In this special crossover episode with Shopify Masters, Tori is sharing the secrets she’s learned about what it takes to make money online organically — from her journey trying to save $100k at 25 to becoming a New York Times bestselling author and founder of the multi-million dollar business Her First $100K. In this interview she shares tips on scaling a business, creating engaging content and building business from your community. She also emphasizes the importance of values-based spending in your business and offers practical advice on saving, investing, pricing your services, and the significance of financial feminism in creating systemic change.
Key takeaways:
- Financial literacy and early entrepreneurship are key. Tori emphasizes the significance of financial education starting from a young age. Her first entrepreneurial venture at age nine with vending machines taught her essential business skills like money management, pitching, and dealing with rejection. These experiences laid the foundation for her later successes.
- Your finances and values often go hand in hand. Tori advocates for a balanced approach to money management through values-based spending. This involves identifying and prioritizing expenditures that bring joy and align with personal values, while cutting back on non-essential expenses. She highlights that financial diets, like strict budgets, are often unsustainable, advocating instead for a mindful approach to spending.
- Content creation is crucial. Tori discusses how creating valuable and engaging content on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram played a crucial role in growing her business and platforms. She stresses the importance of having a clear opinion and targeting a specific audience to build a loyal community. Her strategic use of viral content to drive email subscriptions demonstrates the power of content marketing in business growth.
- Money management is both emotional and psychological. Financial management is not just about numbers; it involves understanding the emotional and psychological aspects of money. Tori emphasizes the need to address internal narratives and emotional hang-ups about money, which can significantly impact financial behavior and decision-making. This approach helps individuals move from a place of fear and shame to one of confidence and empowerment.
- Overcoming financial misconceptions is essential for success. Common misconceptions about investing — such as the belief that it’s complicated, it’s only for the wealthy or that it is gambling your money away, are simply not true. She stresses the importance of understanding the basics of investing, such as the need to actively choose investments within accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s, and the benefits of diversified investments like index funds.
Notable quotes
“You don’t need to stop spending money, you just need to stop spending money on shit you don’t care about.”
“Trying to be everything to everybody makes you nothing to nobody.”
“Money is a form of power and control. It’s the reason why often women and other marginalized groups are in situations they have to be in or are forced to be in rather than situations they want to be in.”
Episode at-a-glance:
≫ 01:49 Tori’s financial journey
≫ 04:50 The Importance of value-based spending
≫ 08:39 Investing 101: Debunking myths and getting started
≫ 11:13 Tori’s first business venture
≫ 16:15 Creating engaging content
≫ 21:22 Building a business from your community
≫ 22:07 The customer journey funnel
≫ 23:34 Going viral on TikTok
≫ 25:57 Developing a healthy relationship with finances
≫ 36:14 The importance of Financial feminism
Shopify Links:
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Thrive Causemetics: Get an exclusive 10% off your first order at thrivecausemetics.com/FFPOD
Squarespace: Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase.
Hill House: Visit hillhousehome.com and use the discount code TORI at check out for 15% off.
Indeed: Visit indeed.com/FFPOD to get a seventy-five dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility.
Are you registered to vote?
Register to vote/check your voter registration: vote.gov
RESOURCES:
Feeling Overwhelmed? Start here!
Our HYSA Partner Recommendation (terms apply)
Behind the Scenes and Extended Clips on Youtube
Leave Financial Feminist a Voicemail
Financial Feminist on Instagram
Take our FREE Money Personality Quiz
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
Hi, financial feminists. Welcome to the show if you’re new here. Hi, my name is Tori. I fight the patriarchy by making you rich. I have helped over 5 million women save money, pay off debt, start investing, start businesses, and feel financially confident. I have a book that is a New York Times bestseller, also called Financial Feminists. It’s available wherever you get your books. And we have so many resources on our website, both free and paid at herfirst100k.com. A fairly [inaudible 00:00:39] good you knew that already. Welcome back to the show. Today we are releasing an episode I did on Shopify’s podcast, which was very exciting and a big deal.
The Shopify Masters podcast is all about starting and growing your business. You want to start a business, how do we do it? So on Shopify Masters, which is their official podcast from Shopify, they sit down with entrepreneurs, e-commerce experts as they share their experiences running successful online stores. Everything from how to run your social media, to optimize your website, to finding the right suppliers and more. So on my episode where I was a guest, I talked about how I spend and save without guilt using values-based spending, which we talked more about on this show, but also in my book, some of the biggest misconceptions I come across when it comes to investing.
