Hey, hey, hey, we're back.
We're black, We're brown.
Ambition ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition. Hey mandra, Hi, gorgeous.
How are you with your beautiful here today?
Well I'm hanging in there, you know, I am. But the sun is shining. And we survived the biblical floods in the on the on the East Coast on Friday.
That was fun.
It was It was biblical and I mean it, yeah, it was nuts. But shout out to my community, my neighbors. We all rallied together and one mom stayed at the bus stop because so the other moms who were stuck in traffic and couldn't get home for their kids pick up early pickup dismissal and you know, and one of my friends, one of my neighbors, Lynn, came and watched my baby while I got early from school.
Walk You couldn't even drive.
Yeah, well I could have, but I didn't want to get It would have been fine going there, but I would have been stuck in so much traffic getting back that I figured, let me just park the car. And I just told myself, it's like ten city blocks, you know what I mean. Like a New Yorker, you just like whatever, and Rio had he had a ball. He was like, this is fine. There's water features. Now there's police. Hell, there's like police fireboats and fire trucks and fire people
and all this like commotion. And he was just he told everyone he wanted to hear that. We saw lots of flooding and the train station flooded. And but it was I mean, neighbors, basements flooded, and we're we're lucky we're on like a bit of a hill. But our neighbors at the base of the hill, yeah, got flooded. And my friend's car got flooded at the train station. It's going to be totaled. So you know, I mean luckily, no that I know of, no loss of life or
injuries near here. But it was bad. And in my infinite wisdom, I was like, told the babysitter, you need a home. It looks pretty bad out there. And then well in school was like come get your kid. I was like, oops, just shot myself and that's food. So that's where my neighbor land came in. So okay, how was it a new work?
It wasn't.
I mean, so I flew out' actually in Atlanta right now, So when the rain started, I was flying out, thank god. I mean, I don't know if they delayed any flights, but I had a really early flight at seven am. So I remember like like being like, what the hell because it started raining the night before and in the morning, I'm like, it's raining kind of hard, so much so that like our uber, this never happened to me before.
We heard a big boom, like he drove to a puddle and we heard this like big boom and the tire blew out completely thankfully. I mean he had great control in Atlanta. No, no, this is in Jersey. On the way to the airport.
Oh, I was gonna say, in Atlanta, who got the pothole posse? That was like a big thing back in the nineties.
And I was like, what that never happened to before. Thankfully, We're all okay. The uber driver was so nice. I felt so bad because this tie was finitail. And so another uber picked us up and took us to the airport. And yeah, I got to Atlanta and the weather here is like eighty degrees and I'm like, wait, I'm so confused.
Eighty and Sunday. I feel like I'm in the Caribbean.
Ah. Yeah, but this time of year it is not incredibly humid. No, you can enjoy that little dry eighty It is that.
Yes, I have to say, it's really I mean, I like brought geens and I'm like why literally it's shortened tank top weather.
I'm so confused. My body is like I'm confused.
You're probably gonna get sick now.
Because it's just really really so I'm out here because I did this conference called a three C.
I said a three c AC three A three C, which is like this.
Conference focused on finance, tech and entertainment, and so it was great, Like the networking has been amazing. I forget how people down south are so nice. Everyone is like, you know, like sometimes you go to like a conference and you speak or whatever, and you just feel like the other speakers are not quite as welcoming.
But that is not the case here.
I've heard that, in particular that Atlanta, the black professionals are really just open to being like I'm doing this, how can I help you?
And you know, let's collaborate.
That there's this a collaborative kind of like energy here and I mean I could see it full time, like I'll give you an example, the master investor Ian his he had a bodyguard. So Ian's like on that market Mondays with Erner Leisure, you know, yeah yeah, and.
So we had him on the podcast with them mm hm.
Mm hmm yeah, and so like he had the bodyguard, bodyguard, big guy, muscular, all this, and so I ended up just talking to him and I was just like, you know how you know, like, are your body gud for other people? He named some other rappers. He's like, I'll never want to do that work, he said, because rappers are the biggest punks. He was like, you know, I've had rappers punch people in the face and look at me like you got them right.
It's like wait, Like he.
Was like, I would love to be like do more like of the finance guys, which I I think it's hilarious that finance guys now have like bodyguards, but whatever, he said, because you know they're super chill. You're just more so that no one's going to steal from you or or whatever. And so but he was telling me, he was like, actually, you know, like I'm an accountant by trade.
I mean this guy is.
Massive, like six two sixty four, I mean muscles, on muscles and I was like really. He was like, yeah, you know, I started doing accounting and I really want to get into finance. And he was like, so one of the reasons I made the switch into doing body bodyguard work for this industry is because proximity I.
Want to learn.
I just thought that was so awesome, you know, and he was like he is away cover. Yeah, and I just love that for him. I was like, okay, so yeah, So it was just.
You've mentioned before that financial like pros influencers now have bodyguards, and I was like, wow, we reached that stage.
Yeah, I don't know, not me, because he asked me, did I have one? And I was like, no, No, one's run.
Up on only.
Yeah, I would be shit, but your vibe is different than some Yeah, I have a master investor with his marketing. Yeah, it could be a target.
You know me, I'm gonna target Marshall's girls. So you go see me there and be like, hey, girl, we're gonna run.
On say that a lot.
I see why.
Now, don't take me for ransom. No, my family can afford me. I'm the money. Ooh, maybe they'll take someone. Oh no, not baby, Lisa. This is where my head is going, they're gonna kidnap you, so they're gonna hold you for ransoms, gonna be all this crypto.
Okay, but but I do that. I just so, yeah, it's just been like that was really cool.
