Ep. 198 — How Tiffany Made Her First $1 Million as The Budgetnista

muse and next. I'm like, Sir, can you read the label? It says coughing all the things that I didn't have. But he's just swear that musin next is a cure off and everything. I'm like, it doesn't. None of my symptoms are on the front. And he was like, you fight me on everything. He was saying, He's like, yo, every time I make a suggestion. But I'm like, but if your suggesting doesn't make sense, sir, I don't need If you said next, I'm not I'm not coughing up phlam.

I don't like literally none of my things are on it. Like look at Benajo. It says sneezing, running eyes, running nose. That is me.

boobs leaking, like with the Newborn. I don't know where I'm going to be in a week and a half when this show airs, but I wish myself well, hang in there, girl, hang in there.

they actually make money? And it was like this secret And I would ask people because I'm pretty transparent, and they would skirt around the question, and I'm like, so, because I'd be curious. How if I see someone online, I'm like, hmmm, she has a you know whatever, like a she's a travel influencer, but how does she actually make money? And I found that people didn't want to share.

Maybe they weren't making money. I don't know. But we figured we do a show where I pulled back the curtain of ten years worth of work that I've done as the Budgetnista, and how I made money in the beginning, middle and where I am now and how we make money. And I'll share some numbers with you. I'm honestly super open about, you know, like how much I make and what makes a lot and you know what's different now than before. So man's going to be her journalist self.

Ask me some questions and I'm excited to share.

I found her website, the budget Nista. I wanted to find at the time, I was writing about a lot of these personal finance personalities who had emerged after the recession, and we're offering guidance to people who were struggle to recover. And you know, I figured these people must be making

money somehow. But one of my pet peeves is that you would have people kind of like positioning themselves as if they've mastered their finances and gotten out of debt and they're kind of turning around and making money off selling that story from like blog posts and stuff and anyway, sometimes people just wouldn't be very transparent and I and one of the things I liked about Tiffany is she was always sort of upfront, like, you know, here's my

business model. And it wasn't just about selling people a dream. It was it was about you know, creating a like a lasting product or products, or diversifying income streams so that she's giving value to people but also building a business and sustaining it for herself, you know what I mean. So yeah, I mean obviously admire Tiffany a lot. And uh and I'm so yeah, thank you for opening up, because I feel like other people who want to How many people when we ask them for the wildest dreams

responded to us. I want to be a I want to be an influencer. I want to do I want to have speak. I want to be a speaker. These are the types of jobs or types of businesses that are I think most difficult for people to figure out how do you make a living off of that? And how do you make it work? So let's get to at Tiffany. So take us back to when you first because I know it took you a while before Budget

Needs to made money. Yes, while what was one of the first like aha moments for you where you're like, oh, I can make income off of this, and then you just were like you went for it with the business?

outside of you know, teaching day teaching, preschool. But I wanted a fun name, and so that's when my sister le So told me that I was not the Fashion Lissa, indeed, though I could be the Budget Lisa. And so that's how that name started, and that was the original intent behind the budget Lisa to be a nonprofit. Then two thousand and nine happened and I lost my job along a ton of other people. And even then I was trying to figure out, so what do I do with

this thing that I was using to volunteer? So I told myself, I'm going to continue to volunteer, but ramp up. And in that year, I was trying to figure out what did I want to do with my life. I told myself I didn't want to be a teacher anymore. I was tired of the administration, not the kids, because they were awesome, And so I was trying I thought maybe I'd be an event planner. I was trying out all these different hats while still volunteering and teaching financial education.

And everywhere that i'd volunteer in a different capacity, I would find myself teaching financial education anyway, like the janitor, the principal. Wherever I was, someone would ask me money questions and I would light up and teach it. So all two thousand and nine I was just volunteering, and I was living off unemployment. I think by then I

had moved back home with my parents. I mean I rented out my condo that I bought when I was twenty five, and then at the end of two thousand and nine, like I knew my unemployment wasn't going to last that much longer, and I think I helped a friend, then a friend of a friend, and then somehow a friend of a friend of a friend like messaged me and said could I help them? And how much did

I cost? That was the aha moment, I would say, probably the beginning of twenty ten, and I was like, I don't cost anything.

And so when that happened, it was the first time I thought someone would pay me for that, because it didn't even cross my mind, honestly, Mandy, that someone would pay me to sit down, because by then I was just doing friends like, girl, your budget is a mess. Look at this, let's write this down. And so when she asked that, I remember I told Drina and I said, girl, you know such a such friend of a friend asked me how much did that cost to like help her

with her budget? Look her, I don't do that. She's like, you do Tiferty every weekend, you're helping someone. I'm like, yeah, but I don't cost anything. And she's like, do you have money? I said no. She said, then you should cost something, and I remember not knowing what to charge because how do you know? And so I think I think at the time, I called my friend Veronica, who was doing like consulting work. She was like, the only one I knew that was even remotely in that arena.

