Tiffany Owns That B...

All the things are cute and so I'm like, where'd you get this from? She was like Amazon. They're called Jessica. It's not a name burner or anything like that, but they're loungewear. But they're so cute. So I brought every single color available. Girl, I got pink. I have coral, I have blue, I have green, I've got yellow. But I tell you, I know people are just so sick of me, Like if she don't did she go with that? Zessica again, I am honestly, I love it my family.

But at the same time, you know, I'm not trying to wearst the lettos. This is not the sixties. Not the sixties. What was that the fifties where women were heels at home?

just like, this is great cute content. You know, He's like, shut up and go do your TikTok dances.

easy to do thirty day street? I said, you know what, I'm actually gonna tell the step by step story of how I legit became a millionaire. I'm shying the dances you're already you're not doing. Literally, I woke up this morning. I told I promised myself. I said, tivity, you're gonna start TikTok today. I literally still had my you know how you have your bedbun where you're like, this is where how I were my head to sleep here to sleep. I still have my bedgun on in my target night

dress on. And I was like, hey, I'm not coming to UQ. I made myself a promise. I guess I'm trying to keep it. Let's talk about how I became a millionaire. Whatevs. You know. So I just like, you know, I'm just gonna post the videos I told myself. I'm not, you know, like but hona say. I just feel like I don't know that I've ever told the story from beginning to end, because it's really only been like the

last four years. I'm I guess on paper, maybe I was a millionaire by maybe thirty five, thirty six, maybe because I never had the company evaluated. But I'm talking about like an actual I won't say actual because you know, but if I had to look at my actual money investments like capital liquid millionaire, it was by thirty seven that was able to look and say, oh, look there's a million, and then by thirty eight more and more

and more, and now I'm forty one. So by thirty seven I became like a there are seven figures I can visibly see, excluding homes and all that kind of stuff, you know, and other assets. So I was like, you know, I never really told that story because that happened at thirty seven, but by thirty three I was still broke. So what happened in kind of like that four years

and what led up to it? I was like, you know, I'm just gonna literally, I'm just gonna do it one minute clips until the story is done, and then you know, if I like it, maybe I'll say I thought.

what happened? Come follow? You know you can comment or whatever. I'm gonna be there.

separates some people.

video on my ig. It's like, expand your capacity. So how do you So It's almost like you have this cup, and this cup can hold eight ounces, and that is the way you're thinking now, but you want to be able to hold sixteen ounces. Well it can't be the same cup because that cup is not going to hold more than eight. So unless you expand your capacity, get a new cup, you know, and introduce new ideas, new ways, new ways of thinking and navigating things, you will always

only hold up to eight ounces. And so that's really the key. And it's it's all it's hard word, you know because even me, so despite the fact that we hit ten million dollars last year, I still think I think too small, you know what I mean, because like I still feel like I have not widened, you know, my capacity for thinking beyond where I am now. Because I will talk to someone else and I'm just like, wow, I never thought about it that way, and I'm enjoying that.

So I'm actually spending so much time now. I have shifted what I thought I should be as a CEO to something different. So in the beginning it was a lot more hands on because I had to be like, what's this, what's that? What about this? What about that? You know, like no, no, no, like this like that. So but I have grown the team enough and the six weeks away has taught me to trust them enough that they got it and I just kind of come in and make some changes. So my role as a

CEO is to remove blockages and challenges. So let's just say, you know, the content team has been trying to reach out to somebody they want to partner with and the person's not responding. I'll just make a phone call. I'm been like, says, pick up your phone, you know. So I removed challenges. I set vision, you know, like here's the north star what we're headed toward. I also am in charge of company culture, you know, because it really

does kind of trickle down from the top. But also something that I've incurred is that, like, to me as a really good, CEO. I have to be an amazing student. I've been doing a lot of studying Mandy, a lot. I mean, I had been watching so many YouTube videos about creating, about investing, about anything I can think of, any kind of interest. I have read so many books. I just finished one Atomic Habits today, and I have

I'm going to read Trevor Noah's Border Crime. I've been listening to so many podcasts.

even that I don't believe. But teaching, certainly, when if you can teach, do you understand how few people like what a what a highly monetizable skill set teaching is yo? If you can teach, you can like literally rule the world, and so like, I just challenge anyone who kind of feels like they're in a position or you know, or any sort of position, yeah that where they think that they're meant there what they can make is limited. I challenge you to be like, I don't that's not true.