But I wanted to talk about like so it was so crazy because you know, the phones be listening. So when I was I landed in Atlanta and I'd opened up my Instagram and there was this post saying that the Atlanta that nobody wants you to see. And I was like, huh, And it was like this post of this woman who was showing parts of downtown Atlanta where like just a lot of unhoused people, just like areas that were little CD looking and I was like, this is like.
When I first.
Landed, I didn't think anything of it until I got to to my hotel where I'm staying. It's in midtown, like literally well directly downtown downtown, and the day I landed, it was still we landed pretty early, and I said, oh, well, you know me, I love my walks. I said, let me go for a walk. I can say I have traveled to many different places. I mean just this year alone, Egypt, Kenya, you know London, Paris, off Ey Coast, and I live in Newark. I have not felt unsafe like this in
a long time. Downtown there were so many unhoused people. And it wasn't the unhoused park, but it was the unhoused that were unwell. It was there were so many aggressive like either whereabouts.
Which is that just downtown? Like where are we talking? Yeah? A landmark?
So okay, so I'm not really good at like.
Like Centennial Park at Mercedes Stadium.
Yeah, so by Mercedes Stadium, but also too by like Peach peaked Peach was it Peach Street?
Okay, well there's seventy five.
I know, I'm just like I mean, but like like I'm saying, I think, like the chance is that the Candler Hotel, which is like right downtown.
Okay, I can't even I'm just like, you know.
I don't have my my my my barrier. But I mean, but even I walked about three miles one way and back, you know, so I got to see, like I mean, certainly there are parts I'm like, oh, okay, this is clearly a part like you know them.
Gets a little nicer, yes, But I was really shocked.
Like like I said, unhouse people you know, I see all the time, but the amount that were I don't know whether it was you know, under the influence or there's just mental health, but the the sheer amount. Maybe there was literally street where the whole street was just people laying and not just laying like you know, like off to the side, but in the middle of the sidewalk.
I just was like, wait, what it seemed like a movie, like it seemed you could film of zombie Apocalypse and be like you don't have to twitch anything.
And I just I've.
Never seen there was so so you know, the Martyr, so you know, the big five points Marta.
That was when it was like the word I was.
There was one side of downtown Atlanta on that that train station, and the other side I never it looked like and abandoned.
Like I can't even describe it.
There must have been like fifty or sixty men standing outside of this Walgreens just kind of like standing waiting, I don't know for you know, like and it just was heartbreaking to see. And I just I didn't I guess I'm like, I honestly was at a loss for words.
You know. There were parts where I'm like this is the this is where it's.
The smell of urine made me gag, Like right outside the Martar station where I'm just like, people are just like literally police tapping people to see are they still here with us? Because of the way they were just laid out. I've never seen anything like it, and so I I went. They had this African Caribbean festival. I went there yesterday, which was great fun, It was great. And on the way back, I ordered an uber and it was this young woman who I went to high school with, Keana.
I was, Oh, my god, Keana, what are you doing here?
You know she lives she grew up in Jersey and we just got to talking and I asked her about it. She said, yeah, it's been getting worse and worse and worse. And then she informed me that in August alone, I think, I want to say, she said August or maybe the July, there were eighty thousand evictions, not in the state of Georgia, in Atlanta alone, and I was just like, what's really happening that it is becoming it gets becoming too expensive
for basic needs. Everything is going up but income, and so I'm just wondering, like city to city to city is this kind of like what's happening, you know what I mean, Like where people just don't even like you can't we talk about like, oh I can't afford a house, That's one thing, but literally I can't afford to have a safe place to lay my head. It seems like that's what's happening.
Now.
I've read someplace too that the current president has this like affordability housing crisis, like kind of my task force or something that like, because yeah, I just well.
The thing is, and you know, I knew you were going to talk about this, and I was coming today to talk about the childcare cliff because my store, my head heads at is like, you know, the incredible cost of childcare and how little we give a fuck about children in this country. And it's so sad. I'm like shaking my grippy socks that I got so I will slip in my heartwood floors and in my research over that,
I'm like, and you talking about this. These are I feel like two issues that have been well, they were already in existence right pre pandemic. The unhoused you know in Atlanta. I mean, go back to the Olympics, if you recall like in the nineties when we had the Olympics in Atlanta, it was a city too busy to hate, you know, and they all have the sparkling marketing campaign, and yet they were like shoveling the homeless off the
steps of downtown Atlanta, like get out of here. We don't want this on the brochure, you know, we don't want people like you Tiffany visiting Atlanta for the Olympics and being distracted by this riff rap, you know, this the mess under the bed, the mess that we shove in the closet, and I you know, and yeah, and Atlanta is victim to the same forces that have pushed out, you know, low to middle income people. Even in New York, where I moved to thirteen yeah, thirteen years ago, you
get pushed further and further and further away. You're not erasing the problem, but because of rising prices and gentrification and no social safety nets, you just you know, shove the problem out. And I think in Atlanta, what's interesting
and not interesting? But in New York there's Heidi holes, there's everything is so big and so massive, and there's so many distractions, and you have the subway system where a lot of the unhoused will seek refuge and you have you do have shelters, but they're tucked away and you know there's I think they they sort of and with the yeah, they're spread. You know, it's so much area in Atlanta, I think because the relationship most people have with the city is through driving. Like you don't
walk Atlanta. Like you were walking Atlanta, you don't typically do that. The city is moving toward more of a walking culture. They finally have the the what do you call that that pathway everyone walks on in Atlanta. I can't. I can't think of it anyway. But so all that to say is it was already a problem. But that and also the lack of childcare, they were both issues before. But during the pandemic what happened. We finally got our shit together and had some social safety nets put in place.
