Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, we're back. We're black, We're brown. Ambison
Speaker 1: ambitson ambitsi ambisi. Yeah, I love something little sauce that.
Speaker 2: Hey, Mandy, Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 1: I was going good last night. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's the weather changed, but I was gonna
Speaker 1: die last night, sneezing, coughing, like I'm like, where did
Speaker 1: this come from? Out of the blue. And but I
Speaker 1: took benadoyl went to sleep and woke up my regular
Speaker 1: south So I'm feeling much better.
Speaker 2: Benandrilla, you say, interesting, it's this dry air. I feel
Speaker 2: like like the cold sucked all the humidity out of
Speaker 2: the air and it's left me.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure. I like, is it allergies? Is it?
Speaker 1: Because I don't feel all sick and that's so typically
Speaker 1: how I know it's an allergy if it's like I
Speaker 1: don't feel sick, but my eyes and my nose are
Speaker 1: saying something different, like I'm not exhausted, I'm not like
Speaker 1: worn out, but I'm like my nose was running like
Speaker 1: I was three years old. I'm like, what's happening? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's what it was. But that Bena Joe
Speaker 1: Boy Meanwhile, a superman was trying to convince me of
Speaker 1: muse and next. I'm like, Sir, can you read the label?
Speaker 1: It says coughing all the things that I didn't have.
Speaker 1: But he's just swear that musin next is a cure
Speaker 1: off and everything. I'm like, it doesn't. None of my
Speaker 1: symptoms are on the front. And he was like, you
Speaker 1: fight me on everything. He was saying, He's like, yo,
Speaker 1: every time I make a suggestion. But I'm like, but
Speaker 1: if your suggesting doesn't make sense, sir, I don't need
Speaker 1: If you said next, I'm not I'm not coughing up phlam.
Speaker 1: I don't like literally none of my things are on it.
Speaker 1: Like look at Benajo. It says sneezing, running eyes, running nose.
Speaker 1: That is me.
Speaker 2: I picture you guys in the Dwayne Read aisle having
Speaker 2: this conversation like so vividly because it's definitely been me
Speaker 2: and Husby. Is it weird that I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: talking to our listeners in the future because this show
Speaker 2: is airing after things skiff. Where will I be after
Speaker 2: Think I could be in the hospital, I could be
Speaker 2: bleary eyed, falling asleep in the recliner with like my
Speaker 2: boobs leaking, like with the Newborn. I don't know where
Speaker 2: I'm going to be in a week and a half
Speaker 2: when this show airs, but I wish myself well, hang
Speaker 2: in there, girl, hang in there.
Speaker 1: I just I wish myself well, that's hilarious.
Speaker 2: Good luck to Mandy in the future.
Speaker 1: So we we were going to tape something evergreen for
Speaker 1: y'all because I feel like when I started my business
Speaker 1: as an entrepreneur, I feel like I didn't know any
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs in real life. I mean, I knew people who
Speaker 1: were just starting like me, but I would always wonder,
Speaker 1: how did like my local small entrepreneur who wasn't like
Speaker 1: a bakery or like, you know, an accountant, how did
Speaker 1: they actually make money? And it was like this secret
Speaker 1: And I would ask people because I'm pretty transparent, and
Speaker 1: they would skirt around the question, and I'm like, so,
Speaker 1: because I'd be curious. How if I see someone online,
Speaker 1: I'm like, hmmm, she has a you know whatever, like
Speaker 1: a she's a travel influencer, but how does she actually
Speaker 1: make money? And I found that people didn't want to share.
Speaker 1: Maybe they weren't making money. I don't know. But we
Speaker 1: figured we do a show where I pulled back the
Speaker 1: curtain of ten years worth of work that I've done
Speaker 1: as the Budgetnista, and how I made money in the beginning,
Speaker 1: middle and where I am now and how we make money.
Speaker 1: And I'll share some numbers with you. I'm honestly super
Speaker 1: open about, you know, like how much I make and
Speaker 1: what makes a lot and you know what's different now
Speaker 1: than before. So man's going to be her journalist self.
Speaker 1: Ask me some questions and I'm excited to share.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mandy Carrick in the house. I'm excited to get
Speaker 2: to grill you. Because also one of my biggest pet
Speaker 2: pieces as a writer all these years talking to like
Speaker 2: Tiffany and I met because I did a story on
Speaker 2: her when I was a reporter at Business Insider, you know,
Speaker 2: a long time ago, like twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: I found her website, the budget Nista. I wanted to
Speaker 2: find at the time, I was writing about a lot
Speaker 2: of these personal finance personalities who had emerged after the recession,
Speaker 2: and we're offering guidance to people who were struggle to recover.
Speaker 2: And you know, I figured these people must be making
Speaker 2: money somehow. But one of my pet peeves is that
Speaker 2: you would have people kind of like positioning themselves as
Speaker 2: if they've mastered their finances and gotten out of debt
Speaker 2: and they're kind of turning around and making money off
Speaker 2: selling that story from like blog posts and stuff and anyway,
Speaker 2: sometimes people just wouldn't be very transparent and I and
Speaker 2: one of the things I liked about Tiffany is she
Speaker 2: was always sort of upfront, like, you know, here's my
Speaker 2: business model. And it wasn't just about selling people a dream.
Speaker 2: It was it was about you know, creating a like
Speaker 2: a lasting product or products, or diversifying income streams so
Speaker 2: that she's giving value to people but also building a
Speaker 2: business and sustaining it for herself, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean obviously admire Tiffany a lot. And
Speaker 2: uh and I'm so yeah, thank you for opening up,
Speaker 2: because I feel like other people who want to How
Speaker 2: many people when we ask them for the wildest dreams
Speaker 2: responded to us. I want to be a I want
Speaker 2: to be an influencer. I want to do I want
Speaker 2: to have speak. I want to be a speaker. These
Speaker 2: are the types of jobs or types of businesses that
Speaker 2: are I think most difficult for people to figure out
Speaker 2: how do you make a living off of that? And
Speaker 2: how do you make it work? So let's get to
Speaker 2: at Tiffany. So take us back to when you first
Speaker 2: because I know it took you a while before Budget
Speaker 2: Needs to made money. Yes, while what was one of
Speaker 2: the first like aha moments for you where you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I can make income off of this, and then you
Speaker 2: just were like you went for it with the business?
Speaker 1: I would say, so two thousand and eight, I actually
Speaker 1: registered the business, the Budget Needs Tom, because I my assumption,
Speaker 1: I was still teaching then and it wasn't to me
Speaker 1: it wasn't going to be a business. It was just
Speaker 1: going to be an avenue for me to volunteer. So
Speaker 1: the Budget Needs was meant to be a nonprofit because
Speaker 1: I really believe like living a life of service and
Speaker 1: I love teaching. So I was like, oh, and I
Speaker 1: found myself doing a lot of volunteer work with kids
Speaker 1: outside of you know, teaching day teaching, preschool. But I
Speaker 1: wanted a fun name, and so that's when my sister
Speaker 1: le So told me that I was not the Fashion Lissa, indeed,
Speaker 1: though I could be the Budget Lisa. And so that's
Speaker 1: how that name started, and that was the original intent
Speaker 1: behind the budget Lisa to be a nonprofit. Then two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine happened and I lost my job along
Speaker 1: a ton of other people. And even then I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, so what do I do with
Speaker 1: this thing that I was using to volunteer? So I
Speaker 1: told myself, I'm going to continue to volunteer, but ramp up.
Speaker 1: And in that year, I was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what did I want to do with my life. I
Speaker 1: told myself I didn't want to be a teacher anymore.
Speaker 1: I was tired of the administration, not the kids, because
Speaker 1: they were awesome, And so I was trying I thought
Speaker 1: maybe I'd be an event planner. I was trying out
Speaker 1: all these different hats while still volunteering and teaching financial education.
Speaker 1: And everywhere that i'd volunteer in a different capacity, I
Speaker 1: would find myself teaching financial education anyway, like the janitor,
Speaker 1: the principal. Wherever I was, someone would ask me money
Speaker 1: questions and I would light up and teach it. So
Speaker 1: all two thousand and nine I was just volunteering, and
Speaker 1: I was living off unemployment. I think by then I
Speaker 1: had moved back home with my parents. I mean I
Speaker 1: rented out my condo that I bought when I was
Speaker 1: twenty five, and then at the end of two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, like I knew my unemployment wasn't going to
Speaker 1: last that much longer, and I think I helped a friend,
Speaker 1: then a friend of a friend, and then somehow a
Speaker 1: friend of a friend of a friend like messaged me
Speaker 1: and said could I help them? And how much did
Speaker 1: I cost? That was the aha moment, I would say,
Speaker 1: probably the beginning of twenty ten, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't cost anything.
Speaker 2: And I remember she wanted you to like coach her
Speaker 2: personally like a person, like a money coach, and pay you.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't even Yeah, I couldn't even write my
Speaker 1: mind around it because I didn't I wasn't thinking of
Speaker 1: the budget lista that way. It was just an avenue
Speaker 1: for me to volunteer while I was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out in this stage in my life, what did I
Speaker 1: want to do now that I knew I didn't want
Speaker 1: to go back to the classroom. By then, I had
Speaker 1: my master's in education, and I'm like, I know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a principal. That was what that
Speaker 1: master's was for. But I was like, yeah, that sucks.
Speaker 1: And so when that happened, it was the first time
Speaker 1: I thought someone would pay me for that, because it
Speaker 1: didn't even cross my mind, honestly, Mandy, that someone would
Speaker 1: pay me to sit down, because by then I was
Speaker 1: just doing friends like, girl, your budget is a mess.
Speaker 1: Look at this, let's write this down. And so when
Speaker 1: she asked that, I remember I told Drina and I said, girl,
Speaker 1: you know such a such friend of a friend asked
Speaker 1: me how much did that cost to like help her
Speaker 1: with her budget? Look her, I don't do that. She's like,
Speaker 1: you do Tiferty every weekend, you're helping someone. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't cost anything. And she's like, do you
Speaker 1: have money? I said no. She said, then you should
Speaker 1: cost something, and I remember not knowing what to charge
Speaker 1: because how do you know? And so I think I
Speaker 1: think at the time, I called my friend Veronica, who
Speaker 1: was doing like consulting work. She was like, the only
Speaker 1: one I knew that was even remotely in that arena.
Speaker 1: She did consulting work, but for like marketing or something
Speaker 1: like that, and she was like, you should charge one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars an hour, and I was like,
Speaker 1: that seems like a lot of money, you know. But
Speaker 1: and so I think I was like, it'll be one
Speaker 1: hundred dollars for me to sit down with you, no
Speaker 1: matter how long it would take, and it would be
Speaker 1: like seventy five if we did it on the phone,
Speaker 1: versus like me coming to you. So the first time
Speaker 1: I went and sat down with someone, we it was
Speaker 1: like three hours. So and then at the end she
Speaker 1: was like me while her kids were in the house,
Speaker 1: she was a single mom.
