Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Let's talk about money and other taboo things. Entrepreneurs like to say we talk about and keep a lot of the things behind the scene. Not today. We are talking with the financial feminist. Her first 100 K, a person who I have watched from a distance and expand beyond entrepreneurship, beyond personal finance, and really stepped up as a voice for people to be represented in the financial markets I couldn't be more excited to have on the podcast. Miss Tori Dunlap.

Tori Dunlap 00:00:26  So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jasmine Star 00:00:28  I am happy you're here. I am so happy you're here. Okay, so right before we started, I had said I see the podcast happening into into acts, but oftentimes on the podcast it takes its own of course. Okay, so in the beginning I really want to talk about personal finance. Great people who are watching and listening, entrepreneurship. We want to talk about money. And one of the things that initially struck me was her first 100 K. That is your Instagram handle.

Jasmine Star 00:00:51  And I heard a story about how you set out to document you getting your first 100 K, and I wanted to tear apart a little bit of those details. So let's start with the beginning, and then I'd like to dig in for the story elements.

Tori Dunlap 00:01:01  Yeah. So in 2016 I graduated college with degrees in communication and theater. So I did not study finance, I did not study business. And I thought, okay, I'm going to work my way up the corporate ladder in marketing. That was the dream. As I was going to stomp the pavement and have my little briefcase and my pencil skirt. And that's how I know it's a fantasy. So I've never worn a pencil skirt and my gosh dang well.

Jasmine Star 00:01:22  Have you have you carried a briefcase, though?

Tori Dunlap 00:01:23  I don't think so. No, I don't know if anybody does that anymore, but that was the vision. Like I was going to girlboss my way up to VP of marketing by 30, graduated college, got into jobs and realized very quickly, especially with my first job, that I was in a very misogynistic work environment, like I was in an environment of just a lot of toxic culture, where there was open bars at every office.

Tori Dunlap 00:01:48  And like just I was watching other friends of mine who were women get passed over for opportunities and like male superiors were saying, just weird, you know, sexually harassment stuff to me. And I was like, this is not what I dreamt of doing for 35 years, because I was 22 and I was like, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? And also a lot of things are happening politically at that time. And so I just kind of started asking, what kind of person do I want to be? What do I want to build both for myself and that also makes an impact. And I was the friend all of my friends were coming to for advice and guidance around money. Because because I had a great financial education for my parents. So my parents were really diligent because they both didn't grow up with a lot to make sure that I knew. Here's how to not overspend on credit cards. Here's how to save money. And I just took that for granted because that was all I had known.

Tori Dunlap 00:02:37  I thought, oh, everybody knows how to do this until I realized, of course, that's not the case. But I was also becoming obsessed with learning everything I could about personal finance, because when that job got even more toxic, I couldn't quit because I needed the money. I had to stay. And I think that's most people is I want to leave a situation or I want to do this, or I want to take this opportunity, but I can't. And the reason I can't is because I can't afford it. And so I realized that maybe that was the impact I could start making, both in my own life, but also in the women around me and talking more about money. So her first 100 K was my journey to save $100,000 at age 25, but it had nothing to do with the money. Really. Like, yeah, it was cool seeing $100,000 in my bank account, but it was about freedom and it was about options and it was about choices. And that's what I really am committed to with our work.

Tori Dunlap 00:03:34  At her first 100 K is the money. Learning how debt works, learning how investing works. All of that is, of course, crucial and important. But our why here is so much bigger than cash in a bank. It is about options. And so I saved my 100 K at 25, I was able to quit my job to run a first under process.

Jasmine Star 00:03:54  Look like if you're like I'm going to save 100 K. Yeah. Before I'm 25. What are you saying? What are you putting out? Talk to me about that beginning journey. There's a lot of people who have a mission or a personal purpose on their heart, and they want to do something big, and then they stop themselves or they keep small. What was your approach?

Tori Dunlap 00:04:09  Well, I'll tell you a funny story. So when I decided, I'm going to, you know, try to do this big thing that I didn't even know I could do. It was like, I'm sure you're the same way. I was like, I'm going to set a goal.

Tori Dunlap 00:04:21  That feels a little scary because that's the only way that we actually grow. So I set this goal in probably 2017, 2018, I switched jobs, ended up being even more toxic, had to quit after ten weeks without another job lined up. So then I spent three months unemployed. But I had an emergency fund at that time, so I was able to leave able to live off of that. But I remember not saving any money because I wasn't making any money and then spending the money I had saved and being like, oh no, can I do this? And I had not announced it publicly at that point. But what that taught me was one, of course, that money meant freedom, but also to. There is something to the documentation of it that makes you accountable to that thing. And I think that scares people, of course, sometimes of like, oh, what if it doesn't happen? So 2019, I rebranded my business to her first 100 K and my dad called.

Jasmine Star 00:05:08  When you say your business though, we Lily patted.

Jasmine Star 00:05:11  Yes. So talk to me about the start of your business.

Tori Dunlap 00:05:13  Sure. So I was doing like blogging. This was like peak Tumblr era. Do you remember this in, like, any sense? Yes. So I was like, oh, I want to do, I want to, I want to be a blog for 20 something women. And I had already talked in college about doing this and just kept kicking it down the can and was like, no, now's the time. So 2016, it was like December 27th, 2016. I like literally put $20 towards a domain and $20 towards like a Squarespace subscription. And I was like, okay, I've launched this blog with like three blog posts, and then I was starting to grow it over time. And I would talk about like, travel or I'd talk about career or I'd talk about, you know, my own struggles or challenges trying to progress in my career, but all of it ended up being about money and all of my conversations with other friends and with other people in the space were about, what are you making? How are you negotiating? Oh, you got that flight deal, how did you get it? So when we rebranded to her first hundred K, it was much more clear.

