YourRichBFF’s Step-By-Step Plan To Hit $25M (Vivian Tu)

How rich do you want to be?

The FU number in my head right now is $25 million.

This next guest, her name is Vivian Tu, also known as Your Rich BFF.

I'm Vivian, Your Rich BFF and your favorite Wall Street girly.

She teaches a lot around personal finance. We'll go into that.

Focus less on the coupon clipping. Open up retirement investment accounts. Every 2 years you need to be getting a 10 to 15% promotion. Otherwise you need to leave.

We'll also talk about the minority mindset as well.

I got some, some traumas here. You wanna know how many kids told me my lunch smelled weird?

Where she invests and where she's taking her business.

I would love to make my foray into TV. That's mass media.

It will happen. Much more than that. A lot of stuff around marketing too. Hope you enjoy it. Mark my words, by 2034, so let's call it in 10 years, Vivian will have more than $25 million.

I hope I do it in like next year. You know, my first year of making money was certainly not a lot of money. It was just something part-time that I was doing in the summer as a club promoter.

Yeah.

But all the way to the very end of like, you know, every single year I was leveling up, every single year I was making more money. And when I made the leap to, you know, a full-time Wall Street job, you saw that number jump. Of course, you're going from a part-time job to a full-time job after I graduated. But what People don't even realize that everybody thinks I made all of my money on Wall Street. Absolutely not. Okay, I was on Wall Street for 2 and a half years, and I was making an analyst salary and bonus. It's not that exciting. The base was $80,000. You got a $10,000 signing bonus. And then when I left Wall Street and moved into tech and media sales, that's when I started to really— Make the big bucks because, you know, my salary was still roughly the same, but now I ate what I killed. For every extra email I would send, for every extra call I would be willing to take over the guy sitting next to me, I knew I was going to make more money. And my very first year, I made slightly more than I did on Wall Street. My second year, I made some— it was like a 6-figure income, something with a 3 handle on it. And by the very last year of working at BuzzFeed, I made all in roughly $625,000. And when people hear that number, the immediate assumption is I made that trading equities, but I made it because I was a really good salesperson.

Got it. And by the way, it's when you're working in, I think it was iBanking, right?

I was on the trading side of house.

Trading side, okay, got it. So, but also you were getting grinded to the bone too, right?

Yeah, yeah, I was trading.

You're working your 70, 80 hours a week?

I mean, I was waking up at 5, My butt had to be in the seat at 5:45. And then I would leave the office every day roughly 6:00. But typically on Tuesdays through Thursdays, I had a client event to go to. So it wasn't like at 6:00 I got to go home. I then had to go to drinks or go to dinner. And when you first sign up for the job, that sounds amazing, right? Because you're 22, you have no money, there's no way you can afford to eat at this really fancy steakhouse. You get to go to this dinner. But you have to realize, like, You're not hanging out with your friends. You're hanging out with people that you need to be on around. And I had to talk shop. I had to, you know, hang out with clients that maybe I liked, maybe I didn't. Maybe they weren't particularly nice. It's work. So, you know, I'd probably get home around 8, 9, sometimes closer to midnight if it was a really late night.

Yeah.

And so every week I'm working 80 hours a week.

Yeah.

To what, make $100,000 a year? Like, at a 40-hour work week, that's $50,000, which is below what the median American makes.

Right. That's nuts. I mean, what— that's like, what, probably $20-ish, $30-ish an hour, something like that.

To be doing really mentally taxing work. Like, from the hours of 9:30 to 4:00 PM, it's not like I got to freely go take a bathroom break. If I had to go to the bathroom, I would have to Yell out to the trader next to me, be like, can you watch my screens while I go to the bathroom? And I had to hustle, go as quickly as I could, and come back. And I don't think people realize that this is not a normal corporate job where you are allowed to go to the water cooler. Like, when you are in a trading seat, 9:30 to 4, you are tethered to your desk, and it's hard.

How rich do you want to be? What would be ideal? Because I think you made a comment about how billionaires shouldn't exist, right? So like, where does that cap out at?

So I think this ties back to my FU number. I think I have multiple tiers of FU number. I think the FU number in my head right now, as it stands, is $25 million because at $25 million invested, that backs into about $1 million a year if I'm able to get a 4% return on that $25 mil, which is very conservative.

Got it.

And at $1 mil a year, I can do everything that I want in my life. I have my primary home. I have a vacation home. I'm going to be able to help put my kids through any sort of education they want to do, any sort of vacations our family wants to have. We'll be able to afford a car. It's going to cover every expense that I need. I wouldn't have to work anymore. And at that point, I would say that my priorities would severely change. Based on the fact that my financial needs and my family's future financial needs, not just my own, but my family's future financial needs would all be met.

Mark my words, by 2034, so let's call it in 10 years, Vivian will have more than $25 million.

You really, you have a lot of confidence.

We're going to come back to this.

Okay.

In 10 years. We'll come back to this. We'll see.

We'll see.

We'll see.

I hope I do it in like next year and then we have to come back around.

Yeah, well, that would, that would be even better. So, okay. What do people get wrong with their money?

You know, I think a lot of us really focus on the scrimping and the saving. And so people are like, I'm not buying that avocado toast, I'm not buying that Starbucks, I'm not, you know, doing anything that brings me joy. Think about how hard it is to cut $10,000 worth of expenses out of your life. Like, that's hard. You're giving up a lot of things you really enjoy. How easy is it to ask for a $10,000 raise? That is absolutely heard of. Like, heard of, as in happens all the time, happens to so many people. A $10,000 raise is really not that strange, and you can get one just by being responsible, Mm-hmm. Making sure you come to the table with like quantifiable facts and like, you know, a good excuse for your boss of why you deserve one. So it's a lot easier to make more money than it is to cut out all of the things that bring you joy. So my advice is, hey, focus less on the coupon clipping and the little, you know, tiny things. Focus on the big stuff. Because if you're not asking for a raise every single year, it doesn't matter if you're trying to scrimp and save, like you're still not going to get ahead.

