Really, at the heart is can financial feminism exists under capitalism? Any answers No, However, this is the system that currently exists. And wow, you're figuring out how to navigate this fucking capitalist healthscape. We can work to burn it down. Late at night, when I'm doing my revenge bedtime procrastination on TikTok or Instagram, I've thought to myself, who are all these social media influencers and how much goddamn money do they make? My guest, Tory Dunlop has an answer. She's a very on brand guest for us because not only is she an influencer two point two million followers on TikTok, six hundred eighty five thousand on Instagram, she's an influencer who talks about money and just a note, this was recorded many months ago, so some of the time references you hear might be a little off. I might allow and this is other people's pockets. The show where I ask people about their money, So the questions we all have about how much other people make and how their finances work can be a little bit less of a mystery. Hey, Tori, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. So I'm so excited to talk to you because you are all about transparency around money and that's what we are also trying to do on this show. And I don't usually start here, usually warm up to this question, but I figured that you would be totally game for it. So can you just tell me what you do and how much money you make? So my name is Tory. I run her First hundred K, which is a money and crew platform for women, and I basically fight the patriarch keep by making women rich. So I'm a financial educator and a speaker. It's an interesting question, and I'm going to give you a politician answer, but I'm going to explain why I give you a politician answer. Up until probably a year or two ago, I was extremely transparent with my own personal finances. Would tell you immediately what number I had in my bank count, you know how much debt I had, if any I paid off my debt in early twenty twenty, yeah, what the business made, what I was taking from the business. I was super transparent about all of that. And then an interesting thing started to happen, And this is part of the reason why I, of course the reason I do the work that I do, and it's weird to have it reflected back in my own life. Part of what I've discovered in my own research and my own experience with what I do now is that we view money very differently depending on gender and race and all of these other factors, and specifically, we view men who have money very different than we view women who have money. Men who have money are lauded and celebrated and worshiped, and women who have money, while they must have gotten it from somewhere else, it must be daddy's money, it must be from their husband. They must have gotten it, not of their own hard work and their own volition, and the way they spend that money is judged in a way that men's money isn't. And the other thing that I've realized, also through conversations with people in my life who care about me a lot, is that if I am public as a woman about how much money I have, it puts a target on my back in a way it doesn't for men. It's interesting when I think about I would love to be able to celebrate how hard I've worked and to talk about that transparently, because That's what I've been all about for a really long time. And yet the very thing I'm fighting against, which is this view that women who have money are bad or that we get to dictate what they do with it, affects me very directly. So in the process of like trying to fight against that, I'm realizing in my own life what that means and unfortunately, what having financial stability means in terms of your own safety as a woman. But I will tell you I'm a multi seven figure business owner. Our business has generated multi seven figures in revenue both last year and we're on track to do that this year. And I am financially independent, meaning that I would never have to work another day in my life if I didn't want to, and of course I want to because I believe in my work very much. Yeah, I mean, that's so crazy because it's kind of like, yeah, like you said, like as of a few years ago, you would have been open about it, and then now now you've like come full circle where it's like, oh, actually I can't tell you this, which which is like the thing that like you it literally all I want to do is tell you, and all I want to do is talk about it because that's what I believe, right, is that's my whole thing about financial transparency, and yeah, I'm up against the very factors I'm trying to change with my work. And just to put in context for you, to be running a multi seven figure business, how old are you, I'm twenty seven, Okay, So yeah, that's that's pretty that's pretty amazing. I mean, can you talk about like this duality of like you are a public figure you want to talk about money. There could be like people who see you on the street and recognize you, right, and so it happens all the time. Now, yeah, and that's helpful for you. It's helpful for your business. At the same time, like it brings these risks and these drawbacks, like how do you kind of figure out like what the balance is? There are there days where you're like, fuck, like I just wish I could just be anonymous and like just not be visually consumed, to be judged, commented upon, etc. Like I just want to like opt out. It's really funny you say that. It's like you cracked open my brain and looked inside. All of this is speaking from a place of intense privilege, having financial stability, of having a business of doing all of those things. So anything I'm going to say is going to be a little bit like, oh, poor you complaining about this. But I literally have told you a few people in my life, like my best friend and I work with an energy coach and I've talked to her about this. Of like, I have this duality where I my ambition. I want my face in our business and our mission on magazines and I want to sell out stadiums talking about what we want to talk about. And I want to write, you know, a bunch of books, and I have a TV show and have you know, continue the success of our podcast, and like, my ambition wants all of that so desperately, And at the same time, there's part of me that is like, I want a cabin in the woods. I want nobody to ever know who I am, And I want to get a bunch of dogs and play you know, board games and do puzzles and read books. And that's what I want the rest of my life to me. And I'm trying to find ways that both of those things can exist because I feel like my ambition is the thing that's gotten me here. My ambition is also a drug and I don't want to overdose on that drug. Is there an argument to be made that as this grows, as her first hundred K grows, that you're not the face of it, or like, basically, why does it even have to be about you to begin with? The answer is it doesn't. You're exactly right, and again it's like you've peered into my brain. We're having calls with our team every week to move from a creator focus business to a brand focused business, and that's one hundred percent something that we're doing right now. We are currently literally having conversations with other women we admire to kind of bring them within the fold, both because I would really like to not burn out, please, and also because I personally don't want to just hear from a cisiender white woman all the time. So I feel like giving some diversity both in thought as well as experience. But also our audience is getting more and more global every day and somebody comes to me and it's like, what do you recommend for Canadians And I'm like, honestly, I don't know. It's hard enough just to keep up with the university, so what's going on here? So no, that's