And I share about how I turned a viral video into a hundred thousand email subscribers in a week and how that changed my business forever and is still changing my business. So let’s go ahead and get into it. Enjoy this episode, guys. But first a word from our sponsors. Money is a learned skill just like anything else. And you’re going to be bad at it. It’s going to be uncomfortable, it’s going to feel very vulnerable to do. But give yourself all of that grace and all of that understanding that you’re learning this skill just like anything else.
Shuang Esther Shan:
Hey, how’s it going? Shuang Esther Shan here, back with another episode of Shopify Masters. Your companion for starting and building a business. If you want to run a successful company, you need to have a strong understanding of finances. Tori Dunlap has dedicated her career to financial literacy, and she’s my guest today. Her first experience with entrepreneurship came at the age of nine when she invested into local vending machines. After selling that business to pay for college, Tori then worked in marketing and saved up a hundred thousand dollars.
Her savings journey inspired her to launch her brand, Her First $100K to help others do the same. Today, Tori is a New York Times bestselling author and podcast host, and her company educates over 5 million women on financial literacy, investing and business building. Tori, so happy to have you with us.
Tori Dunlap:
Thanks so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.
Shuang Esther Shan:
I mean, money is such a big barrier for business founders and your whole journey started about your process of saving up your first a hundred thousand dollars. Give us some tactics. What are some of the most essential things people need to know when they’re thinking about saving?
Tori Dunlap:
So Her First $100K is the name of my company, but it’s also my Batman origin story, opera house back alley was me trying to save a hundred thousand dollars of my own. So my 100K journey was attempting to save 100K at 25. I successfully achieved that goal. I’m nearly 30 now, so it’s hard to believe it was almost five years ago, but that 100K was the permission slip I needed to quit my job. And I talk more about that in my book Financial Feminist, but the thing about money is that it gives you options and choices and flexibility. And so for anybody listening who is a business owner who wants to be a business owner, there’s something so impactful about having that safety net, especially when you are getting started.
So for me that 100K was a combination of a few things. It was privilege. I always like to acknowledge that off the top. I graduated without student loans because my parents and I were able to collaboratively pitch in to pay for college. I would not have hit that 100K as quickly as I did had I not had that factor. I was saving a huge percentage of my take home pay at my nine to five job. I worked in marketing and I think at the peak was saving 27% of my take home pay. And that was either going immediately to savings or to investments. I was also making a little bit of money in the business on the side. For a while there, it wasn’t making a lot of money, but then when it did, it was a secondary source of income for me.
I also invested as soon as I could. I started maxing out my Roth IRA when I was 22. And any business owner or want to be business owner out there, take advantage of those tax advantage accounts. Things like your 401k, your IRA, your SEP IRA if you’re a side hustler. And then I was also just really strategic on prioritizing things that I loved. I call it value-based spending, but a lot of people hear my 100K story and they’re like, “Oh, so you ate oatmeal and ramen and had no fun.” And I’m like, “No, I went to Costa Rica, I went out to eat.” I live in Seattle. I lived by myself. So I think that there’s so much to be said about balance when it comes to money is that diets don’t work both for physical health but also for financial health.
If you tell me I can’t have fried chicken, all I’m going to want is fried chicken, and that’s not willpower, that’s literal psychology. So when it comes to money, I think finding that balance is really important too, of achieving your goals, saving, investing, paying off your debt, but also finding ways to spend your money on things that you love.
Shuang Esther Shan:
I think that is such a smart mindset. Like you mentioned, diets don’t work. It’s more of a lifestyle that’s sustainable that you can live every single day and not being restrictive. So what are some things people should think about when they’re thinking about purchases to make that impactful, enjoyable so they can still have those “indulgent” purchases and not feel guilty about that?
Tori Dunlap:
I always say that you don’t need to stop spending money, you just need to stop spending money on shit you don’t care about. And that may have added a couple of people and you may feel a little personally attacked by that, and hopefully you do. Because the thing is, to your point, the answer is not never spend money again. That’s not sustainable, that’s not realistic, and frankly, that’s not fun. So, a lot of people just get caught up on mindless spending or on spending money on things that maybe their friends spend money on but they don’t really like or just a pressure they might feel. So I walk through this exercise in my book, but I help people identify what I call their three value categories.
What are the three areas in your life where you get the most joy? So for me, that is travel, love going and traveling to different places, food out. I’m a huge foodie, so I’m never going to say no to a fun restaurant. And really my house, but by my house, I mean plants, you can’t see it but probably in my office alone, 1, 2, 3, probably 15 plants just in this one room. So that’s where the majority of my money goes, and that’s where I get the most joy. So that’s where I want my hard-earned money to go. Now, if there’s a sweater sale at TJ Maxx, am I buying one? Am I going to buy the occasional coffee?
