
Speaker 1: one can out Tiffany Tiffany, you know, and so once
Speaker 1: I do, you know, So that's really it. It's like
Speaker 1: showing up authentically as myself, consistency and staying in the
Speaker 1: lane of Tiffany, and those three things are are how
Speaker 1: I've been able to do New York Times you know,
Speaker 1: um my book has been it was eight weeks on
Speaker 1: the New York Times best Seller's list, you know, a
Speaker 1: Good Morning America Today show. I'm the financial expert for
Speaker 1: the real Um. Literally just today I submitted something for
Speaker 1: news Week. I write for Bloomberg, you know, Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: I mean there's there was one point literally where I
Speaker 1: had to tell like CNBC, like, is there anybody else
Speaker 1: that you know? I can't I can't do something every week.
Speaker 1: I'm tired. I'm gonna. I'm tired. I can't do an
Speaker 1: article I thing every week. Do you know any other experts?
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that to flex, I'm saying that
Speaker 1: you want to know why. The news Week got emailed
Speaker 1: me this morning said hey, Tiffany running an article and
Speaker 1: I need some some some sales tips, you know, some
Speaker 1: saving tips. And I woke up this morning and I
Speaker 1: had my my meeting. I was like, okay, so I
Speaker 1: saw it. Within an hour, I had written him back
Speaker 1: with the two tips and said, you know, please attribute
Speaker 1: me as Tiffany the budget needs to financial educator author,
Speaker 1: Your Times best selling author of Get Go with Money.
Speaker 1: He was like wow, he Now, guess who's going when
Speaker 1: they tight on a deadline? Guess what Newsweek journalist's gonna
Speaker 1: hit me back up? Again? He is, you know, because
Speaker 1: he's like, yo, Tiffany is boom bom boom bob. You know,
Speaker 1: most of these outlets want you to just be primed
Speaker 1: and ready and consistent, and they'll come back to you
Speaker 1: over and over because you're super easy to work with.
Speaker 1: And so so let's go in on on that continent.
Speaker 1: You know, content is king, and I wonder what your
Speaker 1: strategy is like, did you pick one distribution channel? Is
Speaker 1: it like your blog that you just go in on
Speaker 1: to the you know, neglect of everything else, or is
Speaker 1: it Instagram? Or have you figured out ways to you know,
Speaker 1: spread yourself across these different platforms to be able to
Speaker 1: reach people where they are. So at first, you know,
Speaker 1: my my only platform, because it's really what's kind of like,
Speaker 1: the only one available was was Facebook. So I put
Speaker 1: all of my time and energy into Facebook. Um, but
Speaker 1: what really helped me to expand is I created And
Speaker 1: this was accidental, and sometimes your best ideas are accidental.
Speaker 1: I created something called my Liverage your challenge. It was
Speaker 1: this free online three recourse. Because everyone kept asking me
Speaker 1: individual questions, and I said, what if I that I
Speaker 1: used to be a school teacher for ten years and
Speaker 1: I had my master's in education, and I had been
Speaker 1: teaching this course at my local United Way, And I said,
Speaker 1: what if I take this course? And I put it online.
Speaker 1: So people who keep asking me the questions, I'm like,
Speaker 1: take a free course, go to literature challenge dot com,
Speaker 1: which is still available. Take a free course, right, And
Speaker 1: so I said, I'm gonna get My idea was to
Speaker 1: get ten thousand people signed up, which I did by
Speaker 1: I want to say it was um January two fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen. And what happened in the course is that
Speaker 1: I did this accidentally, like I think, um, like Twitter
Speaker 1: just came out, and maybe Instagram came out like the
Speaker 1: next year or whatever. But you would coming to the course.
