March 18, 2021 • 36 mins
This week on What’s Her Story with Sam & Amy, we chat with financial expert and educator Tori Dunlap, also known as @herfirst100k. We talk salary negotiation tips; why she quit her first corporate job; how she talks money on first dates; and her mission to help more women invest.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? Was? Sam and Amy? This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today, we're
so excited to welcome Tory Dunlop to the show. She's
(00:23):
a speaker of financial coach and the founder of her
first on a platform that is all about women in
financial literacy. Am, how did you first meet Tori? So
we actually met through the Riveter. She joined the Riveter
in Seattle when she had a full time job but
was thinking about her side hustle. Was it immediately obvious
that she was a superstar? Yes, it absolutely was. I mean,
(00:45):
you look at this woman. I think Tori was like,
she might kill me for saying this, but I think
she was like twenty three or twenty four, and she
came into the Riveter with all of these questions, all
of these ideas, and I could just tell she was
going to run with it. And I mean, and she has.
Let's dive in Tory. Welcome to What's Her Story? With
Sam and Amy. We are so excited to have you
on the show today. Thank you so much for having me.
(01:07):
I'm I'm over the moon to be here. I want
to go back to the very beginning. Um, you know,
you've said that your parents were so frugal that you
had to learn how to spend money. Tell us about
your parents, like, did you did both of them work?
What was your childhood like? Yeah, so I am an
only child. Uh, my parents and I talk every day. Still.
I'm twenty six and I still talked to my parents
(01:28):
every day. Yeah. I grew up with a financial education.
I grew up with very frugal, you know, financially smart parents,
and thought that that was the case for everybody. I thought, Okay,
everybody knows not to overspend on credit cards, and everybody
knows how to save money and negotiate. And of course
realized very quickly that that wasn't the case. And I
kind of discovered that in college and outside of college,
when I was a friend, all of my friends were
(01:50):
coming to for advice and guidance. And so I discovered
that financial education was a privilege and that I had
a responsibility to have these conversations to spread this knowledge
and that's why I founded her first under KUM. But yeah,
my parents it was very frugal lifestyle. We never uh,
we never wanted for anything. We but we also, you know,
we weren't lavish spenders. They still drive you know, ten
(02:12):
year old cars, and like I said, they haven't moved
even though they could afford to. Um. So, when I
graduated college and kind of came out on my own, yeah,
I was very frugal and had to kind of learn
how to feel comfortable spending money on the things that
were important to me. So tell us about your first
job out of college. I was lucky enough to have
a really great kind of first job in terms of
(02:35):
you know, the work I was doing. So I was
leading social media marketing and digital marketing for a company
of about five thousand employees. I was their only marketing
communication person, which was kind of crazy. So I was
twenty two racent grad coming into corporate and thought to myself, Okay,
I want to be a VP of marketing by thirty
Like that's that's my trajectory. And within two weeks of
(02:56):
working my corporate job, I was like, oh, this is
not for me. For ever. I was like I don't
like having to, uh, you know, submit time off to
take vacation and the fact that I only get like
eight days of vacation a year. I don't frankly like
making somebody that I don't respect rich. That was a
big thing is I worked with a lot of very
(03:19):
misogynistic men who said weird sexist things and comments to
me as I would walk by at work. So didn't
like that and was just feeling very much like I
wanted to do my own thing. And I I read
the quote in my first year at corporate which is
every job is paid training until you get to work
for yourself. And that was very much my mantra of like,
(03:41):
I learned a lot and got as much information as
possible in order to kind of build my own thing.
How did you get that first job? Goodness, I think
it was a cold application. Pretty much every job I've
had was a cold application, even though I totally like,
I did a ton of networking. I did an informational
interview every single week my senior year of college, Like,
(04:02):
I was so focused on landing a job before I graduated,
and it didn't happen, which was such a bummer. I've
been all this time, and then I applied to like
this random job on indeed, and I get it. So yeah,
it's kind of funny because everybody tells you like you
llion jobs by networking. I am the exact same way Tory.
I got my job in Nickelodeon from a New York
(04:23):
Times classified at. I mean, that's how old I am.
But I literally sent in a resume, so I totally
get that. I love that, and I think it makes
you hungrier because you know what it's like to like
send out a zillion applications until you get that one.
It's just like anything else. So I remember reading that
there were three months after you quit where you were
like unemployed essentially. What was that like? So that was
(04:46):
my second job. So I quit my first job after
about a year and a half. I got this new
opportunity um and I ended up negotiating twenty dollars more
than they wanted to pay me at that age, How
did you learn to negotiate a twenty all or raised
before you even started? Yeah, I'll be really transparent. So
they offered me sixt k and I'm a negotiation coach
(05:07):
now because I've done it so frequently in my life.
And helped other women. And what I tell them is
you need to ask for more than you want, right,
because the negotiation is a collaboration. You're going to meet
in the middle ideally, right. So I wanted seventy K,
and it I should say, market research and market rate
told me I should be asking for seventy K. I
didn't just want seventy K, but I was like, Okay,
if I'm gonna get at seventy, I'm gonna ask for
(05:28):
a dy with the expectation we're going to meet in
the middle. And that was actually the first red flag
for me. She like immediately said yes, She's like sure,
we'll pay you eighty. And at the time that was
like a fun thing of like, oh maybe I'm maybe
I'm worth this amount of money. But what it ended
up being, of course, in hindsight, was she was so
desperate to get somebody into this role that she was
(05:50):
just like sure eight, like let's do it. And yeah.
At the time, I'm like, great, I just negotiated to
increase expecting only to negotiate about ten. And then it
felt like, okay, well I have to take this job
now because this is this is more money than I
was making Uh you know, I need to I need
to accept this role and kind of let it, uh
(06:11):
distract me from all of the all of the evidence
that this was not going to be a good fit
for me. When you asked for that eighty thousand, like tell, okay,
so I used to have a hard time negotiating until
I started figuring out how to do it, Like when
you asked for that eighty thousand, Like did you write
a script? Did you like so? And then like wrote
a script and then got on the phone. How did
(06:32):
it feel? Yeah, I literally teach the script of my
negotiation workshops because and my and my courses, because it
has been perfected over time. But I still get nervous negotiation.
I remember, Yeah, I was twenty three negotiating that job,
and I knew that if it was backed in data,
I had a better shot. So what And that's why
I was quick to clarify I didn't just want this
(06:54):
amount of money. This was backed in data. This was
me looking at companies like glass Store and pay Scale
salary data, having conversations with colleagues about what I should
be getting paid. And that's what I teach a part
of my negotiation uh workshops and courses. It's like, you
really need to make sure that you have that good
data because you're talking to data driven people, and then
in addition to that data, you're going to show them
(07:16):
how valuable you are. So it's data plus your value
that you're adding. It's never not a little daunting, especially
we're told as women that we should just sit down
and shut up and be grateful for our opportunities. And
then you know, when we have the audacity to ask
for more money or ask for what we're worth, it's
it's definitely a little intimidating. Tory. I love your I
(07:36):
love your TikTok videos about negotiating and then like you,
you share how to do it, and I laughed out loud,
and then like your hand is shaking with the water.
It's really funny. So tell us about those three months
you are this frugal saver and your unemployed for three months,
you can only spend and you're not earning anything. There
was a lot of emotions at that time. A lot
(07:56):
of feeling like I had failed, um because my boss
was telling me I was a failure. A lot of
feeling like I couldn't hack it, like I couldn't and
maybe I wasn't as as competent as I thought I
was UM And then during that three months, it was
a really honestly a great personal experience for me because
it informs the work that I do now. I was
(08:18):
able to quit that toxic job because I had money
in the bank. I mean, it was really nerve racking.
It made me it's so grateful that I had done
that upfront work of saving an emergency fund to fall
back on UM and and that was the ticket out
of a toxic situation? Was that financial freedom? What did
you do to build an emergency fund when you weren't
(08:40):
making like, you weren't making six figures, right, it's like
what did you do? So kind of like what are
like broad strokes? What did you do to save money? Yeah?
