Want to know the real, unglamorous story behind Her First $100K?
In this crossover episode I sat down with Jasmine Star to talk about how I got started and the money stories that almost kept me playing it safe forever.
This episode is a little different. It’s my conversation with Jasmine Star on The Jasmine Star Show, and we’re sharing it here because it goes deep into something I don’t usually get asked about on my own show: the actual business mechanics behind Her First $100K. We talk about the $49 coaching sessions that started it all, the money story I inherited from my parents (and had to unlearn), the exact logic I used the night before I quit my job, and why “done is better than perfect” has become my whole content philosophy. If you’re building something of your own, or thinking about it, this one’s for you.
Key takeaways:
Undercharging isn’t a mistake
My first paid sessions were $49 an hour, sitting across from someone at a Starbucks in Seattle, building a budget together and explaining what a Roth IRA is. That price was too low, and I knew it at the time. But I wasn’t ready for the credibility that comes with charging more. I needed the reps. Every one of those sessions was me testing what actually clicked for someone and what didn’t, and a lot of that material became the foundation of my book. If you’re underpricing your first offer right now, that might not be a problem to fix, it might be exactly where you need to be.
The worst-case scenario is almost never as bad as the fear makes it feel
The night before I quit my 9-to-5, I stood in front of the mirror with tears in my eyes and told myself, “You can do this.” My own boss asked me the question that changed everything: what’s actually the worst that can happen? For me, the honest answer was: I drain some of my savings, I go back and get another job, and I have a year of real entrepreneurship experience on my resume. That’s it. That’s survivable. And I asked myself that instead of spiraling on “what if this doesn’t work,” and it’s a question I still think every woman on the edge of a big risk should ask herself directly.
Give every dollar a job
Once you’re making more money than you’re used to, it gets tempting to stop paying attention. That’s one of the worst traps you can fall into, because your money starts controlling you instead of the other way around. Every dollar needs a job: going toward your present expenses, your past expenses (debt), or your future expenses (retirement, a house, a business). And notice which spending categories get demonized when people talk about this — it’s lattes and manicures, not golf clubs or NFL season tickets. That’s not an accident. Prioritize what you actually value, not what you’ve been shamed into cutting.
Your money story from childhood is still running your business
I learned from my parents that you never spend more than you have, and that safety meant a stable paycheck and a 401(k). That’s a good lesson on paper, but it also meant that when I wanted to build something of my own, my own parents panicked, because risk felt dangerous to them. Understanding where your beliefs about money and safety actually come from is what lets you tell the difference between a real red flag and an old, inherited fear.
Scaling means serving the room, not the one person in front of you
For a long time, I thought about our audience member by member. But once you’re trying to reach hundreds of thousands or millions of people, that mindset breaks. I tell my team constantly: we have about 50 football stadiums worth of people in our community. We can’t help everyone the way we’d help one person one-on-one — the job becomes building systems and programs that serve people well at scale, even if that feels less personal than it used to.
Done is better than perfect
The content that performs best for us right now isn’t the beautifully designed Canva graphic. It’s what we call “chin videos” internally — me, on my phone, sometimes on the toilet, just talking. If I overthink a post for an hour, it usually underperforms something I built in ten minutes. Give yourself real time constraints when you’re creating. It forces you to stop overthinking and just ship the thing.
Notable quotes
“If you can manage $30,000, you can manage 30 million. That’s the truth.”
“If you’re not going to hype yourself up, nobody will.”
“If people think that you talk too fast, they just listen slow.” — Jasmine Star
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 Intro & the story behind the name “Her First $100K”
02:25 Documenting the money journey publicly — and why that built accountability
04:27 Rebranding to Her First $100K, and her dad’s reaction
06:30 The $49 coaching sessions that started it all
08:01 From coaching, to a $97 workshop, to a course
10:30 Tori’s money story: safety, risk, and her parents’ fear
14:19 Why women are conditioned to avoid risk
15:35 The night before she quit her job
18:54 “Give your dollars a job”: the psychology of scaling income
24:21 Her First $100K’s revenue model today
28:33 What’s stayed the same (consistency) vs. what she let go of
31:58 Building an email list early, and current team structure
33:53 What Tori loves doing vs. what she’s delegated
42:04 The “chin video” strategy: why imperfect content wins
44:54 “Done is better than perfect”: hiring, imperfection, 2026 content trends
50:05 Owning her success without performing false humility
Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode!
Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode!
Jasmine’s Links:
Ready to take control of your money and finally start investing? Visit https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod to register for our FREE workshop, Stock Market Secrets: Debunking Common Myths for Successful Investing to learn how to avoid common mistakes and how to balance investing with paying off debt so you can build wealth without fear or confusion.
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Transcript:
Jasmine Star:
Let’s talk about money and other taboo things entrepreneurs like to say we talk about and keep a lot of the things behind the scene, not today, we are talking with the financial feminist, Her First $100K, a person who I have watched from a distance and expand beyond entrepreneurship, beyond personal finance, and really stepped up as a voice for people to be represented in the financial markets. I couldn’t be more excited to have on the podcast, Ms. Tori Dunlap.
Tori Dunlap:
So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jasmine Star:
I am happy you’re here. I am so happy you’re here. Okay. So right before we started, I had said, I see the podcast happening in two acts, but oftentimes on the podcast it takes its own-
Tori Dunlap:
Of course.
Jasmine Star:
Okay. So in the beginning, I really want to talk about personal finance.
Tori Dunlap:
Great.
Jasmine Star:
People who are watching and listening, entrepreneurship, we want to talk about money. And one of the things that initially struck me was, Her First $100K. That is your Instagram handle. And I heard a story about how you set out to document you getting your first $100K.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And I want to tear apart a little bit of those details.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
So let’s start with the beginning and then I like to dig in for the story elements.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So in 2016, I graduated college with degrees in communication and theater. So I did not study finance, I did not study business. And I thought, okay, I’m going to work my way up the corporate ladder in marketing. That was the dream, is I was going to stomp the pavement and have my little briefcase and my pencil skirt. And that’s how I know it’s a fantasy, as I’ve never worn a pencil skirt in my gosh dang life.
Jasmine Star:
Right. Have you carried a briefcase though?