Yes, but I’m prioritizing the things that I love and spending pretty unabashedly on those things and then not really spending money anywhere else. So it’s always this thought of my friend and she’s a fellow finance expert, Paula Pant. She says, “You can afford almost anything. You just can’t afford everything.” So everything’s a trade-off. And that doesn’t mean deprivation. It just means, “Okay, if I want this thing really badly, it might mean not buying this thing.” So identifying your value categories I think is really impactful.
One, because you identify where do you actually enjoy spending money? What do you value? And two, where might you be spending money right now that doesn’t align with those values? Doesn’t bring you joy? Because we either want our hard-earned money going to things we love, and I know that sounds so obvious, but the amount of money that we spend on stupid shit or shit that we don’t even care about or shit that is mindless. And then the second thing is we really want to make sure that if we’re not spending mindfully, can we be saving some of that money too? Can it get reallocated to a different goal to prioritize our financial health?
Shuang Esther Shan:
And I think that is the perfect step, right? First you identify the three core categories you want to spend in, and then after you’ve saved, you need to start thinking about investing. And I think a lot of people get intimidated. They don’t know how to open different accounts and buy stocks. Talk to us about where do I start if I want to think about investing?
Tori Dunlap:
So a common misconception, I mean, there’s many when it comes to investing. “Investing is gambling. I can lose all my money. Invest is just for rich people, or I need a bunch of money to invest. Investing is just picking individual stocks.” None of those things are true. The biggest one I see, especially for women, which is our core demographic, is that investing is complicated and I need to hand this over to somebody else like a financial professional because I don’t understand it. When really the financial industry is a multi-billion dollar industry built on making you feel like you’re too stupid to understand. You’re not too stupid to understand.
So when it comes to investing, very simply is it’s putting money into an account and not just putting that money into an account, but then choosing your investments with it. The number one mistake I see people make is put money into something like an IRA and think that you’re done. You take the thousand dollars for example, and you put it in the IRA and you think it’s like a bank account. So you put that thousand dollars in the IRA and you’re like, “Cool, I’m done.” You’re not actually invested. The IRA is not the investment. The 401K is not the investment. It is the account that holds the investments. So you not only need to put money into the IRA or the 401K, but then you need to go buy things with the money, and that’s the actual investment.
And I see this mistake all of the time where it’s like financial purgatory, people put their money in, no one’s explained to them that you actually have to go choose the investments, and it just sits there. In terms of what investments to choose, it doesn’t have to be individual stocks. And actually I’m not just saying this because I’m on this podcast. One of two individual stocks I own is Shopify. Everything else is in index funds. Everything else is in a diversified investment vehicle. And an index fund is simply a bunch of different companies together.
So rather than just investing in one or two companies and putting all of your eggs in that one basket, it’s putting your money in something that is lower risk because that’s another fear is that I’m scared of, again, losing my money or I’m scared of gambling. Day-trading, picking those individual stocks, trying to ride them to the moon, that is gambling, that is taking on an extraordinary amount of risk, but really investing, which is diversified, long-term, thinking of this as a strategy for years, if not decades. That is something that unless you do it, you are not going to be able to retire for the average person.
So investing is really, really powerful. It allows compound interest to work harder for you by allowing your money to make money, to make money. And there’s ways to do it that the crypto bros and the guys on TikTok don’t want to tell you.
Shuang Esther Shan:
So we need to get into a good financial lifestyle, start saving, investing and of course after that we might have business ideas. We of course need to talk about your first ever business. It actually started when you were in grade school. Talk to us about TDJ Snacks and how you entered your entrepreneurial journey.
Tori Dunlap:
I feel like I’m having a Hot Ones moment where you’ve really done your research, so I really appreciate it. So my first ever company, and therefore my first ever acquisition was TDJ Snacks, which was my vending machine business. I actually owned vending machines, the kind where you put a quarter in, you get a handful of candy out, like gumball machines. And it all started because my dad is a salesman. He had a customer who was trying to get rid of some of them. He bought one for I think 300 bucks, and he brought it home one day and I was just sitting in our family room after school and I was nine years old and precocious as hell. And he brought it in and literally said it in front of me.
He’s like, “You want to start a business?” And of course I’m ambitious and said, “Sure.” So it was not a gift, it was a loan. I paid him back over the course of, I think probably took me about a year and a half to pay him back because I’m just making quarters. And I slowly learn a lot about running a business. Now, I didn’t go on Shark Tank, I didn’t invent anything, but I understood profit and loss. I was literally signing checks for my product when I was nine years old. I learned how to make out a check. I opened up my first savings account and checking account when I was nine or 10. I understood that you can’t expand your business unless you have money to do so, because probably every couple of weeks I was asking my dad, “Can we get another one?”
