Tori Dunlap: The Queen of Personal Finance

Today, the queen of personal finance, Tori Dunlap joins us to talk about her pivot from her corporate job to founding one of the most successful financial education platforms. She is the Founder and CEO of Her First 100K, author of the New York Times bestselling book, Financial Feminist, and host of her successful podcast also called Financial Feminist. But her pivot was driven by something we all experienced in 2016: the election of Donald Trump. It was then that she realized how much power and freedom money held, especially for women, as she achieved her own goal of saving $100k before turning 25. Now, she passes the critical financial tools she honed on to other women, empowering them to negotiate a raise, pay off debt, build wealth, and contribute to their local economies.

 

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She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Tori, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Tory dumat.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome back to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host Emily Tish Sussman. On

(00:32):
this episode, the Queen of personal finance, Tory Dunlap, joins
us to talk about how she went from a traditional
corporate career to founding one of the largest financial education
platforms out there. Tory is the founder and CEO of
her first one hundred K, author of the New York

(00:52):
Times best selling book Financial Feminist, and host of her
successful podcast, also called Financial Feminist. I first met Tory
when I was an editor at Marie Clair and hosting
the weekly business show Getting Down to Business, where I
interviewed women about the nitty gritty behind their career success.
Her story stuck out to me because she came to
this calling after Trump was first elected in twenty sixteen,

(01:15):
something I see as a pivot point for many women
that I talked to. It was then that she realized
that money equaled power and freedom, especially for women, so
she set out to save one hundred K before she
turned twenty five, and started blogging about it as a
way to show women everywhere that they could do it too.
Before she knew it, she had a real business on

(01:36):
her hands and decided to quit her day job, making
a scary, but ultimately rewarding pivot. Since then, she's helped
millions of women take control of their money, whether it's
negotiating a raise, paying off debt, or building wealth. Tory's
mission is simple to give women the tools they need

(01:56):
to own their financial futures. She's been featured in The
New York Times, Forbes, and Good Morning America, to name
a few. This season, after working on the Harris Walls
presidential campaign, I've been thinking about things through the lens
of how each of us can have a unique impact
outside of politics, and I love what Tory is doing.

(02:18):
When women have financial freedom, it doesn't just help us
pivot in our own careers, it gives us the power
to make real change in our lives, our communities, and
the world around us. I'm so excited for you to
hear Tory's story. Let's jump right in.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
My name is Tory Dunlap. I am the founder of
for first hundred K, which is money and career platform
for women. I believe I was put on this earth
to fight for women's financial rights.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Okay, so we're going to back it up. What was
life like for young Tory? Like, where were you in
the birth order? What was it like where you grew up.
I am the eldest and the youngest in the middle.
Because I'm an only child.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
I have major I think oldly child syndrome, both in
all of the good ways and all the bad ways.
But yeah, I am an only child. Yeah it's been
great having all of the attention and terrible having all
the attention. But yeah, I grew up the only child
of two parents who are still together and still live
in the same house I grew up in like they

(03:20):
have not moved since I was born thirty years ago.
I was immediately the artistic kid, dance, acting, music. I
started piano at five. I was singing before I could talk,
and that's what I thought my life was going to be.
I got to college majored in communications, which I loved
and still loved, but that was my like almost apology major.

(03:44):
It was like the thing that was doing all of
the things I loved about theater, but in a way
that I could actually make money, you know, the storytelling
and the talking to people. And then I also majored
in theater, and I wanted that to be my life.
But I also was super practical, and I had parents
who gave me the incredible gift of a lot of learnings,

(04:05):
but a financial education and a lot of conversations about money.
And so I remember talking in high school and then
in college about like, Okay, are you going to pursue
acting professionally? And for me the entire time, it was
just very obvious that that was not the life I
was going or not the path I was going to take.
I think I deeply wanted it. There's times I still
want it, but the practical side of me was like, Okay,

(04:29):
we have to pay rent, we have to make sure
that we have enough money to do the things we
want to do. And I don't think I wanted that
struggle that so many of my incredibly talented friends have,
where it's like auditioning day in and day out, working
three jobs just so you can try to pursue this dream.
And I didn't want that. Did you ever audition as

(04:51):
a kid All the time I was doing two shows
a year on camera work, like I had an agent
when I was like five, but it was not it
was like the reasonable stuff. It wasn't the dance mom,
pageant mom stuff. I was like, yeah, I don't think
I ever landed like a national commercial. But I was

(05:13):
doing some on camera work. But theater was really where
I love to be. So I was doing community theater,
you know, sound of Music when I was thirteen, and
then every play slash musical offered in high school and
then obviously you know, beyond that into college. So there
was a lot of you know, my heart is with theater,
and that's one of the reasons I love chatting with

(05:33):
you is figuring out, you know, what show are we
seeing on Broadway? And every time I'm in New York,
it's like, how many shows can I see in my
three days? And it's the answer is usually three. So yeah,
that is that is my love, and that is what
I thought when I was little. That's what I thought
I was going to do with my life.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
In addition to her love of theater, Torri also became
one of the youngest business owners I've ever met after
her dad helped her stand up and run a mini
vending machine Empire.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
I've had a very unique experience, which was I started
my first business when I was nine years old. So
I owned vending machines, the kind where you put a
quarter and you get a handful of candy out, like
gumball machines. I bought my first one when I was
nine on a loan from my dad that I did
pay back took me two years. I still remember it
like it was yesterday. I was like home from school,
sitting on the floor of our family room, and he