Tori Dunlap:
I don’t think so. No, do you-
Jasmine Star:
Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
… I don’t know if anybody does that anymore. But that was the vision, like I was going to girl boss my way up to VP of marketing by 30. Graduated college, got into jobs and realized very quickly, especially with my first job, that I was in a very misogynistic work environment. I was in an environment of just a lot of toxic culture, where there was open bars at every office. And I was watching other friends of mine who were women get passed over for opportunities and male superiors were saying just weird sexually harassment stuff to me. And I was like, “This is not what I dreamt of doing for 35 years.” Because I was 22 and I was like, “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” And also a lot of things are happening politically at that time. And so I just kind of started asking what kind of person do I want to be? What do I want to build, both for myself and that also makes an impact? And I was the friend all of my friends were coming to for advice and guidance around money.
Jasmine Star:
Because?
Tori Dunlap:
Because I had a great financial education from my parents. So my parents were really diligent because they both didn’t grow up with a lot, to make sure that I knew, here’s how to not overspend on credit cards, here’s how to save money. And I just took that for granted because that was all I had known. I thought, “Oh, everybody knows how to do this.” Until I realized of course that’s not the case. But I was also becoming obsessed with learning everything I could about personal finance, because when that job got even more toxic, I couldn’t quit, because I needed the money. I had to stay. And I think that’s most people, is I want to leave a situation or I want to do this or I want to take this opportunity, but I can’t. And the reason I can’t is because I can’t afford it.
Tori Dunlap:
And so I realized that maybe that was the impact I could start making, both in my own life, but also in the women around me and talking more about money. So Her First $100K was my journey to save $100,000 at age 25, but it had nothing to do with the money really. Yeah, it was cool seeing $100,000 in my bank account, but it was about freedom and it was about options and it was about choices. And that’s what I really am committed to with our work at Her First $100K, is the money, learning how debt works, learning how investing works, all of that is of course crucial and important, but our why here is so much bigger than cash in a bank. It is about options. And so I saved my $100K at 25, I was able to quit my job to run Her First $100K.
Jasmine Star:
So what did the documentation process look like? If you’re like-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… “I’m going to save $100K-“
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
“… before I’m 25,” what are you saying? What are you putting out?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Talk to me about that beginning journey. There’s a lot of people who have a mission-
Tori Dunlap:
Totally.
Jasmine Star:
… or an question or purpose on their heart and they want to do something big and then they stop themselves or they keep small. What was your approach?
Tori Dunlap:
Well, I’ll tell you a funny story. So when I decided, A, I’m going to try to do this big thing, that I didn’t even know I could do. It was like, I’m sure you’re the same way, I was like, I’m going to set a goal that feels a little scary.
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Because that’s the only way that we actually grow.
Jasmine Star:
That’s right, yes.
Tori Dunlap:
So I set this goal in probably 2017. 2018, I switched jobs, ended up being even more toxic, had to quit after 10 weeks, without another job lined up. So then I spent three months unemployed, but I had an emergency fund at that time. So I was able to leave, able to live off of that. But I remember not saving any money, because I wasn’t making any money.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
And then spending the money I had saved and being like, “Oh no, can I do this?” And I had not announced it publicly at that point, but what that taught me was, one, of course, that money meant freedom. But also two, there is something to the documentation of it that makes you accountable to that thing. And I think that scares people, of course, sometimes of like, “Oh, well, what if it doesn’t happen?” So 2019, I rebranded my business to Her First $100K and my dad called me up.
Jasmine Star:
When you say your business though-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… we lily padded.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
So talk to me about the start of your business.
Tori Dunlap:
Sure. So I was doing blogging, this was like peak Tumblr era. Do you remember this in like 2010s?
Jasmine Star:
Oh girl, yes.
Tori Dunlap:
So I was like, “Oh, I want to be a blog for 20 something women.” And I had already talked in college about doing this-
Jasmine Star:
Hey.
Tori Dunlap:
… and just kept kicking it down the can and was like, no, now’s the time. So 2016, it was December 27th, 2016, I literally put $20 towards a domain and $20 towards a Squarespace subscription. And I was like, okay, I’ve launched this blog, with three blog posts. And then I was starting to grow it over time. And I would talk about travel or I’d talk about career or I’d talk about my own struggles or challenges trying to progress in my career. But all of it ended up being about money and all of my conversations with other friends and with other people in the space were about, “What are you making? How are you negotiating? Oh, you got that flight deal, how did you get it?” So when we rebranded to Her First $100K, it was much more clear, A, this is about money, but B, this is for a specific group of people, women, obviously, and not your first million, not your first hundred million, this is for the people just getting started.
Jasmine Star:
So you get the domain, you get the Squarespace, you put the three blog posts out. When do you start making money?
Tori Dunlap:
Took me about two and a half years.
Jasmine Star:
So you were blogging and creating for two and a half years.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And then when did somebody pay you and what was it for?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I mean, I was doing social media in my nine to five. I had freelance social media clients where I was making money through that kind of business. But the first time I really made money teaching people about money was coaching, which I think is how a lot of us get started. It was me literally, for $49, I would sit down with you. And a lot of times it was local in Seattle, it was like, go to our Starbucks, sit down for $49. We create a budget together, I explain what a Roth IRA is. We look at where your leaks are in your budget, where you’re spending money. And we might meet once, we might meet three times, but I think that was the first thousand or so dollars I made in the business, was just-
Jasmine Star:
$49.
Tori Dunlap:
$49 for an hour.
Jasmine Star:
And when you got that first client-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… what did you think? What did you feel? Because I think that people can look at your business now, I mean-
Tori Dunlap:
Oh yeah, it’s very different.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I mean, it felt obviously very euphoric, but it was also, it was very quickly not scalable.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think that is the trap that a lot of people get in, is if you’re able to start a business, and it’s usually, for women, it’s a lot of teaching. We’re good teachers.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
And so the coaching was fun. And then I remember when the first time I sold a 10 coaching package, like a 10 slot package, and that was a couple of thousand dollars. And I was like, “Oh, this is so much money.” I still remember that so vividly. And that was early 2019, and I was starting to make more money than I was making in my nine to five job. So what I said was, okay, this coaching is no longer scalable or really sustainable long term. So then I took most of what was happening in coaching sessions and created a workshop out of it, because 90% of the conversations were very similar. It was how do I control my spending? How do I mindfully spend money on things I actually like? What is the game plan? What do I do in which order? So then that became a $97 workshop, so I could teach it one time to dozens of people. Eventually, probably doing that for a year, that no longer became sustainable, so that became a course. So now we’re talking two, three years in this, right?