At the end of the day, it's your earning power. And Charlie Munger likes to say, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome, right? And you certainly proved that. So I guess for practical advice for people, like, how can they go about increasing their earning power? Is it learning before you earn? Like, what is it?

I think it's learning while you earn, right? Like, in any job, you either need to be learning or earning, ideally both. And I think it's about being really, really selfish, right? Back in the day, our parents, our grandparents were incentivized to stay at companies for 30, 40 years because they had Yep. Pensions. And pensions are this special little thing that help you prepare for retirement because your company would put money away for you and take care of you in old age. Now, most of us have something called a 401, which is just a pension, but it's worse in literally every way because instead of your company contributing to it, you have to contribute to it. Instead of your company selecting investments, you have to select investments. And back in the day, if your company didn't select the right investments, come retirement, they still had to pay you out on what they owed you. And it got bigger and bigger and bigger the longer you stayed at someplace. Now it's like, okay, well, it's my money going into this account. Maybe your company matches it, maybe it doesn't. You have to pick investments. You better pick right.

Yeah.

Because if you don't, sorry, too bad, so sad. And we are no longer incentivized to stay at companies for 30, 40 years. Because why should we? We have to put our own money into these accounts. The only way we can put more money into these accounts is by making more money. So my thing is, is be selfish. Forbes did a study. People who stay at jobs for longer than 2 years make less than— make essentially 50% less their entire lifetime. So my thing is, is like, you need to be either up or out every 2 years. Every 2 years, you need to be getting a 10 to 15% promotion. At a minimum, every 2 years. Otherwise, you need to leave. You need to go somewhere that's going to pay you. Because if you're not doing that, you're going to be making less. And people are like, well, the job market's bad, and it's not the Great Resignation anymore. I agree. I concur. It's not as easy as it was 2, 3 years ago. But we have to take a long, hard look at ourselves and be like, am I actually doing a good job? Do I deserve a raise?

Because—

The best people, the smartest people, the people who perform the best and have the best results and, you know, make sure their boss knows that they're doing a good job. They tell people what they're going to do, they do it, and then they tell everyone how they did it. Those people are going to get paid every year, and they always have since the dawn of time.

I guess based on, based on experience, and I think the same thing for you too, it's like, yes, be selfish, but also don't be afraid to job hop. And us having Asian parents, it's like, no, you should stay, you should get pension and everything, right?

1,000%. Do you know how bad my mom yelled at me when I told her I was leaving JPMorgan?

You lost the badge.

I lost the badge. I lost the badge. So we were talking, you know, before the show started about how I am a native Shanghainese speaker, which is essentially a dialect of Mandarin. There's a phrase that all of her Asian auntie friends said to her about my getting to work there. Basically, if you want to work at a company like that, nong yone dou, you know, long ke. So essentially, you have to crack your head open. 요네 너츠 당계. So like, you have to basically crack your head open to work somewhere like that, meaning it's hypercompetitive. It's so hard to get a job there. It's grueling physically, emotionally, mentally.

Yeah.

And it was like a point of pride that I had that type of grit and other people couldn't do it. So my leaving, in a sense, was not only a failure because I couldn't hack it, because people love to say that I couldn't hack it, and 2, It felt like all of the investments my parents had put into me for, you know, 2 decades, they felt like they had wasted. So the extracurricular business clubs that I was in in high school, all the field trips that I went on to, to like debate competitions, going to a school like UChicago, which certainly is not cheap. That was a quarter of a million dollar education. And sure, I got some merit grants and I got some scholarships. But they also helped pay for a lot of it. And I always say that's a huge privilege of mine. I don't have student debt. They chose to allow me to go to a school like UChicago knowing that it was a feeder school for lawyers, doctors, engineers, and financiers. And their thought was like, we accomplished that. She got the thing that she said she wanted to do because we got her into that. She got into that school. We helped pay for it. She has this career. And now you want to—

Yeah.

Piss it away. That was the attitude.

You had a video on how to avoid paying taxes legally, so I figured we might as well talk about it again.

Yeah, let's do it.

Go for it. What do you got?

So first and foremost is to open up retirement investment accounts. So things like a 401 or an IRA or a Roth 401 and a Roth IRA are a really easy way to avoid taxes legally. In a 401 or an IRA, the money you put into that account Is tax-free. You get to save on your tax bill this year. In the future, when you take money out, you'll have to pay taxes on that. But hey, you're only paying taxes on one end of that transaction. On the flip side, a Roth 401 and a Roth IRA, you pay taxes on the front end, but when you take that money out, free of charge. So again, you're only paying taxes one way or the other. I would say another really Mindful way is to write off your mortgage interest rate or your mortgage interest. Obviously, when you go out and get a mortgage, you are paying interest for the pleasure of borrowing that money. And if you're itemizing, you're able to write off some of that interest. So it's just like a little nice to have. There are certainly some amazing tax credits that you can take if— I don't know, I was looking at your keys earlier, but like— If you go and get an electric vehicle, you can get a $7,500 tax credit.

Yep.

And that's great savings. That's avoiding taxes legally. And I think people need to remember that the tax code is written in a way that incentivizes— back to the Charlie Munger statement— like incentivizes you to do certain things. Our, you know, country wants us to be more green. It wants us to save for retirement and invest for retirement because guess what? If you don't, who has to take care of you? The government. They don't want to do that. They want you to have your own money. So that's why they're incentivizing you to do that. They want people to be homeowners. That's why you can have some of that written off. If you are a small business owner, you can write off and essentially get a tax break on expenses because they want people to start businesses and write off things like office space or travel or business meals. And again, these are all ways to avoid taxes legally, but it allows you to also do something that Uncle Sam wants you to do.