And he is like, “No, you haven’t paid me back, so you can’t get another one yet.” But by the time I graduated high school, I had 15 of those machines. All the profits went to my college fund, and then I later sold that business after 11 years to a 10-year-old who also happens to be named Tori because that’s how this crazy world works. And she looks like me. I could literally grab you. I have a framed photo that my dad framed for Christmas one of these years back that says, “Chase your dreams,” which is very sweet. And it’s me at 20 years old and her and we both have glasses, we both have brown hair and blue eyes, and we look like each other. It’s just crazy.
So I think that was one of the one… I mean obviously this incredible gift my parents gave me, but beyond that, it was one of my first direct encounters with me understanding that I had control over my money, my money didn’t have control over me, and that I could pass along this gift of financial stability, financial independence, but also just total badassery to a girl about the age I started. So we continue that to this day with Her First $100K, we impact literally millions of women every single day. We’ve helped them save money and pay off debt and start investing. And it really all started with my vending machine business when I was nine years old.
Shuang Esther Shan:
I love it so much because I can just envision you and the new mini-Tori together, such a beautiful moment. I think also what’s cool about this is at a young age, you’re also learning about, “I need to buy inventory. I need to talk to other adults and be confident.”
Tori Dunlap:
Got to learn how to pitch yourself. I was literally… The first couple of years my dad was doing most of the talking and then probably 12, 13, these pitches were my responsibility. So if I wanted my machine stocked in this business, I had to go out and talk to them. I had to convince them. I still have a copy somewhere, but I would put together a contract in Microsoft Word with my cute little 10-year-old signature that was like, “I’m going to keep this machine clean and full of…” It was literally full of tasty snacks, that was in the official contract. And then I think it was something like, “You’re going to provide the space for me to stock this tiny machine rent-free.”
And I also had to deal with rejection. I ended up studying theater in college as well. And I feel like part of my success as an entrepreneur is understanding that just because you got a no now, it doesn’t mean it’s a no forever and that you got to get right back on the horse and keep going. It’s the same thing in auditions, right? You’re going to hear no 99 times and then that one yes is going to be life changing. It’s the same thing with entrepreneurship. So I was learning so much about money management and growing a business and we don’t even talk about the rat incident of 2011. Don’t even talk to me about that.
So there was just these moments where resilience as a business owner, understanding, “Okay, you just lost a bunch of your product because you stuck the chocolate too close to a window and it melted.” Which is a real thing that happened. And my dad and I sat there for 45 minutes and had to clean it all out, and that was probably $40 worth of product that was wasted, which doesn’t sound like a lot now, but for me then that was a lot of money. So it was one of the coolest things that my parents did for me. And also I’m so thankful that I had that experience and that I was also able to pass it along.
Shuang Esther Shan:
We won’t talk about the rat incident, but I’m sure it helped you to problem solve, and it’s probably a great chapter as well. So Her First $100K is a hub of content on TikTok and Instagram, where on both platforms you have millions of followers and you were talking about money, which is often taboo to talk about. How were you able to create content that’s educational and entertaining and people actually wanted to subscribe to?
Tori Dunlap:
I love this question. I learned a lot about content creation from actually doing it, and I know that sounds obvious. But one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is making no mistake at all, is not doing anything. I think especially people who are ambitious and want to be business owners are so afraid of failure, so afraid of looking cringe online, so afraid that maybe they don’t have the answers to questions they don’t even know yet. It was very similar for me when I first got started. I was anticipating everything that could go wrong five years from now and it would terrify me as opposed to realizing that I was going to figure out the problem five years from now in five years.
So I think that’s the first thing is just understanding I didn’t figure out what my content was going to be or even that it was going to be about money until about three years into creating content. So you only figure out your niche or what you want to talk about by actually doing it, and it’s not going to be good. You can scroll back to my Instagram in 2018. It’s awful. It’s not pretty, but it had to be done. It had to be done in order for me to understand what was going on. So that’s the first thing is fear of failure, fear of being cringe, fear that you don’t have all the answers right now is holding you back from starting. You’re going to figure out as you go. So that’s the first thing.
Second thing is I need you to have an opinion. And what I mean by that is not all of your content or really you or your business should not be for everybody. Trying to be everything to everybody makes you nothing to nobody. I’m going to say that again. Trying to be everything to everybody makes you nothing to nobody. When people first get started, especially they want to get customers and they want to make sure they’re not alienating everybody. So they make their business or their product offering so broad to the point where you go to their website or you go to their Instagram and you’re like, “I don’t know if this is for me. I don’t even know what they’re trying to sell.
