Save your seat inside Business Bootcamp! Your COMPLETE roadmap to go from idea to income: herfirst100k.com/business-bootcamp
What if the only thing standing between your idea and your income was simply taking the first step?
If you’ve ever thought, “I want to be my own boss, but I don’t even know where to start,” this episode is for you. I’m sitting down with my friend, business coach and entrepreneur Mallory Rowan, to talk about how to finally stop dreaming and start building your own business. We’re unpacking the fears that hold you back—like not having the “perfect” idea, worrying about failure, or feeling like you’re not the entrepreneurial type—and giving you the permission slip and playbook you need to move forward. From learning why “ready” is not a feeling to understanding how entrepreneurship can change your finances and your life, this conversation will inspire you to take messy action, trust the process, and start your journey from idea to income.
Key takeaways:
You’ll never feel ready—because “ready” is a decision, not a feeling.
Mallory and I break down the myth that you’ll wake up one day and magically feel prepared to start a business. The reality is that readiness comes from action, and every entrepreneur learns by doing, not by waiting for perfection.
Your first idea doesn’t have to be your forever idea.
Mallory reminds us that the best business idea is simply the one you can take action on. Early attempts—even “failed” ones—teach you essential skills that compound and make your next venture stronger. The key is to start, knowing you can pivot as you grow.
Failure isn’t fatal—it’s just data.
Instead of seeing failure as an identity, Mallory reframes it as a set of data points that inform your next steps. Every “cringe” website, awkward first sale, or abandoned idea helps you refine your business and move closer to what truly works.
You don’t need a huge following to make money.
Mallory shares examples of students landing clients and building thriving businesses with fewer than 1,500 followers, proving that impact and income don’t depend on influencer-level reach. What matters is connection, consistency, and showing up authentically.
Entrepreneurship is the fastest path to financial freedom and flexibility.
Both Mallory and I share how starting our businesses transformed not only our bank accounts but our lives—giving us the ability to travel, set our own schedules, do work that matters, and create long-lasting “memory dividends” with our loved ones.
It’s not that serious.
At the heart of this episode is the reminder that starting a business doesn’t have to be scary, overwhelming, or perfect. It’s about taking one small step, learning along the way, and giving yourself permission to try.
Notable quotes
“Ready is not a feeling—it’s a decision.”
“Failure isn’t an identity, it’s just a data point you collect along the way.”
“You don’t need a million followers to build a successful business—you just need to connect with the right people.”
Mallory’s Links:
Website: https://malloryrowan.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/malloryrowan/?hl=en
Business Bootcamp: herfirst100k.com/business-bootcamp
Free Idea Generator: herfirst100k.com/idea
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Meet Mallory
Serial entrepreneur, educator, and queen of no-BS strategy. Find her stalking the latest Zillow listings. Mallory helps creators, coaches, and founders build smart businesses that don’t sacrifice their mental health or their weekends.
Transcript:
Tori: [00:00:00] If you’ve ever thought I wanna be my own boss, but you have no idea how this episode is.
The permission slip, push and playbook you’ve been needing to start.
I’m here with my friend Mallory Rowan, and we both were sitting at jobs. We hated daydreaming of quitting, but had no roadmap in sight. So this episode is covering all of the real talk on starting your own business from scratch, why entrepreneurship was our ticket to Financial Freedom and the launchpad that we’ve built to help you do the same.
Hello, Mel.
Mallory: Thanks for having me.
Tori: I’m so excited.
Mallory: so excited too.
Tori: Okay, so talk to me about where you were at prior to being a business owner. What was life like for you?
Mallory: So I knew I was really ambitious early on, so I was working full-time corporate during school. So I was balancing school, working a marketing job that was in the high tech space.
Kind of moved into the startup world. So I was like starting to, you know, move myself closer to entrepreneurship, but still ultimately a little bit afraid of it.
Tori: What about life did not feel fulfilling? Like what? [00:01:00] Kept you thinking maybe this is all there is. Like, how do I get out of this?
Mallory: Honestly, I think for me it was that I had always been intrigued about personal finance and just the math wasn’t mapping for me with most nine to five scenarios, and so.
It honestly just came down to the math of it, of seeing, okay, well maybe it’s going to be a risk that I’m taking, but if I don’t start building something, I don’t see how I’m gonna make the numbers work for the kind of life that I wanna live. Yeah.
Tori: I think that is a realization that a lot of people have, but entrepreneurship is not necessarily the thing they think of. So if like you’re in debt, you are trying to save your first a hundred K, like, that was my scenario of like, okay, how do I save my first a hundred k? Before I turned 26. Yeah. And I was negotiating my salary.
I was paying off my debt, I was investing, I was doing all of the financially smart things. Yeah. But probably the biggest thing that got me to that goal and every financial goal after that was being a business owner.
Mallory: Yeah, absolutely. I know people say you can only save so much, you can only budget [00:02:00] so much. And I think to the same point, yes, there’s so much great advice now about how to get promotions, how to get a raise. Yep. But I ultimately feel like entrepreneurship actually puts you in the driver’s seat, more than ever before.
Tori: I know we’ll talk about this more as the episode goes on, but I think for so many people, I mean, our parents both taught us, oh, you get the staple job you get for, you’re Canadian.
For me it’s, you get the health insurance, you get the 401k. Well
Mallory: still, the health insurance
Tori: yeah. But it’s like you get the two week paycheck every and like that is how. That’s the American dream, or that’s what you do. Yeah. And that was so unfulfilling for both of
Mallory: Yeah, and I also think the pandemic was kind of the thing for our generation that showed a lot of people that this promise of stability, I feel like that’s when it started to get shaky for a lot of people of, hang on, I actually thought I took this stable route, and all of a sudden it feels like the rug’s being pulled out from under me.
Whereas at that point, already being self-employed, I felt, again, a lot more in the driver’s seat and like I could [00:03:00] say, okay, well things are changing. Everywhere. But I can look more at my own picture and decide how I’m going to adapt and change and feel more in control of that and in control of my financial future.
Tori: We talk a lot in the show about how. You can control what you control and then you work to change everything else. And at the systemic level. And I think that for most women listening, we all have control issues. So it’s like this is actually a great way to have more control.
