the number one New Year's resolution every single year is to lose weight the number two is to get their money right is to get rich an economic Improvement because people are starting to think that all they've been doing is spending in December and now they're like oh shoot my savings account does not look where I want it to be it's not looking good for me the the to she got to start working on Wall Street before carving her path in the media space she's built an audience of millions generated billions of streams but most importantly helped countless people get smarter about their money Rich it didn't feel like something that was made for people like us it's so easy to dream but when you go and you see this is what a rich person looks like it can be really hard to imagine yourself in that position or really hard to imagine success for people who come from your background who may not have had a dad who worked in the business or a grandfather who worked in the business I think a big misconception is that rich people work harder than us smarter faster stronger better they're not they are lazy but they are smart kind of lazy and what they have realized that a lot of people haven't is that money is young impr profitter one of the best ways to become rich is to learn how rich people think this is a Gospel According to Vivian 2 and she knows what she's talking about Vivien 2 is a former Wall Street Trader and entrepreneur turned personal finance educator you may know Vivian best as your Rich BFF she's on Tik Tok and YouTube where she's taught millions of followers how to save invest and grow their careers Vivien was also named as a Forbes 30 under 30 for 2023 and she's the host of the popular personal finance podcast Networth and chill her first book Rich AF is due out later this year viven welcome to Young and profiting podcast thank you so much for having me I'm so looking forward to this conversation and you are such an impressive CEO you made your first million dollars by the time you were just 27 but I did find out that you group in a family that was pretty conservative in terms of their view of money so curious to understand how did your early upbringings shape your mindset around money yeah I think it was certainly a lot of a scarcity mindset you know my parents are Chinese immigrants and um for the first two and a half years of my life I actually was shift back over to China to live with my grandparents so my parents could get their feet on the ground uh my dad would work in New Jersey and commute home to Maryland um my parents were doing what they needed to do to get by and I think that led to a feeling of survival survival survival and we were super Frugal my mom still to this day washes Ziploc bags like sometimes they have like a little mold growing in them I'm like that's disgusting throw that out um but you know I think we were really really good about saving money my parents were very much like throw it in the bank where it'll be safe or like a little bit of like the metaphorical put the cash under the mattress um but there wasn't too much conversation around actually navigating career or investing or growing money or getting rich it didn't feel like something that was made for people like us getting rich and being rich felt like something that we watched in the movies and that was it and what views did you keep from them and what views did you change yeah uh so I am still very frugal which is so funny uh people joke about this all the time that I'm the only person who will uh at my earn my income fly Spirit Airlines and they're always like what in God's name compels you to do that and I'm like well it's 35 bucks like I'm just trying to get from point A to point B and they're like it's a tin can in the sky please uh but there are certain things that I'm just like it's not worth it to me to be spending money on a quick puddle jumper 2hour flight uh but I've definitely kept the budgeting and saving peace but I have certainly kicked away a lot of the scarcity mindset I would say because when I started my career on Wall Street I got a mentor who really opened my eyes to the possibilities available to me and for the first time I saw someone who looked like me she was like a young Asian woman with the coolest designer bags and the stilettos that click clacked on you know the floor walking into the office like for the first time I saw someone who I wanted to be like and the only way for me to get there was through growing my wealth making more money and investing so let's talk about your time on Wall Street in New York at the time you were single and you were dating around doing like once two dates a week what did you learn about financial literacy of people your age while you were dating more like what I didn't learn um it really just felt like even people who worked in finance people who had these high finance jobs who were you know moving millions billions of dollars around on paper were pretty bad with their personal finances there were guys who would rather spend their money on a new Rolex or a new pair of Gucci loafers or an heres Thai then have an emergency fund and people who were living so far beyond their means and just putting it on a credit card and rolling that balance over month to month and it became pretty apparent to me that even if you worked with you weren't always good with your own yeah that makes sense so as an Asian-American woman like you said there was not many people that really look like you and you found a mentor who did look like you nothing's better than finding a mentor in the workplace that you can kind of idolize and see yourself as what was your experience like as an Asian-American woman did you feel like you fit in on Wall Street not at all um my entire team was predominantly middle-aged white guys um and my mentor and manager was the only other woman and the only other Asian person they really said twer on both of us and seeing her was the first time I realized that I could make it cuz it's so easy to dream right but when you go and you see this is what a rich person looks like and they all look like a certain way and it's not the way you look it can be really hard to