How I Made $3 Million in One Year | Vivian Tu

So going to your business now, the business empire, how is the revenue broken down? I think you probably have a lot of sponsorships. Like, how is it structured right now?

Yeah, I would say the vast majority of my income is from brand partnerships. I will say I got a very healthy book advance, but people think suddenly they like hand you a check. No, you get a quarter of the advance upon signing. Great. You get a quarter of the advance upon final manuscript delivery. You get a quarter of the advance the day the book launches, and then you get another quarter of the advance a year after the book launches. So it's not quite quick money. I make money through advertising on my podcast as well. I make money from the platforms. It is certainly probably the smallest revenue stream. This is like TikTok Creator Creativity Beta or AdSense or—

YouTube.

Ads on Reels, what have you. Affiliate. So if someone purchases a pair of boots that I really— that I have on, and frankly, affiliate is a portion of my business that I'm not really big on. I don't push people to buy stuff a lot. I think the only time I really do it is when there are deals to be had. So Black Friday or Cyber Monday, things like that, when there are actually really good deals, I'm like, hey, if you want a vacuum, this is the time to buy it. But, you know, Fashion Girlies affiliates a huge portion of that business. But I would say affiliate and platforms are the smallest. Brand partnerships is the largest. Advertising on the podcast, book advance, speaking is kind of in the middle.

Got it. You talked about, I think in a video with Eric Wei from Carrots, how you made $3 million on TikTok. How did that happen? That's $3 million in aggregate, right?

So last year, My business cleared $3.2 million, and everybody gets so excited about that number because it's huge, right? I think a lot of people think that means I have $3 million and I put it in my pocket.

Yeah.

Not how that works at all. What people don't realize is that when you have a business as— and I'm very fortunate— booming as mine, you're not doing it on your own. I have— I'm repped at an agency, so they take somewhere between 10 to 15% of every dollar I make depending on the sector. I have a management team, they take 10% of everything I make. I have an attorney who takes 5% of everything I make. So that's 25 to 30% off the top before anything happens.

Yeah.

Okay, so we're already down to like 2. Then I have to pay for expenses. So that's things like my business manager, that's a monthly retainer. That's like my publicist, that's a monthly retainer. Then I have to pay my newsletter writer. Then I have to pay my social media manager. Then I have to pay my assistant.

Mm-hmm.

Then I have to buy $22,000 worth of camera equipment to trick out the studio in my apartment.

Yeah.

Because my business is content. Then I have to pay I have to pay to travel to certain events because they're good for my career. Then I have to pay for the hotels once I'm at the place to get that done. When I'm invited to events, I have to get hair and makeup done because I can't show up to something like this looking jank or busted. There's so many expenses that people don't realize that when you are not a W-2 employee, I don't have a corporate car that some invisible boss pays. I am the boss. I pay those expenses. And after all those expenses, the government still takes pretty much half of it. So do I have an incredible business? Yes. Do I— did I make $3.2 million in my business last year? Yes. You wanna know what I paid myself? About $300,000. It's a lot of money, don't get me wrong, but it's a really different number than the one that people love to talk about.

I was about to say 30 grand.

Oh yeah, I mean—

'Cause you start, like when you're starting it off, you know, like you're putting it Yeah.

I felt confident enough that I was able to pay myself a really, really meaningful but responsible salary. But my salary is not like 10x, you know, my full-time employees. They're relatively within realms of reality. And that's because not all of that money goes to me from the business. I want to reinvest it. And to reinvest it, like, I have to spend that money.

How much more fulfilled do you feel making the $300,000 from your business versus the $625,000 from BuzzFeed?

Way more fulfilled. It's my thing. My brand is my face. And I will say this, my very first job was great. I helped make rich people and ultra wealthy institutions that managed rich people's money richer.

Mm-hmm.

Great. Cool. Great. My second job, I was helping major corporations get richer. They were putting ads on the website. They were launching joint business ventures. They were doing in-person marketing. I was helping corporations get richer. Now I help regular people get richer. And how awesome is that? Because when I was selling ads at BuzzFeed or moving numbers, you know, on Wall Street, like Okay. I get DMs now of people telling me that they have retirement accounts because of me. I get DMs now where people are like, you have changed the trajectory of my life because I didn't know about missingmoney.com. And I went and looked to see if I had any missing money. Turns out my, you know, past husband who tragically passed away had a life insurance policy I didn't know about. I'm getting $1 million. I changed a woman's life forever. I never would have done that in any other job.