literally a hundred percent what the plan is, and we are trying to move from her first hunder k being Tori Dunlap to her first under k being a company that happens to be founded by Tori Dunlap. So that's an intentional choice that literally we're in the midst of planning and yeah, right now. And I love, I just love how you're you're talking about all this because I think that there's obviously this would be a very sort of retrograde perspective to have, but you know, there are people out there who are like, oh, like being an influencer that just seems so easy and like you just you know, it's just you and you just put some videos of yourself and like you don't have to have a certain degree or it's a sixty second TikTok. How much how much time did you actually spend on that? Right? And like you're kind of speaking to like hear the realities of it, Like yes, like it's helped grow your business, but at the same time, like it's also really hard, and like you can also really burn out, and there's there's mental health costs. If there's anything that I'm now realizing, it's that on a daily basis not just even trolls, because I can write that off of a man calling me fat and telling me I'm going to be a I'm never going to get married like one of a bullshit. Okay. It's literally now every day someone who actually like who's a pin and I respect, is upset with me about something and it's very interesting and I am the human like actual physical embodiment of Leslie. Nope. I want everybody to love me all the time, and I want to win people over and that is so important to me. And I also, at the same time don't give a fuck with people think, and that's a very interesting ban diagram. This is now like almost a daily occurrence, and I'm trying to come to terms with that and understand that with this growth is also going to come both necessary and really helpful feedback of how I can run my business better or how I can show up better, but also feeling sometimes like I got a batton down the hatches for it, and it's it's something that I'm not shocked about, but didn't necessarily prepare for it, and I don't know if anybody can prepare for it. And I literally I turned to my COO Karina the other day, and I was just like, I just want somebody to just like understand and all of the things that we have to think about before we publish something or before we you know, create something. And now we're a team of fifteen and you know, managing that team and each of them doing their best to figure out, you know, how to present something well. And I love my job and I love what I do. This is just the ship that you just don't think about of wondering if someone will give you grace when you do make a mistake. Do you have someone helps screen the comments you get? I mean, how do you deal with that? We have a bit of that. I also feel like a fucking protective mama bear over my team too, where I'm also trying to protect their mental health and I would rather have mind suffer if they don't have to. But no, we do have like we have a community manager who's great, who monitors comments and that sort of thing. But like I see things because I care about what I do, and I also love seeing the great comments. I love seeing the really positive ones. But no, I mean, yeah, I definitely see them, and I think it's kind of unavoidable, and I actually do hate that advice where people are like, just don't look at comments, and I'm like, I don't think you, Like, it's literally impossible if you are online for two seconds, right, and like the engagement is also part of the whole thing. Right, But no, again, like the conversations we've had in the last year and continuing to have this year about the way we structure the business, like hiring people whose entire job is just to grow and manage our community and make sure it's not only a safe space for myself and for our team, but also for other community members. So how much do you currently charge for a post on Instagram or TikTok? All rates are negotiable. I'm willing to do, you know, more work for less money potentially if like the brand makes sense, or if it's less of my active time and more of like my team can help produce content. I think we're at fifteen K for like a sixty second TikTok and around ten to twelve for an Instagram post. And do they give you creative license? Are they like great, so just do a post bottom brand? Or like do you have to run it by them? Or like, how how do you figure that out ninety five percent of the time it is here is generally like we just did a sponsored campaign with Canva, who I've actually been chasing four years. They're the like the design tool, and they were our dream partner because literally we I have used Canva in every job, every corporate job I've had, and then we build everything for her first enter kay in Canava. So I was stoked. And so for them, they were a little more flexible where they're like, send us some scripts about like about this and about your experience with it, and then we'll sign off on them. But yeah, it is very much like some brands are like you have to say this thing word for word. Others are like, we don't care as long as you as long as you you know, make sure to mention of course the product or whatever. Most common it is very similar to that camp a partnership where it's like, Okay, here's the thing we want you to highlight. We'll approve the scripts. Here's the timeline we need it by. We would like to also see like basically of screen recording of the video before you publish it, and like how do you figure out what the value is of it? Like are other people telling you Tory, you are not charging enough? Like you like, how do you figure out what is the actual value and what should I be charging? The one thing I do when people ask me is I asked them to think about how many hours it's going to take them to not only of course create the content, but to go back and forth with the brand to actually, you know, record something, to get something approved. It ends up being sometimes with a campaign, maybe it's ten hours, maybe it's twenty, maybe it's fifty, depending on how much work you're doing. It's really not about the followers immediately. It's just about like how much time are you putting into this thing? And an addition, of course, if you're an entrepreneur, which any content creator is, they're working for themselves, thirty percent of that is going to be taxes right off the top. Right, So if it's a thousand dollars that this client is paying you, you're paying thirty percent for taxes three hundred dollars if that is gone, so now you're rate seven hundred, right, And if you put twenty hours in or twenty five. I can't do that math really quick, but like it ends up being not a lot. And that's assuming you have nothing in expenses, you one hundred percent do right. You probably have a laptop, maybe you have filming equipment. You have your phone that you're probably filming it on, or your camera you're filming it on, right, So you know, let's take another two hundred dollars off that seven hundred for expenses, so you know, immediately just thinking about your rate in terms of like how much you're getting per hour for your actual labor of creating that content. Typically people are undercharging just with that. So I've become the person on TikTok now who just people will DM me and be like, Hi, I'm sorry to bother you. This brand reached out. I have no idea what I should be charged, And unfortunately, what's typically happened is I had one woman who I follow we're mutuals on TikTok, and I think she has like three point two million followers and I have two point one, so she's she's even bigger than I am, and this brand wanted to pay her like five hundred bucks, and she's like should I take