Let me find an example of that's where that's not true. And I'm an example where that's not true.

nothing is final. And I hope that Brown Ambition is a place where people feel like they can come and help there and help and we help them, you know, see a bigger vision of what their life can be as well. And that's what it feels like to me for sure.

I believe, right. So anyway, we were talking about that and how she was sharing how she went to this conference where she sat on this panel with some of the largest names in the creator space, and she just knew that these huge names got to be making fifty one hundred million dollars something crazy, and she found that on that panel, she was like, not only was she making more than most, Like almost everyone on that panel, they like, it's one thing to gross ten million, it's

another thing to net. So the difference, y'all is gross is oh this is all we you know, you get the complete bag? Net is after I pay all these expenses, what's left over? And she said that, you know that there were people who maybe make eight or nine, but they were like, we're negative, We're not actually making any money. And she was so shocked because she just assumed I'm

not famous, I'm not well known. You've got millions and followers, and you've got twenty million followers here, and you've got this big platform here, and you need to tell me you're in the negative. And she just couldn't believe because I was telling her like, oh, you know, I really

got to do better. She was like, girl, no, you are a freaking unicorn, because I think the last time I checked, our our net was forty six percent or forty six percent profit, So that means of the ten you know, you get to keep four point six million, four point eight million, So that's high for kind of any company. And so that was just like such an eye opener of some You don't need to be as big as you think you need to be to be as successful as you like to be.

one of them is Girl Trek. So if you guys are not familiar with Girl Track, girl Track is a black women's nonprofit and the premise of girl Trick is to get black women out walking treking, right, and so girl Trek without any ads, it's first I could see signed up like about one million women in about a year and a half a year year and a half to Girl Track. That's like incredible because you don't understand like everybody here, everybody spends so much money on ads

for the most part. So I look at girl Track and if you like, if you I was just on TikTok to see this. Girl Trek have a TikTok. They do zero post. If you go to their Facebook, it's decent. But if you go to their Instagram, Okay, it's decent. But eh, they they don't send out a ten of emails because I'm on the Girl Trek email list, and yet they have been able to get this amazing this

like a million women to move right. I remember they they did a partnership with like Oprah via WW they did a partnership I think with like Walmart and Target. And you're like, so sometimes you can get so sidetracked by like the flashy that you see that you're missing out on these real amazing lessons of like these diamonds. So to me, I don't look at another other stuff I'm looking at. So how does girl Trek do this?

I know I know both Morgan and Vanessa Hork, founders of girl Trek, and that's another thing that I really enjoyed with Girl Trek is that it's Girl Trek, not Morgan and Vanessa. Like I would love to be able to like really in the next five years. I wanted to fall off as Tiffany. I want like the new financial people like oh remember the budget Nessa when she was oh, look at Tiffany, and I'm like, yes, I

fell off. I fell off and you can't find me anywhere, and like the business is the phrase fronting thing and so like I just study like those types of brands. I think I think we're in danger these days of like kind of like giving all of our energy toward the things that look outwardly successful but inwardly are really not.

top one hundred on Amazon. Her McCormick Seasoning sold out in like thirty minutes, right, So she has a you know, I don't know what her business model is, but let's just you know, from the outside, successful business, huge following. People move as a result of Tapatha. But she has both.