Yeah, actually, that, that's, that's a good one. It's, it's the tax code actually incentivizes people to do things. So yeah, businesses, real estate, and all that, right? Like, the more you do, the more tax incentives you get.

Correct.

Yep. Okay, you made a video on, I think, why do people actually like Buying fake bags? Why do rich people like buying fake bags?

So this came out of a piece, I believe, in The New Yorker. And it was basically this exposé about how these women on the Upper East and Upper West Side of Manhattan, you know, one of the most expensive zip codes in the country, were going and buying high-end fakes. And those are 3 words you would never think would be in the same sentence, because high-end and fake Usually are a clash. But as it turns out, a lot of these women who are self-made, who make millions of dollars every year, who have supported themselves, built that nest egg on their own, they're saying, why do I need the real thing? I got it like that. People think it's the real thing. And if I'm buying a really, really well-made fake, nobody knows the difference. So what's the point? Why should I spend $25,000 on a bag when I can spend $1,000 on the bag, have the exact same result? And it almost to them felt like cheating the system of like the mean girls scene of like, you can't sit with us unless you don't have a $25,000 bag. But it's like, I've got a bag that looks identical to your $25,000 bag, and I'm getting into this club, but I paid a 25th of the price. It's also, you know, A lot of it came down to them saying, like, the only women I know who buy the real thing are people whose husbands made all the money, and they don't work, and they chill, and they don't actually have a concept of what it took to make that money. But I work. I'm not going to be able to build my wealth spending my money that way. I would rather pay $1,000 for the bag and invest the other $24,000.

Love it.

And, like, I think that speaks a lot. to value systems, and I love it. I'm all about it.

There's a lot of this red pill content on YouTube, right, where it's like, yeah, women are supposed to just cook, clean, blah blah blah.

Like the tradwife.

Yeah, yeah, tradwife. Just be, you know, just listen and then, you know, take orders from the man or whatever, right? And I'm just like, okay, well, but that's to your point. It's like, no, there are like a lot of women out there that are providing for themselves, right? They're investing.

Also, here is my hot take, but I think it's just a really rational take. If you want a traditional wife, then be a traditional man. And I'm talking about obviously heterosexual relationships here, but like, you cannot ask for wifey privileges if you— like stay-at-home wifey privileges— if you don't have stay-at-home wifey money.

Mm-hmm.

Right? Like, you want me to clean the kitchen? I'm happy to clean the kitchen if I get to wake up at 10, I get to clean the kitchen, I get to go lounge by the pool, and then you come home at night. Like, sure, no problem. But if I'm waking up at the crack of dawn with you, we're both going to our 2 very demanding jobs and then coming home, don't ask me for anything you're not willing to do.

Mm-hmm.

Because this isn't even like a, a jab at men of like modern-day men, but like more and more families cannot make the numbers work without 2 incomes coming into the house. Back in the day, there was this traditional family. You had a man who was the breadwinner, the woman would stay at home, and a middle-class income was enough for you to buy a white picket fence house. You would have your golden retriever, your 2.5 kids, you would go on vacation twice a year, and by the time you turned 60, 65, you'd be able to retire. Great. That doesn't work for most people now because A normal income now is a lot harder to make ends meet. And suddenly your stay-at-home wifey has to go pick up a job and she doesn't have the hours in the day to be doing those tasks, that household labor that was unpaid. And my thing is now is like, if you're both working, if you both have external responsibilities, you're both contributing to the financial wellbeing of the home. You also both need to contribute to the emotional wellbeing of the home. So. Yeah. It's not like I did my wife a favor by doing the dishes. It's like, those are your dishes, you wash them. Like, split up the chores. And I will say, that's something I am so grateful about my partner. When we first started dating, this is also very single child, like only child syndrome of me, I like barely knew how to do chores. Like, because I was very studious, I would kind of like get out of them. And my mom would be like, you need to learn how to cook and clean if you want to keep a man around. I'd be like, whatever, like I'll figure it out later. Never figured it out. My fiancé taught me how to do a lot of those chores. What we try to do now is like our work ebbs and flows. So like right now, you know, I'm very busy. I'm, you know, about to launch Rich AF, my book, December 26th. I have to say it. You can preorder at richaf.me. I'm going on tour in January. I'm going to be doing a lot of travel in February. For that 3-month stretch, he's probably going to have to pick up a little bit more of the household labor in our home. But there were times during COVID when my work really slowed down and his work really picked up. And so I was cooking every meal. I was cleaning the dishes. I was washing our laundry. I was the one going to the grocery store to physically pick out the vegetables and the fruit and whatever. Like, we just— I don't know, we're in tune. We talk about it. It's like, hey, I need a little bit more. And that's why I hate when partners say we're 50/50 partners. It's never 50/50. Some days it's 90/10, some days it's 70/30. But if you want to be 50/50 all the time, you are going to come to a day where your partner can't give 50, and then you're— you don't have 100. And that's bad.

I look at it as like Batman and Robin. Sometimes you have to be Batman, sometimes he has to be Batman.

Yes, exactly.

There's a couple that comes to mind. So 2 good friends, Alex and Leila Hormozi. And I remember once Alex was asked on stage, it was like, yeah, you know, I just don't think it makes sense. Like all the things like cleaning the dishes and all that stuff, like that's just someone you can hire to help. And like, you want to have someone that's a partner that can build something with you. And that's a lot more attractive to me. And it seems a lot more fulfilling, which sounds like what you're doing too.