They’re trying to do too much.” And so with our content, you know immediately if you’re either vibing or if you hate it. People who are upset by the word feminist are not going to like our content. People who enjoy Dave Ramsey’s work are not going to like our content, but people who get us, the girls that get it, get it, the girls that don’t, don’t. It’s really true. And so when it comes to having a business, have an opinion, be controversial, and I don’t mean say offensive things, I just mean have a stance, know who you’re trying to market to, because again, if you’re trying to please everybody, it’s going to dilute your message, dilute the power of your brand.
And that’s something I think that was crystal clear for me when we rebranded Her First $100K in 2019. Now, do we have men or non-binary folks who follow us? A hundred percent, but it’s 95% women, and it’s mostly women who are at the start of their journey. It’s not her first million or her first 100 million, it’s Her First $100K. And we got very, very clear on who we were serving. So I think that’s the second thing is have an opinion, understand who your customer is, and don’t worry about trying to be everything to everybody in terms of creating content. The final thing I’ll say is that we always need to think about serving before you sell.
If I could tattoo that on my forehead, it is like my biggest business mantra, especially when it comes to creating content. If you have a product, if you have a service, often people think that the community comes from a good product, and often that is not the case unless you are something like Nike or some larger company that is already established. When it comes to small businesses, it is so much easier to build a community, to gain people’s trust, to provide value to them, and then eventually to sell them on a product because they already trust you, they already find you credible. There’s already that community there.
And even if somebody never buys from you, they’re always going to have a positive idea of who you are and what your business stands for because you’re constantly providing value. You see this in our posts. You’re always going to learn something. You’re going to take something away. You’re going to think differently. You’re going to know how to better manage your money or save it or invest it. And if you want to learn more, great, there’s options for that. There’s paid and low cost options for that. So serving before you sell I think is absolutely huge. Providing that value to people is incredibly important.
And I think too many people do it the opposite way. They’re like, “Cool, I’ll get a product and I’ll sell that product and then I’ll serve them later.” That’s, in my opinion, not the best recipe.
Shuang Esther Shan:
Well, thank you for such insightful advice. I’m very excited to talk about building a business from your community. But before then, I’d just like to take a moment to thank our listeners for tuning into the show. Wherever you’re listening now, make sure you are following or subscribe to Shopify Masters and leave us a review with feedback for the show. We love reading them. Thank you so much. So building a supportive community is tough on social media and then translating it into a business is even tougher. You were able to create courses, write a book, and start a podcast. Talk to us through that transition.
Tori Dunlap:
I could talk to you about this for hours. The big thing that was I think really smart about what we did is we thought about and continue to think about the entire customer journey funnel when we’re creating content. And especially in Covid and especially on TikTok because that’s our largest platform. I had so many people in my DMs who were just blowing up on TikTok, who were not creators and who were suddenly finding themselves with viral videos and a larger social following, and there was a lack of connection between, “Okay, I’ve gone viral, or I have these followers. How do I actually make money doing this? Or how do I actually get people off the platform?”
As much as I love social media, incredible top of the funnel selling points for your business. These are platforms you don’t own. You’re building on borrowed land when you do grow your audience on something like Instagram or even LinkedIn or Reddit or pick a social platform. And so the business technically started in 2016. We rebranded in 2019. I went full-time late 2019, 2020 was on TikTok. And that’s when things really started becoming clear to me that, “Okay, we are going to do well on these platforms and we need to get people off of them.” I came up with a funnel for our business to be able to get people to give us their email, but also to be able to continue to market to them and to serve them in places that weren’t one of these social platforms.
So in April of 2021, we had a video go crazy viral on TikTok. It’s still probably our most viral video. It was about 7 million views. Most of that came in a week. And something I did on that video that looking back if I do say so myself, was very smart, is that I said, “Take the quiz linked in our bio for a free money plan.” And before we had even posted this video, my team and I had spent a couple of weeks building out this money quiz, which asks you things like, do you have debts? Are you prioritizing saving money? Have you started investing? And then at the end, it determines what sort of plan we’re going to give you.
It’s kind of like a money personality quiz. You can still take it. It’s at herfirst100k.com/quiz. It’s still the thing we use. In that one week with an organic TikTok that I filmed in 10 minutes with no makeup and a sweatshirt. We got 100,000 email subscribers.
Shuang Esther Shan:
Love the poetic moment of 100K emails.
Tori Dunlap:
Crazy. Truly, truly. We’re getting first 100Ks all over. But it was a hundred thousand emails from an organic TikTok in seven days. I still market to those people. That’s still insane. So I think when you’re creating content and when you’re thinking about growing a larger business, after you figure out how to create content that works and create content that serves and connects with people, you then have to start thinking about what is the funnel after that? Where do we go to get people off of TikTok, off of Instagram, off of Pinterest, off of Facebook and into your actual landscape?
