Business: How Short Term Sweat Equity Equals Long Term Passive Income
Episode Summary
Unpaid labor is almost never a good idea — but sweat equity? That's a whole other story. Today Allegra sits down with Taylor, our content manager, to talk about how she used sweat equity to gain business ownership in not one, but two small businesses.
Episode Notes
Unpaid labor is almost never a good idea — but sweat equity? That's a whole other story. Today Allegra sits down with Taylor, our content manager, to talk about how she used sweat equity to gain business ownership in not one, but two small businesses.
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Transcript
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Even for me, like that was kind of a pride thing, like telling people I was the manager of a Pilates studio didn't always feel sexy. And I don't know, like, it wasn't the corporate ladder, it wasn't a high title. It wasn't a high this or that. And that was hard for a little while. But then, you know, a few years into it, and talking to friends who had taken that kind of more traditional path and seeing the flexibility that I had in my job and seeing the, you know, the lessons that I was learning versus what they were doing, I kind of started to feel more and more conviction and what I was doing, and that's when I kind of started seeking out other opportunities like Doughboys. And you know, and getting more involved in the business side of things at the studios. So
I just want listeners to really understand from ownership into other businesses that she's getting, are they monthly or quarterly payouts? Right now? We're doing monthly for both what's like an average good month if you know, pizza, and Pilates is doing well, what kind of additional income can you expect this year,
it's been between 20 503,000 A month combined, we're still kind of coming out of the pandemic, right, like, you know, this is 2022 is going to be their first full year back, you know, for both of these businesses. So, you know, obviously, we don't know what's to come, but I'm hoping that those numbers will will just continue to go up.
This is Allegra Moet Brantley and you're listening to the coffee and coin podcast where women talk wealth. I'm the founder and CEO of Factora. Have company on a mission to lead 1 million women to 1 million in net worth. Because when women have more money, we'll have more power to be the change we want to see in the world. If you're ready to hear real women share their real numbers and investment journeys and have a sneaky feeling you should be doing a little more with your money. You are in the right place. Just sit back, relax and turn me up.
All opinions expressed by Team Factora and podcast guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Factora Incorporated. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be used as the basis for investment decisions. Team Factora and podcast guests may maintain positions in the securities or investments discussed in this podcast.
Welcome back to another episode of Coffee and coin. I have Ms. Taylor on the podcast with me today. Welcome Tay Tay.
Hi, I'm happy to be here.
Do you like it when I call you TJ?
Yeah, I find it very like endearing when people give me or like call me my nickname. So yeah,
is that a common nickname that people call you?
I don't get like double Tay very often. Usually, it's just one I was watching the video that you sent the task of the testimonial we're working on the subtitle, like turn Taytay into Tater and which people also called me tatertot Or Taylor taught growing up. So I've got all sorts of nicknames.
I love nicknames. I love giving nicknames to people, they have to come genuinely. And I also like it when my nickname is not already a common nickname of their so double take from me. For those of you who don't know, Tay Tay, she is our content marketing manager at Factora. She's only been on the podcast one time before this, but we're hoping to have her back many more times in the future. And today's conversation is going to be about business investing because TJ has been business investing since she walked out of college. And what I mean by that is, Dun dun dun. She's never had a real job. And what I mean by that is she didn't graduate from college and go into a typical corporate role, and has actually just skipped corporate entirely. And she's been very drawn to small businesses and entrepreneurship, even though she's not launched her own business, which I'm intrigued if that might be down the road for you. She has helped other founders get their businesses off the ground. And she's very much a part of doing that for Factora. She sits in between product and marketing and helps what women see in the wealth circle get extracted so that our audience who haven't taken a wealth circle can still be getting all of those little investment pieces that we can give to you in a bite sized way because obviously you got to take the wealth circle to experience the magic of the community and to get the fundamentals which we can't do for you and an Instagram post. But anyways, she is challenged with doing that and does an incredible job. So, welcome to the podcast. Give us a little introduction about you and your life. and where you live and why we're doing this interview?