The two biggest ways that I built the emergency fund
and built my hundred K. First, I invested and I
actually took my side hustle earnings, and that was either
funding an emergency fund or funding my investments, funding my
(09:01):
retirement accounts. I guess that's two things. But the third
is I automated my savings. So when I got a
paycheck from my nine percentage of that immediately went into
my savings account. I didn't even see it. It was like,
you know, another bill was being paid. And that's if
you're going to take anything away from from my financial advice,
it's to automate your savings. Set up an automatic transfer
(09:23):
from your checking account to your savings account. So what
happens on autopilot so you don't even don't even realize it.
So I had money accumulating and you know, growing in
the bank without me actually having to do anything. What
was the original brand for her first Yeah, it's a
blood called Victory Media and you but you couldn't tell
what what I did, right, And it actually still is
my LLC because it's a good kind of umbrella for
(09:45):
everything I want to do, but not a good like
brand name. So I was Victory Media until February when
I rebranded to her First hundred K, and that's kind
of where everything took off and where I very publicly
stated my goal of trying to stave a hundred So
tell us about the takeoff. Oh yeah. I started Victory
(10:08):
Media in late after Trump got elected and was just
living in a very different America than I thought and
wanted to start having some of these conversations and then
realized I wanted to talk specifically about money for women.
So February and I rebranded UM. I got featured in
market Watch, which was my first big kind of media
hit in March, and then everything blew up from there.
(10:30):
How did you get featured in? I bugged the reporter
on Twitter, which is I am. I am a little
pitch machine. I will go after the things I want.
And Twitter has been like, I've gotten Good Morning America, CNBC,
the New York Times, UH, a bunch of others, and
(10:51):
pretty much all of them have come from me cold
pitching myself on Twitter. So you you hold pitch yourself
to a Good Morning America producer, share with us with
that pitch sounds like I slimed their d M s
and I say, Hi, Hi, Sam, I hope you're doing well.
I uh my name story, I founded her first hundred
K And if you do have other media features, you say, okay,
I was featured on market Watch last week. My story
(11:12):
and my mission is focused on giving women actionable resources
to fight the patriarchy and get rich. UM, would you
like to tell my story and for me the hundred K? Specifically,
I thought in terms of headlines. And that's that's a
great advice for anybody who's pitching, Like, think in terms
of what this headline will be. So for me, the
obvious headline was year old on on track to save
(11:33):
a hundred K. Here's how she did it. So that's
that was my pitch. And then I would always say,
because I meant it, like, I would be honored to
have you tell my story. Would you be interested? I
would be honored to work with you. Let me know
if you're interested, and if you're not, let me know
if if there's somebody in your community who might be.
CNBC happened that way, market Watch happened that way. Good
(11:54):
Morning America happened because they saw me on New York
Magazine and I got New York Magazine because I've pitch
reporter and now for a quick break. I would agree
from my perspective that Twitter is the best place to
connect with and pitch journalists. And I think people don't
talk about that enough, but I mean it's this open
(12:14):
community where you can meet and talk to anybody. They
might not talk back to you, but like you can
say anything, and I think and all journalists are just
like that's their forum. Yeah, I have a lot of people,
you know who do what I do, or female entrepreneurs
and they're like on Instagram or they're on Facebook and
I'm on both. That is my customer facing platform, my
(12:35):
you know, the more industry focus, that's what's happening on Twitter.
So I'm going to Twitter to connect with other people
who do what I do. Or two. Yeah, pitch reporters
find opportunities. That sort of thing. That is such a
great I've never heard of anyone frame it that way,
and that's actually a brilliant way to frame it. How
would you position TikTok than because you have an enormous
TikTok following. TikTok is also customers, But that's led to
(12:58):
media opportunities, right, just because I have as big of
a platform as I do. TikTok has been interesting though,
because they are it's probably not surprised to a lot
of people, but they skew younger. So I am actually
more likely to make money off of TikTok or to
grow my influence on TikTok by actually promoting brands I
work with rather than promoting necessarily my own products, because
(13:20):
they are more likely to sign up for like a
bank that I recommend because it's at no cost to them. Right,
then they are to sign up for a course that
I offer. That's two that we still get some people
from TikTok that do that. And it's not just you know,
nineteen year old, but I saw half of my business
revenue last year come from affiliate marketing via TikTok, which
(13:43):
is crazy. That is crazy, Like how did you so?
I think this is like there's so many platforms, right
like now I have Clubhouse and also like, how did
you decide to go after TikTok? Right, Like how did like,
because you only have so much time in the day,
so how did you decide like, oh great, I'm gonna
do this too. Instagram was my primary platform and still
largely is. Actually, um I doubled down on Instagram when
(14:06):
I rebranded her first under Kay. I was like, Okay,
I'll be on Facebook, I'll be on Twitter, but I
will spend the majority of my time on Instagram. And
I grew Instagram, you know, I got to a point
where I had a really great community there, and then honestly,
Instagram was feeling a little stale, It was feeling very
it was hard to not feel like it was manufactured.
As we were growing and and trying to figure out,
(14:28):
you know, where I was going to spend my time,
it felt less and less creative to be on Instagram.
It just felt like, Okay, we have to post every
day and we have to do you know this kind
of post work well, and I wanted something a little
a little more creative. I also had so many people
who were telling me, like, you should be on TikTok,
like there's a there's a need there, but there's not
a lot of financial advice yet. Who is we? When
(14:51):
you said we decided who? Who is the we? Because
I don't think we heard when you started hiring your
first people tell us about that. So I have a
team actually we just heard are two people last week.
So I have a team of four. But they're all
part time college students. They're all women who are still
in school um, and we're hoping to bring two of
them on full time when they graduate. How do you
(15:13):
decide how much to pay them? Oh? Amy, So funny
you asked that because literally we're going I'm I'm navigating that.
I'm still trying to figure that out, Like I asked,
because I think it's particularly hard because I think you
know Sam's businesses financial services, and it's it's geared toward women.
The Riveter was geared toward working women. Your business is
geared towards women, although all of our businesses speak to everyone.
(15:35):
But the point is we're all talking about women and
getting great jobs and making a lot of money. And
it's a minefield in the sense that when you're starting
your own business, you can't sometimes pay people what you
wish you could or what you feel their qualification deserves well.
And the funny thing is, I'm so transparent about what
our business made. I actually I've told the people very
publicly what our revenue is. Yeah, so what if it
(16:00):
for the people who are listening. We did over half
a million in revenue last year, which was our first
full year of of me being an entrepreneur. And the
funny thing is is that in speaking so transparently about money,
people think they know how to run your business, and so,
you know, you get feedback of like you should be
paying people this amount, or you should and I'm all
(16:20):
for equal pay. I'm all for you know, good equitable
wages and all of those things. It's also like Just
because you see the over half a million dollars, that
doesn't mean we made that much, right, It doesn't mean
that's money in my pocket. We we netted actually a
good chunk of that, and I'm really proud of that.
But I'm in reinvesting that end of the business. You know,
there's other factors there that I have to consider. So
that's the other thing I'm trying to navigate is like,
(16:43):
how do I continue being transparent about money in a
way that feels genuine and authentic to me while also
understanding that, like, everybody's gonna have a different opinion about
how I should run my business if I choose to
be that transparent. Like, ultimately, how do you feel about
building in public? Because you are building in public and
you are public, Like, what are your boundaries in terms
of sharing about the business or your life. I've had
(17:07):
to figure those out over time. I've had some scary
things happen in the past couple of months that have
been really really public and really, yeah, really scary. I
kind of we're talking about how great TikTok is. It's been.
It's literally changed my life in my business. It's also
come with death threats and with you're fat, and you
(17:30):
are ungrateful and you're just I mean, can I curse
on this podcast? Yes, Oh you're you're a bit and
you are ungrateful and you should just sit down and
shut up, which was an actual email I received. All Right,
let's sit separate those two things, because I think the
latter is something that we all face. What it's not
new to social media, right, It's like anyone woman who
(17:51):
is successful is face that. But the first thing, the
death threats, I don't understand. Can you share what that means?