Speaker 2: Andre calls, that's so funny.
Speaker 1: I was. And then it turned out when we did
Speaker 1: her budget together, she was like negative five hundred bucks
Speaker 1: a month. So I'm looking at her, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the kids. I'm like, this girl does not have a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to pay me. And so she was getting
Speaker 1: ready to pay me, and in good conscience, I couldn't
Speaker 1: take it because I'd seen her money and it wasn't
Speaker 1: like she was like twenty five, she'll be fine. I'm
Speaker 1: looking like the kids. She's here by herself, she's trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out. I just couldn't stomach it. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, you know, I don't even worry
Speaker 1: about it. She's like, no, Tiffany, you helped so much.
Speaker 1: I'm like, here, girl, but your budget you don't have it,
Speaker 1: you know, I just you don't have it. And that
Speaker 1: happened a number of times before I said okay this.
Speaker 1: I was still on un appoyment. But I knew that
Speaker 1: business model was not going to work because it wasn't
Speaker 1: in alignment with how I wanted to help people. Because
Speaker 1: I get it. I mean, people will tell you like, well,
Speaker 1: people will buy Jordans, they should pay you. Maybe so,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing like coming to I went home and
Speaker 1: meeting their family and looking at the numbers, and the
Speaker 1: numbers honestly say it's not there, and then you're taking
Speaker 1: from them anyway. I couldn't stomach it. So I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do any more one on one,
Speaker 1: but there has to be a better way than this
Speaker 1: one on one thing. And I had a mentor at
Speaker 1: the time. Her name was Christine, and she had some
Speaker 1: million dollar company and I told her, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what do you think I should do? She said, well,
Speaker 1: you need to get contracts. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what does that mean. She was like, you have to
Speaker 1: get someone to pay you to do the thing you
Speaker 1: want to do. And I was like, okay, good, and
Speaker 1: she's like, well, I got to go. And I was like, wait, Christine,
Speaker 1: I need more. And that's what she That's literally all
Speaker 1: she said.
Speaker 2: You just have like a note card with contracts written
Speaker 2: on it, contracts exclamation for it.
Speaker 1: And I was like And by then I think I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I didn't want to live with
Speaker 1: my parents anymore. I think by then I was sleeping
Speaker 1: on my sister Tracy's couch, so I would say by
Speaker 1: then I probably was a It was probably two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven, I guess, so I think I was like
Speaker 1: thirty or thirty one by then, so really living it
Speaker 1: up on my sister's couch. And I remember like writing
Speaker 1: down contracts and trying to figure out so who could
Speaker 1: I go to for contracts, and being so frustrated because
Speaker 1: I was like, yo, like it's been two years. I'm
Speaker 1: broker now at age thirty thirty one that I was
Speaker 1: at age sixteen. Like unemployment's going to run out in
Speaker 1: another six months. I don't know what to do, Like
Speaker 1: I'm my condo, I'm losing it because although I'm getting
Speaker 1: rent for it, it wasn't covering my mortgage. My mortgage
Speaker 1: was sixteen sixteen, my rent was twelve hundred. I didn't
Speaker 1: have the four hundred bucks to cover it. Everything was
Speaker 1: falling apart, and I just remember thinking like, it doesn't
Speaker 1: literally get much worse than this, but it did so
Speaker 1: so I for a while long time I didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do about that contract situation, and I literally
Speaker 1: was just living off unemployment until finally I thought to myself, Okay,
Speaker 1: let me list all of the resources I do have
Speaker 1: available to me, and which were very minimal. But one
Speaker 1: thing I remember thinking was I do have emails, because
Speaker 1: when I would volunteer, you know typically you know, they
Speaker 1: contact you via email or you sign up for some
Speaker 1: email list. And I said, well, I'm going to email
Speaker 1: everyone that I've gotten their email from from the last year,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna say, hey, it's me, Tiffany, that I
Speaker 1: did this volunteer work for you. I teach financial education
Speaker 1: and I would love to do that for your organization.
Speaker 1: So I emailed probably was like fifty emails that I
Speaker 1: had and one person email back. Catherine Wilson's community developer
Speaker 1: for the United Way. It was like her week, her
Speaker 1: first week in that position, and she was like, Amy,
Speaker 1: who you emailed or Brooke, who you email no longer
Speaker 1: works here, and I was like, uh, what can I
Speaker 1: meet you? I literally wrote that back, can I meet you?
Speaker 1: And she was like sure. So the next day or
Speaker 1: that week I went to meet Catherine and it was
Speaker 1: perfect timing because she had just gotten this role of
Speaker 1: her job was to get to grow. I guess, like
Speaker 1: like classes or whatever. The United Way wasn't really known
Speaker 1: for much in Newark, because she was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how do we develop a better relationship with the
Speaker 1: community and how do we like what in what ways
Speaker 1: can we serve the community. So when I met her,
Speaker 1: we hit it. We're still I just had lunch with her,
Speaker 1: like a week ago, We're still like really good friends.
Speaker 1: This day we hit it off. She's the same age
Speaker 1: as me, and we were just like laughing and giggling
Speaker 1: and like, as I was running out of the house,
Speaker 1: I brought my book. I'd written this book, the one
Speaker 1: Week Budget, but I wrote it when I was teaching
Speaker 1: preschool because even then I was helping my friends and
Speaker 1: I actually wrote it like in an actual notebook. So
Speaker 1: my friends who would ask me to help them with
Speaker 1: their budget, I would bring this notebook with me and
Speaker 1: during my unemployment. I said, you know, I should, I
Speaker 1: should make this notebook into an actual book, and so
Speaker 1: I self published through what was then called create Space.
Speaker 1: It was Amazon's self publishing arm. So I had this
Speaker 1: book that had written that no one bought except for
Speaker 1: my friends the first month and it was like languishing.
Speaker 1: So I had a bunch of copies in the house
Speaker 1: and I said, let me bring this with me. So
Speaker 1: as we were talking, she opened up about her financial struggles,
Speaker 1: and so I ended up giving her session because we
Speaker 1: just had such a good time and she was like,
Speaker 1: that was amazing. Do you think that you could do
Speaker 1: this for my staff? I was like, yeah, you think
Speaker 1: you could prepay? Kidding but not really kidding. Can you
Speaker 1: prepay it? And she was like sure? So she wrote
Speaker 1: me a check. I think it was I want to
Speaker 1: say she said three hundred or five hundred dollars something
Speaker 1: like that. Something within that.
Speaker 2: Did she ask you how much would you charge to
Speaker 2: teach the staff?
Speaker 1: No, she just said like with three or like I
Speaker 1: didn't even know. So she just said would whatever it was,
Speaker 1: like three or five hundred dollar? Would that be enough?
Speaker 1: And I said sure? Because I had no concept of
Speaker 1: what I should charge, and.
Speaker 2: You weren't like how many people, how long, how much time?
Speaker 1: But I was at the end of mine because I
Speaker 1: was like, unemployment runs down in like a month. I
Speaker 1: have no money. So whatever she could have said, fifty bucks,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, I'll be there. And so she just,
Speaker 1: you know, she offered up that amount. She likely probably
Speaker 1: did ask me and I probably said honestly, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and she probably you know, like I said, she said,
Speaker 1: I think it was like five hundred dollars, and I said, okay,
Speaker 1: and yes, it was around five hundred because a week before,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, Dessa, was living in this room.
Speaker 1: She had a whole house downtown Newark, a woman who
Speaker 1: was renting out each room in this whole, big, beautiful house.
Speaker 1: And I'd met Dessa while volunteering and she was really nice,
Speaker 1: and she told me, Hey, the house I'm living in
Speaker 1: is empty. I only rent a room, but I'm afraid
Speaker 1: that she's going to rent it out to random strangers
Speaker 1: if you're looking for a place to stay. Each room
Speaker 1: was five hundred buck, but I didn't really have five
Speaker 1: hundred bucks. But I remember with this contract with Katherine,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this is my five hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: So I came and I taught the lesson. Like one
Speaker 1: thing I am, like, I'm not good at a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, but one thing I am really good at
Speaker 1: is teaching. And so I brought my A plus plus game.
Speaker 1: I went to t TV Bank and stole all those pens.
Speaker 1: When I stole just you know, took them all those pens.
Speaker 1: I went to the dollar store and got all these folders.
Speaker 1: I brought my book, the one week budget for each person,
Speaker 1: and like I printed out. I had my friends who
Speaker 1: worked in corporate to print out all my handouts, and
Speaker 1: I taught my little heart out during their lunch and
Speaker 1: learn and it went really well, so much so that
Speaker 1: people in the company that were not there that day
Speaker 1: told Katherine that's not fair, we missed out. Can you
Speaker 1: bring her back? So she called me and said can
Speaker 1: you come back next week? And I was like, yes, oh,
Speaker 1: now I have two months rent.
Speaker 2: So were you depositing this check into Tiffany's budget like
Speaker 2: you're checking account or did you have the business set
Speaker 2: up already?
Speaker 1: I did not have business set It was just Tiffany,
Speaker 1: like it wasn't. It took me like four years to
Speaker 1: have like any sort of real business. So this was
Speaker 1: just mouth. I was like, woo, fata do The first
Speaker 1: two years I didn't even pay taxes, and so Carlos
Speaker 1: was like, do you want to go to jail? Carlos's
Speaker 1: my accountant. He caught me at shop right because I
Speaker 1: was avoiding him, and so like, honestly it was hand
Speaker 1: of mouth. I was like, as soon as I got
Speaker 1: a check, it paid for something, and it was just tiffany.
Speaker 1: Everyone just paid Tiffany. I would say, for the first
Speaker 1: three or four years of business, I was not conducting
Speaker 1: business like a business owner. I was conducting business as
Speaker 1: just myself. Even though I had like my business registered,
Speaker 1: I wasn't, you know, like I didn't know anything about
Speaker 1: really running a business. So I did that. I you know,
Speaker 1: I talked there. I did the second round, and she
Speaker 1: was like, that's so good. Can you do this for
Speaker 1: the community that we have a financial education program called
Speaker 1: the IDA program, the Individual Development Account Program. A bank
Speaker 1: gives us money and people have to take classes and
Speaker 1: then we give them money for a house, education or
Speaker 1: a health or a business. And it was like a
Speaker 1: four to one match up to two thousand dollars. But
Speaker 1: she's like, people are not coming to take the class
Speaker 1: because they're boring, but you're fun. So if you taught
Speaker 1: the class, we could give away this money the bank
Speaker 1: has given us to people. And I said, okay, so
Speaker 1: the first class, she said, well, how long is your series?