She did consulting work, but for like marketing or something like that, and she was like, you should charge one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, and I was like, that seems like a lot of money, you know. But and so I think I was like, it'll be one hundred dollars for me to sit down with you, no matter how long it would take, and it would be like seventy five if we did it on the phone, versus like me coming to you. So the first time I went and sat down with someone, we it was

like three hours. So and then at the end she was like me while her kids were in the house, she was a single mom.

to figure it out. I just couldn't stomach it. And I was like, oh, you know, I don't even worry about it. She's like, no, Tiffany, you helped so much. I'm like, here, girl, but your budget you don't have it, you know, I just you don't have it. And that happened a number of times before I said okay this. I was still on un appoyment. But I knew that business model was not going to work because it wasn't in alignment with how I wanted to help people. Because

I get it. I mean, people will tell you like, well, people will buy Jordans, they should pay you. Maybe so, but there's nothing like coming to I went home and meeting their family and looking at the numbers, and the numbers honestly say it's not there, and then you're taking from them anyway. I couldn't stomach it. So I said, I'm not going to do any more one on one, but there has to be a better way than this one on one thing. And I had a mentor at

the time. Her name was Christine, and she had some million dollar company and I told her, you know, like, what do you think I should do? She said, well, you need to get contracts. And I was like, well, what does that mean. She was like, you have to get someone to pay you to do the thing you want to do. And I was like, okay, good, and she's like, well, I got to go. And I was like, wait, Christine, I need more. And that's what she That's literally all she said.

I was like, yo, like it's been two years. I'm broker now at age thirty thirty one that I was at age sixteen. Like unemployment's going to run out in another six months. I don't know what to do, Like I'm my condo, I'm losing it because although I'm getting rent for it, it wasn't covering my mortgage. My mortgage was sixteen sixteen, my rent was twelve hundred. I didn't

have the four hundred bucks to cover it. Everything was falling apart, and I just remember thinking like, it doesn't literally get much worse than this, but it did so so I for a while long time I didn't know what to do about that contract situation, and I literally was just living off unemployment until finally I thought to myself, Okay, let me list all of the resources I do have

available to me, and which were very minimal. But one thing I remember thinking was I do have emails, because when I would volunteer, you know typically you know, they contact you via email or you sign up for some email list. And I said, well, I'm going to email everyone that I've gotten their email from from the last year, and I'm gonna say, hey, it's me, Tiffany, that I did this volunteer work for you. I teach financial education and I would love to do that for your organization.

So I emailed probably was like fifty emails that I had and one person email back. Catherine Wilson's community developer for the United Way. It was like her week, her first week in that position, and she was like, Amy, who you emailed or Brooke, who you email no longer works here, and I was like, uh, what can I meet you? I literally wrote that back, can I meet you?

And she was like sure. So the next day or that week I went to meet Catherine and it was perfect timing because she had just gotten this role of her job was to get to grow. I guess, like like classes or whatever. The United Way wasn't really known for much in Newark, because she was trying to figure out how do we develop a better relationship with the community and how do we like what in what ways can we serve the community. So when I met her,

we hit it. We're still I just had lunch with her, like a week ago, We're still like really good friends. This day we hit it off. She's the same age as me, and we were just like laughing and giggling and like, as I was running out of the house, I brought my book. I'd written this book, the one Week Budget, but I wrote it when I was teaching preschool because even then I was helping my friends and

I actually wrote it like in an actual notebook. So my friends who would ask me to help them with their budget, I would bring this notebook with me and during my unemployment. I said, you know, I should, I should make this notebook into an actual book, and so I self published through what was then called create Space. It was Amazon's self publishing arm. So I had this book that had written that no one bought except for my friends the first month and it was like languishing.

So I had a bunch of copies in the house and I said, let me bring this with me. So as we were talking, she opened up about her financial struggles, and so I ended up giving her session because we just had such a good time and she was like, that was amazing. Do you think that you could do this for my staff? I was like, yeah, you think you could prepay? Kidding but not really kidding. Can you prepay it? And she was like sure? So she wrote

me a check. I think it was I want to say she said three hundred or five hundred dollars something like that. Something within that.

you know, she offered up that amount. She likely probably did ask me and I probably said honestly, I don't know, and she probably you know, like I said, she said, I think it was like five hundred dollars, and I said, okay, and yes, it was around five hundred because a week before, a friend of mine, Dessa, was living in this room. She had a whole house downtown Newark, a woman who was renting out each room in this whole, big, beautiful house.

And I'd met Dessa while volunteering and she was really nice, and she told me, Hey, the house I'm living in is empty. I only rent a room, but I'm afraid that she's going to rent it out to random strangers if you're looking for a place to stay. Each room was five hundred buck, but I didn't really have five hundred bucks. But I remember with this contract with Katherine, I was like, oh, this is my five hundred bucks.

So I came and I taught the lesson. Like one thing I am, like, I'm not good at a lot of stuff, but one thing I am really good at is teaching. And so I brought my A plus plus game. I went to t TV Bank and stole all those pens. When I stole just you know, took them all those pens. I went to the dollar store and got all these folders. I brought my book, the one week budget for each person,

and like I printed out. I had my friends who worked in corporate to print out all my handouts, and I taught my little heart out during their lunch and learn and it went really well, so much so that people in the company that were not there that day told Katherine that's not fair, we missed out. Can you bring her back? So she called me and said can you come back next week? And I was like, yes, oh, now I have two months rent.

