August 17, 2021 • 31 mins
Tiffany Aliche, founder of “The Budgetnista”, is an award-winning teacher of financial education, and America's favorite personal financial educator. She is the author of Get Good with Money (a New York Times Bestseller), The One Week Budget, and the Live Richer Challenge series.
On this episode, Tiffany talks with Will Lucas about how to develop a content strategy that gets attention, LLC Twitter and the Tax Code, and bootstrapping a million-dollar business.
Follow Will Lucas on Instagram at @willlucas
Learn more about other Black tech disruptors and innovators at AfroTech.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Power one oh five New York City. En I Hire
Radio Studios, Lower Manhattan. Charlotta Magne, the guy is one
third of the Hall of Fame morning show The Breakfast Club,
And I'm sitting in somebody's office at the radio station
talking with him about how we amplify our good working
business as the community. And they're talking about our moves
(00:25):
and something we should talk about publicly. It's Charlotte main threat.
The need don't on how we talk about doing good
work and inspire the next generation to think bigger, to
think bigger than themselves. It's just like anything else. Right.
If you're a rapper and you rap about the club,
and you have about alcohol, and you have about drugs,
and you have about dealing with a bunch of women,
(00:46):
that's what you're influencing the people that are listening to
you to do. Right. So for me, it's like, you
gotta talk about those type of things. We have to
talk about some of the moves you make in business,
you know, because a lot of the movies that I'm
making business really are things that will better society, especially
the black community. So it's like, Yo, you have to
make people aware of those things because you're influencing the
(01:08):
next generation. So the next generation needs to know that
you could be more than just you know, in the
entertainment business, that you can be more than just an athlete,
you know. I think about what I saw guys like
Robert Smith, and you see the jay Zs of the world,
and you see the things that they do. The Tyler
Perry is like, of course, it makes you want to
do just more good business, you know. So yeah, I
(01:31):
think that's that's something that you'll see me show more.
I'm with Lucas and this is Black Tech Dream Money.
I'm gonna introduce you to some of the biggest names,
some of the brightness minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black,
in building or simply using tech to secure your back,
this podcast is for you. Tiffany l founder of The
(01:57):
Budget NISA, is an award winning team Financial Education in
America's favorite personal finance educator. She's been featuring the shows
like Good Morning America, NBC News Today, and more. She's
the author of Getting Good with Money, which is a
New York Times bestseller, the One Week Budget and To
Live Rich Challenge series. I asked Tiffany with so many
(02:20):
people just as skilled as she is in finance, but
in their own verticals, what can they do that she
did to finally break out and to get the attention
of the masses. So court thing once I learned to
like let go and be myself, right, So I used
to If you look back at any of my old
YouTube videos from like ten years ago, I was stiff, like, hello,
(02:41):
money is Tiffany? He said. Now I'm like, girl, your budget?
What are you doing? You know? And so I So
what happened was maybe like six or seven years ago.
I was like doing Alive and I want to ask
a question, and the real Tiffany slipped through and I
was like, oh, let me people look going back to professional.
But the comments went crazy easy, like yes girl, yes,
(03:02):
And I was like, oh yeah, right that okay. I
turned it up a little more, then a little more.
Then I saw this it was either a documentary. Maybe
I read an article where um Quincy Quincy Jones was
talking about Oprah and said the best um I think
she said, the best kind of piece of advice or
(03:22):
compliment that he ever gave her was that what makes
Oprah so special is this She's exactly the same on
camera as she is off, and I know it sounds
like okay, so I want no. I don't think people
understand when that camera turns one pc of people change
and are different because you know, you're you're either insecure,
(03:43):
you're like, oh my hair, do I look right? Do
I sound right? So there are all these things that
go through your head. So someone else shows up, it
shows up differently than how when the camera turns off.
Then you're like, all right, well so you know, and
if you can do that, So I worked the last
five years in particular to be the same Tiffany on
camera as I am off. And the closer I get,
(04:04):
I'm still about eight, you know, depending like right now
this is all to me. But like if I'm doing
like good Morning America, you know, I'm like, you know,
you know, I'm still about like sevent But the closer
I get, the more opportunities open up. Because human beings
are attracted to what is real and what is genuine,
even if they don't feel it on the surface. They're
(04:24):
attracted to like, you know, like the human and you
feels the human in me. So if I'm being myself,
you feel it and you react to it naturally, And
so that's Number one is I've gotten really close to
being myself on and off camera. Number two is just
some consistency. You'd be like, oh, people always ask me
to mentor them and they're like, oh, you know, I
(04:44):
just started my business a year ago and it's not
going as good. I'm like, first of all, sister, you
just got here. You're literally a year old. That's like
the baby saying why can't I walk? I mean you
gotta call And then too, you know, you have a
blog or you have a podcast and it's supposed to
drop it every Wednesday, but I haven't heard your podcast
drop in the last two months. You're just not consistent. Literally,
(05:07):
some of people are winning only because they do what
they say gonna they're gonna do, and they do it
when they say they're gonna do it. That's it. Can
you imagine eight percent of winning is just do I
do what I say I'm gonna do? Do I do
what when I say I'm gonna do it? The vast
majority of people, quite honestly, they don't either. They overpromise,
they get overwhelmed. They just don't feel like if they
lose interest. So I show up consistently, you know, and
(05:31):
I probably say the last but not least is the
truth is I try not to take it too seriously,
meaning like take myself too seriously and allow me to
be in alignment with how, you know, like with what
is out there for me. It's very easy to get
distracted and say I ought to do this because this
person is doing this, I ought to do that. So
I really try to stay in my lane because no
(05:53):
one can out Tiffany Tiffany, you know, and so once
I do, you know, So that's really it. It's like
showing up authentically as myself, consistency and staying in the
lane of Tiffany, and those three things are are how
I've been able to do New York Times you know,
um my book has been it was eight weeks on
the New York Times best Seller's list, you know, a
Good Morning America Today show. I'm the financial expert for
(06:14):
the real Um. Literally just today I submitted something for
news Week. I write for Bloomberg, you know, Wall Street Journal.
I mean there's there was one point literally where I
had to tell like CNBC, like, is there anybody else
that you know? I can't I can't do something every week.
I'm tired. I'm gonna. I'm tired. I can't do an
article I thing every week. Do you know any other experts?
(06:35):
And I'm not saying that to flex, I'm saying that
you want to know why. The news Week got emailed
me this morning said hey, Tiffany running an article and
I need some some some sales tips, you know, some
saving tips. And I woke up this morning and I
had my my meeting. I was like, okay, so I
saw it. Within an hour, I had written him back
with the two tips and said, you know, please attribute
(06:56):
me as Tiffany the budget needs to financial educator author,
Your Times best selling author of Get Go with Money.
He was like wow, he Now, guess who's going when
they tight on a deadline? Guess what Newsweek journalist's gonna
hit me back up? Again? He is, you know, because
he's like, yo, Tiffany is boom bom boom bob. You know,
most of these outlets want you to just be primed
(07:18):
and ready and consistent, and they'll come back to you
over and over because you're super easy to work with.
And so so let's go in on on that continent.