imagine yourself in that position or really hard to imagine success for people who come from your background who may not have had a dad who worked in the business or a grandfather who worked in the business and she would tell me about her upbringing about how her parents ran a restaurant and how she went to a really wonderful College on scholarship and then managed to get this job and eak her way here and Eed her way there and finally got to the seat and started making real money and it felt like it was like looking at myself in a time machine and I so badly wanted to emulate her because for the first time I saw a rich Asian woman not just an Asian woman who looked like my mom not just one on TV in a movie it was someone who was powerful it was someone who was confident it was someone who had a ton of money and I wanted to be just like that and for the first time I saw the dream in real life and I knew it could happen for me too so at what point did you realize that JP Morgan was no longer for you and that you needed to make a change yeah uh so I have this amazing Mentor right and she's like okay I'm going to teach you everything I know and I am learning learning learning everything's great for the first year and a half until the head of our desk gets let go and this type of thing does happen on Wall Street like pretty regularly but when the head of the desk gets let go typically the people that he or she was close to they kind of typically also go um the new boss got hired ended up firing half of the team brought in a whole slew of new people that he you know really liked working with felt close to um and the team changed pretty much overnight and that was a really scary experience for me because that original team was the same one that I'd interned for the one that I'd earned my stripes on the one that I'd spent the past year and a half currying favor with like doing nice things like doing picking up extra projects like I was going to have to basically do that all over again and I ended up getting moved from my mentor to a new person who was like the new head of the desk right-hand man and it was kind of just all downhill from there uh with this guy instead of being you know the they used to call me like Superstar Rockstar like I went from being the Rockstar to being the girl who couldn't do anything right I was I was called stupid I was told I was too early for the job like this person was just not fit to be a manager and frankly work in any sort of environment with other human beings um I just felt really disrespected and one day I came to the office with a long cardigan on and he touched his hands together and bowed at me and said ooh a kimono or like ooh is that a kimono and I knew from that moment on that regardless of how smart I was regardless of how many hours I put in how much elbow I rubbed on every single project I did this guy was never going to be in the back room advocating for me saying this girl is too smart to lose we can't we have to pay her more we have to promote her we have to give her opportunities he was never going to do that he saw me as less than for reasons I was never frankly ever going to be able to change um he didn't like the fact that I looked a certain way he didn't like the way that you know I was a girl and it was time to go so I ended up telling my original manager my mentor and I was like I'm quitting today and she was like don't be an idiot you don't have another job lined up there's going to be a massive gap on your resume you're never going to be able to explain that like it's going to be really hard to find a job if you quit just tough it out we'll figure something out and the way she said we gave me so much Hope and Faith cuz I was like this person actually has my best interest at her and she's going to help me figure it out so I ended up starting to interview and coincidentally enough she had a best friend who had left Wall Street and gone into the tech media world and after a few rounds of interviews I ended up working for my very first manager's best friend who became my first manager at BuzzFeed amazing and I know that you had an awesome career at BuzzFeed what you're saying really resonates with me too because I remember being a young girl in corporate at heet Packard and I love that company I started as an intern I earned my stripes everybody respect Ed me I got promoted five times in 5 years then I went to Disney I got poached at Disney and all of a sudden I was back at square one everybody treated me like an intern everybody was talking about how I dressed every nobody respected me and I felt the same way and it ended up you know starting my podcast during my company and all that jazz and and leaving so it's like I know what you mean sometimes you get into these corporate situations and as a woman especially it feels like unless you started as an intern and earned your stripes essentially you're always sort of starting from scratch even if you have a lot of experience and skills so I totally feel you on that what was different about working at BuzzFeed in terms of the culture and environment for you aside from the very obvious stuff when I started my LinkedIn master class I wanted to focus on what I do best which is marketing and teaching when it came to things like building a website and collecting payments I didn't know where to start and frankly I didn't want to spend my energy on those things that's why I'm so glad I found Shopify Shopify is the Commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide just like mine whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready Shopify is the only tool you need to start run and grow your business without any struggle Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel so whether you're pushing designer t-shirts from their in-person POS system or monetizing master classes like me on shopify's all-in-one e-commerce platform you're covered setting up my Shopify store just took a day or two and in lessening year I've made well over $300,000 with my LinkedIn Secrets masterclass Shopify is a platform I log on to daily during promotional periods from my class my favorite thing to do is to put up a social