Speaker 1: And when I tell you I made it up. I
Speaker 1: said six weeks. But you know, like she wanted to know,
Speaker 1: like the series of classes that I magically supposedly taught prior.
Speaker 1: But she kind of knew because she gave me like
Speaker 1: this booklet. Was like, okay, here's a book of like
Speaker 1: a real class, just mirror it to this. But one
Speaker 1: thing I am good at is writing curriculum, and like
Speaker 1: I said, teaching. So I told her six weeks, and
Speaker 1: I developed a six week program. But I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to do a proposal, so I tweeted help, I
Speaker 1: need help with a proposal. A woman named Michelle Thomas,
Speaker 1: I'll never forget, had seen all the volunteer work I did.
Speaker 1: I didn't know at the time. She was the communications
Speaker 1: director for the City of Newark. She was just a
Speaker 1: woman on Twitter that we would tweet like back and forth,
Speaker 1: back when Twitter was really localized. And so I gave
Speaker 1: her all of my stuff Michelle Thomas, and she put
Speaker 1: it in a proposal form and when I tell you,
Speaker 1: I still use that proposal to this day. It has
Speaker 1: made me hundreds of thousands of dollars and I give
Speaker 1: it away to people all the time because it was
Speaker 1: so great and.
Speaker 2: So that's so funny.
Speaker 1: I know came back. I literally tweeted help, but because
Speaker 1: back then I used to also tweet all of my
Speaker 1: volunteer stuff to ask if anybody wanted to come with me.
Speaker 1: So she saw what I was doing in the community
Speaker 1: and was like, I see how much service you've been
Speaker 1: doing over the last few years in the community of
Speaker 1: Newark where I live, and I would love to be
Speaker 1: of service back to you. And so I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was nice, and she gave me that proposal. I
Speaker 1: gave it to Catherine and I got it. I think
Speaker 1: they were paying me that was what it was, three
Speaker 1: hundred bucks a class, So what was I eighteen hundred dollars?
Speaker 1: And that was amazing because I was like, Okay, now
Speaker 1: we're in business. Finally that contract that Christine, my mentor,
Speaker 1: told me, and so I started with the Unato way
Speaker 1: doing these cohorts and the first one, I think only
Speaker 1: five people showed up because the Unati Way did all
Speaker 1: the marketing. So this is when I learned how to market.
Speaker 1: And so I thought to myself, if not enough people come,
Speaker 1: they're not going to hire me back to teach five people.
Speaker 1: So I asked her, can I share these classes online
Speaker 1: on social media? At the time, it was just Twitter
Speaker 1: and Facebook.
Speaker 2: And were you calling yourself the budget Neista yet?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Kind of. I mean the business was because you know,
Speaker 1: I had the Budgetisa the name since two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't really doing much with it, I would
Speaker 1: say by two thousand and eleven twenty twelve. Then I
Speaker 1: started to really lean into it because I think I
Speaker 1: even changed my name on Facebook to Tiffany the Budget
Speaker 1: Nista Alecha, because I wanted people because because I started
Speaker 1: to advertise the classes with the Unadded Way, and I
Speaker 1: wanted people to know, like, hey, this is what I do.
Speaker 2: And so I want to leave people on the cliffhanger.
Speaker 2: So you're going to figure out how to market your
Speaker 2: own business yourself? And what year is this again?
Speaker 1: This is about two thousand eleven twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: All right, so Facebook ads were a thing probably at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Well maybe, but I wasn't using Facebook ads at all.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, let's take a quick break and then we're
Speaker 2: going to come back and figure out how you started
Speaker 2: to market your brand, because I feel like that is
Speaker 2: one of the earliest things that entrepreneurs have to learn
Speaker 2: how to do themselves, because you don't have money to
Speaker 2: like high Affirm right Affirm to do that for you yet.
Speaker 2: All right, okay, so quick break, we'll come back with
Speaker 2: more of how the budget needs to makes her money
Speaker 2: loving it and we're back. Okay, So tell us when
Speaker 2: you first decided I need to take my own marketing
Speaker 2: into my own hands. How do you do that when
Speaker 2: you don't quite have money to hire people?
Speaker 1: So what I learned from volunteering was that if I
Speaker 1: wanted people to come out, I had I had to
Speaker 1: basically show like, hey, I'm doing this today, would you
Speaker 1: want to come? So I said, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: do that, but for this for to come to my
Speaker 1: class at the United Way. So I had already taken
Speaker 1: a lot of pictures from that first cohort, so I
Speaker 1: would use those pictures to say, Hey, teaching a financial
Speaker 1: education class at the United Way. Space is limited, if
Speaker 1: you'd like to come register here, like I send them
Speaker 1: to wherever it was that the United Way they had
Speaker 1: to go, and people started to really respond. So I
Speaker 1: think the second cohort we had like you know, maybe
Speaker 1: like ten to fifteen people, and I learned that. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I learned to start to market in the moment. So
Speaker 1: right before class foks, I would always get there like
Speaker 1: an hour early, and I would set up the room
Speaker 1: and look really nice, and I would take a picture
Speaker 1: and say, can't wait to teach class tonight. If you're
Speaker 1: interested in the next cohort, go here. So that's how
Speaker 1: I really started to market. Basically, my marketing is just
Speaker 1: to show what I'm actually doing. They give you the
Speaker 1: opportunity to participate, so that's what I would just do
Speaker 1: time and time again. And before long, you know, like
Speaker 1: class went from five people to fifteen to twenty to fifty,
Speaker 1: so we had to get another room. Had one hundred
Speaker 1: people signed up once and it was great.
Speaker 2: But you weren't getting paid more per head, right, No,
Speaker 2: I wasn't. You were just established that you were a
Speaker 2: draw exactly.
Speaker 1: But I also too, honestly, for me, I wanted classes
Speaker 1: to continue because I wanted the another way to see
Speaker 1: value in what I was doing so they could continue
Speaker 1: to pay me, and it was a great for me.
Speaker 1: It was a perfect business model for what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do, which is I wanted to help as many
Speaker 1: people as possible without being a financial burden all those people.
Speaker 1: So it's perfect because the United Way pays me and
Speaker 1: I can help as many people as this room can fit.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't really thinking about it like, as I
Speaker 1: should be getting paid more and there's more people here.
Speaker 1: I didn't care about that. Honestly. I wanted obviously to
Speaker 1: be paid, but I also really wanted to serve and
Speaker 1: it allowed me to do both. So that was that
Speaker 1: business model, which was get someone an entity to pay
Speaker 1: you to do the good deeds. That was like a
Speaker 1: perfect business model for me starting.
Speaker 2: So it started with the United Way. And when did
Speaker 2: you start adding other companies and how long did you
Speaker 2: take that business model?
Speaker 1: So yu anyway, I said, I did the United Way
Speaker 1: for about three years. But in doing the United Way
Speaker 1: and in like advertising for the United Way, there was
Speaker 1: like this secondary bonus and that people who didn't live
Speaker 1: in Jersey started to see what I was doing because
Speaker 1: people would be posting there or like people in class
Speaker 1: would post, and so people started to ask me, how
Speaker 1: can you come do this where we are? You know,
Speaker 1: can you come to Philadelphia? Can't come to most people
Speaker 1: didn't have money, so I was like no. But it
Speaker 1: started to grow the brand outside of New Jersey, and
Speaker 1: I didn't realize what a strong name the United Way had,
Speaker 1: just like globally, because once I did the United Way,
Speaker 1: then colleges started to reach out and other organizations in
Speaker 1: Jersey started to reach out because they were like, well,
Speaker 1: if you've been vetted by the United Way, come speak
Speaker 1: at Rutgers, come speak at Princeton. And I found that
Speaker 1: colleges were a great place to make money because typically
Speaker 1: it was like a kid that So the way colleges
Speaker 1: work is that the money is disseminated in the beginning
Speaker 1: of the year to all the like fraternity sororities and
Speaker 1: and stuff. So all the vetting is done in the
Speaker 1: beginning and then they give them money to these different
Speaker 1: clubs and it's like a seventeen eighteen year old kid
Speaker 1: who was making the final decision because the red tape
Speaker 1: has already been done. And so if you can connect
Speaker 1: with the student body president, and that's what my first
Speaker 1: college was keen because a friend of mine, his brother
Speaker 1: was like vice president of student body, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: the student body, and so they paid me seventeen hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: which I almost fanted because I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: to come speak because they they had the budget. So
Speaker 1: that happened as a result of all the social posting
Speaker 1: just really helped to establish me as someone who does this.
Speaker 2: And was that your first paid to speak gig apart
Speaker 2: from the classes.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was my first like standing up in front
Speaker 1: of the audience, although I had landed one before, but
Speaker 1: I lost it, Hucha. It was a nursing home, was
Speaker 1: a nursing home something to that effect, and they were
Speaker 1: going to pay me I think like six hundred bucks,
Speaker 1: and stupid me went to Twitter was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: nursing home just hired me and they're paying me doctor rate.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine? I tweeted, I tell you Mandy. Within
Speaker 1: thirty minutes I had got an email. Yeah we no longer.
Speaker 1: No longer. I would have won. It was well I
Speaker 1: tell you up below. But it was such a valuable
Speaker 1: lesson to learn in the beginning. And I wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to brag. I just couldn't believe someone agreed to pay me.
Speaker 1: I forget how much it was, but to me, it
Speaker 1: was so significant and I wanted to share the good
Speaker 1: news I'm talking about they paid me doctor rates. To
Speaker 1: hear the woman on the phone read back my tweet
Speaker 1: to me that was set to corporate, I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's me, I still like and it was a sister
Speaker 1: girl and she was like, girl, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: And I was like, so, then do I want me
Speaker 1: to come in? She's like, no, because they're afraid that,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna, like, you know, we like the nursing
Speaker 1: home or wherever facility. She's like, were you know, we
Speaker 1: have privacy like clauses and you've already like violated one
Speaker 1: of them basically, And so unfortunately, no, we have to
Speaker 1: rescind our invite. And I was crushed, but you know what,
Speaker 1: it was a valuable lesson learned. And then and then
Speaker 1: King Keen came calling and so, but one of the
Speaker 1: things I was consistent. I don't do this as much now,
Speaker 1: but one of the things I was really consistent was
Speaker 1: at work. Whenever I spoke volunteer or otherwise, I would
Speaker 1: always get at least one picture and then I would
Speaker 1: share what I was doing and say, if you want
Speaker 1: the same from me, contact me here. So this is
Speaker 1: like a like if you're first starting out, you have
Speaker 1: to your social media is another form of your resume.