So you had the eviction moratorium, which is one thing that was put in place that until this past summer. A lot of the in Atlanta is one of those states, or sorry, one of those cities where the eviction moratorium expired and they chose not to continue it. And that's where you got that eighty thousand, you know number, and then I looked in September it was twelve thousand, So it's come down from that peak. But you see how
many people were on the cusp, you know. And at the same time, we also right now are just fell off of a childcare cliff, Like all this extra funding that the government provided childcare centers during the pandemic so they could stay open, so they could pay their staff has also expired. And I'm having a I know that we averted the government shut down, and I don't know if it's because it's just not a headline issue, but I can't figure out did we go over the cliff?
I don't I think we did. I don't think it was saved in this forty five day extension of the federal budget. So I without these and I'm not saying that the eviction moratorium that was never going to solve homelessness. It was it was bad for landowners land you know, landlords and you know homeowners and home and all that
it was. It wasn't a perfect solution. Neither would injecting an infusion of cash into childcare because the reality is that it's just so expensive and families can't afford it, so they needed those subsidies or else they would have to start as they have been passing on the cost to families and losing customers that way, or losing their staff to like my son's daycare that he used to go to before I finally got access to you universal pre K, they had several of his teachers that quit
in the last few months. And this daycare was known for not having a lot of turnover, which is quite you know, hard to do, and it was like they were getting higher wages somewhere else. You know, these were great people that they lost, and it's just it just makes me think of the lack of so safety nets. And call me a bleeding heart liberal all you want, but not we have. We can't not care about the most vulnerable children, the chronically mentally ill, of course, the elderly.
I don't know if you can feel it, but I can feel it just.
From just talking casually to friends that we're doing fine, who are not doing fine. I'm talking about people who have you know, college education and degrees and experience and haven't at work for months and months and months. I mean, you see it with your many money makers, you know, I feel like we're in this like dangerous tipping point where you know, the economy is you know, I mean one of the things I heard on the panel over and over. I was on the financial panel with ian
master investor, a really big real estate investor. His name is Cedric Nash Melinda high Tower. I think she is the oh I forget, she is the managing director. I think of like USB UBS that's a big a of their multicultural it's a.
Big BBS the bank, the investment bank.
Yeah yeah, and then MAC and so. One of the things that came up is that like, you know, whether they call it or not, you know that we are headed towards some rush rough financial times.
But I mean you can see it.
I saw someone posts they they use an app to order groceries, and they said, let me show you how much my groceries cost in twenty twenty versus twenty twenty three, And it was like this water I normally get, you know, the same quantity was, you know, four dollars now it's six seventy five.
Things were some things you know up one hundred. And it's like, how.
Like I don't I think people don't I've you know, my parents are from a country when where there is no middle class and it's just uber wealthy and the vast majority of people don't have and it makes for very dangerous living. Because I did not feel safe walking down downtown two o'clock in the afternoon Atlanta.
I mean, the like.
People were just approaching me in ways that were really aggressive and scary, and I, like, I said, I live in Newark, where I'm just like, okay, you know, I've never felt unsafe walking downtown Newark.
I'm just like, you know, you keep your eyes about you, You're like okay.
But no, it was a different level of aggression that I had not experienced. So I just am there is something happening, and there's a shift coming that's not a good one.
And I can feel like I can feel in.
The people that I serve because the advice I used to give before was like management, It's like, okay, and make a little more here, budget tighter here. And now it's like that doesn't work unless I don't eat, don't this, don't like it.
Yeah, it's just really worrying, and I'm not really sure what to do about it.
I just yeah, you say you mentioned a tipping point and I also makes me think of what's happening in New York very much on our doorstep is the migrant crisis and the fact that the governor of Texas and legislators there bust migrants from the border to you know, these coastal cities like New York, DC, and New York has, like you the picture you were painting of Atlanta is what downtown you know, Manhattan has been looking like because all these migrants are here and they don't have anywhere
to go. They're overrun with housing. And New York actually has this law that a lot of people didn't realize or didn't know about so much until now that if you come to New York, you're guaranteed a roof over your head. I figure what the law is called. So a lot of you know people, these migrants, when they get here, you know, they're just like shepherded here and uses the political football. But then they're like, oh, new
York has this guaranteed housing thing, let's tell everyone. And so New York's kind of becoming like more of a destination because of this policy, which is you know, proliferating
that problem we already couldn't handle. The unhoused before these migrants came, however, and it is it's become very artists and Republicans sent them here to make a point that, you know, your lack of immigration policy reform, I know that it's everyone's, but yeah, of course pointing the thing are at Democrats like what if it's on your doorstep? Would you be as lacks of daisical as you have been about this kind of issue? And you know what
the reality is? They kind of have a point. Yeah, sometimes you need it to be on your own goddamn doorsteps, in your face, hurting your and you know, your nostrils being in you know, assaulted by the stench, your life at risk. And then you can just expand the same argument, the same thing out to so many other issues, gun violence, you know, until it's your child, I didn't care about kids, and I'll admit it until I had my own, which
is a damn shame. There's like a lack of empathy, a lack of caring for people that are out of sight, out of mind, And I don't know what the solution for that is other than you know, the pandemic took away the distractions that so many of us had to stop from looking at these issues. And when things got back to.
Normal, they're worse than before.
We went right back to our old habits, our old ways anything, and they're worse than ever.