this? Is this a good deal? And I was like hell no, it's not a good deal. I was like no, no, no, no, and it was just proof to me of again, like these conversations are not being had and we need to start talking to each other because both it sucks for you if you if you don't get paid your worth, of course, if you don't get compensated fairly, but also if you take way less, then the rest of us have to take away less, right, Yeah, And so it hurts not just you, it hurts everybody in the industry. And again it disproportionately affects women and people of color because we're largely the people who are doing it. So it's so veiled and it's so new. There's this bias or this this like thought that like content creation is like oh, well you just you spent thirty seconds on a tikto video, like why do you deserve twelve thousand dollars? And I'm like, okay, well it is a real job. And I could go off on you for about a half hour explaining like what all goes into that and you know the care and the detail and that basically you're a one person marketing agency. If somebody's choosing to work with you as an influencer or a content creator, like you are being hired as someone to create content almost as if they were hiring a marketing agency. So it's just again, like an onion, when you start like peeling back layers, you just keep peeling for a while. Can you talk about like what parts of your business sort of bringing the most money, what brings in the least money, kind of like what are all the ways that you make money? It's actually really funny we're having this conversation right now because we just lost fifty percent of our revenue, and I'm happy to tell you why. Okay, the vast majority of our business comes from partnerships. So we do sell courses, like we do a lot of direct to consumer kind of scales, So we do courses or digital downloads that sort of thing. So if you where a person who was trying to learn about money, you could come and pay like ninety seven dollars and get our course or something like that. So we make a good chunk of revenue from that. But the vast majority of our business is built on partnerships with larger companies who actually have a lot of money. Right, So me partnering with a company recommending them and us getting a cut if that person is somebody signs up doing speaking opportunities at corporations. And the interesting thing is almost fifty percent of our revenue came from one particular partner, and we got some feedback from our community that was pretty alarming in terms of how their customer service was treating them. And through a lot of thought and a lot of back and forth and a lot of deliberation, we chose to end that partnership at a severe cost to our business. So overnight in February and March, we've lost fifty percent of our revenue and we will be fine as a company. However, again, the things you don't think about as a business owner is we're hiring because we're growing, and ultimately, again we will be fine, but we chose to make the right decision for our community and taking a huge, massive revenue cut because of it. A lot of bosses feel like no one ever teaches them how to be a boss. Right, So, what's it like not only being in your twenties, but like having employees and kind of thinking through like your responsibility to other other people and this is their income and this is what they used to feed their families. Like how do you kind of think through that? Yeah, it's a lot of pressure and the best way possible. Yeah. No. The realization in the coolest way that this is beyond me now and that we get to give people's jobs is amazing, but also the kind of panic of oh, this is beyond me now and there's people, Yes to your point relying on me for income. Do you think that your employees can achieve the level of financial freedom that you have if they work at a job working for you, or just at any traditional job. It's a very interesting question. I'm gonna be honest with you and say no. And I say that because my numbers, the actual numbers of how much I made and how much I was able to take home vastly changed when I went full time in my business. Now again, I sat on that business for three years, grewing on the side of my nine to five. I made strategic decisions in order for that to happen, But the numbers between what I was making at corporate and what I'm making now are very very different numbers. So, yes, you can achieve financial independence financial stability one hundred percent. But I'm not blind to the fact that I did that as a twenty seven year old because I owned my own business one hundred percent. Yeah, and you've talked openly about like you grew up with privilege, you grew up with parents who taught you about money. Can you talk a bit more about your story, like what what did your parents teach you about money and what was their financial situation. Sure, my parents are very private people, and we've discussed quite a lot that they would like to maintain their privacy. But I will tell you a couple of things about my parents. Both of them didn't grow up with a lot my dad, especially my dad and his two brothers. It's gonna made me cry. I've never gotten through the story without crying. They took a bath once a week and grew up in a pretty toxic situation with an abusive father and an alcoholic father. And this is part of the reason why it really hurts when I see comments of oh, your parents must have just like must be like filthy rich, and I'm like, no, I was my parents' investment and my parents, my parents worked really hard to make sure that um that I never wanted for anything. And of course, you know, my parents are still in the same house I grew up, and they could have upgraded, but they wanted to make sure to send me to really good schools and wanted to make sure that I could take piano lessons if I wanted to do that, and wanted to make sure that, yeah, I was their investment. They get so much credit for who I am and what I have been able to do with my career because they didn't have it, and so they committed to giving me that. In terms of particular advice, I learned very early on from my parents that if you want something, you have to save money for it. My parents don't have a debit card. I don't either. I've never owned a debit card, neither of they They put everything on credit cards and then they pay it off on time and in full every month. And that's a practice I took from them, and so they were very much like credit cards are actually really useful, but as long as you use them responsibly. And here's what it means to use that credit card responsibly. My dad set me down and taught me how to invest. I definitely didn't know everything that I was doing, but at least helped me get started. And again I realized with all of that that it was a privilege. In talking to my friends and talking about how they grew up. I realized that that financial education, it was a privilege, and with that privilege came a responsibility. And so that is why I do the work that I do now is realizing that that, unfortunately, that shouldn't be a privilege, and that having open conversations about money where my parents were not just telling me how to manage their money, they were actually showing me was really powerful. And so I really saw them model what I now call value based spending, which is like spending your money, your discretionary money, on things that you really really love and cutting back on everything else in order to do that. And I do the same thing in my life. You know, when I was saving my original hundred k, my origin story of her first hunder k was me trying to save one hundred k at twenty five. You know, part of that was me discovering like, oh, okay, I want to spend money on these things and then