And then you might have someone like, for example, like a ray J. No shade to you, Brandy's brother, but he I've seen him post things and they'll say like you know, it's it's busted, like and no one, no one has purchased it, no one has moved, although he's got more than a million followers, right. And so the difference is trust. You watch Tapatha Brown, and based upon the things that she's sharing, you trust her, and so as a result, you move when she says to move.

And so I look at ray J. Now I'm not saying no things, but if ray J is telling me about a bank account, I don't care. If ray J' is telling me maybe about a music app, I might because I'm like, okay, he comes from a musical family. And so that when you build trust with your audience, you don't need as much audience as you think, Like I mean, I know, relatively speaking for most people, it

might seem like I have this huge audience. But in the social media space now, these like five year olds have like five million you know followers doll but you know, literally an egg, an uncooked egg on Instagram has more following. But what I do have with my audience is trust, and especially in a space personal finance, where trust is not easily won or kept. And so as a result, you know, I don't need it's huge of an audience because of one I do have moves. So trust is

built with consistency. Trust is built with do you say what you're gonna do, do you say what you know, do what you said, and did you do it when you said it. Trust is built with transparency. Trust is built with genuineness and care. And so that's really the difference.

Like when you hear Tabitha Brown speak, you trust her because she seems real, you know, whereas there might be a brand that like you know, you follow for the for the giggles, but you're like, hmmm, they're probably a liar, but this is fun, you know, like I'm not clicking on what they asked me to click on. And so just asking yourself, like, how can you increase the trust the trust between you and your audience wherever you currently

are with your audience by being consistent showing up? Like lately, I've been doing these lives and I told myself, I don't look at the numbers anymore. But my sister was like, girl, have you noticed your lives are increasing? I'm like, huh, because you know, for my own mental health. Like I told doctor Greed, I love teaching. So she was like, but I'm like, but I don't like social media anymore. And she was like, well, why not just go on

teach and come off. That's what I do, Like, I actually add the app of TikTok on what I feel like doing a live because maybe I got an amazing lesson or something came to me. I'll do a live, and then as soon as I go off, I take off TikTok. I'm not TikTok. I take Instagram off my phone. So at first, when I was doing lives, it was

maybe like a month or so ago. I started to do them, and I got maybe like a on average, one hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty people would show up, and that number would maintain, you know, and then it crept up to two hundred, and now we're up to four fifty five hundred in a span of about a month and a half. I don't save them cause quite honesty, like I don't want to upload them

for later for critique or whatever. I just have a lesson that I want to teach a jewel that I want to drop, typically about business or personal finance, and then I like, drop, Mike, I'm out. But people have been really loving them, and you know what it's been doing, It's been building trust. Because the other day I didn't even talk about the book. I jumped off. I think someone said something like, oh, I have your book, and I was like, oh, thanks so much. I hope you're

enjoying it. I jumped off. A few hours later, I looked on Amazon because I checked my my numbers book sell numbers all the time, and I jumped like five hundred spots and I was like, what, I don't want I wasn't even selling the book. But no, it was because of that trust from that live and people were having such a good time, they said, what else does

Tiffany have? And so like keeping that in mind, like you know, if you're a business owner or just even like in your career, that like it's trust is truly the commodity that you were in the business of. You know, if you can do that, then everything else becomes so much easier.

the time. And I was thinking recently while I was taking my little girl chek walk earlier four miles whatever, and I was thinking about the Shae moisture controversy when they sold Shay moisture to what was it, Sundial which owns Loril and a bunch of other brands, and they had that really tone deaf commercial, uh and shit hit the fan, and it was like, you know, black women especially and I personally also took a little bit personally because you feel like this was for.

little bit of fear. Okay, they're working for a network now it's not just Tiffany and Mandy anymore, but we are still here in it, you know, on every email, a chain, making every decision about who who, who sponsors us, who doesn't, who's the guest, who's not the guest, and that I think helps continue that trust and we have to continue thinking about that. It gets harder to do when the money gets bigger and the opportunities bigger.