Tori Dunlap 00:06:11  Hey, this is about money, but B, this is for a specific group of people. Women, obviously. And not your first million. Not your first 100 million. Right? This is for the people just getting started.

Jasmine Star 00:06:21  So you get the domain, you get the Squarespace, you put the three blog posts out. When do you start making money?

Tori Dunlap 00:06:28  It took me about two and a half years.

Jasmine Star 00:06:29  So you were blogging and creating for two and a half years, and then when did somebody pay you and what was it for?

Tori Dunlap 00:06:35  Yeah, I mean, I was doing social media in my 9 to 5. I had like freelance social media clients where I was making money through that kind of business. But the first time I really made money teaching people about money was coaching, which I think is how a lot of us get started. It was me literally for $49, I would sit down with you and a lot of times it was local. In Seattle, it was like, go to our Starbucks, sit down for $49.

Tori Dunlap 00:07:03  We create a budget together. I explained what a Roth IRA is. We look at like where your leaks are in your budget, where you're spending money. And, you know, we might meet once, we might meet three times. But I think that was the first thousand or so dollars I made in the business was.

Jasmine Star 00:07:17  $49.

Tori Dunlap 00:07:18  $49. And for an hour.

Jasmine Star 00:07:20  You when you got that first client.

Tori Dunlap 00:07:22  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:07:23  What did you think? What do you feel? Because I think that people can look at your business now I mean.

Tori Dunlap 00:07:27  Oh it's yeah, it's very different. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it felt obviously very euphoric, but it was also it was very quickly not scalable. Right. And I think that is the trap that a lot of people get in is if you're able to start a business and it's usually for women, it's a lot of teaching, like we're good teachers. And so the coaching was fun. And then I remember when the first time I sold a ten coaching package, like a ten slot package, and that was like a couple thousand dollars, and I was like, oh, this is so much money.

Tori Dunlap 00:07:58  I was like, I still remember that so vividly. And that was like early 2019, and I was starting to make more money than I was making in my 9 to 5 job. So what I said was, okay, this coaching is no longer scalable or really sustainable long term. So then I took most of what was happening in coaching sessions and created a workshop out of it because 90% of the conversations were very similar. It was, how do I control my spending? How do I mindfully spend money on things I actually like? What is the game plan? What do I do in which order? So then that became a $97 workshop so I could teach at one time to, you know, dozens of people eventually probably doing that for a year that no longer became sustainable. So that became a course. So now we're talking like 2 or 3 years in this, right?

Jasmine Star 00:08:48  Okay.

Tori Dunlap 00:08:49  But hang on. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:08:50  I want to.

Tori Dunlap 00:08:50  Am I going too fast? I'm going to.

Jasmine Star 00:08:52  Be kidding me.

Jasmine Star 00:08:53  Like. No, no. People think that you talk too fast. They just listen slow. So what I want to do now, though, is I want to dovetail what's happening here. Because, sure, when people hear $49, $97 workshop. Yep. Multiple workshops, digital course. There's a lot of lily padding. And for the vast majority of people who are either getting similar results or not, the money beliefs behind it are parlaying. And so, because I know you and I know a lot of your story. Can we pause there? That's the linchpin. That's what good podcasters say is like a cliffhanger. Let's go back to your childhood. Let's go back to your money stories. Let's go back to how you learned about it and the narrative that it's creating as you build a business. And we're going to come back to the business. But I want to get into money stories.

Tori Dunlap 00:09:34  Yeah. I spend so much of my work talking about this because like I said at the beginning, people think it is about numbers and it's about spreadsheets and it's about being good at math.

Tori Dunlap 00:09:46  I majored in theater. Jasmine, like, this is not like I'm not out here. Like looking at spreadsheets all the time and doing intense calculations. It was all psychological. So what I learned from my parents is remarkably simple but effective, which is you're never spending more than you have, and you are thinking strategically about when and how you spend money. So my parents were never big restaurant people like we, if we did go out to a restaurant, it was, you're drinking water and there's no appetizers. Right. That was like, I don't think I looked at the appetizer menu until I was in my 20s, like ever. And the reason they did that is because we took a family vacation every year. Like I went to Europe when I was 13. Like, I'm really lucky to have been able to do that. But because my parents were strategic, they were like, okay, we can't afford absolutely everything, but there's plenty of things that we can save strategically for. The interesting thing, though, is that when there was talks of me becoming an entrepreneur, My parents freaked out because they always made the safe financial choice.

Tori Dunlap 00:10:54  They were always the we get the 401 K, we get the stable paycheck, and I'm very thankful for it because it gave me a very stable childhood. But as soon as there was talks about me going out on my own, I think especially in my mid 20s, like my parents were like, you need to do anything you have to do to keep your job. Even when my business was growing. So that was the first money story that seems positive on paper, right? Like make the smart decision how that stable paycheck get your commiserate raises every two years. But I wanted so much more than that. And I knew that my earning potential was pretty much infinite, but it was very controlled. When I was working for somebody that a I didn't respect, and B wasn't going to respect me in the way that I wanted to.

Jasmine Star 00:11:46  Okay, so your money story is good on paper. And your parents did the best they could with what they had. But the narrative that started off as the safe and secure was also something that was going to keep you safe and secure and stuck.

Jasmine Star 00:11:59  Yes. So my earliest memories, my we lost our home. My parents, I remember as a young child, probably 4 or 5. They they cut up their credit cards in front of somebody to help them learn how to play me. So my dad, I'm a first generation Latina. So in my like my money story is whatever you get. You hoard. Yes.