not spend any money elsewhere. And I didn't feel like I was depriving myself. I was still you know, going out to eat when I wanted to go out to eat, and was still getting to travel and do the things that were important to me. But there was just certain certain things I just wasn't spending my money on at all, and so having that modeled for me, I think was really powerful. In addition to the privilege of a financial education and me bringing up the hundred K, I'm the first to acknowledge that that hundred k would not have happened as quickly as it did if I graduated with student debt. I was able to graduate debt free from college, both because I worked three jobs on campus I got tens of thousands of dollars in merit scholarships, but also again I was my parents' investment. They had the foresight and had the stability and ability to set aside money for me for college. So it wasn't like they handed me a check. It was more of a collaborative process of me paying us working to pay for my bachelor's degree. However, I fully acknowledged that it's a privilege that plenty of people don't have. What class did you consider yourself when you were growing up and what class do you consider yourself now? I think we were mid to maybe upper middle class. Even in being transparent about money, I still don't know how much my parents make, and I don't know how much they have saved, which I think is very interesting for being as transparent as they were and as transparent as I am with them, I actually still don't know their numbers, so it's hard to say. I think now for me, based on my age, based on you know, my tax bracket, yeah, I'm definitely upper class. It's weird. I've never actually had to say that out loud. It makes me feel weird. It's very interesting. I'm a financial expert and that makes me feel weird. Why does it make you feel weird? Hmm, that's a good question. I think there is still such a stigma around how we view people with money, and you like want to be the person who's like, yes, I have money, but I'm trying to do good with it, you know. Like, and this is again a unique thing that I feel women. We feel this unique pressure as women to do like we have to caveat it, right, you have to hedge and be like but like I'm a big giver, yeah right, right, and we almost like have to like tax ourselves. Right. You can't just have money because it's good to have stability and it's nice to buy nice things, and of course it's good to donate. I'm not screwed mcdock, right, But it's like men don't do this shit. Men don't have to do this shit. They don't have to apologize for buying a rolex, Like they don't have to do that. They don't have and they don't have to show you that they, you know, they donated this amount of money, or that they gave this amount of money away to somebody in need. Like they don't have to do that shit. So I wanted to also ask you about like your big thing is like women need to invest. They need to invest early roth ira A four one k index funds, mutual funds, like you need to be in the stock market, right and at the same time, like you know, a lot of the big companies out there, like if if you were to invest in S and P five hundred index, like those big companies are not all you know, not all roses and puppies. Yeah, right, right, Like it's it's it's definitely upholding the status quo a lot of it. And you know we're speaking very broad strokes, but you know there's one argument for like Okay, so you need to just play the game and you need to be part of the system because if you don't, like you're going to be left behind. And like you you alone can't change everything. And at the same time, like there's an argument for like burn it down. This capitalist system is a result of you know, the system that we have, and so like where do you kind of draw the line of like reconciling, like you need to not get left behind. But at the same time, like if you buy into this, like you're you are buying into the system. Okay, this is this again. We're going to peel back layer by a layer here at this onion. So I'm writing a book right now. My manuscripts actually do April first, and literally my introduction is basically answering the question you just post to me, which I really at the heart is can financial feminism exists under capitalism? And the answer is no, like true feminism, true equality of course cannot exist under capitalism. I do not like capitalism, I do not support it, I do not want it. However, this is the system that currently exists. And you have to figure out how to pay your rent, and you have to figure out how to take care of yourself, and you have to figure out how to buy groceries, and wow, you're figuring out how to buy groceries and figuring out how to save money and figuring out how to navigate this fucking capitalist healthscape. We can work to burn it down, right, We can work to change the very system that we exist in. And it's not a perfect solution, but frankly, I think it's the only solution. We have. Is try our best to do the least harm possible, because whether we do like it or not, we have to play the game in order to survive. And that's what I believe financial feminism is is putting your oxygen mask on first so that you can then help others. And I am okay playing the game if it means that I get to grow my wealth and then go do good things with it, I am okay in this instance, and investing in potentially companies that I don't love or whose actions I don't agree with, I'm okay actually going in there and profiting off of these terrible companies and then doing things that they would absolutely hate, like supporting candidates that they wouldn't or supporting policies that they wouldn't, or giving money to people who really fucking need it. But again, that's of course not a perfect solution either, and I don't judge somebody who disagrees and chooses to make a different decision. Yeah, no, I mean it. It's hard because the standard advice is, like, first of all, be in a diversified four one K whatever, and if you are like that probably means that you're invested in Amazon, etc. Right, So like you're not avoiding Amazon if you're Yeah, if you're looking at performance, you're not avoiding Amazon, Like you're not, right, So you know, there's just no It feels like there's no getting around it, unless of course you want to like you know, just opt out or very specifically choose your stocks. But then again, like that would mean that you're researching stocks all day, So I don't know. Yeah, what do you indulge in financially? Well? I did drive here in a Camaro and that was a fun. I'm renting a top down Camaro. They gave me an option of a Camaro or a Mustang, and I chose wrong, let me tell you, But it's very fun because it brings me all hot of joy and it's really fun. So I think the big things I indulgent are like travel and experience. You know, I've been doing the digital nomad thing for a while and that's been really fun. And you know, getting to live in different places and getting to experience life in different places has been the thing I indulge in, Tory Dunlap. This has been such a pleasure. It's so fun talking to you. Thank you. Thank you for asking just really beautiful, thoughtful questions and holding space for me even when I didn't have an answer for you, and I just really appreciate it. Thank you. Other People's Pockets is written and hosted by me My Allow. It's produced by me along with Joy Sanford and Dan Galucci. Production help by Angela Vane. Our mix engineer is Dan Galucci. Our executive producers are me My Allow along with Jane Marie and Dan Galucci. A special thanks to being full time self employed. Other People's Pockets is a production of Pushkin Industries. 