post on LinkedIn and then I check my analytics in the live view on Shopify right away and I can see how many people are logged on how many people added to cart how many people are checking out it is so exhilarating it is such a dopamine rush and it's rewarding to see all of my hard work in action in their live view once you've reached your audience Shopify has has the internet's best converting checkout to help you turn browsers into buyers Shopify helps me close more sales by giving me the ability to easily do things like retarget abandon carts give discount promo codes set up referral programs and subscriptions and I was even able to implement a chat function within just minutes to answer questions my future students had about class it's no wonder Shopify Powers 10% of all e-commerce in the US and Shopify is truly a global Force powering companies like Alberts Roth and Brooklyn and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 170 countries plus shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way this is possibility powered by Shopify sign up for your $1 per month free trial period at shopify.com slala and that's all lowercase make sure you type it in correctly that's haa shopify.com Halla to take your business to the next level again for a $1 per month trial period go to shopify.com slala haa and that's all lowercase aside from the very obvious stuff of you know I wasn't working nearly as many hours I was wearing ripped jeans to work um I was working on a little laptop wherever I felt like in the office versus um you know a more chain to your desk Lifestyle on Wall Street I felt like there were so many more women in the workspace and it wasn't just a feeling there were so many more women and in some respects that was amazing because I was able to pick up mentors that I identified with so much more quickly but I will say this it also did lead to a lot more I would say competition at the junior level um when you see people who you know have your same job title and could be you could replace you you're getting paid roughly the same like there's a little bit of like competition there especially since I was hired as someone who didn't understand media someone who had no experience in selling ads or building joint Partnerships or doing any sort of marketing I think a lot of people not looked down upon me but felt like I had gotten that role unfairly because of my connections to my then manager um but I kind of let that slide water off a Ducks back but for the most part I would say all of the people that I met at BuzzFeed were so amazing so respectful and I had three different managers throughout my time there every single one was good every single one um I have nothing bad to say about any of them they were so supportive of me and my career and that was the respect that I had gotten with my first manager that I didn't get with the guy who told me I was too girly and didn't like my kimono and I knew that if I could get my boss to like me I would be able to showcase the type of work I did and the amount of work I was able to do and from there on um I'd be able to get promoted and get paid and that's exactly what I did yeah you ended up doing really good I read that your salary was like 600k at one point at busz speed which is pretty crazy like a lot of corporate people never reach that kind of compensation so at some point you realized that you had other passions and you started Rich BFF which is a huge brand right now you're huge on Tik Tok huge on Instagram we've got a new podcast so talk to us about when you realized that people wanted Financial advice from you how did you realize that yeah so it wasn't this like evil plan or like whatever to start an amazing company I had no aspirations of that it was really when I got to BuzzFeed and I like started making new friends they would all find out that I had started my career on Wall Street and the immediate follow-up question was what should I invest in hahhaa and then the actual legitimate questions would then follow of like but actually what are you buying in your 401k can you help me um which health insurance plan did you pick is it the cheaper option uh should we be buying Company stock options like what should I be doing with my money and I was answering so many of those questions that like there was often times like a small line at my desk to the point where like I was having a hard time like just getting some of my work done and so as a not a joke but like as a little passion product just for my friends I started creating content about being smart with your money and what I didn't realize was I made the very first video on January 1st of 2021 and I was like hm like I've been seeing some really shady stuff going around people telling others to put their stimulus checks into Bitcoin do not recommend um you need that money for rent for food what have you like I don't have a get-rich quick scheme but if you want to learn more more about money I can teach you it's not that hard that was the entire video and that video ended up getting 3 million views and I had 100,000 followers by the end of the week it was oh my god do you realize how lucky you are in maybe maybe not lucky I don't know actually that's a good question like do you think it was luck do you like there's so many content creators out there that create content day in and day out and your first post went viral you went from just not being a content creator or an influencer to the next day being an influencer which people work years to have that sort of success so what do you think was different with you you know I think it was a little bit of luck a little bit of authenticity and a little bit of like good timing so the number one New Year's resolution every single year take a guess at what it is every single year for just um Everybody New Year's resolution losing weight I don't know yes yes the number one Year's resolution is to lose weight the number two is to get their money right is to get rich whatever an economic Improvement so the only type of content that I feel like I could have done even better is if I had a six-pack and I was like this year is the Year we're getting like you know