Speaker 1: And so if I want people to know that I'm
Speaker 1: available to speak at your women's group, your church group, whatever,
Speaker 1: I'd be very clear. Just spoke at Bethel Baptist today,
Speaker 1: taught the congregation or the women's group about budgeting and saving.
Speaker 1: It was so awesome and then you would see the
Speaker 1: picture of all of us smiling, if you want me
Speaker 1: to do this at your church. So I was teaching
Speaker 1: the people who were following me or watching me how
Speaker 1: to hire me. And then I found this on site
Speaker 1: called woolfu wufoo that was like such a godsend because
Speaker 1: a free it's a free contact me form. So you
Speaker 1: can go to wool fool, fill it out and create
Speaker 1: a contact me form and woofoo will give you a link.
Speaker 1: So what I found was the less work someone had
Speaker 1: to do, the easier it was for them to contact me.
Speaker 1: So I would say contact me here instead of having
Speaker 1: them contact me via email. It would be the link
Speaker 1: to my rufu contact form that went to my email.
Speaker 1: It's so much easier for someone to click a button,
Speaker 1: type in their message and it gets sent to you
Speaker 1: than it is for them to remember your email, type
Speaker 1: it in and send you an email. And so that
Speaker 1: helped significantly. And I did that every single time I
Speaker 1: spoke somewhere, you know, so excited to speak here. This
Speaker 1: is exactly what I did. I can do this for
Speaker 1: your organization, and without fail, every time I posted I
Speaker 1: would get at least one or two inquiries, even if
Speaker 1: they didn't hire me, just people who were interested in
Speaker 1: learning more. So that's like just a great way to start.
Speaker 1: And then from there I was like, okay, so there
Speaker 1: has to be It took me along. There was a
Speaker 1: gap between me doing classes and figuring out what the
Speaker 1: next model was for earning money. But in the meantime
Speaker 1: I started something called the Live Rich Your Challenge I
Speaker 1: want to say two thousand and fifteen. And that came
Speaker 1: about because people who couldn't come to Newark for my
Speaker 1: United Way classes started asking me I want to take
Speaker 1: those classes and I was like, well, I don't you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not in Pennsylvania. I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: So I thought, you know what, what if I take
Speaker 1: these United Way this cohort, and I bring it online.
Speaker 1: And so that's how the Literature Challenge started. The first one,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be only one. It was the
Speaker 1: six week course I taught at the United Way, but
Speaker 1: I made it five weeks and I put it online
Speaker 1: and I gave it away for free, and everyone, all
Speaker 1: my business friends, all my finance friends, said I was
Speaker 1: stupid because they're like tivity again, I gotta make any
Speaker 1: money off the Liverature Challenge, but I really wanted to. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I really driven by being like living a life of service.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I don't charge the people in
Speaker 1: class at the United Way to take these classes, so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to charge online. So I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: well maybe I can get sponsorships. So I did reach
Speaker 1: out to some brands, and I think Crudential at the
Speaker 1: very end end of giving me a little bit of money,
Speaker 1: I came out of pocket for the Liverature Challenge. Don't
Speaker 1: ask me where I found this money. It took me
Speaker 1: a year to build it and it cost me about
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars, which is crazy because I didn't have
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars. But I was determined to build this thing.
Speaker 1: I reached out to some of your fath media outlets.
Speaker 1: I reached out to some of your faith financial brands
Speaker 1: and asked them if they could help subsidize paying for
Speaker 1: me creating the Live Ritual Challenge and then you know,
Speaker 1: we could you know, both of our names could be
Speaker 1: on it and we can help as many people as possible.
Speaker 1: Every single one of them said no, every single some
Speaker 1: of these brands that purport to helping black women, they
Speaker 1: all were not interested. And I remember being.
Speaker 2: Sorry, take me back, because we went from so you've
Speaker 2: you've gotten your first speaking gig or like you're starting
Speaker 2: to speak, and then you also have the idea to
Speaker 2: take the course that you have and put it online, right,
Speaker 2: but like you don't have do you have a website yet?
Speaker 2: I mean, was a ten thousand dollars spent on basically
Speaker 2: investing in building out the course online?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It was. So what happened was it would be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I want to do the Live Ritual Challenge, but
Speaker 1: I don't only have any money, so I spent bit
Speaker 1: by bit. I remember I said I need a logo,
Speaker 1: so I paid for that which I did not but
Speaker 1: need a logo, but I paid for the logo, and
Speaker 1: then I was like, okay, I need Literature Challenge dot com.
Speaker 1: So I paid someone to make the site for me,
Speaker 1: but it looked terrible. So I ended up using Squarespace
Speaker 1: and building my own, but that was money lost, you know.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, okay, I have to figure
Speaker 1: out how do why Because I'm not super tech savvy,
Speaker 1: I have to figure out how do I how do
Speaker 1: I get people to sign up? So I signed up
Speaker 1: for like I think it was like I think I
Speaker 1: was using mad Meme at the time. It's like a
Speaker 1: It's like one of those email platforms. So I had
Speaker 1: to pay for that where people can go to Literature
Speaker 1: Challenge dot com put in their name and email and
Speaker 1: they would get an email about when it was going
Speaker 1: to start. But that was how I was going to communicate.
Speaker 1: Then I had to build a blog. I paid somebody
Speaker 1: for that. They did a terrible job, so I ended
Speaker 1: up I think most of the money came from paying
Speaker 1: someone to do the platform, but it wasn't right. So
Speaker 1: then I ended up figuring out WordPress myself and building
Speaker 1: because that's why I was going to house the the
Speaker 1: daily task for the literature challenge, or didn't.
Speaker 2: You get the funds because like if you're were you
Speaker 2: were you consistently speaking and getting income that way? Or
Speaker 2: were you like living off of your savings? I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm mixed.
Speaker 1: So some of the funds were speaking. I would started
Speaker 1: to pick up speaking more. I still was working at
Speaker 1: the United Way. And then what happened even though my
Speaker 1: unemployment ran Now I would say the majority of the
Speaker 1: funds were the bank that owned my condo or yeah,
Speaker 1: the bank that owned my condo refused to take stop
Speaker 1: taking money from me because they're like, if you can't
Speaker 1: pay the full sixteen sixty, we don't want your twelve hundred.
Speaker 1: And I was like that doesn't make sense, Like what
Speaker 1: so guess who did want that twelve hundred? Me? So
Speaker 1: that's I was living off that too. So it was
Speaker 1: a mix between speaking, I was babysitting, I was tutoring,
Speaker 1: and the money from from from my condo the rent
Speaker 1: for my condo because the bank wouldn't take it. So
Speaker 1: it was like a hodgepodge of like like little and
Speaker 1: plus my life. I was spending next to nothing on
Speaker 1: my life. I had deferred all my loans. My rent
Speaker 1: was five hundred. The car that I was driving, I
Speaker 1: had already bought it when I was in my twenty
Speaker 1: It was paid off. I bought a cash for like
Speaker 1: five thousand bucks, so I had really low personal overhead
Speaker 1: because I didn't, you know, I didn't really have money.
Speaker 1: Many bills and five hundred dollars included everything where I
Speaker 1: was living in. It included lights, electricity. We were right
Speaker 1: next to the library and Newark, so I got the
Speaker 1: Internet for free. So basically all of my extra money
Speaker 1: was going into building this Liverature challenge. And I can't
Speaker 1: tell you why I was so adamant about building it.
Speaker 1: Something said that if I build this, this is going
Speaker 1: to change the trajectory of the budgetista. I couldn't put
Speaker 1: my finger on it, but I was adamant about building it.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't ten thousand altogether. It was over a
Speaker 1: year's span, so like one thousand dollars for this, fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred for that logo, you know, two thousand for the website.
Speaker 1: So it was like all of these like it wasn't
Speaker 1: until I didn't even know I was spending that much
Speaker 1: because it didn't seem like that much. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: the end of the year when I met with my
Speaker 1: accountant that we added up how much I spent and
Speaker 1: I was like what. But thankfully Credential they came in
Speaker 1: at the last minute to become a sponsor and gave
Speaker 1: me about half that money back. So and I didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about affiliates or anything. None of that was
Speaker 1: in the challenge. The first one was just a It
Speaker 1: was just I'm just going to do it, and I
Speaker 1: think we had My goal was ten thousand women, and
Speaker 1: by January of twenty I think fifteen, we had ten
Speaker 1: thousand women signed up and we did the challenge and
Speaker 1: it became magical. Like the challenge changed everything for me
Speaker 1: because one it started to really build my audience. I
Speaker 1: went from maybe like fifteen hundred people following me to
Speaker 1: ten thousand. Now.
Speaker 2: I remember covering the Literature Challenge at Yahoo Finance.
Speaker 1: Yes, I remember we did. I came in that you
Speaker 1: did a video with.
Speaker 2: You and I remember being like, Tiffany's a budgetizza, She's
Speaker 2: got this business. She's like, I didn't realize. I mean,
Speaker 2: I knew it was the first time you were doing it,
Speaker 2: but something about the way you like presented yourself and
Speaker 2: like for all like hearing it back now, like how
Speaker 2: bootstrapped it was and how you were sort of like
Speaker 2: cobbling it together. It didn't seem that way to me.
Speaker 2: You were on the free you are like the front
Speaker 2: page of Yahoo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I'm not why at that time, So.
Speaker 2: Find yourself a sucker like me. No, I'm kidding, No, Actually.
Speaker 1: At that time, I just because I felt really strongly
Speaker 1: about it, like I even though I was doing literally
Speaker 1: I had no help. It was myself, and I think
Speaker 1: I had an intern tailor at the time, tailor, you know, talent.
Speaker 1: She was like interning with me at the time, but
Speaker 1: I had, like, honestly like it. That first challenge nearly
Speaker 1: broke me because it was so much work. I was
Speaker 1: literally working for like months and months and months. I
Speaker 1: was working like, you know, ten to fifteen hour days
Speaker 1: NonStop because I was doing everything. But I was so
Speaker 1: passionate that this is really going to help save people
Speaker 1: and it wasn't free.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that is why, like the value. I know,
Speaker 2: people were telling you you're crazy for making it free
Speaker 2: to start with, But that's the reason I covered it
Speaker 2: is because it was post recession and there were like
Speaker 2: the people that you were helping were the people that
Speaker 2: no financial planning company or investment firm was going to
Speaker 2: take time to help, and you were offering the service
Speaker 2: for free, which was so unusual, but it was exactly
Speaker 2: what people were constantly asking for you, Like I'm a
Speaker 2: single mom with no additional income. How do I save money?
Speaker 2: You know, like I've got student loan debt coming out
Speaker 2: of my eyeballs, I can't afford a planner. What do
Speaker 2: I do? And there was never a good answer, but
Speaker 2: like this was actually an answer you could give people
Speaker 2: and then you build. It was like an investment on
Speaker 2: your part in the potential, but without really knowing that's scary.