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Really, at the heart is can financial feminism exists under capitalism? Any answers No, However, this is the system that currently exists. And wow, you're figuring out how to navigate this fucking capitalist healthscape. We can work to burn it down. Late at night, when I'm doing my revenge bedtime procrastination on TikTok or Instagram, I've thought to myself, who are all these social media influencers and how much goddamn money do they make? My guest, Tory Dunlop has an answer. She's a very on brand guest for us because not only is she an influencer two point two million followers on TikTok, six hundred eighty five thousand on Instagram, she's an influencer who talks about money and just a note, this was recorded many months ago, so some of the time references you hear might be a little off. I might allow and this is other people's pockets. The show where I ask people about their money, So the questions we all have about how much other people make and how their finances work can be a little bit less of a mystery. Hey, Tori, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. So I'm so excited to talk to you because you are all about transparency around money and that's what we are also trying to do on this show. And I don't usually start here, usually warm up to this question, but I figured that you would be totally game for it. So can you just tell me what you do and how much money you make? So my name is Tory. I run her First hundred K, which is a money and crew platform for women, and I basically fight the patriarch keep by making women rich. So I'm a financial educator and a speaker. It's an interesting question, and I'm going to give you a politician answer, but I'm going to explain why I give you a politician answer. Up until probably a year or two ago, I was extremely transparent with my own personal finances. Would tell you immediately what number I had in my bank count, you know how much debt I had, if any I paid off my debt in early twenty twenty, yeah, what the business made, what I was taking from the business. I was super transparent about all of that. And then an interesting thing started to happen, And this is part of the reason why I, of course the reason I do the work that I do, and it's weird to have it reflected back in my own life. Part of what I've discovered in my own research and my own experience with what I do now is that we view money very differently depending on gender and race and all of these other factors, and specifically, we view men who have money very different than we view women who have money. Men who have money are lauded and celebrated and worshiped, and women who have money, while they must have gotten it from somewhere else, it must be daddy's money, it must be from their husband. They must have gotten it, not of their own hard work and their own volition, and the way they spend that money is judged in a way that men's money isn't. And the other thing that I've realized, also through conversations with people in my life who care about me a lot, is that if I am public as a woman about how much money I have, it puts a target on my back in a way it doesn't for men. It's interesting when I think about I would love to be able to celebrate how hard I've worked and to talk about that transparently, because That's what I've been all about for a really long time. And yet the very thing I'm fighting against, which is this view that women who have money are bad or that we get to dictate what they do with it, affects me very directly. So in the process of like trying to fight against that, I'm realizing in my own life what that means and unfortunately, what having financial stability means in terms of your own safety as a woman. But I will tell you I'm a multi seven figure business owner. Our business has generated multi seven figures in revenue both last year and we're on track to do that this year. And I am financially independent, meaning that I would never have to work another day in my life if I didn't want to, and of course I want to because I believe in my work very much. Yeah, I mean, that's so crazy because it's kind of like, yeah, like you said, like as of a few years ago, you would have been open about it, and then now now you've like come full circle where it's like, oh, actually I can't tell you this, which which is like the thing that like you it literally all I want to do is tell you, and all I want to do is talk about it because that's what I believe, right, is that's my whole thing about financial transparency, and yeah, I'm up against the very factors I'm trying to change with my work. And just to put in context for you, to be running a multi seven figure business, how old are you, I'm twenty seven, Okay, So yeah, that's that's pretty that's pretty amazing. I mean, can you talk about like this duality of like you are a public figure you want to talk about money. There could be like people who see you on the street and recognize you, right, and so it happens all the time. Now, yeah, and that's helpful for you. It's helpful for your business. At the same time, like it brings these risks and these drawbacks, like how do you kind of figure out like what the balance is? There are there days where you're like, fuck, like I just wish I could just be anonymous and like just not be visually consumed, to be judged, commented upon, etc. Like I just want to like opt out. It's really funny you say that. It's like you cracked open my brain and looked inside. All of this is speaking from a place of intense privilege, having financial stability, of having a business of doing all of those things. So anything I'm going to say is going to be a little bit like, oh, poor you complaining about this. But I literally have told you a few people in my life, like my best friend and I work with an energy coach and I've talked to her about this. Of like, I have this duality where I my ambition. I want my face in our business and our mission on magazines and I want to sell out stadiums talking about what we want to talk about. And I want to write, you know, a bunch of books, and I have a TV show and have you know, continue the success of our podcast, and like, my ambition wants all of that so desperately, And at the same time, there's part of me that is like, I want a cabin in the woods. I want nobody to ever know who I am, And I want to get a bunch of dogs and play you know, board games and do puzzles and read books. And that's what I want the rest of my life to me. And I'm trying to find ways that both of those things can exist because I feel like my ambition is the thing that's gotten me here. My ambition is also a drug and I don't want to overdose on that drug. Is there an argument to be made that as this grows, as her first hundred K grows, that you're not the face of it, or like, basically, why does it even have to be about you to begin with? The answer is it doesn't. You're exactly right, and again it's like you've peered into my brain. We're having calls with our team every week to move from a creator focus business to a brand focused business, and that's one hundred percent something that we're doing right now. We are currently literally having conversations with other women we admire to kind of bring them within the fold, both because I would really like to not burn out, please, and also because I personally don't want to just hear from a cisiender white woman all the time. So I feel like giving some diversity both in thought as well as experience. But also our audience is getting more and more global every day and somebody comes to me and it's like, what do you recommend for Canadians And I'm like, honestly, I don't know. It's hard enough just to keep up with the university, so what's going on here? So no, that's