Speaker 1: But what I was doing is effectively you would see
Speaker 1: it on Facebook and then you you said, you know,
Speaker 1: you registered for the course. Now I have your name
Speaker 1: in email, so that's one platform. And then when you
Speaker 1: were in it, I saw someone had this kind of
Speaker 1: like um click to tweet in one of their blog
Speaker 1: posts that I really liked, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you mean you can. You can create a message in
Speaker 1: this box and people can just click it and then
Speaker 1: it will tweet out. And I was like, okay, so
Speaker 1: I added click to tweet. So the way the course
Speaker 1: work was that it was an email course. Every day
Speaker 1: for three weeks I would give you one small assignment
Speaker 1: um that focused on that week's goals, you know, and um,
Speaker 1: so now you're in my inbox. Now you're on my
Speaker 1: email list. But then the daily email sent you to
Speaker 1: the blog to actually get the lesson. So now I
Speaker 1: got email. Already had Facebook, but now I got email,
Speaker 1: and I got blog visitors. And then when you're on
Speaker 1: the blog, I'm getting you the tips and I'm saying
Speaker 1: click to tweet. Now you follow me on Twitter. And
Speaker 1: then like the three or four days out of the course,
Speaker 1: I would create a YouTube video lesson just to change
Speaker 1: it up, so now you're following me on YouTube. And
Speaker 1: then when Instagram came out, I'd be like, you know,
Speaker 1: share your you know, share your feedback here, and now
Speaker 1: I got you on Instagram. So that's how I really
Speaker 1: started to kind of go. I call it like um
Speaker 1: taking people on a tour of your brand. Facebook was
Speaker 1: the door, then you sat in my living room, which
Speaker 1: is my email list. Then you use the restaurant, which
Speaker 1: was Twitter. Then you were like, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: let me see the kitchen, which was Instagram. You know.
Speaker 1: Then you so before you know that, one person has
Speaker 1: visited all of my platforms because of that challenge. So
Speaker 1: it was one of the The challenge was one of
Speaker 1: the best tools I ever created, you know, for my
Speaker 1: brand to grow, to grow the community, and to bring
Speaker 1: them around the full tour. So I've got like really
Speaker 1: robust um following on all of those platforms, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where it started with with one platform, and then
Speaker 1: I created something that allowed me to bring people through
Speaker 1: all these platforms. And I would imagine that, um, you
Speaker 1: weren't manually Okay, I'm gonna manually do this blower post,
Speaker 1: then manually do the YouTube, and manually do the Facebook,
Speaker 1: and then the Twitter and Instagram. So I would imagine
Speaker 1: that there were some systems in place there. And my
Speaker 1: question is that how did you get the technical aptitude
Speaker 1: or did you hire out that opportunity for somebody else
Speaker 1: to be able to come alongside your team? And because
Speaker 1: well most people figure they don't have the resources to
Speaker 1: go do all those systems as well as you. Honestly,
Speaker 1: that's I disagree. I did that at my brocus So
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I want to build this course. I
Speaker 1: don't have any money nor in my tech savvy. It's
Speaker 1: just enough for me to get on Zoom, so I said.
Speaker 1: Even now to this day, so I said, okay, what
Speaker 1: do you know how to do? Tip me? I said,
Speaker 1: I know how to email, and my blog I built myself,
Speaker 1: because you know, they have those blog platforms that it
Speaker 1: wasn't It was like, you know, if you can do Facebook.
Speaker 1: I tell people it's even easier now. Back then it
Speaker 1: was a little harder. I think I was using blogger
Speaker 1: dot com or whatever. But it's just basically a template
Speaker 1: that you put your picture on. It looked terrible that
Speaker 1: you put your picture on and then you, you know,
Speaker 1: you just upload your blog posts. Right, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: I didn't have to be technically savvy. So that course
Speaker 1: was really just you joined my email list, and every
Speaker 1: day I emailed you, Hey, go to my blog for
Speaker 1: today's lesson. So there was no real tech savvy stuff
Speaker 1: I needed other than do you not how to send
Speaker 1: the email? I think I was using like mad Memia design,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, and right, so it wasn't even
Speaker 1: like something like now we're use infusion soft, you know.
Speaker 1: But so it wasn't even some some sophisticated CRM. It
Speaker 1: was just a regular email list. I got you on
Speaker 1: the email list, and then every day I said, here's
Speaker 1: day one of the Literature Challenge. This week we're talking
Speaker 1: about budgeting. Um learn how to create your budget click here,
Speaker 1: and then here took you to the blog post. So
Speaker 1: ahead of time, I wrote out the twenty one blog
Speaker 1: post and I wrote out the twenty one emails and
Speaker 1: then I just said, mad meet me on this day,
Speaker 1: send this email on day, to send this email on
Speaker 1: this day. And so what happened and that I found
Speaker 1: that my audience was like, this is so great and
Speaker 1: they were messaging me. And then that's when Facebook groups
Speaker 1: came out. So at the end of each blog post,
Speaker 1: I said, we want to talk about today's lesson, join
Speaker 1: us in the group. And then my Facebook group became
Speaker 1: the place where it was like the community. I didn't
Speaker 1: have to build them, so I didn't. The first challenge
Speaker 1: or two challenges I did completely solo because I didn't
Speaker 1: need any super tech savvy. I knew how to use Facebook.