Speaker 2: It is all be worth it, but.
Speaker 1: Exactly honest, I just thought to myself, at the very least,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna build my audience, and then two I will
Speaker 1: have helped people, which is always like my first and
Speaker 1: foremost goal. And this is what I thought back then.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I mean, I know better now that I
Speaker 1: just figure that somehow, if I did the good work,
Speaker 1: money would come. I didn't realize that you had to
Speaker 1: have a good work plan and a money plan. I
Speaker 1: just thought, well, if you just have a good work plan,
Speaker 1: money money's gonna come. And so after the first year
Speaker 1: of doing it, and it did so well. By the
Speaker 1: end of the year, we had twenty thousand people signed
Speaker 1: up for the challenge because we did it live in
Speaker 1: January collectively together. And then at the end there are
Speaker 1: people who were like in February who were like, I
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance. So I made it automatic where
Speaker 1: you could just sign up. Even now to this day,
Speaker 1: you could just sign up and start the next day
Speaker 1: with the challenge. And by the end of the year,
Speaker 1: like I said, I had twenty thousand people that had
Speaker 1: gone through the challenge, and I started the Spacebook group
Speaker 1: originally for the United Way cohorts where I can answer
Speaker 1: questions at once, and people from the challenge found the
Speaker 1: Facebook group and they started joining the Facebook group, and
Speaker 1: so that's where I would keep up with people as
Speaker 1: they were doing the challenge. We would connect there and
Speaker 1: so it was great. It was just like this like
Speaker 1: bumping movement, but no real money, like like like you know,
Speaker 1: I was still speaking, but it wasn't really real money.
Speaker 1: I would say. It wasn't until maybe like four or
Speaker 1: five years into the Budgetista that I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm consistently making at least a few thousand dollars a month.
Speaker 1: But in the beginning it was touch and go. There'd
Speaker 1: be some months i'd be lucky to make five hundred,
Speaker 1: and some months I might make. You know. I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I made ten thousand dollars in a month,
Speaker 1: and I thought, yeah, this is it. We're are ten thousand.
Speaker 1: And then the next month I made five hundred. So
Speaker 1: it was really touch and go for the first four
Speaker 1: or five years, and it was a mix of so
Speaker 1: what happened with the challenge. It was the first time
Speaker 1: I realized I could monetize something with the challenge because
Speaker 1: someone said, what if I don't want to take this
Speaker 1: challenge online? It was in December. I'll never forget what
Speaker 1: if I don't want to take this challenge online? What
Speaker 1: if I want a book version? And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: why would you this is me, Why would you pay
Speaker 1: for a book? What I'm giving this away for free?
Speaker 1: I was really didn't. I didn't want to do a book.
Speaker 1: I thought that's stupid. Who's gonna pay for a book
Speaker 1: it's free? And they're like, yeah, but I like to
Speaker 1: hold a book, and I was like okay, So I
Speaker 1: found a guy I had to pay him that's part
Speaker 1: of the ten thousand to take the challenges and put
Speaker 1: them in book for it. It was a few thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and I remember being like, okay, and I put it up. Now. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the one week budget by now was still selling next
Speaker 1: to nothing. I put up the Literature Challenge book the
Speaker 1: same time that the Challenge launched in January, and it
Speaker 1: hit number one on Amazon in its category three days later.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: People selling it for.
Speaker 1: I want to say, like ten bucks or something like that.
Speaker 2: Is it hard to set up an Amazon like to
Speaker 2: sell a book on Amazon? Like, what's that process?
Speaker 1: Like, well, I'm sure it's a little different now, but
Speaker 1: because they used to call it create space, you just
Speaker 1: have to find it. It's basically the same. You find
Speaker 1: a designer to put it in the right format, which
Speaker 1: which Amazon I think they call it KDP now, which
Speaker 1: Amazon gives you your designer would like set it up
Speaker 1: according to like whatever specifications they have in their back
Speaker 1: end office at KDP, and you just literally just uploaded
Speaker 1: and they'll say how much you want to sell the
Speaker 1: book for, you know, like ten bucks, and then Amazon
Speaker 1: will show you if you settle for ten bucks, this
Speaker 1: is how much money you're going to get, and that's
Speaker 1: literally it, and you press on and then it's on.
Speaker 1: So it was really it's fairly easy. The hard part
Speaker 1: is finding a designer. To hector, who's my designer, he's dope,
Speaker 1: But to find a designer that's going to do the
Speaker 1: specifications right. Because the designer I hired before that, I
Speaker 1: went to a lot of money on terrible people that
Speaker 1: it took months he could not figure out the specifications.
Speaker 1: I suspect he really wasn't a designer. So finally I
Speaker 1: found Hector, and within a day he had it up
Speaker 1: and running. So it's literally just once it's uploaded, it
Speaker 1: typically takes twenty four to forty eight hours for Amazon
Speaker 1: says this is the right specs, and then you click
Speaker 1: it's live. So Hector did that, and he also did
Speaker 1: the Kindle version for me for Amazon, and so that
Speaker 1: book sold and I was like, I think that's what
Speaker 1: it was that January that book sold. I think in
Speaker 1: January that's the month I made ten thousand dollars because
Speaker 1: it sold so much, I couldn't believe it. And that's
Speaker 1: when I was like light bulb that people will buy
Speaker 1: other things from me, Tiffany. So for a number of
Speaker 1: years I had speaking engagement. It was the United Way
Speaker 1: and book sales, and I said, okay, now we're cooking
Speaker 1: with grease. This is you know, like about three or
Speaker 1: four years into the budget, Nesta like, okay, so here
Speaker 1: are all the Hodgepodge ways that money money's coming in.
Speaker 1: And then I would about three years ago I wanted
Speaker 1: to do it, really four years ago. I want to
Speaker 1: do something a little bit more consistent. And around this time,
Speaker 1: I had done another literature challenge. Like I said, it
Speaker 1: was year after year I was doing these new challenges
Speaker 1: and I met my now current business partner, Jabroo. We
Speaker 1: were both in this black traveling group called No Madness,
Speaker 1: and I just remember thinking like he was like a
Speaker 1: young twenty something like twenty six or twenty seven, but
Speaker 1: he traveled the world and I saw he was a
Speaker 1: digital marketer. I'd never even heard of that before. But
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn how do I market outside of
Speaker 1: just the organic way of me just posting on social media,
Speaker 1: and so I reached out to him. He's like, I've
Speaker 1: been watching you. I love what you're doing, and how
Speaker 1: many people you're helping, and he and by then I
Speaker 1: think I was on Challenge two or three and he
Speaker 1: asked me did I have in the affiliates? And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, what's that? He's like, it's a referral program,
Speaker 1: that is, you refer of particular product or service, they'll
Speaker 1: pay you. He's like, for example, you have this one
Speaker 1: bank in here you always talk about, did you know
Speaker 1: they were giving twenty five bucks away per person that
Speaker 1: you sign up? I almost cried because Mandy, I had
Speaker 1: signed up twenty five hundred people to that bank. Do
Speaker 1: the math of how much money I left on the table,
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred and I only knew twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: signed up because I did a survey in the challenge
Speaker 1: to say, did you sign up for the bank account
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand times twenty five dollars sixty two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars, Mandy I could be I know.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, what, So here was the
Speaker 2: one who told you about affiliate deals?
Speaker 1: Yes, but because I always thought that they were scam me,
Speaker 1: because I would I'm not gonna lie. I would go
Speaker 1: to finn Con and hear people talk about affiliate deals.
Speaker 1: But the way a lot of people talked about them
Speaker 1: is that they were pushing things that were good for
Speaker 1: their audience. So I was like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: do that, and so he said, well, that's not how
Speaker 1: you would do it. He'said, make a list of all
Speaker 1: the products and services that you use and like and trust.
Speaker 1: So I made a list about maybe fifteen, and then
Speaker 1: of the fifteen he said, d five have affiliate programs.
Speaker 1: Go sign up for them. And I did it. He
Speaker 1: was like, we're going to start to market. We're gonna
Speaker 1: spend about thirty bucks a day. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I s thirty bucks a day, not me. And he
Speaker 1: was like, no, we'll take the money from the affiliate
Speaker 1: marketing money. And I said okay. So he said he said,
Speaker 1: in the beginning, we'll just organically share these products and
Speaker 1: services that you've already been sharing. Share them in the challenge.
Speaker 1: But you're already sharing them in the challenge, but now
Speaker 1: switch out the regular link like bank dot com for
Speaker 1: Bank dot com, slash Tiffany's affiliate. So I did that,
Speaker 1: and I started. I did. I started with Ebates. I remember,
Speaker 1: and I love Ebates and I been sharing ebates for
Speaker 1: years and Ebates was giving like, I don't know, ten
Speaker 1: bucks per person, and I think my first check from
Speaker 1: EBAs they pay you quterly was like twenty five hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: And I was like, he's like, but that money is
Speaker 1: to go right back into marketing because you have to
Speaker 1: start to learned to market digitally. So we did that
Speaker 1: and we started to use that money from marketing to
Speaker 1: use that to market people to the next liverature challenge
Speaker 1: that I had other affiliate links in. So I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: another source of income, so now I can share the
Speaker 1: things that would normally share but get paid for that.
Speaker 1: So that I would say the so much, so there's
Speaker 1: a there's a brand that I work with now that
Speaker 1: we wrote one email because I was so so excited.
Speaker 1: They were giving away a really dope free financial product
Speaker 1: that was amazing that had used and I wrote one
Speaker 1: email out to my audience and we made one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars three days.
Speaker 2: When was that?
Speaker 1: Like how this was last year?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Last year? Okay, yeah, so yeah and so but it
Speaker 1: was like whoa, Like that's what I started to realize,
Speaker 1: Like you can make a lot of money with affiliates.
Speaker 1: So cause they were paying twenty five bucks per person.
Speaker 1: But what they were giving away was so great. I
Speaker 1: remember they actually called me and said, can you turn
Speaker 1: it off? I'm like, there's no way. This is not
Speaker 1: an ad that was one email, but you're giving away
Speaker 1: something so great. They were giving away like a personalized
Speaker 1: investment plan, which you normally would have to pay like
Speaker 1: twelve hundred dollars for. And I knew because I had
Speaker 1: to pay twelve hundred dollars for it, not from them,
Speaker 1: but for some from my financial advisor. So I was like, yo,
Speaker 1: I literally just paid twelve hundred dollars for this, and
Speaker 1: it's it's the same advice that this company is giving
Speaker 1: is what my financial advisor gave me. Jump on this
Speaker 1: now because it's not always going to be free and
Speaker 1: it and people signed up in droves.