Yeah, for sure. So first, I'm just liking to say that, you know, the first time I was on the pod was about my real estate journey. And it was like, you know, a very stressful one. So I'm very happy to be here today on a much lighter note, I think. But yeah, a little bit about myself. I have been born and raised in Texas, I've been here 29 years, I grew up in Dallas with my parents and my brother. And then I went to school at UT, where I did my undergraduate and then that's where I've been ever since. But kind of how I got to where I am both of my parents, my mom is an attorney. My dad is an architect, but they've both always owned their own businesses, their own firms. And as a kid, that's something I saw just what I gathered from that was that they had a lot of flexibility, they didn't ever have to ask for time off shore, they worked really hard, and they couldn't travel anytime they wanted to, because they were very much, you know, needed within their businesses, especially earlier on. But they just had a bit more freedom and flexibility than I felt that some of my friends, I guess parents had growing up. And, you know, my mom worked from when I was six months old to to now. But she and my dad were able to kind of work their schedule, so that someone was always home with us in the mornings before school, and someone was always home with us, you know, 3pm on after school, so they kind of had a fun trade off of how they did that. But again, not everyone's job kind of allowed for early exits in the day like that. And that's something I've always really appreciated and admired about my parents and about their jobs. So then I went to college. And I started out as a fashion major at UT, I wanted to be like a fashion buyer. And I still love the world of fashion and have a lot of fun with that. But at some point, I had to take an intro to nutrition course, this is like a science credit. And I was like, This is amazing. And I just I totally got enveloped in nutrition. And you know, I never really thought that science was something that that I was that deeply interested in. But I really love the material. So I think this was my sophomore year. So I switched majors and went into nutrition, I thought I was going to be at one point a like nutritionist for like an NFL team was a dream. And then at then I wanted to just be more kind of traditional and work in hospitals as a dietitian. And then as I kind of got towards the end of my, you know, studies, I realized this is not at all what I want to do with the rest of my life, which this was like I don't know, a couple of months before graduation. And I was like, Well, it's kind of too late to change now. So I obviously just kind of graduated with that degree. But I had started teaching Pilates at a studio in Austin. And I love that very much fit in with nutrition and just wellness in general. And I had never thought about being a fitness instructor. But I found this this method and I loved the workout. And I loved the studio and the owner of the studio. And so I kind of just fell in with them. And I went through the training process and became an instructor there. And so when I was graduating and having this kind of like conflict of what the hell do I do with the rest of my life at age 22, I was talking to the owners of the studio and kind of telling her my predicament. And she she totally understood she had come from a background in corporate accounting and consulting and had got burned out, you know, after going through grad school and working as a consultant for a few years. And so that's why she had started to move from California to Austin and started these studios. And so I was just kind of confiding in her. I was like, I don't think this corporate career is for me, I'm just not really sure what I want to do. My parents always have owned their small businesses, you know, I'm really interested in that. And she's, she was just like, I need someone to help me run these studios. We're starting to grow them. I've been doing on my own for a really long time, I could actually use someone. And so I was her first full time hire. I took a couple of weeks off after graduation and went and traveled. And then when I came back I came on as a first full time employee at at the studio. And that's where I was for six years, I helped grow the studios from one to two to three, I got to go through the whole construction phase of a commercial building, which is a whole podcast episode on itself. That was a crazy experience. And I helped grow our team from like eight to 20 fives I learned I learned a lot. And then after pure I ended up that Factora but you're
missing one because I always love to refer to TJ as our Pilates pizza and personal finance guru. Yes. So there was Pilates and I understand how you fell into that. But it seems like it was a great fit because you were there for a number of years helping that business grow. And then what about pizza? When did pizza appear?
What about pizza? Yeah, so this is one of the most fun parts of my career so far. So during the pandemic like pretty early on Two of my friends decided to open a pizza food truck. One of them they had their their dad is in the food industry in Florida and he kind of happened into a food truck that he wasn't going to use. And so asked these two guys if they wanted it, and they were like, hell yes. So they shipped the food truck from Florida to Austin and Doughboys was born, which is still a food truck. And here in Austin, they're down at meanwell burn these days. But when the brand was coming together, they were needing someone to just help build the brand and the social presence and you know, kind of get the word out about about this truck. It was a weird time to be launching a new business. I mean, I think anytime is a difficult time in the restaurant industry. And especially in Austin, there are so many incredible vendors in the space. But yeah, it was I was looking for a bit of a challenge. Like I said, I'd been doing what I had been doing for quite a while and the pandemic just it slowed everything down for boutique fitness as it did many industries. So I had a little bit of extra time on my hands and just kind of needed a creative spark. So I was like, I was just like, let me run your Instagram. Let me do the marketing. Let me help you guys do your your launch and all of that. And so they were like, Okay, let's let's do it. So through that whole process, I worked as kind of the the Marketing Manager for them for about a year. And I did a lot of that upfront work for free and ended up exchanging that kind of sweat equity for 5% ownership in, in the company. Amazing. So yeah, now I'm not doing too much other than just eating the pizza these days, but
it was, but you still own 5% of the pizza truck. Yes, I do. Um, and then I don't think we talked about what kind of equity stake you have in the Pilates company.
