Vivian Tu | Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life | Talks at Google

Sonali Karmarkar 0:00 [ on-hold music]

Sonali Karmarkar 0:07 Hi, everyone. Welcome to our Talks at Google event, live from New York City. My name is Sonali Karmarkar, and I manage our Shorts Creator community here at YouTube, where I've had the pleasure of working with our guest, Your Rich BFF, also known as Vivian Tu. I am very excited to introduce today's guest, former Wall Street trader turned expert, personal finance educator, public speaker, entrepreneur, and debut author of an instant New York Times bestseller, Vivian Tu, AKA Your Rich BFF, is on a global mission to make the financial industry less male, pale, and stale.

Speaker 0:53 [cheering]

Sonali Karmarkar 0:54 She is the founder and CEO of the financial equity phenomenon, Your Rich BFF, which she developed as a passion project to destigmatize and make the rules of personal finance accessible and digestible to non-experts and marginalized communities. She has garnered nearly six million followers and counting across platforms, as well as honors on both the Forbes 30 Under 30 and inaugural Forbes Top Creators lists. Vivian continues to spread her wealth of knowledge on her top-charting podcast, Net Worth and Chill, which debuted in March 2023, and immediately climbed to the top of the business podcast charts. Since the release of her book, Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life, Vivian's financial prowess has garnered the book a spot on the New York Times bestsellers list three weeks in a row immediately following its release. Vivian's relatable, easily digestible advice has inspired millions to be more open and transparent regarding conversations around money as she transforms finance into funance to help her followers become successful in wealth. There's no doubt that Your Rich BFF is becoming a common household name. Vivian, it is my pleasure to welcome you to Talks at Google.

Speaker 2:16 [clapping]

Vivian Tu 2:22 Thank you so much for having me.

Sonali Karmarkar 2:24 Of course.

Vivian Tu 2:25 Beautiful in this room. You guys are looking good.

Speaker 2:27 [laughing]

Sonali Karmarkar 2:28 [laughs] All right. So would love if we could start off, if you could share a bit about your background and what helped you identify your purpose to feel confident to take the leap into content creating.

Vivian Tu 2:40 Ugh, man. So I became a content creator completely by accident. I did not want to become an influencer. Um, I would s- I was terrified of those people. Um, but I started my career as a trader on Wall Street, and when I left to go into the media field, I worked at BuzzFeed. Um, RIP. Uh-

Speaker 3:00 [laughing]

Vivian Tu 3:01 But I... Okay, listen. I worked at BuzzFeed. I had a really good job there. I was a digital media strategy salesperson. And so essentially, I was able to combine that personal finance knowledge I was picking up on Wall Street with the social media knowledge I was picking up at BuzzFeed and, perfectly timed, all of my new colleagues were like, "Hey, you are coming from Wall Street. This is now your opportunity to teach me how to be good with my money. Um, you're gonna help me rebalance my 401 [k] , tell me which health insurance plan to pick, and are our company stock options worth anything?" And so I started answering, answering these questions day to day, and ultimately I got so many of the same questions, I was like, "You guys, this is really annoying. Like, I gotta get my own work done."

Speaker 3:42 [laughing]

Vivian Tu 3:43 So I started putting this content on the internet and, as it turns out, a lot more people needed that information and that advice than just my five colleagues. Uh, the very first video I put up was on TikTok, and it ended up going viral, and I feel so lucky. Ever since then, I've put out a piece of content every single day. I now do long form on YouTube, have the podcast, the book. Um, the business has really, really changed, but ultimately the mission is still to help everybody feel more confident and comfortable, comfortable with their money.

Sonali Karmarkar 4:15 Yeah, and I think what's so amazing about the help and the, um, message that you're spreading is how you're speaking to a lot of people who haven't previously been spoken to.

Vivian Tu 4:26 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 4:26 And I think that is what really resonates. Um, and I remember when we were chatting, part of your inspiration to start creating content was to bring financial education to more people who looked like you.