Speaker 2: So there's affiliate. The person who wrote that affiliate agreement
Speaker 2: play got fired.
Speaker 1: I know. They were so exciting. They actually looked they
Speaker 1: deepened our relationship, so we have a deeper relationship with
Speaker 1: them now because they were so amazed at how many
Speaker 1: people I was able to send to them. So but
Speaker 1: you don't have to have like hundreds of thousands of followers.
Speaker 1: You just have to have engaged people who when you
Speaker 1: share something they you know, they they listen. I have
Speaker 1: something called my Lisa rule. Lisa's my baby sister, and
Speaker 1: she's also a dream catcher. Then, because I would try anything,
Speaker 1: and I used to have a rule that if I
Speaker 1: would try it, i'll you know, I'll suggest it to y'all.
Speaker 1: But then one day Lisa signed up for something from
Speaker 1: an email I sent out and she was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I signed up for that that app you mentioned in
Speaker 1: your email. And I was like, what appen? And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, why are you nervous, Tiffany. He says,
Speaker 1: if it's good for you, it's good for everyone, right,
Speaker 1: And I realized that's not true. That I'm a lot
Speaker 1: more lenient with what I'm able to try. So I
Speaker 1: changed my rule and I said, no, I have to
Speaker 1: be willing for Lisa to be able to sign up
Speaker 1: for it without telling me. And so, because I know,
Speaker 1: I'm way more conservative with the things that I share
Speaker 1: with Lisa, and so I came up with my Lisa
Speaker 1: rule that has really served me well, that I won't
Speaker 1: share anything with dream catchers if I could not comfortably
Speaker 1: say Lisa, go ahead and do it. So affiliate program
Speaker 1: came in, and then three years ago, I said, well,
Speaker 1: let's look for more consistent income, and folks started asking
Speaker 1: me if I could teach investing, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: Although I invest with the help of my financial planner,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel comfortable teaching that. I'm not the investaista,
Speaker 1: And so we were going to actually start an investment
Speaker 1: club and people said that they would be willing to
Speaker 1: pay for it, and so the investment club idea seemed
Speaker 1: kind of narrow. So I thought, well, what have we
Speaker 1: taught more than just investing? What if we taught like,
Speaker 1: really the next level of personal finance. I think basic
Speaker 1: personal finance should be free. That's why most of my
Speaker 1: like all the stuff that I give away as a budgetista,
Speaker 1: I give away almost everything, right, But I thought to myself, well,
Speaker 1: what if with this next level? What if I created
Speaker 1: this online school where it's really next level, where I
Speaker 1: get financial experts that know more than me in their
Speaker 1: particular topic to teach, and you guys paid for and
Speaker 1: they said yes. And so the three years ago, the
Speaker 1: Literature Academy was launched in like May twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 1: it was like, I remember, we were going to make
Speaker 1: it like twenty five bucks a month or something like that.
Speaker 1: But then people were like, oh, that's a little too high,
Speaker 1: can afford it? I said, okay, well the first two
Speaker 1: thousand people will make it ten bucks a month. Don't
Speaker 1: you know. They lined up like they were Jordan's. They
Speaker 1: were up at sixtus. They broke the site all day long.
Speaker 1: We made thirty thousand dollars in the first day. I
Speaker 1: couldn't even run my mind. This is back then, so
Speaker 1: I was like what And I think at the time
Speaker 1: the launch made its about seventy thousand dollars over that week,
Speaker 1: and it was like the first time that I realized, WHOA,
Speaker 1: there's a different business model out there. There is a
Speaker 1: subscription model. So the Academy since then has made This
Speaker 1: year we made three thousand dollars, but of all time,
Speaker 1: we've made just under six thousand dollars with the Academy,
Speaker 1: a six thousand, six million dollars.
Speaker 2: With you to say, six million, six million with the
Speaker 2: Academy and how many.
Speaker 1: Years in three years? This year alone though, we made
Speaker 1: three million. Wow.
Speaker 2: And that is because so the model is that people
Speaker 2: pay monthly to access it.
Speaker 1: Right, they paid monthly to access it, so now it's
Speaker 1: it's fifty nine ninety nine a month, but we always
Speaker 1: give a I'm always having a sale forty percent off sales.
Speaker 1: So typically people pay around twenty nine ninety nine a month.
Speaker 1: But what I do is I get like top tier experts,
Speaker 1: typically women and honestly women of color, because I want
Speaker 1: you to see yourself in the Academy, and they teach
Speaker 1: a class anywhere ranging from if it's at the expert
Speaker 1: as the experts are about an hour to forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: But then we also have deeper, longer classes as long
Speaker 1: as a month long. Some of them are a few
Speaker 1: days long. It depends really, like what kind of learner
Speaker 1: you are. We have these amazing classes from how to trade,
Speaker 1: how to invest, retirement, legacy, planning, to buy a car,
Speaker 1: how to talk to your spouse about money, really next level,
Speaker 1: you know, like like I said, retirement, like next level
Speaker 1: things like Sandy teaches a side hustle course. So I
Speaker 1: really tapped into my expert friends to teach these amazing lessons,
Speaker 1: and the Academy has just been bumping and jumping, and
Speaker 1: so that is my that is my consistent source. But
Speaker 1: I purposely created because the Budgetnisa is the business of Tiffany,
Speaker 1: and it got to start. I wanted to start to
Speaker 1: have a family. I wasn't married yet, but Superman and
Speaker 1: I were close, and I knew that I didn't want
Speaker 1: that only source of income to be like I have
Speaker 1: to show up as Tiffany the Budget Nista. And so
Speaker 1: the Academy allowed me to take a step back because
Speaker 1: I get to disseminate the expertise between myself and fifty
Speaker 1: other experts. People don't really look for me inside the
Speaker 1: Academy because I'm not the most expert of all the experts.
Speaker 1: They're looking at all the other experts and it's been awesome.
Speaker 1: And so I have a team that runs the Academy
Speaker 1: and I just check in with them. So it's allowed
Speaker 1: me to like have this second business with my partner Jabrill,
Speaker 1: where he does the marketing, have a manager, we have
Speaker 1: customer support. But it's been like the first though. But
Speaker 1: the first year, although we made that seventy thousand, it
Speaker 1: was really hard because we couldn't find the right platform.
Speaker 1: It was we almost closed down like so many times
Speaker 1: because we ran out of money and it just wasn't
Speaker 1: we could not figure out, you know, what type of
Speaker 1: classes to have, how to lay out the website. We
Speaker 1: just finally quite honestly got it together this year because
Speaker 1: there's like last year, I told Jabrill, my business partner,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is going to work. It's like,
Speaker 1: like the website is a mess. I can't find anything.
Speaker 1: And we paid like eight thousand dollars to get it
Speaker 1: totally redesigned and we did a launch. So our first
Speaker 1: launch we made seventy thousand. We were geeked so so much,
Speaker 1: so like six months later we did another launch, but
Speaker 1: we were lazy with it, so we made thirty five thousand,
Speaker 1: and we realized, like the effort you get put in
Speaker 1: is what you get back. Then set the third launch.
Speaker 1: I want to say we made two hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: but that was like a survival launch because we had
Speaker 1: we ran out of money and I was like, if
Speaker 1: we're going to really try to save this academy, we
Speaker 1: have to have money to last us for the next
Speaker 1: for a year. And so we did that launch. We
Speaker 1: made the two fifty, but the two fifty was really
Speaker 1: there to give us the space to learn how to
Speaker 1: run this company. And then the launcher that we did
Speaker 1: earlier this year made five hundred and fifty thousand and so,
Speaker 1: but now we're cooking with recent the academy. I feel
Speaker 1: like we finally have found our stride. After three years,
Speaker 1: it's getting better. I always like, I'm hard on us.
Speaker 1: I give us like the Academy like a solid B,
Speaker 1: but I'm like, I want an eight plus plus. So
Speaker 1: that's who we're working to. But we have some great
Speaker 1: new things that we're adding, and by twenty twenty, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be a plus plus because we are like quickly
Speaker 1: approaching that. Even though when I ask members of the
Speaker 1: Academy they're like I like it, I'm like, m m,
Speaker 1: I know we can do better.
Speaker 2: Well, it's also like the what if you had waited
Speaker 2: to perfect it all these years? Like imagine how much
Speaker 2: money you wouldn't have made exactly you know, And then
Speaker 2: how can you perfect it if you don't get the
Speaker 2: feedback from people?
Speaker 1: And then that's one of the things that has been
Speaker 1: on saving grace. Honestly, it's transparency because I would literally
Speaker 1: go live every week and say, hey, I know this
Speaker 1: thing is this one part of the academy is not working.
Speaker 1: What do you think we should do? Like I would
Speaker 1: always be really honest and then they would be like,
Speaker 1: well can you do this? And I'd say, okay, hold on.
Speaker 1: Then I would try to find someone to help, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I found this guy Tom, He's going
Speaker 1: to fix it. Do you want a purple? Do you
Speaker 1: want a green? Do you want to left to the right.
Speaker 1: So there was always this acknowledgment of I know we
Speaker 1: can do better. What's your feedback? And then I would
Speaker 1: come back and say, we fixed it, how do you
Speaker 1: like it? Should we do better? So that was our
Speaker 1: saving grace inside the Literature Academy was that there was
Speaker 1: always this sense of like, what is it that you want?
Speaker 1: What can I do better? Like people when bitcoin was
Speaker 1: a big thing, people reached out to me and like
Speaker 1: from the academy and they said, we want to learn
Speaker 1: about bitcoin. It took me a week. I interviewed five
Speaker 1: different experts to teach and I found one Cassandra Cummings,
Speaker 1: who's amazing, and she taught her class. So you requested
Speaker 1: it a week later and I let them know I'm
Speaker 1: interviewing people. I'm down to the last two. We found someone.
Speaker 1: So I find that for us in business, it's not
Speaker 1: about perfection, but it's that transparency and we have a
Speaker 1: true desire to serve. So I want you to see that,
Speaker 1: so you know that when I mess up or something's
Speaker 1: not perfect, it's not for lack of trying, you know.
Speaker 1: I think that's important that I don't want you to
Speaker 1: see that like well, dang, I don't like this and
Speaker 1: it's behind this like this curtain. I want you to
Speaker 1: see that, Like I know, I don't like it either.
Speaker 1: We're trying to fix it. If you have any suggestions,
Speaker 1: please bring them to the table. So we are so
Speaker 1: much better as a result of not trying to hide
Speaker 1: our imperfections but to show them and show them how
Speaker 1: we're working on them. And by by January twenty twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the trajectory that we're on now with growth, I think
Speaker 1: we're going to hit our first definitely, definitely by first
Speaker 1: quarter with where we are now, but by January, that's
Speaker 1: what it's looking like. We're going to hit our first
Speaker 1: seven figure month, which would be insane, imagine a million
Speaker 1: dollars a month, But that's where we're headed out the
Speaker 1: last the last few months of the academy, we've like
Speaker 1: I want to say that we're probably averaging maybe three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month in recurring income.