I don't even get it. Social media is such a
great community, it's such a great place, and quite honestly,
I thought I wanted some sort of notoriety or fame,
and I have now the teenious little sliver of it,
and I've realized I don't want it at all. I'm
gonna start crying. But like I realized, I don't want
(18:13):
it at all because what I went through. I had
a TikTok go kind of negative viral in November of
last year where I talked about me as an influencer
and as a creator getting offered this really small amount
of money for from this huge brand, and I talked
about like brands, you need to start paying people more,
like this is not okay. And I was very transparent
about what they offered, and we had half the people
(18:36):
who were like, yeah, that's great, like yeah, ask for
what you're worth, and the other half of people who
are like, you need to just sit down and shut
up and just be grateful. It's a global pandemic and
you're out of touch and like you're you're terrible and ungrateful.
And so what I realized is it's it's it's a
very delicate balance. And it's also you know, when you're
a woman, you're exactly right, Sam. When you're a woman online,
(18:56):
this is the kind of ship that happens to you.
Every single day. You're gonna get called fat, you're gonna
get told you're unlovable, you're gonna get you know, you're
gonna get all of these sorts of comments every single day.
And I think the fact that I talk about money,
this very taboo topic, the whole point of my thing.
If my entire platform is like, let's talk about this
thing that's taboo because no one's talking about it, and
(19:16):
so in doing so, it can either be really triggering
to people or it can be threatening to people, or
it can be if if somebody is having a hard
financial time, I can understand how they project that onto
me or onto what I'm doing. I can understand that
doesn't mean, you know, you need to be mean about it.
But I learned a lot from that experience. And I
also just realized, like to your point, Amy, about boundaries
(19:39):
of Like I just deleted TikTok, deleted the app off
my phone for like a week and a half. I
just like went dark, and I had my team handle it,
which I'm so thankful to them because they have a
degree of separation. Um. But I've had to get way more,
way more intentional, and I'm something I'm still navigating on
what I want to share in what I don't. Amy
and I are both so p about this topic because
(20:01):
it's it breaks my heart here you say I don't
want to be anywhere famous in this to to I guess,
prevent yourself from being exposed to even more young people
just because of a few evil people. It's just I
want to be clear, Stamp, that's not my objective. I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna, you know, crush my own
dreams because somebody's being shitty, like I'm not going to
do that for me. It's just the realization that like
(20:22):
you think, like you know, we have this very very
skewed version of what famous looks like, especially in the
United States, really in the world, we don't see that
you also have all of this stuff to deal with.
You have your own like literal, physical and emotional protection
to make sure you're keeping track of, Like I am
now so concerned about, like how do I protect my team?
(20:45):
How do I protect my parents? Because we can ask
how do you protect yourself? I'm public, like this is
something I have to deal with. But the people who didn't,
you know, yeah, I mean, like what you asked for
is to live in this purpose of like what we
started our conversation with though of saying, look, I grew
up with this privilege of learning how to be financially
smart and generate wealth and grow my wealth, and I
(21:06):
want to share that with everyone. That's what you asked for.
And I have to say, like, we'll dive into this
because I've read a lot of your commentary and Dave
Ramsey nobody ship. I bet no one gives him like
I met, Nobody talks about his appearance. I bet nobody,
you know, Like I bet nobody's like Dave Ramsey, be
grateful for what someone pays you, even if they should
be paying you more. We tell women to be grateful
(21:28):
for the script and so like, how do we change that? Yeah,
and that's my whole thing. And that's why it was
Actually that post was so ironic that it went so
like negative viral. I'm like, this is this is it?
Like you are proving the point even if this is awful,
Like you are proving the point of why this is needed.
So tell us about your social life. I would imagine
as a young person, your dating life is complicated because
(21:53):
of this. I mean I have no dating life to
speak of with the pandemic. But um, it's interesting you
asked the question and phrase it that way. I for me, like,
this is gonna sound vaguely egotistical. I don't know how
to say it any better. I this was the plan
for my life for a very long time, Like I
wanted to change women's lives. I wanted to build something
(22:15):
I was proud of and have something that was that
was bigger than me. And I felt that way even
as a kid or even you know, growing up and
starting to date in like high school and college, and
there's a lot of men that are intimidated by strong women,
and I shouldn't stay intimidated threatened by strong women. And
some of whom you know, uh can can move past
(22:35):
that right and come to the point where you know,
this feels like a partnership when I'm dating and actively
dating people. I think it's very interesting because, um, yeah,
I'm going to talk about money really upfront and really transparently.
And Sam, I don't know if you saw, but I
posted a TikTok the other day about like a question
to ask, if you are someone who dates men, how
(22:55):
do you feel dating somebody and dating a woman who
makes more than you? Even if you don't make more
in the person, it's just knowing what their attitude would
be around it that can be very very revealing as
to what this partnership is going to look like. And
especially when we consider that that the number one reason
that uh so, you know, separations are divorces happen in
the United States is actually related to money. So if
(23:16):
you're not having these conversations very very early, it can
be really damaging. How do you bring up money on
a date. I mean, what's what's an example figuring out
who's going to pay for what? Right of like if
you're going to dinner in a movie if we still
do that anymore into this coming year, but like saying, hey,
are you okay if like I cover dinner and you
cover the movie, Like it can be just you know,
(23:38):
something like that, or you know, you know, if they
bought ice cre or if they bought dinner, like, hey,
I'll get I'll get ice cream after I'll get dessert. Um.
You can also just ask them like bring up a
maybe an article you read like that would actually be
a great article to discuss this this this emotional labor
China dispute, and just saying like, hey, did you see
this article I read the other day? What are your
(23:58):
thoughts about it? Um? And that can be a great
way of asking them how they feel about money without
directly being like, what is your relationship with money? And
now for a quick break, do you know if your
parents talked about money before they got married? Yes, they did.
And my mom's a stay at home mom. My dad
is a salesperson and is uh kind of moving towards
(24:20):
retirement in the next few years, um. And yeah, they
had a lot of conversations about you know, if we're
gonna have children, um Like, I really we want to
have one of the one of the parents stay and
raise raise our child. Um. So approaching it from shared
goals can be much more productive than getting them these
like you know, these fights or these spats about money.
(24:44):
It feels like one of your competitive advantages before you
started her first one K was that you really understood
digital marketing in a way and a more sophisticated way
than most people do when they start their businesses, recommendations
you have for other entrepreneurs and how to build their
social following. My number one rule on social media is
(25:08):
served before you sell. It's my number one rule. So
when you're showing up online, you want to create and
generate and always provide value for people before you try
to convince them to buy anything. To too many people,
I see too many entrepreneurs go into social media thinking like, Okay,
I'll sell my products and that's what will get people
to follow me or to join my community. They'll they'll
(25:30):
find my community because I sell products. That's that's the
exact opposite. You want to serve and provide value for
people and generate growth that way and build their trust,
build your credibility by serving people before you try to
sell them, because like I said, build trust, incredibility, But
it also gives you awareness as to what your audience needs.
(25:53):
So the more content I put out, the more questions
I got. You know, So if I talk about paying
off debt, people would be like, okay, but like how
do I go about doing that? Should I consolidate? What
should I pay off? First? And then it's like, okay, great,
I need a debt payoff product. I need something to
serve that need. Further, that is a paid product. So
in serving them providing value first, it's you know, building
(26:14):
that relationship, building that trust, but also gives me a
path to what my next product should be or to
how I can you know, generate growth in my company.
And then in terms of just like any tips logistically
for how to build a TikTok filling how to build
an Instagram following TikTok is interesting. There's three types of
content to do well and really across social media, I
(26:36):
think that either has to be educational, it has to
be aspirational, or it has to be entertaining. Those are
really the three, and if you can do all three,
you'll probably go viral on TikTok, like if you can
be educational, aspirational, and entertaining all at once. And I
think I kind of meet in the middle between aspirational.