And so freebies like the quiz are a perfect example of this. If you know a bit about funnel building, you’ve heard about this of eBooks or things like that. But I think one of the missed opportunities for people who end up doing really well on social is they don’t have a lot to show for it at the end of the day. Going viral is fun, going viral is great, but if you don’t have anything to show for it, it’s kind of a wasted opportunity. So that’s one of the really strategic things that we continue to do is getting people acquainted with us on these platforms and then getting them off the platform onto our email list.
Shuang Esther Shan:
Of course, finances is the foundation for your life and your business and I think a lot of it comes down to mindset. I really love the way that you mentioned how you view it as a game, and it sounds like you have a great relationship and a great mindset towards money. Talk to us about how founders can actually develop a healthy relationship towards their finances.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m very proud to run a very scrappy business, especially in the early days. I think that we’re self-funded, I’ve never taken a loan, I’ve never taken outside investment. And so that’s something that I’m also really proud of is that we built this organically from scratch also with no paid ads. And so I think that even organic marketing, if you do have the time and energy to do that, in my previous life as a social media marketer in my nine to five, I was working for companies who were completely financially dependent on running something like Facebook ads and they would spend 300,000, 500,000 a month on ads.
And if the ads didn’t perform well for two days, it completely changed the trajectory of their business. So that’s one thing is if you can create an organic content creation machine, I’m still creating the majority of the content that we do at Her First $100K. Even as the CEO, it’s still my face. So I’m in there creating a lot of that content. There’s strategic ways to shoot that content that is low lift. I think that that’s one really cost saving strategy is actually still working to grow organically. I think it can’t be overstated. I mean, I just paid the biggest tax bill of my entire life as a business owner.
I don’t even want to tell you how much I paid, and I’m a good socialist, I’ll pay my taxes. But also it’s so much. So it sounds so obvious, but I think especially for people who are just getting started, you might not realize if you charge a thousand dollars towards a client or for a service or a product, the thousand dollars you get has nothing taken out of it yet, right? If you’re a W2, if you’re working a nine to five, the money you get in your account, your paycheck has already gotten your taxes taken out. So price accordingly. Think about, “Okay, this a thousand dollars, I haven’t taken my business expenses out.”
My taxes are going to be at least 30%, so we’re looking at maybe $500 as opposed to a thousand. So price accordingly. Also, understand that how you figure out your numbers is going to be not just again, the revenue you’re bringing in, but what is your actual profit? Sending aside money for taxes, I encourage every business owner to open a high yield savings account and just every time you get paid, every month, whatever that looks like, just putting about 30 to 40% of your money in your high yield savings account for your taxes. The last thing, and this is kind of obvious as I’m talking about this, but I see a lot of right brained people get into business, which is great.
It’s very creative and they want to be able to do the thing that they love and they don’t want to hassle with the left brain stuff. The left brain stuff is the reason you’re able to do the things you actually want to do. You need to know your numbers. You need to know what money’s coming in and what money’s going out. And my favorite little hack is to treat it like a game. Now, this is a very serious game because I pay 15 people salaries. I pay myself. I literally impact millions of people on a day-to-day basis. So it’s a game I take seriously, but viewing it as a game can just be something like, “Hey, there’s five days left in this month.
Let’s see how much money I can make in those five days. Or we are $5,000 under where we were last month. Let’s see what we can do with this remaining week to hit what we did last month.” So your numbers don’t have to be scary. In fact, they’re the reason again that you get to continue doing the things that you love and continue running the business that you do. And it can also just be this fun thing that ebbs and flows and that you start to understand. I can predict roughly how much money we’re going to make in April of 2025. So a year from now.
I’ve gotten to the point where you can start predicting how much money you can make based on seasonal trends, based on what you’re launching, based on what you’re putting on sale. And so again, it starts to become this fun game where it motivates you to continue growing your business forward.
Shuang Esther Shan:
Finances is the foundation of your personal life and also your business. I love the way that you phrase it. You think about it like it’s a fun game, which shows the kind of mindset you have and the relationship you have with money. But it’s hard. A lot of founders or individuals might have not a healthy relationship with money or they’re scared of finances. So what is your advice here to build confidence and comfortability towards money?
Tori Dunlap:
People think managing money is about math. It’s not. Again, I majored in theater and communications in college. I’m a multimillionaire. It’s not about math. It’s about your emotions, it’s about your psychology, it’s about managing what’s going on in your brain and body. There’s a reason why the first chapter of my book, and it’s the longest chapter, is about your emotions of money. Before I start talking about paying off debt, before I teach you how to invest, before I tell you how to budget without deprivation, I have to teach you what sort of narratives are you believing about money?