(06:23):
like brought in this machine and was like, do you
want to start a business? And nine year old me,
who's like precocious as hell and very ambitious, is like, yeah, sure.
And that was not yeah, it was not part of
the plan. But I learned everything about how to run
a business. Now. I didn't start anything brand new. I
didn't invent anything. I didn't go on Shark Tank, right,
but like I learned profit and loss, I learned I

(06:46):
opened my first bank account when I was nine, and
I was signing checks by ten, Like I knew how to,
you know, manage money. I knew how to run a
pretty basic business but still a bit business. And I
also understood how to pitch myself, and I was learning
that through theater, but I was also learning that through
this entrepreneurship experience. I was learning how to he or

(07:08):
no and be okay with that, and how to get
up and keep going. There was plenty of people who
told me, no, you cute twelve year old kid, you
can't stop your machine here, but I love that for you,
or plenty of people who said, no, you don't get
this part, even though you auditioned four times. And so
I think that was super crucial again to the success
I have now. It's just like hearing no, pitching yourself,

(07:29):
being okay, not taking it personally. Like There's so many
things that happened that, you know, really helped me manage money,
help me learn how to do that, but also was
just a great bonding experience for me and my dad.
We went out, you know, one Saturday a month for
ten years together and stocked the machines, and then by
the end of high school, I had fifteen machines with

(07:50):
all the money going into my college fund. And then
after eleven years, so about halfway through college, I think
my junior year, I sold that business to a t
and year old who also happens to be a named Tory.
And if I look back on that, that was the
first taste of what I have now, which is like
the entrepreneurship, the financial independence, the teaching women. And I

(08:11):
think that a lot of those experiences were very instrumental
in me doing the career I have now. It was
a really really great gift my parents gave me. And
I knew that wasn't normal, and I knew, you know,
that kids weren't having venue machine businesses. But I did
think that the financial education was normal. I thought that
everybody knew how to save. I thought that everybody knew

(08:33):
how to manage a credit card responsibly. And so then
when I got to college and started having conversations of like, oh,
how much does college cost? How can we afford this?
I started realizing, Oh, this financial education I had for
my parents was a privilege.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Can you talk a little bit more about what, like,
what was that financial education that your parents gave you? Like,
what kind of conversations was it. Did you guys like
sit down and have structured time to talk about the
next phase of a business? Did you sit down and
talk about your savings or was it sort of something
that you did like they did. They talk about their
own finances.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
One and this is my biggest tip to parents is
they didn't just talk to me. They showed me. And
I know that sounds obvious, but there's a lot of parents.
We get so many questions now from parents of like,
how do I know teach my kids to be financially responsible.
There's so many parents I think who well intentionally say, oh, well,
you need to save money, or you can't buy something
if you can't afford it. But then you see, you know,

(09:29):
the kids, see them putting their credit card down for
everything knowing they can't afford it, or having this really
you know, harmful relationship with money. But I saw them
talk about like very value based spending and that's still
something I teach. But we still went on a family
trip every single year. Yet there were things that we
didn't do in order to afford that trip. And so

(09:51):
they were talking about, like, we really value experiences, we
really value travel, we want to do that with you,
So we're not going to go out to eat all
the time. And really, look back, I think going out
to eat, especially at like a nice restaurant, was not
a Tuesday. It was like special occation. It was birthday,
Christmas like that was kind of it. And so I
think that that was one really great thing my parents

(10:11):
did was not just talking to talk about walking the
walk and also demonstrating, hey, we're not doing this so
that we can do this, We're not having this thing
so that we can have this other thing. I think
the second thing that was really impactful was you were asking,
you know, did they sit down and be like, this
is dedicated time to have conversations. I still remember getting

(10:33):
my first paychecks and that was a dedicated, sit down
conversation where they're like, Okay, so this is how much
you're getting paid. This is your houry late rate, and
this is you know what it equates to for your
pay period. This is what taxes are, and this is
what's happening when they take taxes out. Because I remember
getting my first paycheck and being like, wait, all this
money's not mine and just that blowing my mind and

(10:56):
so yeah, I understanding that, but then also understanding like, okay,
so you have this amount of money left over, what
are you going to do with it? And I was
actually thinking about this the other day. I don't I
didn't really spend a lot of my money in high school,
Like it all went to savings because my parents had,
you know, told me this mindset of like, hey, you're working,

(11:17):
so you can save money. That is the primary goal.
Spending's the secondary goal. So I was putting almost all
of my money into my college savings. And then when
I was in college, I remember graduating and then sitting down,
I still have it somewhere. My parents had me write
out what everything might cost, So what my average rent

(11:37):
might be, what my phone bill was going to cost,
what the electricity bill was, you know, all of these
new adult things that I was going to have to
completely pay for. And they were like, so that job
you got offered that's thirty thousand dollars a year is
probably not going to cover your basic expenses, and especially
not if you want to save money. And just doing

(11:58):
that again sounds so well, but I don't think most
my parents are doing this with their kids. Like that
was so helpful for me to be able to see like,
this is how much things cost one, but also two,
this is how much I'm going to need to make
in order to afford my life and in order to
hopefully save to get financially ahead. I want to acknowledge
too that I graduated without student debt per first hundred k.

(12:21):
You know my company is, and I'm sure we'll get
into it, but kind of it was built on or
the name came after I saved my own one hundred
k at twenty five, and I would not have been
able to do that had I not graduated debt free,
So it wouldn't have happened as quickly as it happened,
And that is privilege definitely. My parents worked really hard.