You know, content is king, and I wonder what your
strategy is like, did you pick one distribution channel? Is
it like your blog that you just go in on
to the you know, neglect of everything else, or is
it Instagram? Or have you figured out ways to you know,
(07:39):
spread yourself across these different platforms to be able to
reach people where they are. So at first, you know,
my my only platform, because it's really what's kind of like,
the only one available was was Facebook. So I put
all of my time and energy into Facebook. Um, but
what really helped me to expand is I created And
this was accidental, and sometimes your best ideas are accidental.
I created something called my Liverage your challenge. It was
(08:01):
this free online three recourse. Because everyone kept asking me
individual questions, and I said, what if I that I
used to be a school teacher for ten years and
I had my master's in education, and I had been
teaching this course at my local United Way, And I said,
what if I take this course? And I put it online.
So people who keep asking me the questions, I'm like,
take a free course, go to literature challenge dot com,
which is still available. Take a free course, right, And
(08:24):
so I said, I'm gonna get My idea was to
get ten thousand people signed up, which I did by
I want to say it was um January two fifteen
or sixteen. And what happened in the course is that
I did this accidentally, like I think, um, like Twitter
just came out, and maybe Instagram came out like the
next year or whatever. But you would coming to the course.
But what I was doing is effectively you would see
(08:46):
it on Facebook and then you you said, you know,
you registered for the course. Now I have your name
in email, so that's one platform. And then when you
were in it, I saw someone had this kind of
like um click to tweet in one of their blog
posts that I really liked, and I was like, oh,
you mean you can. You can create a message in
this box and people can just click it and then
it will tweet out. And I was like, okay, so
I added click to tweet. So the way the course
(09:07):
work was that it was an email course. Every day
for three weeks I would give you one small assignment
um that focused on that week's goals, you know, and um,
so now you're in my inbox. Now you're on my
email list. But then the daily email sent you to
the blog to actually get the lesson. So now I
got email. Already had Facebook, but now I got email,
(09:28):
and I got blog visitors. And then when you're on
the blog, I'm getting you the tips and I'm saying
click to tweet. Now you follow me on Twitter. And
then like the three or four days out of the course,
I would create a YouTube video lesson just to change
it up, so now you're following me on YouTube. And
then when Instagram came out, I'd be like, you know,
share your you know, share your feedback here, and now
I got you on Instagram. So that's how I really
(09:50):
started to kind of go. I call it like um
taking people on a tour of your brand. Facebook was
the door, then you sat in my living room, which
is my email list. Then you use the restaurant, which
was Twitter. Then you were like, you know, you know,
let me see the kitchen, which was Instagram. You know.
Then you so before you know that, one person has
(10:11):
visited all of my platforms because of that challenge. So
it was one of the The challenge was one of
the best tools I ever created, you know, for my
brand to grow, to grow the community, and to bring
them around the full tour. So I've got like really
robust um following on all of those platforms, and so yeah,
that's where it started with with one platform, and then
I created something that allowed me to bring people through
(10:32):
all these platforms. And I would imagine that, um, you
weren't manually Okay, I'm gonna manually do this blower post,
then manually do the YouTube, and manually do the Facebook,
and then the Twitter and Instagram. So I would imagine
that there were some systems in place there. And my
question is that how did you get the technical aptitude
or did you hire out that opportunity for somebody else
(10:56):
to be able to come alongside your team? And because
well most people figure they don't have the resources to
go do all those systems as well as you. Honestly,
that's I disagree. I did that at my brocus So
I said, okay, I want to build this course. I
don't have any money nor in my tech savvy. It's
just enough for me to get on Zoom, so I said.
(11:17):
Even now to this day, so I said, okay, what
do you know how to do? Tip me? I said,
I know how to email, and my blog I built myself,
because you know, they have those blog platforms that it
wasn't It was like, you know, if you can do Facebook.
I tell people it's even easier now. Back then it
was a little harder. I think I was using blogger
dot com or whatever. But it's just basically a template
that you put your picture on. It looked terrible that
you put your picture on and then you, you know,
(11:38):
you just upload your blog posts. Right, So it wasn't
I didn't have to be technically savvy. So that course
was really just you joined my email list, and every
day I emailed you, Hey, go to my blog for
today's lesson. So there was no real tech savvy stuff
I needed other than do you not how to send
the email? I think I was using like mad Memia design,
you know, you know, and right, so it wasn't even
(12:01):
like something like now we're use infusion soft, you know.
But so it wasn't even some some sophisticated CRM. It
was just a regular email list. I got you on
the email list, and then every day I said, here's
day one of the Literature Challenge. This week we're talking
about budgeting. Um learn how to create your budget click here,
and then here took you to the blog post. So
ahead of time, I wrote out the twenty one blog
(12:22):
post and I wrote out the twenty one emails and
then I just said, mad meet me on this day,
send this email on day, to send this email on
this day. And so what happened and that I found
that my audience was like, this is so great and
they were messaging me. And then that's when Facebook groups
came out. So at the end of each blog post,
I said, we want to talk about today's lesson, join
us in the group. And then my Facebook group became
(12:44):
the place where it was like the community. I didn't
have to build them, so I didn't. The first challenge
or two challenges I did completely solo because I didn't
need any super tech savvy. I knew how to use Facebook.
I knew how to send an email, and the blog
it wasn't great, but I knew how to edit least, like,
you know, use the blog Tampa that they created for me,
so you don't need And to this day, that's still
(13:05):
basically the way the literature challenges are run, and over
one million people have done one or more of my challenges.
One million on that same simple sending your email, go
to the blog, sending your email, go to the blog.
That's it good for you? I mean, that's it's a
lot of people in your in your sphere, and I
want to I want to talk a little bit about
(13:26):
because we have so many conversations in our world about
they're not being enough capital for black people to start businesses. Um,
not the venture capital there's you know, there's an increasing
amount of angel and angel capital, but there's still a
touch of disparity, right and so UM for the men
and women who will be listening to this and are
(13:47):
using either their savings or their personal credit cards to
build their business, how do you advise them to gauge
to what extent they should be leveraging their personal holdings,
their security um to invest in a company. How how
do you advise them to and to use that morning
that should be there for the rainy day that should
(14:07):
be there, you know, the bridge over troubled water, to
invest in their things. So I'll say this that there
is a place for VC funding. I don't have any
where I am a hunter said funded and we don't
have any debt. And we made ten million dollars last year.
This is just us, our little black business is doing
what we do, serving black people, right and so, but
(14:28):
ten million to one of these fast growth companies, is like,
what because it's ten millions, ten years that we got here.
For some people, they're like, what we did then that
first six months? Yeah, but then somebody else owned your company.
They're like, you know, like I make ten after I
take home seven? Do you take home seving? Because I
know the people not let you take them that big
salary because that business belonged to them, you know. So
(14:50):
there's something to be said for I remember I was
meeting with a young woman who started this great brand.
It's entire and she's doing well, and she was saying,
the only way to really have well is that you
have to have an exit. And I was like, that's
not true, you know, but that I get it because
she had, you know, she had um um um DC funds,
you know, like embedded into her business. So yes, But
(15:10):
in general, everyone, I have friends who regret taking money
and friends who are so glad that they took money.