Yeah, so I currently own 10%. I've owned that for I think almost three years. There's like a year that gets lost to there was a pandemic. But yeah, that was granted to me just as part of my, you know, obviously proven track with the company.
I love it. And we are currently negotiating your equity. In Factora, so soon to be owner in three businesses. But talk to me how it breaks down then with your so you're full time here. And then you have ownership in these two other companies. So what is your salary look like? And then what is your total estimated annual income? And what's the difference between the two?
Yes, so salaries easy. My salary is 75k a year. And then estimated income, again, estimated is key because it's you know, the I get distributions based on the performance of the companies each month. So I have a range, my estimated range for this year for total income is between 100 and 125k. I'm hoping it will be closer to the high end but like to give myself you know, some some wiggle room there. So yeah, that's anywhere a difference anywhere of 25k to 50k. From, from my salary to my total expected annual income.
So I just want listeners to really understand from ownership into other businesses that she's getting. Are they monthly or quarterly payouts? Right now? We're doing monthly for both amazing so what's like an average good month if you know pizza, and Pilates is doing well? What kind of additional income can you expect this year?
It's been between 25 and 20 503,000 a month combined love
that. That could be another 36 grand y'all.
Yeah, not bad, we're still kind of coming out of the pandemic, right. Like, you know, this is 2022 is going to be their first full year back, you know, for both of these businesses. So, you know, obviously, we don't know what's to come, but I'm hoping that those numbers will will just continue to go up.
Well, what I love so much about your story is that last night, we had the business investing session of the wall circle, and we have it's typically around 20% of the wealth circle participants are entrepreneurs and the other 80% are the more w two standard corporate ladies. And when women go into breakout rooms, they get to talk to each other. So you might have one entrepreneur in your group if you're lucky. But we also challenged them to start thinking through what are creative ways that you could get into the business investment asset class without even having to create your own business. Because teh story, she just partnered with someone who'd already started a studio and helped her grow that and then got to a point where she owned 10% of all of those studios, like the whole company, and then 5% of a food truck. And I feel like correct me if I'm wrong, but you were probably able to negotiate the food truck stuff easier because you already knew what it looked like to put in sweat equity and say, Okay, I'm going to do this type of work but in exchange for this type of ownership, which can be really, really helpful for a founder who can't pay you yet, but they can pay you on disk revolutions in the future if things work out. So it's an upfront risk, but it's a down the road passive income stream, if you can negotiate a good deal. And I think there are so many women that leave that session being like, wow, I don't actually have to start a business to be a business investor. And that sounds pretty sweet. I'd love to be an owner in this or that thing that my friend is doing. And that's what we challenged them to do. We're like, go home, look around you who in your friend group is starting something cool, start having conversations with them? Or what is your skill set that you could offer to someone else and start having conversations where you could offer help in a way that would be really beneficial to that founder? So am I correct in saying that with the Pilates studio, you basically were ahead of operations and people developing team and keeping the company running from, you know, being locked out of a building to growing to the next studio. And then with the pizza truck, you really were all about marketing, both grassroots, because I went to some of your events, and then also just that digital marketing that you've come to specialize in and as why effect Torah has leveraged those talents. Because the thing I really want to touch on there is you grew your skill set. By way of these different businesses, you were like, Yep, I'll try a new challenge. And the thing I love is that you went to school for nutrition, and you haven't even used that. I mean, you can say nutrition and food and pizza, like there's something there. But you know, probably not too many nutritionists would be like, Yeah, eat pizza all day to go. So talk to me about that, like just leaving behind a degree to do something different. And then, with each business doing something different, I mean, now you're specializing in content, and you're working with product, and you haven't had this work with a digital course or community or product before. So how is it that you feel so comfortable? Just trying and learning these new things on the job?