Everyone just paid Tiffany. I would say, for the first three or four years of business, I was not conducting business like a business owner. I was conducting business as just myself. Even though I had like my business registered, I wasn't, you know, like I didn't know anything about really running a business. So I did that. I you know, I talked there. I did the second round, and she was like, that's so good. Can you do this for the community that we have a financial education program called

the IDA program, the Individual Development Account Program. A bank gives us money and people have to take classes and then we give them money for a house, education or a health or a business. And it was like a four to one match up to two thousand dollars. But she's like, people are not coming to take the class because they're boring, but you're fun. So if you taught the class, we could give away this money the bank

has given us to people. And I said, okay, so the first class, she said, well, how long is your series? And when I tell you I made it up. I said six weeks. But you know, like she wanted to know, like the series of classes that I magically supposedly taught prior. But she kind of knew because she gave me like this booklet. Was like, okay, here's a book of like a real class, just mirror it to this. But one thing I am good at is writing curriculum, and like

I said, teaching. So I told her six weeks, and I developed a six week program. But I didn't know how to do a proposal, so I tweeted help, I need help with a proposal. A woman named Michelle Thomas, I'll never forget, had seen all the volunteer work I did. I didn't know at the time. She was the communications director for the City of Newark. She was just a woman on Twitter that we would tweet like back and forth,

back when Twitter was really localized. And so I gave her all of my stuff Michelle Thomas, and she put it in a proposal form and when I tell you, I still use that proposal to this day. It has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars and I give it away to people all the time because it was so great and.

gave it to Catherine and I got it. I think they were paying me that was what it was, three hundred bucks a class, So what was I eighteen hundred dollars? And that was amazing because I was like, Okay, now we're in business. Finally that contract that Christine, my mentor, told me, and so I started with the Unato way doing these cohorts and the first one, I think only five people showed up because the Unati Way did all the marketing. So this is when I learned how to market.

And so I thought to myself, if not enough people come, they're not going to hire me back to teach five people. So I asked her, can I share these classes online on social media? At the time, it was just Twitter and Facebook.

loving it and we're back. Okay, So tell us when you first decided I need to take my own marketing into my own hands. How do you do that when you don't quite have money to hire people?

education class at the United Way. Space is limited, if you'd like to come register here, like I send them to wherever it was that the United Way they had to go, and people started to really respond. So I think the second cohort we had like you know, maybe like ten to fifteen people, and I learned that. Honestly,

I learned to start to market in the moment. So right before class foks, I would always get there like an hour early, and I would set up the room and look really nice, and I would take a picture and say, can't wait to teach class tonight. If you're interested in the next cohort, go here. So that's how I really started to market. Basically, my marketing is just to show what I'm actually doing. They give you the opportunity to participate, so that's what I would just do

time and time again. And before long, you know, like class went from five people to fifteen to twenty to fifty, so we had to get another room. Had one hundred people signed up once and it was great.

So I wasn't really thinking about it like, as I should be getting paid more and there's more people here. I didn't care about that. Honestly. I wanted obviously to be paid, but I also really wanted to serve and it allowed me to do both. So that was that business model, which was get someone an entity to pay you to do the good deeds. That was like a perfect business model for me starting.

can you come to Philadelphia? Can't come to most people didn't have money, so I was like no. But it started to grow the brand outside of New Jersey, and I didn't realize what a strong name the United Way had, just like globally, because once I did the United Way, then colleges started to reach out and other organizations in Jersey started to reach out because they were like, well, if you've been vetted by the United Way, come speak

at Rutgers, come speak at Princeton. And I found that colleges were a great place to make money because typically it was like a kid that So the way colleges work is that the money is disseminated in the beginning of the year to all the like fraternity sororities and and stuff. So all the vetting is done in the beginning and then they give them money to these different clubs and it's like a seventeen eighteen year old kid who was making the final decision because the red tape

has already been done. And so if you can connect with the student body president, and that's what my first college was keen because a friend of mine, his brother was like vice president of student body, you know whatever, the student body, and so they paid me seventeen hundred dollars, which I almost fanted because I was like, you know,

to come speak because they they had the budget. So that happened as a result of all the social posting just really helped to establish me as someone who does this.

No longer. I would have won. It was well I tell you up below. But it was such a valuable lesson to learn in the beginning. And I wasn't trying to brag. I just couldn't believe someone agreed to pay me. I forget how much it was, but to me, it was so significant and I wanted to share the good

news I'm talking about they paid me doctor rates. To hear the woman on the phone read back my tweet to me that was set to corporate, I was like, oh, yeah, that's me, I still like and it was a sister girl and she was like, girl, you can't do that. And I was like, so, then do I want me to come in? She's like, no, because they're afraid that, like you're gonna, like, you know, we like the nursing

home or wherever facility. She's like, were you know, we have privacy like clauses and you've already like violated one of them basically, And so unfortunately, no, we have to rescind our invite. And I was crushed, but you know what, it was a valuable lesson learned. And then and then King Keen came calling and so, but one of the things I was consistent. I don't do this as much now, but one of the things I was really consistent was

at work. Whenever I spoke volunteer or otherwise, I would always get at least one picture and then I would share what I was doing and say, if you want the same from me, contact me here. So this is like a like if you're first starting out, you have to your social media is another form of your resume. And so if I want people to know that I'm available to speak at your women's group, your church group, whatever,

I'd be very clear. Just spoke at Bethel Baptist today, taught the congregation or the women's group about budgeting and saving. It was so awesome and then you would see the picture of all of us smiling, if you want me to do this at your church. So I was teaching the people who were following me or watching me how to hire me. And then I found this on site called woolfu wufoo that was like such a godsend because

a free it's a free contact me form. So you can go to wool fool, fill it out and create a contact me form and woofoo will give you a link. So what I found was the less work someone had to do, the easier it was for them to contact me. So I would say contact me here instead of having them contact me via email. It would be the link to my rufu contact form that went to my email.