I talked about quitting my job, I talked about building,
(26:56):
building my business, and then obviously educational, how do you
say money? How do you invest that sort of thing?
Can I ask kind of a weird question, do you
ever like run out of things to talk about? Yes?
And then what do you do? I don't create that,
I mean, and that sounds that sounds ridiculous, But like
I again, I made that mistake where I was like, okay,
(27:18):
a feeling like I have to just keep going, and
you either create ship content which you don't want to do,
or you burn yourself out. Or to Amy's point, I
am an author, and so whenever I get stuck with
writer's block, I will read other author's books and immediately
I'm inspired. What is that thing for you? I go
ask my community what they need? So I go, hey,
(27:41):
what what what do you want to see? More? More
from are? More about from us? You know, how can
we serve you better? And that's a great, like, that's
a that's great because they're generating ideas for me. I
don't have to think of them, and I know that
when I create content or create products around it, they'll
be serving the need for them. What do you think,
(28:01):
because you're an expert, what do you think women kind
of writ large need in terms of financial education and tools.
So we're talking about the wage gap a lot, very necessary.
Seventy eight cents to a man's dollar works. If you're
a woman of color talking about it all the time,
should continue to talk about it. We are not talking
(28:22):
about the investing gap. We're just not. We're not having
conversations about it. Women either wait longer to invest or
don't invest compared to men, and we live on average
seven years longer than men do. So we take less
money because of the wage of gap, It grows at
a slower rate because of the investing gap, and then
we're expected to live longer on that money. Makes no sense.
(28:42):
The number one reason women don't invest is fear. Lack
of education, fear getting started, fear that it's gambling, fear
that this industry is just not for them. You walk
on to Wall Street, you walk into the financial district
in New York. It is the most masculine symbol you've
ever seen in your gash being life. It is this
ball whose balls you touch for financial like prosperity. You
(29:04):
go up and you touch the balls on this ball,
you know, for good luck and for financial yeah, financial prosperity.
Of course, we don't feel like this is for us.
Of course we don't feel like investing is our arena.
And even with all of this game stop stuff around,
like the democratization of wealth and like, you know, going
against these hedge funds. Cool. The hedge fund managers are
(29:25):
straight white men. You know what? These Reddit forums are
also made up of straight white men. Women people of
color are still getting left out of the investing conversation.
So we need to start talking about not only keeping
your wealth, saving money, budgeting, but how do you grow
your wealth. In a stereotypical heteronormative partnership, the man is
(29:46):
handling the wealth building strategies. He's handling investing the stock market,
buying real estate. The woman is handling budgeting, saving money
for short term goals. We need to do more to
educate women to have conversations about how to grow wealth,
not just sustain it. Where do you want to be
(30:07):
in ten years? I want to be Tony Robbins, but
less Ikey love it. I don't know if we're allowed
to say no. I think no. I I get what
you're saying. Do you see kids as part of that?
It's a really great questioning. I thought for a really
(30:28):
long time I wanted to be a mom, and now
I'm doing that fun thing where I'm like, do I
actually want to be a mom or this society just
told me I should be. I'm also I'm twenty six,
I am not. I'm not romantically partnered. I do not
I don't want to have a child not having a partner.
Both logistically, yeah, I think that. I don't know if
(30:50):
I could do that alone. I don't want to do
that alone. Um, and then just it's really important to
me to be able to have a partner to raise
a child with. But so the partner's got to come first,
and honestly, that's that's something that I'm more interested in.
So we end every episode with the lightning round, and
then our colleague Glue will come back on and wrap
up the episode for us with a question of his own.
(31:11):
So with the lightning round. What book are you reading? Oh?
I just finished The Woman in the Window. I like
my thrillers. How about your favorite true crime podcast, Serial
Season one. I don't think anything in touch it. Nothing
can touch Cereal season one. What is your nighttime routine?
I typically read. I'm probably on my phone more than
(31:32):
I should be. UM, but I always journal every single night,
and it's three things I'm grateful for at least and
ends up pretty pretty much being an overview of my day.
And then I do some affirmations, and then if I
have time, I do some manifestations. If you made a
billion dollars, what would your number one cosby that you
would give back to Planned Parenthood and or together rising
(31:56):
Glennon Doyle's amazing organization. Lou are you retty for? How
can we get more people of our age to stop
thinking dead if they talk about money, it's a bad thing.
I love this question. So the money is taboo narrative
is perpetuated by the patriarchy. And we'll define patriarchy as
(32:19):
this larger system that is oppressive racially. Uh, you know,
it's sexist, it's it's it's misogynistic, it's you know, not
acknowledging any kind of systemic oppression, right, and is continually
the societal impact. Right. So when we stay money is taboo, really,
that's the straight white male perspective. They already have money,
(32:41):
The patriarchy already has money. They already have power. And
the more that they tell you that money is taboo,
the more you that they stay in power. Right, they
profit off of our silence, They profit off of us
not having conversations. So the more that they tell us
money is taboo, or wanting money is bad or evil,
or that talking about money is impolite, the more they
stay in power. So for me, the mission around her
(33:04):
first under Ky is like, let's not just have you know,
conversations about money or build wealth on our own. Let's
view those as radical acts of protest, because they are.
If we can get more wealth into people of colors hands,
into women's hands, into you know, every marginalized group's hands,
we can start to change the world. So for me,
when I think about, Okay, I'm going to potentially do
(33:27):
this risky societal or societally risky thing of talking about money,
I am doing it not just for myself, but I'm
doing it on behalf of everybody who feels too afraid
to do it, so it's it's an act of protests
in and of itself. I say that having a financial
education is your best form of protest, because it is
you have financial agency when you start to talk about money,
(33:48):
and therefore you have power in the larger scheme of
you know, your life and society. So if we can
view talking about money not just beneficial for ourselves, but
beneficial to working towards a society that is more equitable,
then cool, everything starts to change. And actually it's statistically speaking,
for women, were a lot more likely to do something
(34:09):
if we feel like it benefits somebody else. So if
we can which I know amy is like some bullshit.
I want, I want you. I want so confident about
to do something because it benefits me, but like use
that to our advantage, right, So yeah, let's have transparent
conversations about money, not just because it betters our money,
but because it betters everybody around us. When I look
(34:32):
at Tori and I think she's only twenty six and
the confidence that she has, I'm really blown away. I mean,
I wish I'd been that confident when I was in
my mid twenties. I was still really struggling with who
am I, what do I want to do? How do
I use my voice in a certain way? And it's
really powerful to see someone take it from such a
different perspective. I love meeting Tori. I found her perspective
(34:54):
both on saving money and on social media really interesting
and it's so fascinating how she's combined the two. Yeah,
I mean, she really has used it as a platform
and a business tool. I mean, one of my favorite
things about social media amy is that it is everyone
has access to it, and it's free, and so there's
something about the fact that we um can use whether
(35:18):
it's LinkedIn or clubhouse or Twitter or I mean, there
are so many ways to use social media to grow
your audience, to expand your network, and I think so
few people really take full advantage of it. And it
was really interesting to hear her talk about how she
grew up with parents who are pretty frugal and taught
her how to save right, how to think about money
(35:39):
as a tool, because money is a tool, and we
don't talk about it enough as that. Right, it's a
tool for freedom, it's a tool for buying things, it's
it's a tool for a lot of different things, and
so I really enjoyed hearing her perspective on how the
money became so important to her and how she uses
it too well. I like the idea also that she's
getting young people to talk about money and to get
comfortable talking about money. And I think if more women
(36:02):
were comfortable talking about money, they'd be more comfortable earning money.