Jasmine Star:
Okay, but hang on.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
I want to pause here-
Tori Dunlap:
Am I going too fast?
Jasmine Star:
You’re not going too fast.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m going too fast.
Jasmine Star:
Are you kidding me? No, no. If people think that you talk too fast, they just listen slow. So what I want to do now though is I want to dovetail what’s happening here, because-
Tori Dunlap:
Sure.
Jasmine Star:
… when people hear, “$49, $97 workshop.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
“Multiple workshops.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
“Digital course,” there’s a lot of lily padding. And for the vast majority of people who are either getting similar results or not, the money beliefs behind it are parlaying.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
And so because I know you and I know a lot of your story, can we pause there? That’s the linchpin. That’s what good podcasters say is a cliffhanger. Let’s go back to your childhood.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Let’s go back to your money stories.
Tori Dunlap:
Sure.
Jasmine Star:
Let’s go back to how you learned about it and the narrative that it’s creating as you build a business. And we’re going to come back to the business, but I want to get into money stories.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I spend so much of my work talking about this because like I said at the beginning, people think it is about numbers and it’s about spreadsheets and it’s about being good at math. I majored in theater, Jasmine, I’m not out here looking at spreadsheets all the time and doing intense calculations. It was all psychological. So what I learned from my parents is remarkably simple but effective, which is, you’re never spending more than you have and you are thinking strategically about when and how you spend money. So my parents were never big restaurant people. If we did go out to a restaurant, it was, you’re drinking water and there’s no appetizers. I don’t think I looked at the appetizer menu until I was in my 20s, like ever. And the reason they did that is because we took a family vacation every year. I went to Europe when I was 13, I’m really lucky to have been able to do that. But because my parents were strategic, they were like, “Okay, we can’t afford absolutely everything, but there’s plenty of things that we can save strategically for.”
Tori Dunlap:
The interesting thing though is that when there was talks of me becoming an entrepreneur, my parents freaked out, because they always made the safe financial choice. They were always the, “We get the 401k, we get the stable paycheck.” And I’m very thankful for it, because it gave me a very stable childhood. But as soon as there was talks about me going out on my own, I think especially in my mid-20s, my parents were like, “You need to do anything you have to keep your job, even when my business was growing.” So that was the first money story that seems positive on paper, right?
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Like make the smart decision, have that stable paycheck, get your commiserate raises every two years. But I wanted so much more than that, and I knew that my earning potential was pretty much infinite, but it was very controlled when I was working for somebody that, A, I didn’t respect and B, wasn’t going to respect me in the way that I wanted to.
Jasmine Star:
Okay. So your money story is good on paper.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
And your parents did the best they could with what they had, but the narrative that started off as the safe and secure-
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
… was also something that was going to keep you safe and secure and stuck.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
So my earliest memories, we lost our home, my parents, I remember as a young child, probably four or five, they cut up their credit cards in front of somebody-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… to help them learn how to plan my… I’m a first generation Latina.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
So my money story is whatever you get, you hoard.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
Because there’s not much.
Tori Dunlap:
Which is very common in an immigrant story as well, yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And so I think that what happened with that, and so then my parents, after cutting their credit cards, my dad would get his paycheck and then he would put cash in white envelopes.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
And if the cash was not in that envelope, then you were not going out to eat or we had to make do with the groceries that were there.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And so it became as this thing that was finite.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
I walked with the whole perspective of there is a white envelope and if there’s not money in that white envelope, there’s no way of getting it, we have to wait.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And so as I got into building a business, it was like hoard, hoard. And this idea of reinvesting or taking strategic risk was so foreign to me-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… that I had to unpack that story. So let’s talk about how you are unpacking the story as you start your career.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. That concept of risk is one we talk about at Her First $100K a lot, because we are told as women to not take risks. So even something-
Jasmine Star:
Why do you think that’s the case?
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, there has been so many studies. I think about the Girls Who Code founder, she has a great Ted Talk where she talks about, we teach boys to be, I think it’s brave and we teach girls to be perfect. And so men, starting in childhood, boys, it’s like, “Yeah, jump off the play set and if you skin your knee, whatever.” It’s adventurous and it’s taking risks. And I talk about this in my book even, stereotypically, the toys we give boys are like Legos or trucks or things to build. What do we give girls? Dolls. We give them dolls, we give them easy bake ovens, we give them bridal veils. From a very young age, we are told what our value is to the society, which is take care of everybody’s needs above your own and also, be perfect, which by the way is of course impossible. So we are chasing this impossible ideal.
Tori Dunlap:
I think for my parents in addition, I believe that they have often viewed the world as a scary place. So if we can just keep our head down and if we can make safe choices, then we will be safe. And so as I started wanting more, that felt very risky, both to them and to me. I was on the precipice, in 2019, of quitting my job. I had my $100K in the bank. I had announced my $100K goal, I had my cute little hundred balloons. Good Morning America had picked up my story. I was on top of the world. It was feeling really, really great.
Tori Dunlap:
And the company I was at freaked out about it, that I was getting all of this media coverage and they weren’t. It was rough. And it became very clear to me, I think now’s the time to try to take this business full time. And I wanted to wait another six months, after I had already told myself, “Tori, if you get your $100K, you get to quit.” But I was like, no, we can just wait six more months, because again, my brain is going, “Yeah, but you don’t have enough money yet or you don’t have the connections yet or what if this doesn’t work out?”
Jasmine Star:
Now, the job that you were currently at, was that social media?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Oh, so they see you getting a big social media push.
Tori Dunlap:
Uh-huh.
Jasmine Star:
Oh.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Okay. Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
I won’t talk about too much of it, but-
Jasmine Star:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
… it’s very interesting when you as a 24-year-old, 25-year-old woman are threatening to the men in their 40s who are on their fourth company. Very interesting. But I’m a petty (censored) by the way, Jasmine, if that isn’t obvious. I’m just like, mm-hmm. But I was having conversations with my parents and my well-meaning parents who had always chosen the safe option were like, again, “You need to do everything you have to do to keep this job.” And I was like, “I don’t think this is it anymore.” Quit my job, ended up being the best financial decision I ever made. And the logic I had during that time-
Jasmine Star:
Take me back to the day.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh.
