Katie Gatti Tassin, better known as Money with Katie, is the face and voice behind one of the top personal finance media brands for women. Her mission is to close the gender wealth gap by creating content about money that women actually want to consume.
In this conversation, Katie shares how she took her blog from a side hustle to a million-dollar business in just a few short years, the hidden stress behind that astronomical growth, and what she learned from being acquired by Morning Brew.
WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES : shannaskidmore.com/katie-gatti
📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Katie’s Wealth Planner
Morning Brew
Personal Finance 101 Free Email Series
Bossy Podcast
Katie Gatti Tassin, better known as Money with Katie, is the face and voice behind one of the top personal finance media brands for women. Her mission is to close the gender wealth gap by creating content about money that women actually want to consume.
In this conversation, Katie shares how she took her blog from a side hustle to a million-dollar business in just a few short years, the hidden stress behind that astronomical growth, and what she learned from being acquired by Morning Brew.
WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES : shannaskidmore.com/katie-gatti
📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Katie’s Wealth Planner
Morning Brew
Personal Finance 101 Free Email Series
Bossy Podcast
Katie (00:00:00):
Back in 2018 or 2019, I was a diehard morning brew reader. I'd read it every single morning on my way to work. And there was one day that, as you know, because I was so busy at this time, I was constantly running from one place to the next and I really wanted to read the Daily Brew newsletter before I got to work that day. So I was late, I was rushing from a yoga class I had just taught and I was sitting at a stoplight reading it in traffic, and I got pulled over for looking up my phone and I got a ticket and I was like, dang it. And I was so frugal at this point that a $200 ticket was such a weak ruiner for me. And so I tweeted about it and I was like, I just got a ticket for reading Morning Brew while sitting at a stoplight, like that's how diehard I am. And their CEO Austin dmd me and was like, Hey, that's hilarious. We want to pay for the ticket. What's your PayPal?
Shanna (00:00:57):
You are listening to Consider the Wildflowers the podcast episode 76. I have a fellow money gal on the podcast today, and we had the best time geeking out about simplifying money and empowering others to take control of their finances. Katie Gatty Tesson, better known as Money with Katie, is the face and voice behind one of the top personal finance media brands for women. Listen in as Katie shares how she took her blog from a side hustle to a million dollar business in just a few short years, the Hidden Stress behind the Astronomical Growth and what she learned from being acquired by Morning Brew. If you dig professional bios, here goes Katie Gaty Tossin, better known as Money with Katie on the internet, is the face and voice behind one of the top personal finance media brands for women today. Her ultimate mission is to close the gender wealth gap, and she does that by creating content about money that you'll actually want to consume.
(00:01:45):
She knows women's experience with money is fundamentally different from men's and approaches it accordingly. Okay, formal introductions over, let's dive in. Hey, it's Shanna and this is Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast. For the past 15 plus years, I've had the honor to hear thousands of stories from entrepreneurs around the world. As a former Fortune 100 financial advisor turned business consultant, I have a unique opportunity to see the real behind the highlight reel. I'm talking profit and loss statements, unpaid taxes, moments of burnout, and those of utter victory. Or as my husband says, the content everyone is wondering but not many are talking about. And now I'm bringing these private conversations to you. Here are the untold stories of how industry leaders, founders, and up and coming entrepreneurs got their start, the experiences that shaped them and the journey to building the brands they have today. Stories that will inspire and reignite encourage to redefine success and build a life and business on your own terms. Welcome Wildflower. I'm so glad you're here. Hey Katie, welcome to the show.
Katie (00:02:43):
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me.
Shanna (00:02:45):
I just need a preface this for everyone listening. If you don't know Katie, now you do. I mean, I'm sure you do. She's amazing. Two numbers, girls get on a podcast. This is what happens. I'm so pumped about it. Thank you. This is an honor. Okay, so you were asking me before we hit record and that's why I was like, let's hit record and do it. I have listened to your show. I don't know how I found your podcast originally, but I just, females talking about money, I'm so here for it and I love it. My background is in finance. I have worked in finance for 15 years and I just loved your show. So then I don't know if it was a couple months ago or I can't quite remember, we had one of my students actually emailed me who's also a listener of our show and said that you had talked about the goal setting, some prompts that we used during our goal setting, annual planning process. And I was so honored. I was like, oh my gosh, money with Katie knows mine name. So it was just really fun. So I'm just honored to have you here and excited for our chat.
Katie (00:03:53):
Well, part of the reason this is such a full circle moment is because your planner, I think I first bought it in 2021, my friend Maddie had told me about you and she has a calligraphy business, and she's like, Shannon Skidmore is amazing. She changed my life and I was like, oh, I got to check her out. So back in 2021, I go, and I find this planner on your site, and I mean, I am such a planner girl that I was like, oh, heck yeah. So I think I went to one of your, you did a freebie workshop that I attended, and then there was a downloadable at the end of it that I filled out three pages of it and I had seven revelations and filling it out, I was like, all right, I need the planner, let's go. And I actually, in that planner in November, 2021, had written in that section that has the overview calendar that's like, where am I today?
(00:04:49):
Where do I want to be one year from today? And in the year from today, I was like, I want to be running money with Katie full-time, making half a million dollars a year. And I look back at that page probably once a month because seriously, I remember the moment where I wrote it down and I was like, there's no way I can't even begin to envision a path to this. And sure enough year from that date, we were doing it full time and we were going to make a million dollars that year. So it's just absolutely wild to me to hear that you had that reaction. I was like, dude, your goal setting work was such an integral part of my path.