Yeah. Over a very uncontrollable scenario between like
Mallory: layoffs.
Yeah.
Tori: getting fired or just having your job
Mallory: And I like to have fun, so I’m like, if, if I can have, if I can have fun doing my work, and that means that I’m not, you
Tori: making an impact and Yeah. Yeah. I
Mallory: I think that’s such an important piece too. It’s like, okay, maybe you do have a job that you enjoy, but for me it was just seeing both the financial opportunity and just that.
Really opportunity to go after a dream and be like, I think there is a version of life where you get to enjoy every day. You’re not sitting in a cubicle and air conditioning in the summer. That was a big thing for me as like a [00:04:00] university student at the time. I was just like, again, for me, the math wasn’t math thing of like, it’s a beautiful day out and I have to sit in this specific seat.
Yeah. With these fake walls around me. For what?
Tori: That was me, where it was like, am I doing this for the next 40 years?
Yeah. Like, is this, it felt like Groundhog Day. Yeah. Like, am I doing this for the next 40 years? Like making men, I don’t respect
Mallory: Rich. Mm-hmm.
Tori: And begging for PTO.
Mallory: Mm-hmm. Navigating office politics that you want
Tori: Oh, and I’m getting like weird misogynistic things said to me at
Mallory: work.
Tori: and I’m like, I don’t like this.
Is this what I have to do for 35 years? Okay. So somebody’s listening to home and they’re like, this sounds great to and Mel, but how do I actually do this? So when we talk about both in so many conversations we’ve had privately and publicly, people getting stuck. Yeah. Like the first narrative I think is like, okay, but I don’t know enough,
Mallory: Mm-hmm. Like
Tori: Tori and Mallory know something about running a business that I don’t know, even if that’s not like a conscious thought, it’s like, [00:05:00] okay, I don’t know enough about running a business.
Mallory: Yeah. I think like.
There’s certain aspects of life where we put so much pressure on ourselves and we don’t realize that we don’t really apply that pressure the same way in other instances. So for me, that would be like going to the gym, right? Yeah. Usually when you go to the gym, you start with the basics of like, okay, am I comfortable going to the gym to do, there’s usually a tour or something, right?
Yeah. You’re like, can I go get some information? Yeah, right. You start there, you’re not like, do I know how to use every single machine? In three different ways. Yeah. Do I know how to squat 300 pounds? That’s not the expectation you put on yourself going to the gym. If you were deciding you wanna start cooking or a new hobby, knitting, you don’t say, could I knit an entire blanket and scarf it?
Right. Scarf right now. Right. Um, so I think with business we just put a lot of our identity into it too. And sometimes it can feel really scary and it feels like more of a pass fail than we. Look at something like the gym. And so I think that’s a big part of it is just you have to accept that you’re gonna [00:06:00] learn as you go, just like everything else in life.
And that there is literally no world where you know everything before you start because there’s no rubric. So I think the biggest thing is you actually don’t know what you don’t know. So to put that expectation on yourself is a little bit wild.
Tori: The problem I had that I know listeners have too, is speaking of control issues, it’s like I am trying to anticipate every single.
Problem or have answers to every single question. Yeah. That are gonna happen like five years from now. Mm-hmm. So what happens when I have to hire a
Mallory: team? Mm-hmm.
Tori: What happens when, uh, I don’t know, somebody sues me. I don’t know. Like
Mallory: No, it’s so
Tori: the worst case scenario. Mm-hmm. And it’s like nobody hands you a playbook for entrepreneurship.
I mean, we built you one, we’ll talk about it, but like no one hands you the playbook and it’s like you do figure it out. So getting caught up in the, like five years from now, problems. You five years from now knows how to handle those.
Mallory: actually, [00:07:00] you know, we talk about this a lot later of like, you know what got you here won’t get you there.
Yes. I feel like people are familiar with that, but it’s also realizing that means that the steps you have to take right now are actually not the same steps in five years. And so those beginning parts. Are important. With my first business, we had, as you know, a power lifting apparel company, and one thing we did was we put handwritten postcards in every package.
Mm-hmm. Right. And it’s one of those things where when you start to do, people go, well, what happens when you have a hundred thousand orders? We’re like, well, we don’t right
Tori: right, right. Which is such an obvious like
Mallory: Right. And so it means that you can do those things that maybe you don’t get the opportunity to do when your business is massive, right?
And, but those are the things that really built our customer base and people loved those things. So I actually often think it can be an advantage to be on that smaller end where you’re like, oh, I can actually do things now that maybe Tori doesn’t face as the business owner that she is now.
Tori: Talk to me about your jail quote,
Mallory: because
Tori: it is always so funny
Mallory: are you [00:08:00] saying you’re further from jail than you think?
Because obviously it makes sense. We all get nervous about how am I supposed to register my business? What kind of bank account do I have to set up? You need a lawyer. Yeah. How do you file taxes? What are business taxes? There’s so many different elements that intimidate people. Yeah. And so I like to say that because it’s true.
When we put it that way, it, it feels like. Yeah, you know what? You are right? Like it’s silly that I’m that worried, but um, with our first business, we just kept receipts for a year. We were like, I’m not really sure what you’re supposed to do, but we know you’re supposed to have your receipts. And the only consequence really was that we had to sit down and take a chunk of time to go through them.
And that is barely a consequence. There was nobody knocking on our door being like, were you every week doing this thing? Like no. Um, so I think there’s those little steps. You just do what you can and you will continue to learn as you go.
Tori: Google
Mallory: free. Yeah.
Tori: is free.
Mallory: And people, you know, I guarantee, you know, somebody with a business or you know, somebody who works in accounting, I love to call my [00:09:00] accountant friends.
Yeah. Before I had my own accountant and ask those kind of questions. I still sometimes call them for an opinion.
Tori: So when we talk about the next quandary or the next concern for people, which is like, I don’t have the right idea. Mm-hmm. Or even like, yeah, I don’t, I haven’t settled on an idea, or I have 500 ideas and I don’t know how to pick one.
I think that. One we’re helping with that. We have a free tool and a free challenge. Yeah. That will link down below in the description, but like that will literally help you figure out what your best business idea is. Yeah. Because that’s something that people do get hung up on is like picking the perfect thing.
