Loading summary
Transcript16 lines
- [00:00]
A
It got to a point where I was working every single day, seven days a week. I hated my job, I hated Urich bff and I was terrified to jump into something new that I didn't know how was going to work. I was so burnt out that I said I couldn't do this anymore. I didn't want to be 50 or 60 looking back on this moment and wonder, what if I was leaving? Very literally a dream job. What's up everyone? I'm your host Vivian Tu, AKA your rich BFF and your favorite Wall street girly. Today we're going to talk about my villain origin story, AKA how I decided to become a full time content creator and take your rich BFF full time. In the digital age, we are seeing more and more people work for themselves, be digital nomads. And it can feel really tempting. I mean, I make Internet videos from my house or in this case, my podcast studio. It sounds super cool, right? But here's the thing that nobody tells you when you're fantasizing about quitting your 9 to 5. The freedom of working for yourself certainly doesn't come for free. Before I went all in on your rich bff, I had a financial Runway, a clear strategy, and one very specific number in my head. And that number was my permission slip to finally bet on myself. So let's get into how I took your rich BFF full time and made the entrepreneurial leap.
- [01:25]
B
Support for the show comes from Amazon.
- [01:27]
A
We've all been there.
- [01:28]
B
It's the night before your flight and despite your best intentions, you've procrastinated on packing only to realize that your favorite travel size moisturizer only has half a pump left.
- [01:39]
A
What we're not going to do is
- [01:41]
B
stretch that half a pump over 10 days and we're definitely not going to try and find it at the airport for a 200% markup. Not when there's Amazon. Get your essentials ahead of time or get them overnight. If you live for the drama of panic packing, shop Amazon and save on essentials. Save the everyday.
- [01:58]
A
So let's talk origin story. Allow me to set the scene. I had left JP Morgan and was now a top media seller at Buzzfeed. And in my last year at Buzzfeed I made 625 000. So how did I actually get there? I was very much the dream Chinese immigrant daughter. I was the valedictorian of my high school, I University of Chicago. I was doing everything right. I get this job at JP Morgan. Everything is amazing. I think I'm going to be there for the rest of my life. I'm going to climb the corporate ladder, and one day, if I'm lucky, I'll get to be the head of the desk. And that was a plan for a little bit. But unfortunately, about a year and a half into my career at JP Morgan, the head of my desk got let go. And when he got fired, a new manager was brought in. And this guy ended up firing half the team. And how or half the team basically quit. There was a lot of turnover very, very quickly. And because of that, all the new folks that were hired were kind of loyal to this new manager. But it really changed the environment and the dynamic that I had signed up to work for. That was not the desk that I had interviewed on, that was not the one that I interned on, and it wasn't the one that I had joined. So I was a little frustrated, but I wanted to do well. And ultimately, I was moved from my existing manager, who, by the way, is still my mentor to this day. She was the only other woman I worked with. She. At my wedding. I love her so much. I was moved away from her and moved underneath a new manager who had just started. And that was the beginning of the end. I genuinely cannot tell you why, but this guy just had it out for me. He didn't like me. He didn't like that I was a girl. He didn't like how I did my makeup, didn't like how my nails click clacked on the keyboard. And one day I came into the office with a long cardigan on, and he looked at me, touched his hands together and bowed and said, is that a kimono? I didn't even know what to say. I just felt this ball well up in my throat, and all I wanted to do was punch him in the face. I didn't. But I knew that I had to go. So ultimately, I spoke with my mentor, my manager, and I said, I want to quit. And she said, you don't have another job lined up. You can't quit. I said, okay, fine. So I stuck it out, but she ended up helping me with her network. And that is how I ended up getting my first job at BuzzFeed. She had a friend who had left Wall street and gone into the media tech space, and that woman ended up becoming my first boss. So, shout Susie, thank you so much for taking a flyer on me. When I knew nothing about media sales, when I knew nothing about advertising, when I knew nothing about the digital space, you gave me a new lease on life. And When I got to buzzfeed, I was so desperate for friendship because at JP Morgan you get hired as an analyst class. So there was like a hundred other young people that I was best friends with before I started and I was able to really build out a network. But at buzzfeed I was, you know, there wasn't an analyst class. I was hired off cycle. I was just, I just got a job and I had to make friends. So during lunch periods when I would sit with different people, I would tell them that I had come