fit um but I I you know I can't do that so I was like okayy like let's get our money right and the timing of that being January 1st crushed it because people are starting to think about that they've just spent an arm and a leg on holiday presents they've traveled to and fro to see family all they've been doing is spending in December and now they're like oh shoot my savings account does not look where I want it to be you know it's it's not looking good for me I have to go back to work at a job that maybe I don't like they wanted away you know to improve their situation so I think the timing was really good I think my I was just really Earnest I called out like this is what I'm seeing it's hot trash you should not listen to crypto Bros and their mom basements and take advice from strangers on the internet when they tell you to do a risky thing um I think people really appreciated that I was real and called it out and for what it was and I was like that's BS um I like I think people appreciated that I was honest and I was like I cannot make you a millionaire overnight you cannot do that like unless you hit the lottery that's not happening for you um people appreciated that I was honest but I was like listen like if you want I can show you how to do it and you know I think little bit of it does have to do with luck like in some weeks I can tell I'm like I'm in favor with the algo right now every video is a banger and then other weeks I'm like am I like not funny anymore am I not cute do people not like me am I not smart like I think in part you always have to chalk it a little bit up to luck but I think my timing was good and the content itself was authentic mhm yeah I totally agree so you're are you even 30 yet I am 29 so not even 30 years old and you've reinvented yourself so many times you know you started on Wall Street then you got into sales at BuzzFeed and like worked your way to the top now you're an entrepreneur finally why why do you think you've been able to sort of reinvent yourself and pivot so much before even 30 years old calling all dog owners when your dog truly loves their food you can tell from a pey step to a healthy coat your dog feels their best when they're eating well that's why you should switch to nom nom nom nom 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whatever was in the cupboard a nom nom is trusted by so many other dog owners over 40 million meals go to good dogs like yours in mine inspiring millions of clean bowls and tail wags plus n Nom comes with the money back guarantee if your dog's tail isn't wagging within 30 days Nom Nom will refund your first order no fillers No Nonsense just just Nom Nom go right now for 50% off your no risk twoe trial at trom.com profiting that is something I think about all the time CU to your point like I'm on my third doover like um I think it's good because um so there's this quote I think I believe from Francis Pabi like our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction um and what I love about that is like you're never too old to do something I think some of the best advice that I've ever heard in my life is like whether or not you do that thing today two years from now you're still going to be two years older 5 years from now you're still going to be 5 years older do you want to you know go to medical school now a little bit later than you know the standard medical student and get that doctorate whatever sure do it because even if you don't time is still going to pass and you need to do what makes you happy it's okay to take risks especially if you have you know really really analyze the situation and have a safety net and have taken calculated decisions to get yourself there I just don't think that Reinventing ourselves is is promoted as much as it probably should be I think we talk about living one life like you know at 18 you decide what you want to major in and that's what you do for the rest of your life and it's just not true it's not fair um we're changing all the time our personalities change all the time we're allowed to change and I think for one change is a good thing yeah and speaking of change and speaking of taking risks at one point you decided to walk away from your $600,000 salary at BuzzFeed that changes a little harder than most yeah and uh you know I did the same thing I walked away from an executive job at Disney and and started my business started my podcast my agency it's tough but it's actually pretty exhilarating right so talk to us about becoming an entrepreneur and how you decided like all right well actually H how did you create a business model out of becoming an influencer that's my number my first question and then how did you decide that it was time to leave BuzzFeed yeah so the business model piece is that from jump uh as soon as I had my 100,000 followers I was able to get into the Tik Tok Creator fund I was able to get into like the the equivalence the ad senses on YouTube the reals fund whatever the bonus on uh meta platforms so I was starting to make just a little bit of like fun money um certainly not enough for me to quit my job uh I was not getting paid tons of money but you know a couple hundred couple thousand dollars a month just extra nice while I'm creating content the real money started to come in when brand started hitting me up and saying hey like you want to like make a video for us I was like yeah I do how much um I obviously went through some Growing Pains of negotiating my first three videos I did for like $400 I I I like genuinely can't even talk about it like hurts my stomach um but like I was ideating filming editing posting moderating comments for $400 and I had an audience at that point of like 200 250,000 followers and I was like this seems like a lot of work um but I was able to start getting my r to a more fair Place uh and what I realized was that I was going to be able to make um six figures doing this and my thought to myself was hey I may not make as much money as I do in my standard W2 job but if I can make $100,000 I'm not going to starve I'll always be able to pay my rent I'll always be able to buy groceries and I might still even be able to go on vacation