Shanna (00:05:33):
I love it. I literally have chills. That is such a special page. So for anybody listening, we do a goal setting, but it's funny to even call it goal setting because it really is about planning and planning your life and your finances. And yes, there are goals involved, but it's about developing this plan for how you want your life to look. And it's called My Blueprint Ear, and it's so good. And my favorite page in it is this one year from now, Kate, I dunno if you know this, but I used to host this in-Person retreat years ago. We haven't hosted it in person since before covid. So 2019 was our last year, and I would have the attendees write down one year from now, here's where I want to be, and I have these prompts, and I would collect these letters, and then the next year I would mail them all out. Oh my gosh. I just think it is so incredible. The power really is in, I really believe the power in goal setting is in focus and getting clear on where you want to be, why you want to get there. And it's just such a powerful exercise. And sometimes the years look nothing like you wrote down, but somehow I always think the most important things happen. Yeah.
(00:06:56):
Congratulations, you, that's amazing. Thank you. Going full time. So we are recording this in early 2024. So you have now been full-time, a year and a half for
Katie (00:07:06):
Two years. About two years, yeah.
Shanna (00:07:08):
Okay. This is exciting. All right. So I just want to take it back a little bit. I know your journey and your story a little bit, but I would just love to hear it from you. So take us back to before owning your business, what were you doing? And then we'll go into the early days of how this all came to be.
Katie (00:07:31):
Sure. So when I started, or I guess before I started, we'll say my life before Money with Katie was working full-time for basically big corporations. And at the time I liked that enough. It was always, they were good companies. I was always paid decently well, nothing crazy, but I was paid in a way that I didn't feel undervalued at the time. And on paper, I feel like my life looked and seemed really good. I was also very busy at the time. I worked part-time as a fitness instructor while working full-time in my day job. And so my days were always really, really packed, starting at five or six in the morning most days, and then ending nine or 10 at night. And I just felt like that busyness was, in some ways a lot of noise, but I didn't really realize it until 2020 when the pandemic kind of shut everything down because I worked for an airline and I worked in in-person fitness, and those are two industries that pretty much overnight went to nothing.
(00:08:53):
And so I went from having this crazy busy life where I was happy ish, but had this kind of low level knowing or humming in the back of my psyche that was like, this isn't quite right. It feels like there's something else that you're supposed to be doing. And I didn't know what that was. And that feeling was so frustrating to have that sense, but to be like, I just don't know what it is. I just don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. And it was not until the world shut down and I was in my apartment seven days a week kind of by myself with my roommate that I had that space and clarity to let that type of, I'll call it messaging, but those pings, those intuitive pings to kind of settle more fully. And so it was really only a month into the pandemic.
(00:09:55):
It was mid-April 2020 when I just one day was like, I kind of want to start a straight up personal finance blog. I had a personal blog at the time, and I would post kind of sporadically on it, but there wasn't really a thesis for the site. It wasn't really, no one read it that weren't my friends. So I was like, I kind of feel like I want to just write about money. And I bought the domain money with Katie, and I was kind of shook that it was available. So I was like, all right, that's cool. And I remember sitting there for eight hours one day in April just building out the whole site, and time just flew by. And I don't know, I just kind of had that feeling of like, oh, I don't know. That felt really good. That felt really right. So that was how it started. But I think it almost feels like when I reflect back on the time before it, I'm like, what did I spend all my time thinking about and doing? Because I almost can't remember life before this, even though it's only been four years. Yeah.
Shanna (00:11:04):
Okay. Why money? Why personal finance? I mean, do you have a background in that? Do you
Katie (00:11:09):
No, no, not at all.
Shanna (00:11:10):
Okay. I know a little bit, I've read your story, so I'm like, I kind of know, but tell me.
Katie (00:11:15):
Yeah. Well, no, I don't have a formal background in finance, which is, I always like to think at first it kind of made me insecure a little bit. Well, actually in the beginning it didn't make me insecure at all. I didn't know enough to be insecure, which is kind of the beauty of delusion when you're a total beginner. But there was a certain point of attention and audience growth that I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable of, I don't have any credentials. I'm not licensed, and all these people are listening to me and wanting to know what I think. And I feel a little bit unsure about that. But my background was in public relations, communication, writing, psychology, and I worked in user experience design and user experience copy. So it wasn't like I was doing anything related to money in my day job.
(00:12:03):
The only reason I got interested in money was because I was earning money, and I didn't know what the hell to do with it. So I was like, I feel like I have to figure out how to manage this money. And I think it was probably six months into my first full-time job where I had kind of gotten into that dangerous pattern of the discover Bill comes at the end of the month, you see the number, you're like, oh my God, there's no way. Let me make sure this was all me. You realize it was all you. You're like, okay, well that's a problem. But I mean, I was just doggy paddling, treading water. I wasn't really moving forward. I wasn't making progress. And it just kind of struck me, I don't even remember. There was no one moment, but it just kind of slowly started to seep in that, okay, I'm going to be working forever in this cubicle because every single week the money that's coming in, I'm just like mindlessly spending it on God knows what, and I feel like I'm just treading water running on a treadmill to stay in place.
(00:13:11):
So that was what sparked my interest, and that was in early 2018. So there was two years there where I just got really into personal finance. So I was reading all the books, I was listening to all the podcasts, I was researching as much as possible. I was really enthralled with personal finance. And by two years in of making that kind of a hobby that you're spending a ton of time learning about, you kind of know what you need to know. You learn a lot in two years. So that was why I wanted to talk about it, because I felt like, okay, now I feel like I understand what to do. I'm learning and realizing that it's actually not that hard. It's not that complicated. I learned much harder things in the course of my formal education than what I'm learning here. And oh, by the way, it's actually kind of fun and getting rich is kind of fun. And I feel like other women would think it was fun, so let me make it fun and tell them about it. And that was really the impetus for the direction that I went.