Tori Dunlap 00:12:18  Because there's very common, very common in an immigrant story as well. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:12:23  And so I think that what happened with that. And so then my parents, after cutting their credit cards, my dad would get his paycheck and then he would put cash in white envelopes. Yes. And whatever. If the cash was not in that envelope, then you were not going out to eat or we had to make do with the groceries that were there. And so it became as like this thing that was finite. Yeah. Like I walked with the whole perspective of there is a white envelope, and if there is not money in that white envelope, there's no way of getting it.

Jasmine Star 00:12:47  We have to wait. And so as I got into building a business, it was like hoard, hoard. And like this idea of reinvesting or taking strategic risk was so foreign to me that I had to unpack that story. So let's talk about how you're impacting the story as you start your career.

Tori Dunlap 00:13:02  Yeah. That concept of risk is one we talk about at her first under K a lot because we are told as women to not take risks. So even something.

Jasmine Star 00:13:12  Why do you think that's the case.

Tori Dunlap 00:13:13  Oh there has been so many studies I think about the girls who co-founder. She has a great TEDx talk where she talks about we Teach Boys to be. I think it's like brave and we teach girls to be perfect. And so men starting in childhood. Boys. Right. It's like, yeah, jump off the playset. And like, if you skin your knee, whatever. Right. It's adventurous and it's taking risks. And I talk about this in my book, even like the stereotypically the toys we give boys right are like Legos or trucks or things to build.

Tori Dunlap 00:13:46  What do we give girls dolls? We give them dolls. We give them Easy-Bake ovens. We give them bridal veils. Right from a very young age, we are told what our value is to the society, which is take care of everybody's needs above your own and also be perfect. Which, by the way, is of course, impossible. So we are chasing this impossible ideal, I think, for my parents. In addition, I believe that they have often viewed the world as a scary place. So if we can just keep our head down and if we can make safe choices, then we will be safe. And so as I started wanting more, that felt very risky, both to them and to me. I was on the precipice in 2019 of quitting my job. I had my 100 K in the bank I had announced my 100 K goal. I had my cute little 100 balloons. You know, Good Morning America had picked up my story. Like I it was I was on top of the world.

Tori Dunlap 00:14:51  It was feeling really, really great. And the company I was at freaked out about it like that. I was getting all of this media coverage and they weren't. It was rough. And it became very clear to me. I think now is the time to try to take this business full time. And I wanted to wait another six months after I had already told myself, Tory, if you get your 100 K, you get to quit. But I was like, no, we can just wait like six more months because again, in my my brain is going, yeah, but you don't have enough money yet or you don't have the connections yet, or like, what if what if this doesn't work out?

Jasmine Star 00:15:22  Now the job that you are currently at was that social media.

Tori Dunlap 00:15:24  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:15:25  Oh, so they see you getting a big social media push,

Tori Dunlap 00:15:28  Oh yeah. Okay, okay. We'll talk about too much of it. But, you know, it's very interesting when you, as a 24 year old, 25 year old woman, are threatening to the men in their 40s who are on their fourth company.

Tori Dunlap 00:15:40  Very interesting. But I'm a petty bitch, by the way. Jasmine, if that isn't obvious, I'm just like. But I was having conversations with my parents and my well-meaning parents who had always chosen the safe option were like, again, you need to do everything you have to do to keep this job. And I was like, I don't think this is it anymore. Quit my job ended up being the best financial decision I ever made, and the logic I had.

Jasmine Star 00:16:07  During the day take me back to the day like you quit, and then take me back to one week after you quit. You wake up and what are you doing? What are you thinking? How to. How does Tori view the world then?

Tori Dunlap 00:16:18  Yeah, I actually took a video the my last day of work, because I quit and I gave my two weeks and all of that, you know, and I remember literally staring at myself in the mirror and I was like, you can do this. As cheesy as that sounds.

Tori Dunlap 00:16:36  Literally Stood. Tears in my eyes. Looked at myself in the mirror and were like, you can do this. And the logic I had, because at that point it was like logic ING my way to feeling good about this. If I could get that much work done in my business, working about 20 hours a week on it, imagine what I could do with 40 hours or 50. Especially during that first period of time. Like, imagine if I was dedicating all of my time to this. Like I'm already getting so much done. Imagine what happens if I go all in. And this is the one gift I was actually really generous to get from that company. My direct boss was great, and we had a very honest conversation, like the day before I quit where he was like, entrepreneur to entrepreneur. You have money in the bank, you have momentum in your business. And like, what's the worst that can happen? You go, you go back and you get another job.

Jasmine Star 00:17:32  That's right.

Tori Dunlap 00:17:32  And I think it's so crucial for women who are on the precipice of what feels like a big risk to ask yourself, like, like what actually is the worst that can happen? The worst that could happen, truly is, I don't know. I spent a year of my life on this business, and maybe I drain part or all of my 100 K, and I go back and get another job, and I have a year's worth of great entrepreneurship experience on my resume. Like, that was the worst that could happen. And instead the best happened, which is a multi-million dollar company that impacts 5 million women every single day, that has helped them escape violent, abusive marriages, that has helped them pay off their debt, that has helped them start businesses, that has helped them just feel better because they're no longer stressed about money. And that's the upside. But we spend all of this time thinking about, oh my gosh, what if what if this doesn't work out? What if I fail? Yeah, yeah.

Tori Dunlap 00:18:31  What if? But also what if all of the good things happen.

Jasmine Star 00:18:34  So one of the things that I had heard you mention is a large part of your work is not teaching people how to save a 100,000 $500,000 dollars. A lot of it is starting at the very beginning and uncoupling, because you've worked with a lot of people who you set a budget and then they stick with it. And then there's like this, like spinoff. Talk to me about that, because there's entrepreneurs that, for the first time in their lives, are making their own money and they're like, great, great, great, great. I'm going to budget, I have more, I can do more. And then what happens? What do you see? And then how are people looking right now? Entrepreneurs are like, okay, I think I have 65,000. I can get to 100,000. Yeah. Let me learn how to budget from Tory. And then what happens? Cast a vision of the future.