Yes. But talk to me about the experience of like picking the
Mallory: thing. Yeah, I mean there’s a photographer quote actually people say often that’s like the best camera you have is the one in your hand. Mm. And they say that a lot for beginner photographers. ’cause you could feel that pressure to have the most expensive one when really the iPhone or the Android will do for now.
Yeah. Because it’s what’s gonna get you starting to use that photographer eye. [00:10:00] Right. So. Yeah, I really think it’s similar that way, that in one sense the best business idea is just one that you can take action on, and that’s going to often be the first step, right? We think I have this, you know, business idea.
I’m scared and I have to go for it. And again, it’s gonna be that pass fail, but it’s also okay if it’s the business idea that gets you to the next thing.
Tori: And I think that’s super common. I mean, her first a hundred K was not a financial education company. Like a lot of people do not
Mallory: that.
Mm-hmm.
Tori: I was, that was like peak Tumblr blog era.
Excellent. Like 2010s. Oh, I, I Miss Tumblr. Like good old Tumblr. Oh. And we got bought by Yahoo and it just went downhill immediately. But like that was, it was like life of a 20 something woman. Right. And I was like following travel bloggers and that’s what I thought I wanted my life to look like. So I started running this blog on the side of my nine to five.
Was it making me any money at that time? No, it was not. Yeah. But only by doing that did I realize, oh, every blog post I’m writing has something to do with money. Mm-hmm. [00:11:00] And I am the person, all of my friends were coming to to talk about money. So for at least a year, I think a good two years, I was just running this like very general life of a 20 something.
Yeah. Blog. And that was not the right idea, but I only realized it wasn’t the right idea by fucking doing the thing.
Mallory: Yeah. And you learned how to make a blog. Yes. You learned how to be a better writer for blogs Right there. All of these elements saw in can and did
Tori: look pretty,
Mallory: bought a domain.
Tori: I did buy a domain.
It was the $40. The first $40 I ever spent was Squarespace domain. Squarespace signup.
Mallory: up. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. Um, I had a student that was actually a long time follower and I knew that she was an aspiring business owner, but she didn’t quite have an idea and so there was a lot of, you know, she would come to some of my workshops, we would chat in the dms, and it got to the point.
Where it’s just like, Jordanna, you gotta start, you gotta do something
Tori: right? You gotta stop talking about it, you gotta
Mallory: do something. And so she started building this kind of home DIY project, um, Instagram page, knowing that that was something she was really enjoying. And [00:12:00] once she started that it really just evolved like her artistic, creative side.
Yeah. And she ended up, you know, pivoting from there. And she now makes these really incredible dog portraits that she actually makes. Out of dog hair. So if someone’s dog passes, oh yeah. They send in some hair and she makes these beautiful replicas of them and it’s so special. I know, I know. It makes me like emotional just talking about
Tori: but like how would you come up with that?
Mallory: Right. And so for her. It was really, she had so long where she wasn’t taking that first step. Yeah. And then once she took the first step, it was quickly the second, the third, the fourth. Now I’m onto a new idea and just was no big deal to switch ideas. Yeah. Whereas she was putting so much weight in that first idea and now it’s a business that she uses to, you know, directly fund particular things in her life and really give her some extra stability.
That feels really good.
Tori: Well, you were mentioning, I think she’s like paying
Mallory: off mm-hmm.
Tori: like medical
Mallory: bills, right? Yeah, yeah.
Tori: [00:13:00] Which is, that’s the kind of financial impact we’re talking about too.
Mallory: Absolutely.
Tori: This is gonna be a recurring theme. I’m understanding, and what you and I are talking about is it’s like, it’s not that serious dude.
Mallory: It’s not that serious.
Tori: It’s like, it’s not that serious. Like
Mallory: I’m always like, just do it.
Tori: Well, it’s like you do it. Okay. It didn’t work out exactly the way you wanted to, or you learned something new again, like I learned, oh, I wanna talk about money, and I only learn that by doing it. Like you only learn. By doing it. And I think so many people, they work up the business in their heads. They’re like, I don’t have the logo, I don’t have the website.
I don’t have the perfect idea. Yeah. The only way you figure that out is by doing it.
Mallory: Yeah. I mean, we built our first business to like a globally recognized, um, multi-six figure business, and then.
Walked away. ’cause it wasn’t in the end, the idea we wanted to continue with. And I was extremely burnt out a story for another time. Yeah. Um, but for me it’s like that business gave me so many lessons past as we were talking about, you know, the domains, these things. I learned how with every launch, what [00:14:00] kind of things to add, right?
And so when we went to build our next businesses, we were able to do it exponentially faster, exponentially more efficient. And so, even though I went from product. Business to then a real estate team and coaching and services. It’s wild. How many skills will really get you there faster.
Tori: Yeah. I think the third concern people have is it’s like, well, I’m not that kind of person. Mm-hmm. Like, I’m not the kind of person that could be an entrepreneur or I haven’t, um, like yeah, I’m a nurse or I’m a teacher.
I like, what would I do? Yeah. And I won’t say everything about him to keep his privacy, but like, I’m helping my partner launch a business right now. And he’s a civilian. He is not on social media. He doesn’t post, he is not like, he is not currently an entrepreneur and. Had that same thought. He was like, Tori, I see what entrepreneurship has given you.
You know, we’re, you’re able to take Fridays off to spend with me. You’re able to work from anywhere. You’re completely [00:15:00] financially independent. I kind of want that, uh, how do I do that even if I’m not that type of person? And I think that there’s so many different entrepreneurs than we see both online, but also yeah, that.
To this point about this example of like, yeah, how are you coming up with that idea? It doesn’t have to be like the thing you went to school for. No. Or like, okay, I’m a nurse. How would I make that a business? Mm-hmm. It can be related to a skill you have or a skill you wanna pursue.
Mallory: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.
Tori: talk about, yeah, like I’m not that kind of person.
Yeah. How do we debunk that myth for people?
Mallory: Yeah. I mean, for myself, I always thought I would be like a really high level exec.
Me too. At a big company. Me too. Yeah. I think that’s like the version of success we also grew up with.