Jasmine Star:
You quit, and then take me back to one week after you quit, you wake up-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… and what are you doing? What are you thinking? How does Tori view the world then?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I actually took a video my last day of work, because I quit and I gave my two weeks and all of that.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
And I remember literally staring at myself in the mirror and I was like, “You can do this.” As cheesy as that sounds. Literally stood, tears in my eyes, looked at myself in the mirror and were like, “you can do this.” And the logic I had, because at that point it was like logicing my way to feeling good about this.
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
If I could get that much work done in my business, working about 20 hours a week on it, imagine what I could do with 40 hours or 50, especially during that first period of time. Imagine if I was dedicating all of my time to this. I’m already getting so much (censored) done. Imagine what happens if I go all in. And this is the one gift I was actually really generous to get from that company. My direct boss was great and we had a very honest conversation the day before I quit, where he was like, “Entrepreneur to entrepreneur, you have money in the bank, you have momentum in your business, and what’s the worst that can happen?”
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
“You go back and you get another job.”
Jasmine Star:
That’s right.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think it’s so crucial for women who are on the precipice of what feels like a big risk, to ask yourself, “What actually is the worst that can happen?” The worst that could happen, truly, is, I don’t know, I spent a year of my life on this business and maybe I drain part or all of my $100K and I go back and get another job and I have a year’s worth of great entrepreneurship experience on my resume. That was the worst that could happen. And instead the best happened, which is a multimillion dollar company that impacts five million women every single day, that has helped them escape violent, abusive marriages, that has helped them pay off their debt, that has helped them start businesses, that has helped them just feel better, because they’re no longer stressed about money. And that’s the upside. But we spend all of this time thinking about, “Oh my gosh, what if this doesn’t work out? What if I fail?” Yeah, what if? But also, what if all of the good things happen?
Jasmine Star:
So one of the things that I had heard you mention, is a large part of your work is not teaching people how to save $100,000, $500,000, a million dollars. A lot of it is starting at the very beginning and uncoupling.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
Because you’ve worked with a lot of people who you set a budget and then they stick with it and then there’s this spinoff. Talk to me about that, because there’s entrepreneurs that for the first time in their lives-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… are making their own money and they’re like, “Great, great, great, great. I’m going to budget. I have more, I can do more.” And then what happens? What do you see? And then how are people looking right now, entrepreneurs who are like, “Okay, I think I have $65,000. I can get to $100,000.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
“Let me learn how to budget from Tori.” And then what happens? Cast a vision of the future.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes. Everything you said is true. Money is psychological, but we want to think it’s numbers-based. But if you are making, especially more money than you’ve ever made in your life, and I’m not even talking millions, I’m just talking like $10,000 more money than you’re used to.
Jasmine Star:
That’s right.
Tori Dunlap:
If you can manage $30,000, you can manage 30 million. That’s the truth. But if you don’t understand what your emotional and psychological triggers are, all of this will disappear way faster than you want it to. So what I usually ask on my show, is, “What is your first money memory?” And you already answered it for me, which was so cool, which was, “I watched my dad hoard money and be very diligent about splitting it into envelopes.” So that tells me a couple of things. One, that tells me every dollar has a job, which I think is a great thing, every dollar should have a job. Absolutely.
Tori Dunlap:
This is something that I see so many people who start making a little bit more money, they fail to do, is they’re like, “Okay, cool. Now I don’t have to look at my money as much.” Because when you’re not making as much, you’re hypervigilant, right? But then once you start making, let’s say $100,000, 150, 200, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have to check this all the time.” And that’s one of the worst traps you can get into, because suddenly your money is controlling you rather than you controlling it. So give your dollars a job. The other thing that is so common-
Jasmine Star:
Pause.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
When you say, “Give your dollars a job,” in the past I’ve heard you say, “This goes for utilities.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
“This goes for investment.” Give me a nutshell version of, “Give your dollars a job.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yes. When we’re thinking about the money that comes in, you need to know where it’s coming in, what are your sources of income, whether you’re a nine to fiver, but especially if you’re an entrepreneur, because hopefully you have multiple sources of income. So you need to know your numbers very clearly. You need to know this is what’s coming in, this is how much I get paid, these are the terms of those payments, and here’s where the money’s going out. So am I spending money on things that I don’t really care about or that feel mindless? And this is where a lot of the misogyny in personal finance starts kicking in, where it’s like, “The reason you’re not rich is because of the latte.”
Tori Dunlap:
No, it’s systemic oppression. And also, you notice that the things that are demonized are inherently feminine spending, the lattes, the makeup, the blowouts at the salon, the manicures. It’s not NFL season tickets, it’s not golf clubs, it’s not video games. So I’m not in any way demonizing spending, but if you are spending your money on things that you don’t give a (censored) about, that’s your hard earned money. You worked hard for it, you need to be prioritizing your spending to what you actually value. So when we say, “Give a dollar a job,” what we mean is that no dollar is just hanging out doing nothing. It’s either going to our present day expenses, our past expenses, debt.
Jasmine Star:
Debt.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Or our future expenses, retirement, buying a house, buying a business or starting a business, the things that you need to plan strategically for, getting married. I call it the big stuff. So every dollar needs to have a job in that way.
Jasmine Star:
Ooh, so good.
Tori Dunlap:
And I would also recommend not putting it in envelopes, which is actually something we also see a ton. This is a larger conversation, but we have a massive under or unbanked population in the United States.
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Largely from immigrant communities who don’t trust banks. Which you can’t really blame them.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
But you need to be using the financial tools at your disposal-
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
… to make more money.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
High yield savings accounts, which are just like everyday savings accounts, except they’re offering you more money. Investing, this is something I see with women over and over again, is they don’t invest their money because they want to see it all. They keep it in their checking account, they keep it in a savings account, it doesn’t have the opportunity to grow because of that risk. They’re worried about risk, they’re worried about losing money. This is what you have to do if you actually want to take care of yourself in the long term financially.
Jasmine Star:
So good. Okay. So I kind of pivoted us there just to clarify-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… where every dollar goes.
Tori Dunlap:
No, it was so helpful.
Jasmine Star:
And so we used the story narrative of the frame that you had as you built your business and you took these risks and you go back to the worst case scenario.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And you said, “I accept the worst case scenario.” It ended up being the best case scenario, wildly popular New York Times bestselling book, multi-seven-figure business.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And so you have these things and you’ve worked through money stories, you’ve empowered other women to work through their money stories to first identify that, and then that would then be the linchpin-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… that will connect them to their ultimate outcome. So we kind of had a brief history of the business. So coaching one-on-one, coaching in groups, coaching in a course. And then you had said that it’s really important as an entrepreneur that you know your revenue streams.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
So let’s talk about the business of your business.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Do you want it now or back in the day?
