On today’s episode, Ellyce goes “under the desk” with TikTok’s favorite newscaster V Spehar (they/them) of @underthedesknews. V shares how their experience with security around money has evolved – and is still evolving – as a gay, non-binary person, journalist, content creator and entrepreneur. They also discussed the impact that being their true self openly has had on them in business, daily life and with money.
Some of the takeaways they hope you get from this episode are:
We are honored to have V on the podcast during Pride Month!
Follow V:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@underthedesknews
IG: https://www.instagram.com/underthedesknews/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vitusspehar
Subscribe to the V Interesting Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/v-interesting-with-v-spehar/id1626342129
Join the Queerd Community:
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/ellyce.fulmore/
TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@queerd.co
WORK WITH ME: https://ellycefulmore.com/
Ready to take control of your money? Well I’ve got you covered with my mini course library. 6 different courses priced at $47 each, these mini courses are an awesome (and affordable!) way to start taking control of your financial future.
https://ellycefulmore.com/mini-courses
On today’s episode, Ellyce goes “under the desk” with TikTok’s favorite newscaster V Spehar (they/them) of @underthedesknews. V shares how their experience with security around money has evolved – and is still evolving – as a gay, non-binary person, journalist, content creator and entrepreneur. They also discussed the impact that being their true self openly has had on them in business, daily life and with money.
Some of the takeaways they hope you get from this episode are:
We are honored to have V on the podcast during Pride Month!
Follow V:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@underthedesknews
IG: https://www.instagram.com/underthedesknews/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vitusspehar
Subscribe to the V Interesting Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/v-interesting-with-v-spehar/id1626342129
Join the Queerd Community:
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/ellyce.fulmore/
TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@queerd.co
WORK WITH ME: https://ellycefulmore.com/
Ready to take control of your money? Well I’ve got you covered with my mini course library. 6 different courses priced at $47 each, these mini courses are an awesome (and affordable!) way to start taking control of your financial future.
https://ellycefulmore.com/mini-courses
Hi and welcome back to this week's episode of Keep Finance Queerd, a podcast that's putting the personal back in personal finance through complex and nuanced guest interviews and solo episodes. I'm your host, Ellyce Fulmore, and on today's episode we go under the Desk with TikTok's favorite newscaster, V. V has done such an incredible job of creating a safe space to talk about current events and politics and very exciting news. V just launched their podcast called V Interesting, where they will be able to dive deeper into complex topics and keep you engaged and well informed with what's happening in the world. I'll make sure to link the podcast in the show notes for you to check out. I am such a big fan of V and the content they create and I was so honored to have them on today. In this episode, V shares how their experience with security around money has evolved and is still evolving as a gay, nonbinary person, journalist and entrepreneur. They also discussed the impact of being their true self openly has had on them in business, daily life and money. We are honored to have VI on the podcast during Pride Month. And just a quick reminder that the Queerd Pride Month scholarship is still open for donations and applications. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far. We are almost halfway to our goal of raising $2,500 for LGBTQIA plus folks in need. Okay, but enough of me talking. Let's get into security, being yourself, and money with V. Hi there. Hi, I'm Sydney. My name is Rebecca. I'm an Autistic Kwoman. I'm Jane. I'm a first generation Latina. I am a single mom and a survivor of domestic abuse. I am an ADHD plus sized millennial on the autism spectrum and add creating other problems in itself. Even though I bring in decent money, I struggle with staying ahead of everything. I am now struggling to pay off my debt. My traumatic brain injury means that it's hard for me to concentrate long enough to sort out my finances. The hardest time managing my finances my parents were never able to teach me. I love my Starbucks habit and I'm not giving it up. Hi Vy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm so excited to be chatting with you. Yes, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. So a lot of you might know Vy as under the Desk News on TikTok and Instagram. And I've recently become a big fan of your content because I feel like you just have such a gift for taking tough news topics and delivering them in such a calming way. And I'm someone who likes to stay up to date with current events and know what's going on in the world. But I also get very overwhelmed with the news. So you become my safe space on the Internet to get the basics, and then I can go and do more research as needed. From there. I know for me, I'm just so grateful for your page and all the content that you put out. For those listeners who aren't familiar with you, would you be able to share a little bit more about who you are and the work that you do as a newscaster and digital creator? Yeah. Thank you so much for having me and for that kind feedback. That's exactly the experience I hope people have when they're watching under the desk is that you've come, you've learned something, you've stayed curious, you go rabbit hole it later and get more of the context and details so that you can form your own opinion. So I started it just about a year and a half ago with the intention of providing a space where folks could have a conversation about current events and politics that wasn't riddled with bias, wasn't riddled with opinion, and that also didn't make people feel bad. If they didn't know something, it was okay to ask questions. It's okay to not know something and go research it later. It's been a nice little community. I love my little under the Duskers. Yeah, it's amazing. I feel like we're similar in that sense of trying to provide and break down information that can be really overwhelming and complicated in more of a simple, straightforward way. And like you said, then the people consuming the content can go and research more where they want to or dive into whatever rabbit hole they want to. But it's kind of like meeting the audience where they're at and on a platform that they're already using, which I think is just such one of the great parts about TikTok is like you kind of catch people where they're already consuming content and be like, hey, how about you think about this thing also? Yeah, you're exactly correct. And it's keeping that gatekeeping at Bay. Right. The idea that it's only if you can use the biggest words and the most fancy words and have the fanciest education, then you deserve to understand something. I don't subscribe to that at all. And I think there are ways that we can make world better place just by making an easier place to have a conversation. Yeah, definitely. I completely agree. So my next question for you, we're just going to dive right in is how has your identity or the major pieces of your identity impacted your relationship with money? My identity has evolved from when I was young, so I'm almost 40 years old right now. I would say