And I think to myself of like, because I was talking to a couple, like some of my young mentees, and you know, they felt immune because you know, they were gigging it to success, you know, they social media TikTok it. Well, I'm making money, making money, so much of that is dried up, honestly. And now they're like, wait, you mean to tell me that YouTube is not going to save me? So what do I do now? And so that's what's coming up, and they're like, I think
I have to get a job. This is what I part from a few of my you know, young mentees. But I'm not even sure what does that look like. I haven't had one, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna lie.
I feel like chicken little.
This guy is probably this guy? Oh god, I know that means be worried for Generation Z and the what is it after them? I don't know, but thinking that influencer is any different than a I mean or or you know, influencer, an entrepreneur. I suppose you could call influencing entrepreneurial. Sure, but unless you got a business case, a business structure, a business plan, you treat it like
a business. That'd be like McDonald's, you know, only ever serving French fries, like we're a French fry restaurant, Come get your fringe fries, and ignoring the other ways. The other you know, things products and services that people need to diversify their their own revenue streams. And I've always I've had I've taken that approach as an influencer myself. I don't think of myself as an influencer first at all.
That money if I get it, and if you know, I don't do I have like two brand partners this year, and even then you probably don't know because I don't post that. I don't have relationships where it's like post are real every day and you know. But anyway, when I take them and it is, you know, it can be great. But I'm not expecting to have that money replicated because first of all, I worked in marketing. I know what happens to those budgets when the economy is bad.
The first one for real, It's true, Yeah, No, it's absolutely true, because I mean they have to like, you know, marketing. I feel like it's like the first thing to cut. I mean, like you said, like you know we we affiliate stuff is stuff that we kind of were doing on the side. And literally I was like, oh oh, because we all got these messages in September saying or it was August saying tap tap tap tap, so so great that you share our links.
You could continue to do so, but we don't have any Monday.
I was like, literally within one week, like four or five of the people that we have these relationships with said and I was like, you know, I told.
You the affiliate link. Yeah, that's that's how I knew you. For every customer we gave you twenty five cents or whatever.
So I was like, okay, you know we always I kind of knew that already, so we always planned for like, okay, that's a smaller part of the business.
But I wasn't shocked.
And so what one thing we did learn is that like, because some places we drive a good amount of traffic, so we would reach out and say like, hey, that's fine, but we have this like like I was doing the Literature Challenge six months later, like because we're now we're doing it twice a year, and I said, we're doing the challenge, but thanks for letting us, so we'll just take you out.
They were like wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait.
Because sometimes they won't have It's not that the marketing budget is cut completely, it's just they're using it more wisely. And so they were like, Tiffany, you'r you know, so there's some of them. We were like, oh, okay, let's continue the relationship and just monitor.
All right, va fam, stay tuned for more from Brown Ambition. And we are back with more from Brown Ambition.
Yeah.
One of the things I peeped very early on when I started the Budgetista was I remember, just because nobody wanted to rock with me as a black woman the financial space serving black women, and they made a baby clear. That's why I said, I have to create my own like almost like like create my own farm on my own homestead, because I don't, you know, I might not be able to go to the supermarket which is partnering with stores because everybody else, all my other friends were able to do so.
And so I'm so glad. I did you know, I build my own things.
On the budgetist side, I built the literature Academy, we had this podcast, so we were building our own things. And so when those things go up and down, certainly I'm not happy about it, but it's not like that's the whole business, which is like who they good for that? You know? But yeah, so when I see influencers, you know, send tens of thousands of people to this company, I'm like, you could also be influencing to your own product and service.
Spend that time to create something for yourself so that way when they say no, you still have something.
Yeah.
Absolutely, I'm just checking our bank account balance for BA and like.
Oh right, whatever, it's not for man, It's like, so go ahead and go ahead and take put.
A little something.
I'm know how I became the CFO of people looking.
Because you know, I'm renovating now, but kind of I'm like, oh, I guess I will get that style air.
Yeah. Yeah. The and and the reason I checked is because your point about you know, they will spend you know where they're where they They're just more judicious about spending their marketing dollars. And that's where I'm just and then the light of like, like you said, this economy and the tightening in the economy, a lot of marketing dollars being gone, and yet Brown ambition our biggest year for revenue. Quality care about money until like you're sick.
Quality.
Yeah, that's the key quality audience engaged on.
And so.
I mean, but for real, though it's true that like that, it's not everybody doesn't get cut. I mean certainly, you know, but like everyone doesn't get cut because if you blue quality.
If you you know, if.
You you know, because yes, people just someone's always going to need to market or whatever it is they're doing. And if there's a thousand people, you know, they might keep the top five. And so if you bring excellence to the table. I always tell this to my mentees, if you bring excellence to the table, a space at the table will always be made for you, you know.
Or better yet, you might have your own table where you're like, well we eat good over her either way, yeah you know, so yeah, no, I just yeah, I love that first because I'm saying thinking to myself, you know, when I started my mentor Tiffany dot com, like my mentor first of all my mentees came out and I'm having dinner with them tonight in Atlanta.
Oh you know, we know I'm gonna do that at the Brown Booth.
We must, yes, but uh, Atlanta must go hard for the bunch.
Of Yeah, tickets soldale.
But but but one of the things that like I have just learned, like I said, is that like what can you create, like you know, and how can you bring excellence to the table That typically is takes a like consistent investment of your time and energy. Like That's why I love like seeing how you created money, Mandy money makers, because you learn firsthand being on the other side, like, oh, someone could just decide nope, we don't want y'all.
You're like wait, wa wait, whoa wa what what?
But when it's your thing, like it really is like as long as I'm willing to show up and put in the work, although it might be really hard work and sometimes it's overwhelming and sometimes it just seems like so much, at least it's in your hands, you know.
