I recently sat down on a couch in beautiful Laguna Beach with four women who’ve made over $100 million combined.
And what they have to say will change the way you think about business.
This episode is different from our usual format. It’s a live panel conversation recorded at a seven-figure entrepreneur mastermind, where I’m joined by Adley Kinsman (founder of Viralish, Vanessa Marin (licensed sex therapist and co-founder of Vanessa and Xander), Maria Wendt (entrepreneur and educator who’s sold over $21 million in low-ticket products), and Natasha Willis (co-founder of School of Bots). Together we get into the self-sabotaging beliefs that keep people from starting a business, what money actually buys beyond the sexy parts of entrepreneurship, whether ambition and rest can coexist, and the money beliefs each of us had to unlearn to get here.
Key takeaways
Your first business is never the business you end up running
Adley Kinsman shared that she’s had roughly 20 iterations of Viralish, and expects another one or two by year’s end, because, in her words, “success loves speed.” She started bankrupt, without money to pay for courses or mentors, and had to figure things out through trial and error. Her take: constraints force creativity. When you don’t have unlimited resources or information, you’re forced to pick a path and get good at it, rather than trying to Frankenstein together advice from ten different sources.
You don’t have a knowledge problem, you have a discipline problem
Maria Wendt made $63 in her first year in business and $350 in her second. It took her two years to make $400. What changed wasn’t more information; it was believing that making money didn’t have to be as hard as she’d made it. Once she shifted that belief, she says her brain started finding ways to make it true. Her broader point: most new entrepreneurs overcomplicate the process and don’t give themselves permission to make it easy.
Identity has to come before the proof
Adley described believing she’d be wealthy someday even while bankrupt, with zero evidence to support it — and acting accordingly. Her argument is that people get manifestation backwards: they want the outcome without becoming the person who has it first. The identity shift has to happen before the circumstances change, not after.
Confidence comes before action — not the other way around
Vanessa Marin drew a direct line between entrepreneurship and her work as a sex therapist: people wait to feel confident before they take a risk, when it actually works in reverse. You build confidence by doing the thing that requires it, surviving it, and repeating that process. As Tori put it in the conversation, “ready” isn’t a feeling you wait for — it’s a decision you make.
Money buys more than the “sexy parts” of business ownership
For Vanessa, entrepreneurship meant being able to financially support her father through a stage-four cancer diagnosis and take the time off to be at his appointments and recovery. For Natasha Willis, it’s meant a sense of safety — knowing she and her family would be okay no matter what happens. For Maria, it’s meant being present for her daughter while running a seven-figure business two days a week. Across the board, the panel agreed: the real gift isn’t the income ceiling — it’s the flexibility and options money creates when life gets hard.
Wanting money isn’t greedy
Maria had to unlearn the idea that desiring money made her a bad person. Adley had to unlearn that money was hard to make, crediting years of scrappy hustle — selling insurance door to door, flipping phone cases, even raising and reselling baby pigs — with teaching her to see opportunity everywhere. Vanessa had to learn to actively pay attention to money at all, pushing back against the “Sleeping Beauty” socialization many women receive around finances. Tori tied it back to a bigger point: money in the hands of women changes outcomes for families and communities, which is exactly why the discomfort around wanting it matters.
Making money and building a business are not the same skill
Adley drew a sharp distinction: posting constantly to win a Snapchat cash giveaway was making money — it wasn’t a business, because the moment she stopped showing up, the income stopped. A business, as Tori framed it, is a system that keeps running without you having to personally feed it every day. Learning to make money is often the entry point; building something durable is the next, separate skill.
Notable quotes
“Identity has to come before the proof.” — Adley Kinsman
“The more I started loving money, the more money started loving me.” — Maria Wendt
“You build confidence by taking action that requires confidence.” — Vanessa Marin
“Ready is not a feeling, it’s a decision.” — Tori Dunlap
Episode at-a-glance
00:00 Intro
01:30 Self-sabotaging narratives and startup myths
04:25 From therapist to entrepreneur: overcoming the “business is dirty” belief
05:35 Making money is easier than you think
08:30 What entrepreneurship gives you beyond money
12:17 Identity before proof: what successful entrepreneurs know
14:55 The volume and obsession success requires
18:55 Ambition vs. rest: finding your version of “enough”
23:15 The moral responsibility to scale your business
29:43 Boundaries: what to share publicly
34:05 Money beliefs you had to unlearn
37:22 The ostrich effect: why you avoid your money
39:30 Making money vs. building a business
Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode!
Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode!
Links:
Adley Kinsman (Viralish) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adley
Vanessa Marin (Vanessa and Xander) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/VanessaandXandr
Maria Wendt Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maria.wendt
Natasha Willis (School of Bots) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/NatashaTWillis
Learn the exact strategies to save money, pay off debt, improve your money mindset, and increase your net worth. Get your personalized plan: https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
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Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
The women sitting with me on the couch today have made over a hundred million dollars, and here’s what we know about money that we’re ready to teach you. I recorded this week’s podcast on the sunny shores of Laguna Beach at a seven-figure entrepreneur mastermind, and I sat down with four women who are absolutely killing it in their businesses. This conversation is not about spreadsheets or strategy. It is about the identity shift that must happen before you actually start making good money. And it has all of the secrets of high earners that you need to hear in order to level up your money story. So today I’m sitting down with Adley Kinsman, Vanessa Marin, Maria Went, Natasha Willis, and yes, myself. And we’re talking about what it really takes to build wealth, whether ambition and rest can coexist, and the money beliefs we each had to unlearn to get here. This episode is one of the most powerful transformations you can make in how you think about and earn money. So let’s get into it.
But first, a word from our sponsors.
I’m so excited to chat with you all. Tell me how your business makes money in one second. Maria, I’ll start with you.
Maria Wendt:
Low ticket products. I’ve made $21 million with $27 products.