Speaker 1: I knew how to send an email, and the blog
Speaker 1: it wasn't great, but I knew how to edit least, like,
Speaker 1: you know, use the blog Tampa that they created for me,
Speaker 1: so you don't need And to this day, that's still
Speaker 1: basically the way the literature challenges are run, and over
Speaker 1: one million people have done one or more of my challenges.
Speaker 1: One million on that same simple sending your email, go
Speaker 1: to the blog, sending your email, go to the blog.
Speaker 1: That's it good for you? I mean, that's it's a
Speaker 1: lot of people in your in your sphere, and I
Speaker 1: want to I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: because we have so many conversations in our world about
Speaker 1: they're not being enough capital for black people to start businesses. Um,
Speaker 1: not the venture capital there's you know, there's an increasing
Speaker 1: amount of angel and angel capital, but there's still a
Speaker 1: touch of disparity, right and so UM for the men
Speaker 1: and women who will be listening to this and are
Speaker 1: using either their savings or their personal credit cards to
Speaker 1: build their business, how do you advise them to gauge
Speaker 1: to what extent they should be leveraging their personal holdings,
Speaker 1: their security um to invest in a company. How how
Speaker 1: do you advise them to and to use that morning
Speaker 1: that should be there for the rainy day that should
Speaker 1: be there, you know, the bridge over troubled water, to
Speaker 1: invest in their things. So I'll say this that there
Speaker 1: is a place for VC funding. I don't have any
Speaker 1: where I am a hunter said funded and we don't
Speaker 1: have any debt. And we made ten million dollars last year.
Speaker 1: This is just us, our little black business is doing
Speaker 1: what we do, serving black people, right and so, but
Speaker 1: ten million to one of these fast growth companies, is like,
Speaker 1: what because it's ten millions, ten years that we got here.
Speaker 1: For some people, they're like, what we did then that
Speaker 1: first six months? Yeah, but then somebody else owned your company.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, like I make ten after I
Speaker 1: take home seven? Do you take home seving? Because I
Speaker 1: know the people not let you take them that big
Speaker 1: salary because that business belonged to them, you know. So
Speaker 1: there's something to be said for I remember I was
Speaker 1: meeting with a young woman who started this great brand.
Speaker 1: It's entire and she's doing well, and she was saying,
Speaker 1: the only way to really have well is that you
Speaker 1: have to have an exit. And I was like, that's
Speaker 1: not true, you know, but that I get it because
Speaker 1: she had, you know, she had um um um DC funds,
Speaker 1: you know, like embedded into her business. So yes, But
Speaker 1: in general, everyone, I have friends who regret taking money
Speaker 1: and friends who are so glad that they took money.
Speaker 1: To me, there's no right or wrong. You have to
Speaker 1: just decide for yourself if you're not gonna take money,
Speaker 1: be okay with growing slow. I don't know when did
Speaker 1: it become like you have to grow super fast and
Speaker 1: in doing so, I don't know if you've ever listen
Speaker 1: to the podcast How I Built This. Sometimes you listen
Speaker 1: and you're like, Okay, so you grew this billion out
Speaker 1: of company and now you are one percent. Well, damn,
Speaker 1: I don't want that, you know what I mean? Honestly,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in making someone else wealthy if I'm
Speaker 1: all the way real, other than my audience that I'm helping,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in growing something. And then you like, yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead, go ahead, girl. You know what that's called slavery.
Speaker 1: You know our people are and we we apt that now.
Speaker 1: And so I say this is that, you know, be
Speaker 1: willing to grow slowly. I never grew more than what
Speaker 1: the company can there. I did take leaps here and there,
Speaker 1: especially when it came to hiring, but I would take
Speaker 1: a calculated leap where I would be like, for example,
Speaker 1: my first CEO, like I had already been business for
Speaker 1: like four or five years, but she was really good
Speaker 1: at organization and that's something that I lacked. And so
Speaker 1: I remember telling her I'm launching this new business. I
Speaker 1: had a budget of thest to business. I have several businesses.
Speaker 1: The budget needs to business, which is the business of Tiffany.