Yeah exactly, yeah I can. Yeah, No, one thousand percent. I didn't. I was very uncomfortable with want, with like the waiting for a check, because even if you do have these relationships, like you ain't going to see that money right away. It's very shout out to my shout out to my admin louda, because if I do not respond to her invoice within an hour, I get the ping ons like hey, it's the men in the invoice. Hey. I'm like, well, I'm gonna get to it today, I
promise you. And also it takes my shit like sixty days to come through. I'm like telling these brands.
Like, hey, where's my money?
Anyway, I really hated that feeling, and because of that, I do pay very, very swiftly yes, okay loud to okay amber On.
So as a small business owner, when I navigate where contractors are small businesses, I don't play about they money because I know one week, two weeks, like what that can do to a.
Business, and so like I do not Yeah, I do not play it.
And even like I know you hear Mandy and I, I mean, if you haven't listened from the very beginning, you wouldn't know our humble beginnings of like how you know money was saying for a long time, personally humble beginning.
I'm in the humble now. I'm trying to hang with you, Tiff and your rich auntie lifestyle.
But even still, let me tell you.
About the thing is, I've been getting the money while I've been having the you know, the children and the family, and it's like where I'm breaking my own life. If you don't want to, if you want to follow my advice to not have lifestyle inflation, don't have kids, learn it from me first. You I'm like, when am I ever getting my feel like I have money again?
You will? But I got to say, honly I live so far below my means. Like so even when you see me pop out like, oh my gosh, you bought a condoct know that I live. At one point, especially when I was like breaking in the door, I was living at ten percent of what I was making, you know, and it was still good money. But meaning that, I've always been conscious that, you know, if I make a tremendous amount of money, say like seven figures in a year, I'm not going to live out half half a million.
I'm not, you know, because one, I think I can live a really great life at like you know, we're one two manny, and I not that everyone has to do this. I'm big on like buying things in full, so I don't have to worry about a month to month to month because I like to keep my month to month in a way that if everything goes wrong,
I'm still okay. Even when I bought my condo, if y'all remember, like my financial advisor, Angelie, was like, well, it would be my advice that you get a mortgage, and because you're a high networth individual, we can probably get you an interest rate especial behind the scenes industry, which I.
Was like, that seems fair, but I'll take it. But like, you know that, like you don't have to get a regular.
Person's interest rate that we can like negotiate with a bank, you know, for high network individuals to get you like a lower interest rate. And I told her, I said, honestly, I would prefer to buy the condo cash. And she said, I know you're going to say that. I said, now, knowing my financial picture, I know that the best solution is to get you know, put a decent amount down and to mortgage it and then to put that cash to work in the market. I know that that's the
best solution, But is it a bad choice? Like is it like really really bad for my finances if I purchase it cash? Because there's two different things, you know, And she was like, well, it's not a bad financial choice.
It's not going to harm you financially.
Ideally, would have would love to put more money in the market for you, but you've already kept like there's a certain amount every year that I like to want to put up in order to reach my financial goals. She's say, you've already done that. This would just be access to that, and certainly this access can will likely grow faster than sitting in your house. But I know you, Tiffany.
You like to keep your monthly expenses low. And sure enough, I'm so glad I did that in the beginning because I bought the house very early on the beginning of the year. And I'm so glad because this was our one of our toughest budget east to years yet as far as like business, and so we didn't do nearly as well.
I didn't make nearly as much.
But the one thing I wasn't stressed about is my monthly My monthly expenses did not.
Increase, so I wasn't like I.
Got my new work at They basically stayed the same relatively speaking, like a few hundred dollars here and there, you know, but basically stayed the same, and for me, the peace of mind of knowing that even if something I knew we were going to have a rough year this year, I could feel it even when that happens, I had kind of like already, like the car I own is paid off. The home that I live in outside of the condo, the home that I live in
currently paid off. Like my bills are such that I can manage on very relative little to.
What I Meanthany, how do you how do you that's so unrelatable?
I'm what I'm saying is like the pullback, so he has a related bility.
How do you know? I'm curous cause like for me, that's unrelatable at this point. I and I'll admit it. I went to Tiffany, you love me no matter what.
Right, Okay, yes, I said, you had to Tiffy's. I'm like, what are my Tiffany's.
My husband wishes no. We literally, when I tell you, I don't know what he has like disassociated from reality so hard. When we went to the mall this weekend just for something to do, or last week now, he was like, let's go into the role X store. I was like and I was like, yeah, let's take our two kids and go in and pretend like we can afford any of these college tuition, you know, time pieces. And Rio was running around and I was just like, yeah, you want to try one on? Hey, sir, can we
try on your most expensive role x? I can't wait? Can my three year olds? Do you have it? In his sof And Rique's like, never mind, get out, he was so anyway, But we went to pottery Barn or one of these I forget caught craiiton burro. I want, I want new betting. I want my bed to look like a picture. My bed looks ratchet, okay, even when the cleaning ladies fix it, it looks ratchet because Molly has showed through things. It doesn't look pretty like it
used to anyway. And I wanted like and I was like, I want that picture. And I chose the betting. I got everything da da da da da, and I put it on after pay okay, in three but I chose the three payment option, okay, so I would have zero interest because now after pay' is like, oh you want six to twelve month options, Well, we're going to charge you like extra fees and you do end up paying more than it costs. But one thing I hate doing is paying more than something costs just to have more
time to do it. So anyway, but that's my no, I don't me that's my confession.
I learned early on that, like, whatever it took, I had to figure out a way I wasn't always able to. I had to figure out a way to live under my means. That's how I got here.
So like he was like, literally, I was living in a room.