from Wall Street. And the immediate first thing that people would say is, will you help me rebalance my 401k? Which health insurance plan did you pick? Are company stock options worth anything? And I ended up helping so many of my co workers like basically manage their finances. And it got to the point where people would start to form a small line by me at lunch and I'm like, this is so annoying, I don't want to do this. And so I said, you know what guys? Like, I'm going to make some content, you can watch it on there. And I this was all done at the egging of my work best friend. Her name is Alison and she was the most famous person I'd ever met. She had 10,000 followers on Instagram and a small food blog. So at Alison Kimchi if you want to give her a follow. But she basically was like, Vivian, you have to talk about finance online. And I told her, I was like, Allison, people want to see you make sesame tahini cookies. They don't care about their 401k. And she was like, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong. Just try it, just try it. So I finally try it January 1st of 2020 and I have such a strange creator origin story because I know most creators will post and post and post for like a month before something hits. My very first video went viral. It got 3 million views and by the end of the week I had a hundred thousand followers. But then I was really confused cause I didn't know what to do. Ultimately what ended up happening was I cleared the fact that I had gone viral and could continue to make content with my employer. But I actually worked for over a year at both my full time day job and while building your rich bff. Monday through Friday would always be about my day job. I would work really, really hard. And frankly it was more of a 9 to 6:30, maybe 8:30 to 6:30 job. And I was still doing really, really well at my day job. And once I Would get to the weekend. On Saturdays, I would write out all of the content for the week. And then on Sundays, I would change outfits seven times. And so you thought that I was making video content every day, when in fact it was all being filmed on that one Sunday. It got to a point where I was working every single day, seven days a week. And I was so burnt out that I said I couldn't do this anymore. I hated my job. I hated Urich bff. And I told this to my now husband, and he said to me something that was so, like, it opened up my eyes, but he basically said to me, hey, Viv, did it ever occur to you that you don't hate your job and you don't hate your rich bff, but you hate doing them at the same time? And he was so right. It's not normal to work seven days a week every single day for over a year. I was so burnt out. This is what kind of led me to this ultimatum moment where I had to decide if I was going to leave a job. Which, by the way, the last year I worked at Buzzfeed, I made $625,000. That is a like, a shit ton of money. That is an unbelievable amount of money. And I was terrified because that was such a great living. It was such a great year. I had a boss who liked me. I had coworkers who were nice to me. I was leaving very literally a dream job. And I was terrified to jump into something new that I didn't know how was going to work. But I thought about it, and I felt like if I tried your HBFF for a year and it didn't work out, I could always go back with my tail between my legs and ask my boss, beg him for my job back. And I was good enough at my job, and I had succeeded very well. He, you know, one of his top, top reports, I thought he would take me back, but I didn't want to be 50 or 60 looking back on this moment and wonder, what if? So I had to make the decision to make the leap. I didn't want to have these regrets, but that did mean I had to actually do some planning. This is where I really, really built out my team. So I made sure that I had an attorney, which is so funny, because I got connected with this attorney who's still my attorney to this day, through my first manager at Buzzfeed. She was married to a guy who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew this person. And she ended up becoming my lawyer. This was also when I was planning on taking on management and maybe an agency. And I knew that they weren't going to sign me if I wasn't full time on this. So a year and three months in, it was the end of March, early April. I left my job at Buzzfeed. But I made sure that I had a hundred thousand dollars in the bank. That $100,000 was going to pay my rent. It was going to cover groceries and utilities and all the things that I needed to pay for. It was even going to still cover things like vacations because I wanted to make sure that I didn't have to live a super tough, bare bones life because that was naturally going to make me hate everything I was doing. I. I wanted to have a regular life. I wanted to have my regular year and still have a little bit of cushion. But having that parachute made me so much more confident to be able to take this adventure on and know that I could fully jump off the cliff and I would have a little bit of a parachute. That said, I do wish I had known that when you become a full time entrepreneur, you don't suddenly get to