Yeah. Um, okay, so yes, touch on kind of my overall roles at each and how that kind of played in with my college degree. So yes, I essentially have not used my college degree in any, in any way that has earned me money, right? Like, I have never been paid as a nutritionist, I didn't go through the full dietetics program. So I never got my like, you know, license as a dietitian, for sure. Food is like a core value of mine. And food can be a fourth core value. And so in that way, definitely plays in a lot of themes in my life. I love to cook and I think I still use a lot of the principles I learned in school, you know, just to have a better life. But But no, I don't use them, you know, in a job or any way to earn money. But yeah, here I was, you know, my final title at the studio was general manager. So I did anything and everything you can think of I was like the resident IT person, which is terrifying, because like, I'm not the one who should be the IT person at all. But you know, I was and I did marketing for the studios, I helped with our email on our social and we kind of just focused on community based marketing with that I did finances I did, yeah, operations, from things breaking from people getting locked out of the studio from air conditioners, flooding the studio, whatever it was. And then yeah, I also trained, new, you know, full time staff members, as well as new instructors, because I was also a lead trainer at the studio. So I and I still I still teach up here, which I love. It is a passionate forever favorite hobby. But yeah, so kind of a jack of all trades, did a little bit of everything there, which again, like that was kind of a whole, I don't know, college experience baked into a job, right? Like I kind of got paid to learn to do all these things, how to budget for a business and how to be a profitable fitness business, which is not easy. I mean, it's not easy to be a profitable business at all. But, you know, I think a lot of people who go into fitness do so because they're really passionate about it. And they don't necessarily have the background. And so I was really fortunate to work with two founders who had really strong financial backgrounds. And so, and ultimately, that kind of got me interested in Factora, you know, like, I knew a lot about business finances, and I realized I had this void of, of personal finances. And so ultimately, that's where you guys eventually came in. Yeah, so I did a little bit of everything up here. And then when I went to Doughboys, like I had a pretty basic understanding of brand and you know, social content creation, but that was a skill that I really wanted to improve. And so there was like, it was such a cool opportunity because I got to start from ground zero like a completely blank Instagram slight, you know, and I got to define what the voice was going to be of the Doughboys which, you know, the two founders are the most energetic and fun guys like it was very easy. is easy and fun to write from, from bear voice. But I got to build it into a pretty well recognized brand with an awesome community like the guys would be out around and people be like, Hey, are you a Doughboy? And like, when I kind of got that feedback, you know, it was pretty cool to be able to get to a point where they were being recognized within our community. So that was a lot of fun. And then yeah, the skills I learned Doughboys I think ultimately got me in the door with Julia at Factora, she recognized that I was able to harness that voice of someone completely, not me and kind of build it into a full a full brand. So yeah, everything I've learned from one job to the next was definitely carried on. And as you said, yeah, now I'm getting to work with a product team, which is very different from anything I've done before. And I absolutely love getting to reach a much broader audience than my previous jobs, which is also a fun, a fun challenge.
And anyone that you are more closely the demographic, you aren't a dough boy, you're a pizza eating woman, but you are a wealth building woman, and you get to talk to them, and you do it so authentically. And so Factora is so lucky to have you. In fact, if y'all like today's Instagram posts on Pandora, go give us a little love right now, or leave us a podcast review, because she works are really, really hard to make everything. So it's like your smart older sister is talking to you and trying to share little tiny pieces of wealth building information, the best that we can on a platform that is made for pictures and quick, quick five seconds. And now I'm done with you. And we really are always challenging ourselves to put as much value into everything we do and leave the jargon out. There's too many financial companies that are going to give you all sorts of acronyms and bullshit. And we're not going to do that. We're not going to make you feel stupid, because you're not stupid. The industry is just trying to be complex, so that you feel like you need someone to help you and you can't help yourself. And that's crap. So we we focus on doing something very different. But okay, I want to get back to your story. And I want to talk about some more numbers. Yes, it is the coffee and coin podcast. So what is your salary? Excuse me, we know your salary. What is your net worth today? And how has it changed over the last few years? And then talk to me about your different income streams?