I think that's right, and we love to talk about
women earning money. Absolutely. Thanks for listening to What's Her
Story with Sam and Amy. We would so appreciate if
you would leave a review wherever you get your podcasts,
and of course, connect with us on social media at
(36:23):
What's Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with Sam and
Amy is powered by my company, The Riveter at the
Riveter dot c o in Sam's company, park Place Payments
at park place payments dot Com. Thanks to our producer
and editor Laurel Mogulin, our podcast associate Phoebe crane Fus,
and our male perspective Lue Burns
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? Was? Sam and Amy? This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today, we're
so excited to welcome Tory Dunlop to the show. She's
(00:23):
a speaker of financial coach and the founder of her
first on a platform that is all about women in
financial literacy. Am, how did you first meet Tori? So
we actually met through the Riveter. She joined the Riveter
in Seattle when she had a full time job but
was thinking about her side hustle. Was it immediately obvious
that she was a superstar? Yes, it absolutely was. I mean,
(00:45):
you look at this woman. I think Tori was like,
she might kill me for saying this, but I think
she was like twenty three or twenty four, and she
came into the Riveter with all of these questions, all
of these ideas, and I could just tell she was
going to run with it. And I mean, and she has.
Let's dive in Tory. Welcome to What's Her Story? With
Sam and Amy. We are so excited to have you
on the show today. Thank you so much for having me.
(01:07):
I'm I'm over the moon to be here. I want
to go back to the very beginning. Um, you know,
you've said that your parents were so frugal that you
had to learn how to spend money. Tell us about
your parents, like, did you did both of them work?
What was your childhood like? Yeah, so I am an
only child. Uh, my parents and I talk every day. Still.
I'm twenty six and I still talked to my parents
(01:28):
every day. Yeah. I grew up with a financial education.
I grew up with very frugal, you know, financially smart parents,
and thought that that was the case for everybody. I thought, Okay,
everybody knows not to overspend on credit cards, and everybody
knows how to save money and negotiate. And of course
realized very quickly that that wasn't the case. And I
kind of discovered that in college and outside of college,
when I was a friend, all of my friends were
(01:50):
coming to for advice and guidance. And so I discovered
that financial education was a privilege and that I had
a responsibility to have these conversations to spread this knowledge
and that's why I founded her first under KUM. But yeah,
my parents it was very frugal lifestyle. We never uh,
we never wanted for anything. We but we also, you know,
we weren't lavish spenders. They still drive you know, ten
(02:12):
year old cars, and like I said, they haven't moved
even though they could afford to. Um. So, when I
graduated college and kind of came out on my own, yeah,
I was very frugal and had to kind of learn
how to feel comfortable spending money on the things that
were important to me. So tell us about your first
job out of college. I was lucky enough to have
a really great kind of first job in terms of
(02:35):
you know, the work I was doing. So I was
leading social media marketing and digital marketing for a company
of about five thousand employees. I was their only marketing
communication person, which was kind of crazy. So I was
twenty two racent grad coming into corporate and thought to myself, Okay,
I want to be a VP of marketing by thirty
Like that's that's my trajectory. And within two weeks of
(02:56):
working my corporate job, I was like, oh, this is
not for me. For ever. I was like I don't
like having to, uh, you know, submit time off to
take vacation and the fact that I only get like
eight days of vacation a year. I don't frankly like
making somebody that I don't respect rich. That was a
big thing is I worked with a lot of very
(03:19):
misogynistic men who said weird sexist things and comments to
me as I would walk by at work. So didn't
like that and was just feeling very much like I
wanted to do my own thing. And I I read
the quote in my first year at corporate which is
every job is paid training until you get to work
for yourself. And that was very much my mantra of like,
(03:41):
I learned a lot and got as much information as
possible in order to kind of build my own thing.
How did you get that first job? Goodness, I think
it was a cold application. Pretty much every job I've
had was a cold application, even though I totally like,
I did a ton of networking. I did an informational
interview every single week my senior year of college, Like,
(04:02):
I was so focused on landing a job before I graduated,
and it didn't happen, which was such a bummer. I've
been all this time, and then I applied to like
this random job on indeed, and I get it. So yeah,
it's kind of funny because everybody tells you like you
llion jobs by networking. I am the exact same way Tory.
I got my job in Nickelodeon from a New York
(04:23):
Times classified at. I mean, that's how old I am.
But I literally sent in a resume, so I totally
get that. I love that, and I think it makes
you hungrier because you know what it's like to like
send out a zillion applications until you get that one.
It's just like anything else. So I remember reading that
there were three months after you quit where you were
like unemployed essentially. What was that like? So that was
(04:46):
my second job. So I quit my first job after
about a year and a half. I got this new
opportunity um and I ended up negotiating twenty dollars more
than they wanted to pay me at that age, How
did you learn to negotiate a twenty all or raised
before you even started? Yeah, I'll be really transparent. So
they offered me sixt k and I'm a negotiation coach
(05:07):
now because I've done it so frequently in my life.
And helped other women. And what I tell them is
you need to ask for more than you want, right,
because the negotiation is a collaboration. You're going to meet
in the middle ideally, right. So I wanted seventy K,
and it I should say, market research and market rate
told me I should be asking for seventy K. I
didn't just want seventy K, but I was like, Okay,
if I'm gonna get at seventy, I'm gonna ask for
(05:28):
a dy with the expectation we're going to meet in
the middle. And that was actually the first red flag
for me. She like immediately said yes, She's like sure,
we'll pay you eighty. And at the time that was
like a fun thing of like, oh maybe I'm maybe
I'm worth this amount of money. But what it ended
up being, of course, in hindsight, was she was so
desperate to get somebody into this role that she was
(05:50):
just like sure eight, like let's do it. And yeah.
At the time, I'm like, great, I just negotiated to
increase expecting only to negotiate about ten. And then it
felt like, okay, well I have to take this job
now because this is this is more money than I
was making Uh you know, I need to I need
to accept this role and kind of let it, uh
(06:11):
distract me from all of the all of the evidence
that this was not going to be a good fit
for me. When you asked for that eighty thousand, like tell, okay,
so I used to have a hard time negotiating until
I started figuring out how to do it, Like when
you asked for that eighty thousand, Like did you write
a script? Did you like so? And then like wrote
a script and then got on the phone. How did
(06:32):
it feel? Yeah, I literally teach the script of my
negotiation workshops because and my and my courses, because it
has been perfected over time. But I still get nervous negotiation.
I remember, Yeah, I was twenty three negotiating that job,
and I knew that if it was backed in data,
I had a better shot. So what And that's why
I was quick to clarify I didn't just want this
(06:54):
amount of money. This was backed in data. This was
me looking at companies like glass Store and pay Scale
salary data, having conversations with colleagues about what I should
be getting paid. And that's what I teach a part
of my negotiation uh workshops and courses. It's like, you
really need to make sure that you have that good
data because you're talking to data driven people, and then
in addition to that data, you're going to show them
(07:16):
how valuable you are. So it's data plus your value
that you're adding. It's never not a little daunting, especially
we're told as women that we should just sit down
and shut up and be grateful for our opportunities. And
then you know, when we have the audacity to ask
for more money or ask for what we're worth, it's
it's definitely a little intimidating. Tory. I love your I
(07:36):
love your TikTok videos about negotiating and then like you,
you share how to do it, and I laughed out loud,
and then like your hand is shaking with the water.
It's really funny. So tell us about those three months
you are this frugal saver and your unemployed for three months,
you can only spend and you're not earning anything. There
was a lot of emotions at that time. A lot
(07:56):
of feeling like I had failed, um because my boss
was telling me I was a failure. A lot of
feeling like I couldn't hack it, like I couldn't and
maybe I wasn't as as competent as I thought I
was UM And then during that three months, it was
a really honestly a great personal experience for me because
it informs the work that I do now. I was
(08:18):
able to quit that toxic job because I had money
in the bank. I mean, it was really nerve racking.
It made me it's so grateful that I had done
that upfront work of saving an emergency fund to fall
back on UM and and that was the ticket out
of a toxic situation? Was that financial freedom? What did
you do to build an emergency fund when you weren't
(08:40):
making like, you weren't making six figures, right, it's like
what did you do? So kind of like what are
like broad strokes? What did you do to save money? Yeah?