Tori Dunlap 00:19:12  Yes. Everything you said is true.

Tori Dunlap 00:19:15  Money is psychological, but we want to think it's numbers based. But if you are making especially more money than you've ever made in your life. And I'm not even talking millions, I'm just talking like $10,000 more money than you're used to. That's right. You. If you can manage $30,000, you can manage 30 million. Like that's the truth. But if you don't understand what your emotional and psychological triggers are, all of this will disappear way faster than you want it to. So what I usually ask on my show is what is your first money memory? And you already answered it for me, which was so cool. Which was? I watched my dad hoard money and be very diligent about splitting it into envelopes. So that tells me a couple of things. One, that tells me every dollar has a job, which I think is a great thing. Every dollar should have a job. Absolutely. This is something that I see so many people who start making a little bit more money they fail to do is they're like, okay, cool, now I don't have to look at my money as much because when you're not making it as much, you're hypervigilant, right? But then once you start making, let's say $100,000, 150, 200, it's like, oh, I don't have to check this all the time.

Tori Dunlap 00:20:23  And that's one of the worst traps you can get into, because suddenly your money is controlling you rather than you controlling it. So give your dollars a job. The other thing that is so common.

Jasmine Star 00:20:34  Is when you say, give your dollar dollars a job. In the past, I've heard you say, this goes for utilities, this goes for investment. Give me like a nutshell version of give your dollars a job.

Tori Dunlap 00:20:43  Yes. When we're thinking about the money that comes in, you need to know where it's coming in. What are your sources of income, whether you're a 9 to 5 or. But especially if you're an entrepreneur, because hopefully you have multiple sources of income. So you need to know your numbers very clearly. You need to know this is what's coming in. This is how much I get paid. These are the terms of those payments. And here's where the money is going out. So am I spending money on things that I don't really care about or that feel mindless. Right.

Tori Dunlap 00:21:12  And this is where a lot of the misogyny and personal finance starts kicking in, where it's like, the reason you're not rich is because of the latte. No, it's systemic oppression. and also and also, you notice that the things that are demonized are, like, inherently like feminine spending the lattes, the makeup? The blowouts at the salon. The manicures. Right. It's not NFL season tickets. It's not golf clubs. It's not video games. Right. So I am not in any way demonizing spending. But if you are spending your money on things that you don't give it about, that's your hard earned money. You worked hard for it. You need to be prioritizing your spending to what you actually value. So when we say give a dollar a job, what we mean is that no dollar is just hanging out doing nothing, right. It's either going to our present day expenses, our past expenses debt, or our future expenses retirement, buying a house, buying a business, or starting a business, right? The things that you need to plan strategically for getting married, right? I call it the big stuff.

Tori Dunlap 00:22:18  So every dollar needs to have a job in that way.

Jasmine Star 00:22:20  Oh so good.

Tori Dunlap 00:22:21  And I would also recommend not putting it in envelopes, which is actually something we also see like a ton. This is a larger conversation, but we have a massive under or unbanked population in the United States. Yes, largely from immigrant communities who don't trust banks, which you can't really blame them. But like, you need to be using the financial tools at your disposal to make more money. High yield savings accounts, which are just like everyday savings accounts, except they're offering you more money. Investing. This is something I see with women over and over again, is they don't invest their money because they want to see it all. They keep it in their checking account. They keep it in a savings account. It doesn't have the opportunity to grow because of that risk. Right. They're worried about risk. They're worried about losing money. This is what you have to do if you actually want to take care of yourself in the long term financially.

Jasmine Star 00:23:08  Are so good. Okay. So I kind of pivoted us there just to clarify where every dollar goes. No, it was so and so we used the story narrative of the frame that you had as you built your business, and you took these risks and you go back to like the worst case scenario. And you said, I accept the worst case scenario. It ended up being the best case scenario, wildly popular New York Times best selling book multi seven figure business. And so you have these things and you've worked through many stories. You've empowered other women to work through their money stories to first identify that. And then that would then be like the linchpin that will connect them to their ultimate outcome. So we kind of had a brief history of the business. So coaching one on one coaching and groups coaching and course. And then you had said that it's really important as an entrepreneur that you know your revenue streams. Yeah. So let's talk about the business of your business.

Tori Dunlap 00:24:01  Yeah. Do you want it now or back in the day?

Jasmine Star 00:24:04  Let's go to now because I think that we can kind of dovetail like we have the starting point.

Jasmine Star 00:24:09  Yeah. And that we go from $49 back in the day to something entirely different today. What is it today? Because somebody's watching right now. They're like, if I can get $49 to teach somebody about. Right, that's kind of finance. Okay, great. Yeah. But then cast a vision. For what? Somebody who's technically unqualified, unfunded, uneducated in this to do this.

Tori Dunlap 00:24:27  Yeah, I think the $49 was so crucial for me because one, I was not ready emotionally or with the background. Like I didn't have the credibility yet to charge somebody $500. Right. But I also needed that period of time to build my own skills. And I think this is the thing that so many wannabe entrepreneurs or starter entrepreneurs don't understand is you're not just selling a product to make money. You're selling a product to beta test not just the material, but like your own confidence. So, you know, that was probably too cheap. But I was willing to do that because I was like, I need to grow in my skill set to be able to know how to teach this properly.