Sure. So my I recalculated it yesterday, my current net worth is $225,000. to about $225,210. Yes, so that includes I do count my equity in the Pilates studios. And that number, I don't count my equity in Doughboys, just because we've never really valued the company as a whole. Whereas with with the studios we have, so part of that comes from business. And then part of that comes from ownership in my house. And then part of that are from equity in my house. And then part of that is just, you know, cash and paper assets. So yeah, it has come a long way in the last few years. I I mean, I don't know, I think the first time I calculated, well, I can tell Okay, so in this is how I benchmark this in 2019, my boyfriend and I took a pause on our jobs and went and traveled around Southeast Asia and spent time with family for about six months. And when I came back from that trip, I think I had $2,000 on a credit card. And I had like maybe $3,000 in a bank account. And I was like I need enough to be able to put down a deposit on an apartment when we get back from this trip. And I was like we were traveling. I was like, I don't know if it's it's the way we're going. I'm not sure it's going to happen. So yeah, I think my net worth was like $1,000, you know, at that point. So this was like mid 2019. So from 1k to 225k. In like three years, which you know, not not too shabby.
It's amazing. I love it. So talk to me about today when you budget and invest, what are those numbers? Because obviously you have you have stable income through Factora. But the rest is variable. So how do you kind of chop up your your income into additional wealth building?
Yes. So from my salary, I automatically save 20% every month and invest I think about 25% So that's about 45% investment and savings rate just from from my 75k salary. And then on top of that I pretty much exclusively contribute any distribution I get from the Pilates studio to my paper investment accounts and then any distributions I get from Doughboys I typically put into my near term savings goal. So one I usually I use to support you know, paper assets and one I use this for savings goals. So it gets kind of confusing calculating that all out. But I looked back at my March numbers and in total I invested 47 for I saved and invested 47% of my total income last month. And I think that's pretty, pretty true for how it's been going the last six months or so.
Okay, I'm gonna stop you right there, listeners. She saves and invests about half of her income. You know what her income is? She lives in Austin. This is not the lowest cost area to live in. But actually, we didn't tell them where you're podcasting from. Where are you right now?
Yeah, yes, I'm actually in Lima, Peru right now in a little neighborhood called near Flores. Why? You know, because I can No, I mean, sort of, but my boyfriend has a lot of family that happens to live in Lima. He has three cousins that are half Peruvian. And one of them is is not living here right now. So she has an empty apartment. And she's like, You guys should just go. And we had a very hard time turning down that offer. We're both working remote right now. And for the foreseeable future, and Lima is actually in the same timezone is Austin so makes that super easy. And we have a free place to stay and a lot of family around. So yeah, we're here for a little over three weeks just just living and working from from Lima.
But that just goes back into your creativity, right? Instead of saying that you value travel, you are traveling while you live your life. So I love that and 50% to savings and investing is so huge, like that's gonna get Taytay. So far so quickly. wealth building is all about how much you can be? Well, saving is important because it's gonna buy near term assets, but really investing so that that money can be compounding in the background. So let's talk a little bit about what are your near term goals that you're saving for?
Yeah, so right now, most of that is going towards either our house. So we're when we get back, we're going to kind of start working on our backyard, which for me was a lot of the reason I wanted a home was, you know, for getting into the real estate world, but also to have a space to host friends and family and to be and so we're going to be building a dock and kind of building out the backyard space. And then just you know, we've been in our house for like six months, but honestly have done nothing other than paint the walls and put in some new flooring. So we have some house projects we want to get into later this year and part for our own benefit. But also in 2023 We would love to be able to start Airbnb in our house, when we're traveling elsewhere to kind of you know recoup the costs of where whatever place that we're staying. And so to park goal there was to just make it homey or for us, but to to make it more enticing for others. And then yeah, travel, my travel fund is getting beefed up a bit right now as everyone else like we've been pretty stagnant the last few years. And with personal trips like this one. And with a lot of friends getting married in a couple of different countries this year, we have a pretty big travel travel list. So you know, I want to be able to fully enjoy those trips and not feel stressed. And so for me, it's really important to have a dedicated not only like fund for flights and you know, the logistics of travel, but also just on the money to spend on experiences while we're in those places, and not to have to stress or worry about it. So that fund is getting beefed up pretty, pretty heavily. Honestly, I don't have a number for it. But we're just we're throwing a lot of money towards it every month. And then also short term, just saving for the next potential investment. I don't know yet if that's going to be real estate or if it's going to be business and we can kind of get into that, you know, on my phone calls in a little bit. But you know, I just want to have I'm kind of building up a cushion for for the next thing, whatever, whatever that may be
optionality, let's get into it. What are what are some of your big, big, audacious goals?