To me, there's no right or wrong. You have to
just decide for yourself if you're not gonna take money,
be okay with growing slow. I don't know when did
it become like you have to grow super fast and
in doing so, I don't know if you've ever listen
to the podcast How I Built This. Sometimes you listen
(15:31):
and you're like, Okay, so you grew this billion out
of company and now you are one percent. Well, damn,
I don't want that, you know what I mean? Honestly,
I'm not interested in making someone else wealthy if I'm
all the way real, other than my audience that I'm helping,
I'm not interested in growing something. And then you like, yeah,
go ahead, go ahead, girl. You know what that's called slavery.
(15:51):
You know our people are and we we apt that now.
And so I say this is that, you know, be
willing to grow slowly. I never grew more than what
the company can there. I did take leaps here and there,
especially when it came to hiring, but I would take
a calculated leap where I would be like, for example,
my first CEO, like I had already been business for
like four or five years, but she was really good
(16:11):
at organization and that's something that I lacked. And so
I remember telling her I'm launching this new business. I
had a budget of thest to business. I have several businesses.
The budget needs to business, which is the business of Tiffany.
So it's like my New York Times best selling book
Get It with Money, and my other books. It's speaking
spokesperson work, Rand ambassador work, basically the business of Tiffany.
But I said, I wanted to create a business that
(16:33):
wasn't the business of Tiffany. So my second business Literature Academy.
So I told my CEO at the time, I don't, girl,
I don't have no money. But what I do have, like,
I don't have any money to pay you now from
the business because that business has not launched yet. But
I did. She wanted to make I think it was
like three thousand dollars a month, and I said, okay,
I've got six months worth of savings in my personal save.
(16:55):
I had eighteen thousand dollars. I had cobble together, you know.
So I said, I got six months. We have six
months to get Literature Academy off the ground so it
can start paying you. So we worked our behinds off
and we did it by months six. Right when my
my savings was done, the academy launched, and uh and
during that we launched, launch was like a week. We
(17:15):
made seventy tho hollars that that during that launch. Now
here's the thing. It sounds cute, but we spent it
cost us fifty to make that seventy. Right, But because
my literature Academy was UM still in existence. UM it's
a subscription based business. So although we spent fifty to
them to make that seventy, that's because we have to
build everything that But then the subscription started to roll
(17:38):
in so it was enough to cover her salary. So
that's why I said, you want to make calculated risks, like, Okay,
I'm not just going to drain my savings account and
hope and wish and pray we had a strategic plan
in place, like if I pay more, if I if
I spend this expense, how can I expect to get
that money back? If you don't have that plan in place,
then you're likely to lose all of that money. I'm
(17:59):
not willing to do that. So that's what I suggest, Um,
two folks that if you are going to you know,
use your own money, do so make those calculated risks
and and be clear of this is how I'm going
to get my money back. This is the timeline and
time frame. If if we don't, here's the backup plan
to that. You know, we could probably go way fast.
I mean, honestly, we could probably be at thirty million
(18:19):
dollars a year right now in business, but that would
cause us to grow in a way that's quite honestly
not sustainable. Because you hear people like you can make twenty,
but we spend a twenty one to make twenty. That's
why some folks are doing I'm not interested in that.
We are forty six percent profit. You know, we've got
a healthy profit margin. So so what do you say
to the people who says, you know, we hey, but look,
(18:41):
you could be you know, a two billion dollar business
if you became something else, and you know, yeah, you
might own point one percent, but that's still a lot
of money compared to the ten millions. So I'll say
this that I I don't disagree with that, and so
I'm actually building something out externally from that, meaning that
for me, I'd like I'd like to have a little
(19:01):
bit more diversity. So I have the budgetsa that's a business.
I've got the literature academy that that is slow and
steady wins the race. It's like amazing money for me
every year, and I'm building another business where um, I'm
doing just that that is going to be like, it
is my intention to grow in the next three years
and sell it for about two hundred three hundred million
dollars and take my cut from that. And so to
(19:24):
your point, I'm thinking about that too, you know, but
I needed um for me. Security was most important because
I had been so financially insecure for so long that
the budget Issa and the Literature Academy gave me that.
So now that my house is paid off, my rental property,
home is paid off, my parents house is paid off,
my student loan that's are gone. I'm literally debt free
(19:45):
like a toddler. So now that I'm in a safe,
comfortable place, I have a business that generates money for
me no matter what because it's a subscription base. Now
I can take the risk for me. Now I can
take that risk because if the risk doesn't work out,
guess what, I will still make seven figures a year,
you know. So for me, I all of my risk
I take are not really risk. I'm like, m M,
(20:07):
I know I could go for a billion right away,
but let me just go for my million. Feel good,
make sure everybody good, we all fed, And now I
could take the leap from a place that's not a
place of fear, you know what I mean, Like I
can take the leap from a place of like, you know,
regardless of what happens. You know, I know I'm gonna
be Okay, let's just go for it. So that's what's
happening in phase three of my business development. So you know,
(20:28):
there's this quote that says, how you do one thing
is how you do everything right. And and I wonder,
if you can't manage your personal finances, can you be
expected or um, can you manage business finances? Because I
imagine some people will have the excuse of, like, look,
I'm not making enough, so I'm always messing up because
(20:49):
I'm always trying to play catch up. But they may
have this idea that could potentially get them out of
that situation. How can they be trusted with the money
to do it? So I wonder to what extent is
that excuse valid? Um? I think it's very valid because
of one at the very least, if you are stressed
personally when it comes to your finances, then it's gonna
(21:11):
be very hard for you to develop a business without
that fear in the background. Okay, you know, we really
got to make money. I just you know, it's hard.
I'm not saying that. Now here's the thing. I develop
a budget and stuff from that space in place because
I I had nothing. But it's really difficult to stay
focused because now you're making choices where you're just like,
is this good in the long term or is this
(21:31):
a quick buck? But that quick buck might mean So
for example, let's just say you partner with the brand
and they're like, hey, Tiffany, you know, like beginner Tiffany,
will pay you ten thousand dollars for us to be
able to use your use your likeness for the next year.
In the beginning, you're like, oh, I'll take that ten
thou because I need it, you know, I gotta pay
these bills. And then what happens is as you're growing
(21:53):
and developing your brand, you have all these other brands
I want to work with you, but guess who can't
work with them? You because you're in the contract for
that year, and there was a five thousand dollar or
two thousand or two or three or four altogether, that's
fifty thou dollars that you could have locked in, but
because you're locked in for that ten you're like dang.
And I'm sharing that from like experience where I've locked
myself in because I'm like, I need the money now,
(22:16):
and I'm like, okay, but I learned the lessons to say,
if if someone's going to lock me down, it has
to be a significant amount of money, more than what
I can anticipate based upon last year what I would
make if I was gonna partner with multiple people. So,
but if you are reckless with your because I've seen
people who are reckless with their personal finances, not just
(22:37):
I'm having a financial hard time because maybe you lost
your job or whatever, but reckless, You're likely going to
also be reckless with your business finances. And if you
have the pleasure and the privilege of having a team,
you put everybody at risk. I don't play that. And
so you know, you do want to get yourself financially
together because also to you to work with financial professionals,
like you might have a CFO, you might have a controller,
(22:59):
you might have a bookkeeper, you might have an accountant,
but you're gonna want to know what you're looking at,
you know, and so you can't just um um give
all the financial control away. And so getting your personal
finances in order. It's definitely a major key in making
sure your business is also sustainable. You know, you talked
about how you know you were in that situation. You
(23:22):
know you built your business from a state of being broke,
and um, I wonder what was the break that you
had that set you on a different trajectory. So, like,
I'm broke today, but tomorrow, because this thing happened, I'm
finally free, you know the proverbial sense of free. I'm
out of those those weeds. And how can we be
intentional about making sure that that break happens? So for me,
(23:46):
I remember, for me, it was connection to different people.