Jasmine Star:
Let’s go to now.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay.
Jasmine Star:
Because I think that we can kind of dovetail. We have the starting point.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And that we go from $49 back in the day-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… to something entirely different today. What is it today?
Tori Dunlap:
Entirely different.
Jasmine Star:
Because there’s somebody watching right now, they’re like, “If I can get $49 to teach somebody about finance.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right, that’s [inaudible 00:24:21].
Jasmine Star:
Okay, great.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
But then cast a vision for somebody who’s technically unqualified, unfunded-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… uneducated in this to do this.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I think the $49 was so crucial for me because, one, I was not ready emotionally or with the background, like I didn’t have the credibility yet to charge somebody $500. But I also needed that period of time to build my own skills. And I think this is the thing that so many wannabe entrepreneurs or starter entrepreneurs don’t understand, is you’re not just selling a product to make money, you’re selling a product to beta test, not just the material, but your own confidence. So yeah, that was probably too cheap, but I was willing to do that because I was like, “I need to grow in my skillset to be able to know how to teach this properly.” And I could see, live, if I’m coaching you, I know when something’s connected with you-
Jasmine Star:
That’s right.
Tori Dunlap:
… or I know when it hasn’t. And then I need to figure out how do I explain it differently? So then I have five ways to explain something so that hopefully one of those is something somebody understands. And then when I get more credibility, then I can raise the price and then I can do more. And all of those coaching sessions, a lot of that course became the thesis of my book. So many things I was doing in 2019 that I was testing in real time with people were the basis of my book. So I think that’s one thing if you’re trying to figure out how to scale the company, you’re not just scaling.
Jasmine Star:
So you’re having this in 2019-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… when did the book drop? What year?
Tori Dunlap:
Book, end of 2022.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
So almost 2023.
Jasmine Star:
So it took about three years-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… of gestation and ideology-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, almost four.
Jasmine Star:
… and reps.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
Like you’re doing the reps.
Tori Dunlap:
We’re doing the reps, exactly.
Jasmine Star:
How lovely.
Tori Dunlap:
And it’s also, again, how do I be different? Because that’s the other thing I’m sure you and I hear a ton of, I know I hear it, is like, “Oh, but a million other people are doing-“
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
“… the kind of business I want to do.” And it’s like, the reason you’re putting in your reps is so you can figure out how do I communicate this in a way where the information might not be new, but the way you communicate it is. There weren’t a lot of people talking about money in a very feminist way at that time, especially. And that is what made me stand out, is I could talk about money, but in a way that wasn’t jargon heavy, that wasn’t bro-y, just felt like we’re sitting down at brunch together, but also, I’m going to talk about how do we fight the patriarchy by getting rich, which is one of our taglines.
Tori Dunlap:
So now the business, I mean, it’s obviously expanded, but a lot of what we started off with is also what we’re still teaching. So we have eight sources of revenue at Her First $100K, some programs, so we’re teaching women how to invest through our stock market school, which has $135 million invested. Which I’m so proud of.
Jasmine Star:
You should be.
Tori Dunlap:
We’re not just teaching concepts, we actually have women bridging wealth gaps and I’m teaching them step-by-step how to invest. So that’s one of our signature programs. We have brand deals that we work with, more straight influencer partnerships, but also affiliate deals, where if you sign up for a link I recommend, we’re going to get a kickback from that. I speak on stages all over. We have our podcast that makes money, that’s newly independent, which we’re really proud of.
Jasmine Star:
Congrats. Congrats.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you. The book continues to make passive revenue for us. So there’s a lot of different revenue streams, but all of it is back to, how do we educate women about money in a way that feels both accessible, but also so much bigger than personal finance and is more about true self-care, which is, if I can take my financial education seriously, how can my entire life change?
Jasmine Star:
And so when you go back 2019, 2020.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Because you’re active on social media
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And you have millions of followers, what has been the same? I’m going to ask it to you three ways. It’s kind of like the keep, stop, grow.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, so kick start.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Thank you. Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jasmine Star:
I just make it up. I just make it up.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
So what’s one thing that you’ve stayed doing since then, that has continued to prove itself?
Tori Dunlap:
Everybody’s going to hate this answer. I’m sorry, it’s true. I stayed consistent.
Jasmine Star:
I don’t hate that. That’s what I’ve been saying. Y’all, y’all, that’s what I’ve been saying.
Tori Dunlap:
I post all the time, we post all the time.
Jasmine Star:
When somebody says that all the time, everybody has different versions, I ask people [inaudible 00:28:33]-
Tori Dunlap:
Every day.
Jasmine Star:
“I post all the time,” and it’s like twice a week.
Tori Dunlap:
Every day. Every day. We post every day. Yeah. And sometimes multiple times a day, especially on Instagram. And one thing that we did really well then, that we continue to do really well now, is we find the platform that’s working for us and we invest all of our time there. That is a mistake I see so many new entrepreneurs make, is it’s like, remember Clubhouse, you remember that for like a second?
Jasmine Star:
Oh, do I?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Oh, do I?
Tori Dunlap:
That’s the perfect example of what’s the hot thing?
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
What’s the sexy thing?
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
And then everybody went over there.
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
And yeah, maybe that was the next TikTok or Instagram, maybe. But as soon as, I keep hitting the mic, as soon as you start trying to be everything to everybody-
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
… in too many places at once, you’re nothing to nobody. It’s just so hard to do that. So I figured out where’s my audience? Okay, they’re women, they’re largely millennials with a little bit on either side. They’re on Instagram, that’s where they’re hanging out. They’re, I don’t know, they’re not really on Facebook anymore.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s where they’re at. So I’m going to double down on Instagram. And that’s what I did. Yeah, we care a little bit about the other platforms too, but still, Instagram is our biggest revenue driver by far.
Jasmine Star:
Oh, by far. I agree. So what you’ve carried throughout the years, consistency.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
What were you doing in 2019 that you stopped?
Tori Dunlap:
That’s a great question. I think that one of the biggest things we stopped doing, is thinking about me being a one-to-one with people in our audience. So as we scaled it started to become impossible for me to be one-on-one with people, both like literally one-on-one, but thinking about individuals rather than how can I help as many people as possible? Now, we help, especially in our programs, more finite groups of people, I think, do bigger things and be able to, we just dedicate more time to them there. But it’s so easy, as you start growing, to feel like it’s kind of getting out of control, of like, “Oh my gosh, there’s so many people in there.” So your frame of mind has to grow too.