(12:42):
They only had one kid to save for, but they
helped contribute to my college fund. But I also was
working those jobs. And we sat down every single semester
before the semester happened and we had a collective conversation
and said, Okay, how are we going to afford this?
And my parents said, hey, we have this much money
to put up for you this semester. How much money
do you have this semester? How much money are you

(13:02):
going to make? How much money did you make last year?
And so that was a collaborative conversation we had. And
I remember I think it was my senior year, or
maybe my junior year before senior year, being like, Okay,
we have this amount of money and I think we
can squeak by. And I think we just had a
little bit of money left over after senior year to
be like, Okay, we did it. We graduated debt free

(13:23):
and so that was a huge benefit and a huge
leg up for me financially.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
And then you went on to work in marketing. So
because you had had all of these conversations, did that
put did you feel like it put like an extra
pressure on you to choose something that was going to
be your career forever.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah. I remember going in the guidance counselor before I
committed what university I was going to, and I was like,
I really want a major in theater and my parents
were like, no, You're not majoring just in theater. And
then I discovered that I could do you know, basically
marketing with less math, which is a calm degree, and
then theater with no extra charge. And I was like boom, okay,
we're double majoring. And so yeah, I think that for

(14:05):
me getting into my career in marketing. I actually really
loved it. And I think I loved it because, like
I said before, it was like scratching the itch of theater,
but in a quote unquote more practical way, more corporate way.
So I was getting to storytell, I was getting to
be around people, I was getting to write, I was
getting to strategically plan, and that was one of my
favorite parts of acting, was like the table reads and

(14:27):
the like character work before I even got on stage.
And so a lot of I think marketing, especially like
marketing planning, is that I was like, how do we
you know, what's the go to market strategy around this thing.
So I started my career in social media and was
doing social media marketing, and pretty much every job I
had until I became my own boss full time was

(14:48):
like the team of one marketer at a company. So
it was like social media primarily, but a lot of
other different things like content and sometimes PR and communications,
and there was a lot of you know stuff that
went into like just the social media marketing title. So yeah,
my first job, I was the only marketing person for

(15:10):
a company of five thousand people, and at twenty two,
like had a manager title, and so that was a
great experience and also very daunting. And yeah, I thought
I was going to be like VP of marketing by
thirty because I'm a very goal oriented person. I was
going to like climb the corporate ladder and girl boss
my way through the city and like have my coffee

(15:31):
and my briefcase and my pencil skirt. And that's how
I know it's a fucking fantasy, is I don't wear
pencil skirts and never have and they're uncomfortable and I
hate them. And like that's what I thought I was
going to do. And then the work environment, like my
rose colored goggles came off. I realized I was working
at an extremely toxic sexist company. I was getting weird,

(15:53):
sexual inappropriate things said to me at work. I was
watching my friends who were women at the company or
when of color, getting like passed over for opportunities. And
of course the election happens, and I'm twenty two, and
I'm thinking I'm coming to adulthood but really into womanhood
in a country with our first female president, And of

(16:13):
course it's not what happens, and fucking still has not happened,
and so I'm just like, uh, okay, what kind of
person am I going to be? Like what do I
stand for? And it really radicalized me, and I started
realizing that when I had money, I had options when
I had money and I'm not talking Bezos money, I'm
just talking like enough money to make my own decisions.

(16:36):
I could leave toxic situations I didn't want to be
in anymore because that first job I couldn't leave because
I didn't have enough money. I didn't have enough money saved.
I didn't have another job lined up. So I could
leave bad situations. I could start a business. I could
donate to causes I believed in. I could go to therapy.
I could afford a nicer apartment. Like every option opened

(16:58):
up to me when I had money. And through conversations
with my friends who were then coming to me for
financial advice, they were like what's a roth ira? And
like how do I get out of debt? And all
of that, I realized maybe this was the answer, Maybe
this was the way I can make an impact. And
the more research I did and the more experiences I
had in my life through the next couple of years
of corporate I was like, Oh, a financial education is

(17:20):
our best form of protest, Like in a world that
constantly does enfranchises women and any other marginalized group, having
the financial education, having the again ability to choose your
life and to have options and flexibility and freedom like
that is the feeling I want for every single woman,
And so that is kind of what led to her

(17:42):
first hunder k and then eventually me taking that business
full time.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Saving one hundred K by twenty five is no joke,
so I had to know how the numbers worked. After
the break, Tory tells us exactly how she saved her
first one hundred k. Then later we learn how she
pivoted and turned it all into a multimillion dollar business.
Stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
So I was doing her first hundred K savings and
actually like publicly announcing it as like a side hustle.
So this was twenty eighteen. I had run a blog
since twenty sixteen. It was like a blog for twenty
something women because it was like classic Tumblr era, you know.
And I was talking about career and money and travel
and all those things. But then I realized that everything
I was talking about was through the lens of money.

(18:40):
So yeah, I'd talk about travel, but I talk about
like how I negotiated you know, this rate down, or
like how I scored this flight deal or whatever, and
so and again, more research, more people coming to me,
me realizing in my own life oh, I'm able to
leave this really, really toxic boss without another job lined
up because I have an emergency fund. And wow, what
flexibility is that? And what is this beautiful feeling I have?