And then two, what honestly helps is that you have some and you might not always be able to do this, but you have some underlining other things, meaning that we can say no to money now and wait hold out for what we really what we really want, you know, because we're this money. We don't live and die by this the you know what's happening now that we will play the long game, you know. And so with Budgeteiza, it wasn't always so, because I was definitely broken in

the beginning. But what I used to say was like, oh, I can say yes to this even though it's not in alignment, or I can babysit in tutor and wait until something's in alignment. So I always made sure that like and from the very beginning, I said to myself, Tifton, you're going to have to create a way that income comes in that is not in aligned with not aligned with anything else other than delivering to the audience. Because he keeps you honest. So now when a brand like

you should see me on my lives, I'm wild. Sometimes I'm like, ooh god, I don't save it because I'd be like these brand couple, Why these brands can't kiss my behind? And you know what they do? They love it. Oh my god, Tiffany, you're so authentically black. I'm like, get out of my inbox. Get out of my inbox, you know, because you don't to know why. Because eighty to ninety percent of that ten million dollars came directly

from the audience. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do as long as I'm in alignment and I pour back into the very people that I have said that I've been going to serve. I don't ever have to worry. There's not a brand I've had brand say to me there was one brand in particular. I won't say it was a big bank you can't run, you know, that's a little hint. Anyway, they wanted me to do something and I was like nah, and the

guy actually wrote back, we work with people bigger than Tiffany. Ooh, you man, we work with people bigger than Tiffany and something he said. And I was tempted to be like, sir, what are you in my inbox? Waste in my time? My dad and I just was like, oh, delete. But here's the thing. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care if you want to offer me one hundred thousand, I don't care if you want to offer me one million, I don't care. If you're want to offer me ten million.

I can make that myself. You can kick rocks. The better I am to my community, the better my business is. And so if you develop your business on that kind of foundation, and it might be slow in the beginning. Remember I told y'all that I didn't really I got to millionaire status. I'm talking about capital liquid millionaire status at age thirty seven, but at thirty three I was broke, right, So it took a long time thirty three was like, oh my U's ever gonna thirty four? I started a

little peak thirty six and then it finally hit. But you see, it's so much better this way because literally there's nothing that I have to say yes to. Nothing. I always ask myself, is this an alignment? Isis you want to go? Is this good for the audience? Does this feel right? I'm not going to sell like someone just offer me a ton of money to sell some crappy payday loan. It's a different type of payday loan.

I was like, oh, take this and shove it. Like you know, if it knows who you are, they're always offered me. I'm telling you now, most of my contracts now are six figure contracts, and so I probably say,

note about seven figures a year, you know. But and I'm okay with that, you know, doing that because I always said the money was I needed enough to be safe and secure with my family, and we're here now, and so oftentimes I let go of the money just to just to make sure that, like you know, I'm working from a place of you know, what I really believe to be right and true. I want to be able to sleep well at night. Like, one of my companies make seven figures a year and I don't take

any money from that. Instead, I use it to hire more women that look like me on purpose. And I told the team that the other day they're like, I don't, I don't understand. I'm like, I could be making an additional an additional million dollars a year and take home pay a year, and I have said, noice that because I want you to be able to work here, because I know where you were before they mistreated you. I know that where you were before they didn't care about

your your your feedback. I know where you were before you know they they took your ideas and pretended it was theirs. So as a result of that, I will relinquish this million dollars a year for my family and I. But I expect excellence from you that I want you to come to the table with the best that you have in you, and I don't. I don't accept any excuses for excellence. Excellence just means doing your best, and so in doing so, there is no brand that could

come to me that can tep me with anything. I'm like, since I say note to a million dollars, but my own damn company. I don't give a damn about your credit card. That's you said it's going to make me rich. I'm already rich.

is awesome. And so they partnered with a podcast company called Oh you know my brain is really Like, I feel like I had something to do about beer their podcast.

their contract. They were being paid seventy thousand dollars base and then a percentage of merch sales and percentage of ads, and so they renegotiate, negotiate, negoti But one of the things that they negotiate for is ownership of the IP, the intellectual property of Call Her Daddy. And at first the answer was no, no, no, no no. But they fought for it, and one of the girls, I guess she wanted to go a different way, ended up leaving.