that my relationship with money has always been that I wanted it. When I was twelve years old, I got my very first job tagging shirts with the dry cleaners that my grandma and my mom worked at. It was like a family business. And I remember I made four point $25 an hour. And in 19 and 90, that was like a lot of money. Like a lot of money. That was a wealth of money. And I stayed up one night to make sure when my dad got up to go to work, he knew that I didn't need him to leave lunch money out for me. And that was my first real taste of financial freedom. And I would say really the way that I started to build a relationship with money, which was wanting to be really financially independent. So what would you say were, like, the main aspects of your identity that had an influence on how you thought about money? So my parents were very young when they had me, and I kind of know two childhoods. I know one growing up with my parents from when they were teenagers until they got their big people jobs, like their big boy and big girl jobs, and the other after both of them were working, when my mother was working as a nurse at Yale Newton Hospital and my father was working aircraft and a Union factory. And those were two different parts of who I am and how I grew up and the way that I related to the world. And also money played a very different role in those two sides of my childhood. So you have the very early years, I didn't know if we had money or if we didn't. I had a lot of love in my house, and it was very fun to live there. When we, quote, got money, which I wouldn't even say, like my family is not wealthy by any means, but when we achieved, like, a level of we went to Disney that year money, it felt different and it felt more fragile, and I became aware of the difference. You don't know what you don't know. Right. So growing up, I only knew one way, and then I knew this way, and I started I would say one of the fractured relationships I have with money is thinking that having financial independence and financial security is a very fragile situation. It's a very temporary situation. It can be taken away at any time. And I would say that probably stems from those two childhoods. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I've heard that from quite a few guests of a similar experience where they grew up in Scarcity when they were younger, and then somewhere in, like, their teens, their parents started to make more money and had that shift. And it's hard to adjust when you're used to not having enough, to suddenly having enough. It's like, what do you do with that money? How do you choose to spend it? And I often see kind of two directions either. It's like you got to spend that money because you might not have it again. So you're like, spending it really quickly or on the other side feeling really guilty spending any money and just wanting to keep it all and hoard it all just in case that money goes away. So, yeah, definitely. That is something that plays a huge role in the way that you think about money even as an adult. I'm sure that's, like, carried over into adulthood. Well, the example for me was that my mom wanted to show us all the things that she knew we didn't have before, but we didn't know we didn't have before. So when they got some disposable income, we lived very near New York City, and I wanted to be on Broadway when I was a kid. And so it would be like when we would go to a Broadway show, like, at least once a month, that's an expense. It did go essentially right back out. I wouldn't say that there was any kind of lesson in savings over. Now we can do more cool stuff, and I want to make up for all these things that my parents thought that we should have or wanted to give us that they didn't. But we didn't know we were missing out on. And so then it became the idea that money is to be spent. And that really covered me all the way through my twenty s and early 30s was, well, I'd rather have the experience and what's the point in holding on to it if it's so fragile? I might as well use it while I have it. And then when you're getting to 40, I'm like, okay, wait, maybe I should actually plan a little bit better. I didn't think I was going to live this long. I think a lot of people, especially millennials, especially queer millennials, I did not think I was going to live this long. I just didn't see myself really getting past, like 25. Not that I was depressed or suicidal necessarily. It just didn't make sense to me. Like that world didn't seem possible. So now that I'm almost 40, I'm like, oh, well, okay, maybe I have to reevaluate my relationship again, right? You're constantly doing that. Yeah. So how did you find that balance between being able to spend on the things that you missed out on when you were younger and have those experiences and enjoy your life while also now thinking about saving for the future? I don't know that I have. Honestly, I think that's something that I'm still working on and will probably be working on forever. There are some times where I will look at my bank account and feel very secure. The biggest notion of security for me was not having a credit card balance. All I wanted at one point in my life, not even that far off from where I am now, was to see my credit card balance at zero. In my early 30s, late twenty s, I had a really good job, and I was able to get my first big credit card, and it had like a $10,000 limit or something. And it was like a titanium blue card. It looked really cool. It was from Chase. I remember everything about it. The Sapphire card originally, and I would use it for everything, and then I would pay it off at the end of the month, and I was single, and I was able to do that. I was really proud of that. And then I got into a situation with a partner who was not great and ended up getting further and further away from that moment where you can clear that credit card at the end of the month and it adds up on you and adds up on you. So what I wanted to do after I survived that experience was to have that moment where I could use my credit card and then, no, I would clear it at the end of the month. And that was financial freedom enough. I still have moments where I'll freak out, even if I quote, like, have money, meaning I can pay all my bills and I'm not worried about going truly paycheck to paycheck, although I don't know anybody who doesn't live paycheck to paycheck. I couldn't miss one even now. And I don't live an extravagant, luxurious life. I have what I consider, like, a pretty normal life or what a normal life should be or basic should be. But I'll have a panic attack. Like, I'll decide I want to buy new sneakers. Right. And let's say they're $120. That shouldn't be, like, a hard swing, but I'll do it, and I'll think about it for, like, six weeks. I don't have to be totally sure about it. But then other times I'll go to Target and I'll buy groceries and, like, a random T shirt and $200. I'm like, no problem. So I think I'm still figuring it out when I decide that money is worth spending or when I'm afraid of it or when I'm not afraid of it. It's such a lesson I'm, like, deeply in the middle of right now. Yeah. So has there been any kind of patterns that you've identified of, like, maybe when your mindset fluctuates between this is worth the money, I can spend it where it's like feeling guilty about it. Like, is there anything you've identified that maybe triggers that, or is it just kind of seem random at this point? I think because I've always had a chaotic modeling for me in the way that people in my life spent money or got money or lost money, it remains like, a very present fear in my life. And it's not just the way that my family was, it's the way that my friends were, the way that other, more extended