Tori Dunlap:
Incredible. Vanessa?
Vanessa Marin:
Low ticket products as well.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing. We teach women to be good with money. That’s how we operate.
Adley Kinsman:
We teach businesses how to go viral so they can spend less on paid ads and grow a viral brand.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing. That was Adley and Natasha.
Natasha Willis:
We help the top accounts on Instagram maximize their revenue through our done for you services.
Tori Dunlap:
Boom. So when we think about entrepreneurship, I think that anybody listening, there is this belief that I can’t be an entrepreneur for whatever reason. Can you walk me through when you started being a business owner, what were the self-sabotaging narratives that you had that someone out there probably has as well? Natasha, you want to go first?
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. I think one of the biggest traps that I see people fall into is that they think they need more information. And so they constantly are stopping themselves from taking action and just continue to plan, plan, plan, plan.
Tori Dunlap:
The analysis paralysis part?
Natasha Willis:
Yes, exactly. And so for each person, it looks a little bit different, but at the end of the day, oftentimes it is just you’re trying to consume more information. And so I think one of the best things that you can do in that situation is just get off of social media, put up a blocker through whatever app you want to, and just completely get narrow focus so that you can just get something launched out there. And the quote of you should be embarrassed by your first product or your first whatever is so freaking true. And it just means that you are able to move fast enough to where now you’re iterating just faster and faster from there. And I think all of you are a great example of that. Or you look back five years ago, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I posted that” or “I can’t believe that was my customer experience.” But that’s exactly what you want to see because otherwise then you’re not iterating quickly enough to be able to just fail faster by pulling the future forward in that way.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I think Adley, you and I have talked and we talked yesterday about how many iterations you’ve had in the business. So maybe talk to us about your first business is not the business you’re running now.
Adley Kinsman:
Your first business is not the business you’re running now.
Tori Dunlap:
So good.
Adley Kinsman:
Never. I think I’ve had 20 … I’m not kidding, 20 iterations of Viralish and I’ll have maybe another iteration or two by the end of the year because success loves speed. And I was bankrupt when I started as an entrepreneur, but I just think entrepreneurship is trying to find the problems that you uniquely can solve and that you’re interested in solving. And then you get paid in direct proportion to the size of the problem that you’re solving. And so I didn’t have money to spend on information that was gate kept 10 years ago. And so I had to just try on my own and fail because I couldn’t afford the courses or to learn from a mentor and pay to be in their programs. But I credit so much of our now success and the woman that I try to be today to moving as fast as possible.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and I love talking about money. What you just said, I think is another narrative people believe is I need a bunch of money to start a business. And I started with 40 bucks. I think most of us started with very little money and you were bankrupt when you started.
Adley Kinsman:
I was. And I think it’s such a blessing because I think the constraints leave a lot of room for creativity.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. They force you to figure shit out.
Adley Kinsman:
They force you rather than if you have all the options and you can take all the courses and all the information out there is free, then you’re trying to take an ingredient from this person, ingredient from this person, ingredient from this person and make a cake and you wonder why your cake doesn’t work. You wonder why it doesn’t rise and why it tastes like crap because you’re mixing all the ingredients rather than just picking a path with a limited scope because of your constraints and able to get really creative within that and come up with solutions that other people wouldn’t have come up with otherwise.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. Well, and Vanessa, I think about you because your experience is I think so many people where you have a very “Normal job.” You talk about sex for a living, but you were a therapist. You had a job that wouldn’t immediately think, “Oh, I’m going to create content or I’m going to be an entrepreneur.” So how did you transition from someone who took clients to now being a content creator, but also a business owner?
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah. So I am a licensed sex therapist and our business … I work with my husband. We specialize in helping couples in long-term relationships still want to have sex with each other even after all of these years. And I think my struggle with entrepreneurship was something that a lot of people struggle with where I though, I’m a therapist. I went to school for this. I want to help people. The business stuff, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I never got any training in it. I’m here to help people. And I think a lot of us helpers, we also think that business is dirty in a way. I don’t learn how to sell to people. I just want to help them. So having to overcome that and recognize nobody is really going to school for this. We’re all starting from nothing and trying to figure it out on our own and just throwing stuff out there and making mistakes and learning from that and reiterating over and over again.
Tori Dunlap:
Maria, you’re teaching thousands of entrepreneurs at this point. When you look at the mistakes they’re making, how are they sabotaging themselves?
Maria Wendt:
Yeah. It’s a great question. I’m super proud. We’re almost at the 200,000 customer mark, so we’re getting very close.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s incredible.
Maria Wendt:
Yeah. Every day we get 200 new customers. Something that I don’t think got mentioned, but I think it’s so important that I observe in looking at what do new entrepreneurs do to sabotage themselves, what do they do to keep themselves from success? I just think that they think it’s a lot harder than it actually is. I really think that they don’t give themselves permission to make it easy. They over complicate it. I saw this quote and it was so good. It was like, “You don’t have a knowledge problem, you have a discipline problem.” And I think that if we understood that it’s actually quite easy to make money, it’s quite simple to make money, and we just started believing that belief and we’re like, “What does that actually look like for it to be easy to welcome money into our life?” That for me is when it clicked because I spent so many years at first, $63 in my first year is what I made. And then the second year I only made $350. So it took me two years to make $400, and it’s because I believed that it was very, very hard to make money. But once I shifted that belief and I was like, “Actually, it’s very easy to make money,” my brain started trying to find ways to make that true. And it has become so easy.