I mean, in general, you know, I think growing up, I like a lot of us, like it's just you, you're taught that you go to college, and then you get a job and then you work that job until you retire and or you know, and for me, that's the path at least that, you know, I've seen my parents take and like I said, my mom has worked my whole life and I always kind of just like for me, I always knew that even if I have kids and I wanted to work in some capacity, you know, I kind of wanted to have the option of being able to do both. But you know, as I've gotten older like I realized that you know climbing the corporate ladder is obviously not a value of mine I never even entered the corporate ladder not even on the bottom rung. You know, I'm now my goal is to find a way to build a lot of wealth, like I want to have a lot of money. I want to be really comfortable. I want to be able to provide for myself and my family and to do the things that we want to do. But I don't see myself like, you know, trying to get into this rat race of a career. So I'm looking for ways to build wealth outside of that. And you know, create these passive income streams that we've we've talked about and do it on a little bit of a different a different way. And it's not something I've seen necessarily anyone in my direct life do. But you know, now that I'm in this community, I see women doing it left and right. And that is just something that's, that's very exciting. So you know, I want to continue to add passive income streams through business, investing in real estate, so that I can spend my time traveling far and wide. And you know, we were talking about this as a company the other day, but one of my, you know, one of my core values is family, and I want to remain really deeply rooted in my family and in my community, or communities. But I also want to be able to travel a lot and see see a lot of the world. And I think in order to do both, you know, I kind of I mean that financial support and stability.
So do you do you have a number of school with the amount of passive income you'd like to see?
Yeah, so near term, like, I think just in the next like, five to 10 years, five years, that's in five years, like, I would love to get it to, like 75k a year in passive income. Amazing. Yeah. Which is a little bit more than doubling kind of, you know, my, my optimistic goal for where I am right now, which feels very doable.
Definitely, you already did happen a few years. So you could definitely, I mean, again, Factora the hope is that we can start doing distributions, we have to stabilize the business first. But that's something that would come straight to employees as soon as we can. And, I mean, what you only need, like one or two more food trucks,
right to go to pick them up. But yeah, so that would essentially replace you know, what my I mean, not essentially, it would replace my current salary, which is a salary that I know I can live comfortably at, while still contributing to, you know, future goals. But if I'm generating that passively, then whatever I earn, on top of that, which I intend to be something for, you know, at least a good while will only put me in an even better place. So yeah, that's kind of in the next five years, what I'm what I'm aiming to do.
Yeah, it's so true. I mean, we show these graphs in the wall circle, which would be very annoying for me to try and explain without a visual. But basically, if you could replace your salary with passive income, and then obviously, in five years from now still have a salary that's much higher, because, well, it needs to be for inflation, but also, you're getting more and more skilled. So you can demand more and more income, then most people just think about going up the income track, the fact that you could have more than double because your original salary is now passive income through your real estate and business assets. It's just like, I want every woman to realize that this is not only possible that it is being done in this community, I mean, what you're you're already making, like around $3,000 a month in passive income. That's incredible. Of course, you can double that. And you can make 75,000 in I think, less than five years, let's just say less than five years. So I want to talk a little bit about what are some learnings you've experienced from, as you said, not even finding the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, just walking around entirely and kind of jungle gym and your way through utilizing these businesses to earn equity and skills that you can apply to more things of interest?