(19:04):
And that was the realization of like, oh, I think
I want to do this work. So twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,
I rebranded to her First hundred K and that is
when I declared my her first hundred K goal publicly,
which was I was attempting to save slash invest one
hundred k before I turned twenty six. And that was
the joke is as long as I did it the
day before I turned twenty six and still counted. So

(19:25):
the one hundred k was a couple of things. One privilege,
I always want to acknowledge that I'm assist gender white woman.
I also again graduated without student debts, so I had
a leg up there. The second thing was that I
was saving a portion of my take home pay every
time I got paid, and I think at the peak
of that, I was saving twenty seven percent of my
take home pay. Now people hear that and they think, oh,
you didn't do anything fun. Now. I still traveled internationally,

(19:48):
I still went out to eat, I just got really
clear on and this is my third tip, like what
I actually valued. So I valued travel, I valued food.
There were other things I didn't value as much. I
hardly ever bought a coffee because I just that was
not where I wanted to spend my money. And so
I got really really clear on what I wanted to
spend my money on, what brought me the most joy,
and then didn't really spend on things that I didn't

(20:10):
love or that you didn't make my life better. I
started investing really early. I was twenty two when I
opened up my roth Ira, and I worked to max
it out every single year. So I was not only
saving and investing, but also I was allowing my money
to work harder for me in the stock market. So
it helped me hit that one hundred k quicker because
when I put money in right, I was making the

(20:32):
compound interest gains on that too. I also negotiated every
single job I had, and I did not stay in
a job for longer than I felt respected. So the
moment I was like, I don't think I am getting
compensated fairly, or I think it's time to move on
was when I was strategically pivoting every single time, going like, Okay,
I'm going to find another job. I'm going to negotiate

(20:55):
that salary even more so, I don't think I stayed
at a job longer than two years. And we've talked
a lot at her first hundred K. And I'm sure
you have two about like job hopping, and I put
that in quotes, but like the negatives around job hopping
is not really a thing anymore, Like if you want
to leverage your salary, if you want to make sure
you're compensated fairly, like not staying at a role that

(21:17):
you don't feel fairly compensated in, even if it's only
been two years, Like that's a myth that I think
needs to die, and needs to die really hard. You're
allowed to switch jobs. It doesn't show that you like
can't keep a job. It's more about making sure that
you're family compensated to whatever role you're at. So, yeah,
I was doing these things of making more money and
then being able to save more or investing to allow

(21:40):
my money to work harder for me. And really the
hundred K was not about having one hundred thousand dollars
in my bank account, like that was fun it was
cool to see, you know, that six figure number, but
it was what that money meant. And this is something
we talk about in our work all the time, is
that money is not about math. It's not about numbers

(22:01):
people think it is. It's about like how good you
are with math, and it's like, I'm majored in theater, y'all,
Like I I'm not good with math. It's not about numbers.
It's about psychology, and it's about motivating you, just like
any other goal, to achieve it. And so the one
hundred k was not about one hundred k. It was
about me being able to quit my job and me
being able to take her first hunder k full time.

(22:22):
So in the midst of my own saving journey, the
company was also blowing up. Twenty nineteen, we got a
bunch of incredible press. Market Watch was like our first
big piece, which is you know, very like your dad
who's fifty five years old named Steve like reads it.
And I had my fun little turning point where the
comment section was just a mess of people being like
she said, it's just gendered, and so I'm not going

(22:44):
to read or like she said, the word privilege and
it's just had this beautiful moment of twenty four year
old me deciding was I going to try to be
for everybody or was I going to focus on the
people that I knew or I could really help, which
is women who are talking about how money affects women
different and women who do care to talk about systemic
oppression in regards to personal finance. And so that was

(23:06):
a turning point for me where I was like, Okay, yeah,
we're going to double down and sorry Steve if you
hate it, but this is what we're doing. It was,
you know, CNBC, and the big one was Good Morning America.
So I was on Good Morning America for the first
time when I hit my hundred k goal. So I
hit my one hundred k goal when I was twenty
five years and like three months old. I went to

(23:27):
Europe to celebrate with my best friend and got the
call for Good Morning America in a pub in London,
came home, did the interview.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Tory Dunlap set an ambitious goal for herself when she
was right out of college. Saved one hundred thousand dollars
in three years by the time she was twenty five.

Speaker 4 (23:46):
I crunched the numbers, did some math and realized that
that might be possible for me.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Dune Lap hit her goal months before herself in post deadline,
I read.

Speaker 4 (23:54):
An article about someone saving one hundred K at twenty
five and I was probably twenty one or twenty two
when I read the article, and I crunched the numbers,
did some math, and realized that that might be possible
for me.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Done Lap hit her goal months before herself imposed deadline.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
I really focused on priority based spending, so figuring out
what your priorities are in life, what really brings you joy.
So my lovely friend says, you can afford anything, you
just can't afford everything.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
You may have noticed that Torri did the Good Morning
America interview remotely, and it wasn't because of COVID. In fact,
her corporate job wasn't too pleased with her new fan success.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
But things got really squarely at work and my boss
was super supportive, but the other co founders were not
so much and thought that I had stolen their pr
company to get this opportunity, and like, none of that happened.
And at that point I was actually trying to stay
longer because this is the fun thing about about growing

(24:57):
up financially educated. Is that My parents, well meaning, were like,
do you keep a job? No matter what. You get
your four own K, you get your health insurance, you're
not quitting. You're not quitting your job. You have to stay.
And I was actually planning on staying even after my
one hundred K. I was like, Okay, I'll do six
more months because I was just so afraid of going
out on my own. It felt like such a risk.