And so one of the first things I work on with my students is this is not hard. This is not hard. And any industry can do it. I always say I have a student who’s made over a million dollars teaching parents how to knit felt hats for their kids’ birthdays. This is the most random industry. Anyone can make money and it’s a lot easier than you think. And I think we don’t say that enough as leaders in our space. It’s actually quite easy. This is not that hard.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I think that that’s a belief that I see a lot is that there is something that we all have, some DNA trait that we have that the average person doesn’t. And I’m like, there are privileges that we all have, absolutely. But I think that there is like, “Oh, you have a certain degree or you knew a certain person.” And it’s like not, I just put in a shit ton of work and it wasn’t glamorous.
Maria Wendt:
Not at all. And I think therein is the answer. It’s actually really empowering to say, yes, I’ve had things that have made my life easier and I also just sat down and did the work and anyone can. I really want that to come across as anyone can make money doing what they love. I’ve seen it to almost 200,000 people. And I just really want beginners to have that belief because if they have that belief, they’re going to work through the kinks which will keep them from quitting. That’s what we want is we want to keep new people from quitting.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Well, and one of the things you talk about is giving people access to just a couple of thousand dollars extra a month because it’s going to be easy to look at all of us. We are all seven figure founders. We’re making millions of dollars every year. And someone watching is going, I don’t know if I need millions of dollars. Which first of all, let’s hope you want millions of dollars, right? But there is this belief of, no, I just need a little bit of money. And I think that is something that entrepreneurship can grant you in a way that you’re nine to five it’s just really tricky to do.
Maria Wendt:
Yeah. I always say I don’t want to help a few people make millions of dollars. I want to help millions of people make a few extra thousand dollars a month, which I think is very realistic.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. If you had 2K extra a month, what would you do?
Maria Wendt:
Yes, it’s life changing. It really is. And that’s so achievable.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. So when we think about the way we view money, you were mentioning this before, when I talk about money for a living, it makes people uncomfortable because we, I think as women have been told that money is bad, that we should push away money, that the pursuit of money is wrong. And one thing that I am so passionate about is women unapologetically wanting to be rich. What did entrepreneurship give you in your financial life besides just all of the maybe sexy parts of running a business? What did entrepreneurship buy for you?
Adley Kinsman:
Entrepreneurship more than anything else has given me immense amounts of self-confidence because as an entrepreneur, you were getting kicked in the face left and right with things you never saw coming.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally.
Adley Kinsman:
People betraying you, you never saw ever in your future that were going to betray you. And you just never imagined these things to happen. And you get a resilience and a self-trust over time because you’ve overcome imposter syndrome, not once, but usually several times throughout your journey. And so when you’ve been kicked that many times and you are still here and you’re still going, I believe that I can overcome anything.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. Natasha?
Natasha Willis:
100%. Yeah. I think along that same thread, the thing that comes to mind for me is both the confidence and also I feel very safe and protected because I know that even if I, God forbid, lost my partner tomorrow or something else happened in my life, I would be okay because I would be able to have food and shelter and far more than what I need and still be able to feel like I have the option to go and be whatever I want to be because I have those options, which I love you are always saying how money does give you options and that is the biggest gift that you can give to yourself. And all of us truly in the world deserve to have that as an option, but it only happens when you start to believe that for yourself.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And we were talking about this inside, but one of the things I think about all the time is when shit does hit the fan, the last thing you want to think about is money. And that’s the gift for me of entrepreneurship is I earn more money than I could make in a nine to five and I also get to run my business the way I want to run my business. When I was working for somebody else, it was just really toxic environments. My income was capped. I didn’t like making someone I did not respect rich. And I think that when you are an entrepreneur, you get to run your business how you want, you get to provide the benefits you want to provide. And also you get to change the way you think about money and change what your financial picture looks like.
Vanessa Marin:
Entrepreneurship gave me the ability to take care of my dad. He was diagnosed with stage four cancer at the end of last year, given an absolutely terrible prognosis. And entrepreneurship gave me the ability to support financially, to take time off and be able to go to appointments and help him recover from surgeries and treatments. I cannot fathom what it would’ve been like to go through this journey. Just gets me emotional. Even just thinking about it to have to go through this journey and not have that opportunity.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, the flexibility.
Vanessa Marin:
Flexibility.
Tori Dunlap:
And that’s what I’m here too. The money’s nice, but it’s the flexibility. It’s the ability to take time off. It’s the ability to work when you want. It’s I’m not able to show up today and act like a normal human being because shit’s going down and offers you a ton of flexibility that a nine to five just doesn’t. Yeah.
Maria Wendt:
I think for me, entrepreneurship has given me the gift of being the exact kind of mama I want to be without compromising my financial goals. I make about a million dollars every single month and I work two days a week. And the rest of those five days a week, I’m at the beach with my daughter Ellie. I’m reading the nerdiest fantasy books. I paint. I always say I’m rich in time and I’m rich in money and I’m rich in love. And today’s my 13th anniversary of starting my business. So August 1st is my [inaudible 00:12:14]. I’ve been doing this for 13 years today. Thank you.
Vanessa Marin:
Wow.
Maria Wendt:
And I made that decision 13 years ago. You can’t predict, you can’t say it’s going to be this, but if I would’ve known I start this business and 13 years later I’m going to be a rich single mama living life on my terms, hell yeah, I would do this all over again. I’m very grateful.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. What do successful entrepreneurs know that the average person doesn’t?
Maria Wendt:
Great question.
Adley Kinsman:
Identity has to come before the proof.
Tori Dunlap:
Tell me what that means.
Adley Kinsman:
So for me, I delusionally believed, even when I was completely bankrupt, I had no evidence to support that I would be really wealthy someday. And nothing around me had to give me any indication of that, but I knew it. And so I acted accordingly and I just believed it even the circumstances were very, very bleak. And that identity resonated and then attracted what I wanted to me. And I think people get a lot of attraction backwards. I think that they just manifest and they just think, I want these things, I want these things, but they don’t become them first. When the identity shift happens before the proof, before the circumstance change, that’s when everything really unlocks for you. So identity has to come before the proof and you resonate and then that is what attracts what you want to you.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and manifestation is nice, but you can dream all you want, but a goal without a plan is just a wish.