sit at home and eat bonbons instead of working 9 to 6:30. Now I get to work 24, 7. I was complaining about working every single day, but now I work even more. That said, it does feel a lot more rewarding to know that everything that I do builds towards my goals. Because, you know, sometimes no matter how hard you work, you're working on behalf of someone else. This feels so personally motivated. It's what everything I loved about being in sales of. You eat what you killed. You know, you send one more email, you make one more call, you're able to win a little bit more. But in this case it's do I make one more video? Do I record one more podcast, do I write one more book? I think I'm very much someone who likes to rely on myself and being an entrepreneur has been a gift. But that's not to say that if you want a normal, traditional corporate job and to make a lot of money doing that, that's a bad route. This is just my personal experience, so I oftentimes get a lot of questions about when should you make the leap. A lot of people want to be an entrepreneur or at least try and work for themselves at some point. It sounds super great in theory. Making your own hours, not having to answer anyone. Yeah, it sounds great. But the question I have for you is how are you actually going to get there? You need to have a business plan. So repeat after me. I will not quit my stable 9 to 5 job for just an idea. I promise I will have a business plan. Your business plan doesn't have to be perfect, but you do want to have a little bit of an outline of where you see yourself in six to 12 months. You want to make sure that you have an idea of how you are going to monetize. Because not only do you have to enjoy what you're doing, do you have to be good at what you're doing? You have to be able to make money to do it. Otherwise how are you going to pay your rent? How are you going to buy groceries? But also something to think about is a swot analysis. S W O T this is something that my friend who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to get an MBA taught me. SWAT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. And this is how you actually think through whether or not you should start a business, whether or not you should found something. But you look at this essentially like a four square. Think about what your internal strengths are. So whether it be for content creation or starting your own beauty line or you know, becoming a wedding photographer or building that Etsy store, creating a Shopify link where you sell candles, whatever it is, ask yourself what are your internal strengths? What are things that you possess that are going to help you on this process? So for me, my internal strength is unfortunately or fortunately, I have the gift of gab. I can talk to a camera. I can talk to a brick wall. I used to get in trouble as a kid. Report card always said, no matter where we move Vivian in the classroom, she finds somebody to talk to. She's distracting other students. I am someone who loves talking to camera and that is really helpful for a job like the one that I currently have. Weaknesses. This is where you identify internal weaknesses. So things that make you not so good at the job that you do. So for example, for me, I think one of my weaknesses is that I am actually very socially anxious. I don't like recording in public. I want to be able to be at home and do a zillion takes and make sure it's great. I am someone who is not very technically savvy. So videography, audio photography, all of that stuff I had to learn on the job. And this is just a, you know, quick shout out to a really good friend of mine. But David Suh, he's a photographer. I had to call that man and ask him how do I use these DJI mics that I bought off of Amazon that I have no idea how they work. And he walked me through it and explained it to me. Those are weaknesses that I've had to overcome to be able to be successful. But like you are naturally going to have weaknesses up next. Now we go into the external phase of the things that we're considering externally. What are your opportunities? For example, an external opportunity for me was this was mid pandemic. Everybody was sitting at home on their phones. Naturally more people were already on social media. So I knew I was getting engagement, I was getting those eyeballs. This was a natural opportunity to talk about money because I came up around the time when the gamestop situation happened, when people started talking about crypto, when people were becoming more and more critically aware of what was going on in their wallets, people, people wanted to talk about money. So that was an opportunity for me. That said, externally there were also threats, right? This was a market that to me at least felt quite saturated. There were already other creators out there. That doesn't mean I shouldn't do it, but there's something to keep in mind there. On top of that, there were also threats of the algo changing. We've all felt this as content creators. One day you're hot and the other day you're not. There were threats of the fact that, you know, many creators disappear after two to three years because they're no longer