literally a hundred percent what the plan is, and we are trying to move from her first hunder k being Tori Dunlap to her first under k being a company that happens to be founded by Tori Dunlap. So that's an intentional choice that literally we're in the midst of planning and yeah, right now. And I love, I just love how you're you're talking about all this because I think that there's obviously this would be a very sort of retrograde perspective to have, but you know, there are people out there who are like, oh, like being an influencer that just seems so easy and like you just you know, it's just you and you just put some videos of yourself and like you don't have to have a certain degree or it's a sixty second TikTok. How much how much time did you actually spend on that? Right? And like you're kind of speaking to like hear the realities of it, Like yes, like it's helped grow your business, but at the same time, like it's also really hard, and like you can also really burn out, and there's there's mental health costs. If there's anything that I'm now realizing, it's that on a daily basis not just even trolls, because I can write that off of a man calling me fat and telling me I'm going to be a I'm never going to get married like one of a bullshit. Okay. It's literally now every day someone who actually like who's a pin and I respect, is upset with me about something and it's very interesting and I am the human like actual physical embodiment of Leslie. Nope. I want everybody to love me all the time, and I want to win people over and that is so important to me. And I also, at the same time don't give a fuck with people think, and that's a very interesting ban diagram. This is now like almost a daily occurrence, and I'm trying to come to terms with that and understand that with this growth is also going to come both necessary and really helpful feedback of how I can run my business better or how I can show up better, but also feeling sometimes like I got a batton down the hatches for it, and it's it's something that I'm not shocked about, but didn't necessarily prepare for it, and I don't know if anybody can prepare for it. And I literally I turned to my COO Karina the other day, and I was just like, I just want somebody to just like understand and all of the things that we have to think about before we publish something or before we you know, create something. And now we're a team of fifteen and you know, managing that team and each of them doing their best to figure out, you know, how to present something well. And I love my job and I love what I do. This is just the ship that you just don't think about of wondering if someone will give you grace when you do make a mistake. Do you have someone helps screen the comments you get? I mean, how do you deal with that? We have a bit of that. I also feel like a fucking protective mama bear over my team too, where I'm also trying to protect their mental health and I would rather have mind suffer if they don't have to. But no, we do have like we have a community manager who's great, who monitors comments and that sort of thing. But like I see things because I care about what I do, and I also love seeing the great comments. I love seeing the really positive ones. But no, I mean, yeah, I definitely see them, and I think it's kind of unavoidable, and I actually do hate that advice where people are like, just don't look at comments, and I'm like, I don't think you, Like, it's literally impossible if you are online for two seconds, right, and like the engagement is also part of the whole thing. Right, But no, again, like the conversations we've had in the last year and continuing to have this year about the way we structure the business, like hiring people whose entire job is just to grow and manage our community and make sure it's not only a safe space for myself and for our team, but also for other community members. So how much do you currently charge for a post on Instagram or TikTok? All rates are negotiable. I'm willing to do, you know, more work for less money potentially if like the brand makes sense, or if it's less of my active time and more of like my team can help produce content. I think we're at fifteen K for like a sixty second TikTok and around ten to twelve for an Instagram post. And do they give you creative license? Are they like great, so just do a post bottom brand? Or like do you have to run it by them? Or like, how how do you figure that out ninety five percent of the time it is here is generally like we just did a sponsored campaign with Canva, who I've actually been chasing four years. They're the like the design tool, and they were our dream partner because literally we I have used Canva in every job, every corporate job I've had, and then we build everything for her first enter kay in Canava. So I was stoked. And so for them, they were a little more flexible where they're like, send us some scripts about like about this and about your experience with it, and then we'll sign off on them. But yeah, it is very much like some brands are like you have to say this thing word for word. Others are like, we don't care as long as you as long as you you know, make sure to mention of course the product or whatever. Most common it is very similar to that camp a partnership where it's like, Okay, here's the thing we want you to highlight. We'll approve the scripts. Here's the timeline we need it by. We would like to also see like basically of screen recording of the video before you publish it, and like how do you figure out what the value is of it? Like are other people telling you Tory, you are not charging enough? Like you like, how do you figure out what is the actual value and what should I be charging? The one thing I do when people ask me is I asked them to think about how many hours it's going to take them to not only of course create the content, but to go back and forth with the brand to actually, you know, record something, to get something approved. It ends up being sometimes with a campaign, maybe it's ten hours, maybe it's twenty, maybe it's fifty, depending on how much work you're doing. It's really not about the followers immediately. It's just about like how much time are you putting into this thing? And an addition, of course, if you're an entrepreneur, which any content creator is, they're working for themselves, thirty percent of that is going to be taxes right off the top. Right, So if it's a thousand dollars that this client is paying you, you're paying thirty percent for taxes three hundred dollars if that is gone, so now you're rate seven hundred, right, And if you put twenty hours in or twenty five. I can't do that math really quick, but like it ends up being not a lot. And that's assuming you have nothing in expenses, you one hundred percent do right. You probably have a laptop, maybe you have filming equipment. You have your phone that you're probably filming it on, or your camera you're filming it on, right, So you know, let's take another two hundred dollars off that seven hundred for expenses, so you know, immediately just thinking about your rate in terms of like how much you're getting per hour for your actual labor of creating that content. Typically people are undercharging just with that. So I've become the person on TikTok now who just people will DM me and be like, Hi, I'm sorry to bother you. This brand reached out. I have no idea what I should be charged, And unfortunately, what's typically happened is I had one woman who I follow we're mutuals on TikTok, and I think she has like three point two million followers and I have two point one, so she's she's even bigger than I am, and this brand wanted to pay her like five hundred bucks, and she's like should I take