Adley Kinsman:
Amen.
Tori Dunlap:
You can go, yeah, I want this life and it will come to me. This something that drives me crazy is some of the financial content I see is just like call in $250 to your wallet, call it in. People will comment claimed. And I’m just like, “No, that’s not how this works. This is a scam. That’s not how this works.” So yeah, you can want these things, but you have to go out and actually put in the work.
Adley Kinsman:
Be like, I am a millionaire. Okay. Then what would a millionaire do? Do the motions of that identity and then maybe you can call in the $250.
Tori Dunlap:
And also how do I unpack emotionally the feeling of I want to be a millionaire, oh, bathes in sweat immediately. Who am I to want to be a millionaire? Who am I to want wealth?
Vanessa Marin:
Yeah. Very similarly, confidence comes before action. And this is something that entrepreneurship and sex have in common.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Talk to me.
Vanessa Marin:
A lot of people with sex will tell me, well, I can’t do that because I’m not confident yet.
Tori Dunlap:
I can’t reverse cowgirl.
Vanessa Marin:
I can’t get on top and turn all the way around. I’m not confident yet.
Tori Dunlap:
No. It’s my knees. It’s my knees.
Vanessa Marin:
I can’t have my partners see me naked with the lights on. I’m not confident yet. We’re waiting to just magically all of a sudden from the sky, the confidence just falls into our lap and you become this magically confident person.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Ready is not a feeling, it’s a decision.
Vanessa Marin:
And that’s not how it works. You build confidence by taking action that requires confidence. That’s so true. And you take that step, you realize I survived. The world didn’t explode. I did it. You gain a little bit of confidence. You take another step, you realize you survived again. You get a little more confidence. So it’s the same in the bedroom as it is in entrepreneurship.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. It’s building that self-trust. Maria, what do successful people know that the average person doesn’t?
Maria Wendt:
I think successful people know what it takes. And I think sometimes they gatekeep how much it really takes because they’re scared of scaring people. But let’s be so for real. We’ve all put the reps in. We are at the top of our game and we’ve put the reps in. And I just really reflect so much on how if we knew … It’s a good thing we don’t know what it takes at the beginning. The long-term game, not just how to make money, you made money so fast, so easy, but to really be in this game and play this game at this level that we’re playing it for as long as we’ve been playing it, I would’ve fallen to my knees.
And so I think that successful people know what it takes and they’re not afraid of it. I just got done with one of the most grueling months of my whole career and I’m so proud and I’m so self-satisfied and I’m confident. Like you said, I’ve pushed myself to such a level and I have the pleasure of meeting … We all do. People at the top of our industry and they’re beasts, they’re animals. They do the work and they know what it takes and they’re not afraid of it. And I think that that is one of the big gaps between people who are just beginners and people that are very successful is they understand the volume that it takes to see success and they’re not afraid of it. They’re willing to do it.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Natasha, you’re working with so many entrepreneurs. You and I have worked together for three years. How do you see their behavior? How is it different than the person who wants to be an entrepreneur or wants to scale a business?
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. Obsession keeps coming back into my mind lately as the phrase, it’s so true that you do have to allow yourself to be obsessed and allow yourself to create an environment that allows you to be obsessed. So for example, a lot of people maybe don’t have the most supportive spouse who’s like, “Hey, it’s time for us to hang out. Maybe you should stop working as much,” so on and so forth. And so for each relationship, that dynamic is a little bit different because you have to come to the right expectations together of, “Hey, what do I really want out of this relationship?” And what am I-
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and seasons too.
Natasha Willis:
Absolutely. And so I think that people experience challenges around their life when they’re crushing it in business because they haven’t set the right expectations with the other people that they are in agreement with, whether that’s their husband or their kids or their family or friends or whatever it might be. And so I think being able to create the environment for yourself first is super important. Like you talked about confidence coming before the action. Absolutely. And I think it’s confidence and environment paired together because you can very quickly allow your confidence to be killed by external factors if you are in a friend group that’s like, “Why are you starting your own business? Oh, I saw your little social media posts.” Okay. Cringey, whatever it might be. And so you really do have to create that even though it’s going to be very lonely initially, knowing that and having faith in the fact that it’s going to allow you to become the person that then brings you the next circle of friends, the next circle of team members, whoever’s going to support you in that, to be able to do what you want to do. That you’re going to find your people.
So it’s that confidence, faith and environment that all need to be together initially in order for you to have those right ingredients. But it really is obsession. We were talking earlier, you’re talking about the volume of customers you’re currently bringing in and the entire customer journey that has to exist. It really is all about volume. We were talking about how many emails that you’re sending a day. We have clients that are doing $300 million a year. They send 20 emails a day. The volume, it becomes to the point where you’re like, “Oh, what I’m doing is still the small game and there’s so many more levels to the game.” But I think the most important part of it all is just deciding what do I actually want out of life? And not everybody wants to run a $300 million a year business.
Tori Dunlap:
I mean, I know.
Natasha Willis:
Some people do.
Maria Wendt:
I do.
Natasha Willis:
And it’s super important to have that awareness. And my husband has really brought that for me because I’m very much a person who’s like, “Let’s do more, let’s do more, let’s do more.” And I’ve realized that that’s not for everybody. And it’s most important to know that because if you go onto social media, you allow yourself to be brainwashed by too many different people and all of a sudden you feel conflicted with yourself, but you haven’t spent enough time with yourself to know what you want. So it’s like the most important thing is the confidence, the faith, the environment, and starting to bring awareness to what you want. And in order to do that, you need white space to allow that for yourself.