relevant. So how was I going to make sure that I could see stay relevant? And again, I've tried to overcome that by building out a multimedia brand, podcast, books, speaking, all of it. I don't just do digital social content, but this is something to think about of what are your threats of? Maybe there are supply chain disruption so your candles aren't going to get made on time or shipping is getting more and more expensive. So like it's hard to mail out your jewelry or naturally, if you're making something from as a small business, there are certain brands out there that might try to rip you off. She and might be over there making those same shirts that you're tie dying by hand. These are all things to consider. But doing a SWOT analysis allows you to decide how much of your money, how much of your time and how much of your effort you want to initially dive in before you take things full time. So it's just really helpful to do one now. I want to talk a little bit about something that's so important, how to actually survive as an entrepreneur. When I say this, I really need you to listen. Cash flow is your lifeline. This is probably the biggest mindset and wallet shift that you have to have from traditional employment. Your income can swing wildly month to month, so building systems to smooth out those peaks and valleys becomes so crucial. I remember getting a W2 paycheck. It was so nice because I could count on it twice a month, every two weeks. But now there are going to be months where I make $0.0. I am a multi millionaire, I have a successful business and I still have months where I'm in the red because I've made zero. But it still costs me money to run my business. I have full time employees, I have to pay for web server hosting, I have to pay for different tech platforms, editing, all of this stuff. I am in the red. There are other months though that I make what some people make in a year, in a month. This is all to say you should keep a detailed cash flow forecast that tracks when money comes in versus when bills and taxes and things are due. So you're never caught off guard. My biggest nightmare, and especially why I have been so mindful when it comes to hiring full time members of my team, is I never want to have to look at them and say I can't make payroll. That is bad. That is scary. That is scary for the people who work for you. That creates an incredibly destabilized work environment. I want the people who work for me, I want my editors, I want the vendors that I use to all know that they can count on me. And because of that, I have to be super, super mindful with the cash that comes in the door. People love to talk about the big number, the headline number, you know, the New York times, you're rich. BFF makes $7 million a year. I don't take $7 million and put that in my pocket. I have to pay agents, I have to pay lawyers, I have to pay publicists, I have to pay business managers. Then I have to pay full time employees, I have to pay for travel, I have to pay for all of these other expenses. Then I have to give nearly half of it to the tax man. And then on top of that, I can still think about other things that I want to be spending on and living off of. So just make sure that you're really mindful of the money. The checks can be big, but when you are not having someone withhold taxes on your behalf or not having somebody who's making those plans for you, you have to be the responsible one. You have to be the one to tell yourself that you've got food at home. On top of that, your emergency fund becomes non negotiable. While the average single person who works a traditional W2 job might need three to six months of living expenses saved, entrepreneurs often benefit from having six to 12 months because our income can be more unpredictable. This isn't just for personal emergencies either. You also want to have an emergency fund for your business that's business buffer for slower seasons. Maybe one of your clients pays late. It's definitely happened to me. Even when I have contracts that are net 90, 90 days comes and I'm like, where's my money? Clients are late. It happens. There also might even just be unexpected opportunities that require quick investment. There have been moments where I'm like, oh man, I really want to invest in this new tech platform that's going to help make book marketing easier. But that could cost $6,000. So I just need to make sure that I have cash ready and available to be able to do that. Like I mentioned, the first year I took your HBFF full time, I had set aside $100,000 for the entire year. That way if I didn't make a single dollar, I still would have been able to sustain my current lifestyle and afford any emergencies that came up. Plus I also had that cushion of cash which could buy me time if I needed to look for another full time position. If it started to look like your HBFF wasn't going to work out. Luckily for me, I never had to do that. But it was good that I had that. It allowed me to operate from a place of abundance versus a place of scarcity. Next up, you gotta separate your business and personal finances completely. This means different bank accounts, different credit cards, everything. You