(25:19):
And my direct boss, after things got really really squarely
and not great, he sat down with me and we
had a very honest conversation, and I'm very grateful for it.
He was like, entrepreneur to entrepreneur, you have a thriving business,
you have money in the bank, you're making money in
your side hustle. Quit. Yeah, I think it's time. And
it was also very obvious to us that we were

(25:40):
not going to be able to repair this relationship with
the other people at the company, and so quit my
job three weeks after Good Morning to America. And now
my life could not be more different. We have helped
five million women save money, payoff debts, start investing, start businesses.
We've helped them feel financially confident to help them feel

(26:01):
like they have self worth in every aspect of their lives.
I have a New York Times bestselling book called Financial Feminist.
We have the number one money podcast for women in
the world called Financial Feminist. And this is just my
favorite thing to do in the world. And if you
would have told me eighteen twenty two that this is
going to be my path four year old me, who
you know is singing and dancing into two two, that hey,

(26:22):
you're going to educate women about personal finance, I would
have laughed to you. This was not the plan. But
this is my favorite thing to do. And the coolest
thing is we can directly see its impact every single
fucking day. And yeah, it's just very different than what
I ever thought you would be doing, but also very
aligned because I just love when women always, I love

(26:45):
when women succeed it. Nothing makes me as emotional as
women standing in their power and being the fullest, best,
baddest version of themselves. And that is what I have
become and continue to work to become, and is what
we help women become too. Getting better with money is
a twenty twenty five goal. Well, great, you're in the

(27:05):
right place. Hi. My name is Torri.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
I have helped over five million women save money, pay
off debt, start investing, and start businesses.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
I'm gonna want to hear this, but you need to.

Speaker 4 (27:14):
A financial education is your best form of protest in
a society and in a system that constantly disenfranchises you.
Having money, which really means having options, is the way
that anybody gets ahead in life, especially if you're a
member of a marginalized I'm so excited to do this
free live workshop for you all called the Seven Day

(27:35):
Money Reset. It is step by step tips, strategies, techniques
for seven days to get you off on the right foot.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
For twenty twenty five. So a seven day plan for you.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Can you explain as a business model to me? Like
when he said, like when your boss at the time
said to you, you have a business and it's making money.
How was it making money? Like, did you have a
business model from the minute you started having in come
in it.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
I started first again as that blog, and it was
like my creative outlet. It was like my you know,
I was reading all of the blogs. I have so
many friends now friends, but people you know, who I
was reading who I was inspired by or it was
you know, like the seven things you should ask at
the end of a job interview. You know. It was
like those kind of those kind of posts. And then

(28:23):
I thought, Okay, maybe I can monetize this blog, like
through ads or through sponsored posts. But I was not
the blog didn't have enough numbers for that. And as
I started progressing in my career, and then also again realized, okay,
I think I really want to dial in on personal finance.
Then it was financial coaching, and that was the first
big profitable thing, and the end of twenty eighteen into

(28:46):
twenty nineteen, I charged my special was forty seven dollars
an hour, and I would either meet with you over
the phone or we'd go to like a coffee shop
in Seattle, and I would look at your money, and
you know, we would work together to figure out a plan.
In those early days, it was just like one session
and you could buy more if you wanted. Then I
got smarter and started selling like three packs, five packs.

(29:06):
Then I raised my rates. Then I realized, Okay, this
is no longer sustainable to do like one off coaching,
so then I moved it to a workshop. So I
think twenty nineteen was the time where I was still
doing coaching, and then I was selling like digital download products.
So I had my coaching that was like the premium product,
and I think premium was, you know, like ninety seven

(29:28):
an hour with my and my time. And then we
had like a resume template that I created off my
own resume, but would teach you how to you know,
here's where you talk about your experience in this way,
so you could buy that I think for like fifteen dollars.
So that was where the business was making money. And
then every press hit I got brought more business. Every
social media follower I got obviously brought more business. So

(29:52):
I think when I quit in I could probably tell
you with screenshots in like that October November of twenty nineteen,
I had probably ten thousand and followers on Instagram, maybe
like twelve thousand followers. I couldn't tell you exactly how
much money I was making, but I remember I was
making you know, as much, if not sometimes more a
month than I was making in my marketing job, which

(30:12):
was paying before taxes, like seventy seven thousand a year.
And then I was realizing that, oh, if I'm getting
this much done doing this part time, imagine what I
could do if I'm doing this full time, like this
is enough money, that this is money that I'm making
just on the side as a side hustle. What if
I do have the time to dedicate to this fully.
I also again realized, okay, I can't do this one

(30:34):
on one coaching thing forever, and so I started phasing
that out and doing a workshop that is now actually
it turned into a course then, so it was like
I was getting more and more removed from it on purpose,
so it was less and less of my active time.
It was coaching and then a workshop and then a course,
and then a huge chunk of that course actually became
my book. But over a couple of years. So twenty twenty,

(30:56):
I worked with a friend who is a positive psychology coach,
and we loved lunched like our first course, and it
was called Master Money, and we sold it I think
for like five days into the new year, and I
remember we made twenty two thousand dollars and we split
that in half, and I remember thinking, this is more
money than I've ever seen in my life, especially over like,
I just made this money in five days. And then

(31:18):
I think by March of twenty twenty, I had made
my entire corporate salary already, and I was like, Okay,
so we can do this. We can make this work.
And not only can it work, but I think it
can be really, really profitable.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
When we come back. Tory breaks down the highs and
lows of going out on our own, from building during
the height of COVID to learning that she couldn't plan
for everything.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
What were some of the anticipated challenges, did they.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
End up being what you thought they were going to be,
and what were some of the real surprises anticipated challenges.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
I'm actually going to tell you some challenges that or
I thought would be challenges but weren't. The first one
was I thought I was going to struggle to make money.
I thought it was going to be like really difficult
and ironically, and I'm so thankful for this because so
many businesses did not. We thrived in COVID because we
had a very lean business. We were talking about personal
finance education. TikTok really transformed our business. I made like

(32:26):
our first TikTok in July of twenty twenty and it
blew up and so we just I think it was
like very you know, I was very strategic. I think
I'm very smart, but it was also very much luck.
It was like right place, right time, so that I
just thought was going to be more of a struggle.
The other thing that I watched business after business do
because I was running marketing or involved in those decisions,

(32:48):
especially the last startup I worked out before I went
full time. They were one hundred percent reliant on like
paid marketing, so you know, the Facebook ads, the Instagram ads.
They basically built an entire business that crumbled if their
Facebook ads didn't perform. We only as a business at
her first owner k only started running ads like literally

(33:10):
three weeks ago. So in twenty twenty four we have
scaled to five million followers and multimillions in revenue with
no paid ads, no advertising, no loans, no like financing
from a rich uncle, like none of that. I started
with forty dollars in twenty sixteen when I signed up
for my domain and you know, signed up for my website.