Tori Dunlap:
One of the things I struggled with a couple of years ago that I imagine every single one of us has struggled with, I have this feeling of ambition. I want everybody to know my name and I want to sell out stadiums and I want to write a million books that are bestsellers and I want all of that. And then at the same time, I want a cabin in the woods where nobody knows my name and I adopt a bunch of dogs and I do puzzles. And for me, it was really hard to see. I would swing back and forth. It was a pendulum for me for a very long time. It was like, “Oh, really intense.” And then it was like, “I want nothing to do with this.” And for me, I finally found the space where it was seasons. It was predicting there are times where I will push and I will do that intentionally and there are times where I will pause. So let’s discuss ambition versus a cabin in the woods or whatever that looks like to you. Balance is a myth, but how do you find the balance of those two things?
Adley Kinsman:
I think past $5 million a year, maybe even past a million dollars a year, life doesn’t look that much different whether you’re at five or 10 million a year. Your overhead can increase and different things can change. But as far as lifestyle, being able to order whatever you want off a menu or afford some of the luxuries in life, it doesn’t change that drastically versus maybe 300 million. But there’s levels to this. And I think the self-awareness to know what you are aiming at is so important because the top of every mountain is just the bottom of another. I remember going to my first 100K was the hardest, then the first million, even harder than that. And then after a million, the leverage changes and so it becomes a lot easier to make money after that.
Tori Dunlap:
It does. It really does.
Adley Kinsman:
And then so being able to know where we want in the spectrum is great because once you get to the top and you’re like, “I’m crushing it. 10 million a year.” Then you are around a different caliber of person that’s doing 25 plus and then I’m like, “Oh, I feel bad about myself versus did I want this in the first place? Is my quality of life everything that I ever dreamed of?” And my self-worth is not determined by adding another 20 million this year.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And there’s so many people listening who again are just like, “I want $2,000 extra a month. That would be really, really nice.” And then there’s other people who are like, “No, I want 50, $100 million.” And I think both of those can coexist. But to your point, as soon as you open the doors to another room, there will always be another room. And you have to decide. I think pre-deciding is helpful because once you’re in the room, you’re like, “I want to go see.”
Natasha Willis:
Now it’s an emotional … Yeah.
Adley Kinsman:
Yes. Yes. Yes. And are you willing to sacrifice what it requires to get to that next level? Because we could all say, “I want a $300 million company.” Sure. But are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to be the person it takes to do that? And then you have to answer that question very honestly. And it doesn’t make you less of a person if you’re not because you want more family time.
Tori Dunlap:
Give me one second because what you just said too, I have had experience with of there is some envy still that I have where I see somebody else because I’m ambitious, I am so supportive of other women. And also at the same time I’m like, “Oh, I want that too.” And then the thing I ask myself is, “Am I willing to do what she did to get it?” And if the answer is no, then I don’t really want it. And that’s okay. But that’s the question I start asking myself is if I look at somebody … And it’s so easy, maybe somebody listening is looking at one of or all of us and going, “Oh, I really want that.” And the point we’re trying to make is, are you willing to put in your reps? And if the answer is no, that’s fine. But then you can’t say you want it.
Vanessa Marin:
One thing that’s been really helpful for me is to bring it down to a much smaller scale and to think about what do I want my average day to look like? It’s so easy to spin out … And 10 million a year, 30 million a year, 300 million company. But if you shrink it back down to what actually feels important to me on a day-to-day basis, that’s been really helpful in grounding me. So two things emerged for me. One was I actually want a lot of space and freedom in my day. I do my absolute best work when I have a lot of spaciousness, when I don’t … meetings on the calendar all day long. I don’t have a million things on my plate. I have the most creativity. I produce the best when I have a lot of space. And the second thing was I am not willing to risk my relationship. And especially since my relationship is a part of the business, I got to doubly protect it. But I really realized I am not willing to do anything that would put my relationship in harm in any sort of way. And just even having those two things to think about has really helped me identify what I’m willing to do.
Maria Wendt:
I think I actually have a pretty interesting take on this. I think that all of us have been given so much with our success and I think that we have a moral responsibility to grow it as big as it can get.
Adley Kinsman:
Yes, I agree.
Maria Wendt:
I think that it’s called being a good steward of the opportunities we have. And so I would disagree. I don’t think it matters in a way what I want my day to look like. It’s what should my day look like? Think of us as women to be in such a tiny percentage of successful founders we have been given such a gift and such an opportunity to impact not just our customers, but our family tree and to leave a legacy. And so I think that for me, I went through all of this where I was like, I can just retire early and live on the money I have invested.
So I went through this really big identity crisis this February and I really was like, “Well, if I don’t have to work, why am I working?” And I wrestled with it. I actually took a staycation here in Laguna, fully unplugged from the world and I really wrestled with this because I was tired. I wanted to retire. But the conviction for me came so strong that what you’ve been given, you’re in charge of being a steward of. I think that … It’s my opinion, but there’s what we might want to do and what we’re called to do, what we’re supposed to do. And not out of heavy obligation, but more out of a gratitude, realizing this is what I’ve been given. What an unbelievable, unique, rare opportunity for me, especially as a woman to have that opportunity. And so I think that that’s why I don’t quit and that’s why I keep going and that’s why I keep pushing. It’s because I’m ambitious and I want to, but also because I have a moral responsibility to steward the blessing that I’ve been given and to not just take care of myself, but to take care of the people I’m supposed to take care of, which is so much bigger than me and my daughter. So that’s my take on that.
Vanessa Marin:
How do you balance that when it starts to feel like it’s really draining you?
Maria Wendt:
It does. I experienced that. Yeah. It’s not about me. It’s not about me. Who gives a fuck if I’m drained? Who cares? You take your little break. Practically, okay, I need to get off Instagram for a day and may need to reset. We’re so talented and we’ve reached levels of success that’s so rare … I think we were put on this earth for a very specific reason and it’s our gift. It’s our gift to take it to the nth degree. And so there are so many days of course where I’m tired and I want to quit, but I felt this conviction very clearly to slow is to let a business die. If business isn’t growing, it’s dying and I’ll be damned if my business grows on my watch. And so it’s not about what I want, it’s about what I’m supposed to do, not in a heavy obligation way, but more in what a gift to be able to do this and I’m not going to be selfish with my gift.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. That’s interesting.