It's so much easier for someone to click a button, type in their message and it gets sent to you than it is for them to remember your email, type it in and send you an email. And so that helped significantly. And I did that every single time I spoke somewhere, you know, so excited to speak here. This

is exactly what I did. I can do this for your organization, and without fail, every time I posted I would get at least one or two inquiries, even if they didn't hire me, just people who were interested in learning more. So that's like just a great way to start. And then from there I was like, okay, so there has to be It took me along. There was a gap between me doing classes and figuring out what the

next model was for earning money. But in the meantime I started something called the Live Rich Your Challenge I want to say two thousand and fifteen. And that came about because people who couldn't come to Newark for my United Way classes started asking me I want to take those classes and I was like, well, I don't you know, I'm not in Pennsylvania. I don't know what to say. So I thought, you know what, what if I take these United Way this cohort, and I bring it online.

And so that's how the Literature Challenge started. The first one, it was supposed to be only one. It was the six week course I taught at the United Way, but I made it five weeks and I put it online and I gave it away for free, and everyone, all my business friends, all my finance friends, said I was stupid because they're like tivity again, I gotta make any money off the Liverature Challenge, but I really wanted to. Honestly, I really driven by being like living a life of service.

And I thought, well, I don't charge the people in class at the United Way to take these classes, so I'm not going to charge online. So I thought to myself, well maybe I can get sponsorships. So I did reach out to some brands, and I think Crudential at the very end end of giving me a little bit of money, I came out of pocket for the Liverature Challenge. Don't

ask me where I found this money. It took me a year to build it and it cost me about ten thousand dollars, which is crazy because I didn't have ten thousand dollars. But I was determined to build this thing. I reached out to some of your fath media outlets.

I reached out to some of your faith financial brands and asked them if they could help subsidize paying for me creating the Live Ritual Challenge and then you know, we could you know, both of our names could be on it and we can help as many people as possible. Every single one of them said no, every single some of these brands that purport to helping black women, they all were not interested. And I remember being.

And then I was like, okay, I have to figure out how do why Because I'm not super tech savvy, I have to figure out how do I how do I get people to sign up? So I signed up for like I think it was like I think I was using mad Meme at the time. It's like a It's like one of those email platforms. So I had to pay for that where people can go to Literature Challenge dot com put in their name and email and they would get an email about when it was going

to start. But that was how I was going to communicate. Then I had to build a blog. I paid somebody for that. They did a terrible job, so I ended up I think most of the money came from paying someone to do the platform, but it wasn't right. So then I ended up figuring out WordPress myself and building because that's why I was going to house the the daily task for the literature challenge, or didn't.

so guess who did want that twelve hundred? Me? So that's I was living off that too. So it was a mix between speaking, I was babysitting, I was tutoring, and the money from from from my condo the rent for my condo because the bank wouldn't take it. So it was like a hodgepodge of like like little and plus my life. I was spending next to nothing on my life. I had deferred all my loans. My rent was five hundred. The car that I was driving, I had already bought it when I was in my twenty

It was paid off. I bought a cash for like five thousand bucks, so I had really low personal overhead because I didn't, you know, I didn't really have money. Many bills and five hundred dollars included everything where I was living in. It included lights, electricity. We were right next to the library and Newark, so I got the Internet for free. So basically all of my extra money was going into building this Liverature challenge. And I can't tell you why I was so adamant about building it.

Something said that if I build this, this is going to change the trajectory of the budgetista. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I was adamant about building it. And it wasn't ten thousand altogether. It was over a year's span, so like one thousand dollars for this, fifteen hundred for that logo, you know, two thousand for the website. So it was like all of these like it wasn't until I didn't even know I was spending that much

because it didn't seem like that much. It wasn't until the end of the year when I met with my accountant that we added up how much I spent and I was like what. But thankfully Credential they came in at the last minute to become a sponsor and gave me about half that money back. So and I didn't know anything about affiliates or anything. None of that was

in the challenge. The first one was just a It was just I'm just going to do it, and I think we had My goal was ten thousand women, and by January of twenty I think fifteen, we had ten thousand women signed up and we did the challenge and it became magical. Like the challenge changed everything for me because one it started to really build my audience. I went from maybe like fifteen hundred people following me to ten thousand. Now.

NonStop because I was doing everything. But I was so passionate that this is really going to help save people and it wasn't free.

single mom with no additional income. How do I save money? You know, like I've got student loan debt coming out of my eyeballs, I can't afford a planner. What do I do? And there was never a good answer, but like this was actually an answer you could give people and then you build. It was like an investment on your part in the potential, but without really knowing that's scary. It is all be worth it, but.

money money's gonna come. And so after the first year of doing it, and it did so well. By the end of the year, we had twenty thousand people signed up for the challenge because we did it live in January collectively together. And then at the end there are people who were like in February who were like, I didn't get a chance. So I made it automatic where you could just sign up. Even now to this day, you could just sign up and start the next day

with the challenge. And by the end of the year, like I said, I had twenty thousand people that had gone through the challenge, and I started the Spacebook group originally for the United Way cohorts where I can answer questions at once, and people from the challenge found the Facebook group and they started joining the Facebook group, and so that's where I would keep up with people as they were doing the challenge. We would connect there and

so it was great. It was just like this like bumping movement, but no real money, like like like you know, I was still speaking, but it wasn't really real money. I would say. It wasn't until maybe like four or five years into the Budgetista that I was like, Okay, I'm consistently making at least a few thousand dollars a month. But in the beginning it was touch and go. There'd be some months i'd be lucky to make five hundred,