Tori Dunlap 00:25:12  And I could see live. Right. If I'm coaching you, I know when something's connected with you, right? Or I know when it hasn't. And then I need to figure out how do I explain it differently. So then I have five ways to explain something so that hopefully one of those is something somebody understands. And then when I get more credibility, then I can raise the price and then I can do more. And all of those coaching sessions, a lot of that course became the thesis of my book. Like so many things I was doing in 2019 that I was testing in real time with people were the basis of my book. So I think that's one thing. If you're trying to figure out how to scale the company, you're not just.

Jasmine Star 00:25:51  You're having this in 2019. When does the book drop? What year?

Tori Dunlap 00:25:53  2022, end of 2022. So almost 2023.

Jasmine Star 00:25:56  Three, about three years of gestation and ideology and reps like you're doing the right.

Tori Dunlap 00:26:03  You're doing the reps. Exactly.

Tori Dunlap 00:26:04  And it's also again how do I be different? Because that's the other thing. I'm sure you and I hear a ton of I know I hear it is like, oh, but a million other people are doing the kind of business I want to do, right? And it's like the reason you're putting in your reps is so you can figure out, how do I communicate this in a way where the information might not be new, but the way you communicate it is. There weren't a lot of people talking about money in a very feminist way at that time especially. And like that is what made me stand out is I could talk about money, but in a way that wasn't jargon heavy, that wasn't like Roe just felt like we're sitting down at brunch together. But also I'm going to talk about like, how do we fight the patriarchy by getting rich, which is like one of our taglines. So now the business, I mean, it's obviously expanded, but a lot of what we started off with is also what we're still teaching.

Tori Dunlap 00:26:55  So we have eight sources of revenue at her first 100 K, some programs. So, you know, we're teaching women how to invest through our stock market school, which has $135 million invested, which I'm so proud of. We're not just like teaching concepts. We actually have women bridging wealth gaps. And I'm teaching them step by step how to invest. So that's like one of our signature programs. We have brand deals that we work with. You know more straight influencer partnerships, but also affiliate deals where if you sign up for a link, I recommend you were going to get a kickback from that. I speak on stages all over. We have our podcast that makes money that's newly independent, which we're really proud of. Thank you. The book continues to, you know, make passive revenue for us. So there's a lot of different revenue streams, but all of it is back to yeah. How do we educate women about money in a way that feels both accessible, but also so much bigger than personal finance and is more about true self-care, which is if I can take my financial education seriously, how can my entire life change?

Jasmine Star 00:27:58  And so when you go back 2019, 2020 because you're active on social media, yeah, and you have millions of followers, what has been the same? I'm going to ask it to you three ways.

Jasmine Star 00:28:08  It's kind of like the keep stop. Yeah.

Tori Dunlap 00:28:11  Keep start.

Jasmine Star 00:28:11  Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I'll just make it up. I just make it up. Yeah. So what do you think? What's one thing that you've stayed doing since then that has continued to prove itself?

Tori Dunlap 00:28:20  Everybody's going to hate this answer. I'm sorry. It's true. I stayed consistent.

Jasmine Star 00:28:23  Like I don't hate it. That's what I've been saying. Y'all. Y'all. That's what I've been saying.

Tori Dunlap 00:28:27  I post all the time. What post? All the.

Jasmine Star 00:28:30  Time. Everybody's different versions. I asked people every day. I post all the time and it's like a week.

Tori Dunlap 00:28:34  Every day you post. Every day. Yeah. And sometimes multiple times a day, especially on Instagram. And one thing that we did really well then that we continue to do really well now, is we find the platform that's working for us, and we invest all of our time there. That is a mistake I see so many new entrepreneurs make is it's like, remember clubhouse? You remember that for like, okay.

Jasmine Star 00:28:55  Yeah I'll do.

Tori Dunlap 00:28:56  I like that's the perfect example of like what's the hot thing. Like what's the sexy thing? And then everybody went over there and like, yeah, maybe that was the next TikTok or Instagram maybe. But as soon as I keep it in, like as soon as you start trying to be everything to everybody in too many places at once, you're nothing to nobody. Like, it's just so hard to do that. So I figured out, where is my audience? Okay. They're women. They're largely millennials with like, a little bit on either side. They're on Instagram. Like, that's where they're hanging out there. I don't know, they're not really on Facebook anymore. Right. That's where they're at. So I'm going to double down on Instagram. And that's what I did. Yeah. We care a little bit about the other platforms too. But still Instagram is our biggest revenue driver by far.

Jasmine Star 00:29:36  Oh by far I agree. So what you've carried throughout the years. Consistency.

Jasmine Star 00:29:40  Yep. What were you doing in 2018 that you stopped?

Tori Dunlap 00:29:43  Yeah, that's a great question. I think that one of the biggest things we stopped doing is thinking about me being a 1 to 1 with people in our audience. So as we scaled, it started to become impossible for me to be one on one with people both like literally one on one. But thinking about individuals rather than how can I help as many people as possible? Now we help, especially in our programs, more finite groups of people, I think, do bigger things and be able to, you know, we just dedicate more time to them there. But it's so easy as you start growing to feel like it's kind of getting out of control. I'm like, oh my gosh, there's so many people in there. It's just like, so your frame of mind has to grow to. And the thing I tell my team all the time, like they're they care so much and they want to like, answer all the emails that come through, like our contact at inbox.

Tori Dunlap 00:30:42  And every about six months I have to tell them, hey, we have 5 million people here. And I know that's hard to contextualize. So biggest football stadium in the United States is 100,000 people. We have 50 football stadiums of people. That's a lot of people. And we cannot continue to help as many people as we want to help. If we are so laser focused on just helping a couple. And I think that was one transition that we had to make, both in order for us to scale, but also in order for our message to continue spreading throughout the world.