once a year and for me that was really kind of like the turning point of like okay I can make a living maybe not as lucrative of a living doing this but I want to give it a try because I had so many other things I wanted to do and I was just not having the time after my full workday at work on Saturdays I would ideate like seven pieces of content one for every day of the week and then on Sundays I would film one video take off my shirt film video two take off another shirt film video three I would like literally put on these outfits and they would just like progressively get layered on to me and it I'd start in like a chunky sweater like this and by the end I was like in a tank top because I just kept taking off layers to film more content so that it looked like I was filming a new video every single day and then it became to the point where like I was getting 30 emails a day I was not responding to them because I just didn't have the bandwidth or the mental power to do so and I had hired an attorney to help me look over over contracts cuz that's just something that I didn't have experience doing and I didn't want to waste time doing and I was like listen I'm I'm really underwater like what do you recommend she's like I think you might need a manager and I spoke with you know this amazing talent manager and she you know I I told her I was like I just want to be transparent like I'm still in my full-time job and she was really honest with me and she was like you are so so driven you have such amazing goals but there's a bit of hesitation on my end to take you on as a client if you are splitting your time between two jobs and I'm going to be honest with you that I think that might be the case with any talent manager you speak to and I knew what she was saying was so true like you're not going to hire someone who has another full-time job and I had these Big Dreams of having a podcast and writing a book and having a TV show and I wasn't going to be able to do that while doing my full-time job job so um before I quit I set aside $100,000 in cash I was really you know making sure I had that nest egg and then I was like ideally if I can make you know roughly $100,000 of income through brand Partnerships through the platforms I'll be in a really really good spot and I won't have to dip into that 100 but even if I do that's fine um but I quit my job a year and 3 months into building your Rich BFF and it was the best decision of my entire life um I had my management team exclusively for three months then it got to the point where like my management team couldn't even handle all of the work that we were getting so they were like we think you might need agency representation so then we go I end up getting signed with WME I mean such a big honor like I now have a full service team it's you know it's just business left right and Center I'm able to pitch a book I'm able to pitch a podcast deal I have brand Partnerships coming in I am still still getting paid you know that little fun money through the platforms um and now I have four or five income streams um and only more good things to come but it ended up exceeding my wildest imaginations and now I make more money as the CEO and face of your Rich BFF than I even did at my very very lucrative corporate job yeah I know I know how it feels it's amazing being an entrepreneur and removing that ceiling of your potential to make money I make more money every month than I did in a year at Disney so it's pretty crazy um so let's talk about your mission at Rich BFF and your new book so what was the Genesis of your new book Rich AF what are you trying to teach so I think the content that I create on social media is really helpful it's bite-sized 60 to 90 seconds and you get to learn one new thing every day and you feel good and you feel smart but I was getting so many DMS of like this is helpful but I want the bigger picture I want it all at once is there a place on the website where I can have basically an organizer of things I need to be doing or hey have you ever thought about like writing your thoughts down it'd be really helpful to read them in an organized way and it felt like the key word here was like organization people just really wanted a step by step and I kept getting asked for book kept getting asked for books so I said fine you guys want a book so bad I will write a book um and the Gen of your You Know Rich AF wasn't even just my desire to write a book but like the desire for the BFFs to read one um and I think that in the generation above ours there were some really killer money books the richest man in babyon Millionaire Next Door Rich Dad Poor Dad um you know psychology of money like just so many great Finance books but there were so few for Our Generation that acknowledged the systemic inequalities of the world that acknowledge the student debt crisis that acknowledg how wages had stagnated and everything and the cost of living had gone up up up up up and how Society has changed and how making money changes and what that looks like so I thought it was time for refresh it was time to address money for this generation for Millennials and jenski for people who haven't had someone to talk to them about money because a lot of those books were written by and for the male pale and stale audience and I was none of those things so I wrote a book about money that caters to you know a crew of people that I've lovingly dubbed The Leftovers women people of color the lgbtq community people who grew up lwi income immigrants anybody who has ever felt like the financial services industry has left them behind they've been forgotten about they have been completely taken from for granted this book is for you let's talk about some of the key themes in your book because a lot of your book is talking about how rich people think differently so just off the top of your head what are the different ways that rich people think differently than other people yeah I mean I think the first one is that rich people are really lazy I think a big misconception is that rich people work harder than us that they are smarter faster stronger better they're not they are lazy but they are smart kind