do not want to co mingle those funds. It makes taxes one infinitely easier. It helps you track actual business profitability, but it also helps protect your personal assets. Plus mixing funds can create big legal headaches down the road. So if there is something that you know, your business starts to make a little bit of money, something you want to invest in, I would say a good accountant who can help you set up the infrastructure in a smart system so that your money does not mix. And speaking of a good accountant, tax planning becomes a year round activity. As a self employed person, you're likely paying quarterly estimated taxes and you want to maximize every every deduction possible. You're tracking everything, and I mean everything. This means maybe your home, office expenses, business meals, equipment, software, subscriptions, if you drive, gas mileage if you're traveling, the flights, the hotels, if you're going all over visiting clients. I would say truly consider working with a tax professional in your state who understands entrepreneurs, but not just entrepreneurs, the type of business you're running, because the savings often pay for themselves. And it is really, really important. And especially as your business gets more complicated and you have more people paying you to actually have someone who knows what they're doing, especially as the tax code does change every single year. Another thing to flag is that now that you're working for yourself, now that you're an entrepreneur, retirement planning is on you. There is no employer for 1K. There's no match. It means you need to be really proactive. You cannot put off planning for your retirement any longer. SEP IRAs, SEP IRAs and Solo 401ks offer much higher contribution limits than traditional IRAs or traditional retirement accounts, which is perfect for entrepreneurs that might have variable income. In good years, you can really supercharge your retirement savings. And in some slower years, you can know that you've been preparing for retirement so you don't have to stress about it and you're able to take care of more immediate expenses first, both for your business, but also just your personal life. This provides you a little bit of flexibility, but just make sure that you are still prioritizing it. Just because your employer is not a traditional one does not mean you still don't need to be prepping for retirement. And I mentioned something a little bit earlier about how I wanted to have a bunch of different lines of businesses so that my business could have longevity. I cannot stress this enough. No matter what you do, you want to diversify your income streams as soon as possible. Whether that's multiple client types, whether that's passive income products, whether that's complimentary services that are able to be stacked on top of each other. This reduces the risk of losing a major chunk of income if one client or revenue source disappears. You can't put all of your eggs in one basket. So I'll give an example. Say you run a salon. If it's just a nail salon and people stop getting their nails done, that's a problem. But if your salon does nails and hair and lash extensions and you do massages, it's more likely that you're going to have clients continue to come in even as beauty trends and fads change. This is also something to say about clients. So if you run a graphic design firm, if you're only designing for fashion brands, if all of a sudden there's a retail pullback and they can no longer afford you, you're kind of out of luck. You want to make sure that you're designing for a pharma brand, you're designing for a beauty brand, you're designing for fashion, you're designing for an energy company, maybe a, you know, a hospital, maybe a small business, maybe some larger enterprise businesses. When you have diversity, you are better able to weather any sort of storm or any sort of downturn. In my case, the majority of my own income comes from brand deals, but I have multiple partners. This way, if one brand doesn't renew their contract or if it's just a one off deal, I know that other sources of income are going to still come through the door. On top of that, I'm able to make money through a book advance. I make money through advertising on this podcast. I make money through speaking, licensing, the rights to my book and my name and my image and my likeness for television projects. I am trying to make money as differently as possible. Not as much, but as differently. Because the name of the game isn't to make a ton of money very quickly on one thing, it's how do I make consistent income through a variable number of sources.
- [23:36]
B
This is advertiser content from Amazon Besties Let's Take a vacation. Obviously we'll need a good playlist, preferably a chic convertible and equally chic headscarves. If only it were that simple. When you're planning a trip, it's tempting to want to jump ahead to the fun stuff. The outfits, the photo ops, the regional snacks. But before you get to all that, you have to start with budget and logistics. Otherwise you risk getting stuck in tourist traps with insane markups. Whenever I'm planning a trip, here's what I like to do ahead of time.