Jasmine Star 00:31:20  How big is your team? Well, I'm going to pause. I'm going to repeat back. Yeah. So the thing that you have continued to do, yes, is consistency. And what you stopped doing was what you let go was the attention to the one on one. And then what you decided to do was in order to grow, which was your growth point, we have to say what isn't the best service of the masses? Instead of serving one football stadium, we're going to serve 50.

Tori Dunlap 00:31:42  And I'll also say one thing that we did that was really crucial at that time, learning from people like you and Jenna Kutcher and Amy Porterfield. Even though we are a social media focused business, I do not consider myself a creator. There's other people who do what I do who are like creator first businesses. I was getting people on an email list way back in like 2018, 2019, because I was listening to all y'all who were like, this is land you do not own. So the thing I am very proud of as a business owner is although as we've continued to scale on social, we've also continued to scale on email, and I always think about a customer journey funnel. Not just like how do I get Instagram followers, but how do I turn any top of funnel people into customers or into supporters on land I own, or in places where I can be more present for them than what the algorithm is going to dictate. I can be.

Jasmine Star 00:32:37  Like, oh, that's so good. So how many people are on your team?

Tori Dunlap 00:32:39  We have six full time W-2, and then I believe we have ten contractors.

Tori Dunlap 00:32:46  So we're about 16, 17 people at this point.

Jasmine Star 00:32:48  And on an average day. And I know if your days look anything like mine, they never look never average. Yeah. But like what? What might like where do you find yourself spending most of the time in the business. And I'm going to ask that in two parts. Where are you spending most of the time in the business with stuff that lights you up, that is like needle mover. And then the I am doing this and I can't stand.

Tori Dunlap 00:33:06  It, I love it. Your business coaching me right now? Yeah, I have a theater background, so I love doing this. I feel so at home on a stage in front of 5000 people. I love that. I love being on stage. I love teaching, especially to larger groups of people because it's like, ooh, I get to try out my stand up material and also like, it's just it's so fun for me and I love that. I also love tinkering. And by that I mean the marketing side of my brain, right? The theater part of my brain loves to perform and teach and be on stage, and the marketing part of my brain is like, ooh, what levers can I pull? Like, I my brain director Amanda thinks the same way I do.

Tori Dunlap 00:33:47  And we talk about levers all the time, which is like, if I try this one different thing, what does that lead to? If I try a different CTA on this Instagram caption, what does that lead to? If we send out two emails for this launch a day instead of one, what happens and what do we learn from it? And I have gamified our business so much, and that especially is something that I encourage every entrepreneur to do, which is view money and your revenue as a game. Now, I don't mean that in a way of like, don't take it seriously because these are people's livelihoods. This is serious business. But I mean, oh, I'm ten days away from the end of the month and I'm at $46,000. How do I make 4000 extra dollars to get to 50 with the remaining days I have, like that sort of stuff I just love, which are what levers can we pull to get where we want to be? That just is so fun for me. The stuff I don't like is a lot of the stuff I've outsourced and like, that's how we scale.

Tori Dunlap 00:34:48  So my CEO Corinna is fantastic. We joke with more theater metaphors that if I'm on stage, she's the stage manager in the back. So while I'm here in California with you, she is holding down the fort in Seattle. She's doing the taxes and the ops and the financial stuff. That is not fun for me that I'm actually not really great at. Like I'm good at making money, but I don't want to figure out what I owe Nebraska for this year in taxes. It's just not fun for me. But she loves that kind of organization. I think the point or the the space I'm still in that I don't love as much is sometimes people management like I am. I think I could be better at that if I had more time to dedicate to it. So one of the things we've done is that Karina and other team members are people who manage most of the rest of our team, and we did that strategically. And, you know, there's just sometimes where you wake up and you don't want to record your podcast today.

Tori Dunlap 00:35:46  Amen. You don't and you don't want to be on. And like I've worked now with my podcast producer, like for years. This literally happened before I left in Seattle. We were batching for like two months, and I was doing the thing that, like, I wasn't even conscious of. I was just asking her a bunch of questions about a bunch of shit that didn't matter. And that was my way of stalling because I didn't want to do it. And she knows me well enough. And she was like, hey Tori, we got to get this done. And I'm like, yeah, you can call me out. That's fine. And like, you know, yeah, we just I sucked it up, buttercup, and it was fine. But yeah, there's some times where when you run a very public business. Yeah, there's sometimes I love being on and there's other times where I'm like, I don't want to put on makeup today. Like, I don't want to perform today. And I think that is the balance sometimes of showing up so publicly.

Jasmine Star 00:36:36  And talk to me about the the creation cycle for how you do show up every day. Yeah. What does that look like? Are you batching your content the way you are with your podcast, or is it a lot more organic creation?

Tori Dunlap 00:36:45  It is a lot more organic. That is one thing that it is kind of a do as I say, not as I do. I do really recommend batching content when you can, especially when you're a newbie entrepreneur and you have a bunch of things you have to do and you're a team of one hour. Social is much more dynamic at this point because sometimes it's responding to something that happened in the news, or sometimes it is. You know, I thought of an idea like the Instagram carousel I posted this morning. I thought of last night, built it last night, had it prepped so it is a lot more organic than I think I would even recommend for people. But I think it works for me because I've done the reps right, because I know what works and what doesn't, and because I also know that sometimes my best ideas are the ones that only take me five minutes.

Tori Dunlap 00:37:32  If I sit down with something for an hour, it won't work as well.

Jasmine Star 00:37:37  Like, how do you know what will work in terms of like last night? You had an idea. Yeah. Quick activator. Put it out and your thesis proved right. How do you know.

Tori Dunlap 00:37:45  It's so hard? It's actually, I think, the hardest skill to teach sometimes what you will or won't do well on social.