and some months I might make. You know. I remember the first time I made ten thousand dollars in a month, and I thought, yeah, this is it. We're are ten thousand. And then the next month I made five hundred. So it was really touch and go for the first four or five years, and it was a mix of so what happened with the challenge. It was the first time I realized I could monetize something with the challenge because someone said, what if I don't want to take this

challenge online? It was in December. I'll never forget what if I don't want to take this challenge online? What if I want a book version? And I was like, well, why would you this is me, Why would you pay for a book? What I'm giving this away for free? I was really didn't. I didn't want to do a book. I thought that's stupid. Who's gonna pay for a book

it's free? And they're like, yeah, but I like to hold a book, and I was like okay, So I found a guy I had to pay him that's part of the ten thousand to take the challenges and put them in book for it. It was a few thousand dollars and I remember being like, okay, and I put it up. Now. Meanwhile, the one week budget by now was still selling next

to nothing. I put up the Literature Challenge book the same time that the Challenge launched in January, and it hit number one on Amazon in its category three days later. I couldn't believe it.

have to find it. It's basically the same. You find a designer to put it in the right format, which which Amazon I think they call it KDP now, which Amazon gives you your designer would like set it up according to like whatever specifications they have in their back end office at KDP, and you just literally just uploaded and they'll say how much you want to sell the book for, you know, like ten bucks, and then Amazon will show you if you settle for ten bucks, this

is how much money you're going to get, and that's literally it, and you press on and then it's on. So it was really it's fairly easy. The hard part is finding a designer. To hector, who's my designer, he's dope, But to find a designer that's going to do the specifications right. Because the designer I hired before that, I went to a lot of money on terrible people that it took months he could not figure out the specifications.

I suspect he really wasn't a designer. So finally I found Hector, and within a day he had it up and running. So it's literally just once it's uploaded, it typically takes twenty four to forty eight hours for Amazon says this is the right specs, and then you click it's live. So Hector did that, and he also did the Kindle version for me for Amazon, and so that book sold and I was like, I think that's what

it was that January that book sold. I think in January that's the month I made ten thousand dollars because it sold so much, I couldn't believe it. And that's when I was like light bulb that people will buy other things from me, Tiffany. So for a number of years I had speaking engagement. It was the United Way and book sales, and I said, okay, now we're cooking

with grease. This is you know, like about three or four years into the budget, Nesta like, okay, so here are all the Hodgepodge ways that money money's coming in. And then I would about three years ago I wanted to do it, really four years ago. I want to do something a little bit more consistent. And around this time, I had done another literature challenge. Like I said, it was year after year I was doing these new challenges

and I met my now current business partner, Jabroo. We were both in this black traveling group called No Madness, and I just remember thinking like he was like a young twenty something like twenty six or twenty seven, but he traveled the world and I saw he was a digital marketer. I'd never even heard of that before. But I wanted to learn how do I market outside of just the organic way of me just posting on social media, and so I reached out to him. He's like, I've

been watching you. I love what you're doing, and how many people you're helping, and he and by then I think I was on Challenge two or three and he asked me did I have in the affiliates? And I was like, well, what's that? He's like, it's a referral program, that is, you refer of particular product or service, they'll pay you. He's like, for example, you have this one bank in here you always talk about, did you know they were giving twenty five bucks away per person that

you sign up? I almost cried because Mandy, I had signed up twenty five hundred people to that bank. Do the math of how much money I left on the table, twenty five hundred and I only knew twenty five hundred signed up because I did a survey in the challenge to say, did you sign up for the bank account twenty five thousand times twenty five dollars sixty two thousand, five hundred dollars, Mandy I could be I know.

So I made a list about maybe fifteen, and then of the fifteen he said, d five have affiliate programs. Go sign up for them. And I did it. He was like, we're going to start to market. We're gonna spend about thirty bucks a day. And I was like, oh, I s thirty bucks a day, not me. And he was like, no, we'll take the money from the affiliate marketing money. And I said okay. So he said he said, in the beginning, we'll just organically share these products and

services that you've already been sharing. Share them in the challenge. But you're already sharing them in the challenge, but now switch out the regular link like bank dot com for Bank dot com, slash Tiffany's affiliate. So I did that,

and I started. I did. I started with Ebates. I remember, and I love Ebates and I been sharing ebates for years and Ebates was giving like, I don't know, ten bucks per person, and I think my first check from EBAs they pay you quterly was like twenty five hundred bucks. And I was like, he's like, but that money is to go right back into marketing because you have to

start to learned to market digitally. So we did that and we started to use that money from marketing to use that to market people to the next liverature challenge that I had other affiliate links in. So I was like, ah, another source of income, so now I can share the things that would normally share but get paid for that. So that I would say the so much, so there's a there's a brand that I work with now that we wrote one email because I was so so excited.