family members were bosses were. I think working in the environment that I have, I worked jobs where it is very easy to get fired. And that is very scary. You know, when you're working from somebody else, you're not your own running your own business. In a sense, you are in a cutthroat business, like news or special events, planning stuff like that. That's tricky, too, because you're like, okay, I'm doing really good right now. But this could all go away tomorrow. Right? Because if my boss decides I'm expendable that day that I am. And so for me, moving towards owning my own business has been really helpful to controlling that part of the experience. But understanding for a lot of folks out there every single day, we're worried we're going to get fired. I'm not sure that's just a millennial thing. I think it's a work culture fragility thing. And then how can you feel secure doing anything when we're all just, like basically one to three paychecks away from poverty? That's scary. Yeah. And I think the pandemic highlights for a lot of people, and we saw how easily people can lose their jobs. And it's interesting that you brought up owning your own business, because I feel the same way as you, where I feel a lot more stable being my own boss. And a lot of people have the opposite view where they're like, don't you feel like there's no stability in owning your own business? And I'm like, no, I feel the opposite because I feel like I'm in control. And if something were to happen where I'm no longer making money from one area of my business, I feel like I can just pivot and make money in a different area. Whereas if I am fired from a corporate job, that's it. I have to go find another job. There's not a safety net. You're exactly correct. And I think that's part of the values that we grew up with as well. Right. Is you grow up, you get a good job with the get your health insurance, and it's too hard to own your own business. It's too risky to own your own business. And I wish that I again had better role models. I knew people that own their own businesses, but they were tradesmen. They were electricians, they were plumbers. They were mechanics. They were my dad's friends. And I knew or they were my mom's friends. And they owned a daycare. They owned something that was a service, a tangible service. You bring your child to me, I will babysit them, and then you will pay me. You bring your car to me, I will fix your carburetor, and I will give it back to you. And when you're doing something like content creation or journalism or events planning or jewelry making or any of these other things that we see people on TikTok be really popular with, being a makeup artist, being any of these kind of things, that is where it's like, okay, well, should I just go work for a brand? Or should I just go work for a company? Or what if I got a job in the mall at Sephora as opposed to doing my own makeup business? Right? Or what if I need to go work for my local newspaper instead of doing my own journalism, in a sense, because you feel like you're not going to have enough credibility. You're not going to know how to run the business. It's going to be too hard, it's too risky. How do I deal with the taxes? How do I do all this? I had all the same fears, and I honestly, as soon as we started doing the own business thing, I was relieved of all the other anxieties that I found the time to figure out how to do business taxes. I found the time to figure out how to manage my time. And when I have a contract, I can treat them like their own little baby rainbows as opposed to tasks that are handed to me from my boss that maybe I don't want to do. Maybe I'm not good at doing. Maybe I don't have the great resources or the time to do within that corporate structure. And if I lose a contract, I know I could replace the contract. It feels a lot less personal even when you lose and you own your own business. Yeah, I completely agree. So while we're on this topic, do you have any advice that you would give someone listening who wants to be their own boss and start their own business? Like, what would be the first step to take? I used to do entrepreneurial coaching for the James Beard Foundation, and I helped women chefs start their own restaurants and cooking businesses. And the thing that we learned there is that women have to feel 100% accomplished before they'll do something. Men only need to feel 100% confident. They just have to believe that they can do it and they'll go and do it where women have to feel like they got to have this roster of proof. So what I would say is, and I think that was overgeneralized because I was working on women's entrepreneurship. I think that's more maybe a personality thing we could see. I would say one, is this business really solving a problem? Is this thing that I do solving a problem? Is it a business or is it a hobby? And you have to start there because sometimes we decide hustle culture will tell you that you got to monetize everything and you don't. And I think that's so dangerous and it's so just such a gut punch. When somebody has a hobby, something they love to do, let's say, like crocheting hats for their friends and they just love it. And they make the most beautiful crochet hats and they go to make it into a business because everyone told them you could sell these, and then they make it into a business and then they have to take commissions and they've lost the joy. It was a hobby. It wasn't a business. So understanding. Is your idea a hobby or a business? Both are extremely valuable to your quality of life. Second, does this business really solve a problem and be honest with yourself? This is the hardest part. Does this business solve a problem and not a problem that you're creating that you think needs fixed, an actual problem that you can be the plug for. Then I would tell people, look at Google the heck out of it, look and see who else is doing what you want to do. Because maybe you could learn from their mistakes or learn from their wins and not have to start everything exactly alone in the individual from the very beginning. There are billions of cupcake businesses that do really well. They all make cupcakes, but they all do it a little different. And each one of their neighborhoods needed a cupcake shop that made sense. So putting those together and then I would say, leaning on the resources of your Small Business Administration, the FBA is one of the most functional and wonderful government options that we have. They have grants, they have education. They will teach you how to do your taxes. You can get something called a scores coach, which is for new entrepreneurs. It's all free, it's all paid for by your taxes. Every city is different. Some are better than others. But I've had great success with the FDA and I would just go to their website every single day and see what you could sign up for a class. Or maybe you'll learn a little new tax deduction. Or maybe you'll learn a new way to structure your business because LLC isn't necessarily right for everyone. Maybe you need something else. And then once you've got that all together, decide, am I going to be a business owner? And then you just do it. You've got to just sometimes just decide for me. When I started doing under the desk and I made a switch from because I had a full time job the whole first year I did under the desk and I had a goal in mind at the time that when I had 1000 followers, I would take it seriously because I didn't think I would ever get that high. And that came really quick. So I was like, okay, I got to a point where I was going to get fired from my day job if I didn't quit to start my own thing. That balance was unfair at a point. A lot of us have jobs that you can do a second job or you can start