Speaker 2: This is okay, So I know we're hitting coming up
Speaker 2: on the end of the show. Obviously we need to
Speaker 2: do a part too, because we have we've gotten we've
Speaker 2: hit the miles, like the big components of how you
Speaker 2: build your business, but I feel like there's like small
Speaker 2: ways and small strategies and money making tips that you
Speaker 2: can offer people. So we'll do another episode for sure,
Speaker 2: But before we do that, I always want to do a
Speaker 2: recap of the lines of business that are really like
Speaker 2: that really funds the budget, neist to you know, ink
Speaker 2: that you've created. And then also how like how do
Speaker 2: you prepare for the future. Do you see the academy
Speaker 2: sustaining you guys for years to come, or you know
Speaker 2: how when you can't.
Speaker 1: Wait to stare? I have some big things, so I
Speaker 1: would say that. So right now there are three companies,
Speaker 1: and I have the budget needs to the original Personality brand,
Speaker 1: which is books, speaking engagements. We didn't even get in
Speaker 1: the spokesperson work, but we could talk about that next time.
Speaker 1: So books, speaking Engagements, folkesperson work, and and teaching. That's
Speaker 1: the budget needs to then the Literature Academy, which is
Speaker 1: the online school, and then we also have it call
Speaker 1: it TJMS. It's literally just Tiffany Jabrill Marketing Solutions. When
Speaker 1: people come to come to me and say, hey, you
Speaker 1: know I want you to do sometimes we get invited
Speaker 1: to and invite only affiliate program and Jabrill will run
Speaker 1: ads to that affiliate program. And so because of that,
Speaker 1: he's a partner and he's not a partner in the Budgetista,
Speaker 1: but he's a partner in the academy and this marketing
Speaker 1: company that we have. So that's the third company. And
Speaker 1: so those are the three companies that really fund and
Speaker 1: aside from Brown Amission because we're a company as well,
Speaker 1: but that's really what funds Budgetissa Inc. The marketing company
Speaker 1: to handle the affiliate programs, the Budgetisa which is the
Speaker 1: business of Tiffany, and the online school. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just been like the TJMS. It makes as much money
Speaker 1: as we put effort into, which we have not put
Speaker 1: as much effort as we could because now we're most
Speaker 1: of our energy is put into the Live Richer Academy.
Speaker 1: But one thing I have learned is that there are
Speaker 1: so many ways Lynette Caledfani Cox, which is one of
Speaker 1: my mentors. She told me a long time ago, years ago,
Speaker 1: probably about six or seven years ago, about ways that
Speaker 1: me and myself how I can make business. And one
Speaker 1: of those ways is something called satellite media tour. I
Speaker 1: just did one a few days ago, and you make
Speaker 1: anywhere from ten to thirty thousand dollars and I made
Speaker 1: I think about twenty five thousand, and to sit down
Speaker 1: for four hours in front of a camera and all
Speaker 1: these like media outlets will basically call in via video
Speaker 1: and you are like, basically, I'm Live and Shott on
Speaker 1: ABC twelve, I'm Live in Natural NBC three.
Speaker 2: And they'll pay for those interviews because usually you don't
Speaker 2: pay people to like do interviews for media.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's a it's a tour. So the company
Speaker 1: there's a comp let's just say the company is Brown Ambition, right.
Speaker 1: Brown Ambition says we have messaging we want to get
Speaker 1: out there. So are there's a satellite media tour company
Speaker 1: that hits up all these media platforms and says, would
Speaker 1: you like some tips on Brown Ambition's messaging? So maybe
Speaker 1: we're not going to say listen to Brown Ambition. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll say, like the messaging is three ways to get
Speaker 1: on financial track and then New Year. But Tiffany, we
Speaker 1: want you to weave in Brian Ambition because ABC wants
Speaker 1: three ways to get on track for the New Year.
Speaker 1: And it just happens to come along with you know,
Speaker 1: me talking about brand Ambition, because that's the company that's
Speaker 1: hired me to weave them into the messaging. You see
Speaker 1: what I mean. And so Brown Ambition is yeah, so
Speaker 1: not in NBC or ABC. They're not paying me. Brin
Speaker 1: Ambition pays me to weave them in to this messaging.
Speaker 1: And so when I tell you, I was like, I
Speaker 1: remember Lenette tell me. She said that's for the big Dog,
Speaker 1: so that won't be for years from now. But she
Speaker 1: was right. I just got booked to do another one
Speaker 1: and they're paying me thirty thousand. And actually someone just
Speaker 1: emailed me a minute before this podcast to do another one.
Speaker 1: So Satellite media tours as they're called smts and radio
Speaker 1: media tours, that's another. Now that's a Tiffany, that's Tiffany
Speaker 1: income or Budgetista income like the original company income. So
Speaker 1: I would say the budgetis to BUDGETISA doesn't make a
Speaker 1: million dollars a year because I slowed down tremendously, But
Speaker 1: I would say the budget needs to probably twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: has probably made about maybe a little over half a
Speaker 1: million dollars. But remember that's with me cutting back. I
Speaker 1: don't even speak hardly anymore. This is mostly spokesperson work.
Speaker 1: This satellite media tours, book sales that happened basically kind
Speaker 1: of organically. It's also some speaking engagements, but typically localized.
Speaker 1: But because now I'm getting brand ambassador work too, where
Speaker 1: I signed a six figure contract to do a brand
Speaker 1: ambassador work for a company. It's like a month long engagement.
Speaker 1: But here the reason why I'm able to do those
Speaker 1: things now is because of that Live Richer challenge that
Speaker 1: everyone said I was foolish to do for free. That
Speaker 1: challenge helped to build my community, help to build trust,
Speaker 1: help to introduce people to me in my way of
Speaker 1: thinking and the way I navigate. It really helped to
Speaker 1: build this like just like army of folks that are like,
Speaker 1: we love what the budget needs to does. So as
Speaker 1: a result, there are companies and agencies who want to
Speaker 1: be in alignment with me. I say no, way more
Speaker 1: than I say yes, Like the budget needs to could
Speaker 1: easily make over a million dollars if I said yes
Speaker 1: to everything. But I say no to most things because
Speaker 1: most things, quite honestly, are crappy and they're not good
Speaker 1: for you. So I would never sell my soul or
Speaker 1: sell y'all out to some company that I know is
Speaker 1: detrimental to your financial journey. But that literature challenge changed
Speaker 1: the game for me. I cannot, like, I cannot express
Speaker 1: how important it for me that maintaining like service as
Speaker 1: our most important aspect of the company has transformed into this,
Speaker 1: like collectively this multi million dollar like you know, like
Speaker 1: ink because of service. And it's possible, but you have
Speaker 1: to have a service plan and a money plan. It
Speaker 1: took me a few years to realize that the money
Speaker 1: didn't just come. It wasn't until Joebroll said, monetize the challenge.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna share the company anyway, see if they
Speaker 1: have a referral program. Oh, that's the business plan or
Speaker 1: the money plan. You see what I mean? Like, I
Speaker 1: have to be really conscious of Okay, I'm gonna sell
Speaker 1: spots inside my academy. I have to be mindful that, yes,
Speaker 1: the academy is great in dope, but I have to
Speaker 1: I have to sell, people have to buy a subscription.
Speaker 1: I can't just have a thing and not be mindful.
Speaker 1: Then how is it going to make money?
Speaker 2: And so we've got but I don't want to And
Speaker 2: this is like the magic of the budget Neista that
Speaker 2: I feel like people need to understand. As you were,
Speaker 2: you were making investments, and you were a smart businesswoman
Speaker 2: because you understood audience and the power of community. So
Speaker 2: you built the goodwill and the trust with your community
Speaker 2: so that when you were ready to do, you know,
Speaker 2: to start selling, you had people lining up who were
Speaker 2: trusted you and were willing to hop on board, you know.
Speaker 2: And and if you start with the money first and
Speaker 2: you're immediately selling people something, it's just it's a different relationship,
Speaker 2: you know, It's it's a different and and I mean
Speaker 2: I'm speaking for you, but I feel like that is
Speaker 2: the this like the visional se qua, like that little
Speaker 2: magic ingredient that you know that other when you say
Speaker 2: you want to be an influencer, like that's the lowercase.
Speaker 2: I like, Tiffany truly in a way that's meaningful and
Speaker 2: not predatory, have become that and that I feel like
Speaker 2: is and that's really how you sustain that kind of
Speaker 2: level of business, you know, in that way.
Speaker 1: No, it's true, and also too, I just think that
Speaker 1: I purposely keep the influencing money to the low end,
Speaker 1: like under twenty five percent of what the budget needs
Speaker 1: to brings in on purpose because my father would say,
Speaker 1: he who pays the piper determines the tune. So if
Speaker 1: all of your money comes from brands, guess who you
Speaker 1: have to listen to brands? I didn't. I don't want that, don't.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to if a brand is
Speaker 1: not a fit. I want to be able to walk
Speaker 1: away from the money because I'm also not beholden to
Speaker 1: the money because it's not the majority of my business.
Speaker 1: I've told many brands and some of your favor brands,
Speaker 1: and you think it's your favorite. But then o'kay about you?
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought most of the big banks have
Speaker 1: hit me up. Ask me if you see a big
Speaker 1: bank that I've worked with. I have not, because quite honestly,
Speaker 1: most of them are not great. And so I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not here to cape for you and to trick
Speaker 1: dream catchers and thinking that you're wonderful when you know
Speaker 1: you're not. Because here's the thing. If something is wonderful.
Speaker 1: Everything I share is not monetized. What I do is
Speaker 1: I figure out what's working and I share it. Then
Speaker 1: I look to see this, does the thing I'm sharing
Speaker 1: have a referral program? If they do, great, and if
Speaker 1: they don't, still get shared. So that is our rule,
Speaker 1: is that we look for good things to share and
Speaker 1: if there's a way to monetize it, great, but if not,
Speaker 1: we still share it. And I tell that to brands
Speaker 1: all the time who are trying to lure me in
Speaker 1: with money. I'm like, yo, if you were dope and
Speaker 1: you actually did right by people, I would share you
Speaker 1: for free, because it's my intention to help as many
Speaker 1: people as possible, like you telling me. I actually told
Speaker 1: the big bank this once and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll pay you. I think it was like
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars and I was like, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, that's cup, But we made that last week,
Speaker 1: so what are you You're gonna pay me a million dollars?