Vanessa Marin:
It’s really interesting because I feel that exact same level of conviction of I know I was put on this earth to do this and I know I want to have as big of an impact as humanly possible, but I feel like I have to take care of myself in order to be able to best give that gift.
Maria Wendt:
And I think it’s not to the exclusion of taking care of yourself, but it’s to know that some days are going to require you to not do what you want to do and to reach in within yourself and find that greatness of an athlete. We’re pro athletes at business and so pro athletes don’t quit. They don’t play slow.
Tori Dunlap:
I think in my head it’s like you take care of yourself so that you keep doing what you want to do. And also at the end of the day, we don’t love our business a hundred percent of the time. And so rather than being like, ‘Oh, I just want to throw in the towel,” determining is this just a season where it’s just really uncomfortable to be a business owner and I just need to go through it? Every single person is going to have a period or even a long season of entrepreneurship where you’re like, “This is fucking awful. This sucks.” And I think what you’re saying is you have the mission or you have the belief that, “No, I still have something to give and I have something that the world needs and so I have to keep doing this.”
Maria Wendt:
I would say yeah, if you get a business to 10 million … This is my opinion. But you have a moral obligation to try to get it to a hundred million. I would say that. If you get it to that far, if you achieve that level of success, you’re being selfish by not taking it to the next level. That’s my opinion.
Adley Kinsman:
I share that same conviction. And Blake and I talk about this.
Maria Wendt:
Interesting.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m like, if I’m at 10 and I feel good at 10, I’m good.
Maria Wendt:
But that’s you playing small and taking care of Tori. That’s not you taking care of Tori’s people.
Tori Dunlap:
No. It’s also your own personal tolerance level for that.
Adley Kinsman:
Yeah. Because Blake was like, “Let’s sail off into the sunset we have hit the mark. Why are we not?” And I’m like, “Okay, maybe on a rowboat. We’re not on a yacht.” We had so far surpassed what he dreamed was possible for his life. So he’s like, “We did it. We crossed the finish line. We don’t need to work anymore.” And I’m like, “We absolutely do. We have so many people to serve.”
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, I agree with that.
Adley Kinsman:
Gift is not mine.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I agree with that.
Adley Kinsman:
But also our knowledge is only as good as to the extent of which we give it away, to which we share. If I have all this wisdom … Tori, you have so much wisdom that can release so many people. And if you just sail off on a yacht and you’re like, “Cool,” then it’s just all yours. It’s not actually good wisdom. It’s not actually a service.
Tori Dunlap:
To me, this is two things. This is scaling versus service. I could retire tomorrow. I’m not interested in doing that because I have a job to do.
Maria Wendt:
Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
And I think that’s how we all feel. And at the same time for me-
Vanessa Marin:
I’m never quitting.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Yeah. And for me also, I could, if I really wanted to scale this to whatever … I am not interested in doing that personally because of what it’s going to require for me in this season of my life. When I was early 20s, maybe, but my success has changed. And I do want to impact as many people as possible, but there are certain things that I am not willing to do for me personally because I know that I would burn out or I know that this would no longer be how do I serve people for a long time? I don’t want to firework and burn out. I don’t want to be a big ball of flame and then-
Adley Kinsman:
You’re protecting you long game.
Vanessa Marin:
I want longevity. I want to be doing this until I’m in the hospital. My last breath like, “We got to find the clit guys.”
Adley Kinsman:
I wanted to ask you this question. Because you teach people how to have better sex, do you have to experiment a lot? You’re like, “Honey, we got to go to work into the bedroom or unto the couch.” What’s your R&D look like?
Vanessa Marin:
All the time. All the time. We are absolutely guinea pigs. We will try any weird tip I’ve found on the internet, any totally bizarre position I’ve found. I want to try everything, absolutely everything. A lot of times people will ask me, “Well, does that take away the spark or the magic from it that you feel like you have to do it for work?” And it’s completely the opposite.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Scheduling sex is actually the best thing.
Vanessa Marin:
It’s given us this freedom to just try things and not put pressure on it. Let’s just see. How does it go? That was terrible? Great. Okay. That was a really funny bonding experience between the two of us.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes. We’re having a whole conversation about something that no one will talk about, which is money, right? Same taboo as sex. Are there certain boundaries you’ve set in your business of what you will or won’t talk about, what you will or won’t share? For me, if anybody’s following me, you know that I am partnered, but I don’t share my partner publicly. And that was something that we started our relationship. I was like, this for me is something that feels private and sacred and I want to keep it that way. Is there something for you?
Natasha Willis:
Right now, honestly, no. I think I’m in this season now where I’ve had so many different phases where a wound hadn’t healed yet and I didn’t want to talk about that scenario. I now feel so comfortable in my own skin and I also don’t have a lot of personal attachment to different scenarios that have happened to me or people are leaving hate comments or whatever. I think I’ve just developed this thick skin where my approach is just kill them with kindness, literally anybody that comes at me. And that leaves me in a happy place and I don’t feel any resentment or guilt or whatever. So honestly, right now I’m in a place where I’m like, film me 24/7 and I’d be cool with that. I’d love to see how that goes for the next five years. So I’m moving into that season for myself, but I also have not had that experience before, so I’ll probably have a different answer in five years. And also when I have kids maybe.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. How about you?
Adley Kinsman:
Oh, I’m an open book. Yeah. I probably should keep more to myself. I just feel so lucky to be here and blessed to be here that I’m like, ask me anything and I’m not embarrassed about where I’ve come from or what I’ve done or anything that’s happened to me or my shortcomings because it’s just-
Natasha Willis:
It’s just who you are.