a TikTok or you can start doing what you're going to do. I have a friend who founded the Stick Company and she did that nights and weekends. Truly, she was so disciplined. Two of my friends have started at Jamie and Cynthia and they would clock out of our day job that we had together and then they would go somewhere else and work on sticks all night and work on it on the weekends. But they were so disciplined about making sure that it wasn't during our work hours because that was something they needed to do for themselves. And it gets to a point where you're like, okay, I have to quit the safety job for the future. Yeah, I think that was just so much good advice. Yeah, it was online in one clip. No, it's awesome. And for those that are listing that are Canadian like me, we don't have the exact same service that Vy mentioned. But there's a lot of very similar services in your province that will offer a lot of business support. And I think that's great advice is like, especially now in 2022, so many people are starting their own businesses and there's so much support out there and so many people to learn from that are willing to teach you and educate you on how to do that. So, yeah, definitely take advantage of all those resources that are out there. 40%. I'm going to interrupt you. Sorry. For 1 second, 40% more small business licenses were applied for since 2020 in the United States, it's up 40%. That's astronomical. The power structure of the corporate safety net we thought we had as soon as we didn't have pensions anymore, we really didn't have anything to be loyal to. So here in the state of corporate structure, they really don't give you that much. You may as well work for yourself. You will find a way to afford health insurance. You will find a workaround that cost comes from somewhere and it's either going to come from your happiness or it's going to come from the fact that you've got the time to make more money and now you can afford health insurance. And that's okay. Which again, of course, Canada doesn't think that you guys don't have to worry about that. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of people think that we do have free health insurance in some areas, but there's a lot that we still have to pay for. We basically get like free doctor's visits, but I still pay out of pocket for the dentist and for therapy and for my medication and lots of things like that. We got a little bit but still something to worry about. But I love that you brought up the transitioning from your fulltime job into entrepreneurship because I think that's also a narrative that I've seen a lot of just quit your job and go all in. And I think that doesn't work for a lot of people. And however, you need to transition into being your own business owner said working in the evenings, working on the weekends, and balancing that out until you feel like you have that safety net to quit your job and move into that. And I think that everyone does it at their own pace. And for me, I was kind of pushed into that from the pandemic. I got laid off from my corporate job. And so I was like, this is the only thing I have to do right now. But if you do have a job, you don't have to feel like you have to don't feel like you have to quit right now to go into your business. You can take the time that you need to feel secure in that totally. And also don't consider that everything needs to be a full time job either. This is something I've only recently thought about. Not everything is a full time job. Maybe you're going to keep your fulltime corporate job because you like your job or you're a nurse or you're something and you really are passionate about your first career and you don't want to lose that. But you do love doing this other thing. You could decide that your success doing that other thing is small, that you just want to do it this much. I think we have this idea all the time that we have to maximize because that's what culture is put on us. There are lots of people who truly run a part time, very lucrative, very fun, brings them a lot of joy part time business. And think of that to limit how many clients you'll take if you do something. Like, I know a guy who makes custom lightsabers and everybody wants this custom lightsaber, and they are so beautiful and incredible. And he's had a lot of people want to throw money at him to scale his business. And he doesn't want to. He'll only make four savers a month. That's it, because he enjoys it. He gives himself I think it's like 40 hours a month or something. It's not a terribly large amount of time to make each one of them takes like ten or whatever it is. And that's his joy. And he makes a lot of money making them and he still has all the time that he wanted. Plus he still works as regular job because he likes his regular job. So you can work it out to say, my small business is a small part time business or it's a small even less than part time business. Yeah. And like you mentioned earlier, it can take the joy, the out of what you're doing if you're doing it too often. And my girlfriend actually does. She does the whole a lot of different jobs at once. So she works like a part time retail job. She also does part time virtual assistant work. And she has her own furniture flipping business. And that's what she likes because she gets bored if it's too much of the same thing. So it's just like a little bit of everything. So, yeah, I didn't really make that connection until you said it. But I'm like that's really good advice because not every business has to be full time. That can really take a lot out of you. And even with my business right now, which is a small business, what I own is called Spear Entertainment. That's the LLC that oversees all of the work that I do now, one that gave me a lot more protection. And what I was doing with brand deals and different stuff, but I have a structure just like you would if you went to a corporate office. I only take four keynotes a year. That's all I'm going to do, because I know how much effort I put into them. I know how proprietary and custom I make them, and I know that takes a ton out of me. Plus, then I have to travel, do it in person, and do the kind of, like, recognizance afterwards. Being a keynote speaker is technically a whole job if I were to do four of them a year, but I'm only going to do four, I'm only going to do six. I can only do a few of them. And then I know I'm doing the news every single night. When it comes to brand deals, I do so few because it's just not something that makes sense with the authenticity of everything else I do. In between giving you the news and breakdowns on politics try to sell you like a suitcase. People will forgive me. They know that I have to pay my bills. I'm like, here we go. Everybody watched the ad quick, and they will, because people respect what I do. They know that there's value in it, and they know that's the name of the game right now. That's how people make their living. But keeping all of that in balance is so important to keeping your business healthy, too, because you can't overwork it. If you think of it as, like anything else that you own, any other tool that you have or any resource that you have, if you overwork it, you'll break it. So keeping that in balance and understanding, even with something like being a digital creator, you may have four or five different business buckets that you're dealing with. One is keynote, one is appearances, one is brand deals. One is consulting, one is actual journalism or contributing articles and columnist and stuff. Breaking it up sometimes can make it much more manageable and definitely more schedule. Yeah. The importance of boundaries in your business. And I think this is something that I need to learn from what