Like I always say to my fiancé, like, I don't have some of these skills. Fortunately, we can outsource for a lot of these tasks that I'm not really good at, that I don't enjoy doing. I would rather spend an hour that I could have been doing the dishes and folding the laundry and spend that extra hour doing something that's going to contribute to my business that'll then pay for services that can help us with that. Because one of them I enjoy doing and the other one I dread, and I'd rather do the one that I like.

What, what's in your portfolio right now and what are you, what are you most interested, most excited about in your portfolio as well?

Listen, people want to hear that like there's something really exciting. It's pretty boring. I am consistently invested in index-tracking ETFs. I've got some target-date retirement funds in my, you know, retirement accounts. I think the only thing that is more exciting, a little bit riskier, because again, I'm still in my 20s, like I'm young, I've got time to take some risks.

Yeah.

My fiancé is employed at a private equity fund, so we are making some co-investments. For the most part, still the vast majority of our money is in public equities. And, you know, I think that's how it really should be for most people. It's just like the slow and steady. There isn't some specific stock or ETF that you're going to buy and tomorrow suddenly you're a millionaire. Like, that doesn't You know what's funny?

I don't know if your parents did this, but growing up they would always be talking about these random stocks. I'm just like, you guys don't know anything about these companies and they're just buying and inviting— they're just trading, right?

It's like going to your other, like your auntie and uncle's house, who, which by the way we're not related to, and they would literally play mahjong, gamble, and then talk about random stocks. And I'm like, none of you have ever Actually researched any of this. So I think, you know, in Chinese culture, the concept of like luck and gambling is like a pretty big thing. And I, I think a lot of our parents and our older family members attribute investing to luck and gambling, which if you're actually a responsible investor, it's not anything like gambling.

I actually never thought of that perspective before. It's like they're going to gamble to talk about gambling. Literally.

Like, everybody loves Temajong.

Yeah. Yep. Totally true. So the book, why a book and why now? Because like, like I— we talked about pre-show, it's like you're on the grind right now. The push is hard.

I am on the grind. Uh, 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.

What, what outcomes would you like from the book?

I want people to have healthier budgets. I want people to have more in savings. I want them to go demand— not ask, demand— raises. I want them to be investing for their futures.

Love it. And people can pre-order it on Amazon?

You can pre-order it anywhere, basically, that you get a book. But if you want an aggregate list of all the places that offer it, you can go to richaf.me. I made the URL a manifestation because I Want to Be Rich or jf.me. And it's an easy little hub where you can find the right copy for you, whether that be a hardcover copy, an ebook, audiobook, or even the international edition that services people who live outside of the US.

You talked about, I think in a video with, 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, 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. Then I have to buy $22,000 worth of camera equipment to trick out the studio in my apartment because my business is content.

Yeah.

Then 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 the, you know, 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. I, you know, like 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. Like, 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, you start like when you're starting it off, you know, like you're putting it all back in. Yeah. Yep.

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. 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 a million dollars. 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, it's like little drugs.

It makes you feel really good, 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?

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, 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, I feel like you're not only educating people, but you're super entertaining as well. So how do, how do people do that?

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.

Yeah.

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, ch-ch-ch, 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.

It sounds to me, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, you probably didn't have to study much stuff around entertainment. It sounds like to me you've kind of just— you came like that.

I like how, like, you came like that.

Yeah, like some people are just born entertaining, you know?

Yeah. I would like to say I am the funniest person I know. That's not even true because I'm friends with Heather McMahon now, and she's a lot funnier than me. She has a Netflix special. But I will say I've always been goofy and a little bit silly and a little bit of a troublemaker, and I love a good laugh. And so I'm always chasing a laugh. And the friends, the girlfriends that I surround myself in college were all really funny, really witty, and really smart. And they were so quick with the comebacks, quick with the zingers, that I think those jokes stuck. And my personality has stuck in that way. And so when I make content, I love to give it a little spicy spicy, and it just makes people watch a little longer.

Okay, so when you're creating content, let's say it's a normal week, not during like book promotion time, but like in normal times, how many hours are you spending per week on content? the actual creation of the content, and then also how much time are you spending on ideating?

Every week I need to ideate 7 pieces of content, 6 to 7. Um, every 2 weeks a YouTube video, every week a podcast, and, you know, book is totally separate, let's just not even count that. But the ideation in total probably takes a full workday, and then the filming Also takes a full workday, but I'm not doing like that. I'm not like ideating every single thing on Monday and filming every single thing on Tuesday. It is broken up. And I think that gives me a little bit of breathing room because if I were to sit in a dark room and have to ideate 6 concepts for short-form stories, plus a podcast outline, plus a YouTube outline, like— The content just wouldn't be any good. I'd be burnt out.

So are you doing it like the— I feel like you're probably like just walking around. Sometimes you stare at something, it's like, okay, there's an idea and you're just writing it down.

Yeah. In my little notes.

Yeah. Got it. And then are you batch recording the content?

Yeah, I typically like to batch record if I can, just because living in New York, sometimes there are days where it's gloomy right now in the winter and the lighting just sucks. And maybe I don't want to use artificial lighting, so I have to take advantage of lighting when I can, one. And two, there are days where I'm in the mood to record, and then there are days that I'm not. And with recording, you know, I also don't want to look really horrible, so I have to put on makeup, I have to brush my hair, I have to, you know, look presentable. So it's nice to just only have to do that once and then just change outfits.

Got it. Oh yeah, I think I saw a video where like you were wearing— you had to change, maybe you had 7 outfits on top and you just kept like moving it around.

Just taking them off. And so I got to the last, last t-shirt. I was sweating by that time, but it was cool because everyone thought it was a new video each day.

That is hardcore. I believe there's gonna be a lot more business creators for sure. More people are warming up to it. What are you excited about as a creator in these like next 5 to 10 years?