Tori: oh yeah, it was like Girl Boss, the
Mallory: the paper
Tori: and wearing our little pencil skirts and our coffees and our
Mallory: briefcases. Dare I say lean in?
Tori: Yeah, lean in really hard. And you might just, that’s
Mallory: what we wanted to do. Um, so I think it is [00:16:00] like, you know, I always say business is the biggest like.
Personal, um, development bait and switch where you will learn so much about yourself. And I think that first lesson is that you can be that type of business owner. As you said, it doesn’t have to be a specific degree. It doesn’t have to be related to your current job. It can
Tori: of us did stuff related to our degree. Really?
Mallory: No. It can be, um, a, a skill set that you have. Yeah. It could even be something that you just feel like there’s a gap in your industry. For us, with our power lifting brand, we were honestly starting just filling a gap that we felt in the community. And that can be enough.
Tori: Yeah. And I think when we talk about that, also fear of like, okay, what if I’ve never sold anything again? We’re like. It’s not that
Mallory: dude.
Tori: Like I’m gonna keep saying that. It’s not that serious. You figure it out.
Mallory: Yeah. You learn by doing.
Tori: What about that fear of like, I’ve never sold anything.
I’ve never marketed anything. I’ve never had to like talk to somebody and convince them to buy a thing.
Mallory: You know what, when you were talking about that, that theme, um, another thing that.
[00:17:00] Comes to mind for me is like a toddler learning to walk, right? Yeah. When a toddler takes its first steps baby, I guess probably a baby toddler,
Tori: toddler,
Mallory: whatever. Same thing.
Tori: that was Mel’s experience. I dunno.
Mallory: I started walking at seven.
Tori: She walked last week for the first time. It was so incredible and was really proud of her. Um, she’s running multi six figure businesses and just finally took her first steps basically.
Mallory: Um, but like when a baby takes its first steps, right? It takes a few and it falls and we all cheer and we’re like, oh my gosh. It’s first steps we’re not like, what a loser that baby fell. Like, how embarrassing. Like it’s never gonna make it right. No, we really celebrate those first steps, but I think we have this crazy expectation that we have to nail it on the first time.
And I think that’s really what we want people to understand more than anything. Also like a scientist or like what if the people. Making electricity tried once. Oh, it’s, and then they
Tori: it Einstein of like, I learned a hundred ways not to make a
Mallory: bulb. Yeah, exactly. Like imagine how embarrassing it would be as a scientist if you tried an experiment [00:18:00] once and then quit.
You changed No factors and you said, well, that didn’t work.
Tori: Yep. Right. And know I quit.
Mallory: Okay. Hilarious. Because actually on the sales side, the example I have in mind is a student who used to work in a lab, and I did
Tori: oh, funny purpose.
Mallory: Um, but I had this student and yeah, she worked in a lab like thought that would be.
Everything, um, got kind of interested in fitness and then in, um, some e energy healing spaces and really wanted to start offering some services to people. And so she started with a side hustle with two clients and then was able to take it full time. And this was someone that did not come from a sales background.
Right? And then through their business, they learn how to sell one-on-one things. They learn how to. Cell group things, they do an in-person retreat. Right. It’s really those skills that have evolved. But she started with zero sales base,
Tori: and she works in a lab. She’s not that person. Again, I’m putting that in quotes, but mm-hmm. She went for it.
Mallory: Yeah, and I think too, when you have a passion for what [00:19:00] you’re doing, sales can feel big and scary in general, but that passion can really come through because if somebody’s coming to me, let’s say I’m a personal trainer, right? And you’re coming to me for help. If I am so passionate about fitness, normally that’s.
The thing you can like nerd out on so much. So if you were telling me, Hey, these are the problems I’m facing, I can probably go straight into nerd mode and be like, oh yeah, like I know all the ways to fix it. I’m so excited about helping you and you’re actually really naturally selling. It’s just when we put that label of making sales, it can feel really scary.
Tori: kinda like networking networking’s, just
Mallory: to people. Yeah. Yeah.
Tori: as you call it networking, it’s again like pencil skirts and like
Mallory: a suit tie.
Tori: And you’re like at round tables trying to figure out how to talk
Mallory: to me. Exactly. You have a name tag on immediately. Exactly. Yeah.
Tori: And when we come back, we are talking about that fear of your business absolutely failing. It’s not gonna fail. We’re gonna be fine. And if you actually need to be on camera, on social media in order to grow your business. Stay tuned.
Mallory: All
Tori: We’re back with Mel. So I’m scared I’m gonna fail. Yeah.
That’s the one I hear all the time. Mm-hmm. Like what if [00:20:00] my friends from high school see me trying to be an influencer? Yeah. Or like trying to be a business owner and they laugh at me. Yeah. First of all, get new friends second, like, what if this doesn’t work out? And I’ve gone all in and I feel, yeah. I feel like a failure.
Mallory: Mm-hmm. I think it’s like if you looked at something like a relationship, right? We often, like we’re in it in the moment and we can see these things developing. Right. It’s like when you start dating someone and you can tell if it’s working or not.
Yeah. But I think with this idea of business, we think there’s almost like. A, a time, an invisible timeline where you’re like, do it for a year and it works or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, it’s exploded your entire life. Yeah.
Tori: And also that you must marry the first person you ever went on a date with. And that is.
Mallory: is Right.
Tori: life partner for the next 50
Mallory: Yeah. And I think when you can let go of that and just say, I am open to like this changing, however it might change, then your idea, uh, your idea of failure really starts to shift. Like, you know, if I had a question that’s like, oh. [00:21:00] You know what people love to ask, like, is there anything you’d change or do you regret anything?
Or we’re like, what’s your biggest failure? Like, I actually can’t think of a thing, and it’s not that I haven’t made mistakes, it’s just you stop categorizing it that way because it was actually just a piece of information. It’s a data point that you collected and then you learn from it. The same way. If a launch goes really well, you collect those data points.
If the business isn’t working, you’re collecting those data points. And for me, I look at it as if. You know, two people just both had business ideas. One spent the next year going for it. Yep. The other one. Kept their notebook and just wrote the ideas over and over, and brainstormed the one who really went for it and just started taking that messy action, is gonna have collected so many data points that now they can make such educated decisions.