Speaker 1: So it's like my New York Times best selling book
Speaker 1: Get It with Money, and my other books. It's speaking
Speaker 1: spokesperson work, Rand ambassador work, basically the business of Tiffany.
Speaker 1: But I said, I wanted to create a business that
Speaker 1: wasn't the business of Tiffany. So my second business Literature Academy.
Speaker 1: So I told my CEO at the time, I don't, girl,
Speaker 1: I don't have no money. But what I do have, like,
Speaker 1: I don't have any money to pay you now from
Speaker 1: the business because that business has not launched yet. But
Speaker 1: I did. She wanted to make I think it was
Speaker 1: like three thousand dollars a month, and I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got six months worth of savings in my personal save.
Speaker 1: I had eighteen thousand dollars. I had cobble together, you know.
Speaker 1: So I said, I got six months. We have six
Speaker 1: months to get Literature Academy off the ground so it
Speaker 1: can start paying you. So we worked our behinds off
Speaker 1: and we did it by months six. Right when my
Speaker 1: my savings was done, the academy launched, and uh and
Speaker 1: during that we launched, launch was like a week. We
Speaker 1: made seventy tho hollars that that during that launch. Now
Speaker 1: here's the thing. It sounds cute, but we spent it
Speaker 1: cost us fifty to make that seventy. Right, But because
Speaker 1: my literature Academy was UM still in existence. UM it's
Speaker 1: a subscription based business. So although we spent fifty to
Speaker 1: them to make that seventy, that's because we have to
Speaker 1: build everything that But then the subscription started to roll
Speaker 1: in so it was enough to cover her salary. So
Speaker 1: that's why I said, you want to make calculated risks, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not just going to drain my savings account and
Speaker 1: hope and wish and pray we had a strategic plan
Speaker 1: in place, like if I pay more, if I if
Speaker 1: I spend this expense, how can I expect to get
Speaker 1: that money back? If you don't have that plan in place,
Speaker 1: then you're likely to lose all of that money. I'm
Speaker 1: not willing to do that. So that's what I suggest, Um,
Speaker 1: two folks that if you are going to you know,
Speaker 1: use your own money, do so make those calculated risks
Speaker 1: and and be clear of this is how I'm going
Speaker 1: to get my money back. This is the timeline and
Speaker 1: time frame. If if we don't, here's the backup plan
Speaker 1: to that. You know, we could probably go way fast.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, we could probably be at thirty million
Speaker 1: dollars a year right now in business, but that would
Speaker 1: cause us to grow in a way that's quite honestly
Speaker 1: not sustainable. Because you hear people like you can make twenty,
Speaker 1: but we spend a twenty one to make twenty. That's
Speaker 1: why some folks are doing I'm not interested in that.
Speaker 1: We are forty six percent profit. You know, we've got
Speaker 1: a healthy profit margin. So so what do you say
Speaker 1: to the people who says, you know, we hey, but look,
Speaker 1: you could be you know, a two billion dollar business
Speaker 1: if you became something else, and you know, yeah, you
Speaker 1: might own point one percent, but that's still a lot
Speaker 1: of money compared to the ten millions. So I'll say
Speaker 1: this that I I don't disagree with that, and so
Speaker 1: I'm actually building something out externally from that, meaning that
Speaker 1: for me, I'd like I'd like to have a little
Speaker 1: bit more diversity. So I have the budgetsa that's a business.
Speaker 1: I've got the literature academy that that is slow and
Speaker 1: steady wins the race. It's like amazing money for me
Speaker 1: every year, and I'm building another business where um, I'm
Speaker 1: doing just that that is going to be like, it
Speaker 1: is my intention to grow in the next three years
Speaker 1: and sell it for about two hundred three hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars and take my cut from that. And so to
Speaker 1: your point, I'm thinking about that too, you know, but
Speaker 1: I needed um for me. Security was most important because
Speaker 1: I had been so financially insecure for so long that
Speaker 1: the budget Issa and the Literature Academy gave me that.