Yeah. So I think the first thing is just like, and I think more people should say this more often, like, I'm so proud of myself, like I am just feeling you know, these last few years have been hard for every person on planet Earth, like it has been a tough few years. But where I am now this path, like I've had this little like, passive income bug, like, you know, and it's bitten me and like now I just want more and more of it. But I just, I never even really knew that that was a thing like passive income was not a word I had in my brain. When I started on this on this journey, I just knew that entrepreneurship could open, more flexibility than I had seen, you know, my friend's parents experience in quote unquote, corporate America. You know, I think what I've learned is just that, you know, you kind of we've talked about earlier, but like, yeah, I've never used my mind are great. And that was really hard for a long time. Like, when I first graduated, I did an extra semester, so I graduated in December instead of May. And if I was going to go down the dietetics path that I had initially planned, it was like I would have to take a test and go through an external internship starting the following summer, so unlike me, so I kind of just went into it. The studio's as a part time position just to make some money while I was doing this, and then when I kind of started, I decided I didn't want to go down that path and dietetics at all. And I kind of wanted to leave my degree behind. And I remember my dad being like, just take the test. So you have that as an option. He's like, I think you'll really regret it. And my dad doesn't say things like that often. And he, my dad always has supported me and anything I've ever wanted to do, but and I just remember like, that really kind of seated itself in me, and I wasn't sure where to go. But I knew that I knew that that's what I did. That's not I knew I didn't want to do that. And so
you didn't, you didn't take the time. I didn't. And yeah, I didn't take the
test. I didn't pursue that at all. I just kind of left the last four years at UT behind me and I went all in on on learning by doing instead of by going to school, and I think there is so much value in working in a small business. Because you have to be scrappy, you have to learn on your feet, you have to, you know, I learned a ton of people skills, I learned a ton of business skills, and just analytical and common sense skills. Like, I mean, I remember going to a conference once for different fitness businesses and the questions people were asking, I was like, how have you guys made it this far, but you know, and they were much further in their careers. But I just I was very lucky to work with the people that I did, and to have the experiences I did and you know, now five, six years laters I'm on the other side of it. And I like I said, I'm really proud of everything I accomplished, and I've learned and of what I helped build, but it felt sticky. And it felt like I was doing the wrong thing for a little while. And so I think it's just like important to know that, you know, and I don't think this is anything new. But like when you're in it, it doesn't always feel exciting and great. But if you know that you're building towards something that's important to you like to hold on to that and to keep going because you know, and even for me, like that was kind of a pride thing, like telling people I was the manager of a Pilates studio didn't always feel sexy. And I don't know, like it wasn't the corporate ladder, it wasn't a high title. It wasn't a high this or that. And that was hard for a little while. But then you know, a few years into it, talking to friends who had taken that kind of more traditional path and seeing the flexibility that I had in my job and seeing the, you know, the lessons that I was learning versus what they were doing, I kind of started to feel more and more conviction and what I was doing. And that's when I kind of started seeking out other opportunities like Doughboys. And you know, and getting more involved in the business side of things at the studios,
I would say I loved what you started out saying most that you're damn proud of you. I agree. And enough, people don't have pride in what they've accomplished, and you've accomplished a lot, and you've done it in your own way. And it is so easy to compare ourselves to people who are on LinkedIn getting bigger and fancier titles, and they're at companies that are recognizable. We we shop at those companies or we utilize their services, and you're like, Oh, I'm just at this, you know, small little company in, you know, that people wouldn't recognize the name of and it's so easy to let comparison. Just rob you of your joy, but I love that you stuck with it. And you can see so clearly now that even though you didn't know, you'd end up becoming a business owner in that tiny little Pilates company that you helped right out of college, look at it now. You know, like it's a very well known brand here and you helped grow it. And I was watching the Kanye documentary last night. He was just really good at being proud of himself and saying he's the best and not being afraid of it. You know? And I think more people should do that. Definitely more women should do that. And I'm proud of you to Tae Tae.
Thank you. Thank you. Um, but yeah, I think you know, just whatever passion you like, whatever small business you have, like we've seen so many women in Factora, start something in their garage, or in their roommates closet, or I don't know, whatever it is and build it into a you know, really successful brands. And I just think there's there's so much opportunity in the entrepreneurial space. I think it does afford so much. It affords so much. Yeah, that's I, I always say like the session five is my favorite of the wall circle like I because I just don't think that's something that a lot of us even think about or talk about. And you know, so just being like, you can do this, you can invest in someone else's business, you can start your own. And you mentioned earlier, you're like curious if I want to start my own business, and the answer is like I don't really know if I do I'm actually not I don't have that much desire to start my own business. I really enjoy partnering with people and brands and companies that I believe in and getting to help grow them into something really special. And maybe one day I'll start my own right now I'm kind of enjoying This path have, you know, support and growth on on that side. But I just I think it's important to know that that is that's a path on its own, like you don't have to start your own.
I agree. I want to touch on that real quickly before we sign off because I think it almost feels sexier to say, I want to be an entrepreneur in the future. But the truth is, not everyone wants to or should be an entrepreneur. It's a lot of hard work. And even though I know you'd be a great one, I love that you're very honest about saying no, I prefer to gravitate towards a brand that I can help grow and scale with my talents as opposed to start my own brand. And again, that's, that's our feelings for now. Those can always change but I think you're very, I think you're very wise for your years
are going on on 30 this year, so gotta get some wisdom packed in
good times. Well, thank you so much for coming on to the pod to tell our audience all about how to get creative with business investing. I hope you listeners are feeling inspired. And we'll talk to you soon.
Until next time.
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