Are you screenshotting all those?

I probably should have. I probably can find them.

Yeah, those are all good. I think it's validation. It's also like the little dopamine hits too. It's like, yeah, you feel good. It's like little drugs.

It makes you feel really good.

Yeah.

But it's also a reminder of like, these aren't just like usernames behind a screen. Like, these are human beings who go to work every day, have people they love, have aspirations and dreams and goals. And if I can help them get there and make money doing that, feel fulfilled doing that, and put something out there that's good for the world, like, why not?

Yeah. So, okay, you mentioned the business size and how much you're taking home. What's the approximate reach from all the social stuff you're putting out each month?

So roughly in terms of followership, We have 6.5 to 7 million followers across all platforms. In terms of accounts reached, I haven't looked on all of them so recently, but I think for the last month on Instagram, it was like 16 million.

Wow. Do you think Instagram is the main one for you?

I would say it's one of the most powerful for sure. And I think that's because the platform allows you to reach people who follow you. TikTok is an incredible discovery tool, but you're only as good as your last video. I have 2.5 million followers. My last video can get 15,000 views.

Yeah.

And that's not weird.

It's weird how like they're all the same format, but they're all— the algorithms work all differently.

So different.

Yeah. I've seen your videos. I mean, obviously I feel like you're not only educating people, but you're super entertaining as well. So how do people do that? Like people want— everyone wants— there's gonna be more and more content creators, right? So.

You know, I think it's about providing your own spin. Any finance content that I create is not new information. You can find it on Google. It's all reputable. It's all pretty boring. But no one's ever compared investing to going grocery shopping before. No one's ever talked about getting a financial planner in terms of getting your nails done at a nail salon. And for the first time, I'm relating a really boring, really complex topic back to everyday topics that anybody can relate to. Even if you have never walked inside of a nail salon, in your mind you have a general understanding of how that works, right? You go in, you pick a color, they do your nails, you're done. Like, people understand concepts better in situations and scenarios that they can visualize and put themselves in versus like these amorphous topics. And by explaining it in a way that only I can do and only I can help people relate to, that makes me special. That makes me more interesting than any other vest-wearing person on, you know, a major financial network. And it's also the thing that makes me so good at what I do is I'm different. The same way that I would say a lot of the TikTok creators that I've seen come up, they're not doing anything new. Think about all of the new food creators. Like, you're not the first person to make a ham and cheese sandwich, but there's a guy that like throws the knife onto the cutting board, and there's the person who does the ASMR like over the grilled cheese or whatever. But like, they're doing it different. It's been— people have been videoing making food for as long as I've ever watched TV. Yeah, right. There was Rachael Ray, and then there was Bobby Flay, and then, you know, Iron Chef, and like all of those people. It's not new, but it is a new spin on how to deliver that information because the medium's changing. People don't have an attention span to watch a 30 to an hour-long show, a 30-minute to an hour-long show. They have the attention span to give you 30 to 60 seconds of their time.

Yeah, so the book, why a book and why now? 'Cause like we talked about pre-show, it's like you're on the grind right now. The push is hard.

I am on the grind. So why a book? It was really just because the BFFs kept asking me for one. I think the way my content is formulated and formatted, it's helpful. It's short form, it's quick and easy, but it only helps with that one specific thing per day. A lot of my BFFs were DMing me, commenting, saying things like, where's the book? And I was like, what do you guys want in this? And they said, we want something where we can read from page 1 to the very last page, And just be better with our money. We don't want to have to like watch a bunch of videos. We don't want to jump around topic. We want to go from A to Z. And so the book is a really easy roadmap of if you have no idea where to start and you read it from the very first to the very last page, I hope you walk away more confident, more capable, and just more ready to take on that financial journey. It touches all of the baseline points, but also dives into some detail in a way that I just can't do in a 60-second video. And it gives people the opportunity to say, hey, I'm now on my feet, I have a jump-off point, where can I go from here? Got it.