Vivian Tu 4:38 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 4:38 Um, and as I mentioned in the intro how finance has historically been male, pale, and stale. Um-

Speaker 4:44 [laughing]

Sonali Karmarkar 4:45 Would you be able to share a little bit about your inspiration for your YouTube channel and how you're thinking about building your narrative around financial education?

Vivian Tu 4:54 Yeah. Um, when you guys close your eyes and you imagine, like, a rich person, or if you, like, were to type into ChatGPT or something and say, like, "What does a rich person look like?" you probably get someone who looks like Warren Buffett, maybe Elon Musk, right? Um, but you don't get a pop-up of someone who looks like me or someone who looks like Sonali and looks like a lot of the faces that are sitting around in this room. And I thought that was, like, really disappointing because when you are basically brainwashed into thinking that you have to be a crusty old white man to-

Speaker 5:27 [laughing]

Vivian Tu 5:27 Sorry to all the crusty old white men in the room.

Speaker 5:29 [laughing]

Vivian Tu 5:30 But when you're told that that's what a rich person looks like, you start to believe that you can't do it, and that you don't belong in that society, or you don't belong in a, a community that has wealth. Um, so my thought was, like, how do my friends understand money? How do I have to explain it to them to actually compel them to take actions that are going to better their financial futures? And that's how I thought most people had to be spoken to. Um, it's the one topic that we sorely need and are not taught in- Public school, K through 12, you learn about the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell. I don't know how many of you guys have used that recently.

Sonali Karmarkar 6:10 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 6:11 Um, not me. But I think for me, teaching about personal finance is so much more about just disseminating information, right? Because nothing I say is new. You can find anything that I am talking about on Google. But then if it's available, why have so few people actually gone through and actually learned it? Well, it's because it hasn't been explained to you in a way that's actually digestible, or accessible, or feels relevant to your life, and that's the whole premise of the content. When I started, especially on YouTube, creating long form content, I wanted to build a community. I wanted to answer the questions that people were essentially too afraid to ask about. And when I saw things that were coming up, you know, I, I was just talking to Sonali about this, um, in the green room, but one of my most recent videos that did really well was 2024 tax changes that are going to impact you. Instead of saying, hey, you know, the IRS website has a complete copy of the tax code that you can read through in your own le- at your own leisure, like, who's doing that, you ge- you giant dork?

Sonali Karmarkar 7:13 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 7:13 Like, no one does that. People wanna know, how is this actually going to impact me? What do I need to d- to do today to actually put myself in a better situation? And how can we make it fun and easy and accessible as simply watching a YouTube video?

Sonali Karmarkar 7:29 Yeah. And there's so much to be said about the brilliant way you break down these really complex topics into these digestible formats, and I think that's why your colleagues were originally turning to you, and then then you built your YouTube platform from it. Um, and I remember us talking about previously as well about this fear of failing and how you have been so successful in taking these risks that often a lot of people feel hesitant about jumping professionally or taking a risk on themselves, especially women. Um, and I remember you saying you're on your third career do-over-

Vivian Tu 8:05 Do-over

Sonali Karmarkar 8:06 ... um, thus far. So would love if you could share a little bit about this, and any advice you have to people looking to reinvent themselves or do the same.

Vivian Tu 8:14 Yeah. Um, especially for people in this room, you've kind of like m- made the dream happen, right? Um, I'm seeing a lot of AAPI faces. I'm seeing a lot of diversity in this room. And when you grow up in a family like mine, and I'm guessing a lot of you did, you kind of get to be one of three things, doctor, lawyer, engineer.

Sonali Karmarkar 8:34 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 8:35 Take your pick. It's like, you know, a P- a Panera. You pick two.

Sonali Karmarkar 8:38 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 8:38 Like, there's not any other options outside of that. And when I got my job on Wall Street, that was like the bonus fourth.

Sonali Karmarkar 8:46 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 8:46 Like, I, you know, I made it. My parents were like, "This is cool. We can brag to the other aunties and uncles about this. This is amazing. Like, great job." When I left JP Morgan to go to BuzzFeed, which my mom only knew for what kind of cheese are you quizzes-

Sonali Karmarkar 9:02 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 9:02 Like, there was a really, almost a little bit of shame there, and it felt like ... She actually asked me this, and we didn't talk for two to three months. I'm an only child, by the way, so it's a very long time. But she was like, "We sacrificed everything to come to this country, walked uphill both ways to school without shoes, carried our lunches in buckets." I don't know if this was true, by the way.