- [24:07]
A
When I book flights, I always book
- [24:09]
B
on Sundays for up to 36% savings. Saturdays work too, for 20% off, but avoid Thursdays and Fridays since those are the priciest days. Fly out on Thursdays or Fridays, though. This might seem counterintuitive, but those departure days are usually the cheapest. Always book domestic flights at least a month ahead and international flights at least six months in advance. For other transportation prep, absolutely book that
- [24:33]
A
rental car in advance.
- [24:35]
B
Also check if you have any status discounts. I'm talking military, teacher, senior, triple A. That applies to car rentals too. And for any other pre trip shopping, hit up Amazon for all of your travel essentials. Airport and resort prices are highway robbery. A $5 bottle of sunscreen becomes $25 really quick, so stock up on travel sized anything portable chargers and snacks. Shop Amazon and save on essentials. Save the everyday hi friends. Quick pause in our show to take a question from my besties In Phone a friend presented by Amazon Kevin asks, how should someone prioritize their spending if they have a limited summer travel budget? Where should the money go first? This is a great question, but one you can really only answer for yourself. You need to find out what you want to prioritize, but if we're talking strictly budget, here are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to a limited summer travel budget. Start with the non negotiables first. This is transportation and accommodation. These are the biggest chunks of your budget and the hardest to change once you're there. Get those locked in early when you can still find good deals, and make sure you're actually excited about what you selected. Try to aim to book international flights no later than six months out and domestic travel at least a month in advance. Anything beyond that can get really, really pricey. Even if you are taking a more budget airline or selecting a more budget hotel, your safety net comes next. Make sure you have enough for food, local transportation and a small emergency buffer. Maybe $200 to $500 depending on the trip length. Nothing ruins a vacation faster than being stranded without cash for a car or having to skip meals because you overspent on activities. Next, pick experiences that actually matter to you.
- [26:26]
A
If you're going to Paris and the
- [26:28]
B
Louvre is your dream budget for that. Before you worry about fancy dinners, if you're a foodie, prioritize restaurant money over expensive tours. The key is being honest about what you'll actually regret missing versus what. What just sounds nice. Better to have an amazing time doing fewer things than a stressful time pinching pennies on everything. Now back to our show.
- [26:48]
A
Now let's get into Q and A. As always, if you have questions that you would like to ask about your money journey, about your finances, you can check out my app, ask dolly@dolly.com. you can try it out. I really hope you enjoy it. But now let's move on to the Q and A for this episode. So first and foremost, how did you determine when to leave your 9 to 5? If I'm honest with you, it was when it came to a head and I couldn't functionally do both of them anymore. I did what I like to call using my 9 to 5 to fund my 5 to 9 I mentioned. I saved that $100,000. But also a week or two before I had already planned on quitting. I had gotten approached by a manager My manager. And he basically was like, hey, like, you're starting to make content about brands that we work with, and sometimes you're criticizing them. That's not a good look. Can you take this down? And I realized that I wasn't going to have editorial freedom in the content I was making if I continued to have this job at buzzfeed. And as much as I love that job, I wanted to be really honest with my audience about stuff that I liked and stuff that I didn't. So it came to a head, and I determined that when I had the money, when I actually saw the run rate for how much I was able to make on your rich BFF hit, like, I think the number I was aiming for was $200,000 a year. That is when I felt confident. Basically, what I did was I extrapolated what I had made for the first three months. So remember, I said that I worked a job for a year and three months while building your HBFF the last three months. I took that three months, and I was like, how much did I make in that three months? I multiplied it by four, and I was like, okay, if I make this much money that I just made in three months over the course of a full year, my full year income would be $200,000 before paying taxes. I can make that work. And that's when I decided to leave. Number two, how did you find good people to help you scale up from a solo project to a team? Oh, my gosh. I cannot believe we're about to have this conversation. Because when I tell you hiring is the most difficult part of my job, even to this day, I hate hiring. It is a slog. It is challenging, and frankly, it's so hard to find people who are as dedicated as you are to your own business. And