you're saying right now, because that's definitely an area that I struggle with, is taking on a lot of things because I'm excited about the project and I want to do it. But then right now I'm looking at my business, and I'm like, I'm doing way too many different things at once, and it's like stretching me thin. So I think having those boundaries of, like, I'm only going to do X amount of brand deals a month, that I'm only going to do X amount of speaking engagements a year. I think that's really great advice, and I'm going to go implement that. Yeah. After this talk, something I learned from Kimberly Strong, who is an angel investor here in the States that I had met really early on. She's not invested in any of my projects right now. She was a speaker for a series that I was touring with, and she said, there's good money and there's bad money, and it all looks bright and shiny and green when it first gets pitched to you. But if you pick up some bad money, it could cost you more than you would have ever gained. And I really didn't get that at first because I was like, but all money is green. And she's like, no, some money is black, some money is dark and evil. And it's true. If you take a project that you know you're not exactly the right fit for, you don't have time for, they're asking too much of you. You don't understand the project that's bad money, and that can cost you more in the long run. So I think that was a really big, great lesson for me early on, just because somebody wants to give you a bunch of money, even if it's and we were talking about startup capital at that time really be clear about what they want for their return, because nobody is just a generous angel. Even when they're called angel investors, they still have returns that they need to see. And so you need to understand that. I think part of developing a better relationship with money has been developing a greater understanding of contracts because you get so excited that somebody cares about the thing you're doing that you're willing to just kind of like, go for it, you'll figure it out later. But the first good hire you can make is definitely a contract lawyer because it's hard to read all that stuff. And you don't have to be an expert in every single claim. You should be an expert in the thing that you do and then find people you can trust to do the other part. Yeah. I think something that really helped me was understanding that money is a form of energy and that there's a lot different energy exchanges that can be made. So when I'm offered a certain amount for a contract, it's like, okay, what energy am I giving them in return? Like, how much time is this going to take? How much time of education did I put in before this to even get to this point? Like, is this an equal energy exchange? Because money is just really a form of energy. And I think that, like you said, it can be easy to be like, it's money. Like, I want it's bright and shiny, but then you don't think about what are you giving in return, which could be your time, your energy, your resources, and it might end up not being actually equal to the dollar amount. Right. Like a hug and a slap or both energy, but they sure do feel different, the same thing, but money being energy, I could not agree more with that. And that's why sometimes you're willing to maybe there's some projects that cost more because they're more of a pain in the ass and some projects you're willing to do because you would have done it for free. So you're going to find that balance. And that's why it's okay to have a sliding scale for your services. I do. Yeah. Me too. It definitely depends on who I'm working with, what they're asking for. I will adjust the prices accordingly. So I want to switch gears a little bit here and talk about something that you actually mentioned in the questionnaire that you filled out prior to this interview. And you mentioned that you felt an urgency to be financially independent from a young age as a way to feel safe as a gay person. Can you talk more about that? Yeah. So I grew up. I mentioned that my mom was a nurse. I did not mention that she was a Hospice HIV nurse. So when I was growing up, it was the was born in 1982. So I mean, really coming in, I knew I was gay from when I was eight years old. So right about that time, and then my parents got their big boy, big girl jobs right about when I was twelve. So that all was kind of happening around the same time. My experience with being gay was my mother's experience with the AIDS crisis. And I grew up in a small town in Connecticut. I didn't know any other gay people. There wasn't any language. There weren't any role models on television, really. My mom had a lot of gay guy friends, so I knew that men could be gay. But I had never met a gay woman ever in my life until truly Ellen came out on her television show, which I was also watching with my parents when I was like 14. And that was the first time I had any concept that women could be gay. And my only other concepts of gay was that I would get AIDS and die, or that I would have to live in New York City as a bokehman person who would not have the life that I grew up valuing so much. I wanted to grow up and have a family. I wanted to grow up with no kids. I didn't see myself reflected in what I understood the gay experience to be at that age during those decades. So knowing that and having those kind of feelings, I thought, well, I'm going to be alone. It was more of a feeling of I will be alone because I didn't see myself in the communities that I had exposure to. And I didn't think that there was any other option because I knew that I couldn't just be straight. Right. Even all of my best friends were boys. And I was like, I don't even think maybe we could have like a platonic older person relationship. I knew that wasn't going to be a thing either. Right? So I figured I would be alone. And if I was going to be alone, and potentially sick, then I should also not be a burden so that I wouldn't be poor and in the streets and the worst of the worst of the worst life. And that's a lot for an 1112 year old kid to be thinking, I told you I got my first job at twelve, and that is why the relationship with money, I think is so fragile and so emotional and also so important and remain important. Luckily, as time went on and I grew up, the world changed with the Marriage Equality Act passing. And obviously I did move to New York City to be gay when I was 18 because that's what I thought I should do. It would be the safest thing to do when I marry and I did, but I enjoyed it greatly. But as the laws started to change, as representation became stronger, as I gained, like, influence and respect in the corporate world, even when Anderson Cooper came out, that was a very big deal. When we Don Lemon, like so many people that I respected you started to see were queer and successful. So I was able to kind of like breathe out a little bit. But that initial reaction of I'm going to be alone and potentially sick, so I have to have enough money to not be in the street at twelve. That's a tough start to your relationship with money. Yeah, definitely. That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself at twelve. And you mentioned, like, you recognized that there was a higher risk of you experiencing poverty or inability to get a job or keep a job and really taking on that burden of financial responsibility. So how did that early messaging and the prioritizing of your financial responsibility, how did that influence the relationship you have today with money? I gave up a lot of who I am truly as a person early in my career for the safety of getting a paycheck. So I was not as visibly gay as I am now. I had very long hair, I was very female, and I did that as