Sonali Karmarkar 9:25 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 9:25 Um, and you know, "We gutted it out so you could go to a school like UChicago, then get a job at JP Morgan for you to throw it away to go write quizzes."

Sonali Karmarkar 9:34 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 9:35 And [laughs] so I'm glad that hit with somebody.

Sonali Karmarkar 9:38 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 9:39 Um, but there was a huge mental barrier that I had to even overcome on my own to leave that type of stability, to leave that type of job. Um, when you are at a place in your career where you get to tell people you work at Google, that's pretty cool. That's kind of the job. Um, but I highly encourage everybody here to think about like what are other things that you really enjoy doing, that you love doing, that you would do even if you weren't necessarily being compensated the way that you do here. And, you know, at a company as large as Google or as large as like a YouTube, like the beauty is, is you can probably find that job somewhere else in the org. And just because you currently work in marketing doesn't mean that you can't pick up the skills to go into the software engineering, you know, team. It doesn't mean that you don't have enough skills to go onto the sales team. It doesn't mean any of those things. And I think those do-overs are our chances to really shape our lives in the direction that we want them to go. Um, my favorite concept is this Japanese one called ikigai, and essentially think about it as like a quadruple Venn diagram, so there's four circles, and then there's like obviously this tiny triangle in the middle. Um, ikigai says that to find your purpose, your why, you need to find something that you are good at, something that the world needs, something that you enjoy doing, and something that you can get paid for. And when you find the central point of all four of those, you have found your purpose because not only are you helping people, you're doing something you're happy doing, and you get, can make money to live a happy life. And I think that has kind of been the guiding principle of like what I do to find out what the next step is.

Sonali Karmarkar 11:34 I love that framing-

Vivian Tu 11:35 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 11:36 ... of ikigai.

Vivian Tu 11:36 It was so good.

Sonali Karmarkar 11:37 And it's ... I, I also love seeing things in Venn diagrams.

Vivian Tu 11:40 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 11:40 That's really amazing. [laughs] Um, but yeah, I'm so glad you found your ikigai through content creation and specifically YouTube as well. Um, so let's talk about your YouTube journey a bit.

Vivian Tu 11:52 Mm-hmm.

Sonali Karmarkar 11:53 Um, you started out on TikTok and-

Vivian Tu 11:55 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 11:55 ... Instagram, and more recently, um, grew so much on YouTube, where we started working together. Um, can you speak to your content strategy across platforms, what you get from being on these different platforms-

Vivian Tu 12:07 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 12:07 ... and how you use them to build your brand overall?

Vivian Tu 12:11 Yeah. Um- I don't think it's a big surprise that I was leveraging platforms like TikTok in particular to start for just the ability for overnight growth. You can literally get a million followers overnight on that platform. And then that sort of changed, and suddenly Reels was the hot girl. And obviously meta platforms were putting a lot of dollars behind Reels, so I started investing some time there. And my thought when it came to going to YouTube is, one, also Shorts was becoming this incredible discoverability factor, but the long form was like the nut that I really wanted to crack. I can't believe I'm about to admit this out loud, but I had read somewhere that Graham Stephan made like $3 million in passive AdSense revenue years after he had made certain videos, and I was like, "I mean, I'd like $3 million a year for not doing any extra work." Um, but it has been a journey. Um, there have certainly been videos that I'm like, [sighs] I'm like not even proud to put this out, and then it goes viral. And then there are videos that I like, I've put hours and hours and weeks and weeks of footage and time into and I'm like, "Hmm, that didn't hit the way I thought it was going to hit." And it has been a journey, but what I will say is is obviously the two things I love most about YouTube are community-building, I think because people are typically either sitting at a desktop or watching a video for longer, there's just a little bit more engagement there, a little bit more stickiness. And then, two, YouTube being owned by Google, it's no surprise, like even when people ask me, like, "Where can I find this video on, uh, TikTok or Instagram?" I'll say, "Go to my YouTube and search Your Rich BFF," and whatever topic they want because the search functionality makes it so easy to catalog my content. At this point, I've been doing it for three years, j- a year and a half full time, and I very literally have over 1,000 videos. Like, how are people... Like, if I can barely find these videos, how are other people going to find them? And YouTube is where I turn to be able to be like, "Hey, if I can only remember [laughs] what I was wearing and maybe vaguely what the topic was about, that's where I'm gonna be able to find my own content."