The two biggest ways that I built the emergency fund
and built my hundred K. First, I invested and I
actually took my side hustle earnings, and that was either
funding an emergency fund or funding my investments, funding my
(09:01):
retirement accounts. I guess that's two things. But the third
is I automated my savings. So when I got a
paycheck from my nine percentage of that immediately went into
my savings account. I didn't even see it. It was like,
you know, another bill was being paid. And that's if
you're going to take anything away from from my financial advice,
it's to automate your savings. Set up an automatic transfer
(09:23):
from your checking account to your savings account. So what
happens on autopilot so you don't even don't even realize it.
So I had money accumulating and you know, growing in
the bank without me actually having to do anything. What
was the original brand for her first Yeah, it's a
blood called Victory Media and you but you couldn't tell
what what I did, right, And it actually still is
my LLC because it's a good kind of umbrella for
(09:45):
everything I want to do, but not a good like
brand name. So I was Victory Media until February when
I rebranded to her First hundred K, and that's kind
of where everything took off and where I very publicly
stated my goal of trying to stave a hundred So
tell us about the takeoff. Oh yeah. I started Victory
(10:08):
Media in late after Trump got elected and was just
living in a very different America than I thought and
wanted to start having some of these conversations and then
realized I wanted to talk specifically about money for women.
So February and I rebranded UM. I got featured in
market Watch, which was my first big kind of media
hit in March, and then everything blew up from there.
(10:30):
How did you get featured in? I bugged the reporter
on Twitter, which is I am. I am a little
pitch machine. I will go after the things I want.
And Twitter has been like, I've gotten Good Morning America, CNBC,
the New York Times, UH, a bunch of others, and
(10:51):
pretty much all of them have come from me cold
pitching myself on Twitter. So you you hold pitch yourself
to a Good Morning America producer, share with us with
that pitch sounds like I slimed their d M s
and I say, Hi, Hi, Sam, I hope you're doing well.
I uh my name story, I founded her first hundred
K And if you do have other media features, you say, okay,
I was featured on market Watch last week. My story
(11:12):
and my mission is focused on giving women actionable resources
to fight the patriarchy and get rich. UM, would you
like to tell my story and for me the hundred K? Specifically,
I thought in terms of headlines. And that's that's a
great advice for anybody who's pitching, Like, think in terms
of what this headline will be. So for me, the
obvious headline was year old on on track to save
(11:33):
a hundred K. Here's how she did it. So that's
that was my pitch. And then I would always say,
because I meant it, like, I would be honored to
have you tell my story. Would you be interested? I
would be honored to work with you. Let me know
if you're interested, and if you're not, let me know
if if there's somebody in your community who might be.
CNBC happened that way, market Watch happened that way. Good
(11:54):
Morning America happened because they saw me on New York
Magazine and I got New York Magazine because I've pitch
reporter and now for a quick break. I would agree
from my perspective that Twitter is the best place to
connect with and pitch journalists. And I think people don't
talk about that enough, but I mean it's this open
(12:14):
community where you can meet and talk to anybody. They
might not talk back to you, but like you can
say anything, and I think and all journalists are just
like that's their forum. Yeah, I have a lot of people,
you know who do what I do, or female entrepreneurs
and they're like on Instagram or they're on Facebook and
I'm on both. That is my customer facing platform, my
(12:35):
you know, the more industry focus, that's what's happening on Twitter.
So I'm going to Twitter to connect with other people
who do what I do. Or two. Yeah, pitch reporters
find opportunities. That sort of thing. That is such a
great I've never heard of anyone frame it that way,
and that's actually a brilliant way to frame it. How
would you position TikTok than because you have an enormous
TikTok following. TikTok is also customers, But that's led to
(12:58):
media opportunities, right, just because I have as big of
a platform as I do. TikTok has been interesting though,
because they are it's probably not surprised to a lot
of people, but they skew younger. So I am actually
more likely to make money off of TikTok or to
grow my influence on TikTok by actually promoting brands I
work with rather than promoting necessarily my own products, because
(13:20):
they are more likely to sign up for like a
bank that I recommend because it's at no cost to them. Right,
then they are to sign up for a course that
I offer. That's two that we still get some people
from TikTok that do that. And it's not just you know,
nineteen year old, but I saw half of my business
revenue last year come from affiliate marketing via TikTok, which
(13:43):
is crazy. That is crazy, Like how did you so?
I think this is like there's so many platforms, right
like now I have Clubhouse and also like, how did
you decide to go after TikTok? Right, Like how did like,
because you only have so much time in the day,
so how did you decide like, oh great, I'm gonna
do this too. Instagram was my primary platform and still
largely is. Actually, um I doubled down on Instagram when
(14:06):
I rebranded her first under Kay. I was like, Okay,
I'll be on Facebook, I'll be on Twitter, but I
will spend the majority of my time on Instagram. And
I grew Instagram, you know, I got to a point
where I had a really great community there, and then honestly,
Instagram was feeling a little stale, It was feeling very
it was hard to not feel like it was manufactured.
As we were growing and and trying to figure out,
(14:28):
you know, where I was going to spend my time,
it felt less and less creative to be on Instagram.
It just felt like, Okay, we have to post every
day and we have to do you know this kind
of post work well, and I wanted something a little
a little more creative. I also had so many people
who were telling me, like, you should be on TikTok,
like there's a there's a need there, but there's not
a lot of financial advice yet. Who is we? When
(14:51):
you said we decided who? Who is the we? Because
I don't think we heard when you started hiring your
first people tell us about that. So I have a
team actually we just heard are two people last week.
So I have a team of four. But they're all
part time college students. They're all women who are still
in school um, and we're hoping to bring two of
them on full time when they graduate. How do you
(15:13):
decide how much to pay them? Oh? Amy, So funny
you asked that because literally we're going I'm I'm navigating that.
I'm still trying to figure that out, Like I asked,
because I think it's particularly hard because I think you
know Sam's businesses financial services, and it's it's geared toward women.
The Riveter was geared toward working women. Your business is
geared towards women, although all of our businesses speak to everyone.
(15:35):
But the point is we're all talking about women and
getting great jobs and making a lot of money. And
it's a minefield in the sense that when you're starting
your own business, you can't sometimes pay people what you
wish you could or what you feel their qualification deserves well.
And the funny thing is, I'm so transparent about what
our business made. I actually I've told the people very
publicly what our revenue is. Yeah, so what if it
(16:00):
for the people who are listening. We did over half
a million in revenue last year, which was our first
full year of of me being an entrepreneur. And the
funny thing is is that in speaking so transparently about money,
people think they know how to run your business, and so,
you know, you get feedback of like you should be
paying people this amount, or you should and I'm all
(16:20):
for equal pay. I'm all for you know, good equitable
wages and all of those things. It's also like Just
because you see the over half a million dollars, that
doesn't mean we made that much, right, It doesn't mean
that's money in my pocket. We we netted actually a
good chunk of that, and I'm really proud of that.
But I'm in reinvesting that end of the business. You know,
there's other factors there that I have to consider. So
that's the other thing I'm trying to navigate is like,
(16:43):
how do I continue being transparent about money in a
way that feels genuine and authentic to me while also
understanding that, like, everybody's gonna have a different opinion about
how I should run my business if I choose to
be that transparent. Like, ultimately, how do you feel about
building in public? Because you are building in public and
you are public, Like, what are your boundaries in terms
of sharing about the business or your life. I've had
(17:07):
to figure those out over time. I've had some scary
things happen in the past couple of months that have
been really really public and really, yeah, really scary. I
kind of we're talking about how great TikTok is. It's been.
It's literally changed my life in my business. It's also
come with death threats and with you're fat, and you
(17:30):
are ungrateful and you're just I mean, can I curse
on this podcast? Yes, Oh you're you're a bit and
you are ungrateful and you should just sit down and
shut up, which was an actual email I received. All Right,
let's sit separate those two things, because I think the
latter is something that we all face. What it's not
new to social media, right, It's like anyone woman who
(17:51):
is successful is face that. But the first thing, the
death threats, I don't understand. Can you share what that means?