Speaker 1: So now that my house is paid off, my rental property,
Speaker 1: home is paid off, my parents house is paid off,
Speaker 1: my student loan that's are gone. I'm literally debt free
Speaker 1: like a toddler. So now that I'm in a safe,
Speaker 1: comfortable place, I have a business that generates money for
Speaker 1: me no matter what because it's a subscription base. Now
Speaker 1: I can take the risk for me. Now I can
Speaker 1: take that risk because if the risk doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: guess what, I will still make seven figures a year,
Speaker 1: you know. So for me, I all of my risk
Speaker 1: I take are not really risk. I'm like, m M,
Speaker 1: I know I could go for a billion right away,
Speaker 1: but let me just go for my million. Feel good,
Speaker 1: make sure everybody good, we all fed, And now I
Speaker 1: could take the leap from a place that's not a
Speaker 1: place of fear, you know what I mean, Like I
Speaker 1: can take the leap from a place of like, you know,
Speaker 1: regardless of what happens. You know, I know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be Okay, let's just go for it. So that's what's
Speaker 1: happening in phase three of my business development. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's this quote that says, how you do one thing
Speaker 1: is how you do everything right. And and I wonder,
Speaker 1: if you can't manage your personal finances, can you be
Speaker 1: expected or um, can you manage business finances? Because I
Speaker 1: imagine some people will have the excuse of, like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not making enough, so I'm always messing up because
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to play catch up. But they may
Speaker 1: have this idea that could potentially get them out of
Speaker 1: that situation. How can they be trusted with the money
Speaker 1: to do it? So I wonder to what extent is
Speaker 1: that excuse valid? Um? I think it's very valid because
Speaker 1: of one at the very least, if you are stressed
Speaker 1: personally when it comes to your finances, then it's gonna
Speaker 1: be very hard for you to develop a business without
Speaker 1: that fear in the background. Okay, you know, we really
Speaker 1: got to make money. I just you know, it's hard.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that. Now here's the thing. I develop
Speaker 1: a budget and stuff from that space in place because
Speaker 1: I I had nothing. But it's really difficult to stay
Speaker 1: focused because now you're making choices where you're just like,
Speaker 1: is this good in the long term or is this
Speaker 1: a quick buck? But that quick buck might mean So
Speaker 1: for example, let's just say you partner with the brand
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, Tiffany, you know, like beginner Tiffany,
Speaker 1: will pay you ten thousand dollars for us to be
Speaker 1: able to use your use your likeness for the next year.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, you're like, oh, I'll take that ten
Speaker 1: thou because I need it, you know, I gotta pay
Speaker 1: these bills. And then what happens is as you're growing
Speaker 1: and developing your brand, you have all these other brands
Speaker 1: I want to work with you, but guess who can't
Speaker 1: work with them? You because you're in the contract for
Speaker 1: that year, and there was a five thousand dollar or
Speaker 1: two thousand or two or three or four altogether, that's
Speaker 1: fifty thou dollars that you could have locked in, but
Speaker 1: because you're locked in for that ten you're like dang.
Speaker 1: And I'm sharing that from like experience where I've locked
Speaker 1: myself in because I'm like, I need the money now,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, but I learned the lessons to say,
Speaker 1: if if someone's going to lock me down, it has
Speaker 1: to be a significant amount of money, more than what
Speaker 1: I can anticipate based upon last year what I would
Speaker 1: make if I was gonna partner with multiple people. So,
Speaker 1: but if you are reckless with your because I've seen
Speaker 1: people who are reckless with their personal finances, not just
Speaker 1: I'm having a financial hard time because maybe you lost
Speaker 1: your job or whatever, but reckless, You're likely going to
Speaker 1: also be reckless with your business finances. And if you
Speaker 1: have the pleasure and the privilege of having a team,
Speaker 1: you put everybody at risk. I don't play that. And
Speaker 1: so you know, you do want to get yourself financially
Speaker 1: together because also to you to work with financial professionals,
Speaker 1: like you might have a CFO, you might have a controller,
Speaker 1: you might have a bookkeeper, you might have an accountant,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna want to know what you're looking at,
Speaker 1: you know, and so you can't just um um give
Speaker 1: all the financial control away. And so getting your personal
Speaker 1: finances in order. It's definitely a major key in making
Speaker 1: sure your business is also sustainable. You know, you talked
Speaker 1: about how you know you were in that situation. You
Speaker 1: know you built your business from a state of being broke,
Speaker 1: and um, I wonder what was the break that you
Speaker 1: had that set you on a different trajectory. So, like,
Speaker 1: I'm broke today, but tomorrow, because this thing happened, I'm
Speaker 1: finally free, you know the proverbial sense of free. I'm
Speaker 1: out of those those weeds. And how can we be
Speaker 1: intentional about making sure that that break happens? So for me,
Speaker 1: I remember, for me, it was connection to different people.