I was thirty something years old, and I was like, living under my means meant renting a room. A bunch of my friends also have branded rooms in that same and I would between the ages I want to say, twenty nine to thirty three.
I did that.
I was people like, oh, I can never do that, and you might have kids whatever, but I'm just saying that. And I remember I drove like the radiest car, which I was like, I would likely walk more often. There were times when I did speaking engagements when I'm like, they wanted to, like, you know, park my car, and I was pretty certain it wouldn't.
Turn back on.
I remember that car, So I was like that white car.
Oh, I could hear it. I mean, and there were.
Times when I'm like, I'm just gonna park down the street and walk up. And so I'm not saying people like, oh I won't do that, get I get it. But for me, it was like I had to figure out two things how to make extra income. I baby said, I tutored, I started the business, but you know whatever that kind of looked like.
And then I.
Really had to viciously cut back on my expenses to create space to then invest in my life. And so to me, the investment was in my business. Yours might be investing in the market and might be investing in bonds.
It might be, but that's really what it is.
You have to create financial space, and in the beginning you might not be able to do that, so you just try to create space so you can just pay your bills on time. I would say for the first three years it was like I just don't want to be in the negative, which I was.
I mean, there's times when I was like I just don't have it. There's just my.
Account just says negative and I will call and cry on the phone and be like, oh what can I do? Like that was life, you know, for the longest like this part of my life is the newest part of my life, you know. But I only got here from a place and still I still use those same principles, which is I still live tremendously under what I make and you know, but not from a place of like I feel like I'm depriving myself.
Y'all know.
I just came back from vacation. But even then, I was like, can I use points? You know, what are other ways to go about? You know, like I mean, Angelie tells me all the time, and I probably do I underspend.
Yeah, So to be honest, and I've been wondering like I should just say it because I want to. I want to be transparent. And I was just talking to my I posted about my six figure book deal because it was it is, okay, it's a fact on because I wanted to share, just like you have with me, been so generous with how it happens. I wanted to. I want to spread the message here's how you get a nonfiction book done. Here's how I did it. Rather so the focus wasn't on the headline I did that.
I did my journalist thing. I want to grab attention, get you to the caption right. But in doing that, I my husband, for example, doesn't listen to the podcast because you know, he gets enough of me at home. And he told me, oh, my coworkers, I think we're rich or something because I saw your posts on IG and I was like, first of all, no, second of all, they don't understand book math and all this stuff, and they just read the headline and saw and I never
want to be putting up ooh. I would hate don't tip the minute you see me front and acting like I got when I don't, because how much of that figure six figures is in my pocket right now? You know exactly because it pays out. I got two years span zero. I haven't even got the contract size. I haven't, you know, I don't get my first check tol then and even then he's like the cut there and the cut there, and the agency and the taxes and all that anyway. But my reality is like I have struggled.
I haven't struggled to create income as a business owner. And I and to anyone who looks at me, and I know some Mandi money makers have mentioned that I have to remind them, Yes, I started Mandy money Makers in twenty twenty one, but I had eight years of brand ambition, six years whatever it was before that. I had,
you know, a brand that I was building. I had like a foundation, a platform that you don't have when you just like if I had started a bakery, probably would have been tougher, yes, you know what I mean, but it was very aligned with what I've been doing so far. So I had given myself a head start there, but anyway, didn't have trouble creating income streams. Haven't gotten financially good at maintaining a budget on income that fluctuates.
And I'll be the first to admit so because of these things like you know, ooh, I'll get like a great deal, but you're not going to see that money for a few months. And I know I'm going to get the money and I'm not stressed, but then this bill and this tuition payment is due, and it's like, oh, well, this isn't comfortable, and it's so that I'm I don't
have enough. I don't have so much coming in that it saves me from those months where I'm like, hmmm, we're poor, but like we're not poor, but like we are.
You know, well, and that's because you don't have a big enough pot, so I used to. It took me a while, a few years to learn like, oh, that person is not paying me. They're paying the pot, and the pot pays me. And so it took Now here's the thing. The pot can't pay you if you don't have anything in it, you know. And so it took a while to kind of build up pot reserves and
to the point now where the pot pays me either way. Yeah, that takes you know, And that's okay because it takes time so slowly, but surely as money comes in.
You said a little bit aside.
I'm the only person on my payroll and I miss paid in August. Sorry, can't we give it one hundred? Not only did I miss payroll, I didn't even realize I missed it. And then I got into whole shenanigans with quick books. They're like, we're going to close your account? Are your accountsing collections? Because they had paid me, they
like fronted me the money for my own paycheck. That should have been it was that I hadn't move the money because I was on the turnity leave and I hadn't move money from savings to my you know, checking and my business because I didn't have any checking over the summer because I didn't make no money. I was having a baby and not getting a paycheck. You guys want to know what entrepreneurship is? Is that?
Yeah?
And so I had it in savings, it wasn't in my checking account. Didn't realize that I got the emails and I'm just reading the first line like, oh money, okay, payroll something da da da da da must be fine, And I just got to go ahead, only to find out those emails were like collections emails because they want their money back because they gave me the money. And
then what happened to your girl, Tiff. I've never felt so ashamed and broke, but like real talk, just to balance, just to balance the beautiful And I'm not taking anything away from you. You deserve you there, I know. Okay, So let me tell the story without you thinking it's because I'm trying to like make you feel some type of away. You know that you're good, okay, and we all love it. But I have two online only banks for my personal and for my business bank account online only.
I love it. Why go to a bank who needs them? I don't even carry wallet anymore. I got Apple Pay. I'm all you know in the in the metaverse and all that kind of stuff. So quick Books want their money. They decide they only want me to wire it, only a bank wire, but I can't. But they won't accept a bank wire from an online only bank.