Jasmine Star 00:37:52  Yeah. So that's why I'm asking you. Because I have not found a way to systematize the way I think about content. And if anybody heard, I mean, we were in Vegas day and a half ago with one of our content creators, and I'm like, well, when do I strategically place this real the timeline, the story, what goes there? And it's like, nobody thinks like that. I'm like, how do I put it all? Like, how do I teach the way I think about the content that I'm putting out?

Tori Dunlap 00:38:15  I think more about social in terms of like themes.

Tori Dunlap 00:38:19  So what I mean is like, what is the theme of this content today? So this is, you know, how you hear people describe like content buckets or something.

Jasmine Star 00:38:26  But I say content pillars.

Tori Dunlap 00:38:27  Yeah yeah yeah yeah. But for me it's even broader than that. Which is like my two things are like, what is the vibe or the tone or the theme? And then what am I trying to get them to do? So today is content that I built yesterday I saw a post, and I take a lot of inspiration from other people and then make it our own. Like stealing is great. Stealing? There was somebody who talks about, like, the work I've gotten done. Meaning like plastic surgery or Botox or whatever.

Jasmine Star 00:38:53  Day late and a dollar short, I got it.

Tori Dunlap 00:38:55  Like the here's the work I've had done. Because I believe transparency is important. And it was like, you know, lip filler or whatever. And I was like, one, I haven't had any work done.

Tori Dunlap 00:39:02  So I can't make this version of this post, but I'm like, I've gotten a lot of work done. I've written a book. Ooh. I have a company. I'm sure. Yeah. So the post this morning was all the work I've had done as a multi-millionaire, because I believe transparency is important. And then the next slide was like, I'm really proud of all the work I've had done, and I don't regret any of it. Right. So I am.

Jasmine Star 00:39:22  Oh my God, that's so cute. You know that maybe we do that today. Maybe I did it today. Do it.

Tori Dunlap 00:39:27  Today. So I'm baiting you a little bit. And then the third one is like, yeah, I've built this company. We've impacted 5 million women. I wrote a New York Times bestselling book. I rang the Nasdaq opening bell. We have a great company culture of these things. And like, this is the work I'm really proud of that I've had done.

Jasmine Star 00:39:43  That's so.

Tori Dunlap 00:39:43  Good. And like, it did great.

Tori Dunlap 00:39:45  And I knew it would do great. Right. I think that again, we call it petty content sometimes like that is like a content theme or a content pillar.

Jasmine Star 00:39:53  I want to embrace that. I always I, I'm like, oh, it's a cringe post where I'm doing a cringe post, I'm doing a cringe post, but I like, I like, I like the petty.

Tori Dunlap 00:40:01  Petty I there's a lot of men who do not like me and do not like the content we create. And then I use that.

Jasmine Star 00:40:07  It's more like you and there's a lot of men that don't like anybody, but.

Tori Dunlap 00:40:09  Then I use it as content.

Jasmine Star 00:40:10  I know it's great. Great.

Tori Dunlap 00:40:12  And I think also like that one, my CTA was just, okay, can we get in in front of more eyeballs? But I didn't have any CTE on it. It wasn't like many chat comments. It was just like, you know, this will be fun and maybe we'll even be a trend, right? Maybe, maybe we'll do it.

Tori Dunlap 00:40:28  So maybe somebody else will do it. The other posts I'm thinking about are yeah, what is our business objective. Right. Okay. So my example of okay, we have five days left of the month and I want to make ten more thousand dollars or whatever. It's like okay, what are the easiest levers I can pull to do that. What are your easiest sources of revenue and how can you do a quick revenue injection. So then I'm going, okay. If it is this program. Yeah, I'm creating content to be able to get people to that program. So what do I have to do in that content that will get them to convert.

Jasmine Star 00:40:59  Okay. So then sometimes when I'm in that situation and I'm like, okay, I want to create a piece of content that activates into financial stream. I think that the more time I have to plan and think about concepts, it's the better. But if I'm on the fly, like how do you quickly distill, okay, what's trending? What do I want to do? How is like how does that come together so quickly for you?

Tori Dunlap 00:41:18  Yeah.

Tori Dunlap 00:41:18  I mean we don't I, I take the opposite, which is like if I've planned it, it probably doesn't actually perform that well. And maybe that's just like the what the algorithm knows about our account, I don't know. We used to make these like beautiful graphics for stories like in.

Jasmine Star 00:41:34  Canva doesn't 18.

Tori Dunlap 00:41:35  Yeah. Or like 2021 2022. Like we make these beautiful graphics for stories they would take every time. But literally we call them chin videos. Internally, I take a photo and I sometimes do it on the toilet. I take a photo of me and it's just like from here up. And if I do my CTA, it performs gangbusters. I don't know why I.

Jasmine Star 00:41:54  Think you're saying that though, because everybody hates me.

Tori Dunlap 00:41:57  No no no no. My personal trainer who's so great and is trying to grow her business. Our training sessions often turn into her telling me to squat and then me telling her what she needs to post on social media. And literally, it's just like everybody over thinks it.

Jasmine Star 00:42:11  Yeah.

Tori Dunlap 00:42:12  Actually, one of the best things you can do is time yourself literally sit down and say, okay, I have ten minutes to think and create a post. And giving yourself those restrictions force you to one be productive. But to stop overthinking because it's like, if I have to have a post in the next ten minutes and also it has to be out, then I can't, I can't think about what's the perfect thing. I mean, hooks are really important. Everybody's told anybody on social media that think about the way you consume content, right? Even if it is the most thoughtful or most valuable post in the world. Right? Tree falls in the middle of the forest. Nobody's around. Like it doesn't matter if the hook isn't there, if you are not hooking somebody into getting them to care for this reason. So my post example yesterday of like the work I've had done, we're all we're all voyeurs. We all want to know, right? It's like, oh, somebody's going to be transparent.