Like the first five years, it was just me, me, me, me,
me in this little hole. I got myself to, like
I think I got myself to a hundred fifty thousand
dollars a year in business, which is really thirty five thousand.
I'll saycom those of y'all who know will know, like,
because you gotta pay bills and you gotta pay Uncle Sam.
(24:07):
So people only make six figures. I'm like, no, my
business makes six figures. I make lesson I did as
a preschool teacher. But I said, don't let people pool
when they're like, oh, I'll make I'm like, is that
your business? You know? And I'm always transparent with our numbers.
I think that's important, right, So so what what what
transformed it for me? Because I had it took me
(24:28):
almost six years to get to six figures and then
I met um So the budgets still a hundred percent mine,
but I met my business partner. He wasn't my business
partner at the time. His name is Jabriel, and he
was like, why are you doing it this way? You
could do it this way. It was a new injection
of new information. He's like, like, for example, he said,
have you ever heard of an affiliate link? And I'm
(24:49):
like now. He was like, well, what tools and resources
do you use? And I said, here's a list. He said,
do you suggest them to your to your artists? I
said yeah all the time. And he was like, do
you know some of these companies will pay you to
suggest them. I did not know that and he was like, girl,
make a list and we found all, like you know,
of the ten ten businesses, maybe there were three that
had an affiliate program that was public. So instead of
(25:11):
just giving a regular link like business dot com, it
was business dot com slash Tiffany, and all of a sudden,
that was an extra thousand dollars a month that was
coming in for something I was already doing. And I
was like, oh, so what I learned is that after
partnering with your brood, to learned that there were other
people that I started to connect with that like you know,
(25:31):
you're really looking to either learn from them virtually meaning
like watching their videos and listening to their podcast whatever,
or you know, sometimes you get the partner in real life,
or you go to networking event. You need to be
amongst people who are have done it or are currently
doing it because it will expand your capacity. So what
helped me go from literally five years five or six
(25:54):
years took me to get to six figures, It took
me two years after that to get to seven, and
then it took me a year after that to get
to um to eight to eight. You see how quickly
that learning curve was, Like you know, so I was like, Okay,
it's the expansion of capacity, you know, Like I was
thinking so small and even now I fight to not
think small, that to think deeper, to think wider, to
(26:17):
expand my capacity for what is possible. Because I was
just thinking that I have a business coach now. And
I was telling him the other day like, I don't know,
I keep getting this like vision that I'm gonna, like,
you know, make fifty million dollars, you know. And I
told him this idea that I'm rolling out. He was like,
are you sure that's what I'm saying fifty million? I
was like yeah. He was like that idea is more
worth more like two hundred millions based upon the market.
(26:39):
And I was like, okay. He said, now the fifty
million is likely going to be what your take home is.
Maybe that's what your vision is telling you. But in
my mind, I'm like two hundred million, no, because it
feels so impossible. And then I, um, he invited me
to this like um entrepreneur kind of like shin dig.
We're literally everybody there. There are people there were like,
(27:00):
oh we made two million last week. It was so great,
So we're gonna have a company for her. Everybody ain't
on social flexing, so that normalization of that like oh yeah,
we built our company, like you know me and you know,
I met him at the last meeting. We built a
company in six months to a million dollars a month.
We just sold it for seventy million. I think we
should do that again. That's fun. And you're like, wait,
what that Expand I'm over here sweating like I'm dont
(27:23):
make it to my ten million, and they're like, oh,
that's so cute. Ten So how's that going. And meanwhile,
these people that you would never see on social are
just are just making money at like a level that
seems so insane and crazy because we don't see it
see it posted on social because they're not trying to
get robbed and every known new business. And so for
(27:43):
me and for anyone who's wanting to go to the
next level, it's gonna require you to expand your capacity.
And some of the best ways to do that is
take a look. It's in a book reading Rainbow Read.
I mean, damn, people don't want to read. Read like
you know, if you want to read this is my
day in a black Moment. Get Good with Money tend
Simple Steps to Becoming financially Whole, my New York Times
(28:04):
best selling book available at Get gives Money dot com.
But no, sincerely, like I'm even now I'm reading Atomic
Habits right, which is like helping me to open up
my mind, like, Okay, before I read David, David and
Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. He's one of my favorite writers,
Like how what David Malcolm Gladwell works writes really amazing books, um,
(28:25):
that can be used for your business, but they're really
books about kind of like psychology. Where David and Goliath
he talks about was David really the underdog? That sometimes
really being the underdog is your best asset and how
to use that. So and before that, um, I read
Delivering Happiness by Tony Shay. So he's the owner of Zapples.
He passed away recently, but he was a billionaire and
(28:45):
his thing was all about company culture. So I had
me looking at my own company's culture to what we
could do better. So I'm constantly reading to expand my capacity.
That's one to talk to people, talk to people who
are doing similar, better, whatever than you, so you can
think beyond what you know. You don't know all the things.
(29:07):
The best thing that you can know is you don't
know anything you know, like expand your capacity that way.
And the third thing is expand your capacity through experiences.
Nothing teaches you better than actually seeing, tasting, doing One
thing I do, like once a month is I find
one of the wealthiest neighborhoods around here and I drive
through because it's a reminder that fifty people in this
(29:27):
neighborhood figured out how to get themselves a five million
dollar home. Sis they are smarter than you. As a teacher,
one of the things you learned as a teacher is
that eighty percent of the student population is of average
intelligence average meaning smart, ten percent have have challenges, you know,
where they really need additional assistance, and ten percent are
super super smart, like geniuses. These people that live in
(29:50):
these houses, it's to any percent. This is not Bill
Gates that lives here. It's some regular deecular people. You
part of the eighty You can live here too. So
I'm always trying to expand my capath to be like, no, no, no, no,
let me experience that, like, Okay, they're not smarter than me,
why can't I live here? Of course you can, And
so experiences, um people and books are one of the
(30:11):
greatest ways to expand your capacity. And that's the difference
between where you are to the astronomical growth that's ahead
of you. I love it. I love it. And you
started off that response talking about something that's super important
for entrepreneurs, and I was taxes, right, And you know,
increasingly I see things on social that talk about how
the tax code was written to incentivize entrepreneurship, business owners
(30:35):
and employing people and growing enterprise. What I wonder is, like,
is there anything missing from that conversation that's not happening
far enough to where regular people, you know, maybe leaving
money on the table or paying too much to Uncle
Sam's like, how can we take advantage of this code
if we are entrepreneurs? And if you're not planning on
(30:57):
being an entrepreneur, but still you know, how to figure
out ways to you know, hope keep some of that
money to be able to deploy it towards you know,
building wealth. I'll say this that if you're not an entrepreneur,
there's not that much in the tax code that's to
your benefit. Quite honestly, this is why you hear about
the people say that, you know, the middle class is
basically carrying everybody else, you know, so um, those
Power one oh five New York City. En I Hire
Radio Studios, Lower Manhattan. Charlotta Magne, the guy is one
third of the Hall of Fame morning show The Breakfast Club,
And I'm sitting in somebody's office at the radio station
talking with him about how we amplify our good working
business as the community. And they're talking about our moves
(00:25):
and something we should talk about publicly. It's Charlotte main threat.