Do you believe that the pursuit of money is wrong or that rich people are bad? Because money is inherently neutral. It’s a stack of paper. It’s what you do with it where that morality starts to come in. And I see for a lot of women who become business owners or want to become business owners are so afraid of making money because they think it’s going to make them a bad person, or they’re so afraid that the pursuit of wealth is inherently wrong. No, I want money. I want choices. I want options. I want flexibility for myself and my community. The pursuit of money is not bad. Do you believe that talking about money is gauche or impolite? That’s the most common narrative, I think all of us believe.
We’re more likely statistically to talk about sex, death, politics, religion, any other uncomfortable topic before we talk about money. And talking about money is one of the easiest things we can all start to do that makes the world a more equitable place, but also helps remove that shame and that fear. And I think that one of my biggest missions is I want to take you from that fear and shame and anxiety to joy and ease and flexibility and abundance. And it all starts with really some therapy with your money, understanding where your financial hangups are, what’s going on in your brain and body when you try to spend money or when you are trying to ask for more money.
I see this a lot, especially with business owners. They’re like, “I need to raise my rates or I should raise my rates, or I’m so burnt out at the amount of money I’m charging. It doesn’t seem worth it anymore.” I literally was just talking to my friend the other day about this. She’s a travel content creator, and I was literally on the phone with her and she told me how much she’s charging for a one-on-one consulting call for an hour. And I was like, “Double your rates right now.” And I was like, “I’m going to watch you do it. I’m going to literally sit here and keep you accountable and watch you go do it.”
And it’s like I think that we just are so scared of charging for our services. A lot of us are scared of selling. And then just money in general has just so much emotional weight to it. One, you as a business owner have value always, but also you’re providing value to people. And this is where the serve before you sell mindset comes in, is you always want to give somebody an accessible option to you or to your business. So if you’re a values-based business and really want to do good in the world, great. Provide some sort of free or at least low cost resource for people. Then also offer the higher priced option for people who can or are willing to invest that amount.
And that helps, I think people who are just like, “I feel bad about charging. I feel bad about selling.” Well, there’s always going to be an accessible option for people. And also you are worthy of compensation. You are worthy of getting paid for your services and for your expertise, and people need it. You denying the world what you have to say or what you have to offer only hurts you and only hurts the entire world around you for denying people that. So I think just there’s so many emotional hangups about money. It’s why I wrote the book, that’s why we have our podcast, Financial Feminist, is you have to start understanding what sort of beliefs you have about money if you’re ever going to feel comfortable managing it.
Shuang Esther Shan:
The mindset is so important, as with so many other areas of life. And I think people don’t think about their financial mindset when they’re thinking about money.
Tori Dunlap:
No. And the last thing I’ll say about that too, people believe that being good with money, and I’m putting that in quotes. They believe that’s an inherent trait. It’s ingrained in our DNA. “I’m either good with money or I’m bad with money.” Same way, “I’m either good with math or I’m bad with math.” No one comes out of the womb speaking fluent French or playing the tuba. These are learned skills. If I want to go be fluent at French, if I want to speak French fluently, I’m going to be bad at it for a while. I’m not going to be good. That first hour of class is going to be, “Hello, goodbye. And where’s the toilet?” Right? That’s the first hour of class.
And if I want to learn how to play an instrument, learn how to speak a language, learn how to roller skate, do anything, I don’t beat myself up maybe in the same way that I do when I’m trying to learn about money. Why is that? Money was never taught to us unless you had the privilege like I did of a financial education from your parents. Money is a learned skill just like anything else and you’re going to be bad at it. It’s going to be uncomfortable, it’s going to feel very vulnerable to do, but give yourself all of that grace and all of that understanding that you’re learning this skill just like anything else.
Shuang Esther Shan:
And having the mindset and belief that you can learn it is like the first hurdle and the first thing that people need to be comfortable with. Talk to us why Financial Feminists, that moniker is so important because I think even though it shouldn’t, finance is divisive, saying the word feminist is divisive, putting the two together, double the divisiveness, but I love it. So talk to us about that.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s a little ghost pepper and a habanero at the same time. No, I mean, you’re exactly right. Feminism is the belief that there should be equality of all genders. That’s it. And if you don’t believe in the equality of all genders, I’m not going to convince you today why you should. It’s not my job. It’s not my responsibility. Second thing is when it comes to money, again, we’ll talk about any other uncomfortable topic before we’ll talk about money. Why is that? Well, because we tie money to our identity and we feel all of that shame and that fear and that judgment. And because at the end of the day, we believe money is about individual choices.