frankly, I don't think you're ever going to find people who love your baby as much as you do. That said, a good lesson that I learned was to hire slow and fire fast. More often than not, within a week of working with someone, I can tell in the pit of my stomach whether or not they're gonna last. And I've always been right. My first assistant that I hired lasted 52 days. Yes, we're talking about days, not months. And didn't necessarily have the skills that I needed to help. That said, the assistant I hired after her is still with me today. She was promoted within a year. Given a raise, she actually now produces the podcast. Grace, can you pop up really quick? She's gonna kill me. Hello? But I think something to be said about hiring someone who loves what they do is you need to make sure that you guys are on the same page. I am someone who doesn't necessarily want to just hire people who have the most skills. I want to hire people who want to win. They have this deep, innate desire to win. They are competitive. They don't care what it takes. They want to be number one. And I think I can teach skills at the end of the day as long as they're decently intelligent. But I would say it's very hard to find people so passionate. And when you do the easiest thing to do, which by the way is what I do, is you just bribe them. You bribe them and make it hard for them to leave. There are no pizza parties here. There's no ping pong table. But if you pay your employees above market, if you treat them with respect and dignity, they stay. And so I think for me, I have been very much in the camp of with people on my PR team and my agent and my, you know, everybody else, I say, hey, do you guys know people that would fit into my working style? And my other teams help me find those because it's really word of mouth at this point. I have a unique working style. For some people, it's a dream because I'm super type A, want to be really organized. But for other people, that's a nightmare. And I'm not saying one is better than the other, but I need to work with people that fit my style. It's not easy to hire great people. I've worked with headhunters. Didn't work. I have taken flyers on random people who slid into my inbox. Didn't work. But I've also hired people from word of mouth and that didn't work. It's really a slow process, but once you do find someone great, it's my job to keep them. 3. How did you maintain your lifestyle while not falling victim to lifestyle inflation? So with the business, I have been trying to pay myself as little as possible to continue to maintain a lifestyle that I'm comfortable with. I also pay myself as much as possible without negatively impacting any money that could be going back into the business. So I'm optimizing for two things. I want my lifestyle to be as good as possible. I want my business to not be impacted as much as possible. And roughly, that works out to me paying myself $300,000 a year. It's a lot of money, but it's also not as much money as people like to Think when the number that the business makes is much, much larger. This allows me to kind of keep it real with myself. I know when I can have a little splurge. I know when I still need to act like a normal person. I am still in the same apartment that I've had pretty much since I. It was the second place I started your HBFF in an apartment that we were renting. We ended up buying a home with the money that I had made from BuzzFeed and my husband's income. And we've stayed in that apartment. We haven't gone crazy with it. And I think for me, the more money that I make, the more I realize there are fewer things that would actually spark joy for me. I spend lavishly on travel and vacations, but I don't need to buy the newest designer bag every single season. That's not something that really sparks joy for me. I'm not someone who needs to have the newest and latest, greatest VR technology headset, whatever. Like that just doesn't do it for for me. But I say pick one thing that really does work for you and then make sure you spend there and then surgically cut out the stuff that doesn't matter. How did you cope with the emotional volatility of starting a business? Not well. Let's just say that there have been multiple days where I have cried. There have been multiple days where I've complained deeply to both my husband and the folks who are on my team. But I think that's kind of the beauty of it. There are so many high highs and so many low lows. But when you have the right team around you and you've got a great life partner, you're able to lean on them, use them as a sounding board, and you don't have to go on the journey alone. I think that's why so often you see a lot of co founder pairs versus just individual founders. Because this is a slog. Being an entrepreneur is not easy. It is a grind. And when you need to have a little bit of support, it's nice to have somebody to talk to. Also, therapy. Okay, so now strategies for mitigating risk of leaving your job to pursue other opportunities. I think the biggest strategy is just having that