The need don't on how we talk about doing good
work and inspire the next generation to think bigger, to
think bigger than themselves. It's just like anything else. Right.
If you're a rapper and you rap about the club,
and you have about alcohol, and you have about drugs,
and you have about dealing with a bunch of women,
(00:46):
that's what you're influencing the people that are listening to
you to do. Right. So for me, it's like, you
gotta talk about those type of things. We have to
talk about some of the moves you make in business,
you know, because a lot of the movies that I'm
making business really are things that will better society, especially
the black community. So it's like, Yo, you have to
make people aware of those things because you're influencing the
(01:08):
next generation. So the next generation needs to know that
you could be more than just you know, in the
entertainment business, that you can be more than just an athlete,
you know. I think about what I saw guys like
Robert Smith, and you see the jay Zs of the world,
and you see the things that they do. The Tyler
Perry is like, of course, it makes you want to
do just more good business, you know. So yeah, I
(01:31):
think that's that's something that you'll see me show more.
I'm with Lucas and this is Black Tech Dream Money.
I'm gonna introduce you to some of the biggest names,
some of the brightness minds and brilliant ideas. If you're black,
in building or simply using tech to secure your back,
this podcast is for you. Tiffany l founder of The
(01:57):
Budget NISA, is an award winning team Financial Education in
America's favorite personal finance educator. She's been featuring the shows
like Good Morning America, NBC News Today, and more. She's
the author of Getting Good with Money, which is a
New York Times bestseller, the One Week Budget and To
Live Rich Challenge series. I asked Tiffany with so many
(02:20):
people just as skilled as she is in finance, but
in their own verticals, what can they do that she
did to finally break out and to get the attention
of the masses. So court thing once I learned to
like let go and be myself, right, So I used
to If you look back at any of my old
YouTube videos from like ten years ago, I was stiff, like, hello,
(02:41):
money is Tiffany? He said. Now I'm like, girl, your budget?
What are you doing? You know? And so I So
what happened was maybe like six or seven years ago.
I was like doing Alive and I want to ask
a question, and the real Tiffany slipped through and I
was like, oh, let me people look going back to professional.
But the comments went crazy easy, like yes girl, yes,
(03:02):
And I was like, oh yeah, right that okay. I
turned it up a little more, then a little more.
Then I saw this it was either a documentary. Maybe
I read an article where um Quincy Quincy Jones was
talking about Oprah and said the best um I think
she said, the best kind of piece of advice or
(03:22):
compliment that he ever gave her was that what makes
Oprah so special is this She's exactly the same on
camera as she is off, and I know it sounds
like okay, so I want no. I don't think people
understand when that camera turns one pc of people change
and are different because you know, you're you're either insecure,
(03:43):
you're like, oh my hair, do I look right? Do
I sound right? So there are all these things that
go through your head. So someone else shows up, it
shows up differently than how when the camera turns off.
Then you're like, all right, well so you know, and
if you can do that, So I worked the last
five years in particular to be the same Tiffany on
camera as I am off. And the closer I get,
(04:04):
I'm still about eight, you know, depending like right now
this is all to me. But like if I'm doing
like good Morning America, you know, I'm like, you know,
you know, I'm still about like sevent But the closer
I get, the more opportunities open up. Because human beings
are attracted to what is real and what is genuine,
even if they don't feel it on the surface. They're
(04:24):
attracted to like, you know, like the human and you
feels the human in me. So if I'm being myself,
you feel it and you react to it naturally, And
so that's Number one is I've gotten really close to
being myself on and off camera. Number two is just
some consistency. You'd be like, oh, people always ask me
to mentor them and they're like, oh, you know, I
(04:44):
just started my business a year ago and it's not
going as good. I'm like, first of all, sister, you
just got here. You're literally a year old. That's like
the baby saying why can't I walk? I mean you
gotta call And then too, you know, you have a
blog or you have a podcast and it's supposed to
drop it every Wednesday, but I haven't heard your podcast
drop in the last two months. You're just not consistent. Literally,
(05:07):
some of people are winning only because they do what
they say gonna they're gonna do, and they do it
when they say they're gonna do it. That's it. Can
you imagine eight percent of winning is just do I
do what I say I'm gonna do? Do I do
what when I say I'm gonna do it? The vast
majority of people, quite honestly, they don't either. They overpromise,
they get overwhelmed. They just don't feel like if they
lose interest. So I show up consistently, you know, and
(05:31):
I probably say the last but not least is the
truth is I try not to take it too seriously,
meaning like take myself too seriously and allow me to
be in alignment with how, you know, like with what
is out there for me. It's very easy to get
distracted and say I ought to do this because this
person is doing this, I ought to do that. So
I really try to stay in my lane because no
(05:53):
one can out Tiffany Tiffany, you know, and so once
I do, you know, So that's really it. It's like
showing up authentically as myself, consistency and staying in the
lane of Tiffany, and those three things are are how
I've been able to do New York Times you know,
um my book has been it was eight weeks on
the New York Times best Seller's list, you know, a
Good Morning America Today show. I'm the financial expert for
(06:14):
the real Um. Literally just today I submitted something for
news Week. I write for Bloomberg, you know, Wall Street Journal.
I mean there's there was one point literally where I
had to tell like CNBC, like, is there anybody else
that you know? I can't I can't do something every week.
I'm tired. I'm gonna. I'm tired. I can't do an
article I thing every week. Do you know any other experts?
(06:35):
And I'm not saying that to flex, I'm saying that
you want to know why. The news Week got emailed
me this morning said hey, Tiffany running an article and
I need some some some sales tips, you know, some
saving tips. And I woke up this morning and I
had my my meeting. I was like, okay, so I
saw it. Within an hour, I had written him back
with the two tips and said, you know, please attribute
(06:56):
me as Tiffany the budget needs to financial educator author,
Your Times best selling author of Get Go with Money.
He was like wow, he Now, guess who's going when
they tight on a deadline? Guess what Newsweek journalist's gonna
hit me back up? Again? He is, you know, because
he's like, yo, Tiffany is boom bom boom bob. You know,
most of these outlets want you to just be primed
(07:18):
and ready and consistent, and they'll come back to you
over and over because you're super easy to work with.
And so so let's go in on on that continent.
You know, content is king, and I wonder what your
strategy is like, did you pick one distribution channel? Is
it like your blog that you just go in on
to the you know, neglect of everything else, or is
it Instagram? Or have you figured out ways to you know,
(07:39):
spread yourself across these different platforms to be able to
reach people where they are. So at first, you know,
my my only platform, because it's really what's kind of like,
the only one available was was Facebook. So I put
all of my time and energy into Facebook. Um, but
what really helped me to expand is I created And
this was accidental, and sometimes your best ideas are accidental.