But the girl who stayed, she got her IP, she got to keep Call Her Daddy And recently, you know, she just got bought by Spotify for sixty million dollars. And I guess, really the booster, I know, I guess really the boost for me is like the power of ownership.

Now you can't always own everything all the time, you know, but sometimes creative you know, sometimes when you start in a business, sometimes when you're doing whatever it is that you're creating, you know, in the beginning, you're so eager to make the money or get put on that you can easily give away your power by giving away your ownership.

I remember I read this thing like it was a podcast something where Nas was on, and he said one of the things that Prince told him was like, own your rights, own your publishing, own your There are people who don't own those things. From my understanding, like Mary J. Blize, for example, as much money as she's made, I read somewhere that she still owes the record label twenty five million dollars and it's hard for her to make that money back because she doesn't own the rights to her

own songs and things. And so ownership is key because you can have someone that's not as popular as a Mary, but because they have ownership, they are still making more, you know, because every dollar they have a greater take of every dollar that comes in. And so I just just was thinking about that, that how important ownership is. And with all these new amazing creators that are coming out, I hope that They're just keeping that in mind that

like ownership, you're not always able to keep everything. But like so, for example, like books, right, so I traditionally published, I don't own like I own the basic copyright for like the words and things I wrote them, but I don't really own the book. Like I can't take this book and sell it myself. Penguin owns it. But I knew that like that was a trade off for me because I knew in order for me to get a New York Times bestsellers list and to do what I needed to do to take the budget East to the

next level, I was willing to give that up. But I still am able to self publish my own books on my own if I decided to move forward. Sorry, Penguin, That's what I decided. That's what I'm going to do. But I also too. A publishing company had asked to buy Molly Moore. I think it was Simon and Schuster. So they wanted to buy get it with money, but they also wanted to buy Molly Moore, and I said no. Matter of fact, I said hell no, because my plans

for Molly are different. And so if I forecast forward, I want to maintain ownership of Molly Moore. And if a production company just reached out to buy it for me, I said no because I have a longer term, Like this book was like I need to give something amazing to my audience. Here's a guide. I want to get a New York Times bestsellers list. I want to raise the profile of budget needs to like, don't play with me. We reel out here done, but Molly more is in

ten years. I want this to be a billion dollar business. I want to see her on every streaming platform. I want the babies to be wear Molly Moore t shirts and Molly Moore shoelaces. That doesn't happen, you know, without me attached to it, Like y'all am not gonna make Molly Moore happen. And I'm just sitting like at home

like that used to be me. So just consider that, like ownership, ownership, ownership is really it's really critical, especially in today's days and time, as you create things on different websites and partner with different organizations to try to maintain as much ownership as possible. So that's my brown boostye.

like we, I mean, who are these attorneys? We will own this an importuity and worldwide, I don't know, in all the universnational universe. Yes, these words are ours. It was. And meanwhile, I wrote the piece and then I shopped it around to different outlets. It wasn't like it was commissioned directly from this particular outlet, and I was like, no,

you can keep the money. And I negotiated like three times normally what they would have paid, and I'll take the the accolade and the fact that I got my piece published on your site, and we'll just call.