really, really beefed up parachute. Like I mentioned, this would be separate from your personal emergency fund. But like really beefing up a I'm going to take a risk fund, I think that is super helpful. But also I think it's maintaining relationships with prior folks that you've worked with. Even when I was building your rich bff. I maintained a great relationship with my former managers, former co workers. When I could funnel them opportunities, I would do so. And because of that, my name stayed in people's mouths. People kept talking about me. So if at any point I wanted to go back into the industry and leave your rich bff, I would be able to make a couple calls pretty quickly and pretty easily. That really allowed me to feel like I always had a backup plan. 6. How do you handle imposter syndrome when speaking with more experienced people? Well, if I'm honest with you, I have met some of the most impressive people on paper in the world. And what I have noticed is they're not smarter than me, they're not better than my friends. They are not more clever. They don't work harder than the people I know. They did not grind it out harder than my immigrant parents. They were strategic. There was a little bit of luck involved and maybe they got the timing right. I feel like looking the way I do and being who I am. My mentor told me this. I've had to work twice as hard to get half as much for me to even be in the same room as some of those people. I've had to run circles, circles around what they ever have been able to do. And so it's not me who should feel like the imposter in the room. I earned it. I deserve to be there. 7. Self branding advice. I love that that was posed as a question. Yeah, I think branding is really important. There are tons of creators on the Internet, but there are only some that you remember. And it's because of branding. Everybody knows my tagline. Hi, I'm Vivian. You're HBFF and your favorite Wall street girlie. And people literally, when they see me on the street, will grab me and say that full tagline. So they're like talking for like 10 seconds before they even say hi. And it makes me giggle because how good is that branding that you're saying it to me, I think it's really important that when you are building out a company, when you are a founder, when you are doing something, you have to have an unmistakable brand. And that is the real difference. There are so many dupes of everything these days. But some things are seen as higher value because they have that brand panache, because they have memorability. People just remember them. So I would say make a tagline, make a good logo. Make sure that your design or your text or your font or even just like your design kit are heavily branded because that is going to become your calling card. And last but not least, what was the hardest decision you were not willing to make? Ooh, I feel like there are very few hard decisions that I'm not willing to make, but there are definitely decisions with my business that I waited too long because I was like, oh, maybe this will just fix itself. It doesn't. If it's something that bothers you today, it's probably gonna bother you worse in three months. This often has to do with existing infrastructure that just doesn't make any sense anymore. I've had to part ways with certain, you know, people on my team, and I probably should have done it sooner, but instead I waited longer and longer and longer because I thought maybe things would get better. And they didn't. But I think you have to be the one to make the hard decisions. That's the point when you found something when you're the CEO, when you build it, the buck stops with you. You get to make the hard decisions. And my God, what a privilege that is. And on that note, I think that's a pretty good place for us to stop. I hope this helped you get a little bit more clarity on the steps to take when it comes to your own entrepreneurship journey. I love being a business owner. I love working for myself. It's not for everybody, but if it's for you, I really encourage you to take a chance, make sure you're set up for success, and have that parachute catch you next week. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, part of the Vox Media Podcast network. If you liked the episode, make sure to leave a rating and review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Got a burning financial question that you want covered in a future episode? Write to us via podcastourrichbff.com follow Net Worth and Chillpod on Instagram to stay up to date on all podcast related news and you can follow me at YourRich BFF for even more financial know how. See you next week. Bye.
- [38:20]
B
Thanks again to Amazon for supporting this episode. Whether you're trying to stay on top of your everyday essentials or on the hunt for an unexpected need, you'll probably find it on Amazon, probably for cheaper, so you can spend less money on markups and more on the weekend getaways and bucket list trips that make it all worth it. Shop Amazon and save on essentials. Save the everyday.