Sonali Karmarkar 14:28 Yeah. No, I love your strategies across different platforms, and especially what you said about the community-building-

Vivian Tu 14:34 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 14:34 ... on YouTube. Um, so kind of going back a little bit, when you s- first were kind of putting content out there, before you knew this was a viable, um, strategy or career for yourself, um, I know a lot of care- uh, a lot of creators have this sort of aha moment-

Vivian Tu 14:52 Mm-hmm

Sonali Karmarkar 14:52 ... um, when your content creation turns into a lucrative business. Did you have a specific moment in time when you were like, "Okay, this is it"?

Vivian Tu 15:02 Yes, but I also had a moment where I was like, "This sucks." [laughs] Um, so a- I w- I wanna say, like as soon as my very first video went viral, I started having brands reach out to me to be like, "Hey, do you wanna work together?" And me being me was like, "Yeah, I'd love that." And they were like, "Okay, how much?" And I was like, "Wait, I thought you were supposed to tell me how much." [laughs] And that was a rude awakening because I knew what pricing to charge for certain media when I was at a behemoth like a BuzzFeed and could offer all of these resources, but I was like, "Okay, w- what do I charge for just like a 60-second video?" I didn't know. And I'll be so transparent with you guys. My very first partnership, I won't say names, but it was a three-pack of videos that I had to ideate, edit, film, and post and, you know, leverage my platform. Take a guess at how much I charged. Just, like, guess. 500. 800. 1,000. $200. $400 a video. Oh. [laughs] That's like 200 a video after taxes, my friends. [laughs] Like, I spent a lot more time on those videos than I probably should have. And I was like, "I don't really see what the big, you know, hullabaloo about this is." But at that point, I realized, I was like, "Oh, I may have undercharged on that." So the next video I asked for a little bit more money, and the video after that I kept asking for more money. I was like, "Wait, these brands aren't pushing back. That feels like not a good sign." [laughs] So then the video after that I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna say like a crazy number, like a number I've never even-

Sonali Karmarkar 16:41 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 16:42 ... dared to think out loud," and I was like, "I want $5,000." And the brand was like, " [sighs] You drive a hard bargain, but yeah, sure, definitely we'll do it."

Sonali Karmarkar 16:51 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 16:52 [laughs] And I was like, "Oh, God. That's not good." [laughs] Um, but over time I eventually got to a point where brands, like, did start pushing back and we would negotiate back and forth, but I started making amounts of money that I was like, "This is kind of crazy," in a very legitimate lucrative side hustle. And the point where there was almost like a pivot was I had lied to my parents. I, I won't say lied. That's, that's a harsh word. I neglected to share- [laughs] ... that, um, I was doing this, and I was like, "Oh, yes, I'm working my job." My mom was like, "Wow, you, like, seem like really tired all of a sudden, like all the time." And I had let it almost slip a couple times and I was like, "Oh, I'm about to go do, like, an interview for, like, NBC or, like, Yahoo Finance," or like something ridiculous. And I was like, okay, we're nine months in. I'm worried that the channels have started to get so large to a point, like somebody's auntie is gonna see this and tell my mom. And so my mom called me one day and we were chatting and I was like, "Oh yeah, by the way, I have a side hustle. I'm a creator on, you know, all the social media platforms and I'm making a lot of money. But by the way, I've already made $50,000." [laughs] And there was just silence on the phone. And I had, I had to filibuster. Please understand, I had to filibuster-

Sonali Karmarkar 18:06 Yeah

Vivian Tu 18:06 ... because when I told my mom I was leaving Wall Street to go to media, if I, I tried to filibuster too, that didn't work for me. We got into a huge fight, and I was like, "We're about to get into a huge fight again." But there was this pause on the phone, and then my mom goes- Wait, did you just say you made $50,000? And I was like, "Oh, I got her."