I just feel like creators are the new businesses. They are at the forefront of pretty much every single industry. The traditional, you know, legacy brands are tripping over themselves to find creators that align with their brand missions to then be like, help us, how do we make content? And it's so funny because they have these million-dollar teams where they've got creative directors and producers and, you know, videographers and filmmakers and all this stuff. And then you've got me with my cell phone doing this, and my video will still get way more views than theirs does. And my video's blurry.

Yeah.

And I think it speaks a lot to who is watching this content and who they wanna watch it from. And so, I think creators are gonna have a lot of power over the next couple years, but that power ultimately comes from their audiences. So, creators are also going to have to be really careful to make sure that they continue to serve their audiences in a way that Keeps them sticking around.

Love it. And 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, you know, TikTok creator creativity beta.

Yeah.

Or AdSense or ads on Reels, what have you. Uh, affiliate. So if, uh, 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 wanna 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.

And I think you mentioned before on an interview that in the very beginning you made like, you know, $200 for like a sponsorship or whatever, right? And but I think over time you've learned how to price yourself as a creator.

Do you know how stupid I felt when I looked back on that and I was like, I had 150,000 followers and I charged $1,200 for 3 videos.

Yeah. I mean, you don't know what you don't know.

You don't know what you don't know. And I was ideating, I was filming, I was editing, I was posting, I was doing all this for $400 a video to get $200 after taxes. Like, I should have just said no. Um, but you're right, I did learn over time, and every brand deal I negotiated for myself after that I got paid more on.

Yep.

And now I'm really lucky. I don't frankly have the time to be negotiating every single deal on my own, but that's why I hired representation. I have my agents and I have my management team and they're handling a lot of that. So not only am I saving time, but typically when you are repped at some of these larger shops, there's a level of, I don't want to say legitimacy, but brands do take you a little bit more seriously. They're not Sending, you know, piddly dink little deals and saying, hey, you have 7 million followers, I'll give you a water bottle. Like, they don't bother to send that to agents because the agents will just laugh in their face. Whereas they're like, send me an appropriate budget, send me an appropriate deal, and I'll bring it to my client. And now I don't have to, you know, vet every single deal. I would say I only end up taking— 5, or if not less, percent of stuff that comes through the door.

Got it.

Because I also want to make sure that my brand aligns with their brand and that they're really valuing my time.

So you don't have a way— I mean, you have representation and then they're figuring out how to structure deals now. But if people are listening to this like, how should I price myself? Do you have any thoughts for them?

I think the easiest conversation is to talk to other creators. That's how I was doing it when I was, you know, getting larger but didn't have representation yet. I would chat with other finance creators as well as just other creators in the space that weren't the same. And I would say, hey, your audience is twice the size of mine. Can I ask, like, what do you charge for a short-form video?

Mm-hmm.

And so many creators have made the same mistakes I did at the beginning. They don't want other creators to make them.

Mm.

And the thought is, is if you get paid more, the next time they come around, I can ask for more. It really is a rising tide lifts all ships. So talk to other creators. There are calculators on the internet that can help you price it out. I never think that they're right. I think they're way low, but I would say Keep raising your price. And if brands are accepting right away, you're definitely not charging enough. Every single deal you do, ask for more until a team pushes back and then negotiate and see where it lands you. And the next time, ask for 10% more than that and see where that lands you. It is a dance. It's an art, not a science. Some brands are going to have more money. Some brands are going to have less, but you need to understand what range you feel comfortable playing in. And then continue to ask for more.

Got it. So what is the goal? Like, I know you want to get to the $25 million, um, and we've talked about this, like, it will happen much more than that. Uh, what's the goal in like the next 5 years for the business?

The next 5 years of the business is to really just keep expanding into different mediums. The reason why I keep saying mediums is I think it's powerful because people learn differently. If you are a quick listener, witty, like you grew up on the internet, you're young, like digital media is really easy for you. If you're a little older than that, which I'm a little older than that, I'm not Gen Z, I'm a millennial.

Yep.

Maybe a podcast or a book is easier for you. I would love to foray into, make my foray into TV. That's mass media. That's easy. You can hit a lot of people that way of all ages. I would love to eventually work on something that serves directly to consumer. I know a lot of people have done the course thing. I don't know if I'm into it. Yeah, I have to really think about that. I don't know. For me, I really like the idea of my current business model because I believe this information should be readily accessible and it shouldn't cost you $2,000 to get access to. Yeah, I personally just have a problem with that.

I think you can get this thing to 10x. You don't need to do courses. I do agree with you. I think it's just like You give away everything for free, your reach continues to compound, you pick the other channels and you just start taking equity in stuff.

Yeah.

And then it just compounds over like 10, 20 years. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. And how is your team structured right now? How is like your core team structured?

I have agents for every sector of my business, so I have a branding agent, I have a podcast agent, book agent, TV agent, touring agent, speaking agent. Anything I do, I got one.

Yeah.

My management team kind of touches everything. They're the ones who liaise between all the different teams. They're the ones who are getting on the phone with clients to be like, what is the ask? We're going to go back to Viv, save her the 30 minutes on the phone call. I have my attorney. She touches anything that requires a signature, anything that is a contract, anything that even gets a little— that doesn't pass the smell test, she looks at. My business managers handle anything that comes with a dollar sign. So that's accounting, accounts receivable, that's bookkeeping, anything. Um, even, you know, tax optimization. They were even able to expedite getting me a new passport.

Yeah.

Like, they do everything.

Wow, okay.