I don't even get it. Social media is such a
great community, it's such a great place, and quite honestly,
I thought I wanted some sort of notoriety or fame,
and I have now the teenious little sliver of it,
and I've realized I don't want it at all. I'm
gonna start crying. But like I realized, I don't want
(18:13):
it at all because what I went through. I had
a TikTok go kind of negative viral in November of
last year where I talked about me as an influencer
and as a creator getting offered this really small amount
of money for from this huge brand, and I talked
about like brands, you need to start paying people more,
like this is not okay. And I was very transparent
about what they offered, and we had half the people
(18:36):
who were like, yeah, that's great, like yeah, ask for
what you're worth, and the other half of people who
are like, you need to just sit down and shut
up and just be grateful. It's a global pandemic and
you're out of touch and like you're you're terrible and ungrateful.
And so what I realized is it's it's it's a
very delicate balance. And it's also you know, when you're
a woman, you're exactly right, Sam. When you're a woman online,
(18:56):
this is the kind of ship that happens to you.
Every single day. You're gonna get called fat, you're gonna
get told you're unlovable, you're gonna get you know, you're
gonna get all of these sorts of comments every single day.
And I think the fact that I talk about money,
this very taboo topic, the whole point of my thing.
If my entire platform is like, let's talk about this
thing that's taboo because no one's talking about it, and
(19:16):
so in doing so, it can either be really triggering
to people or it can be threatening to people, or
it can be if if somebody is having a hard
financial time, I can understand how they project that onto
me or onto what I'm doing. I can understand that
doesn't mean, you know, you need to be mean about it.
But I learned a lot from that experience. And I
also just realized, like to your point, Amy, about boundaries
(19:39):
of Like I just deleted TikTok, deleted the app off
my phone for like a week and a half. I
just like went dark, and I had my team handle it,
which I'm so thankful to them because they have a
degree of separation. Um. But I've had to get way more,
way more intentional, and I'm something I'm still navigating on
what I want to share in what I don't. Amy
and I are both so p about this topic because
(20:01):
it's it breaks my heart here you say I don't
want to be anywhere famous in this to to I guess,
prevent yourself from being exposed to even more young people
just because of a few evil people. It's just I
want to be clear, Stamp, that's not my objective. I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna, you know, crush my own
dreams because somebody's being shitty, like I'm not going to
do that for me. It's just the realization that like
(20:22):
you think, like you know, we have this very very
skewed version of what famous looks like, especially in the
United States, really in the world, we don't see that
you also have all of this stuff to deal with.
You have your own like literal, physical and emotional protection
to make sure you're keeping track of, Like I am
now so concerned about, like how do I protect my team?
(20:45):
How do I protect my parents? Because we can ask
how do you protect yourself? I'm public, like this is
something I have to deal with. But the people who didn't,
you know, yeah, I mean, like what you asked for
is to live in this purpose of like what we
started our conversation with though of saying, look, I grew
up with this privilege of learning how to be financially
smart and generate wealth and grow my wealth, and I
(21:06):
want to share that with everyone. That's what you asked for.
And I have to say, like, we'll dive into this
because I've read a lot of your commentary and Dave
Ramsey nobody ship. I bet no one gives him like
I met, Nobody talks about his appearance. I bet nobody,
you know, Like I bet nobody's like Dave Ramsey, be
grateful for what someone pays you, even if they should
be paying you more. We tell women to be grateful
(21:28):
for the script and so like, how do we change that? Yeah,
and that's my whole thing. And that's why it was
Actually that post was so ironic that it went so
like negative viral. I'm like, this is this is it?
Like you are proving the point even if this is awful,
Like you are proving the point of why this is needed.
So tell us about your social life. I would imagine
as a young person, your dating life is complicated because
(21:53):
of this. I mean I have no dating life to
speak of with the pandemic. But um, it's interesting you
asked the question and phrase it that way. I for me, like,
this is gonna sound vaguely egotistical. I don't know how
to say it any better. I this was the plan
for my life for a very long time, Like I
wanted to change women's lives. I wanted to build something
(22:15):
I was proud of and have something that was that
was bigger than me. And I felt that way even
as a kid or even you know, growing up and
starting to date in like high school and college, and
there's a lot of men that are intimidated by strong women,
and I shouldn't stay intimidated threatened by strong women. And
some of whom you know, uh can can move past
(22:35):
that right and come to the point where you know,
this feels like a partnership when I'm dating and actively
dating people. I think it's very interesting because, um, yeah,
I'm going to talk about money really upfront and really transparently.
And Sam, I don't know if you saw, but I
posted a TikTok the other day about like a question
to ask, if you are someone who dates men, how
(22:55):
do you feel dating somebody and dating a woman who
makes more than you? Even if you don't make more
in the person, it's just knowing what their attitude would
be around it that can be very very revealing as
to what this partnership is going to look like. And
especially when we consider that that the number one reason
that uh so, you know, separations are divorces happen in
the United States is actually related to money. So if
(23:16):
you're not having these conversations very very early, it can
be really damaging. How do you bring up money on
a date. I mean, what's what's an example figuring out
who's going to pay for what? Right of like if
you're going to dinner in a movie if we still
do that anymore into this coming year, but like saying, hey,
are you okay if like I cover dinner and you
cover the movie, Like it can be just you know,
(23:38):
something like that, or you know, you know, if they
bought ice cre or if they bought dinner, like, hey,
I'll get I'll get ice cream after I'll get dessert. Um.
You can also just ask them like bring up a
maybe an article you read like that would actually be
a great article to discuss this this this emotional labor
China dispute, and just saying like, hey, did you see
this article I read the other day? What are your
(23:58):
thoughts about it? Um? And that can be a great
way of asking them how they feel about money without
directly being like, what is your relationship with money? And
now for a quick break, do you know if your
parents talked about money before they got married? Yes, they did.
And my mom's a stay at home mom. My dad
is a salesperson and is uh kind of moving towards
(24:20):
retirement in the next few years, um. And yeah, they
had a lot of conversations about you know, if we're
gonna have children, um Like, I really we want to
have one of the one of the parents stay and
raise raise our child. Um. So approaching it from shared
goals can be much more productive than getting them these
like you know, these fights or these spats about money.
(24:44):
It feels like one of your competitive advantages before you
started her first one K was that you really understood
digital marketing in a way and a more sophisticated way
than most people do when they start their businesses, recommendations
you have for other entrepreneurs and how to build their
social following. My number one rule on social media is
(25:08):
served before you sell. It's my number one rule. So
when you're showing up online, you want to create and
generate and always provide value for people before you try
to convince them to buy anything. To too many people,
I see too many entrepreneurs go into social media thinking like, Okay,
I'll sell my products and that's what will get people
to follow me or to join my community. They'll they'll
(25:30):
find my community because I sell products. That's that's the
exact opposite. You want to serve and provide value for
people and generate growth that way and build their trust,
build your credibility by serving people before you try to
sell them, because like I said, build trust, incredibility, But
it also gives you awareness as to what your audience needs.
(25:53):
So the more content I put out, the more questions
I got. You know, So if I talk about paying
off debt, people would be like, okay, but like how
do I go about doing that? Should I consolidate? What
should I pay off? First? And then it's like, okay, great,
I need a debt payoff product. I need something to
serve that need. Further, that is a paid product. So
in serving them providing value first, it's you know, building
(26:14):
that relationship, building that trust, but also gives me a
path to what my next product should be or to
how I can you know, generate growth in my company.
And then in terms of just like any tips logistically
for how to build a TikTok filling how to build
an Instagram following TikTok is interesting. There's three types of
content to do well and really across social media, I
(26:36):
think that either has to be educational, it has to
be aspirational, or it has to be entertaining. Those are
really the three, and if you can do all three,
you'll probably go viral on TikTok, like if you can
be educational, aspirational, and entertaining all at once. And I
think I kind of meet in the middle between aspirational.
I talked about quitting my job, I talked about building,
(26:56):
building my business, and then obviously educational, how do you
say money? How do you invest that sort of thing?