Adley Kinsman:
Yeah.
Natasha Willis:
I actually love something that Layla Hormozi says, which is that she tries to show herself as raw as she possibly can in every piece of content so that when you meet her, it’s not like you’re meeting a totally different version of that person. And I think it does suck unless it’s intentional like, Hey, this is my alter ego, my alias, whatever.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally.
Natasha Willis:
But someone getting to meet all of us, I feel like all of you are the way that you are in person for real, also in your content and the way that you show up for your customers.
Tori Dunlap:
Public me is me. I’m not putting on a front. But also I am very different in private circles because I will compare myself to Beyonce for a second if you will indulge me. I think it was actually something really smart that she did is she created Sasha Fierce. Because there is a version of you that has to show up in public spaces.
Natasha Willis:
100%.
Tori Dunlap:
I am not who I am here with my partner. That would be so annoying. I’m talking in sound bites and I’d be like … That’s annoying. But it does coexist with that version. Are there certain things … I know you’re open book as well, Maria.
Maria Wendt:
I’m a very open book. I talk about going through my divorce. I talk about all the money stuff. I share how much I spend in my personal life. But similar to you feeling like your partner is sacred, I would say it’s the same thing with my daughter. I definitely talk about her, but I’m very mindful of how I do that.
Tori Dunlap:
We don’t see her face.
Maria Wendt:
You don’t see her face. Her story is her story. And so if I mention her, it’s only in relation to my role as her mother. And so I try to keep my story about me and just really respect her privacy. I think that’s important. But other than that … I wish I could show her face. I love sharing everything. I wonder how I’ll be when I start dating again. Honestly, I think I’m probably going to share it because I share everything so it feels natural to me, but who knows? I love the idea of something being so sacred we don’t share it and that is my daughter.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Vanessa Marin:
Well, vulnerability is really important to me. We know we’re talking about this topic that the vast majority of people feel shame, embarrassment, they struggle to be open about it. So it’s really important to Xander and I to take the lead, to take that first step to show people, look, we can talk about all the most intimate details of our sex life on the internet. We can embarrass ourselves, make fools out of ourselves. Yes. My parents know all the details of my sex life. But we do have a no questions asked veto rule between the two of us. So at any point with any piece of content, if one of us says, “You know what? I actually don’t want to talk about that online.” No questions asked, no pressure whatsoever.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s great.
Natasha Willis:
I really love that.
Vanessa Marin:
And the one question that we won’t answer about our own sex life is how often we have sex.
Natasha Willis:
Interesting.
Vanessa Marin:
Because that’s the number one question people have.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s then a barometer.
Vanessa Marin:
How much sex should we be having? And I think that’s actually the wrong question to be asking, but I think that if we were to share our number, people would think, “Oh, well that’s the right number.”
Natasha Willis:
I could see that.
Vanessa Marin:
If I just try to hit this tally, then we’ll magically be fine because that’s what Vanessa and Xander do.
Tori Dunlap:
You’re like, I’m clocking in for my sex time.
Vanessa Marin:
And if you’re trying to have sex to hit a tally, then it’s not going to be good sex.
Tori Dunlap:
My last question for us, what money belief did you have to completely unlearn as a founder?
Natasha Willis:
That not all debt is bad and that debt can actually be really good leverage in the business context.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I think that’s one interesting thing as a financial educator. We label debt, if you’re poor, we call it debt. We call it leverage if you’re rich.
Natasha Willis:
Leverage if you’re rich. That’s right.
Tori Dunlap:
So debt is credit cards, it’s student loans, debt is bad. My nemesis Dave Ramsey wants to talk all the time about how bad debt is. But the interesting thing is, could have bought my house in cash, I did not because it made more sense for me to take out a mortgage and put my money elsewhere. So I think that’s exactly right.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. Almost more about resource allocation and ultimately having a plan. I think that, and you see a lot more of this than I do, but in my own personal experience, a lot of the time you’re not actually planning what your payback is going to look like for personal debt. You’re just like, “Great, I’ll take out these loans. I’ll take out this credit card debt.” Whereas in business, yes, if you approach it with a plan, then you know, great, I can pay this back in two years, three years, whatever it might be. And so now it is just a reverse engineered decision as opposed to an emotional decision of, “Oh, I want to buy these things. I don’t have the cash, but I want to make an emotional decision and buy this thing to feel good or whatever.”
Tori Dunlap:
Adley, would you have to unlearn?
Adley Kinsman:
I had to unlearn that money is hard to make. When I was in such a place of scarcity and bankrupt, the best gift that I gave myself was the ability to see opportunities to make money everywhere. I was selling insurance door to door. I was flipping phone cases. I flipped pigs, baby pigs. I would adopt them, nurture them for five months at a time and then flip them for $850. I was just finding ways to add value to any situation.
Tori Dunlap:
The hustle is crazy.
Adley Kinsman:
The hustle was wild. But I realized money is all around us. And then if you could just see opportunities, and that helps me so much with it being a tool, knowing if everything was taken from me again, I know I could make it back because I have a gift to be able to see opportunities in anything and offer value in exchange for what people want and what I can bring into the world.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Maria?
Maria Wendt:
I had to unlearn that it wasn’t greedy to want money. It was just common sense. Money is just so good. We shouldn’t have to justify our desire for money. It’s not bad to want money. It’s not evil or greedy. It’s just common sense. Of course you want money. Money’s good. Money’s beautiful. It’s such a tool. And I had a lot of conditioning that needed to be removed around you are greedy if you want money. And so when I stopped seeing money as bad, I started getting some. And the more I started loving money, the more money started loving me.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. And I think speaking of responsibility, I think that any person, but really any woman listening, I need you to have money because you will be the most generous. You will be the most family and community oriented. And in a world where there are certain people who are so greedy and who are just interested in how do I get the biggest yacht and the biggest house and all of that, it’s like money in the hands of women changes the entire world.