Speaker 1: We made that more than that this year, So meaning
Speaker 1: that like, there's not enough money that you can pay
Speaker 1: that would make sense for me to share something that's
Speaker 1: not helpful to my audience. How about you just build
Speaker 1: something good and then I'll share you as much as possible.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't even have to pay me, hardly as much, because.
Speaker 2: You would risk breaking their trust if you sold them
Speaker 2: that products, and then they wouldn't continue signing up for
Speaker 2: the products you you know, the other products exactly.
Speaker 1: So like so just keeping that in mind that it's
Speaker 1: a slower grow. I took the long, meandering route to entrepreneurship,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people don't want to do that
Speaker 1: because you know, you want to make money right away.
Speaker 1: I get it. But I took the route of building trust,
Speaker 1: building community, you know, building relationships. And now the truth
Speaker 1: is now, like the ten years in, I mean, some
Speaker 1: of the things that come to my inbox, it's crazy,
Speaker 1: like I it still blows me away like yo you
Speaker 1: and not pay me what like, But that's only after
Speaker 1: all this time of building that trust, relationship and community
Speaker 1: with the people that I serve. And so now like
Speaker 1: like I mentioned to you guys last time, I I
Speaker 1: you know, I talked about Molly Moore on Brown Ambition
Speaker 1: and someone hit me up from a major, major, major
Speaker 1: studio was like, I've been watching you. I love what
Speaker 1: you do. Let's do it. Let's turn her into a show.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you haven't even read the book or seen it,
Speaker 1: and she's like yeah, but it's you, Tiffany, And I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: how do you creating that? But it's you that people
Speaker 1: are going to buy into the thing that you're doing
Speaker 1: because of what you've brought to the table. So it's
Speaker 1: just like, I mean, even now today I'm meeting with
Speaker 1: this woman, a producer who I was talking to her
Speaker 1: about Molly Moore. She's like, Oh, that sounds great, but
Speaker 1: what about you. I would love for you to have
Speaker 1: a show. She worked for some big production company. I
Speaker 1: don't honestly, I don't know if I want to have
Speaker 1: a show, But like myself personally, because I'm like I
Speaker 1: want to be a mom, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: want to. You know, that's just it seems like a lot.
Speaker 1: But the fact that like people are literally like, here's
Speaker 1: a sheltivity, would you like to be out here have
Speaker 1: your own show? I mean that doesn't that comes from
Speaker 1: all these years worth of work And I know a
Speaker 1: show will pay like a ton of money, but at
Speaker 1: this point, I'm like, what do I ask? So I
Speaker 1: need money for we have a house, we don't have
Speaker 1: a mortgage. I have my little Putt Puck car, which
Speaker 1: is plenty. Like Supergirl's college fund is basically funded for me.
Speaker 1: More money is not enough of a trigger. There has
Speaker 1: to be something greater that they're coming to the table with.
Speaker 1: But I just share all that to say that, like,
Speaker 1: it's possible to do all this thing. I mean, I
Speaker 1: used to be a preschool teacher. No experience other than
Speaker 1: that that like, but really I really try to adhere
Speaker 1: to you know why I started my mission, which is
Speaker 1: to help as many women live a better life, give
Speaker 1: them the tools and the resource and the access to
Speaker 1: live a better life, and especially women of color because
Speaker 1: we've been left out of the financial conversation. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like some of the things, like like I'm writing my
Speaker 1: first real book with the actual book agent. Well I
Speaker 1: won't say real book, but like a book that I'm
Speaker 1: not self publishing. So I'm excited about that. Molly Moore,
Speaker 1: it's looking like something. When I tell you all the
Speaker 1: rest of the stuff that I've done, Mandy, I feel it.
Speaker 1: Molly Moore is going to blow the rest of stuff
Speaker 1: out of the water. It's going to look like I
Speaker 1: know it, and I feel it. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: I felt with the Liverature challenge. I knew it was
Speaker 1: going to change, the budget needs to I knew it,
Speaker 1: I felt it. So that's why I invested the time
Speaker 1: and the energy and money and Molly Moore. I've actually
Speaker 1: never felt it more strongly than that that character. There's
Speaker 1: something there. I really believe that Molly Moore can be
Speaker 1: a billion dollar business. Honestly, there's something there. It's just
Speaker 1: it's been I've been thinking about Molly Moore for the
Speaker 1: last fifteen years and it's been nagging me. And now
Speaker 1: it's starting to come to fruition. Molly Moore is going
Speaker 1: to blow everything else I've ever done out of the water.
Speaker 1: I know. I know it, and I've invested a lot
Speaker 1: of time, energy and money honestly into Molly Moore because
Speaker 1: I know it. So don't be afraid to invest something,
Speaker 1: invest your time, energy and money and to investing in
Speaker 1: an idea that you can't you don't really know the
Speaker 1: end goal, but you could feel like there's something really
Speaker 1: magical and special here because that means that there is.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, hopefully ten years from now we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about Molly Moore, not even maybe five years from
Speaker 1: now about like remember you said, I'm like, I know,
Speaker 1: I told you I felt it. I didn't know what,
Speaker 1: I don't know how, but I felt it and I
Speaker 1: feel it. But No, this has been fine.
Speaker 2: I've felt a great time. No, you have so many,
Speaker 2: so many gems gems. I'm just going to name this
Speaker 2: podcast gems on gems on Gems. Well, thank you. I
Speaker 2: mean five years, having done almost five years, having done
Speaker 2: the show with you, it still it still feels like
Speaker 2: I'm learning bits and pieces about your journey because they
Speaker 2: feel like you've a and you've also being on this
Speaker 2: side of it too. You you reflect, like taking the
Speaker 2: time to reflect back on things that you know that
Speaker 2: you've done. I mean you should. You should be so
Speaker 2: proud and I'm so excited for you and all that's
Speaker 2: to come. And I know people probably have tons of questions.
Speaker 2: We're going to do a part two Faux Show. I
Speaker 2: don't know when it will air because, like I said,
Speaker 2: at this point in time, I may be delirious, you know,
Speaker 2: with a baby technically in the future. So but we'll
Speaker 2: definitely do a part two with Tiffany, So send in
Speaker 2: your questions. In the meantime, go to Brown Ambition Podcast
Speaker 2: dot com, ask us anything, hit us up on Instagram
Speaker 2: at Brown Ambition Podcast, on the gram d m us,
Speaker 2: or you can email us directly Brown Ambision Podcast at
Speaker 2: gmail dot com with your questions on how Tiffany has
Speaker 2: built the budget, needs to makes money and any tips
Speaker 2: you guys want on how you know, whatever you're struggling
Speaker 2: with to make money with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also to like, you know, if you I
Speaker 1: would love to hear your story, share that with me
Speaker 1: on social and yes, I would love some of your questions.
Speaker 1: So for part two we could be more focused. Now
Speaker 1: you know my story, but like we can really answer
Speaker 1: your questions on part two of like this is my issue,
Speaker 1: try to be as specific as possible so that way
Speaker 1: I can give, like, you know, what exactly are you
Speaker 1: trying to do? What is your desired outcome? Where are
Speaker 1: you now? So it will give me the you know,
Speaker 1: it'll give me the opportunity to really dig in and
Speaker 1: help you as best I can.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think we have the next iteration of
Speaker 2: the Little Ritual Challenge just all for business owners, you know, entrepreneurs,
Speaker 2: just saying just kind of put that out there. Well,
Speaker 2: thank you for letting me feel like Guy Raz from
Speaker 2: How I Built This for an hour.
Speaker 1: That's if I could get on that's I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: just wait, guy, I feel like I want to be
Speaker 1: like founder of the Molly of Molly Morris coming on,
Speaker 1: Like honestly, I would die to be on Guy Raz show,
Speaker 1: Like that would be my that's like my one day
Speaker 1: to be on How I Built This? I would love
Speaker 1: because I feel like, you know you.
Speaker 2: Will be because but you don't have a business that
Speaker 2: is as easy as like oh the woman who created
Speaker 2: kind bars or no it was a guy, I think,
Speaker 2: but what's but but they're missing because it's not as
Speaker 2: simple to break apart. You're a business. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not just like one single product. It's so many different things.
Speaker 2: But I mean I would write in everybody, write into
Speaker 2: Guy Ras, Tomy's got en your Tiffany. He's missing, he's
Speaker 2: missing out.
Speaker 1: Well I feel like that yet because I feel like
Speaker 1: everybody there's made like one hundred million dollars. I'm like,
Speaker 1: we have not made that yet, but but definitely I'm
Speaker 1: working toward like being that level of business. But now
Speaker 1: I think I know this is great because I don't
Speaker 1: really honestly, everybody asked me about personal finance. So it's
Speaker 1: not often that I get to like share the business
Speaker 1: because I love being transparent about like what worked, how
Speaker 1: much we made, The team knows, you know, because I
Speaker 1: feel like transparency leads to transformation. So you know, I
Speaker 1: don't mind sharing numbers, and I don't mind sharing like
Speaker 1: losses and stuff because I feel like I wish somebody
Speaker 1: would have told me I can make money doing work, absolutely,
Speaker 1: like you know you can, like these things are out
Speaker 1: there and how to do so, like it shouldn't be
Speaker 1: those people who are hiding. Typically it's because maybe they've
Speaker 1: grown up that way, but a lot of times it's
Speaker 1: because they're not really making any now, not really making
Speaker 1: the income they're protect and that they're making. And then
Speaker 1: you you're chasing after like something that someone's doing that
Speaker 1: that's not really working. It's not real. I feel like,
Speaker 1: how do you really help folks if you're not being
Speaker 1: honest about like how the journey that you've gone through.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so yeah, until until Still part two, I'm
Speaker 1: already were like twenty minutes after, So yeah, I wish
Speaker 1: me luck though I'm meeting with that producer who wants
Speaker 1: to give you my own show. Although I'm not concerned.
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced I want my own show, but wish
Speaker 1: me luck. Hopefully I have some good news when I
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 2: Good fuck, don't be late, all right. I wish me
Speaker 2: luck to future Mandy. Yes, wherever you are, you're doing
Speaker 2: a girl.
Speaker 1: A kiss.
Speaker 2: I will all right, Well, chat with you guys soon.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned to Facebook and Instagram will update you guys
Speaker 2: on what our next show will be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and share our show, share with your friends. Come
Speaker 1: on now, I feel like we've done you a good service. Well,
Speaker 1: are amazing programming. If you have not shared, shared, and
Speaker 1: told a friend, then you know that's the only.
Speaker 2: Way you know.
Speaker 1: But Sierra Sarrah Serras, Yes
Speaker 2: All right, good luck, all right, thank you, all right,
Speaker 2: bad bo