They probably have, they probably have started making money, whereas the other person might go, okay, I’ve done all my research for a year. I’m ready to start. They might be a week into their business and then go, oh, actually this is all different and playing out differently than the research told me it would.
Tori: Time is gonna pass [00:22:00] anyway. Mm-hmm. It’s like. You can either be five years older and have this business that’s successful, which is option number one.
Or went for it and yeah, maybe it didn’t work out. Yeah. Like I’m scared I might fail. You might. Mm-hmm. That doesn’t make you a failure. That’s not an identity. Yeah. That’s an incident that happened.
Mallory: And I think you also get to decide what type of business you want to run and build for yourself. And I don’t think that part is as loud in a lot of these conversations. We see things like the sale of Poppy, right? Sure. Um, and we see these big billion dollar sale stories and so people can get really intimidated by that.
But if you look around you, there’s way more people who are self-employed than you realize that have maybe decided to make. 70 5K but be working for themselves or make a hundred K or 150. And so I think also knowing like you can pick whatever type of business you want
Tori: and scale it at
Mallory: pace you Exactly.
Tori: Yeah. I think with that five years example too, again, like [00:23:00] the outcomes, either I have a really successful business because I went for it in five years. Um, I don’t, I I, but I went for it and I learned a lot and I’m really glad I did.
So I don’t have that regret, or I’m sitting five years later and still wondering, oh, maybe I could be a business owner
Mallory: someday.
Yeah. And sometimes you learn that maybe it’s not for you, but you learned all of these skills that then allow you to go get a different job that you would really love.
Tori: I think the other thing of that, like failure again, is it’s like the fear of looking cringe or stupid.
Yeah. Um, I did, yeah, I do all the time. Like, I look back at my tiktoks in 2020 and I’m like doing the dances and I’m like, oh boy. Wow. Now did it make me like $250,000 in a month? Yeah, it did. So I can’t be that upset about it, but it’s like. I look back at my old website, the graphics I used to make that I thought were good and I’m like, oh God, this looks awful.
I only realize that because I did it.
Mallory: Yeah. I mean, people tell me somebody who doesn’t look back at their life and cringe in other ways. [00:24:00] Right.
Tori: you glad you went
Mallory: Exactly. People cringe at the person they dated, the clothes they wore, right? Yeah. Like that is just part of being human. It’s that you’re evolving.
Tori: It’s a Gambino quote too, that he just came out. He was like, I think the, like the price is
Mallory: successful, successful, successful is being cringe.
Tori: Yeah.
Mallory: Yeah. And you know, I’ve, I’ve experienced this a lot after my first business too, where like the people that maybe were making the sideline comments are not necessarily supportive.
All of a sudden it’s the hey girl dm.
Tori: dm. Oh,
Mallory: absolutely. And, oh, I was just, you know, I have this business idea. I was wondering if I could pick your brain, um, because you, you’ve. Have been so successful in it. Right? And so I think it’s such wasted energy. If I had spent all that time thinking about that person and like having them hold me back when ironically just going for it actually meant those people were gonna turn around and change their mind.
Tori: Yeah. And I think if we talk so much about this on the show about if you are living your life to make other people comfortable at the expense of your own joy or your own comfort. Yeah. Like, is that a life you wanna live?
Mallory: live? There’s [00:25:00] actually a really great trend I’ve been seeing where it’s something like, um, it’s like, so-and-so said you’re so cringe or so and so said, you’re so annoying online.
And then it’s like, oh, great. They didn’t say I was mean, they didn’t say I was a bad person. It’s like, if all that I am is cringe, that’s pretty good. Well, again,
Tori: it’s like, it’s the cringey. Yeah. You only feel cringey because it’s, you’re seeing somebody go for their
Mallory: Yeah. Also, and
Tori: you’re not,
Mallory: life is kind of cringey.
I give myself the ick all the time. Yeah.
Tori: well, it’s like it was what happened? Anytime I can weave in Timothy Shala May, I’m gonna take it, but he had, he won the SAG award for his Bob Dylan movie
Mallory: Mm-hmm.
Tori: he did this great speech where he was like, I want to be great. Like he said in the speech, he’s like, I want to be one of the greats.
Mm-hmm. And there was a certain sub subset of the internet that was like, oh, you’re so pompous. You’re so full of yourself. And the other part was like, why wouldn’t you want to be great? And why wouldn’t you wanna say that Now greatness can be winning Oscars and doing all of that. Greatness can just be, you know what, [00:26:00] I have enough time to go to school pickup every single day.
Yeah. Like I’ve built myself a certain. Life where I can do all of the things I want to do. Yeah. And I never have to say yes when I don’t want to, and I never have to say no when I don’t want to.
Mallory: Yeah. It’s not embarrassing to take the steps required to get the life you want. I think a lot of people probably look up to you and they don’t look at the things you did as cringe.
They look at where you are and go, wow, how did she do that?
Tori: And it was
Mallory: by being cringe.
Tori: It was,
Mallory: And
Tori: again, I. I’m glad I look back though and it’s a little cringey. ’cause it means I’ve grown. It means I’ve actually
Mallory: learned. Exactly.
Tori: only way you learn, the only way you figure this out, if you think you wanna be an entrepreneur, the only way you know for sure is by doing it and then going, yeah, that felt good.
Or I’m gonna tweak this one thing and see if it feels better. Or actually, this is not for me at all. Yeah, but wouldn’t she rather know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Brief here. I don’t have the followers. Right. What, uh. I [00:27:00] have to be on camera, I have to do social media. I don’t wanna be an influencer. Like what can you do if you wanna build a kind of business where you don’t have to show up online?
Mallory: Yeah. I think, I mean, I think we see so much on social and we see that entrepreneurship journey online, but a lot of businesses are not built online. Right.
Tori: The probably the reason you’re listening to this podcast is that you saw me or Mel on Instagram or TikTok or something and like that is one path. A hundred percent.
Mallory: Yeah, and I think there’s versions of showing up online. I had a student that was a mortgage broker and she wasn’t even that comfortable with feed content. She’s a little bit older. It was just a really big learning curve.