a shield. I did that as a protective measure. And there were a lot of times when I started to transition my look a little bit that I would even get comments from older people I work with, like, you can't wear that to what we're doing today. You need to dress gender appropriate was the first time I ever heard that you need to dress gender appropriate for this. And that was their PC way of saying, like, you have to wear a dress. And he comes to this event, right? Because I was doing event planning back then and I was willing to do that at that time because I had to prioritize my safety, my financial security. And also I just didn't want to get bullied all the time. I didn't want to be seen like that. I didn't want to be different. I didn't want to be in trouble. I didn't want to be other, and I just didn't have the role models, community or security that I have now to just be myself. So in a lot of ways, it was exhausting because I'd be putting on essentially this show, this character, and then I would be coming home and immediately changing into my jeans and my brother's T shirts and putting my hair up on a ponytail. Right. So as I got more respect in the working world and my resume expanded and also my community and representation expanded, I felt more comfortable being myself and looking like myself. And I am lucky in some ways that that came about at the time when the EI started to become important to corporate. What would we call this, like their corporate reputation? It became cool to have diversity, and in particular, it became cool to have gay people on your team because I was working events again. So David Tutera, all these people who are on television doing event planning, they were very gay and fabulous, and I was very gay and fabulous. And if you look at my look now, it is very gay and fabulous. In many ways, it's pretty flamboyant, but that's truly how I feel. And like, what I grew up looking like or wanting to look like. And it became cool. So that was very helpful. And then a lot of us who got our foot in the door at that time has, like, left the door open to now pushing for, like, respect for pronouns. And it can't just be a diversity hire. And in fact, folks have greater respect for who they are and the talents they bring over just checking a box or Corporation. But at the time and I was willing to check that box if I could be myself and also have financial security. So I think you trade a lot, especially for folks my age. You traded a lot of yourself for security, and now it is more normal to just be able to be who you are and be respected for that. Yeah. So you mentioned almost like, masking basically, like, masking who you are in the workplace. And I have a very large neurodivergent audience. I know a lot of people will resonate with the idea of masking you a different way. So is that something that you feel like still affects you today in certain situations? Yes and no. And I'm also dyslexic, which is something that I was Additionally trying to hide all the time because I had this issue. I'm a great communicator, and I'll get praised for keeping things really simple and not using big words. And I'm like, but it's because I really don't have big words to use. Like, I just see things in a very particular way. Dyslexically, it can be a bit of a superpower. And your ability to see things such big picture and break it down to such a simple concept makes reciting a credit card number very difficult, but other things very easy, and I am careful to not mask necessarily. But I do find there are times when I try to make myself disappear or be completely small, not in my channel, like an under the desk. I've created a world where everyone is welcome, no matter who you are, what side of the political aisle you're on. We're all here to learn and kind of listen to each other, and we've established this level of respect I wish existed everywhere. But if I'm at the gas station and I'm afraid I'm going to get a hate crime, then I will decide based on my outfit, should I try to look more Manly or more feminine as a survival technique, which is just the weirdest mind game because I'm sure no one else is thinking it but me. Or I think I'm getting away with more than I am or being more convincing than I am. I don't spend a lot of time out of my safety bubble anymore because I've been able to curate this world that I'm essentially in charge of now, and I have the luxury at this point of saying no to things that I am still afraid of or feel I'll be uncomfortable with. The last time I said yes to something because I wanted to see if it would still be painful. I got asked to be a speaker in Birmingham, Alabama, very recently, and I was like, yeah, I'm going to do it because I'm really confident and I know that the people at this particular seminar already know me and I'd be really safe. It's going to be great. I had not anticipated having to go through security at the airport, get a taxi cab, walk around the street, check into a hotel looking as visibly flamboyantly gay as I do now. And I had a really hard time. I had a really hard time to the point that my wife sent me McDonald's in my hotel room because I didn't want to leave the room because I was so scared and I didn't have anybody say anything to me or do anything to me. I just fell out of my bubble and scared as hell. Some of the bias I have towards maybe what I think other people in Alabama would have thought of me, really. It really got my ass. It really got me bad. So we're all still working on it. I could come off as very confident in my swirl then. There are a lot of times when I'm not. I did an event last night, and the thing that I don't like sometimes is people are generally kind to me and generally nice. I think people are generally good. There are some folks who everywhere I go, no matter when I'm going there, and I'm sure this happens to all different kind of people where until they know who I am, I say in quotes, they're very rude to me, I'll get a lot of stares, like, staring, like, actually trying to figure me out. And I know a lot of hair and eyebrows and suits and colors. So I'm like, maybe they're just looking at the spectacle I've created here. And then part of me is like, no, they're looking at you because you look too gay, right? And then I'll do my events, and then they'll be like, oh, my God, I love you. You are so fantastic. And DA, DA DA. And I will feel like they only like me because they don't know who I am. But maybe they never hated me at all. Maybe that's just still my own security issues that I've projected on those folks. I don't know. But it is hard. It's hard to live outside the bubble. Yeah, definitely. And I think that's a fear for a lot of queer people is, we assume, I think, the worst in some scenarios, and I'm very straight passing. But there's a lot of situations where I'm in where I'm like, I don't know if it's safe to talk about my girlfriend or to talk about queer things around these people. And I just always kind of err on the side of caution, I feel like, which maybe isn't always the right approach, but I feel like this is potentially an unsafe space for me. I'm a small woman. These are large men. I don't know what's going to happen here, so I'm just going to not. And I think that's probably a common fear for a lot of queer people. So I think what you said, it's interesting. There probably is part of what we perceive other people are thinking when maybe they're not. But I think also that fear is valid because we've seen so many situations of queer people not being safe. And like, just my wife go to the bathroom with me. I make my wife go to the women's bathroom with me because that's the place I feel most afraid. I have been bullied more by women than by men, and maybe that everybody has a