They were giving away a really dope free financial product that was amazing that had used and I wrote one email out to my audience and we made one hundred thousand dollars three days.

something so great. They were giving away like a personalized investment plan, which you normally would have to pay like twelve hundred dollars for. And I knew because I had to pay twelve hundred dollars for it, not from them, but for some from my financial advisor. So I was like, yo, I literally just paid twelve hundred dollars for this, and it's it's the same advice that this company is giving

is what my financial advisor gave me. Jump on this now because it's not always going to be free and it and people signed up in droves.

she's also a dream catcher. Then, because I would try anything, and I used to have a rule that if I would try it, i'll you know, I'll suggest it to y'all. But then one day Lisa signed up for something from an email I sent out and she was like, Oh, I signed up for that that app you mentioned in your email. And I was like, what appen? And I was like, well, why are you nervous, Tiffany. He says, if it's good for you, it's good for everyone, right, And I realized that's not true. That I'm a lot

more lenient with what I'm able to try. So I changed my rule and I said, no, I have to be willing for Lisa to be able to sign up for it without telling me. And so, because I know, I'm way more conservative with the things that I share with Lisa, and so I came up with my Lisa rule that has really served me well, that I won't share anything with dream catchers if I could not comfortably

say Lisa, go ahead and do it. So affiliate program came in, and then three years ago, I said, well, let's look for more consistent income, and folks started asking me if I could teach investing, and I was like, no, Although I invest with the help of my financial planner, I didn't feel comfortable teaching that. I'm not the investaista, And so we were going to actually start an investment club and people said that they would be willing to pay for it, and so the investment club idea seemed

kind of narrow. So I thought, well, what have we taught more than just investing? What if we taught like, really the next level of personal finance. I think basic personal finance should be free. That's why most of my like all the stuff that I give away as a budgetista, I give away almost everything, right, But I thought to myself, well,

what if with this next level? What if I created this online school where it's really next level, where I get financial experts that know more than me in their particular topic to teach, and you guys paid for and they said yes. And so the three years ago, the Literature Academy was launched in like May twenty sixteen, and it was like, I remember, we were going to make it like twenty five bucks a month or something like that. But then people were like, oh, that's a little too high,

can afford it? I said, okay, well the first two thousand people will make it ten bucks a month. Don't you know. They lined up like they were Jordan's. They were up at sixtus. They broke the site all day long. We made thirty thousand dollars in the first day. I couldn't even run my mind. This is back then, so I was like what And I think at the time the launch made its about seventy thousand dollars over that week, and it was like the first time that I realized, WHOA,

there's a different business model out there. There is a subscription model. So the Academy since then has made This year we made three thousand dollars, but of all time, we've made just under six thousand dollars with the Academy, a six thousand, six million dollars.

But then we also have deeper, longer classes as long as a month long. Some of them are a few days long. It depends really, like what kind of learner you are. We have these amazing classes from how to trade, how to invest, retirement, legacy, planning, to buy a car, how to talk to your spouse about money, really next level, you know, like like I said, retirement, like next level

things like Sandy teaches a side hustle course. So I really tapped into my expert friends to teach these amazing lessons, and the Academy has just been bumping and jumping, and so that is my that is my consistent source. But I purposely created because the Budgetnisa is the business of Tiffany, and it got to start. I wanted to start to have a family. I wasn't married yet, but Superman and I were close, and I knew that I didn't want that only source of income to be like I have

to show up as Tiffany the Budget Nista. And so the Academy allowed me to take a step back because I get to disseminate the expertise between myself and fifty other experts. People don't really look for me inside the Academy because I'm not the most expert of all the experts. They're looking at all the other experts and it's been awesome. And so I have a team that runs the Academy

and I just check in with them. So it's allowed me to like have this second business with my partner Jabrill, where he does the marketing, have a manager, we have customer support. But it's been like the first though. But the first year, although we made that seventy thousand, it was really hard because we couldn't find the right platform. It was we almost closed down like so many times because we ran out of money and it just wasn't we could not figure out, you know, what type of

classes to have, how to lay out the website. We just finally quite honestly got it together this year because there's like last year, I told Jabrill, my business partner, I don't think this is going to work. It's like, like the website is a mess. I can't find anything. And we paid like eight thousand dollars to get it totally redesigned and we did a launch. So our first

launch we made seventy thousand. We were geeked so so much, so like six months later we did another launch, but we were lazy with it, so we made thirty five thousand, and we realized, like the effort you get put in is what you get back. Then set the third launch.

I want to say we made two hundred and fifty thousand, but that was like a survival launch because we had we ran out of money and I was like, if we're going to really try to save this academy, we have to have money to last us for the next for a year. And so we did that launch. We made the two fifty, but the two fifty was really there to give us the space to learn how to run this company. And then the launcher that we did earlier this year made five hundred and fifty thousand and so,

but now we're cooking with recent the academy. I feel like we finally have found our stride. After three years, it's getting better. I always like, I'm hard on us. I give us like the Academy like a solid B, but I'm like, I want an eight plus plus. So that's who we're working to. But we have some great new things that we're adding, and by twenty twenty, we're gonna be a plus plus because we are like quickly

approaching that. Even though when I ask members of the Academy they're like I like it, I'm like, m m, I know we can do better.

want a green? Do you want to left to the right. So there was always this acknowledgment of I know we can do better. What's your feedback? And then I would come back and say, we fixed it, how do you like it? Should we do better? So that was our saving grace inside the Literature Academy was that there was always this sense of like, what is it that you want?

What can I do better? Like people when bitcoin was a big thing, people reached out to me and like from the academy and they said, we want to learn about bitcoin. It took me a week. I interviewed five different experts to teach and I found one Cassandra Cummings, who's amazing, and she taught her class. So you requested it a week later and I let them know I'm interviewing people. I'm down to the last two. We found someone.