And so she started just doing Instagram stories and she was doing mortgage q and As, and she was getting. You know, she had less than probably 1200 followers to start and she was getting clients through that, and that was her version of showing up. And by getting more clients and then also using her offline channel, she was able to then build a team.
And then you can have different people on the team too that maybe do like to do those kind [00:28:00] of. Things. Yeah. But it actually allowed her to get out of a lot of the doing in her business because sh finding that way of showing up instead of just not showing up at all, meant that then she could grow, she could add to her team, she could, um, really change her role in her business, especially as a mom, right.
Being able to take that mat leave as a self-employed person and take more time to be with her kids.
Tori: Well, and what you just said, which is 1200 followers and she’s making decent money. I mean, my partner’s not posting on social media at all.
He’s about to land his first client
Mallory: Mm-hmm.
Tori: At 2,500 bucks and like did not post on social media once. Yeah. Has a website that we built over the weekend. Like you don’t need a million followers.
Mallory: And like, I kind of feel like the hard truth sometimes is like, sometimes there’s just elements of doing anything that you want where you have to work through and you’re like, this is intimidating me, or this is a little un uncomfy at first.
And I
Tori: what, can I give an example? Yeah, like what was your example of that? Because I do feel like sometimes you just gotta suck it up buttercup and do it.
Mallory: Oh one that I [00:29:00] said to you,
Tori: you, or one that you feel, I can give you one
Mallory: you Oh, yeah. I mean, I was gonna say, I feel like people don’t realize social media for a lot of business owners or even content creators, people go through these waves of saying,
Tori: I said to you yesterday, I literally said we were walking
Mallory: A lot of us are in this
Tori: And I was like, I don’t own to post on Instagram, but I know I need to. Yeah. And I like don’t have any ideas, but it’s like
Mallory: There’s so many massive creators and business owners in my life right now that have such a ugh, with social media and it at the same time. It’s like if you asked us all if we were walking away, it’s like, no.
Right. I just wanna have my little temper tantrum and it’s okay to do that and then just work
Tori: are one that people hear a lot of. Like, I just wanna be a creative business owner. I don’t wanna worry about making money. And I’m like, you cannot run the creative business you wanna run. Yeah. Unless you know where the money’s coming
Mallory: Yeah. And something we talk a lot about is different content categories that you don’t always have to be making content that’s designed to become a massive influencer. You can actually lean into certain content categories [00:30:00] that will just help, um, build a really strong trust with your existing community.
And you would be surprised how many conversions I had, actually, a different mortgage broker. Um, similarly had. 1400 followers. We started posting a little bit differently on her account and she got a lead every time she would post. That’s crazy. Yeah. Insane, right? But it’s because people connected with her and they got to know her.
And sometimes it’s even just that reminder like, oh yeah, that person is a mortgage broker. ’cause they’re popping up in my feed. Right.
Tori: Okay. So for everybody listening, again, we have a free resource that we can direct you to. It is actually so impactful. I’m not gonna bullshit everybody and be like, go sign up for this.
But it’s like step by step going to help you figure out what your idea should be. Yeah. Get you outta your own head, actually get you started. Okay. So before we talk about specifically how entrepreneurship changed our lives. Mm-hmm. Let’s focus on some of the themes because all of these.
Mallory: you know,
Tori: I am not, I don’t feel ready.
I don’t have an idea. These all come back to one. It’s not that serious, bro.[00:31:00]
Mallory: Yeah.
Tori: It’s not that serious. This is not life or death. Yeah. Again, just like any other hobby, you can pick it up. You can figure out how good you wanna be at it. Yeah. You can say, ah, actually this isn’t for me. I don’t like knitting. I like crocheting.
Cool. You’re gonna pivot your business. Great. I think it’s also the perfectionism mindset, which is. I have to do it perfectly or not at all. I’ve said it many times on this show. Liz Gilbert has a quote that I live by, which is perfectionism is fear and stilettos. Mm-hmm. It is fear. It’s fear looking stupid.
Fear that you’re failing. Fear that somebody’s gonna make fun of you, fear that maybe you don’t know enough. Yeah. And then I think comparison and overwhelm are also in this too, which is like you are comparing yourself to maybe malorie. To people you see online.
Mallory: Oh my gosh. We still do it
Tori: Yeah, we still do it.
But like how many years in business are you? When did you start your first business?
Mallory: 10 years ago. Almost 11.
Tori: Yep. And I am nine, almost 10 years ago. Mm-hmm. So if you’re comparing yourself as a newbie business owner or as [00:32:00] somebody who wants to be a business owner. Hopefully you’re using Malone as inspiration, but not comparison.
We know a lot more. Yeah. We’ve been at this a lot longer.
Mallory: a whole episode on all the mistakes that we’ve ever made.
Tori: truly, and like I look up to business owners who are 10 years ahead of me. Mm-hmm. Or who, you know, I think, oh, that’s a really interesting way of running her business that
Mallory: that I thought about.
Mm-hmm.
Tori: thought about.
So use comparison as inspiration, not as. This is the reason I can’t do it is they know something. I don’t know. We probably do. We prob we know a lot that you don’t know
Mallory: because we went for it.
Tori: Because we did it. And then I think that overwhelm piece too of like, I need the brand, I need the website, I need the logo, I need, like what would
Mallory: even talk about? Well, and I think starting is the fastest way to squash that overwhelm. Yes. Because if you just decide, I’m starting with the website. Then your brain is just gonna be on the website, right? It’s like all those other things start to go away. If I’m just gonna start by running a social media account, you know, I had, um, another student that wanted to start coaching and was [00:33:00] so overwhelmed by the tech side of things, and so we launched just with her Instagram profile, like no sales page, no nothing.
She was able to fill her group program and even have a wait list.
Tori: I launched my partners, we, we launched it with literally just a like long landing page.
Yeah. We don’t have an about page, we don’t have like a contact form. It’s just like,
Mallory: yeah, you don’t need much Used
Tori: a Squarespace template and called it good.
Mallory: And I think the other thing I like to point out is it’s almost like a bit of being bit by a bug of like if entrepreneurship has always been on your brain.
And even if you can’t land on that idea, I think like if it’s something that intrigues you, it doesn’t go away. And so it’s one of those, like, not everybody has those dreams, and so if it is in you, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t go for it and see if you like it.