different experience. Men have generally been very unthreatened and very kind to me. Women, on the other hand, I have had more unfriendly situations with that goes both from the business perspective to just general public. And I'm not sure why. I mean, there's probably different reasons for each event, but I've definitely been bullied more by women in business and in money than I ever was by men. I've always been lucky to have men help me with securing funding for stuff I wanted to do or want to help build up panels. Every time I've been hired by a man, I've had a better relationship with them in the office than I have when I've been hired by women or had worked with a woman. And I bet there are other people who have had exactly the opposite, of course. So it's a tricky somebody was saying last night, everybody is bullied and everyone is someone bullied. Okay. The level may vary, but everyone has their insecurities play out in a certain way, and what catches them off guard plays out. But yeah, women have been some of my greatest Champions and some of my biggest bullies. And maybe that's because I was born a woman and I just have more exposure or something, but no scarier place in the world than a lady's bathroom. Yeah. That really surprises me to hear because I've definitely somebody who's had the opposite experience and have experienced a lot more bullying from men. And you said you didn't really know why that happened. Do you think it had to do with the types of events that you were at? They're women's entrepreneurial events. When I was running women's entrepreneurial events, there was a lot of women, I would say the gross majority of them. We're very excited, and all women are women, and we're all here to do the thing. And then there were some who and I've had them straight say it to me, you're not woman enough, though, or you benefit from being almost a guy. And I'm like, but I'm not either of those things. And that I promise you, if you think I'm getting special treatment, you are incorrect. But I think other people's insecurities can affect your relationship with work, money, the way you show up in the world, and then your perceptions, like we just explored now, can also hold you back from taking jobs and doing things because you don't feel safer, you feel afraid, or you're just like, oh, man. To your point, the energy that it will take to do this is not worth the financial energy they're offering me. Yeah. So you've done a really great job of kind of doing the opposite on your page and with under the Dust news. And like you mentioned earlier, creating a space where everyone can come and learn, and it's a safe environment. So how have you been able to create that community for yourself that encourages empowerment and authenticity and meets everyone where they're at? I have a little bit of a funny story to transition into that. So I've always been my mom from when we were little, she would make us invite every single kid in the class to our birthday party. And my birthday is in August. So I always had, like, the summer pool party, like the big right before we went back to school party. And I hated it. I hated it because I was like, oh, my God, because it's a host of the party. Right. I always ended up hanging out with the kids that I really didn't want to invite because they weren't even nice to me in school. And then nobody else wanted to play with them, but they were at my house. And so now I had to be nice to them. And I think doing that for 18 years really taught me to see people and why I don't like them or why I think I don't like them in a different way and include them. And then by including them, have them softened to me in some ways. So for 18 years my mom did that. And I think that really set up the idea that I truly do believe that everybody is good and interesting and curious and thoughtful and a good critical thinker. Just sometimes the research and the data they have or the influence they have may be incorrect or maybe more not in line with what I wish it was. And then my brother was this like, vigilante justice kid who one time he went to a concert. We were just raised different. He went to a concert and he saw this girl and her girlfriend getting bullied by these guys in the parking lot. And so he beat up the guy in the parking lot. I was like, oh, peach, why that's so scary? He didn't have to beat him up. He's like, well, I figured it's like Karma, right? Like, I took care of that for those girls. And then if anybody was ever bullying you, like, maybe somebody else's brother would like beat them up. And I was like, you know what? Great logic. Great logic for a 17 year old boy. So yes, under the desk is a place and you'll see it in the comments and you'll see it. You don't see my DMs, but you can see it in the comments. I have everything from far right extremists to far left extremists. And honestly, if you go far enough left, you come back around to the right. If you go far enough right, you come back around to the left. Like it really is a circle. It is a spectrum if we want to use that term. And people are curious and they are scared for different reasons and they are influenced by different things. And I think when we give people space to make mistakes on the Internet or a lot get a lot of questions about something, like a question that they're afraid to ask out loud because they know that the way that they want to ask. If they don't have a language to ask it maybe in the right way, in a way that wouldn't get them canceled or folks need a place to work out their thoughts, man, they really do. And I think with under the desk, I try to make it a space where even we're talking about something divisive. I'll see the protectors in my comments who are oftentimes more guys on the right who are like, we don't really do that here. Don't act like that here. These cool or like these answers your questions in the DMs if you have them. And I think that's helpful too, because there are some people who show their defensiveness with what we might consider a trolling comment. And those are the same exact people who want to protect people. So that instinct to protect or to defend sometimes just needs to be given a better outlet to do that in. And those folks are often left out of what we might consider intelligent or academic conversation about policy because they weren't respected historically. And they are really smart and they do have really great ideas. And the world that they're showing up in is so uniquely different from the one that you are that we need to know that. We need to know that what's going on in a politician's life and what they think is important never trickles down to what's happening in the average American's life. And the average American is my Uncle Mike the mechanic, and it's also me, the super flamboyant Ticktocker. We are both average Americans who within one to three paychecks would be on the street. And that collective consciousness is what I hope we can do it under the desk and continue to build out from so that people start to see their friends and neighbors as friends and neighbors and not as blue or red. Yeah. And I think you've done such a fantastic job of that. And what you mentioned about the defensiveness, I think that is often where a lot of that comes from is because they don't have a space to ask a question without getting attacked. So then they just get used to being defensive. So then they kind of lead to not even asking the question and just going straight to being defensive because they kind of already anticipating how people are going to respond. And I think that I can learn a lot from you and how you manage your comments in your videos, because I feel like I'm really hurt sometimes by the right side and right side of politics and