Tori Dunlap 00:43:01  It's like and then I, of course, have flipped that on its head to keep people engaged. So that's a perfect opportunity of like, what content do you consume? And even just watching yourself on social media go, why did I click on that? Or why did I do that thing? And then how can I replicate that for my business?

Jasmine Star 00:43:19  That's so good. So what we've done is we started off with origin story. Yep. Money beliefs. Money stories. Yep. We talked about your business. And then we kind of went as a little bit of a sideline because I love to geek out. Yeah, I love to geek out with other people who are creating. And then differently, I like to get into the psychology. And I think that at this point in my career, in life, I really do want to create and systematize a team, a team to help do this. And I don't know how to verbalize what it is I see and what I know. And so I was asking you a lot of those questions.

Tori Dunlap 00:43:50  Is sometimes very hard. We have often struggled to hire people for marketing. The marketing is actually sometimes the hardest thing to hire for, because I think people often get in their own way. There's so much content to create, and that's where you are forced to not dwell on things for too long because it's like, yeah, I have to, I have to get this out. Done is better than perfect is like my biggest rule as an entrepreneur. It's just like it will never be perfect. And I could spend I mean, my if I believed that I needed to be perfect, my book would not ever have seen the light of day. I would not be sitting here talking to you. And that's back to the original thing we were talking about is like we teach women to be perfect. It's the same with like social, especially when we have to put ourselves out there. It's like, oh, this post has to be perfect and it has to be the perfect videos, and it has to be the perfect photos.

Tori Dunlap 00:44:40  And right now, especially in 2026 on social media, it is the imperfect content that is doing so well. Preach again. My videos are like the it's just carousels that aren't perfectly posed and professional photos. I build my carousels in Instagram like I use Instagram's tools. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

Jasmine Star 00:45:03  So what we've seen is the journey up through present day. Yeah. And then, like Babe Ruth in the batter's box and you point out to fa fa fa.

Tori Dunlap 00:45:14  I love it. You're comparing me to Babe Ruth. That's really kind.

Jasmine Star 00:45:17  Well, if we see. Look what you look at. What? A girl from Seattle who thought she was gonna wear a pencil skirt and carry a briefcase. Can do. And then blew her own mind before anybody else's and decided I'm going to be and create a 5 million woman entourage to change their lives and reclaim power and ownership by way of their own personal finances. What's next?

Tori Dunlap 00:45:40  Well, Jasmine, I have to tell you a secret. Can I tell you a secret? Yes.

Tori Dunlap 00:45:43  I knew I could do this. I think as women, we are told anytime you just said really kind things. Which. Thank you, by the way we go. Oh, this was beyond my wildest dreams. I never thought this was possible. I never thought I was capable. I just feel so lucky. Right. And it is the thing from the Barbie movie where I was like, I worked hard for this. Thank you for this award. I deserve it. Like, and there's a ton of privilege in my story and we acknowledge that so much. And also, I refuse to come on this or any other interview and be like, oh yeah, it's crazy. I never thought I 100% thought this. Like, I 100% thought I could do that.

Jasmine Star 00:46:26  Well, because you said you you stood in front of the mirror with tears in your eyes and said, you can do this. So that before this question ever came, you had already said your truth. It's not you putting on anything other than your dang truth.

Jasmine Star 00:46:38  And I feel like very spoken to right now.

Tori Dunlap 00:46:39  It's so important. And when you start growing a business, you cannot be the person that's like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening to me. You have to be the person that is like, nope, we are going to do these things and it's either going to work out or I'm going to learn and pivot. But if no one if if you're not going to hype yourself up, nobody will.

Jasmine Star 00:47:05  I see that all the time.

Tori Dunlap 00:47:06  And so you have to say yeah I have big dreams and I know I'm capable of them.

Jasmine Star 00:47:12  Okay. So so rewind and we say so you knew that this was going to happen from day one. What's the next thing you know is going to happen.

Tori Dunlap 00:47:20  Yeah. And of course I didn't know what was going to happen in this way. Right. Like but I knew I was capable of something like this. I am so excited for us to continue investing in our programs. Like, that's for me.

Tori Dunlap 00:47:33  One of my favorite things is we've seen so much success with our stock market school program, and now we're thinking more strategically about how do we continue to serve people in a more intentional way. So we're kind of doing the like hybrid of, okay, it was one on 1 in 2019. We went really big in 2025. How do we, like, get in the middle in 2026? Like, how do we serve a maybe smaller group but in a more intentional way? As we continue to grow, that's awesome. I also as important as true financial education is, which is like what is Roth IRAs and how do we use them and how do we think strategically about debt and budgeting? This, to me, is so much bigger than personal finance, and so much of our content moving forward will, yes, be practical, valuable advice. But it's also going to be about how this moment in history right now is the most crucial moment for women to take their financial education seriously. Like, this is the most important work I will ever do in my life, is making sure that women have money, and not because they want to be greedy with it and not because they want to hoard, but because Women are so generous and create such beautiful things when they are well funded.

Tori Dunlap 00:49:00  And it is every woman listening to job right now to get as rich as possible in the most, you know, hopefully equitable, equal way, ethical way. But we need more money in more women's hands because when that happens, the entire world starts to change.

Jasmine Star 00:49:20  Ladies and gentlemen, Tori Dunlap. One of the things that Tori has said, that I repeat again and again, is nothing bad happens when more women have more money. That's true. So on that note, if you would like to have a personalized financial plan. Tori generously her first 100. Com forward slash quiz. Take a quiz and you will get a personalized money plan free gratis her gift to you, and you can find her on Instagram at her first 100 K. Tori, thank you for being here. Thank you and thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show.