So I find that for us in business, it's not about perfection, but it's that transparency and we have a true desire to serve. So I want you to see that, so you know that when I mess up or something's not perfect, it's not for lack of trying, you know. I think that's important that I don't want you to see that like well, dang, I don't like this and it's behind this like this curtain. I want you to see that, Like I know, I don't like it either. We're trying to fix it. If you have any suggestions,

please bring them to the table. So we are so much better as a result of not trying to hide our imperfections but to show them and show them how we're working on them. And by by January twenty twenty twenty, the trajectory that we're on now with growth, I think we're going to hit our first definitely, definitely by first quarter with where we are now, but by January, that's

what it's looking like. We're going to hit our first seven figure month, which would be insane, imagine a million dollars a month, But that's where we're headed out the last the last few months of the academy, we've like I want to say that we're probably averaging maybe three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month in recurring income.

can offer people. So we'll do another episode for sure, But before we do that, I always want to do a recap of the lines of business that are really like that really funds the budget, neist to you know, ink that you've created. And then also how like how do you prepare for the future. Do you see the academy sustaining you guys for years to come, or you know how when you can't.

it TJMS. It's literally just Tiffany Jabrill Marketing Solutions. When people come to come to me and say, hey, you know I want you to do sometimes we get invited to and invite only affiliate program and Jabrill will run ads to that affiliate program. And so because of that, he's a partner and he's not a partner in the Budgetista, but he's a partner in the academy and this marketing

company that we have. So that's the third company. And so those are the three companies that really fund and aside from Brown Amission because we're a company as well, but that's really what funds Budgetissa Inc. The marketing company to handle the affiliate programs, the Budgetisa which is the business of Tiffany, and the online school. And yeah, it's

just been like the TJMS. It makes as much money as we put effort into, which we have not put as much effort as we could because now we're most of our energy is put into the Live Richer Academy. But one thing I have learned is that there are so many ways Lynette Caledfani Cox, which is one of my mentors. She told me a long time ago, years ago, probably about six or seven years ago, about ways that me and myself how I can make business. And one

of those ways is something called satellite media tour. I just did one a few days ago, and you make anywhere from ten to thirty thousand dollars and I made I think about twenty five thousand, and to sit down for four hours in front of a camera and all these like media outlets will basically call in via video and you are like, basically, I'm Live and Shott on ABC twelve, I'm Live in Natural NBC three.

on financial track and then New Year. But Tiffany, we want you to weave in Brian Ambition because ABC wants three ways to get on track for the New Year. And it just happens to come along with you know, me talking about brand Ambition, because that's the company that's hired me to weave them into the messaging. You see what I mean. And so Brown Ambition is yeah, so not in NBC or ABC. They're not paying me. Brin Ambition pays me to weave them in to this messaging.

And so when I tell you, I was like, I remember Lenette tell me. She said that's for the big Dog, so that won't be for years from now. But she was right. I just got booked to do another one and they're paying me thirty thousand. And actually someone just emailed me a minute before this podcast to do another one. So Satellite media tours as they're called smts and radio media tours, that's another. Now that's a Tiffany, that's Tiffany

income or Budgetista income like the original company income. So I would say the budgetis to BUDGETISA doesn't make a million dollars a year because I slowed down tremendously, But I would say the budget needs to probably twenty nineteen has probably made about maybe a little over half a million dollars. But remember that's with me cutting back. I don't even speak hardly anymore. This is mostly spokesperson work. This satellite media tours, book sales that happened basically kind

of organically. It's also some speaking engagements, but typically localized. But because now I'm getting brand ambassador work too, where I signed a six figure contract to do a brand ambassador work for a company. It's like a month long engagement. But here the reason why I'm able to do those things now is because of that Live Richer challenge that

everyone said I was foolish to do for free. That challenge helped to build my community, help to build trust, help to introduce people to me in my way of thinking and the way I navigate. It really helped to build this like just like army of folks that are like, we love what the budget needs to does. So as a result, there are companies and agencies who want to

be in alignment with me. I say no, way more than I say yes, Like the budget needs to could easily make over a million dollars if I said yes to everything. But I say no to most things because most things, quite honestly, are crappy and they're not good for you. So I would never sell my soul or sell y'all out to some company that I know is detrimental to your financial journey. But that literature challenge changed

the game for me. I cannot, like, I cannot express how important it for me that maintaining like service as our most important aspect of the company has transformed into this, like collectively this multi million dollar like you know, like ink because of service. And it's possible, but you have to have a service plan and a money plan. It took me a few years to realize that the money didn't just come. It wasn't until Joebroll said, monetize the challenge.

If you're gonna share the company anyway, see if they have a referral program. Oh, that's the business plan or the money plan. You see what I mean? Like, I have to be really conscious of Okay, I'm gonna sell spots inside my academy. I have to be mindful that, yes, the academy is great in dope, but I have to I have to sell, people have to buy a subscription. I can't just have a thing and not be mindful. Then how is it going to make money?

And and if you start with the money first and you're immediately selling people something, it's just it's a different relationship, you know, It's it's a different and and I mean I'm speaking for you, but I feel like that is the this like the visional se qua, like that little magic ingredient that you know that other when you say you want to be an influencer, like that's the lowercase.