And one of the big things I have to convince people of, and the reason I wrote the book and the reason the podcast exists and the reason all of our work exists is because personal finance is about 20% individual choices. Do you understand how to budget? Did you open that Roth IRA? Did you work to pay down your debt? And about 80% circumstances, including, but not limited to a trillion dollar student debt crisis, stagnating minimum wages, a lack of paid family leave in this country, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and all of the rest of it. Yet we believe that if we’re not rich, it’s somehow a personal defect. We’re not working hard enough.
We don’t know the right things, and it’s not about that at all. And financial feminism is really this belief that if we can get money into more women’s hands, the entire world starts to change. Because when we’re taken care of and we’re whole and we have that stability, we have choices and options and flexibility. We start to change the system that exists for everybody else. There is something so powerful about especially women or other marginalized groups having access to money. This is a very serious statistic, but it is the perfect example of this. 99% of abusive relationships have some sort of financial abuse tied to them.
So in domestically violent situations, either physically violent, mentally violent, there is financial abuse in 99 out of a hundred. What does that tell me? That tells me that money is a form of power and control. And it’s also the reason that often women and other marginalized groups are in situations they have to be in or are forced to be in rather than situations they want to be in. I want a world where every single person has enough money and has enough financial stability to leave toxic situations they don’t want to be in anymore. And start businesses and to donate to causes they believe in, and to buy themselves nice things and to have safety and to live in the apartment in the slightly safer neighborhood because they can afford to do so.
Everything comes back to money at the end of the day. And I think a financial education in a system that constantly disenfranchises people is someone’s best form of protest, is a woman’s best form of protest. So financial feminism is this belief that getting money into women’s hands changes the world, changes people at the individual level, but also works to change the entire system that exists. And this is the feeling I want for every single person, but really every single woman on the planet is to live the fullest version of their lives, to be the biggest, baddest, best version of themselves and to be financially uncontrollable.
Shuang Esther Shan:
Well, thank you for all the work that you do. And you’ve come such a long way, not just from vending machines, but creating content for three years and then finding your direction to now having 15 people’s livelihoods impacting millions of lives. Looking forward, what are you excited or hoping to do? What is the next chapter for you?
Tori Dunlap:
I’m excited to take a nap. That would be nice.
Shuang Esther Shan:
Naps are always good. I’m a big proponent of naps.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s funny because I’ve gotten asked this question a couple of times since we started this new year. I’m trying to purposely answer it in a way that isn’t about professional accomplishments. We’ve grinded really, really hard. The book was a New York Times bestseller. It sold over 150,000 copies in the first year. I’ve been basically creating at least one video a day, typically three for the last five years. And I’m tired. A lot of us are tired. So I’m right now truly trying to take care of myself. And that’s my biggest goal this year is I’ve hired a personal trainer.
I’m starting to eat better because I sacrifice my personal and physical health to grow this business in the way I wanted it to grow. So I think right now I’m trying to find, I mean, balance is kind of a made up word, but trying to find how can I continue to grow this business in a way that feels authentic to me and feels ambitious, but also isn’t sacrificing things that I don’t want to sacrifice anymore. So I think that’s my biggest priority. But we literally get messages every single day from women, probably every minutes now at this point, from women who say, “I’ve saved my first thousand dollars because of you, or I paid off my student loans, or I left my abusive marriage because I have money to do so.”
And that’s the impact we want to keep having every single day is making an actionable, specific change in people’s lives. And we’re just getting started.
Shuang Esther Shan:
I just want to say rest is not a waste of time, and it is much needed in the journey. So thank you for saying that. I think that’s also very, very important to remember. So thank you so much for joining us, Tori.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for having me.
Shuang Esther Shan:
That’s Tori Dunlap, the founder of Her First $100K. Our show is produced by Gogo Zogar and Megan Coyle. Our engineers are Miku Betlam and Matt Shorts. Benjamin Gottlieb is our managing producer. And I’m your host, Shuang Esther Shan. Come hang out every Tuesday and Thursday for brand new episodes. And if you’re still listening, go share this episode with another entrepreneur. We’ll catch you next time on Shopify Masters.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you to Shopify Masters for having me on the show. You can listen to Shopify Masters wherever you’re listening right now. And if you are a entrepreneur or already a business owner, it’s definitely one that you should subscribe to and listen to carefully. Thanks as always for being here. Financial Feminist, we appreciate your support of the show, and we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. 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, Taylor Chou, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Kurronen, Daryl Ann Ingram, and Meghan Walker. 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 the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
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.