Shanna (00:14:16):
I love it. Kate, what were some of the things that you're like this when it clicked, this is not as hard as I thought it would. What were some of the things, I know you talking about earn more, spend less, invest the difference. What were some of the key takeaways for you that you feel like really empowered you to be like, I can do more with my money than I'm
Katie (00:14:38):
Doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the main thing, because budgeting and saving, that never struck me as complicated. It just struck me as psychologically uninteresting. I'm not, yeah, it's like who wants to restrict themselves? So that was more of a mental battle of shifting my identity to be someone that was like, no, I prioritize my future. I respect my future self. I'm going to set her up for an amazing life because I'm not about to be working my ass off every day so that she has to work her ass off too. So I think the thing that really kind of clicked though and made me realize, oh, this is not that hard, was when I started investing. And that was the thing that I was always, like, I'd hear my guy friends talking about picking stocks and how they made a bunch of money on options, and it just always sounded so complicated and like, oh, you have to really be in the know to do this.
(00:15:36):
But then when I learned about index funds and Robo-advisors and just the absolutely breathtaking amount of financial technology that is available to do this for you at a very, very low cost, I was like, oh, so you're telling me that all I have to do is dump the money into this account and this algorithm is going to automatically invest it professionally for me and it's going to grow. Okay, well, if you would've told me that two years ago, I would've started two years ago, I just had no idea that was even an option. And so the more that I learned that, oh, actually that's the preferable way to invest, that's not like the lazy shortcut that's like, no, that's how you should be investing the stock picking and options and all of that is just noise and gambling. Oh my gosh. I was just off to the races. Then I became obsessed where I was like, well, I just want to granted this too was during a time where the market was ripping. So every dollar I put in was just immediately going up, and I was like, investing is easy. This is so
Shanna (00:16:38):
Great. This is fantastic.
Katie (00:16:39):
This is amazing. All you do is
Shanna (00:16:41):
Make money. I'm good at this. Yeah, I was like, this
Katie (00:16:43):
Is amazing. So I just became obsessed with like, all right, well then let me work more. Let me get a higher paying job. Let me spend even less on dining out. Let me stop shopping. I just want to put as much money as possible into this machine that is just churning out returns for me. And granted now in retrospect, we've been through some massive drawdowns in the market, but again, we are up again. So I think I actually haven't checked in a little bit, but I would venture the guests that several hundred thousand dollars if my net worth is just gains at this point. So that to me is just amazing. And learning that investing was actually pretty easy when you do it correctly was the aha moment where I was like, oh my God. I have to tell everybody I know and that I want them to tell everybody they know, and we're just going to make every woman who has access to the internet wealthier slowly over time.
Shanna (00:17:39):
Katie, I love this so much. Oh, I wrote down. And I don't think coming from a finance background and knowing your friends, talking about their stocks and all options, all the things, I know those people. I know them. I worked with them, have those friends. I don't think the finance world intentionally makes it sound more complicated than it has to be. Maybe they do. I don't know. That's how they get paid. But that's so interesting you said that because I know so many people and why a huge reason I started my business is the intimidation factor in finance. And I know so many people who have savings just sitting in cash because they just have no idea. It does sound so complicated, and I love this mission that you're on, and I love, and honestly, I think there is some beauty in the fact that you've learned it yourself and don't have a background because honestly, I feel like so much of what I do is having to unlearn and having to be a better teacher. I have to teach it from a different perspective because my background is in this and is in finance, is in business, and that sometimes makes it, sometimes I think harder to teach. So I love that we're coming at it from those different perspectives, and the psychology of money is just as important. That is
Katie (00:19:07):
Fascinating. I mean, that makes total sense. And whenever I do speaking engagements and I kind of introduce myself and my background, I always say I am entirely. And I hope that is motivating to you because I always had the story, oh, I'm a writer. Oh, I'm a creative, I'm not an analytical person. I'm not good at math. I don't know business.
Shanna (00:19:31):
I
Katie (00:19:31):
Had told myself that for so many years that it's only really recently in the last couple of years with building the wealth planner and building a business that I've been like, why did I tell myself that I am good at this? And it's something that you can learn. It's a skill that you can learn. And I mean, even the things sounding complicated is interesting too, because I think about, imagine walking into a casino where people are gambling on football. It's like that's going to sound really complicated too. But the underlying things they're talking about, is this team going to score more points than the other? Is this team going to be up at halftime? They have all the jargon, they have all the vernacular for it, and it's happening really quickly and really fast. In many ways. It's very similar, but the underlying concepts are not complicated. And I think that it's kind of the same way that you wouldn't judge yourself for walking into a casino where people are talking about football and not understanding what the hell was going on. So why would you judge yourself for not understanding this right off the bat? Someone has to explain it to you. It's that
Shanna (00:20:35):
Simple and taking the time. Yeah, I love it. Taking the time to be like, I can learn this. I can learn this. It's like I was using an analogy, learning to ride a bike or learning to read. We have to learn those things. And the same with Nobody was Born being great at math, but you can learn it. You can, oh, this is so good. I've got, and it can be fun. And it's so fun. And one of my favorite things about my job is when people email me and they're like, Shanna, I'm obsessed with my spreadsheets. And I
Katie (00:21:05):
Just say shame.
Shanna (00:21:07):
Same.
Katie (00:21:08):
Oh my God,
Shanna (00:21:10):
We're converting one non-money person at a time. Okay, let's go back. So you're like, I'm going to start talking about personal finance in a blog format. Tell me about the early days. How did you start making money? When did the podcast just kind of walk me through how it went from, I'm going to talk about personal finance on a blog to in 2022, making over a million dollars on your podcast.
Katie (00:21:42):
What the heck?
Shanna (00:21:43):
It's so wild. Way to go you, Katie.
Katie (00:21:45):
It's wild. It truly is. And a lot of credit to Morning Brew too, who acquired me in 2022. And so they really helped me scale, but we'll get to that. So yes, started the blog in April, was not super committed to it at first was just like, okay, I have this feeling that this is a project I want to work on. It's going to be a little passion project. Crucially, I was not thinking about it at this point, a business in my head. It was not a business. It was just like, this is just a hobby or a passion project that I'm going to do for fun. However, fast forward to July, so we're now three months ahead. I was starting to feel a little bit nervous about the fact that I worked for an airline. And at this point in 2020, if you recall, the verbiage and the prevailing opinion in the media was that this is going to take a really, really long time to get a handle on, and air travel is probably not going to return for many years.