Tiny Human and being a landlord and all that. But one of her passion projects is the Elevate Money conference, which came about I think the first conference was maybe last year or the year before, and it's right, and she made it happen even through the pandemic. But Elevate Money is really supposed to be a safe space for black and brown people to get together here from black and brown creators and influencers and learn lessons about wealth building,

creating a business, and being empowered. And this year she was supposed to host it and Tulsa, which probably you might have heard, supposed to host it and Tulsa. It was all set up, it was going to be at this amazing location, but then you know, the Delta variant came to town and she decided to no longer do the in person conference, and in fact, it was canceled altogether.

and I know it's going to be extraordinary. And she and I were talking about in one particular part of the conference helping people understand how to get things trademarked. You know, how to protect your IP girl, and yeah, by the way, brand Emission's trademark, you got it, don't go for it, you know, and how to own all of that. So that's what Thanks for reminding me of that. And I'm really happy for Sandy that Elevate Money is happening.

I will I will be there and we'll post a link in the show notes so you guys can check it out and join for free.

afford an attorney. But he had trademarked his name, and I was just like, he said come to He was a musician, and he was like, come to the studio. I'm going to walk you through online. So I literally sat and did it. Oh my gosh, I it is the best thing I ever did, because a year later I got a Google alert that said Meet the Budgeonisa, and it was like traced back to the Wells Fargo website and I was like, oh, Wells Fargo. I wasn't. It was this beautiful Asian woman. I'm sure she's super nice.

It wasn't me. And I was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, what do I do? And within twenty four hours it was down because clearly someone did their googles and found the trademark belonged to it.

talking about race, especially her book. And around that time, this other Instagram account became wildly popular called so You Want to Talk About That was the name, and it came to it came to be and it was all it's all very it's not led by a face. It's just called so you want to talk about? And every day or every other day, they kind of created these these carousel posts of PowerPoint slides talking about different issues, a lot of things about race and racism but also politic,

social justice, et cetera. And it became wildly popular, like three million followers popular. And this author was People were joining this page so you want to talk about because they thought it was this author. Yes, And it turns out, of course, it's run by a white woman whose name

is Jess. And this came out this past week. I don't know if there was a particular incident, because she's this controversy's kind of been there, like people have known, hey, this is not really a Jama and this is not okay. And Ajama got on Instagram and she actually told her story of finding out about the account and really just kind of tucking it away and just saying, listen, I can't do anything about it. I'm just gonna, you know,

go on my merry way. But because of so much backlash and because so many people were really you know, fighting for Ajama and wanting her to be you know,

to have some form of justice. Finally, the Jess, the founder of so you want to talk about, she decided to rename her handle, so it's a different name handle, and she's like, I'm putting my name out there, and she had this like very week week disclaimer kind of shoved down in her Instagram bio that's like not affiliated with a gema, you know, not affiliated with that book.

And she's but now it's a whole different name, and I just thought that that was, yeah, very similar, because it's about so often it's like black creators, black artists, black writers, black entertainers who create something and it's ours, right, and then it becomes you put a white face on it, in a white name or a white you know. Oh yes, so Lizzo said black people created rock and roll. Okay, oh wow, we know please single. Yeah, And it just it continues to happen even today.

do with my mug? And then I woke up and I was like sleeping on my my parents' couch. I was like, ooh, that's my logo dollar sign B. So I went, if you go try trade type in dollar sign B like it says owned by Tiffany Eliche. I still own it. I'm not giving up this, but there was nobody to sew because bitcoin's I owned by anyone.

So it's just really frustrating, you know. Like I was just like because I was using it for like a year to two years, and then bitcoin came out, someone decided this is the artwork for it, and then it went crazy, and I just decided, you know, what do I do. Do I fight against this like machine thing, or do I say that the real the real power is in my name budgetista, you know, And so I kind of like let it go. But yeah, that sucks. I mean I own that, I own that Xala slime b baby.

me off, really does. And I'm sure just said all the right things about how sorry she is, et cetera, et cetera, but it's still that privilege of just just even casually, Oh, I didn't know any better. I just thought it was a good name. But to not have to think about that, and to take something else that was the fruit of someone else's work and then turn it into your own. That is hmm, colonialism, white supremacy, racism.