Tori Dunlap:
And the thing I tell my team all the time, they care so much and they want to answer all the emails that come through our contact at inbox. And every about six months I have to tell them, “Hey, we have five million people here and I know that’s hard to contextualize. So biggest football stadium in the United States is 100,000 people. We have 50 football stadiums of people. That’s a lot of people. And we cannot continue to help as many people as we want to help if we are so laser focused on just helping a couple.” And I think that was one transition that we had to make, both in order for us to scale, but also in order for our message to continue spreading throughout the world.
Jasmine Star:
Ooh. How big is your team?
Tori Dunlap:
We-
Jasmine Star:
Well, I’m going to pause, I’m going to repeat back.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
So the thing that you’ve continued to do-
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
… is consistency.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And what you let go, was the-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… attention to the one-on-one. And then what you decided to do was, in order to grow, which was your growth point-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… we have to say what is in the best service of the masses-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… instead of serving one football stadium-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… we’re going to serve 50.
Tori Dunlap:
And I’ll also say, one thing that we did that was really crucial at that time, learning from people like you and Jenna Kutcher and Amy Porterfield, even though we are a social media focused business, I do not consider myself a creator. There’s other people who do what I do who are creator first businesses. I was getting people on an email list way back in 2018, 2019, because I was listening to all y’all who were like, “This is land you do not own.” So the thing I am very proud of as a business owner, is although as we’ve continued to scale on social, we’ve also continued to scale on email. And I always think about a customer journey funnel, not just like, how do I get Instagram followers, but how do I turn any top of funnel people into customers or into supporters on land I own, or in places where I can be more present for them than what the algorithm’s going to dictate I can be?
Jasmine Star:
Oh, that’s so good. So how many people are on your team?
Tori Dunlap:
We have six full-time W-2s and then I believe we have 10 contractors.
Jasmine Star:
That’s amazing.
Tori Dunlap:
So we’re about 16, 17 people at this point.
Jasmine Star:
And on an average day, and I know if your days look anything like mine, they never look the same.
Tori Dunlap:
They’re never average, yeah.
Jasmine Star:
But where do you find yourself spending most of the time in the business? And I’m going to ask that in two parts.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Where are you spending most of the time in the business with stuff that lights you up that is like needle mover and then the, I am doing this and I can’t stand it?
Tori Dunlap:
I love that you’re business coaching me right now. I have a theater background, so I love doing this. I feel so at home on a stage in front of 5,000 people, like I (censored) love that. I love being on stage, I love teaching, especially to larger groups of people because it’s like, “Ooh, I get to try out my standup material.”
Jasmine Star:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
And also, it’s so fun for me and I love that. I also love tinkering, and by that I mean the marketing side of my brain, right, the theater part of my brain loves to perform and teach and be on stage, and the marketing part of my brain is like, “Ooh, what levers can I pull?” My brand director, Amanda, thinks the same way I do, and we talk about levers all the time, which is like, if I try this one different thing, what does that lead to? If I try a different CTA on this Instagram caption, what does that lead to? If we send out two emails for this launch a day instead of one, what happens and what do we learn from it?
Tori Dunlap:
And I have gamified our business so much, and that especially is something that I encourage every entrepreneur to do, which is view money and your revenue as a game. Now, I don’t mean that in a way of like don’t take it seriously, because these are people’s livelihoods, this is serious business. But I mean, “Oh, I’m 10 days away from the end of the month and I’m at $46,000, how do I make 4,000 extra dollars to get to 50 with the remaining days I have?” That sort of stuff, I just love, which are what levers can we pull to get where we want to be? That just is so fun for me.
Tori Dunlap:
The stuff I don’t like is a lot of the stuff I’ve outsourced and that’s how we scale. So my COO, Karina, is fantastic. We joke with more theater metaphors, that if I’m on stage, she’s the stage manager in the back. So while I’m here in California with you, she is holding down the fort in Seattle, she’s doing the taxes and the ops and the financial stuff, that is not fun for me, that I’m actually not really great at. I’m good at making money, but I don’t want to figure out what I owe Nebraska for this year in taxes. It’s just not fun for me, but she loves that kind of organization.
Tori Dunlap:
I think the point or the space I’m still in that I don’t love as much is sometimes people management.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
I think I could be better at that if I had more time to dedicate to it. So one of the things we’ve done is that Karina and other team members are people who manage most of the rest of our team, and we did that strategically. And there’s just some times where you wake up and you don’t want to record your podcast today.
Jasmine Star:
Amen.
Tori Dunlap:
And you don’t want to be on. And I’ve worked now with my podcast producer, four years, this literally happened before I left in Seattle. We were batching for two months and I was doing the thing that I wasn’t even conscious of, I was just asking her a bunch of questions about a bunch of (censored) that didn’t matter. And that was my way of stalling.
Jasmine Star:
Oh.
Tori Dunlap:
Because I didn’t want to do it.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
And she knows me well enough and she was like, “Hey Tori, we got to get this done.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you can call me out, that’s fine.” And-
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
… I sucked it up buttercup and it was fine. But yeah, when you run a very public business, there’s sometimes I love being on and there’s other times where I’m like, “I don’t want to put on makeup today. I don’t want to perform today.” And I think that is the balance sometimes of showing up so publicly.
Jasmine Star:
And talk to me about the creation cycle for how you do show up every day.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
What does that look like? Are you batching your content the way you are with your podcast or is it a lot more organic creation?
Tori Dunlap:
It is a lot more organic. That is one thing that, it is kind of a do as I say, not as I do. I do really recommend batching content when you can, especially when you’re a newbie entrepreneur and you have a bunch of things-
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
… you have to do and you’re a team of one. Our social is much more dynamic at this point, because sometimes it’s responding to something that happened in the news or sometimes it is, “I thought of an idea.” The Instagram carousel I posted this morning, I thought of last night, built it last night, had it prepped. So it is a lot more organic than I think I would even recommend for people. But I think it works for me, because I’ve done the reps, because I know what works and what doesn’t. And because I also know that sometimes my best ideas are the ones that only take me five minutes. If I sit down with something for an hour, it won’t work as well.
Jasmine Star:
How do you know it will work, in terms of like last night you had an idea-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
.. quick activator, put it out and your thesis proved right. How do you know?