(00:22:39):
Now granted, now we know that that's not true. We know that the bounce back actually happened within a year or two, and that people were back on planes pretty quickly, and now airfare is more expensive than it's ever been, but at the time it was like this could take a decade to get back to normal. And so I was like, well, I don't want my career to stall for a decade. I feel like I need to get into a field that is not as under siege by this pandemic. And so I started looking for work and I ended up applying for a job at a personal finance media company because at this point, three months after starting mine, I was like, well, I think I want to write about money for a living. I really enjoy this. But my brain was still in W2 mode.
(00:23:24):
I was like, okay, if I want to do this for a living, then someone else has to hire me to do it. Someone else has to pay me to do this. So I get through this process, this interview process, I get all the way to the end. It's this arduous. I mean, multiple edit tests, like five or six rounds of interviews, full day thing. It was just crazy. And by the end of it, they tell me, right as I've pinned all my hopes and dreams to this job, they go, we're very sorry, but we're pursuing the other candidate because they have more domain experience in this field. So I am heartbroken because by the way, at the time I made $60,000 a year and this job paid 80. And so I was so attached to this idea of making $80,000. That was just an unbelievable salary to me.
(00:24:08):
And getting to write about money and make 80 k, oh my gosh, you could not have, it was like if you gave me 10 wishes, I would've wished for that every time. So I was devastated. But it kind of, through conversations with friends and a lot of journaling and processing, I kind of came to the conclusion that like, well, wait a second. Why am I defaulting to the assumption that I need someone else to pay me to do this? I already have this website. Why don't I just try to do this myself? And so in July of that year, after this heartbreaking rejection, I decide I'm going to write two blog posts a week for the next year, and we'll see what happens. And if by the end of that year, 104 blog posts later, nothing has happened and no one's reading it and it's a total flop and I'm bored and I hate it, then I'll stop.
(00:24:54):
But in order to really see if this can be something, I need to give it time. So I'm going to give it a year and I need to give it consistency. And so I think that's, when I look back on it, consistency and work ethic are two very important values to me. And I think that partially the reason why I still hold them so near, and we can get into why sometimes you have to be a little more flexible around those things and think about them differently is because it took me to a place that I felt like I would not have reached otherwise. So at the time, probably fall 2020, after a couple months of that, I'm already seeing traction and I'm like, okay, I need to make an Instagram account specifically for this blog because my personal Instagram account, people don't want to hear about money.
(00:25:39):
So I make the money with Katie Instagram probably in August or September, and I would say probably within two or three months, I had more followers on that than on my personal account. And that was an aha moment that was like, oh, I think I actually have something here, by the way, not making money yet, but I think I have something here because it took me, I don't know, five or 10 years to accumulate 4,000 followers on this personal page. That's just me. But this money with Katie Page has more in a matter of months. And so that's telling me that there are people following this page that don't know who I am, they're not following me, they know me. They found me because of what I'm talking about. So the first offer that I ended up making was a digital product. It was my wealth planner at the time.
(00:26:22):
I called it a budget builder. It was this very rudimentary spreadsheet that I had built, and I was selling it for $25 on my website, and I think in the month that I had launched it at the end of 2020, and then I redid it and relaunched it for 2021, the next month it was about to be new. And I was like, okay, I don't know anything about business, but I know New Year's is a sales opportunity, so let's double down. I think it made four or $5,000 on a $25 product with less than 10,000 followers. So I was like, okay, so yeah, this is it. This is the thing. I don't exactly know where to go from here, but I know enough to know that this is working. I've seen enough to know it's working. So I had the product, and then in February of 21 is when I started pitching my first sponsors. And so I would just slide into the dms of brands. I had 4,000 followers and I was like, Hey, I'm writing about money and I think my audience would love to use your product. And so I started getting on these sales calls with clients, and the first one I get on the investing firm is like, alright, well how's like 2000 for a blog post? And I was like, that is amazing. That would
Shanna (00:27:40):
Be, lemme think about that. Yes. Yeah.
Katie (00:27:42):
I'm like, hold on, mute yourself, scream, and then come back and be like, yeah, I think that'll work. So yeah, we were just off and running. It was so scrappy and just fly by the seat of your pants. But I was having a blast, and I think by May I was launching a course and then I started working on another course a couple months later and I ended up doing 250,000 in revenue in 2021. And then at the end of 21 is when Morning Brew reached out, they're like, Hey, we'd like to buy you. And I was like, huh, what does that even mean? Buy money with Katie? And so I ended up getting acquired by them in January, 2022. So I'm on a three year contract. They own the ip, they own the brand now, and I am a W2 employee again of them, but have a percentage of revenue share and get the resources. Their sales team is now pitching clients and not pitching clients for $2,000, but for $200,000. So it's just scaled up in unimaginable ways relatively quickly, or it felt quick, I guess.
Shanna (00:28:59):
Yeah, I think I would say quick. Okay. This is so good. Okay, Katie, I wrote down questions. Okay. What did you do while you were writing, which I think is amazing. Two blogs a week. I mean, I'm over here. Oh yes, I need to do that. And making no money. How did you pay your bills?
Katie (00:29:19):
Oh, I still had a full-time job. In fact, I had two full-Time jobs.
Shanna (00:29:22):
Okay, I love it. Yeah,
Katie (00:29:25):
I was working as a W2 employee of one company and then was a contractor doing project work paid hourly at another company. So between my two jobs, I was probably making $90,000 at that point, doing so. I mean, I had no life though. I was constantly working. So it was a pretty miserable year from that standpoint, but also very exciting because I was so energized by what I was doing with my own business, and that just kept me going.