this? Is this a good deal? And I was like hell no, it's not a good deal. I was like no, no, no, no, and it was just proof to me of again, like these conversations are not being had and we need to start talking to each other because both it sucks for you if you if you don't get paid your worth, of course, if you don't get compensated fairly, but also if you take way less, then the rest of us have to take away less, right, Yeah, And so it hurts not just you, it hurts everybody in the industry. And again it disproportionately affects women and people of color because we're largely the people who are doing it. So it's so veiled and it's so new. There's this bias or this this like thought that like content creation is like oh, well you just you spent thirty seconds on a tikto video, like why do you deserve twelve thousand dollars? And I'm like, okay, well it is a real job. And I could go off on you for about a half hour explaining like what all goes into that and you know the care and the detail and that basically you're a one person marketing agency. If somebody's choosing to work with you as an influencer or a content creator, like you are being hired as someone to create content almost as if they were hiring a marketing agency. So it's just again, like an onion, when you start like peeling back layers, you just keep peeling for a while. Can you talk about like what parts of your business sort of bringing the most money, what brings in the least money, kind of like what are all the ways that you make money? It's actually really funny we're having this conversation right now because we just lost fifty percent of our revenue, and I'm happy to tell you why. Okay, the vast majority of our business comes from partnerships. So we do sell courses, like we do a lot of direct to consumer kind of scales, So we do courses or digital downloads that sort of thing. So if you where a person who was trying to learn about money, you could come and pay like ninety seven dollars and get our course or something like that. So we make a good chunk of revenue from that. But the vast majority of our business is built on partnerships with larger companies who actually have a lot of money. Right, So me partnering with a company recommending them and us getting a cut if that person is somebody signs up doing speaking opportunities at corporations. And the interesting thing is almost fifty percent of our revenue came from one particular partner, and we got some feedback from our community that was pretty alarming in terms of how their customer service was treating them. And through a lot of thought and a lot of back and forth and a lot of deliberation, we chose to end that partnership at a severe cost to our business. So overnight in February and March, we've lost fifty percent of our revenue and we will be fine as a company. However, again, the things you don't think about as a business owner is we're hiring because we're growing, and ultimately, again we will be fine, but we chose to make the right decision for our community and taking a huge, massive revenue cut because of it. A lot of bosses feel like no one ever teaches them how to be a boss. Right, So, what's it like not only being in your twenties, but like having employees and kind of thinking through like your responsibility to other other people and this is their income and this is what they used to feed their families. Like how do you kind of think through that? Yeah, it's a lot of pressure and the best way possible. Yeah. No. The realization in the coolest way that this is beyond me now and that we get to give people's jobs is amazing, but also the kind of panic of oh, this is beyond me now and there's people, Yes to your point relying on me for income. Do you think that your employees can achieve the level of financial freedom that you have if they work at a job working for you, or just at any traditional job. It's a very interesting question. I'm gonna be honest with you and say no. And I say that because my numbers, the actual numbers of how much I made and how much I was able to take home vastly changed when I went full time in my business. Now again, I sat on that business for three years, grewing on the side of my nine to five. I made strategic decisions in order for that to happen, But the numbers between what I was making at corporate and what I'm making now are very very different numbers. So, yes, you can achieve financial independence financial stability one hundred percent. But I'm not blind to the fact that I did that as a twenty seven year old because I owned my own business one hundred percent. Yeah, and you've talked openly about like you grew up with privilege, you grew up with parents who taught you about money. Can you talk a bit more about your story, like what what did your parents teach you about money and what was their financial situation. Sure, my parents are very private people, and we've discussed quite a lot that they would like to maintain their privacy. But I will tell you a couple of things about my parents. Both of them didn't grow up with a lot my dad, especially my dad and his two brothers. It's gonna made me cry. I've never gotten through the story without crying. They took a bath once a week and grew up in a pretty toxic situation with an abusive father and an alcoholic father. And this is part of the reason why it really hurts when I see comments of oh, your parents must have just like must be like filthy rich, and I'm like, no, I was my parents' investment and my parents, my parents worked really hard to make sure that um that I never wanted for anything. And of course, you know, my parents are still in the same house I grew up, and they could have upgraded, but they wanted to make sure to send me to really good schools and wanted to make sure that I could take piano lessons if I wanted to do that, and wanted to make sure that, yeah, I was their investment. They get so much credit for who I am and what I have been able to do with my career because they didn't have it, and so they committed to giving me that. In terms of particular advice, I learned very early on from my parents that if you want something, you have to save money for it. My parents don't have a debit card. I don't either. I've never owned a debit card, neither of they They put everything on credit cards and then they pay it off on time and in full every month. And that's a practice I took from them, and so they were very much like credit cards are actually really useful, but as long as you use them responsibly. And here's what it means to use that credit card responsibly. My dad set me down and taught me how to invest. I definitely didn't know everything that I was doing, but at least helped me get started. And again I realized with all of that that it was a privilege. In talking to my friends and talking about how they grew up. I realized that that financial education, it was a privilege, and with that privilege came a responsibility. And so that is why I do the work that I do now is realizing that that, unfortunately, that shouldn't be a privilege, and that having open conversations about money where my parents were not just telling me how to manage their money, they were actually showing me was really powerful. And so I really saw them model what I now call value based spending, which is like spending your money, your discretionary money, on things that you really really love and cutting back on everything else in order to do that. And I do the same thing in my life. You know, when I was saving my original hundred k, my origin story of her first hunder k was me trying to save one hundred k at twenty five. You know, part of that was me discovering like, oh, okay, I want to spend money on these things and then