I created something called my Liverage your challenge. It was
(08:01):
this free online three recourse. Because everyone kept asking me
individual questions, and I said, what if I that I
used to be a school teacher for ten years and
I had my master's in education, and I had been
teaching this course at my local United Way, And I said,
what if I take this course? And I put it online.
So people who keep asking me the questions, I'm like,
take a free course, go to literature challenge dot com,
which is still available. Take a free course, right, And
(08:24):
so I said, I'm gonna get My idea was to
get ten thousand people signed up, which I did by
I want to say it was um January two fifteen
or sixteen. And what happened in the course is that
I did this accidentally, like I think, um, like Twitter
just came out, and maybe Instagram came out like the
next year or whatever. But you would coming to the course.
But what I was doing is effectively you would see
(08:46):
it on Facebook and then you you said, you know,
you registered for the course. Now I have your name
in email, so that's one platform. And then when you
were in it, I saw someone had this kind of
like um click to tweet in one of their blog
posts that I really liked, and I was like, oh,
you mean you can. You can create a message in
this box and people can just click it and then
it will tweet out. And I was like, okay, so
I added click to tweet. So the way the course
(09:07):
work was that it was an email course. Every day
for three weeks I would give you one small assignment
um that focused on that week's goals, you know, and um,
so now you're in my inbox. Now you're on my
email list. But then the daily email sent you to
the blog to actually get the lesson. So now I
got email. Already had Facebook, but now I got email,
(09:28):
and I got blog visitors. And then when you're on
the blog, I'm getting you the tips and I'm saying
click to tweet. Now you follow me on Twitter. And
then like the three or four days out of the course,
I would create a YouTube video lesson just to change
it up, so now you're following me on YouTube. And
then when Instagram came out, I'd be like, you know,
share your you know, share your feedback here, and now
I got you on Instagram. So that's how I really
(09:50):
started to kind of go. I call it like um
taking people on a tour of your brand. Facebook was
the door, then you sat in my living room, which
is my email list. Then you use the restaurant, which
was Twitter. Then you were like, you know, you know,
let me see the kitchen, which was Instagram. You know.
Then you so before you know that, one person has
(10:11):
visited all of my platforms because of that challenge. So
it was one of the The challenge was one of
the best tools I ever created, you know, for my
brand to grow, to grow the community, and to bring
them around the full tour. So I've got like really
robust um following on all of those platforms, and so yeah,
that's where it started with with one platform, and then
I created something that allowed me to bring people through
(10:32):
all these platforms. And I would imagine that, um, you
weren't manually Okay, I'm gonna manually do this blower post,
then manually do the YouTube, and manually do the Facebook,
and then the Twitter and Instagram. So I would imagine
that there were some systems in place there. And my
question is that how did you get the technical aptitude
or did you hire out that opportunity for somebody else
(10:56):
to be able to come alongside your team? And because
well most people figure they don't have the resources to
go do all those systems as well as you. Honestly,
that's I disagree. I did that at my brocus So
I said, okay, I want to build this course. I
don't have any money nor in my tech savvy. It's
just enough for me to get on Zoom, so I said.
(11:17):
Even now to this day, so I said, okay, what
do you know how to do? Tip me? I said,
I know how to email, and my blog I built myself,
because you know, they have those blog platforms that it
wasn't It was like, you know, if you can do Facebook.
I tell people it's even easier now. Back then it
was a little harder. I think I was using blogger
dot com or whatever. But it's just basically a template
that you put your picture on. It looked terrible that
you put your picture on and then you, you know,
(11:38):
you just upload your blog posts. Right, So it wasn't
I didn't have to be technically savvy. So that course
was really just you joined my email list, and every
day I emailed you, Hey, go to my blog for
today's lesson. So there was no real tech savvy stuff
I needed other than do you not how to send
the email? I think I was using like mad Memia design,
you know, you know, and right, so it wasn't even
(12:01):
like something like now we're use infusion soft, you know.
But so it wasn't even some some sophisticated CRM. It
was just a regular email list. I got you on
the email list, and then every day I said, here's
day one of the Literature Challenge. This week we're talking
about budgeting. Um learn how to create your budget click here,
and then here took you to the blog post. So
ahead of time, I wrote out the twenty one blog
(12:22):
post and I wrote out the twenty one emails and
then I just said, mad meet me on this day,
send this email on day, to send this email on
this day. And so what happened and that I found
that my audience was like, this is so great and
they were messaging me. And then that's when Facebook groups
came out. So at the end of each blog post,
I said, we want to talk about today's lesson, join
us in the group. And then my Facebook group became
(12:44):
the place where it was like the community. I didn't
have to build them, so I didn't. The first challenge
or two challenges I did completely solo because I didn't
need any super tech savvy. I knew how to use Facebook.
I knew how to send an email, and the blog
it wasn't great, but I knew how to edit least, like,
you know, use the blog Tampa that they created for me,
so you don't need And to this day, that's still
(13:05):
basically the way the literature challenges are run, and over
one million people have done one or more of my challenges.
One million on that same simple sending your email, go
to the blog, sending your email, go to the blog.
That's it good for you? I mean, that's it's a
lot of people in your in your sphere, and I
want to I want to talk a little bit about
(13:26):
because we have so many conversations in our world about
they're not being enough capital for black people to start businesses. Um,
not the venture capital there's you know, there's an increasing
amount of angel and angel capital, but there's still a
touch of disparity, right and so UM for the men
and women who will be listening to this and are
(13:47):
using either their savings or their personal credit cards to
build their business, how do you advise them to gauge
to what extent they should be leveraging their personal holdings,
their security um to invest in a company. How how
do you advise them to and to use that morning
that should be there for the rainy day that should
(14:07):
be there, you know, the bridge over troubled water, to
invest in their things. So I'll say this that there
is a place for VC funding. I don't have any
where I am a hunter said funded and we don't
have any debt. And we made ten million dollars last year.
This is just us, our little black business is doing
what we do, serving black people, right and so, but
(14:28):
ten million to one of these fast growth companies, is like,
what because it's ten millions, ten years that we got here.
For some people, they're like, what we did then that
first six months? Yeah, but then somebody else owned your company.
They're like, you know, like I make ten after I
take home seven? Do you take home seving? Because I
know the people not let you take them that big
salary because that business belonged to them, you know. So
(14:50):
there's something to be said for I remember I was
meeting with a young woman who started this great brand.
It's entire and she's doing well, and she was saying,
the only way to really have well is that you
have to have an exit. And I was like, that's
not true, you know, but that I get it because
she had, you know, she had um um um DC funds,
you know, like embedded into her business. So yes, But
(15:10):
in general, everyone, I have friends who regret taking money
and friends who are so glad that they took money.
To me, there's no right or wrong. You have to
just decide for yourself if you're not gonna take money,
be okay with growing slow. I don't know when did
it become like you have to grow super fast and
in doing so, I don't know if you've ever listen
to the podcast How I Built This. Sometimes you listen
(15:31):
and you're like, Okay, so you grew this billion out
of company and now you are one percent. Well, damn,
I don't want that, you know what I mean? Honestly,
I'm not interested in making someone else wealthy if I'm
all the way real, other than my audience that I'm helping,
I'm not interested in growing something. And then you like, yeah,
go ahead, go ahead, girl. You know what that's called slavery.