Shanna (00:29:56):
Okay. And then you said you started to see traction within a few months. Is that through seeing people coming to the website through a senior SEO build? Is that what you mean by that?
Katie (00:30:10):
Oh, great question. So really by Traction at that point, I think because I had had a personal blog for so many years, I kind of had an idea of what a normal amount of traffic was. So I'm posting personal little musings from 2015 to 2020 sporadically and posting them on Facebook or sharing them on Instagram after I write them and seeing a few hundred, maybe a thousand page views, so nothing impressive. Whereas with Money with Katie, once I started doing that, I can't remember the numbers, but I remember having the thought of like, oh, wow, this traffic is already outpacing that other blog by kind of a wide margin. And it was the traction on Instagram specifically and kind of the speed of the early follower growth of going from nothing to a few thousand where I was like, it energized me. And because I wasn't making any money from it, the increasing interest from other people made me feel really invigorated to keep going. And I wanted to keep sharing because everyone that was following was so engaged and so interested and wanted to talk about money. And it just, I had wanted that community. So then once I had them, I was like, oh my gosh, this is the greatest thing ever.
Shanna (00:31:35):
Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Okay. And then at what point did you start the podcast?
Katie (00:31:40):
Oh yeah. The podcast was October, 2021, so it was over a year later, I think. I had been doing the blog and the Instagram for a year and a half almost at that point. And I started the podcast because I just noticed that I listened to a lot of podcasts and I was like, this is weird. This is a medium that I love personally, but I'm not doing it. And so I ended up switching my kind of publishing cadence to one written piece a week and then one episode a week, and now it's one written piece a week and two episodes a week. So we've scaled down in some ways up in others. But the pod has been an amazing experience because it's just such a fun device for storytelling and creativity, and you can really, I love when people can hear what I have to say and hear my voice and my tone, and that way things don't get taken the wrong way. And I don't know, I just think it's such an intimate medium,
Shanna (00:32:44):
And I think you're so right. Sometimes teaching and talking about money is hard to write. It's easier sometimes to explain and more in depth. Okay, this is, okay. So the offers truly were you were reaching out to brands saying, can I write a post for your blog?
Katie (00:33:03):
No, no, no.
Shanna (00:33:04):
For my blog, they were paying for your content and then selling the course eventually the Wealth Planner, that's how you were making the money. And so Morning Brew found you.
Katie (00:33:17):
Yes. So that story is actually so wild. Back in 2018 or 2019, I was a diehard morning brew reader. I'd read it every single morning on my way to work, or once I got to work before my day started. And there was one day that, as you know, because I was so kind of busy at this time, I was constantly running from one place to the next, and I really wanted to read the Daily Brew Newsletter before I got to work that day. So I was late, I was rushing from a yoga class I had just taught, and I was sitting at a stoplight reading it in traffic, and I got pulled over for looking up my phone and I got a ticket. Oh my God. And I was like, dang it. And I was so frugal at this point that a $200 ticket was such a weak ruiner for me. Now I'd be like, all right, well, whatever. But at the time, it was just horrifying. And so I tweeted about it and I was like, I just got a ticket for reading Morning Brew while sitting at a stoplight. That's how diehard I am. And their CEO Austin dmd me and was like, Hey, that's hilarious. We want to pay for the ticket. What's your PayPal?
(00:34:28):
Yeah, they PayPaled me $200. And then they were just tweet about it, just post that we paid for the ticket. We just think it's a fun little social moment. So I was like, alright, no problem. So that's kind of how we met. And then we followed each other on Twitter and we didn't really talk, I guess, but when I started Money with Katie, he subscribed to the newsletter. And so he, I think knew about it. And then there were other women in the Morning brew offices in New York that one of them is actually now one of my closest friends. But at the time, she just somehow found money with Katie and followed it and read it and would DM me occasionally. And so when Morning Brew was going into their next phase of business and wanting to expand more into multimedia and creator focused franchises, he was like, yeah, what do you think about?
(00:35:19):
I guess he was talking to some people in the office. What do you think about this girl money? With Katie, my now friend was like, oh my gosh, I love her. You have to look into her. And so he had just dmd me and was like, Hey, can we set up a call? And that was in November of 21. And literally by the end of the phone call, he was like, all right, well, I'm going to cut to the chase. We want to buy you. We want to buy your brand. At first, I was like, no, I don't think that that makes sense. Listen dude, I'm already making 140,000 at my day job at this point. I had transitioned to tech, so I was constantly trying to increase my salary At this point too, I was like, I'm already making 140 K at my day job, and I made 250,000 from money with Katie this year. Basically, there's no way that you can pay me more than I can pay myself and still make money yourself. And he was basically like, we'll see about that.
Shanna (00:36:12):
There's a way.
Katie (00:36:13):
So when we went into negotiations, he's like, no, but I don't think you're getting it. You have 20,000 followers. Think about 200,000 followers or a million followers. We have the scale and the resources to help you grow to the point that we can sell packages for 10 times what you are charging for them. You will still make more money doing it with us than you're making by yourself right now. And so it's funny because at the time, I don't know, I look back on that moment, and in some ways I'm like, Katie, great job. That was so smart of you to take that deal and to do that and to get the health insurance benefits and to take the guaranteed payout over three years of this amazing amount of money. But there are also parts of me that look back on that and go, why didn't you believe more that you could do it on your own?