not spend any money elsewhere. And I didn't feel like I was depriving myself. I was still you know, going out to eat when I wanted to go out to eat, and was still getting to travel and do the things that were important to me. But there was just certain certain things I just wasn't spending my money on at all, and so having that modeled for me, I think was really powerful. In addition to the privilege of a financial education and me bringing up the hundred K, I'm the first to acknowledge that that hundred k would not have happened as quickly as it did if I graduated with student debt. I was able to graduate debt free from college, both because I worked three jobs on campus I got tens of thousands of dollars in merit scholarships, but also again I was my parents' investment. They had the foresight and had the stability and ability to set aside money for me for college. So it wasn't like they handed me a check. It was more of a collaborative process of me paying us working to pay for my bachelor's degree. However, I fully acknowledged that it's a privilege that plenty of people don't have. What class did you consider yourself when you were growing up and what class do you consider yourself now? I think we were mid to maybe upper middle class. Even in being transparent about money, I still don't know how much my parents make, and I don't know how much they have saved, which I think is very interesting for being as transparent as they were and as transparent as I am with them, I actually still don't know their numbers, so it's hard to say. I think now for me, based on my age, based on you know, my tax bracket, yeah, I'm definitely upper class. It's weird. I've never actually had to say that out loud. It makes me feel weird. It's very interesting. I'm a financial expert and that makes me feel weird. Why does it make you feel weird? Hmm, that's a good question. I think there is still such a stigma around how we view people with money, and you like want to be the person who's like, yes, I have money, but I'm trying to do good with it, you know. Like, and this is again a unique thing that I feel women. We feel this unique pressure as women to do like we have to caveat it, right, you have to hedge and be like but like I'm a big giver, yeah right, right, and we almost like have to like tax ourselves. Right. You can't just have money because it's good to have stability and it's nice to buy nice things, and of course it's good to donate. I'm not screwed mcdock, right, But it's like men don't do this shit. Men don't have to do this shit. They don't have to apologize for buying a rolex, Like they don't have to do that. They don't have and they don't have to show you that they, you know, they donated this amount of money, or that they gave this amount of money away to somebody in need. Like they don't have to do that shit. So I wanted to also ask you about like your big thing is like women need to invest. They need to invest early roth ira A four one k index funds, mutual funds, like you need to be in the stock market, right and at the same time, like you know, a lot of the big companies out there, like if if you were to invest in S and P five hundred index, like those big companies are not all you know, not all roses and puppies. Yeah, right, right, Like it's it's it's definitely upholding the status quo a lot of it. And you know we're speaking very broad strokes, but you know there's one argument for like Okay, so you need to just play the game and you need to be part of the system because if you don't, like you're going to be left behind. And like you you alone can't change everything. And at the same time, like there's an argument for like burn it down. This capitalist system is a result of you know, the system that we have, and so like where do you kind of draw the line of like reconciling, like you need to not get left behind. But at the same time, like if you buy into this, like you're you are buying into the system. Okay, this is this again. We're going to peel back layer by a layer here at this onion. So I'm writing a book right now. My manuscripts actually do April first, and literally my introduction is basically answering the question you just post to me, which I really at the heart is can financial feminism exists under capitalism? And the answer is no, like true feminism, true equality of course cannot exist under capitalism. I do not like capitalism, I do not support it, I do not want it. However, this is the system that currently exists. And you have to figure out how to pay your rent, and you have to figure out how to take care of yourself, and you have to figure out how to buy groceries, and wow, you're figuring out how to buy groceries and figuring out how to save money and figuring out how to navigate this fucking capitalist healthscape. We can work to burn it down, right, We can work to change the very system that we exist in. And it's not a perfect solution, but frankly, I think it's the only solution. We have. Is try our best to do the least harm possible, because whether we do like it or not, we have to play the game in order to survive. And that's what I believe financial feminism is is putting your oxygen mask on first so that you can then help others. And I am okay playing the game if it means that I get to grow my wealth and then go do good things with it, I am okay in this instance, and investing in potentially companies that I don't love or whose actions I don't agree with, I'm okay actually going in there and profiting off of these terrible companies and then doing things that they would absolutely hate, like supporting candidates that they wouldn't or supporting policies that they wouldn't, or giving money to people who really fucking need it. But again, that's of course not a perfect solution either, and I don't judge somebody who disagrees and chooses to make a different decision. Yeah, no, I mean it. It's hard because the standard advice is, like, first of all, be in a diversified four one K whatever, and if you are like that probably means that you're invested in Amazon, etc. Right, So like you're not avoiding Amazon if you're Yeah, if you're looking at performance, you're not avoiding Amazon, Like you're not, right, So you know, there's just no It feels like there's no getting around it, unless of course you want to like you know, just opt out or very specifically choose your stocks. But then again, like that would mean that you're researching stocks all day, So I don't know. Yeah, what do you indulge in financially? Well? I did drive here in a Camaro and that was a fun. I'm renting a top down Camaro. They gave me an option of a Camaro or a Mustang, and I chose wrong, let me tell you, But it's very fun because it brings me all hot of joy and it's really fun. So I think the big things I indulgent are like travel and experience. You know, I've been doing the digital nomad thing for a while and that's been really fun. And you know, getting to live in different places and getting to experience life in different places has been the thing I indulge in, Tory Dunlap. This has been such a pleasure. It's so fun talking to you. Thank you. Thank you for asking just really beautiful, thoughtful questions and holding space for me even when I didn't have an answer for you, and I just really appreciate it. Thank you. Other People's Pockets is written and hosted by me My Allow. It's produced by me along with Joy Sanford and Dan Galucci. Production help by Angela Vane. Our mix engineer is Dan Galucci. Our executive producers are me My Allow along with Jane Marie and Dan Galucci. A special thanks to being full time self employed. Other People's Pockets is a production of Pushkin Industries. 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