Speaker 1: Like the first five years, it was just me, me, me, me,
Speaker 1: me in this little hole. I got myself to, like
Speaker 1: I think I got myself to a hundred fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year in business, which is really thirty five thousand.
Speaker 1: I'll saycom those of y'all who know will know, like,
Speaker 1: because you gotta pay bills and you gotta pay Uncle Sam.
Speaker 1: So people only make six figures. I'm like, no, my
Speaker 1: business makes six figures. I make lesson I did as
Speaker 1: a preschool teacher. But I said, don't let people pool
Speaker 1: when they're like, oh, I'll make I'm like, is that
Speaker 1: your business? You know? And I'm always transparent with our numbers.
Speaker 1: I think that's important, right, So so what what what
Speaker 1: transformed it for me? Because I had it took me
Speaker 1: almost six years to get to six figures and then
Speaker 1: I met um So the budgets still a hundred percent mine,
Speaker 1: but I met my business partner. He wasn't my business
Speaker 1: partner at the time. His name is Jabriel, and he
Speaker 1: was like, why are you doing it this way? You
Speaker 1: could do it this way. It was a new injection
Speaker 1: of new information. He's like, like, for example, he said,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of an affiliate link? And I'm
Speaker 1: like now. He was like, well, what tools and resources
Speaker 1: do you use? And I said, here's a list. He said,
Speaker 1: do you suggest them to your to your artists? I
Speaker 1: said yeah all the time. And he was like, do
Speaker 1: you know some of these companies will pay you to
Speaker 1: suggest them. I did not know that and he was like, girl,
Speaker 1: make a list and we found all, like you know,
Speaker 1: of the ten ten businesses, maybe there were three that
Speaker 1: had an affiliate program that was public. So instead of
Speaker 1: just giving a regular link like business dot com, it
Speaker 1: was business dot com slash Tiffany, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: that was an extra thousand dollars a month that was
Speaker 1: coming in for something I was already doing. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, so what I learned is that after
Speaker 1: partnering with your brood, to learned that there were other
Speaker 1: people that I started to connect with that like you know,
Speaker 1: you're really looking to either learn from them virtually meaning
Speaker 1: like watching their videos and listening to their podcast whatever,
Speaker 1: or you know, sometimes you get the partner in real life,
Speaker 1: or you go to networking event. You need to be
Speaker 1: amongst people who are have done it or are currently
Speaker 1: doing it because it will expand your capacity. So what
Speaker 1: helped me go from literally five years five or six
Speaker 1: years took me to get to six figures, It took
Speaker 1: me two years after that to get to seven, and
Speaker 1: then it took me a year after that to get
Speaker 1: to um to eight to eight. You see how quickly
Speaker 1: that learning curve was, Like you know, so I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's the expansion of capacity, you know, Like I was
Speaker 1: thinking so small and even now I fight to not
Speaker 1: think small, that to think deeper, to think wider, to
Speaker 1: expand my capacity for what is possible. Because I was
Speaker 1: just thinking that I have a business coach now. And
Speaker 1: I was telling him the other day like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I keep getting this like vision that I'm gonna, like,
Speaker 1: you know, make fifty million dollars, you know. And I
Speaker 1: told him this idea that I'm rolling out. He was like,
Speaker 1: are you sure that's what I'm saying fifty million? I
Speaker 1: was like yeah. He was like that idea is more
Speaker 1: worth more like two hundred millions based upon the market.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay. He said, now the fifty
Speaker 1: million is likely going to be what your take home is.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what your vision is telling you. But in
Speaker 1: my mind, I'm like two hundred million, no, because it
Speaker 1: feels so impossible. And then I, um, he invited me
Speaker 1: to this like um entrepreneur kind of like shin dig.
Speaker 1: We're literally everybody there. There are people there were like,
Speaker 1: oh we made two million last week. It was so great,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna have a company for her. Everybody ain't
Speaker 1: on social flexing, so that normalization of that like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we built our company, like you know me and you know,
Speaker 1: I met him at the last meeting. We built a
Speaker 1: company in six months to a million dollars a month.