(00:37:03):
Why did you feel still, there's that W2 mindset. Why did you feel like you needed someone else to do this for you? Why didn't you think that you could build it by yourself? And so that's something that I still kind of reckon with because building a company on your own is very challenging, but building a company within someone else's company is also very challenging. And I think I kind of thought that it would be a lot easier, and in some ways it has been. But there are other things that I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis and other challenges of building within a business of someone else's and someone else's goals and someone else's priorities that it is just challenging in a different way and has pushed me in ways that I didn't really expect it to. And so it's a decision that I'm grateful for every day and would make 10 times over, but I also am now a couple years in reckoning more with that initial like, okay, let's explore that self-doubt a little bit more. Do you now believe that you could do it now that you see everything that you've accomplished now, do you trust that you're capable of this and that it was you who made it happen? Yeah. So yeah, it's like a psychological game as much as anything else. Oh,
Shanna (00:38:15):
So good. Well, I have totally not followed the script on this, and it's been such an amazing conversation, but I feel like this, what you just said leads so good into the question of relationship with money and mindset with money. What do you feel like for you relationship with money, looking back five years, looking back even further versus now, what would you say has come naturally or easily? What has come more challenging? Because on that point, it's funny. People look at me and I'm known as the numbers person. You don't have to hang out here very long to know my brain is working some kind of number. It always is. And it wants to know how much money you make. That's how it rolls. And I just am so glad I have worked in finance for 15 years. I'm allowed to ask that question, how much money do you actually make? But I have so many limiting beliefs about my own ability to make money. Isn't that so interesting? So when you said that, I just thought, so what would you say, Katie has been your relationship with money, and I love how you keep referencing the W2 mindset in the past versus looking a year from now. Sounds like that contract with Morning Brew, it was three years. So
(00:39:34):
How has the relationship with money shifted and changed and maybe given you more confidence or empowered you more?
Katie (00:39:41):
Yeah, what's been interesting is when I first started working and I was making somewhere between, we'll call it 50 and $80,000 in my day jobs, multiple day jobs to generate that much until that final job in tech where it was one 40 total with stock compensation and all of that, you kind of accept, or I kind of accepted that, okay, that's the scale or that's the range of value that I can create and that I'm worth because this is what this big Fortune 100 company is telling me I'm worth. So if that's what they think I'm worth, that's what my skills are worth. That's what my brain is worth. That's what my contributions are worth. And entrepreneurship was very eyeopening, even just doing it as a side hustle, just running money with Katie on the side, it was very eyeopening because I saw directly how my ideas and my creations were generating in some cases when I launched my second course, which I still have, but I actually have moved away from asynchronous self-paced courses and am looking more into getting back into cohort stuff.
(00:40:48):
But at the time, I launched a new course and I think the first day it made 50 or $60,000. And I thought, oh my God, this is something that I dreamt up, created, marketed to an audience that trusts me, that likes what I have to say. And in a single day, it produced more money for me than my entire last year salary. They kind of opened my eyes to limits are not real. The perceived ceiling on what you can do, it's kind of fake. And I hadn't really, it's something that you can mentally know, but until you feel that and you see the numbers on the screen going up and you're like, oh my God, something I created is worth that. Well, what else could I make? And so it was a really eyeopening, it's funny how quickly you, I don't want to say lose perspective, but how quickly the sense of scale grows.
(00:41:47):
So for example, I was looking at this the other day, so I can tell you exactly how my income grew over time. I was making a little chart to see how has this changed. I love a good chart. Give it to me, Cody. Yeah, we love the charts. So hold on, let me pull it up. So, so fricking crazy. In 2018, I had made, let's see, my take, we'll do take home pay because that's what I track. I had made $45,000 take home pay. 2019 was $51,000, take home Pay 2020 was 74,000, take home pay 2021 was 292,000, take home Pay 2022 was 446,000, take home pay, and 2023 was 645,000 Take home pay. Yeah, it was. So it's just like, I know, I'm like, I'm trying to get over this seven figure mark because I'm just competitive with myself. But the business itself, it has, I think last year we did one and a half million, and I really, really, really wanted to get to two, but it was just a down year.
(00:42:59):
This is your year. And I think that this is the year I really do. And I think that from a relationship standpoint, what helps me is seeing boneheaded guys making billions of dollars and going, oh, well, if they're making them, if someone that is truly fumbling the bag over and over again is a multi multimillionaire or billionaire, the rules of this game are not real, frankly. So I think it has been really, it's just been such a journey. But the biggest thing, and I think what my co-host on our second podcast Bossy said the other day, she was like, I am just growing more and more confident that as time goes on, I'm going to be paid more and more money just to be myself. And I was like, wow, that is, which I mean, it is. She's making good money just doing this podcast just to be herself and just to talk about what she thinks.
(00:43:57):
And I think that that realization of, oh yeah, do you think that it was luck in circumstances or do you think that it was you? Do you think that it was something in you and something that you have intrinsic to yourself that can create this for you? That is something that I've actively working on internalizing, because for so long I've kind of, imposter syndrome is a little bit overused, but there's a little bit of fraudulent, oh, I don't know. I probably just got lucky about it. That really degrades your sense of self-efficacy over time and makes you doubt that you are the one that is making things happen. And I think that that's something that in business I've had to really hone and work on, and especially as I see this contract coming to an end and not knowing how a renegotiation will go, just building up that confidence and that faith that this is you and that you can do it again. Yeah.
Shanna (00:44:55):
Yeah. That's so good. I literally wrote down imposter syndrome and how do you over, like you said, it's a term maybe used a lot, which sometimes maybe makes it feel like, I don't actually know what that means, but the idea of no, my brain, especially when you came from, I'm not formally trained in this, that could be a voice that you listen to over and over and over and over, and in money, that's a big deal. It's like if I say this wrong, that could be not good. And so I realized, and honestly over just the past two years, so I don't know if you know this Katie, but I have a psychology degree as well. So I just, oh my gosh. Yeah,
Katie (00:45:35):
I did not know that about you. Okay.
Shanna (00:45:36):
Wow. I'm so glad that I do. And because I'm like, money is so much psychology, so much just beliefs and recognizing my own. My husband joined us full-time two years ago, just the best. That is amazing. We think about things exactly the same in the opposite way. Does that make sense? So we would get to the same destination in totally different ways, and I'm so thankful for that because he has made me really recognize my own limiting beliefs and really understanding. I think because of the way I grew up, I didn't grow up with a lot of money. I set kind of like my life is good at this level and I'm good there. I'm good. That's plenty. And it always, and so just kind of thinking about money differently and recognizing those limited beliefs. So this is so good. Okay, because of time, I'm going to speed us up just a little bit.