Are you kidding?
So no, So a long story short. Somehow I get the wrong, bad, bad intel from quick Books. I end up in my infinite wisdom thinking somehow that if I get the cash out of my business account, I can go to any bank and get a wire transfer. It's stupid. Don't listen. Don't listen to why. The person was very persuasive and wrong. So I'm but then there's a limit on how much cash you can take out of an ATM for your online only bank. And turns out mine was wait, like five, no, two thousand a day, and
I need like four thousand or something like that. And not only that, but the ATM had a limit on how much you can draw it one time. So I'm sitting there trying to figure out, like can I do five hundred at a time. So I'm at the ATM like five hundred insert your car, five hundred, insert your card again, I'm just gonna keep going the Blue Vine that my bank. Blue Vine is like, uh yeah, just keep going. I don't know, maybe it's five and maybe it's six hundreds of limit. Just keep trying. I get
the money out. Uh huh. I go to the bank. They're like, yeah, idiot, we can't wire transfer cash money, like you know, like, who are you coming off the street with this money that probably came from I don't know, something nefarious. So I go back to my car. I go back to my car. Then I'm like, I have this money, how do I put it back in my oline like account? This is over two days of me going to the ATM because again it was too much for one days. Why to go back?
So I go.
I'm like at the ATM, like, can I just where's the hole to put it back? In the internet because I And it turns out, oh, well, you can go
to our you know, call the bang. Oh you can go to O our fee free you know locations where you can week upt cash deposits turns out Walmart is not within like a fifty mile radius of where I live, and the other ATMs like weren't working for deposit and in the meantime, I go to even think I can deposit this cash at an atm, my local CVS, and I'm like walking up to the ATM and looking at my wallet and I'm like, where's that debit card? Oh?
I left it in the atm with the bang. My god, this is love shit I go through.
So when y'all think about when you think about Mandy money and her six figure book deal and the business that is thriving, and those things are true, but what's also true is I am a real person with the same expenses and you know, try and I do, like you said, I keep my lifestyle very reasonable, but the cost, the cost and the demand on the dollars, as you know, at this point, I'm figuring out that balance and trying to like be always ready and I'm not, and it's
very uncomfortable. I don't love it, but I also know this is the way through and I have to just like keep going hells therapy.
And honestly, here you are seeing me at year fifteen, right, and it's really only been the last I want to say, five years that I'm.
Like, huh, we're gonna be okay.
So think about ten years of like what Mandy's describing that's what it was like. Like I I can remember Jal and I were living in the Halfway Hood.
And I was like ripping my cuticles to shredsus I was telling that story. That's how the stress.
Now, even the normal entrepreneurship, we were living in the Halfway Hood, and by Halfway Hood, we were literally living in subsized housing because he worked for housing and as a result, they wanted him to be quote unquote on campus. So I mean it was pretty I think, you know, these were townhouses, but still it's housing.
I'm such, your apartment, yeah, but still it's.
Housing, right, And so our rent was only like nine to twenty because he lived, you know, he worked where he lived. I can remember literally coming out the front door of housing and a young woman coming out and looking at me, and I look at her and she's looking at me. I look at her and she said, but Lisa with you're confused, and I was like, hey, I just took your webinar. I was like, so I'm trying to deflect because I know what she wants to ask. But I'm like, we're not. I'm like, I'll we learned
and didn't die, Okay, I getta go. Guess she's like, does she live in housing with me?
And the Duke of Matters?
It was I'm saying it like that's because you're all worked there now, That's what we could afford too, child, because before I live moved in with Drowse paying five hundred dollars a month for a room.
That's what I could afford.
So I just share that, like the road is not easy and it might not end and where I am now because honestly, I'm not gonna lie. I'm still very conscious that like the shit can fall through now too. I mean, I mean certainly I've been like for if I'm being all the way candidate Mandy, for all the money that I have made in business, I don't have half of it left over, and not from misspending as like Tiffany, but I didn't know how to run business.
I mean, I think certainly there was a lot of overpayment, you know, as far as employees were concerned, just overspending on certain things like you know, like marketing and but not getting the return.
I mean, for all the money I've.
Made, girl, I should literally be like one percent of the one percent you know I've made over fifty million dollars in business.
I don't have twenty million dollars. I don't know how ten million at all, you know what I mean.
I'm just like for what I've made, and so sometimes they're there there's like, you know, I don't want to say shame, but I'm like, damn.
Well, you're talking to your versions of Tiffany who are like different or done something different or had guidance or been there longer. And it's like the comparison up, yeah, you.
Know, because I'm just looking like day. I mean, I had a friend who in business made forty million dollars in business and over the last two or three years, and she has twenty of it.
I was like, wow, do you know how my white heart was like, oh, that's so great for you, but launching. But the thing is the tools that that person used and a lot of us are using today didn't exist when you started and you were building everything and you had your team and all this kind of stuff. So it's also like perspective.
Yes, now you have to do myself the grace and space.
I'm just I'm sharing that like as good as it seems that I have done. When I have tell you I literally made so many tax errors. I want to say, just when the business starts to take off, that it costs no. No, girl, we're in that we're at about seven figures of financial state, Like I probably had to pay out additional million dollars because the tax area. Like literally for like almost two or three years straight, every time I got a tax bill on top of my
regular taxes. I remember the last bill that I got. I just was like, at some point, it has to something has to change. It was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and I was like, what can I do?
I mean because of Memore, because that makes me feel better about my seven thousand dollars IRS bill that I still don't know what the hell. I just took a screen. I was like, I just I can't process this and that wasn't a regular picture and uploaded to my accounting portal and let her figure it out and tell.