Tori Dunlap:
It’s so hard. It’s actually I think the hardest skill to teach sometimes, what will-
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
… will or won’t do well on social.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah. So that’s why I’m asking you.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay.
Jasmine Star:
Because I have not found a way to systematize the way I think about content. And if anybody heard, I mean we were in Vegas a day and a half ago with one of our content creators and I’m like-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… “Well, when do I strategically place this reel, the timeline, the story, what goes there?”
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, interesting.
Jasmine Star:
And it’s like nobody thinks like that.
Tori Dunlap:
I don’t think about that.
Jasmine Star:
And I’m like, how do I teach the way I think about the content that I’m putting out?
Tori Dunlap:
Sure. I think more about social in terms of themes. So what I mean is, what is the theme of this content today? So this is how you hear people describe content buckets or something.
Jasmine Star:
Oh yeah. I say content pillars.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But for me, it’s even broader than that.
Jasmine Star:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
Which is, my two things are, what is the vibe or the tone or the theme and then what am I trying to get them to do? So today’s content that I built yesterday, I saw a post and I take a lot of inspiration from other people and then make it our own.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah, of course.
Tori Dunlap:
Stealing is great.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Stealing. There was somebody who talked about the work I’ve gotten done, meaning like plastic surgery or Botox or whatever.
Jasmine Star:
Oh yeah, okay. Sorry I’m [inaudible 00:38:54].
Tori Dunlap:
No, you’re great.
Jasmine Star:
Got it, got it.
Tori Dunlap:
Like the, “He’s the work I’ve had done-“
Jasmine Star:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
“… because I believe transparency is important.”
Jasmine Star:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
And it was lip filler or whatever.
Jasmine Star:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
And I was like, one, I haven’t had any work done, so I can’t make this version of this post, but I’m like, I’ve gotten a lot of work done.
Jasmine Star:
Ooh.
Tori Dunlap:
I’ve written a book.
Jasmine Star:
Ooh.
Tori Dunlap:
I have run a company.
Jasmine Star:
Gone to therapy.
Tori Dunlap:
Sure, yeah. So the post this morning was, “All the work I’ve had done as a multimillionaire, because I believe transparency is important.” And then the next slide was like, “I’m really proud of all the work I’ve had done and I don’t regret any of it.” So I am-
Jasmine Star:
Oh my God, that’s so cute.
Tori Dunlap:
… I’m baiting you a little bit.
Jasmine Star:
Oh my God, do you hear that? Maybe we do that today.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, do it.
Jasmine Star:
Maybe we do that today.
Tori Dunlap:
Do it. Do it today. So I’m baiting you a little bit. And then the third one is like, “Yeah, I’ve built this company. We’ve impacted five million women. I wrote a New York Times bestselling book. I rang the NASDAQ opening bell. We have a great company culture of these things and this is the work I’m really proud of that I’ve had done.”
Jasmine Star:
That’s so good.
Tori Dunlap:
And it did great and I knew it would do great.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
I think that, again, we call it petty content sometimes, that is a content theme or a content pillar.
Jasmine Star:
I want to embrace that. I always, I’m like, “Oh, it’s a cringe post.”
Tori Dunlap:
Oh.
Jasmine Star:
“I’m doing a cringe post. I’m doing a cringe post.” But I like the petty.
Tori Dunlap:
Petty, there’s a lot of men who do not like me and do not like the content we create, and then I use that as more content.
Jasmine Star:
Yes, there’s a lot of men like you and there’s a lot of men that don’t like anybody out on the internet.
Tori Dunlap:
No, but then I use it as content.
Jasmine Star:
I know, I’ve seen you.
Tori Dunlap:
And it’s great.
Jasmine Star:
It’s great.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think also, like that one, my CTA was just, “Okay, can we get in front of more eyeballs?” But I didn’t have any CTA on it.
Jasmine Star:
CTA, okay.
Tori Dunlap:
It wasn’t like a many chat, comment this.
Jasmine Star:
Okay.
Tori Dunlap:
It was just like, this will be fun and maybe we’ll even be a trend, right?
Jasmine Star:
Yeah, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Maybe we’ll do it so maybe somebody else will do it.
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
The other posts I’m thinking about are, what is our business objective?
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. So my example of, okay, we have five days left of the month and I want to make 10 more thousand dollars or whatever. It’s like, okay, what are the easiest levers I can pull to do that? What are your easiest sources of revenue and how can you do a quick revenue injection? So then I’m going, okay, if it is this program, yeah, I’m creating content to be able to get people to that program. So what do I have to do in that content that will get them to convert?
Jasmine Star:
Okay. So sometimes when I’m in that situation, I’m like, okay, I want to create a piece of content that activates into financial stream. I think that the more time I have to plan and think about concepts, it’s the better. But if I’m on the fly, how do you quickly distill, okay, what’s trending? What do I want to do?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
How does that come together so quickly for you?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I mean, I take the opposite, which is, if I’ve planned it probably doesn’t actually perform that well. And maybe that’s just what the algorithm knows about our account, I don’t know. We used to make these beautiful graphics for stories, like in Canva.
Jasmine Star:
Are we still in 2018?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Or 2021, 2022.
Jasmine Star:
Oh wow, okay.
Tori Dunlap:
But we make these beautiful graphics for stories. They would tank every time. But literally, we call them chin videos internally, I take a photo and I sometimes do it on the toilet, I take a photo of me and it’s just from here up. And if I do my CTA, it performs gangbusters. I don’t know why, I still have-
Jasmine Star:
I’m happy you’re saying that though, because everybody has this idea-
Tori Dunlap:
It’s the authenticity.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
No, no, no, no. My personal trainer, who’s so great and is trying to grow her business, our training sessions often turn into her telling me-
Jasmine Star:
Coaching.
Tori Dunlap:
… to squat and then me telling her what she needs to post on social media. And literally, it’s just like everybody overthinks it.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Actually, one of the best things you can do is time yourself, literally sit down and say, “Okay, I have 10 minutes to think and create a post.” And giving yourself those restrictions force you to, one, be productive, but two, stop overthinking. Because it’s like, if I have to have a post in the next 10 minutes and also it has to be out, then I can’t think about what’s the perfect thing. I mean, hooks are really important, everybody’s told anybody on social media that. Think about the way you consume content. Even if it is the most thoughtful or most valuable post in the world, tree falls in the middle of a forest, nobody’s around, like it doesn’t matter if the hook isn’t there, if you are not hooking somebody into getting them to care for this reason.