I like, Tiffany truly in a way that's meaningful and not predatory, have become that and that I feel like is and that's really how you sustain that kind of level of business, you know, in that way.

not a fit. I want to be able to walk away from the money because I'm also not beholden to the money because it's not the majority of my business. I've told many brands and some of your favor brands, and you think it's your favorite. But then o'kay about you? I mean, I thought most of the big banks have hit me up. Ask me if you see a big bank that I've worked with. I have not, because quite honestly,

most of them are not great. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm not here to cape for you and to trick dream catchers and thinking that you're wonderful when you know you're not. Because here's the thing. If something is wonderful. Everything I share is not monetized. What I do is I figure out what's working and I share it. Then I look to see this, does the thing I'm sharing have a referral program? If they do, great, and if

they don't, still get shared. So that is our rule, is that we look for good things to share and if there's a way to monetize it, great, but if not, we still share it. And I tell that to brands all the time who are trying to lure me in with money. I'm like, yo, if you were dope and you actually did right by people, I would share you for free, because it's my intention to help as many people as possible, like you telling me. I actually told the big bank this once and they were like, oh,

you know, we'll pay you. I think it was like one hundred thousand dollars and I was like, well, you know what, that's cup, But we made that last week, so what are you You're gonna pay me a million dollars? We made that more than that this year, So meaning that like, there's not enough money that you can pay that would make sense for me to share something that's not helpful to my audience. How about you just build something good and then I'll share you as much as possible.

You wouldn't even have to pay me, hardly as much, because.

building community, you know, building relationships. And now the truth is now, like the ten years in, I mean, some of the things that come to my inbox, it's crazy, like I it still blows me away like yo you and not pay me what like, But that's only after all this time of building that trust, relationship and community

with the people that I serve. And so now like like I mentioned to you guys last time, I I you know, I talked about Molly Moore on Brown Ambition and someone hit me up from a major, major, major studio was like, I've been watching you. I love what you do. Let's do it. Let's turn her into a show. I'm like, you haven't even read the book or seen it, and she's like yeah, but it's you, Tiffany, And I'm like, wow,

how do you creating that? But it's you that people are going to buy into the thing that you're doing because of what you've brought to the table. So it's just like, I mean, even now today I'm meeting with this woman, a producer who I was talking to her about Molly Moore. She's like, Oh, that sounds great, but what about you. I would love for you to have

a show. She worked for some big production company. I don't honestly, I don't know if I want to have a show, But like myself personally, because I'm like I want to be a mom, I don't know if I want to. You know, that's just it seems like a lot. But the fact that like people are literally like, here's a sheltivity, would you like to be out here have your own show? I mean that doesn't that comes from all these years worth of work And I know a show will pay like a ton of money, but at

this point, I'm like, what do I ask? So I need money for we have a house, we don't have a mortgage. I have my little Putt Puck car, which is plenty. Like Supergirl's college fund is basically funded for me. More money is not enough of a trigger. There has to be something greater that they're coming to the table with. But I just share all that to say that, like, it's possible to do all this thing. I mean, I

used to be a preschool teacher. No experience other than that that like, but really I really try to adhere to you know why I started my mission, which is to help as many women live a better life, give them the tools and the resource and the access to live a better life, and especially women of color because we've been left out of the financial conversation. But yeah, like some of the things, like like I'm writing my

first real book with the actual book agent. Well I won't say real book, but like a book that I'm not self publishing. So I'm excited about that. Molly Moore, it's looking like something. When I tell you all the rest of the stuff that I've done, Mandy, I feel it. Molly Moore is going to blow the rest of stuff out of the water. It's going to look like I know it, and I feel it. It's the same thing I felt with the Liverature challenge. I knew it was going to change, the budget needs to I knew it,

I felt it. So that's why I invested the time and the energy and money and Molly Moore. I've actually never felt it more strongly than that that character. There's something there. I really believe that Molly Moore can be a billion dollar business. Honestly, there's something there. It's just it's been I've been thinking about Molly Moore for the last fifteen years and it's been nagging me. And now

it's starting to come to fruition. Molly Moore is going to blow everything else I've ever done out of the water. I know. I know it, and I've invested a lot of time, energy and money honestly into Molly Moore because I know it. So don't be afraid to invest something, invest your time, energy and money and to investing in an idea that you can't you don't really know the end goal, but you could feel like there's something really magical and special here because that means that there is.

And so yeah, hopefully ten years from now we'll be talking about Molly Moore, not even maybe five years from now about like remember you said, I'm like, I know, I told you I felt it. I didn't know what, I don't know how, but I felt it and I feel it. But No, this has been fine.

you've done. I mean you should. You should be so proud and I'm so excited for you and all that's to come. And I know people probably have tons of questions. We're going to do a part two Faux Show. I don't know when it will air because, like I said, at this point in time, I may be delirious, you know, with a baby technically in the future. So but we'll definitely do a part two with Tiffany, So send in

your questions. In the meantime, go to Brown Ambition Podcast dot com, ask us anything, hit us up on Instagram at Brown Ambition Podcast, on the gram d m us, or you can email us directly Brown Ambision Podcast at gmail dot com with your questions on how Tiffany has built the budget, needs to makes money and any tips you guys want on how you know, whatever you're struggling with to make money with.

you now? So it will give me the you know, it'll give me the opportunity to really dig in and help you as best I can.

feel like transparency leads to transformation. So you know, I don't mind sharing numbers, and I don't mind sharing like losses and stuff because I feel like I wish somebody would have told me I can make money doing work, absolutely, like you know you can, like these things are out there and how to do so, like it shouldn't be those people who are hiding. Typically it's because maybe they've grown up that way, but a lot of times it's because they're not really making any now, not really making

the income they're protect and that they're making. And then you you're chasing after like something that someone's doing that that's not really working. It's not real. I feel like, how do you really help folks if you're not being honest about like how the journey that you've gone through. So yeah, so yeah, until until Still part two, I'm already were like twenty minutes after, So yeah, I wish me luck though I'm meeting with that producer who wants

to give you my own show. Although I'm not concerned. I'm not convinced I want my own show, but wish me luck. Hopefully I have some good news when I come back.