(00:46:31):
And I do want to ask you, I love talking about money. I love talking about business, but I also love talking about just life and entrepreneurship takes a lot of life and a lot of time. And I just would love to hear you talk about before we go into a quick fire round, in a world that asks us to do everything really well, show up in all aspects of our life. Well, health, fitness, you name it, making money, entrepreneurship. Have you found in these last few years as you've been juggling in some of those years, full-time, job and building your business, how have you found harmony? What steps are you taking to do that? Or is that something you're just like, I'm not seeking right now. I'd love to hear your thoughts on harmony with work and life.
Katie (00:47:23):
Well, I really like that you even asked the question, especially in that terminology of is that even something you're seeking? I think that that's interesting too because I do think that there are certain seasons of life where harmony and balance is maybe not the balance that you're going to find is actually it's more of going to be a sprint for a little while and it's not going to feel super leisurely, but that's okay. Not the season you're in. I do think that that is behind me a little bit mentally speaking. But one thing, just to be completely candid that I think makes it a heck of a lot easier for me to have balance is the fact that I don't have any children. And so I don't have the responsibility of raising other humans. And I think when I talk to a lot of moms who are doing this, and particularly because we know that statistically speaking in a heterosexual marriage, a woman is going to bear the brunt of the unpaid domestic labor at home.
(00:48:24):
She's really working another full-time job on top of whatever she's doing in a business or for someone else's business. So I always like to kind of start with that of let's set the stage that I am not responsible for another human. I have a husband who sometimes I feel like I'm responsible for him and I have a dog and a cat, but I don't have children. So that gives me a huge time advantage. I would like to have them someday, but not yet. And the way that I've found balance and harmony, it's funny because it's not even something that I thought to seek until kind of recently. And the reason that I realized I was walking down a path that was not going to take me somewhere I wanted to go was because I was reading back through my journal entries in 2022, and at the beginning of 23, looking back at 2022, I do this every year.
(00:49:16):
I read the entire journal back to go, what are the themes that are jumping out at me? And the overwhelming theme that I picked up on was, oh my gosh, I do not sound happy. I sound totally miserable. I sound stressed out. I'm trying to intellectualize and talk myself through the amount of work that I'm doing and how little time I feel like I have to do it and how stressed I am about hitting numbers. And it was just kind of staggering. I was like, wow, I just had the best professional year of my life. I'm happily married. I live in this great house, and when I read back on these entries, I sound like an unhappy person. So in 2023, I started making the seed had been planted that something needs to change. I don't know what it is, but something needs to change.
(00:50:08):
And so I would say over the course of 23, it kind of gestated a little bit. And when I read back on the 23 journals a month ago, I noticed that okay, there was a shift where you do sound a little bit happier, but there are things that I'm picking up still in these entries that are like, okay, it's becoming more obvious where the sources of pain and discomfort are coming from. And it's like expectations that either you're setting for yourself or someone else is setting for you. It's the amount of time you're spending on your phone and hearing other people's opinions of you is really messing with your head. And it's the fact that you don't have very consistent routines around what you do in the morning or how you take breaks and how you recharge. You don't really have any hobbies. It's basically the fact that you're spending, you're working every single day, maybe not a full day every single day, but you're never really giving yourself breaks to get back to the things that make you feel like yourself.
(00:51:07):
And so in 2024, I finally feel like I now know what I need to do to make that happen. So a couple things that I'm doing, I'm investing a thousand dollars a month in an editor, an outside editor who's going to function a little bit like a writing coach and help me spend more time with that core craft that I care about. So I'm focusing on the quality of the work and not on how much revenue it's generating. I'm also hiring more of a life business coach, which is probably going to cost me 10 grand this year that I'm going to meet with every single week. And I really love the woman that I've found. She is kind of focused on helping you tune back into your own instincts and your own inner voice and what you want and what your gut is telling you when, if you're a numbers person, if you're analytical Shanna, we are in our heads all day long trying to list everything.
(00:52:01):
And it's like, you know me. Yeah, that's not sometimes you really, I mean, I think back on some of the most pivotal things I've ever done for myself, they were all gut instincts. They were all the inner knowing being like, go start the blog. Go right twice a week. I'm like, the answers are inside of me, and I have lost sight of that voice, so I'm going to invest in finding someone who can help me find it again. And finally, I am taking more time. It's a more accessible morning routine, so it's something that I think I'll stick with, but doing the same exact thing every morning and making it non-negotiable, less than an hour of screen time a day, I have to get off the phone. It's so obvious to me that that's a trigger for me. So less than an hour of screen time, we're going to meditate for five minutes every morning.
(00:52:46):
It's nothing that you can't do quickly. We're going to do 20 minutes of movement every day. Very simple. Again, it's not overwhelming. And I'm going to actually start spending more time with hobbies that are not monetized. So I'm going to try to learn how to play piano. I'm going to take more walks. I think it's become so clear to me that the sources of misery in my life are fully within my control and fully self-inflicted. Now that I can see that, I think I can see the path back to a more balanced life. I actually think that intuitive knowing is telling me that the business is actually going to be better for it. Not worse.
Shanna (00:53:25):
Oh, a hundred percent. I always think we get our creative ideas when we're not working. My best ideas come in the shower or on a walk or on a run, and I think we need that space, but it's so hard. We have to fight for it. I think that's something, as an entrepreneur, I did not know. You have to fight for maintaining the harmony.
Katie (00:53:48):
Yeah, I didn't know either,
Shanna (00:53:50):
Katie. That's so good. Thank you for sharing. This has been so fun. I could talk to you so long. So this is just the beginning.
Katie (00:53:57):
Likewise.