Tori: Talk to me about why ready is not a feeling.
Mallory: We saw a great quote the other day that’s like, ready is not a feeling, it’s a decision.
Tori: The like, I don’t feel ready. That’s not an emotion. [00:34:00] Anger’s an emotion. Mm-hmm. Sadness is an emotion. Ready is not an
Mallory: Like Imagine Inside Out.
Tori: Right? There’s a ready,
Mallory: called Ready,
Tori: She’s like, I’m either ready or
Mallory: not in the back corner.
She just presses a button. Like
Tori: That’s literally what we’re talking about though, is it’s like you can tell me and I’m gonna give you tough love.
You can tell me I don’t feel ready. You will never. Ever, ever feel ready? Yeah.
Mallory: I don’t feel ready. I
Tori: I don’t feel ready either. I didn’t feel ready. I still don’t feel ready sometimes. Yeah. And again, this is where it’s like you are getting caught up in trying to answer questions that are five years from now,
Mallory: Mm-hmm. Well, and what, you know, we keep talking about how we keep feeling these feelings and I think that’s a big theme of a lot of these things that might hold you back at the start of the business are actually challenges you continue to face.
So by. Taking that decision to work through them the first time. That does make you an entrepreneur. That does put you in the right mindset to be a business owner, and it’s a really important skillset and you’re gonna get better and better at it. There’s [00:35:00] always gonna be things that feel scary. I’m sure when you signed, I was gonna, I was like, wait, you’re a bad example.
Maybe for this. I was gonna say your book deal, you might be scared, right? Of, you know,
Tori: was very
Mallory: What if this fails? What if I’m not the person?
Tori: It was more when the book came out, it was like, what if I’ve put all of this time and energy into something? No one likes it. Yeah. Or people read it and they’re like, actually that wasn’t very
Mallory: Yeah. So you’re gonna keep going through those feelings at every stage. Yeah, right.
Tori: the podcast. What if nobody listens? What
Mallory: Yeah. It’s like good news and bad news, right? Yeah. This isn’t the first time you’re gonna feel that way, but if you can start exercising that muscle of just taking action to work through it, I’m a big fan of just like put three things on a to-do list.
Circle the first one, and like that’s how you’re gonna work through those feelings and
Tori: the analysis paralysis. It’s such a good point, mal. ’cause everything we just talked about, again, I don’t feel ready, I don’t have the right idea.
Like, uh, I’ve never sold anything. I’m not that kind of person like you are going to encounter as somebody who’s, you know, both of us have been in this for a decade. You are going to encounter those feelings [00:36:00] every time you do something new in the business. Yeah. Like I’ve never managed a profit and loss spreadsheet.
I’ve, I don’t know how to do this. Okay. I’ve never launched a book. Yeah, I’ve never launched a podcast.
Mallory: But again, tell me you don’t feel that way in life. There’s all the time. A new recipe. You’re like, huh, I’ve never done this before.
Tori: before. I’ve never gotten divorced before. I’ve never gotten remarried before.
Like, exactly. All of these things are, I’ve never had children before. I’ve never gotten a dog before. Yeah.
Mallory: There’s just something about this career element that I think people end up really holding themselves back because they’re so scared of the idea of failing around that.
Tori: Right. Because it, it’s caught up in our
Mallory: identity. Mm-hmm.
Tori: If I fail at this, I am a failure. It’s not an incident
Mallory: happened.
Yeah. It’s
Tori: an identity. I am a failure. Yeah, and you’re not. It’s all right to go for things. And if they were, again, like what’s truly the worst that can happen?
Mallory: happen?
Tori: I know we’re asked this question a lot. When
Mallory: you end up where you started.
Tori: that’s the worst thing that can happen.
What’s the best? [00:37:00] What’s the best?
Okay, so we’ll talk about the best. Let’s talk about how entrepreneurship changed our lives when we come back from break. Stay tuned. Okay. So we can talk all we want about building a business and being business owners, but.
Let’s give some concrete ways that our life got better when we became entrepreneurs. Yeah.
Mallory: I mean. Not to be kind of a dick about it, but I can wake up whenever I want. Yes. You know, I think there’s the day-to-day ways that are really nice, and I think especially for people with, um, like neurodivergent folks, people with disabilities, there’s so many aspects that I find are.
Underlooked for entrepreneurship. Parents for me? Yeah. Caregivers. Sensory overload. Like, there’s so much in my life that I find in the day to day, it’s like I can choose to work in a setting that feels good for me. Yep. I can choose to make the hours, I can choose to wake up one morning and say, I thought today was gonna be super productive.
And actually I just need to. [00:38:00] Watch TV and go for a walk and yeah. Change up the pace. Right. And I think that in itself, for me, in the day to day has really been life changing. Especially as a woman. I could talk about menstrual cycles all day. Yeah. But you know, waking up in a certain part of your cycle and being able to make your.
Schedule based on that or make accommodations. So I think day to day accommodations is huge. And then for me it’s about collecting memory dividends. That’s something that, uh, bill Perkins talks about a lot in Die With Zero of. We talk about like dividends from investing, but thinking of memory, dividends of, are you, I almost picture them like, um, super, super Mario.
Super Mario is, Tori would prefer me to say, um, the coins and that like, I think of collecting the coins of. When I look at all of the life experiences, entrepreneurship has brought me, I’ve been to Mexico to tour properties, right? I’ve got to meet, um, the author of one of my favorite books and like hung out with them and now have a close friendship with, I’ve done more trips than I can [00:39:00] count, and it’s all because of that.
Tori: Yeah. The thing that, as your resident financial expert, I have to tell you, you can do all of the financially responsible things. We were mentioning this up top. Mm-hmm. You can negotiate your salary every time I talk about that a lot. You can pay off your debt. Have many episodes about how to do that. You can save.
Money, you can save your emergency fund or save to buy a house. You can buy property. If you are financially able to do so, you can do all of the right financial things and still not make enough money. Mm-hmm. To live. And that is a hundred percent a systemic issue.
Mallory: Yep.
Tori: And also my not so conspiracy, conspiracy theory is we are taught, especially as minority groups, as women, people of color, L-G-B-T-Q, like you are taught.