(33:32):
Like that's truly the money we started with. And I
used my nine to five to kind of like fund
the business where I wasn't relying on my side hustle
to like pay for my expenses too early. So that's
something that I don't know if I thought it would
be a challenge, but I'm just really proud of is
that like we built it organically. We didn't take a

(33:52):
nique v see, like we did it on our own.
Oh God, what a challenge is So many is really hard.
Firing is really hard. I think managing my own time
is really hard. Managing my own ambition, I think is
the hardist because I want to go, go go all
the time, and I've learned I physically can't and I

(34:15):
emotionally can't. And I think, actually, I was just journaling
about this the other day, twenty twenty four is the
first year where I actually feel like I have the
harmony because I don't like saying balance in this case,
the harmony that does feel right of like caring about
the business enough but also not giving a shit about
the business at the same time, or at least giving
less shits, because that's healthy. I think that everything is

(34:38):
a challenge, And one of the things I see so
many women do who want to be entrepreneurs is they
think they have to have everything figured out before they
launch the business. They're like, Okay, I need the brand
color and I need the logo, and I need the website.
I need to have a five year business plan. You
do not know what the next five years are going
to look like. You can have a general idea, and

(34:58):
I think planning is great. That's good, that's healthy, but
you have to just get started. I learn how to
run this business by running this business. I don't learn
by saying, oh, I don't have enough information yet, so
I can't do it. I didn't know how to write
a book. I wrote a book. I didn't know how
to market a book. I marketed a book. I didn't
know how to launch a podcast. We launched a podcast.

(35:19):
Like all of these things. I don't know how to
be a CEO. No one sat me down. I didn't
go to I didn't get an MBA. No one sat
me down at CEO school and was like, here's exactly
like you learn by doing. And so there's so many challenges,
and there's often times where these challenges come up and
it feels like, oh my god, not again, Like oh
I thought we had overcome this, and I thought we

(35:41):
had gone past this, and like if there's a challenge,
that means something's wrong. And I just had this light
bulb moment late last year because we had a really
rough year with just like team dynamics and a lot
of changing like people coming in and people coming out,
and I was just like, oh my god, we're doing
this again, and that means we're doing something. I thought
we were preventing this. And it's like, you don't prevent challenges.

(36:04):
You can't because you don't have one hundred percent control.
Challenges come up all the time, and you have to
realize that it's not about preventing them because you can't.
It's about understanding what you need to do to move
through them. Does that make sense? Like, Yeah, I thought
it was about preventing it. You can't prevent it. It's

(36:24):
just knowing, Okay, I've been through this before. I'll get
through this again. Even if I've never done this, I
will navigate it. And I've navigated everything else and survived.
So it's about knowing that I have a plan and
that I'm going to stay calm and that everything will
work out eventually, even if it feels like everything's on
fire right now. Right.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
I think it's a lot about the mindset, about not
being surprised or offended or knocked off when a challenge
comes up and just say This is part of the process.
This has to be part of our narrative of how
we succeeded in the end that we weren't able to
be able to have the growth or learnings without opposition
and like learning how to get through it. So how

(37:05):
do you define success for yourself at this point? How
has it changed?

Speaker 1 (37:09):
It used to be professional success, But as my mentor
and my second mom likes to tell me, you're a
human being, not a human doing, and so success for me,
actually I purposefully make it and have nothing to do
about my professional accomplishments. Success for me is am I
showing up as my most joyful self? Am I do

(37:30):
I like my life? Do I like my days? Am
I a nice, pleasant, kind person to be around? Do
I make the world a better place? That's success for
me at this point.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Well, the point of this podcast is to bring in
the intersection of the personal and the professional. And although
you're quite candid about many aspects, I think, particularly about yourself,
you do keep a lot of things quite private, particularly
when it comes to the personal. So how would you
say that the personal factors in your life have impact
did your decision making?

Speaker 1 (38:01):
I love that question, Emily. I think one. You learn
your boundaries sometimes because you crossed them and then you realize, oh,
that was a boundary. So one of the things that
I discovered through posting a lot of my life on
social media is that in twenty twenty, I was in
a relationship and posted about that relationship and that it ended,

(38:25):
and I haven't talked about it a lot, but I
had a really hard time moving forward from that relationship.
It took me two years and was a really really intense,
awful but also incredible grieving process, and I didn't want

(38:47):
to perform any of that publicly. And I also realized
that in talking about that relationship and it ending, I
was going to get well meaning but questions where is he?
How is he? I haven't seen him in a while,
and I am crying on the bathroom floor, and I
can't tell this person because he's not here anymore, like
I can't. I can't do that. And so that was

(39:09):
one thing that I have been very very steadfast in
is I have publicly said I'm in a relationship, but
I have not talked about who this person is. I
have not talked about their career or what they do.
Any photos I post, they're few and far between, and
they are the classic like I like, he's my child.