decisions that are made. And so I can get defensive because it feels like a job against me and my rights. But I know that just even hearing you talk about it, you're so right that people grew up in different ways and they understand things differently, and they still are smart people. They just have had a different lived experience and maybe they've never had the opportunity to ask a question or hear about a different side of it. And that's definitely something that I want to work on on my platform, too. So, yeah, I just think you're doing such an amazing job. I'm a big fan, if you can't tell. Yes. But it's taken me so long to hear that and see that. And a lot of that comes from, like, my brother, my family. He used to feel like he wasn't smart all the time. And I was like, PG are smart. You're so smart. And he's like, no, I'm just like a good fighter. And I'm like, no, you're that too. But you're that too. You are a protector. And if I gave my brother and Agam said, guard this, he guarded with his life. If I gave him an idea. He would guard that equally with his life. Some people are just naturally defensive. They want to defend things. They want to protect things. And that happens in the animal Kingdom. It's happened in all of the history of humanity. And now we're living in a civilization where the idea of being a protector oftentimes means being an obstacle in the way of progress. And that's just because we haven't learned other ways to protect things. That doesn't mean like digging your heels in and protecting it. So I think when you give those protective folks, the guys with the guns, some of them are some of the coolest dudes I know. And, like, they aren't crazy and they're not irresponsible. Most people aren't. But I'm like, why do you need 25 guns, though? And they'll tell you each one does a different thing, and they're really into it because that's the place they've been included. They have a natural protective instinct, and they've been included in the culture that sells this particular item. And now they've been exploited. Maybe they've been over stimulated by that one thing, but that's because that's the only one thing that's paying attention to them. And we can take any group and talk about it in that way. But I think that's why it's important to it's not red. It's like red versus blue. It's literally like us versus the ruling class and the elite and the institution of finance that has kept us very out of the loop on how things work, like even inflation, the conversation on inflation right now. And by using fear as the motivator, especially financial fear as motivator, because that's the only currency that we have that protects you from essentially anything from pain. People are more willing to dig in in different spaces, and it does keep you small, and it keeps you having a bad relationship with money and then also a bad relationship with people. Yeah. Okay. So I know that you have to go. So I'm going to end off our last question. How has money changed your life? Money has changed my life so many times. Not having it, having it, having it, losing it. It's going to continue to do that forever and ever. What I think money has done is maybe a more generous and thoughtful and interested person. The things that I like about the way that I grew up learning that you should go to the show, you should buy the sneakers. You should enjoy the things that you have. And we should live in a world where everyone has that opportunity to do those things, those very normal things like buying sneakers. And I want to be a person who helps other people achieve financial freedom in the way that we don't just think of it as this finite resource. We have not had money that was backed by the gold standard in decades and decades and decades. Money truly is energy. It is fluid it is right now dictated by policy. And what we've decided has value. Medicaid will get an expansion because politicians decided that the Boomer vote had the most value. And what they need is Medicaid. If the millennial generation and younger were to be more valued by the politicians who control the energy, if you want to think of it that way, they control the financial energy, then you would see the end of student loan debt. Right. Because that is the cookie that our generation values. So that's how we would vote. And we have I hope that people don't see money as a finite resource in the grand scheme, even though understanding that we're all on a paycheck, because I think a lot of times we hold ourselves back because we're like, well, who's going to pay for it? And it's like the United States has the money to pay for it. They get trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in taxes every single year from you, and it should be going back to you. You should be getting the energy that you put into it back. But I think financial freedom oftentimes we talk about the money that you have in your bank account, but we need to be talking about the energy that's being put into what we value and how those values are being prioritized or deprioritized by the laws that were governed by. And I think financial freedom means different things to different people. So for everyone saying this is something that you can go away and do is figure out what your definition of financial freedom is. Is that a specific number that you're making every year? Is that a feeling that you have? Is that the environment that you're in? Like, what does it actually mean to be financially free and having that kind of tangible thing to work towards? But also, I know you mentioned this being appreciative of what your current situation is, as well as much as you can, enjoying the money that you do have. There are a lot of very sad rich people. There are a lot of very unsatisfied rich people. Because if you're just chasing money for the paper cash of it for the number on the bank account, then you're not really like living what that money represents in value. What does it mean you can do what does success mean to you? Who told you that successful? And do you still buy it? I think you got to check in. Yeah, I completely agree. Well, Vy, thank you so much for just taking the time to talk with me and all of the amazing thought that you shared. I know that there's going to be a lot of things that the listeners are taking away. So where can the listeners go and find you if they want to follow you? Which they should. Yeah. So you can find me at Underthedesknews US. That's the new website that's coming out pretty soon. And you can find me on TikTok and Instagram at under thedesknews and on Twitter at Vitus Spehar which is V-I-T-U-S-S-P-E-H-A-R. Amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Okay. Wow. That was such an incredible conversation with vy. I am still so starstruck. Fun fact. They were one of the first people that I reached out to to be on the podcast and they were the first one to respond back and actually book an interview time. So this feels just so surreal and I'm still just so thankful to be for coming on the podcast and just sharing so much incredible stuff with us. I highly recommend giving them a follow on Tik Tok at underthesk news and subscribing to their podcast be interesting. All of the links will be in the show notes and I'll see you in the next episode. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, we'd love it if you would share a screenshot on your social media and tell us what you loved about it. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can subscribe to the show, rate, and leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. I will be donating $1 for every review left in the first six months to organizations that our podcast guests have chosen. Thank you for listening and remember to keep finance queerd.