Maria Wendt:
Sure does. Studies show that. They really show that actually. Yeah. They’ve done studies on that.
Tori Dunlap:
I actually need women to have … It’s imperative, especially at this moment to make as much money as ethically as you can, but in a way that is allowing you to provide options and choices.
Vanessa Marin:
I had to learn to pay attention to money. So many of us women have been socialized to not pay any attention to money, to just be the Sleeping Beauty and “Oh, I don’t know. It’s all going to work out” and not pay any attention to it. And I’ve learned to have a relationship with money, to talk to money, to be grateful for money, to have dates with my money, to send my money off to make friends and bring those friends back to hang out. And even to be grateful for expenses, to think about who are the people’s lives that I’m impacting by paying that bill that’s annoying or paying that home improvement project that I wasn’t anticipating having to do. But just being able to think of money as something that I’m constantly in a relationship with.
Maria Wendt:
I love that.
Tori Dunlap:
I think the ostrich effect is real. That’s the most common thing I see in our community is you bury your head in the sand, you act like it doesn’t exist. But the thing I’ve really realized with most people with money is that they say, “Oh, I’m really scared of my money so I won’t look.” I hear that a lot. You’re not scared of money, you’re actually scared because you have no idea what the hell is going on.
Maria Wendt:
Exactly.
Tori Dunlap:
So one of the things you’re doing is it’s like getting in a car with no gas gauge and now you’re just driving. That’s not a fun road trip because the whole time you’re wondering, am I going to break down at two in the morning without cell reception? But if I get in the car and the gas gauge light is on, the light’s on, that’s not great, but at least I know, okay, I can get my four miles to go get gas. So when you say, oh, I’m scared of money and that’s why I’m not looking at it. No, you’re not actually scared of money. You’re scared of the unknown. And there’s nothing that feels worse than going to buy something and your card declines or I haven’t budgeted so I have a pina colada on the beach but it’s with a sigh of guilt. I think it’s so important for anybody managing money, but especially entrepreneurs, as I see so many creative people, they go, well, I’m just not good with money. And I’m like too fucking bad. This is a requirement. This is a skill that you absolutely can and need to learn. I don’t care how creative your business is. You have to at least have a general knowledge of what’s going on because if you don’t, it’s just your business will not be successful. It’s just impossible.
Adley Kinsman:
Do you think there’s a difference between making money and having a business? I’ll give an example.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Adley Kinsman:
We were doing a lot on Snapchat and Snapchat came out with Spotlight for the very first time. They were giving away a million dollars a day. Did we create several accounts across several phones and post every five minutes between Blake and I for seven days straight through the night? Yes, that was making a lot of money. It was not a business. But I think in early entrepreneurial journeys, if you can just learn how to make money and get that muscle memory going, then you find the opportunity that you actually want to scale. But it’s nice. I like flipping pigs and selling insurance and phone cases and all those little things they I did to make money. I won game shows. I just got in the habit of learning how to see money and how to make money. And that was how I edged myself into being an entrepreneur.
Maria Wendt:
I think that’s such a great distinction.
Adley Kinsman:
And found the thing and scaled it.
Tori Dunlap:
I think the business is the system or the thing you’ve built that is not requiring your active work all the time or the new opportunity. If you are 100% reliant on somebody else or some other thing for your profit, that’s just really hard because they can take that away from you at any time versus if you’re thinking more strategically about not only how do I just make more money, it’s like how do I build something that keeps running without me having to feed the fire all the time? I think that probably is the distinction.
Adley Kinsman:
100%. Because as video creator, we would have to dance for our dinner every day. And if I wasn’t making videos, I wasn’t making money. Then we turned it into a business where we started hiring people. We started a management division. We started training our knowledge. So then it was a business that could run and we were making the same amount of money, but I wasn’t having to do the work. But there was a transition between starting to make money in the beginning, then scaling it into a real business.
Tori Dunlap:
Cool.
Maria Wendt:
Yeah. It’s a great distinction.
Tori Dunlap:
All right. I would love for all of us to go around and remind us who we are, what we do, how somebody can get in touch.
Natasha Willis:
Yeah. 100%. My Instagram is Natasha T. Willis and my business School of Bots helps the top Instagram accounts in their niche maximize the revenue from their content.
Adley Kinsman:
As a client, I can vouch for that. My name is Adley. I’m @adley on Instagram and we help business owners increase their visibility in their brand’s reach in five days or less across all platforms.
Vanessa Marin:
I’m Vanessa. I am on Instagram @VanessaandXandr. We help couples still want to have sex with each other. So if you can’t remember the last time you’ve done it, the last time it was good, then definitely come check us out.
Maria Wendt:
Yeah. I’m Maria Wendt. My Instagram is @maria.wendt. Please follow me on all of your accounts, including your backup ones, because I’m almost at a million. So please have your dog follow me, all of them. And I help people get paid doing the things they love. I’m really good at it. Anything you love doing, I can help you make money with it pretty quickly. So come find me and I’ll help you out.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing. And I’m Tori Dunlap. I run Her First 100K. I help women be better with money. You can go to herfirst100k.com/quiz, take a six step quiz. There’s no pass/fail. It’s just getting more information about you and we’ll deliver you a free personalized money plan. So that’s the easiest way to get in touch with me. This was so fun. Thank you.
Maria Wendt:
Thank you so much.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists produced by Her First 100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminists, produced by Her First $100K. If you love the show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you’re looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to http://herfirst100k.com/ffpod.
Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Sciortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Sasha Bonar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Daryl Ann Ingman, Shelby Duclos, Meghan Walker, and Jess Hawks. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