of LA and what they have realized that a lot of people haven't is that money is a better tool to make money than our bodies and our minds um as a human being you can roughly work Max 14 to 16 hours a day for like a temporary period of time before you burn out and you're done whereas your money can work 247 no bathroom breaks no lunch breaks your money can work for you around the clock and it's so important to recognize that like rich people love touting hard work for us they need someone to flip the burgers and pump the gas and check them out at Walmart but they don't want to work hard they want to kick their feet up as soon as possible and the way that you do that is by at the beginning of your life and your career working hard for your money but then making sure that your money can work even harder for you and over time the amount of money you make through Labor and the amount of money you make through money starts to shift in the opposite direction ction so that you're making more money using your money than you are through your job um so I think it's just really important to acknowledge like these I would just say like misinformation that has been passed down like we've pedal this myth that if you work hard you get a good job and you uh can have this white picket fence home this dream life that's not the case anymore you can't save your way to Rich you need to invest if you want to have any hope of retiring eventually and I think it's a little bit of a rude wakeup call but a needed one for Our Generation yeah and and to your point you just said you know you can save all you want but you need to also be able to earn I know that you're really a proponent of this in your book you say you can only save as much as you earn and you say that's the best financial piece of advice that you've ever received why is that because the followup to that sentence is you can always earn more money M if we use round numbers if you make $100,000 a year and you don't have any expenses I mean nothing right you're living with your parents they're paying for food they're paying for gas they pay for everything everything everything after you give away you know if you pay taxes obviously you have a certain amount of money left over and you can only save that much but do you understand how easy it is to ask for a $5,000 race how easy it is to ask for a $10,000 race raise those raise numbers are not out of the realm of reality whatsoever do you also have any idea how hard it is to cut an extra $5,000 of expenses out of your life that you are cutting out that latte cutting out that avocado toast cutting out your Netflix subscription you are not enjoying your life at all that sucks you should not have to live that way it's a lot easier to make more money than it is to cut out every little discretionary purchase that brings you Joy and I think while it is important to practice mindful spending and thoughtful and considerate you know use of your own money it's just as if not more important to learn how to make more of it and that comes from asking for a promotion and a raise at your current job and picking up a side hustle or passion project that you might really enjoy doing so another thing that I learned from your book and we were just talking about it earlier was the way that rich people use collaboration and nepotism and the way that they Network differently I mean you even said yourself you got this amazing job at BuzzFeed because your Mentor was best friends with the manager right and they put you in that spot so talk to us about how rich people collaborate and network differently yeah so I think for many regular people it's a mentality of you or me right Hala you or me are getting this promotion and that's it and we are competing we are fighting we are not friends but rich people really comfortable in their own skin financially stable rich people don't feel that way because you understand that you're an apex predator you're you're not worried about these other Predators you're thinking how can we all work together to hunt more and so when we're rich we are able to be in we're able to be Time Travelers you can be in two places at once right if I am rich and I'm in a high powerful position at my company and there's a job opening that I'm not qualif ified for but I'm like how can I somehow make this work in my favor and I'm like my girlfriend Hala definitely is qualified for this job let me get her this job where she makes so much money where she's going to be really powerful and she's going to owe me one because now I have a chip in my pocket because you're going to remember that I did you that solid I got you that job and then the next time a big opportunity comes up or you have an opening at your golf club Country Club whatever that no one can to get into you're going to think of me you're going to think of that time that I did that nice thing for you and you're going to do me one back so it's very much you scratch my back I scratch yours and that's why when you hear people who are middle class or lower income talking about money it feels like a finite pool and they're all fighting over the same dollar it's because this upper tier of super wealthy people have tricked everyone below them into thinking they they need to fight with each other when in reality everybody at the top is sharing resources being like you should use my accountant you should join my you know Country Club I can get you an I can get you an interview at this job or we should Network or like you should meet this person that I know and they're trying to interconnect their webs to position themselves better and better and better over time and having those connections allows your name to be mentioned in rooms that you yourself can't even get into and it gives you access in a way that very few of us ever have and having access is power I love this advice it's so true rich people have an abundance mindset they're of service they understand that the more they do good for other people that they're going to get those favors back in return so another thing you you say that rich people do is that they're never satisfied they're always looking to trade up and you say loyalty