Shanna (00:53:58):
Let's quick fire before we wrap up. Okay. One thing you would be embarrassed if people knew
Katie (00:54:05):
The amount that I talk out loud to myself.
Shanna (00:54:09):
That's
Katie (00:54:09):
Awesome. Walk around my house all day long, just chattering away. I
Shanna (00:54:13):
Wonder if you've always been like that.
Katie (00:54:15):
I think I have.
Shanna (00:54:16):
Okay. Yeah, so I have a sweet little girl. She's two and a half. Well, she's coming on three now, and she sings to herself.
Katie (00:54:26):
She's
Shanna (00:54:26):
As cute as thing. Katie, you have to meet her.
Katie (00:54:28):
That is so sweet.
Shanna (00:54:30):
And I'm just like, I wonder if she'll always do that, but she's kind of my mini me, and so I sing to myself too.
Katie (00:54:39):
It's just cute. See, my mom did too. My mom talked to herself as well, incessantly funny. So I think it's we're little sponges.
Shanna (00:54:46):
I know. Okay. Any regrets or wish you could do over moments?
Katie (00:54:51):
I think the only thing that I would go back and redo is in my first contract negotiation, I would've negotiated for a little more downside control. So I would've negotiated that if the contract ends for any reason, I still retain the email list, or I get the Instagram account back, or I wish I would've retained some of the intellectual property for myself, because that now is a consideration that if for some reason they decide they would like to end the contract, they could technically keep all of it. And I think the idea of starting over with nothing would be terrifying. So I definitely tell people, if you're negotiating some sort of contract where IP is in question, you want to fight like hell to get some piece of it for yourself as just downside protection.
Shanna (00:55:41):
And that's so interesting, Katie, that you bring that up because you had to learn, even just pitching your first brand, you didn't, you just learned it as you went,
Katie (00:55:52):
Oh my gosh, I had no idea what I was doing. I should have hired a negotiation coach or someone that I had an attorney look at it, but I didn't have someone that is well-versed in intellectual property law, and I wish I would've actually, I was too cheap at the time. I should have invested in that,
Shanna (00:56:09):
Or probably too, we were talking about with limiting beliefs, maybe you never knew it would be what it is. Such a good point. Yeah. You probably were just like, oh, this is great. Let's go. Good.
Katie (00:56:18):
Yeah.
Shanna (00:56:18):
Okay. That's a good one. All right. Big win or pinch me moment.
Katie (00:56:23):
I think the first time that the business made a million dollars in a year, that was a huge, I can't believe that just happened, although it does then lead you down the path of like, all right, how are we going to get to 10?
Shanna (00:56:33):
2 million? No, 10, just straight up seven
Katie (00:56:37):
To eight figures. Yeah,
Shanna (00:56:40):
That's a huge win. Congratulations. Okay. Best advice or just really good advice that you have received?
Katie (00:56:49):
I think to trust yourself. Just to trust yourself and to trust your voice. It's something that I still work with, but I think that that feels very present and resonant for me right now.
Shanna (00:57:05):
Yeah, I love that. And keep trusting it. I think that confidence can be easily lost when a lot of noise comes in. All right. Last quick fire and then we'll send it off. What are you working on now or one resource that you would like to share?
Katie (00:57:22):
Ooh, I love this question. Okay, so let's see. I assume you've got your peeps covered on the financial side of things. So I
Shanna (00:57:33):
Don't teach a lot though about investing, so actually I think this is a great, oh, really great friendship.
Katie (00:57:38):
Okay, great. Well, we have a little mini free mini course little email series called Investing 1 0 1, and it basically just holds your hand and walks you through several different blog posts and podcast episodes. We have hundreds and hundreds of blogs and podcast episodes. It's a little bit of an overwhelming backlog to go in if you don't know what you're looking for. So it just basically takes your hand and goes, okay, read this first today. Alright, next day. Now you're going to read this. Okay, now you're going to listen to this. Okay. Here's what you need to know about that, and it'll kind of give you that foundation pretty quickly. That's a good little resource that I'd point people to. It's in my Instagram bio. If you click the link, it just Investing 1 0 1 is what it's called to sign up,
Shanna (00:58:20):
And we'll link it below too.
Katie (00:58:22):
Oh, thank you. Yes, and what I'm working on right now, right now, I'm writing a book, which is really exciting. And we're also in the kind of early stages of our second franchise called Bossy, which is about entrepreneurship, and I do have a co-host for that franchise, which is fun. But that has been something that, aside from just keeping the money with Katie Wheels turning, we have been actively trying to build up that franchise, and I'm obviously trying to write this massive nonfiction piece of work and make it amazing. So that'll be out probably in, I don't know, a year. We'll see.
Shanna (00:59:02):
That's so exciting. Oh my goodness. Katie, this has been so much fun. I'm just honored to have you on the show. Thank you for sharing your story, and I do want to send it off with looking back now to 2020, starting this blog about personal finance. What would you tell yourself looking back now, just on day one of starting what you thought maybe would always just be a hobby?
Katie (00:59:28):
Buckle up. Buckle up. It's about to be a journey, and who knows where It'll even go from here. Honestly, that's sometimes the craziest part. I'm like, girl, you're still in it. You're still fully in
Shanna (00:59:41):
It. You're still early in it. Yeah,
Katie (00:59:42):
Still early in it. Yeah. God, that's even wilder. Yeah, keep going. Trust yourself, listen to your instincts, all of that, which is just funny that now four years in, that feels like the message that is the most valuable to me. Now I'm like, yeah, that's also what you needed to do back then. So Shanna, thank you so much for having me on the show. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate the amazing questions that you asked too. Thanks for giving me the chance to pontificate a little
Shanna (01:00:11):
Bit. This has been fun. Hey, wildflower, you just finished another episode of Consider The Wildflowers the podcast. Head over to consider the wildflowers podcast.com for show notes, resource links, and to learn how you can connect with Katie. One final thought for today from Brene Brown. You can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both. As always, thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.