(39:31):
I put an emoji over his face, you know, like
I'm Kristen Bell or somebody like posting about my children,
but I'm That was just a huge thing for me
where that felt important for me to keep to myself.
And also, as my public persona has gotten bigger and
bigger and bigger, anybody that I am around has to

(39:57):
just be aware that we're Like I got recognized with
my now partner on our second date in public, and
he turned to me and he was like, does this
happen often? And I was like, okay, we have to
have a conversation now. Well, yeah, and especially in Seattle,
it happens basically every time I go out. So whether
it's grocery store or naked at the Korean Spa, all

(40:17):
of it's happened. So I set that boundary of even
before you know, we were more serious, I was like,
any person that I am involved with, I am not
going to talk about publicly. And I also need you
to tell me if this is ever uncomfortable for you,
because we either are going to navigate together or you
need to tell me that you don't want to do this.

(40:39):
So that was something that you know, has been so
fruitful in my life and feels sometimes weird to not
talk about, but also I don't want to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Tory has built an entire business off being open and
honest about her finances, so I had to know was
there a downside to sharing it so openly.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
This is a very vulnerable thing to say it, but
I will say it. I am always worried that someone
because I'm so forth coming about how much money roughly
I have. People know I'm a multimillionaire. Right. A man
once on a date googled me in front of me.
Don't ever do that then, but googled me in front
of me and was like, holy shit, and like, you

(41:24):
know a lot of information very quickly that for an
average person you will not know. I worry that if
you invite me to your wedding, you're going to expect
a super expensive, lavish gift, and then you're going to
judge me if I don't. I worry that you expect
me to grab the bill every single time, and honestly
I usually do at the restaurant, but like that you're
judging me if I don't like those things. Are the

(41:47):
like very you know, quiet inner thoughts sometimes that I
try to remind myself are it's just the fear and
the shame and the scared little me. But that is
something that I do feel really nervous about sometimes that
I feel like might affect our relationships. I don't know
if anybody in my life has been like, no, I
don't want to be around you because of this, or

(42:09):
this is really hard. I am very protective though now
over my relationships, and my parents especially are extremely private people,
Like anytime I take a photo of them just for
my own my own camera role for five years ago,
don't post it on social media every time my mom

(42:29):
and like I know that by now they don't have
social media themselves, like they have very very little information
about them, and I know it makes them really really
nervous for me to be a public person, for me
to even talk about vaguely how much money I have,
and so that's impacted I think our relationship in that way.

(42:51):
But as far as I know, I mean, almost all
of my very close friends I had before ship blew up,
and I don't think that it's an accident. I don't
I'm not surprised by that the point I do want
to make, and I talk about this anytime I can,
because this is part of my work. Is when I

(43:13):
was saying to my first hundred kay, I was sharing
screenshots like of my bank account, no personal information, right,
you could see the exact amount of money in my
bank account. And I talk about financial transparency as one
of the best things we can do, both, you know,
to better personal finance and to feel ashamed about money,
but also to bridge all of the gaps we're trying
to bridge. Financial transparency talking about money is so incredible. However,

(43:37):
I can't be as transparent as I want to be
for my literal safety. And that's the shit that it's like,
the very work that I'm trying to do is also
I still have to play by patriarchal rules so that
I don't get harmed or so that my family doesn't
get harmed. Like I would love to talk about exactly
how much money I have, and I would love to

(43:58):
own that and celebrate that and also just be like
this transparent, but I can't do that now and haven't
been able to for a while without one a shit
ton of judgment from people who have never met me.
But also literal safety concerns. And so I think that
that's one thing that for me, you know, has a

(44:19):
lot to do with my personal relationships obviously has a
lot to do with my professional relationships. But it's like,
the very problem I'm trying to fix is also the
problem that I have to deal with all the time,
which is we shame women for having money. We don't
like women who want to bashedly pursue money. As a society,
we feel really uncomfortable with any woman who says I

(44:40):
want to get rich or I want to be wealthy,
and we have to justify everything, right, it's, oh, I
want to have money for my children. Oh, I want
to have money so that I can pay my people
at my business. Well what if it's just I want
money so that I have choices and options in my
own life, and I want to take a nice vacation
and I want to like, what if that is enough?
But it's not. And so because money is so emotionally loaded,

(45:03):
I think most people that are close in my life
from jump we were going to talk about money. We're
going to talk about it openly. You date me, you're
hanging out with me, That's what we're going to do
because that's my life. And also the yeah again, the
little voice in the back of my head worries sometimes,
oh does this make them uncomfortable? Do they feel like,

(45:25):
you know, money has changed me negatively? And I actually
remember I haven't told this story. I remember two years
ago I was on a book I was doing a
book event in Portland and that's where I went to college.
And I saw one of my really really good friends
from college that hadn't seen actually since we graduated. We
had tried to make it work and it just didn't happen,
and we went and got lunch, and like, we spent

(45:47):
a lot of time together. I love I continue to
love him, but especially in college, we spent so much
time together. And I remember probably an hour, hour and
a half into our lunch and you know, we ended
up like going on a walk and getting ice cream
and it's like very similar to what we would do
in college. And he looked at me and he was
kind of like, you haven't changed at all, but said
it was like a tone of surprise of like, oh,

(46:08):
you're still the same person. And I was like, what
did you expect And he was like, I don't know,
I don't know what I expected, but just maybe I
don't know. I just expected different, And that was both
a compliment for me of like, cool, this hasn't gone
to my head, but also at the same time a
reminder of like, oh, the expectation is maybe that I'm

(46:29):
a very different person now, and that's just interesting.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
As I craft this season of She Pivots, something that's
always on my mind is what is happening in our country.
I know there is a lot of fear and uncertainty
around the world and the economy as a whole. It
can be hard for people to plan for their futures
when things feel so on edge. So I wanted to
get Tory's expertise on how people can be thinking about

(46:55):
investing and financial freedom in today's day and age.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
I think regardless of who as president, there's always a
impact on your savings, on your investing, on the stock
market that is, that is the only guarantee. Really, we
don't know what the stock market is going to do,
we don't know how it's going to perform, but we
have to stay the course, just like anything else. So
I am still investing at the same rates I was

(47:20):
investing before because I have to prioritize my own savings
and my own retirement. I am really shoring up my
emergency funds. I am, you know, making sure that I
have savings both for myself personally, but also that the
business has savings in case something you know, happens in
the next four years plus years that we don't know.