does not pay these days so talk to us about that never never never never so rich people know their worth they know their value they know the value of their business they are always looking for the next best thing and I think our parents were told to be loyal Company Men company women company people but that was because they were getting something called a pension where their employers had to set money aside for them so that they could have a nice cushy retirement the pension has all but gone extinct after the 401K was introduced and now retiring and planning for the future is your problem it's not your employee so these days it's not necessarily what your employer is willing to do for you in retirement that's keeping you around which is why our parents were willing to stick around at one company for 20 30 years because they knew they were going to be set up we have to contribute to our own retirements and the only way to do that while still having enough money to live your day-to-day life is to make more um so it's critically important for people in our generation to kind of always have one foot out the door um always be willing to take that call with that recruiter always be willing to meet with your friend who happens to work at the competitor of your company because you never know what opportunities are out there and you owe it to yourself and owe it to the people you love to do right by you and make sure that you're getting the most out of every dollar and every ounce of life you have and I think that also comes with you know the types of businesses we Patron right when middle class and lower income people are charged a late fee they're like ah shoot that's my bad okay I'll pay the late fee some of the the richest people I know are the cheapest people I have ever met they will sit on the phone with customer service and argue over a $35 late fee for 30 minutes until that thing gets wiped or they'll even have their assistant do it but frankly they are not paying that late fee they remind that company don't you value my business don't you value the fact that I park a certain amount of money here or I got my mortgage through this company or I did that or I did this I did this whatever you owe me one wave the late feet otherwise I'm leaving and the customer acquisition costs of any Bank whether you are a high net worth player or just an average Regular Joe Schmo is high they do not want to lose you the same goes for cell phone companies utilities any sort of subscription service you can threaten to leave and say I'm going to do right by me and they will do whatever it takes bend over backwards do some back flips to keep you as a customer you need to know your worth and you need to just never be content I call my Wi-Fi provider like every 12 months and I'm like yeah it's not looking good for us uh I'm going to go unless you uh cut me a deal and they do they do every year wow it's so true don't just negotiate your salary negotiate all different things in your life um all right last question because we're running out of time and sorry young impr profitter we had a technical difficulty so you're going to have to go get her book Rich AF because we did not cover enough of it but you got a good Glimpse let's talk about finding your Fu number you say that there's a simple way to calculate our own Fu number let's use this as your one piece of actionable advice to our young impr profitter today so everybody close your eyes and imagine your perfect dream life what does that cost you for one year I don't care if you are living shoeless in an Airstream at age 30 I don't care if you are 65 you have two homes your kids are in college and you've got you know the golden retriever in the backyard whatever your happily ever after looks like think about how much that would cost for one year then divide that number by 0.04 that represents 4% and when you get the number from that equation that is the number you need to have invested before you can essentially kick over your desk and tell your boss F you because at that that point you'll have enough in assets earning you money and 4% is a very conservative return um ideally your money would be earning you more than that and that's just gravy but that is the point at which you will have enough money earning you money that you can live the life that you want to live without ever having to work ever again I love that and what is your secret to profiting in life this can go beyond financial and the topic of today's episode the best tip I ever got was Vivien always buy them the chicken parm and I was like what does this guy mean about this because I'm lactose intolerant and literally can't even have chicken parm um but this guy that I worked with on Wall Street every random couple months he would buy chicken parms for everybody on the team um everybody from the it Guide to the janitor to the you know random compliance guy in the corner and the reason he did this was to remind them that he appreciated them and he did it out of the goodness of his heart and he never expected anything in return and it was always random it wasn't because he got something but when he did need something the IT guy the janitor the com compliance guy in the corner they would come running to his desk because they would remember that that guy was the one who bought them the chicken parm treated them with respect asked them about their families and their kids and took a genuine concern and interest in treating them well and treating them how they would want to be treated and it just goes to show that when you being kind is a personality trait and not a strategy people can see that and that will do you know 10x for you as you have done for others amen I totally agree to that Vivian where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do you can find me across social media as your Rich BFF and if you're interested in ordering Rich AF my book you can go to Rich af. me yes the URL is a manifestation because we all deserve to be happy healthy and Wealthy I love it Vivian I'll stick all those links in the show notes thank you so much for joining us on Young and profiting podcast thank you so much for having me