Yeah, they're great. Um, and then my PR team, they handle anything that relates to press, whether that be, you know, Vivian's great and awesome, but also Rich AF, my book, or Net Worth and Chill, my podcast, or, you know, just putting me into different spaces that I otherwise maybe wouldn't be considered in because finance does touch everything. Finance isn't fine, you know, cool for the sake of money. It's cool because with money you get to travel. It's cool with money you get to purchase products in the beauty space that make you feel really confident. It's cool because with extra dollars you're able to host a dinner party. Here's how you should do it. There's different sectors I can play into. Then I have 2 people who work part-time for me, help me write the newsletter, help me with some social media stuff, manage the website. And then I have 1 full-time employee. She's salaried, she's in the room with us, and she's the best. She's the bee's knees. She keeps me on my A-game, makes sure everything goes smoothly. And frankly, I call her my assistant, but it's so much more than that. I would say Her job isn't running my dry cleaning. Her job is to help me with any task that I would personally do that she can help me do in a time period to get me to do them faster. So that's helping me ideate, that's helping me, you know, manage my calendar because that's crazy. It's outlining business plans for the future. It's thinking about where the business is going to be in 5 years. And it's a really powerful opportunity for me. to give up a teensy-weensy bit of that control because this is my baby. I grew it from the ground up. But eventually, if I want it to get to be at a certain size, I'm not going to be able to do everything.

Yep.

And to have someone who can start to take some of that off of my plate, the hope is over time she'll run an entire line of my business and I'll be like, all right, this is your problem, you deal with it. And then maybe she'll be able to train the next person and then I give them another line of business and I'm like, okay, this is your problem, you deal with it. At the end of the day, maybe I can just be on-screen talent. Let me know when I show up. Yeah. And that's, that's cool.

I love it. I think it's, it's, by the way, like a lot of my founder friends, like I just realized this recently, like the chief of staff is like, you have to have one, right? It's like they're a smokejumper. They're all over everything. And to your point, they can go run a line of business, right? But like, you're obviously way ahead of the game. So, so yeah, I don't think I've talked to anybody. I've done like 400 or 500 of these, but like, I've never talked to anybody that has The fascinating piece is the agent piece, right? So I think you're giving up 20%, 30%. It's not equity, it's profit share.

Correct.

Right. They do all those things for you. Do you think 1 through 10, 10 being best, it's like, it sounds like it's been really good working with them.

Yeah. I would not give up such an enormous portion of my business if the number, if the math wasn't mathing. When I was pricing myself, I was charging probably maybe a fourth. of what they get from me. So I had this concern when I was hiring for my team, right? So the first person I hired was my attorney, and that— I was like, that's a fee I can't get out of. I don't want to read my own contracts. I'm afraid I'm going to get screwed over. I need someone who has an actual law degree and has practiced entertainment law to protect me.

And you— sorry, so entertainment lawyers, do they usually take a percentage?

So typically lawyers in every single field Charge a retainer. In entertainment, they take a percentage. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So my attorney takes a percentage. She is worth every penny. She has saved me from so much heartache. There have been times where, you know, not going to name names, but deals didn't work out. But guess what? My attorney put in some clauses in there that I'm going to get paid regardless. So I'm protected. She earned her keep by doing that. And so I think that's really important. Then I hired management. They were able to start negotiating higher brand deal rates for me from jump, so they were worth the money. And then when I signed with an agency, I mean, frankly, they are able to get numbers that I would never ever have thought to even ask for my work. And that number that they're able to get for me, minus their 10%, minus their 15%, is still more than I was getting with my management team. And the amount that my management team was able to get me minus their 10% is still more than what I was asking for. So at each level of my business, I have looked very critically to be like, does this make sense? Would I have been able to do this on my own? And the answer is no.

So you give them like a 10 out of 10 then?

Yeah, I would. Listen, nobody's ever a 10 out of 10 in my book. Everybody, you know, I will say—

It's the most Asian response ever.

Yeah, I know. I shouldn't have said that.

I feel the same way.

It's like, you know, listen, if it's a score out of 100, like, they're, they're shooting in the 90s for sure. They're doing a good job. I'm happy. Like, my business is booming. Yeah, but you can always be better. Listen, bring me a bigger deal. Bring me another deal. Bring me, you know, another book deal. Bring me another podcast. Like, there can always be room for improvement, but ultimately I'm really, really happy with how things are going.

And are you signed with them for— is it like an annual thing or is it like 5 years? What's the deal?

No, it is You know, we can fire each other at any time.

Oh, okay.

And I think, again, there's power in that, right?

That's a good deal.

Yeah, it's like we are not married to each other. We are choosing to date. And if at any point you start slacking off, or I go off the deep end and like, you know, start posting really hateful things or horrible things on the internet, they can say, we're not working with her anymore. We can fire each other at any time. But I've been with my attorney now for 2 years, my management team for a year and 9 months. I've been with my agents probably a year and a half because I hired them in that order. I've never had to switch shops. I've never worried about whether they were worth the money. So I'm happy.

I like this. Yeah, more— again, first time ever. So it's like, I think more, more, more people should consider this. So this is awesome. Do you have like a creator homie group?

Yeah, like a little bit. But I would say my best friend creator is David Siu. He is a photographer and he's the king of posing. He teaches people how to pose. He is just my favorite person on earth. We became friends and at first we didn't talk about business too much.

Mm-hmm.

And one day, I can't remember, we had just had a really wonderful dinner. You know, we had really gotten close over time. And we were in the car and somehow he looked at me and I looked at him and I was like, how much, how much do you make? And we're like, what? And it was like, how much do you make? And we had that moment where we both just laughed and laughed and laughed. But then we actually started talking about finances. I know for a fact that he has gone back to brands and asked for more because of me. And I've 1000% gone back to brands and asked for more because of him.

Yeah.

And that level of friendship and empowerment is amazing.

You mentioned earlier you're the richest out of your friends, right? Do you think your perception amongst your friends has changed at all?