(47:43):
But I also, again we've talked about this. We have
a whole episode about like how to financially and emotionally
prepare for the next four years of Trump on our show.
But one of the things we talked about too is
like having like a reproductive emergency fund. So either beefing
up the emergency fund you already have or see a
separate one for Okay, I got across state lines to

(48:03):
get the care I need, or I need to take
time off work to do that, like saving some money
so you have that flexibility. And also, like I said
at the start, and it's our tagline, but it's true,
a financial education is your best form of protest. So
the best thing you can do in these next four
years is get as much money in an ethical way

(48:25):
as possible so that you can take care of yourself,
so you can take care of your families, you can
take care of your community. Nothing bad happens when women
have money. And this feeling that you might have that
the pursuit of wealth or the pursuit of money is
bad or wrong or greedy is planted there by the
patriarchy to keep you controllable. I want you uncontrollable, meaning

(48:45):
that you have enough money to make the decisions you
want to make.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
What is something that at the time you felt like
was a real negative for you, like a real low point,
and now in retrospect you see it as having really
set you up for the success that you are now.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Through this without crying. That end of the relationship felt
like my life was over. And it's going to sound
so melodramatic, but we have all had heartbreak, and so
just put yourself back in your heartbreak while I talk
about this. This person felt like the person I was
supposed to be with for the rest of my life.

(49:21):
And then when I wasn't, my entire life made no
sense anymore.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
I could.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
I could not understand it. If I'm not with this
person and there's no potential that I'm with this person later,
it doesn't make any sense. And I will really bring
it home. Emily The reason that I was having all
these feelings and thoughts after a lot of therapy and
a lot of processing, was because I am a storyteller
at heart, and I could not see the end of
the story. And that drove me fucking insane. I could

(49:49):
not I was imagining, you know, okay, ten years later
and we're getting married. And then I would imagine ten
years later and I'm at his wedding, he who's marrying
somebody else, but we like lock eyes from across the
room and like everything's fine. We give that like knowing
glance to each other and the smile you know that
happens at the end of lallall Land. I guess you know,
like that That is what my brain was trying to
do to process because it was like, I'm in so
much pain and I have to think about that. This

(50:13):
pain was quote unquote worth it for it to make sense,
but it was not making sense. And I was in
that for a long time, like seriously, probably nine months,
maybe a year, but like still processing that probably two
two and a half. And publicly everything was happening all

(50:34):
the success. The podcast has blown up. We're getting millions
of followers, We're getting millions in revenue, and I am
at times numb, I'm at times crying on the bathroom floor,
and I remember I had a solid three weeks, which
doesn't sound like a long time, but for a joyful person,
it was a long time where every day I honestly
thought I will never feel joy again. And I look

(50:56):
back on that as the most challenging period of my life.
And as cliche as it stands, God, if I got
through that, I can go through anything. If I came
out the other side of that, of the grief and
just the understanding and learning a lot about myself, and
look back and actually feel like it was helpful, great, wow,

(51:17):
and the biggest thing I learned And you only learn
it when you're in it. Everybody tells you it and
don't listen, and then you learn it. Is like, the
only way I got through that was sitting in it
and time. And it wasn't forcing myself to get better,
because that's what I thought, Okay, when we hit six
months later, I'll feel better. When we do this and
I'm able to feel this way, then we'll be better. No,

(51:38):
I just had to sit in it, and I had
to let it move through me for as long as
it took and be okay with that, And yeah, it
changed my life. And I'm very thankful to this person
both for the relationship that we had. That was the
first time I think I've ever experienced unconditional love, which

(51:59):
was so beautiful, and also very very thankful for the
end of that relationship and what it taught me and
what it taught me about being able to experience hard
things and know that the feeling of aliveness I get
when I feel joyful is the same feeling all the
liveness I feel when the pain is so crushing. So yeah,

(52:23):
it impacted my life a lot, and I thought I
was like, Okay, we will get through this, and it's
going to be awful and we're just going to muscle
through it. And now I look back on it with
actually a shit ton of gratitude because it really really
helped me process a lot of things, but also maybe
into the person I am today.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Thank you so much, Tori.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Thank you so great having you on, Thank you for
having me.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Toy is still leading the financial feminist movement by educating
millions on how they can build wealth and feel financially confident.
Go follow Toy on Instane Instagram at her first one
hundred K to stay up to date and have access
to all her amazing resources. Thanks for listening. Thanks for

(53:10):
listening to this episode of she Pivots. I hope you
enjoyed it, and if you did, leave us a rating
and tell your friends about us. To learn more about
our guests, follow us on Instagram at she pivots the Podcast,
or sign up for our newsletter, where you can get
exclusive behind the scenes content on our website at she
pivots thepodcast dot com. Special thanks to the she pivots team,

(53:37):
Executive producer Emily Edavlosk, Associate producer and social media connoisseur
Hannah Cousins, Research director Christine Dickinson, Events and Logistics coordinator
Madeline Snovak, and audio editor and mixer Nina pollock I
endorse she pivots