Can I ask kind of a weird question, do you
ever like run out of things to talk about? Yes?
And then what do you do? I don't create that,
I mean, and that sounds that sounds ridiculous, But like
I again, I made that mistake where I was like, okay,
(27:18):
a feeling like I have to just keep going, and
you either create ship content which you don't want to do,
or you burn yourself out. Or to Amy's point, I
am an author, and so whenever I get stuck with
writer's block, I will read other author's books and immediately
I'm inspired. What is that thing for you? I go
ask my community what they need? So I go, hey,
(27:41):
what what what do you want to see? More? More
from are? More about from us? You know, how can
we serve you better? And that's a great, like, that's
a that's great because they're generating ideas for me. I
don't have to think of them, and I know that
when I create content or create products around it, they'll
be serving the need for them. What do you think,
(28:01):
because you're an expert, what do you think women kind
of writ large need in terms of financial education and tools.
So we're talking about the wage gap a lot, very necessary.
Seventy eight cents to a man's dollar works. If you're
a woman of color talking about it all the time,
should continue to talk about it. We are not talking
(28:22):
about the investing gap. We're just not. We're not having
conversations about it. Women either wait longer to invest or
don't invest compared to men, and we live on average
seven years longer than men do. So we take less
money because of the wage of gap, It grows at
a slower rate because of the investing gap, and then
we're expected to live longer on that money. Makes no sense.
(28:42):
The number one reason women don't invest is fear. Lack
of education, fear getting started, fear that it's gambling, fear
that this industry is just not for them. You walk
on to Wall Street, you walk into the financial district
in New York. It is the most masculine symbol you've
ever seen in your gash being life. It is this
ball whose balls you touch for financial like prosperity. You
(29:04):
go up and you touch the balls on this ball,
you know, for good luck and for financial yeah, financial prosperity.
Of course, we don't feel like this is for us.
Of course we don't feel like investing is our arena.
And even with all of this game stop stuff around,
like the democratization of wealth and like, you know, going
against these hedge funds. Cool. The hedge fund managers are
(29:25):
straight white men. You know what? These Reddit forums are
also made up of straight white men. Women people of
color are still getting left out of the investing conversation.
So we need to start talking about not only keeping
your wealth, saving money, budgeting, but how do you grow
your wealth. In a stereotypical heteronormative partnership, the man is
(29:46):
handling the wealth building strategies. He's handling investing the stock market,
buying real estate. The woman is handling budgeting, saving money
for short term goals. We need to do more to
educate women to have conversations about how to grow wealth,
not just sustain it. Where do you want to be
(30:07):
in ten years? I want to be Tony Robbins, but
less Ikey love it. I don't know if we're allowed
to say no. I think no. I I get what
you're saying. Do you see kids as part of that?
It's a really great questioning. I thought for a really
(30:28):
long time I wanted to be a mom, and now
I'm doing that fun thing where I'm like, do I
actually want to be a mom or this society just
told me I should be. I'm also I'm twenty six,
I am not. I'm not romantically partnered. I do not
I don't want to have a child not having a partner.
Both logistically, yeah, I think that. I don't know if
(30:50):
I could do that alone. I don't want to do
that alone. Um, and then just it's really important to
me to be able to have a partner to raise
a child with. But so the partner's got to come first,
and honestly, that's that's something that I'm more interested in.
So we end every episode with the lightning round, and
then our colleague Glue will come back on and wrap
up the episode for us with a question of his own.
(31:11):
So with the lightning round. What book are you reading? Oh?
I just finished The Woman in the Window. I like
my thrillers. How about your favorite true crime podcast, Serial
Season one. I don't think anything in touch it. Nothing
can touch Cereal season one. What is your nighttime routine?
I typically read. I'm probably on my phone more than
(31:32):
I should be. UM, but I always journal every single night,
and it's three things I'm grateful for at least and
ends up pretty pretty much being an overview of my day.
And then I do some affirmations, and then if I
have time, I do some manifestations. If you made a
billion dollars, what would your number one cosby that you
would give back to Planned Parenthood and or together rising
(31:56):
Glennon Doyle's amazing organization. Lou are you retty for? How
can we get more people of our age to stop
thinking dead if they talk about money, it's a bad thing.
I love this question. So the money is taboo narrative
is perpetuated by the patriarchy. And we'll define patriarchy as
(32:19):
this larger system that is oppressive racially. Uh, you know,
it's sexist, it's it's it's misogynistic, it's you know, not
acknowledging any kind of systemic oppression, right, and is continually
the societal impact. Right. So when we stay money is taboo, really,
that's the straight white male perspective. They already have money,
(32:41):
The patriarchy already has money. They already have power. And
the more that they tell you that money is taboo,
the more you that they stay in power. Right, they
profit off of our silence, They profit off of us
not having conversations. So the more that they tell us
money is taboo, or wanting money is bad or evil,
or that talking about money is impolite, the more they
stay in power. So for me, the mission around her
(33:04):
first under Ky is like, let's not just have you know,
conversations about money or build wealth on our own. Let's
view those as radical acts of protest, because they are.
If we can get more wealth into people of colors hands,
into women's hands, into you know, every marginalized group's hands,
we can start to change the world. So for me,
when I think about, Okay, I'm going to potentially do
(33:27):
this risky societal or societally risky thing of talking about money,
I am doing it not just for myself, but I'm
doing it on behalf of everybody who feels too afraid
to do it, so it's it's an act of protests
in and of itself. I say that having a financial
education is your best form of protest, because it is
you have financial agency when you start to talk about money,
(33:48):
and therefore you have power in the larger scheme of
you know, your life and society. So if we can
view talking about money not just beneficial for ourselves, but
beneficial to working towards a society that is more equitable,
then cool, everything starts to change. And actually it's statistically speaking,
for women, were a lot more likely to do something
(34:09):
if we feel like it benefits somebody else. So if
we can which I know amy is like some bullshit.
I want, I want you. I want so confident about
to do something because it benefits me, but like use
that to our advantage, right, So yeah, let's have transparent
conversations about money, not just because it betters our money,
but because it betters everybody around us. When I look
(34:32):
at Tori and I think she's only twenty six and
the confidence that she has, I'm really blown away. I mean,
I wish I'd been that confident when I was in
my mid twenties. I was still really struggling with who
am I, what do I want to do? How do
I use my voice in a certain way? And it's
really powerful to see someone take it from such a
different perspective. I love meeting Tori. I found her perspective
(34:54):
both on saving money and on social media really interesting
and it's so fascinating how she's combined the two. Yeah,
I mean, she really has used it as a platform
and a business tool. I mean, one of my favorite
things about social media amy is that it is everyone
has access to it, and it's free, and so there's
something about the fact that we um can use whether
(35:18):
it's LinkedIn or clubhouse or Twitter or I mean, there
are so many ways to use social media to grow
your audience, to expand your network, and I think so
few people really take full advantage of it. And it
was really interesting to hear her talk about how she
grew up with parents who are pretty frugal and taught
her how to save right, how to think about money
(35:39):
as a tool, because money is a tool, and we
don't talk about it enough as that. Right, it's a
tool for freedom, it's a tool for buying things, it's
it's a tool for a lot of different things, and
so I really enjoyed hearing her perspective on how the
money became so important to her and how she uses
it too well. I like the idea also that she's
getting young people to talk about money and to get
comfortable talking about money. And I think if more women
(36:02):
were comfortable talking about money, they'd be more comfortable earning money.
I think that's right, and we love to talk about
women earning money. Absolutely. Thanks for listening to What's Her
Story with Sam and Amy. We would so appreciate if
you would leave a review wherever you get your podcasts,
and of course, connect with us on social media at
(36:23):
What's Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with Sam and
Amy is powered by my company, The Riveter at the
Riveter dot c o in Sam's company, park Place Payments
at park place payments dot Com. Thanks to our producer
and editor Laurel Mogulin, our podcast associate Phoebe crane Fus,
and our male perspective Lue Burns
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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