(15:51):
You know our people are and we we apt that now.
And so I say this is that, you know, be
willing to grow slowly. I never grew more than what
the company can there. I did take leaps here and there,
especially when it came to hiring, but I would take
a calculated leap where I would be like, for example,
my first CEO, like I had already been business for
like four or five years, but she was really good
(16:11):
at organization and that's something that I lacked. And so
I remember telling her I'm launching this new business. I
had a budget of thest to business. I have several businesses.
The budget needs to business, which is the business of Tiffany.
So it's like my New York Times best selling book
Get It with Money, and my other books. It's speaking
spokesperson work, Rand ambassador work, basically the business of Tiffany.
But I said, I wanted to create a business that
(16:33):
wasn't the business of Tiffany. So my second business Literature Academy.
So I told my CEO at the time, I don't, girl,
I don't have no money. But what I do have, like,
I don't have any money to pay you now from
the business because that business has not launched yet. But
I did. She wanted to make I think it was
like three thousand dollars a month, and I said, okay,
I've got six months worth of savings in my personal save.
(16:55):
I had eighteen thousand dollars. I had cobble together, you know.
So I said, I got six months. We have six
months to get Literature Academy off the ground so it
can start paying you. So we worked our behinds off
and we did it by months six. Right when my
my savings was done, the academy launched, and uh and
during that we launched, launch was like a week. We
(17:15):
made seventy tho hollars that that during that launch. Now
here's the thing. It sounds cute, but we spent it
cost us fifty to make that seventy. Right, But because
my literature Academy was UM still in existence. UM it's
a subscription based business. So although we spent fifty to
them to make that seventy, that's because we have to
build everything that But then the subscription started to roll
(17:38):
in so it was enough to cover her salary. So
that's why I said, you want to make calculated risks, like, Okay,
I'm not just going to drain my savings account and
hope and wish and pray we had a strategic plan
in place, like if I pay more, if I if
I spend this expense, how can I expect to get
that money back? If you don't have that plan in place,
then you're likely to lose all of that money. I'm
(17:59):
not willing to do that. So that's what I suggest, Um,
two folks that if you are going to you know,
use your own money, do so make those calculated risks
and and be clear of this is how I'm going
to get my money back. This is the timeline and
time frame. If if we don't, here's the backup plan
to that. You know, we could probably go way fast.
I mean, honestly, we could probably be at thirty million
(18:19):
dollars a year right now in business, but that would
cause us to grow in a way that's quite honestly
not sustainable. Because you hear people like you can make twenty,
but we spend a twenty one to make twenty. That's
why some folks are doing I'm not interested in that.
We are forty six percent profit. You know, we've got
a healthy profit margin. So so what do you say
to the people who says, you know, we hey, but look,
(18:41):
you could be you know, a two billion dollar business
if you became something else, and you know, yeah, you
might own point one percent, but that's still a lot
of money compared to the ten millions. So I'll say
this that I I don't disagree with that, and so
I'm actually building something out externally from that, meaning that
for me, I'd like I'd like to have a little
(19:01):
bit more diversity. So I have the budgetsa that's a business.
I've got the literature academy that that is slow and
steady wins the race. It's like amazing money for me
every year, and I'm building another business where um, I'm
doing just that that is going to be like, it
is my intention to grow in the next three years
and sell it for about two hundred three hundred million
dollars and take my cut from that. And so to
(19:24):
your point, I'm thinking about that too, you know, but
I needed um for me. Security was most important because
I had been so financially insecure for so long that
the budget Issa and the Literature Academy gave me that.
So now that my house is paid off, my rental property,
home is paid off, my parents house is paid off,
my student loan that's are gone. I'm literally debt free
(19:45):
like a toddler. So now that I'm in a safe,
comfortable place, I have a business that generates money for
me no matter what because it's a subscription base. Now
I can take the risk for me. Now I can
take that risk because if the risk doesn't work out,
guess what, I will still make seven figures a year,
you know. So for me, I all of my risk
I take are not really risk. I'm like, m M,
(20:07):
I know I could go for a billion right away,
but let me just go for my million. Feel good,
make sure everybody good, we all fed, And now I
could take the leap from a place that's not a
place of fear, you know what I mean, Like I
can take the leap from a place of like, you know,
regardless of what happens. You know, I know I'm gonna
be Okay, let's just go for it. So that's what's
happening in phase three of my business development. So you know,
(20:28):
there's this quote that says, how you do one thing
is how you do everything right. And and I wonder,
if you can't manage your personal finances, can you be
expected or um, can you manage business finances? Because I
imagine some people will have the excuse of, like, look,
I'm not making enough, so I'm always messing up because
(20:49):
I'm always trying to play catch up. But they may
have this idea that could potentially get them out of
that situation. How can they be trusted with the money
to do it? So I wonder to what extent is
that excuse valid? Um? I think it's very valid because
of one at the very least, if you are stressed
personally when it comes to your finances, then it's gonna
(21:11):
be very hard for you to develop a business without
that fear in the background. Okay, you know, we really
got to make money. I just you know, it's hard.
I'm not saying that. Now here's the thing. I develop
a budget and stuff from that space in place because
I I had nothing. But it's really difficult to stay
focused because now you're making choices where you're just like,
is this good in the long term or is this
(21:31):
a quick buck? But that quick buck might mean So
for example, let's just say you partner with the brand
and they're like, hey, Tiffany, you know, like beginner Tiffany,
will pay you ten thousand dollars for us to be
able to use your use your likeness for the next year.
In the beginning, you're like, oh, I'll take that ten
thou because I need it, you know, I gotta pay
these bills. And then what happens is as you're growing
(21:53):
and developing your brand, you have all these other brands
I want to work with you, but guess who can't
work with them? You because you're in the contract for
that year, and there was a five thousand dollar or
two thousand or two or three or four altogether, that's
fifty thou dollars that you could have locked in, but
because you're locked in for that ten you're like dang.
And I'm sharing that from like experience where I've locked
myself in because I'm like, I need the money now,
(22:16):
and I'm like, okay, but I learned the lessons to say,
if if someone's going to lock me down, it has
to be a significant amount of money, more than what
I can anticipate based upon last year what I would
make if I was gonna partner with multiple people. So,
but if you are reckless with your because I've seen
people who are reckless with their personal finances, not just
(22:37):
I'm having a financial hard time because maybe you lost
your job or whatever, but reckless, You're likely going to
also be reckless with your business finances. And if you
have the pleasure and the privilege of having a team,
you put everybody at risk. I don't play that. And
so you know, you do want to get yourself financially
together because also to you to work with financial professionals,
like you might have a CFO, you might have a controller,
(22:59):
you might have a bookkeeper, you might have an accountant,
but you're gonna want to know what you're looking at,
you know, and so you can't just um um give
all the financial control away. And so getting your personal
finances in order. It's definitely a major key in making
sure your business is also sustainable. You know, you talked
about how you know you were in that situation. You
(23:22):
know you built your business from a state of being broke,
and um, I wonder what was the break that you
had that set you on a different trajectory. So, like,
I'm broke today, but tomorrow, because this thing happened, I'm
finally free, you know the proverbial sense of free. I'm
out of those those weeds. And how can we be
intentional about making sure that that break happens? So for me,
(23:46):
I remember, for me, it was connection to different people.