Me, thankfully we have this.
We had this awesome account and Angie, who used to work for the IRS, who after like all the mess because I didn't really know how to hire. I didn't know how to She was like, we have to unearth what's happening here? Because I was getting a bill I felt like every month, and finally she got through the IRS was like, what's going on? Fix all the paperwork? And IRS was like, yes, but it's been years, so you have to pay those back taxes on top of the fees on top of that.
No, we won't wave them.
And it was when I tell you it was, I mean, I've not added it up, but for as many six figure bills as I've gotten, if it's not at a million, it's not that far from it. Can you imagine that's like like that I've had to pay and that's money from Tiffany. I'm not talking about oh the business, No, no, no, no, because I'm an escorp.
I know, look at me these face like because I'm an es Corp. So it's passed through.
Meaning what that means is that let's just say your business makes one hundred thousand dollars, right, and so if your business makes one hundred thousand dollars and then you spend fifty on running the business, the government says you have to pay taxes only on the fifty leftover. Now, if you save some of that fifty in the business, let's just say you say, oh, I'm gonna put twenty in my emergency account for business. The government says, I don't care, Mandy, you still owe taxes on the fifty
not spent on business. And you might say I'm going to put another ten thousand aside because I want to do a project later.
The government says, I don't care.
Any money not on an es corp or LLC, any money not spent on the business.
For you, the person, you have to pay taxes on that money.
Why in daycare a business expense? How am I p post to business if the kids are here? I can't business, girl. There is no business if there's no childcare.
And so just imagine that million dollars basically in over the last few years that I've had to pay. That's money that if I didn't have to pay that to the I r S for all these mistakes, would have landed into my account.
So like just like really like like that's.
I can, right, And so Biggie was right, money mom.
I mean, it's hard around here in these parts.
It's just I mean, I know it sounds like somewhere like unrelated, like, but it's just me and Mandy are sharing this because.
It's just.
That's good for one thing.
I don't yeah, and plus I don't even know what I'm doing.
I mean, I know, it's like it's stressful to pretend like I got it all.
Every day we'd be making it up. I don't know.
When my team asked me, I'm like, girl, you know, I don't know. I know just as much as you. And the only thing I do know is that through past experiences it helps to inform to help me make better decisions.
But I don't know. I've never been in this position, like how do you how do you launch a workbook version of your book?
I don't know, but I do know how to launch a book because I did that, and so I use some of those things and some of it is working and some of us. Every all that it's like a being a parent every day is new. You know, when Rio turns five, you'll have never had a five year old before. You're gonna have to figure out what it's like to have a five year old. And so when the baby is two, you're like, Okay, I've had a two year old before, but I've never had a two
year old when I also had an older kid. So all you do is that you take your knowledge and there's.
A different example.
I'm going to be stressed and then you do your best. And so I've just just.
Known you try to look back on it without being too hard on yourself. Yeah, and also that goes for y'all too who are listening. Yes, damn it, because we're not perfect and you don't sit there judging. It's easy to judge. But also I think, I mean, we can be vulnerable with our audience, feel like our audience gets it. But I get really worried when people come through Mandy money Makers and I found that they want to be a coach, and I'm like, did I make it seem
too easy? It's not. I had a career for a long time for a reason. But you know what I realized, brown ambition, the thing that we made together has become the consistent beyond my course, the consistent one of the consistent income streams that I have and I'm so grateful for and I'm just like more of those, please, But I'm a baby business.
Okay, No, we all make it, and that's why we have this podcast and we share, and Mandy and I share with each other because I don't know all the things there's times when I'm like, Mandy, because you've worked on the corporate side, what am I.
Doing wrong here?
She's done, She's literally done like training for my employees, because she has a set of knowledge and a skill set that I don't have. And so it's important as you are navigating, whether you work in corporate or whether you work you know, you have your own business or whatever, that you networks Ray sat at best, everybody wants a network. Virtically everybody wants bro Beyonce and Oprah are busy network horizontally, Like, hey, I know this thing, Mandy, but you know that thing
can be exchanged. So that horizontal network is so critical. So you might be far ahead in one space, but there's another space. I'm like, I don't know how to do that, and.
So don't not work with me. About taxes, I'm still figuring that shit.
Not be either shit. I'm finally I think I haven't gotten a letter.
In a long time. You know, I don't think anyone has their taxes figured out.
This country's must So this has been a super long therapeutic episode. So we're gonna say goodbye, farewell.
We're going I thought there was like when the beat drops goodbye, But that's okay.
Because we can see you guys on Friday for b a q A, where if you have questions about business, career, personal finances, we are here to your too smart, cute brown girlfriends and we'll help you out there. But until then, I mean, honestly, we'd love your feedback, like I mean, tweet us dmost on Instagram, like you know, what are
you struggling with? You know even, I mean, I would just love even if you want to do like an anonymous we might do that in like a b a q A. And sometimes you just want to be like I just want I need to tell somebody anonymously the struggle that I'm having. Even if you're not wanting advice, you know, we'd welcome that too.
Sometimes you just need to say this, say it out loud, yes, exactly.
Oh jinks.
Oh maybe I should be a section a segment of b a QA say it out loud, sex shift? Sorry what no I said a section of B AQA say it out loud?
Oh not me scratching my itchy army talking about my.
Finances morel you know, like B a q A may have Like you don't even want advice you just want.
To say it out loud.
Let's let's consider okay, dumpy your stuff on us. We're like a priez but in you're nut anyway. Let the beat drunkerbye then b bye. This is why I don't sing the songs.