To have a certain path in your career and in your life [00:40:00] that’s very linear.
Mallory: Mm-hmm.
Tori: And my suspicion is, is that path is taught to keep you underpaid, overworked. Mm-hmm. And not really loving your life. And there’s a reason I went from a hundred k net worth of 25 to less than two years later at 27 years old being a multimillionaire.
I invested, I did all the right things. That got me to my first a hundred K. The reason that we went from a hundred K to Multimillions in less than two years is single handedly because of entrepreneurship. There is no other reason.
Mallory: Oh, absolutely. Even my first business, I didn’t start investing until after that first business.
I had learned so many lessons. Finally learned more about, um, money. And then with my next business, I was able to look more even further through that personal finance lens. I feel like business one, I knew like, okay, entrepreneurship is a path for personal finance. Right? And then business [00:41:00] two, I got to really zero in on that.
And then in less than five years, I went from not investing to a million dollar net worth before 30. Right? Yep. So, and that is what? Fuels a lot of the things I was talking about of being able to then wake up and have that, that day-to-day freedom to be able to create those memory dividends to, you know, bail on my workday because my sister needs me to pick up my nephew.
Yeah. Or things like that.
Tori: Or to do like actually impactful work. That feels
Mallory: good. Totally.
Tori: There’s so many people I talk to who are like.
Mallory: like,
Tori: I work at X company that I don’t really like working for, but it pays me. Okay. Or I feel like I can’t leave. And yeah, my boss is terrible. The work we do. Yeah. Makes me feel a little icky.
Yeah. And when you run a business, not only do you get to work from everywhere and travel and fund your life, like again, if you have goals to be debt free, this is the easiest way to do it. If you have goals of buying a house. If you have goals of saving a certain amount of money. Yeah. [00:42:00] Like entrepreneurship is your rocket ship to get you there.
Yeah. And also you get to do work that actually feels like you’re making a difference. Like both of us meet people Yeah. Every single day. Who come up to us in public now who say, your work changed my life.
Mallory: Yeah.
Tori: I was never ever gonna have that experience working a nine to five job.
Mallory: No. And I think, I think people get so scared of the income dip.
That you might take at first if you’re like, oh, well I’m on path for this in my business, so I have to sacrifice the salary to go after my dreams to have that impact. But actually what you’ll realize has we both have with entrepreneurship is that you, there actually is a world where you have both, you are going to make more money than at your corporate job, and you’re gonna have the impact.
Tori: Yeah. And again, we’re not looking at entrepreneurship through rose color goggles. There are plenty of businesses that don’t work out. Yep. But again, wouldn’t you rather have gone for it? So, you know, I’ve talked about my net [00:43:00] worth. I’ve talked about, you know, the flexibility of taking Fridays off to be with my partner.
I’m about to do six weeks in Europe, not working at all to do a cooking intensive in Italy that I’m just so excited about and literally like worked through with my therapist where she’s like, Hey, you’ve worked really hard to build this business. Let’s have something to show for. Let’s go do something fun.
And she’s like, what would you do? And I was like, cooking intensive in Italy. And she’s like, really? And I was like, yeah. And like immediately I was just like, this sounds incredible.
Mallory: Mm-hmm. And
Tori: I get to do that. Not when I’m 68 and retired. Yep. I get to do it at 31.
Mallory: Yep. That’s how I feel about our cottage. Yeah, yeah,
Tori: So you bought a cottage. Yep.
Mallory: ’cause we were like, I would rather have it in our thirties to have all of these memories and experiences with our friends and family now, and not wait until we’re 60 and retired. A lot of our neighbors on the lake, right. They’re there in their retirement and it’s lovely, but they’re restricted.
Tori: It’s gonna make me cry. I have friends who didn’t make it to 30.
Mallory: Mm-hmm.
Tori: I have. I’m sure I’m gonna have friends who didn’t make it to 40, like, don’t wait to live a life. [00:44:00] That feels good. Yeah. You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to like put in 40 years. To earn it. And like everything we’re talking about, none of this happened from a paycheck.
No, none of this
Mallory: happens from a patient.
Tori: The ability to do work, we care about the ability to take care of our families. Mm-hmm. And the people we love most. The ability to donate a lot of money, like that’s where I’m at, is like I’m donating so much money to causes that I really love
Mallory: Yeah.
Tori: buying property, doing all the things we wanna do.
That happened
Mallory: So what if somebody’s like, okay, I’m in. I wanna be an entrepreneur, but I have a thousand ideas floating around and I can never land on one.
Tori: Here we go. Okay. So we created this idea challenge for you. It is entirely free. You can sign up, down below. It is 72 hours.
You’re gonna have your business idea. Mm-hmm. Anything else I’m missing? Nope. Great.
Mallory: simple.
Tori: Great. Keep it simple. Don’t overcomplicate it. Yeah, it’s not that serious, bro. Okay, Mel, thank you so much for being here. Tell me everything about you and I didn’t really give you [00:45:00] a proper intro. Tell me everything about you plugging.
No, but I say this both to her face and behind her back that she is probably the most brilliant marketer I know. And. Is so smart about building her own businesses, but then teaching people how to set up a business. Whether it is, I just wanna make enough money to live and pick my kids up from school and like do what I wanna do, versus like, I wanna scale this business ’cause I wanna make a massive impact.
And so I just love you personally. We’re very close friends and then I also just admire everything you’ve built. So thank you. Thank you. Okay. Tell me everything about you. Meaning plug away my friend.
Mallory: Okay. It’s like, do you want my full life story at the end of this podcast
Tori: number? I want everything.
Mallory: Um, you can pretty much find me at Mallory Rowan everywhere. Instagram is my main platform. My website’s mallory rowan.com. If you’re looking for business coaching or anything like that, happy to have a conversation in the dms or shoot me an email
Tori: and we’re launching something really exciting. Call the Business Bootcamp. We’ve done it before in the past, but we’re kind of, we’ve renovated it now for 2025, and [00:46:00] that free Idea generator is a great place to get started.
So you can come into Business Bootcamp with that idea. So again, head on to the link down below. We will see you there.
Thank you for being here, Mel. Thanks.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist a Her First $100K podcast. 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.
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.