Tori Dunlap:
So my post example yesterday, of the work I’ve had done, we’re all voyeurs, we all want to know. It’s like, “Oh, somebody’s going to be transparent.” And then I, of course, have flipped that on its head to keep people engaged. So that’s a perfect opportunity of like what content do you consume? And even just watching yourself on social media, go, “Why did I click on that? Or why did I do that thing? And then how can I replicate that for my business?”
Jasmine Star:
That’s so good. So what we’ve done is we started off with origin story.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
Money, beliefs, money stories.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
We talked about your business, and then we kind of went as a little bit of a sideline, because I love to geek out.
Tori Dunlap:
Side quest.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah. I love to geek out with other people who are creating and then differently. I like to get into the psychology.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And I think that at this point in my career and life, I really do want to create and systematize a team. A team to help do this.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And I don’t know how to verbalize what it is I see and what I know, and so I was asking you a lot of those questions and-
Tori Dunlap:
It is sometimes very hard.
Jasmine Star:
Oh yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
We have often struggled to hire people for marketing. Marketing is actually sometimes the hardest thing to hire for.
Jasmine Star:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Because I think people often get in their own way, there’s so much content to create, and that’s where you are forced to not dwell on things for too long because it’s like, yeah, I have to get this out. Done is better than perfect is my biggest role as an entrepreneur. It’s just like, it will never be perfect and I could spend… I mean, if I believed that I needed to be perfect, my book would not ever have seen the light of day, I would not be sitting here talking to you. And that’s back to the original thing we were talking about, is we teach women to be perfect. It’s the same with social, especially when we have to put ourselves out there. It’s like, oh, this post has to be perfect and it has to be the perfect videos and it has to be the perfect photos. And right now, especially in 2026 on social media, it is the imperfect content-
Jasmine Star:
Facts.
Tori Dunlap:
… that is doing so well.
Jasmine Star:
Preach. 100%.
Tori Dunlap:
Again, my chin videos are like… Just carousels that aren’t perfectly posed and professional photos.
Jasmine Star:
Yes, yes, yes.
Tori Dunlap:
I build my carousels in Instagram.
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
I use Instagram’s tools. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
Jasmine Star:
So what we’ve seen is the journey up through present day.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
And then like Babe Ruth in the batter’s box, and you point out to far, far, far left field.
Tori Dunlap:
I love that you’re comparing me to Babe Ruth, that’s really kind.
Jasmine Star:
Well, look at what a girl from Seattle who thought she was going to wear a pencil skirt-
Tori Dunlap:
Sure.
Jasmine Star:
… and carry a briefcase, can do. And then blew her own mind before anybody else’s and decided I’m going to be, and create, a five million woman entourage-
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Jasmine Star:
… to change their lives and reclaim power and ownership by way of their own personal finances. What’s next?
Tori Dunlap:
Well, Jasmine, I have to tell you a secret. Can I tell you a secret?
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
I knew I could do this. I think as women, we are told, anytime, you just said really kind things, which thank you by the way, we go, “Oh, this was beyond my wildest dreams. I never thought this was possible. I never thought I was capable.”
Jasmine Star:
Ooh.
Tori Dunlap:
“I just feel so lucky.”
Jasmine Star:
Ooh.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. And it is the thing from the Barbie movie where it was like, “I worked hard for this. Thank you for this award. I deserve it.” And there’s a ton of privilege in my story and we acknowledge that so much. And also I refuse to come on this or any other interview and be like, “Oh yeah, it’s crazy. I never thought.” I 100% thought this. I 100% thought I could do this.
Jasmine Star:
Well, because you said you stood in front of the mirror-
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
… with tears in your eyes and said, “You can do this.”
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Jasmine Star:
So before this question ever came, you had already said your truth. It’s not you putting on anything other than your dang truth. And I feel very spoken to right now.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s so important. And when you start growing a business, you cannot be the person that’s like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening to me.” You have to be the person that is like, “Nope, we are going to do these things and it’s either going to work out or I’m going to learn and pivot.” But if you’re not going to hype yourself up, nobody will.
Jasmine Star:
I say that all the time.
Tori Dunlap:
And so you have to say, “Yeah, I have big dreams and I know I’m capable of them.”
Jasmine Star:
Okay. So-
Tori Dunlap:
So what’s next?
Jasmine Star:
… we rewind and we may say, “So you knew that this was going to happen from day one, what’s the next thing you know is going to happen?”
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Yeah. And of course I didn’t know it was going to happen in this way.
Jasmine Star:
Right.
Tori Dunlap:
But I knew I was capable of something like this.
Jasmine Star:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
I am so excited for us to continue investing in our programs. That’s for me, one of my favorite things, is we’ve seen so much success with our Stock Market School program, and now we’re thinking more strategically about how do we continue to serve people in a more intentional way. So we’re kind of doing the hybrid of, okay, it was one-on-one in 2019, we went really big in 2025, how do we get in the middle in 2026? How do we serve a maybe smaller group, but in a more intentional way as we continue to grow?
Jasmine Star:
That’s awesome.
Tori Dunlap:
I also, as important as true financial education is, which is like, what is Roth IRAs and how do we use them and how do we think strategically about debt and budgeting? This to me is so much bigger than personal finance and so much of our content moving forward will, yes, be practical, valuable advice, but it’s also going to be about how this moment in history right now is the most crucial moment for women to take their financial education seriously. This is the most important work I will ever do in my life, is making sure that women have money and not because they want to be greedy with it and not because they want to hoard, but because women are so generous and create such beautiful things when they are well-funded. And it is every woman listening’s job right now to get as rich as possible, in the most, hopefully equitable, equal way, ethical way. But we need more money in more women’s hands, because when that happens, the entire world starts to change.
Jasmine Star:
Ladies and gentlemen, Tori Dunlap. One of the things that Tori has said that I repeat again and again is, “Nothing bad happens when more women have more money.”
Tori Dunlap:
It’s true.
Jasmine Star:
So on that note, if you would like to have a personalized financial plan, Tori, generously, herfirst100k.com/quiz, take a quiz and you will get a personalized money plan, free, gratis, her gift to you. And you can find her on Instagram @herfirst100K. Tori, thank you for being here.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you.
Jasmine Star:
And thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists, produced by Her First $100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