No. My friends from college still love me for being me. They are like, oh, this girl might be cool and fancy and on the Forbes list now, but we knew her back when She was asking her little in our sorority to sneak her into the dining hall so she could get a free ice cream and like, you know, all the silly stuff that you do with your college friends. It's character building. We had a mouse in our apartment that all of us were too afraid of. And so we stood on the sofa with brooms in our hands trying to fight this mouse out of our apartment. Like, those are the moments that you remember. We didn't have anything. We were living in a decrepit apartment with a horrible property manager that was not taking care of us.

Yeah.

But it was so much fun and we have so many memories. And I don't think the money has changed how they perceive me at all.

No.

And I think that's why it's really hard for me to make friends now, because I don't know if someone likes me for me or if someone likes me for my business or what I have or what I can do for them. I think that's also why David and I are very close because We started coming up roughly around at the same time, and I felt like he understood my experience and I understood his. And I knew he didn't want anything from me because he, you know, had a way larger following than I did. And, you know, I, I would never ask him to like post me or anything like that. I'm more than happy to support everything he does because he doesn't ask me to.

Yeah.

I want to support him because he's my friend. But there are certainly creators that reach out that are like, do you want to hang out? And like, I don't know who they are, and they're like, we should collab. And I'm like, on what? Like, we, we don't have a relationship. You haven't even asked me to go grab a coffee with you. You just want to be on my Instagram.

Too transactional.

It's very transactional. So I feel like the friends I do have, I value even more than I did before. And my creator friends especially, like They are a treasure trove of knowledge, but also just some of the people that I feel closest to now because they understand my experience.

Love that. Yeah, it's— you got to keep them close when you— if you make good friends. He had this quote too. So every friendship is a cost-benefit analysis.

Yo, like, I got roasted on the internet for saying that.

I thought it was a great quote.

Because it is. It's true. And I think it was taken a little bit out of context, but this is exactly what I mean. You and I are friends. It doesn't mean that we need to equally have the exact same dollar value of net worth. It means that we both need to bring something to the table of our friendship. And I talk about this with all of my girlfriends. I am the richest friend out of my college close buddies. One of them is a plastic surgery resident right now. One of them is going to be an attorney. 2 of them just graduated from business school. One's a VC investor, another one's a consultant. They all have great livings and careers, but my friend who's a doctor is multiple 6 figures in the hole right now.

Yeah.

The cost-benefit analysis of our friendship, though, is not based on dollars. It's based on laughs. It's based on support. It's based on love. It's based on emotion. She's the person I can call for anything. When I'm having a mental breakdown, I'm like, you know who I should call? That friend. You know, my friend who is the attorney. Like, if I feel like I'm being irrational or crazy, I'll call her to basically have her validate that I'm right. 'Cause she's so great at forming an argument and helps me craft my argument better. But like all of those things that I love about my friends, nothing of them have to do with money. But that's a benefit to me. They make me laugh, they make me happy, they provide me emotional support. And it's strange to me when people don't cost-benefit analysis their friendships, because what if you have a friend, very loosely used term, who takes and takes and takes, sucks all of your energy away, is a Debbie Downer, makes you feel bad about yourself? That's not a friend.

That's one of those energy vampires.

That's an energy vampire. Like, you don't want that person in your life. You need to be assessing, Does this person add to my life or take away from it? And if the answer is take away from it, I don't know why you're still spending time with that person.

So do you make like a— do you make like a spreadsheet for this?

It's not a spreadsheet. It's a gut feeling. I know when hanging out with a friend stops being fun and starts being a drag. I know when there are people who I am so comfortable around, they can come over in their sweatpants and my sweatpants and we literally just marinate and rot on my couch and we watch a movie or we play on our own phones. in silence simultaneously, it's just nice to be around them. And I think my closest friends are the ones that I feel like when I'm with them, it's like I'm alone but better. I don't have to be anyone. I can just be me. Yeah.

And so how do you get rid of friends that are no longer serving you?

This is not the right way to do it, but I just stop making an effort. Like, if you are no longer adding value to my life, I'm not going to go out of my way to try and schedule time with you. I'm not going to really make time for you. But the people who do bring value to my life, that bring me joy, that bring me laughter, I'm trying to see them whenever I can. Because after I hang out with them, I feel energized, I feel recharged. And again, we were talking about this, like, both of us are kind of secretly introverts.

Yep.

And so to have someone that I enjoy spending time with more than I enjoy spending alone time, that says a lot. That means they are truly making my life better for every minute I spend with them.

What do you think about this? So, you know, growing up, we're both Asian American, right? We're minorities, right? There's a lot of people that will say blame it on being a minority for their lack of success or whatever it is. But my take on it as I get a little older is like, At the end of the day, skin color isn't what matters. It's merit that matters. Like, if you're really good, like, you'll figure it out.

You know, I think there are factors at play that you and I have never felt because we are the model minority. We are not white, but we are white adjacent.

You know what someone called me before? They called me a banana.

Yeah.

Yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. And certainly I've been called that.

Yeah.

I, growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood, went to a predominantly white high school. It was like trying to assimilate. You wanted— you didn't want to be other. You didn't want to be seen as less than. But I have never experienced walking down the street and having a cop look me up and down because of the way I looked. I have never been handed the keys at valet, someone thinking that I worked the car stand. And I know people who have. 100 times as much money as I do, who don't look as light as my skin looks, who have.

Hmm.

And while I think there's an argument to be made about merit and working hard, there are just intrinsic biases— biases in this world that are absolutely not fair and hinder people in a way that you and I probably have never even thought about. Do I think we've had it easy? Absolutely not. You wanna know how many kids told me my lunch smelled weird? But I've never been stopped and frisked by a cop. I just think there's levels to this.

Oh, definitely.