Like the first five years, it was just me, me, me, me,
me in this little hole. I got myself to, like
I think I got myself to a hundred fifty thousand
dollars a year in business, which is really thirty five thousand.
I'll saycom those of y'all who know will know, like,
because you gotta pay bills and you gotta pay Uncle Sam.
(24:07):
So people only make six figures. I'm like, no, my
business makes six figures. I make lesson I did as
a preschool teacher. But I said, don't let people pool
when they're like, oh, I'll make I'm like, is that
your business? You know? And I'm always transparent with our numbers.
I think that's important, right, So so what what what
transformed it for me? Because I had it took me
(24:28):
almost six years to get to six figures and then
I met um So the budgets still a hundred percent mine,
but I met my business partner. He wasn't my business
partner at the time. His name is Jabriel, and he
was like, why are you doing it this way? You
could do it this way. It was a new injection
of new information. He's like, like, for example, he said,
have you ever heard of an affiliate link? And I'm
(24:49):
like now. He was like, well, what tools and resources
do you use? And I said, here's a list. He said,
do you suggest them to your to your artists? I
said yeah all the time. And he was like, do
you know some of these companies will pay you to
suggest them. I did not know that and he was like, girl,
make a list and we found all, like you know,
of the ten ten businesses, maybe there were three that
had an affiliate program that was public. So instead of
(25:11):
just giving a regular link like business dot com, it
was business dot com slash Tiffany, and all of a sudden,
that was an extra thousand dollars a month that was
coming in for something I was already doing. And I
was like, oh, so what I learned is that after
partnering with your brood, to learned that there were other
people that I started to connect with that like you know,
(25:31):
you're really looking to either learn from them virtually meaning
like watching their videos and listening to their podcast whatever,
or you know, sometimes you get the partner in real life,
or you go to networking event. You need to be
amongst people who are have done it or are currently
doing it because it will expand your capacity. So what
helped me go from literally five years five or six
(25:54):
years took me to get to six figures, It took
me two years after that to get to seven, and
then it took me a year after that to get
to um to eight to eight. You see how quickly
that learning curve was, Like you know, so I was like, Okay,
it's the expansion of capacity, you know, Like I was
thinking so small and even now I fight to not
think small, that to think deeper, to think wider, to
(26:17):
expand my capacity for what is possible. Because I was
just thinking that I have a business coach now. And
I was telling him the other day like, I don't know,
I keep getting this like vision that I'm gonna, like,
you know, make fifty million dollars, you know. And I
told him this idea that I'm rolling out. He was like,
are you sure that's what I'm saying fifty million? I
was like yeah. He was like that idea is more
worth more like two hundred millions based upon the market.
(26:39):
And I was like, okay. He said, now the fifty
million is likely going to be what your take home is.
Maybe that's what your vision is telling you. But in
my mind, I'm like two hundred million, no, because it
feels so impossible. And then I, um, he invited me
to this like um entrepreneur kind of like shin dig.
We're literally everybody there. There are people there were like,
(27:00):
oh we made two million last week. It was so great,
So we're gonna have a company for her. Everybody ain't
on social flexing, so that normalization of that like oh yeah,
we built our company, like you know me and you know,
I met him at the last meeting. We built a
company in six months to a million dollars a month.
We just sold it for seventy million. I think we
should do that again. That's fun. And you're like, wait,
what that Expand I'm over here sweating like I'm dont
(27:23):
make it to my ten million, and they're like, oh,
that's so cute. Ten So how's that going. And meanwhile,
these people that you would never see on social are
just are just making money at like a level that
seems so insane and crazy because we don't see it
see it posted on social because they're not trying to
get robbed and every known new business. And so for
(27:43):
me and for anyone who's wanting to go to the
next level, it's gonna require you to expand your capacity.
And some of the best ways to do that is
take a look. It's in a book reading Rainbow Read.
I mean, damn, people don't want to read. Read like
you know, if you want to read this is my
day in a black Moment. Get Good with Money tend
Simple Steps to Becoming financially Whole, my New York Times
(28:04):
best selling book available at Get gives Money dot com.
But no, sincerely, like I'm even now I'm reading Atomic
Habits right, which is like helping me to open up
my mind, like, Okay, before I read David, David and
Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. He's one of my favorite writers,
Like how what David Malcolm Gladwell works writes really amazing books, um,
(28:25):
that can be used for your business, but they're really
books about kind of like psychology. Where David and Goliath
he talks about was David really the underdog? That sometimes
really being the underdog is your best asset and how
to use that. So and before that, um, I read
Delivering Happiness by Tony Shay. So he's the owner of Zapples.
He passed away recently, but he was a billionaire and
(28:45):
his thing was all about company culture. So I had
me looking at my own company's culture to what we
could do better. So I'm constantly reading to expand my capacity.
That's one to talk to people, talk to people who
are doing similar, better, whatever than you, so you can
think beyond what you know. You don't know all the things.
(29:07):
The best thing that you can know is you don't
know anything you know, like expand your capacity that way.
And the third thing is expand your capacity through experiences.
Nothing teaches you better than actually seeing, tasting, doing One
thing I do, like once a month is I find
one of the wealthiest neighborhoods around here and I drive
through because it's a reminder that fifty people in this
(29:27):
neighborhood figured out how to get themselves a five million
dollar home. Sis they are smarter than you. As a teacher,
one of the things you learned as a teacher is
that eighty percent of the student population is of average
intelligence average meaning smart, ten percent have have challenges, you know,
where they really need additional assistance, and ten percent are
super super smart, like geniuses. These people that live in
(29:50):
these houses, it's to any percent. This is not Bill
Gates that lives here. It's some regular deecular people. You
part of the eighty You can live here too. So
I'm always trying to expand my capath to be like, no, no, no, no,
let me experience that, like, Okay, they're not smarter than me,
why can't I live here? Of course you can, And
so experiences, um people and books are one of the
(30:11):
greatest ways to expand your capacity. And that's the difference
between where you are to the astronomical growth that's ahead
of you. I love it. I love it. And you
started off that response talking about something that's super important
for entrepreneurs, and I was taxes, right, And you know,
increasingly I see things on social that talk about how
the tax code was written to incentivize entrepreneurship, business owners
(30:35):
and employing people and growing enterprise. What I wonder is, like,
is there anything missing from that conversation that's not happening
far enough to where regular people, you know, maybe leaving
money on the table or paying too much to Uncle
Sam's like, how can we take advantage of this code
if we are entrepreneurs? And if you're not planning on
(30:57):
being an entrepreneur, but still you know, how to figure
out ways to you know, hope keep some of that
money to be able to deploy it towards you know,
building wealth. I'll say this that if you're not an entrepreneur,
there's not that much in the tax code that's to
your benefit. Quite honestly, this is why you hear about
the people say that, you know, the middle class is
basically carrying everybody else, you know, so um, those
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