Speaker 1: We just sold it for seventy million. I think we
Speaker 1: should do that again. That's fun. And you're like, wait,
Speaker 1: what that Expand I'm over here sweating like I'm dont
Speaker 1: make it to my ten million, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's so cute. Ten So how's that going. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: these people that you would never see on social are
Speaker 1: just are just making money at like a level that
Speaker 1: seems so insane and crazy because we don't see it
Speaker 1: see it posted on social because they're not trying to
Speaker 1: get robbed and every known new business. And so for
Speaker 1: me and for anyone who's wanting to go to the
Speaker 1: next level, it's gonna require you to expand your capacity.
Speaker 1: And some of the best ways to do that is
Speaker 1: take a look. It's in a book reading Rainbow Read.
Speaker 1: I mean, damn, people don't want to read. Read like
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to read this is my
Speaker 1: day in a black Moment. Get Good with Money tend
Speaker 1: Simple Steps to Becoming financially Whole, my New York Times
Speaker 1: best selling book available at Get gives Money dot com.
Speaker 1: But no, sincerely, like I'm even now I'm reading Atomic
Speaker 1: Habits right, which is like helping me to open up
Speaker 1: my mind, like, Okay, before I read David, David and
Speaker 1: Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. He's one of my favorite writers,
Speaker 1: Like how what David Malcolm Gladwell works writes really amazing books, um,
Speaker 1: that can be used for your business, but they're really
Speaker 1: books about kind of like psychology. Where David and Goliath
Speaker 1: he talks about was David really the underdog? That sometimes
Speaker 1: really being the underdog is your best asset and how
Speaker 1: to use that. So and before that, um, I read
Speaker 1: Delivering Happiness by Tony Shay. So he's the owner of Zapples.
Speaker 1: He passed away recently, but he was a billionaire and
Speaker 1: his thing was all about company culture. So I had
Speaker 1: me looking at my own company's culture to what we
Speaker 1: could do better. So I'm constantly reading to expand my capacity.
Speaker 1: That's one to talk to people, talk to people who
Speaker 1: are doing similar, better, whatever than you, so you can
Speaker 1: think beyond what you know. You don't know all the things.
Speaker 1: The best thing that you can know is you don't
Speaker 1: know anything you know, like expand your capacity that way.
Speaker 1: And the third thing is expand your capacity through experiences.
Speaker 1: Nothing teaches you better than actually seeing, tasting, doing One
Speaker 1: thing I do, like once a month is I find
Speaker 1: one of the wealthiest neighborhoods around here and I drive
Speaker 1: through because it's a reminder that fifty people in this
Speaker 1: neighborhood figured out how to get themselves a five million
Speaker 1: dollar home. Sis they are smarter than you. As a teacher,
Speaker 1: one of the things you learned as a teacher is
Speaker 1: that eighty percent of the student population is of average
Speaker 1: intelligence average meaning smart, ten percent have have challenges, you know,
Speaker 1: where they really need additional assistance, and ten percent are
Speaker 1: super super smart, like geniuses. These people that live in
Speaker 1: these houses, it's to any percent. This is not Bill
Speaker 1: Gates that lives here. It's some regular deecular people. You
Speaker 1: part of the eighty You can live here too. So
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to expand my capath to be like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: let me experience that, like, Okay, they're not smarter than me,
Speaker 1: why can't I live here? Of course you can, And
Speaker 1: so experiences, um people and books are one of the
Speaker 1: greatest ways to expand your capacity. And that's the difference
Speaker 1: between where you are to the astronomical growth that's ahead
Speaker 1: of you. I love it. I love it. And you
Speaker 1: started off that response talking about something that's super important
Speaker 1: for entrepreneurs, and I was taxes, right, And you know,
Speaker 1: increasingly I see things on social that talk about how
Speaker 1: the tax code was written to incentivize entrepreneurship, business owners
Speaker 1: and employing people and growing enterprise. What I wonder is, like,
Speaker 1: is there anything missing from that conversation that's not happening
Speaker 1: far enough to where regular people, you know, maybe leaving
Speaker 1: money on the table or paying too much to Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam's like, how can we take advantage of this code
Speaker 1: if we are entrepreneurs? And if you're not planning on
Speaker 1: being an entrepreneur, but still you know, how to figure
Speaker 1: out ways to you know, hope keep some of that
Speaker 1: money to be able to deploy it towards you know,
Speaker 1: building wealth. I'll say this that if you're not an entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: there's not that much in the tax code that's to
Speaker 1: your benefit. Quite honestly, this is why you hear about
Speaker 1: the people say that, you know, the middle class is
Speaker 1: basically carrying everybody else, you know, so um, those