And I do think there is this conversation essentially about, like, minorities being pitted against each other. And Asians are certainly at the top of that pile because we've gotten as close to white as we can. But, like, why are the minorities fighting with each other over scraps when Frankly, a lot of the people who are getting by, skating on their— resting on their laurels, skating by, have been the same types of people who have been in power, who've been in positions of power for as long as the tale of America.

Yeah.

Why aren't we talking about the mediocre white guy, Steve, who works in accounting, who gets a raise every year, who gets a promotion every year, Because his uncle knows someone high up? Like, why don't we talk about that?

That's certainly, that's certainly one of the levels.

Yeah, certainly one of the levels. I just think the way that I empower people in my life is by making deliberate decisions to hire women, making deliberate decisions to hire people of color, making decisions to hire LGBTQ+ talent. to hire immigrants, to hire people who grew up low income. I'm always still looking for the best talent. And I'm not going to pick someone's skin color over their talent. But we also need to open our eyes that talent doesn't just come in one shape and size and color.

I'm with you on that. I mean, ultimately, I just don't care if someone's— if someone's good, I just don't care. So that's what it is at the end of the day. Do you think it's net positive to grow— like the way you were brought up, because I think we're brought up the same way, right? Do you think the minority mindset growing up is a net positive?

Listen, I got some, some traumas here because of how I grew up, because of how my parents spoke to me, because of some of the things that were said to me as a young Asian woman in my parents' house, especially being a very loud, outspoken, gregarious girl. Like, my mom hated that. My mom wanted me to be, like, cute, demure, quiet, bookish. And I'm like, you know, on the Richter scale, like, I'm always, like, an, you know, 8,000. I think ultimately looking back, I really appreciate the work ethic, the value system, and the love my parents provided me. They show it in really weird ways. My family certainly is not the I love you family, but my parents would do anything for me. My parents would go hungry so I could eat. And what is better than that? And, you know, I credit a lot of my ability to have done my time on Wall Street to then go to a company where I could outhustle everybody else sitting next to me. to now run my own business, probably put in more hours than I put in on Wall Street, and find fulfillment and ground myself because of the work ethic I saw in them. And also, you know, there was a lot of like laughter and joy in my home, and ultimately I think it was net positive.

Got it.

Yeah.

I love that. So you're gonna be a tiger mom?

Listen, yeah, probably. I wanted to try and like be like, no, like it's gonna be different. Like, I think there'll be things that I say to my kids differently. Like, I don't know if your mom does this because you're like a dude, but like every time I go home, it's always, ooh, you've put on weight.

Oh, yep.

It's always, but why aren't you eating enough at dinner? I'm like, okay, which one is it?

Yeah.

The foundational love and family nurturing I got was great. There are some horrible things that were said to me. Like, you know, my dreams of being the next Britney Spears were quashed. Maybe that was okay because I wasn't that good of a singer. But I want to, like, really empower my kids to pursue whatever passions they have. And that comes from a position of privilege because I'm going to be able to help financially more than my parents were able to help me. But I'd also just choose kinder words because, like, you don't know what sticks with your kids. And there are certain things that I'm just probably never going to get over.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. It's like the same as you, like growing up, it's like, I'll never be like my parents. But then it's like, well, I guess human nature never changes much. It's like, maybe we should— maybe there's some good things there.

Yeah.

But yeah, I'm with you. Words matter for sure. I think we can end it with this. So you, you're in a pod, you're on a pod talking about how just being an Asian American business creator almost is like our version of taking a chance as immigrants. So what do you mean by that?

That's so humiliating, right? Because I certainly couldn't be A cool influencer. I couldn't be a fashion girly or a food girly or, you know, a sport girly or a workout girly. I had to choose the nerdiest topic to be a creator about. But it is a blending of the 2 things that I found to be really good at, you know, my personal finance, finance piece from Wall Street. At BuzzFeed, I was working in the tech media, like entertainment digital space. And then I just jammed those things together.

Yeah.

And that's what I do for a living now. So yeah, is it a little nerdy? Sure. And did I get made fun of when I first started doing it? Of course. And people laughed at me. Nobody laughed when they found out how much my business made last year. Nobody laughed.

I love that. And I think it's like, look, our parents took a chance coming here and, you know, they might have like $10 in their pocket or whatever, but it's like, this is our chance to say, hey, like, we don't need to go down the traditional path, right?

My parents, when I actually quit my full-time job to take Your Rich BFF full-time, I was so scared to tell them. And they were like, okay, well, you know what you're doing. Like, you've shown that you can make money doing this. Like, we trust you. And I was like, who are you? What have you done with my parents? Like, my parents have been kidnapped. I need to call the police.

Yeah.

Like, I was so confused. And now, you know, my mom's always like, how's the business going? And like, I always tell her it's good.

Yeah.

And I think she's really proud of me.

Yeah.

It's, it's the American dream. It's my American dream, right? My grandparents lived under Communist China rule. My parents immigrated to this country for me to be able to work from home in my yoga pants, make more money than they ever dreamed of. Live my life exactly how I want and take care of them.

Do you think they're proud?

I do. And they've actually told me they are.

Yeah.

And I was a little weirded out by it.

What is this compliment?

Yeah, I was like, what is that? Um, but they've started, you know, warming up. And maybe that's also a factor of them having now lived in the US for longer than they lived in China. Like, we forget that sometimes. Like, our parents are getting older, and my parents are citizens. US citizens. So they're softening, which is nice.

I love that. Well, Vivian, this has been great. What's the best way for people to learn more about the book and to find you online?

Yeah, anybody who wants to get a copy of my book Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That'll Change Your Life, go to richaf.me to get your copy. And you can find me all across social media as Your Rich BFF. And you can listen to my podcast at Net Worth and Chill. You can find it wherever you listen The podcasts.