Sonali Karmarkar 18:27 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 18:28 I got her. She's not gonna be mad about this. And for me, Your Rich BFF at the beginning was never to be a full-time job. It was just nice to be able to make an extra $50,000. Like, that was money that I was putting towards a down payment on a home. That was money to help pay off bills. That was money that, like, I was gonna use for stuff, like maybe take myself on a really nice vacation, God forbid. But that was a moment where I was like, Your Rich BFF is an actual financial opportunity versus just, like, something I did for fun.

Sonali Karmarkar 19:00 Yeah. That's so funny how you waited to tell your parents. And I feel like that's so relatable too, because you wanna present-

Vivian Tu 19:07 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 19:07 ... like this nice, shiny thing.

Vivian Tu 19:08 Yes. [laughs] Absolutely. And if any of you guys say you wouldn't have done the same thing, you're liars. Like, it is so scary to tell your parents, who have, you know, in many cases sacrificed a lot for you to have the career that you have, that they were never able to have, opportunities available to you, and to be like, "Oh yeah, I, like, make internet videos." Like, that as a career has not really caught on yet with, like, my parents' generation. Like, people don't realize that, like... They did a study and polled children, I believe the ages was, like, 8 to 15, like, what their number one career was, and you know what it was? Over half of them said YouTuber-

Sonali Karmarkar 19:50 Yeah

Vivian Tu 19:50 ... was their number one c- like, please be a plumber. Like, we need electricians, like desperately.

Sonali Karmarkar 19:55 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 19:55 But, like, it is, like, the new horizon, and, you know, tech has absolutely changed our world, but I still kind of had to get my mom on board with that.

Sonali Karmarkar 20:05 Oh, of course.

Vivian Tu 20:05 [laughs]

Sonali Karmarkar 20:06 Um, and I think what's really amazing is that your name that you chose, Your Rich BFFs-

Vivian Tu 20:12 Mm-hmm

Sonali Karmarkar 20:12 ... because it kind of speaks to this community of BFFs, and I think you've done a really good job of building that community over the span, um, that you've had your channels across platforms. Um, how do you ensure that you continue to engage this community of BFFs, and do you use your community to inform your content strategy?

Vivian Tu 20:32 Yeah, 1000%. What I love so much about social media is that it's literally a renewable resource. I make one video, one YouTube, I'm getting hundreds of comments. And of those hundreds of comments, at least I would say 20% of them are questions. And of those 20% questions, only probably a quarter of those are, like, questions that I would answer in a follow-up video, but now I have fodder for the next thing. And so it is really nice that I fostered an environment where people feel comfortable asking those questions. What I say is that social media and the internet is both good and bad in this way. You can hide behind a keyboard, and for some people that means being an absolute horrible person and a troll. The internet's horrific. But it also means you have a level of anonymity to ask questions that you would be too embarrassed to ask your own friends-

Sonali Karmarkar 21:30 Mm

Vivian Tu 21:30 ... your parents, your dad's financial advisor, whatever. Like, people ask me questions and tell me things that they would never tell their best friend. They tell me how much debt they have, they tell me how much they're making, ask me how they can make more. They are asking me questions that they would not be comfortable asking anybody else in their life, and because they are, you know, SoccerPlayer123, they feel comfortable doing that. And even if I don't know what they look like or I've never met them in person, I feel like we have a relationship because I can do that for them.

Sonali Karmarkar 22:00 And I think there's so much to be said. A lot of people feel this sense of shame or privacy when it comes to finance, so it's so nice that people can go and ask you, and then also that you respond. And I feel like that's also such a great content strategy, that you're getting things that people want to see, and you can easily turn that into pieces of content.

Vivian Tu 22:19 I mean, I genuinely feel like I am loud budgeting manifested as a person. Um, I don't know if you guys are as chronically online as I am. I feel like sort of you have to be if you work here. Um, but, like, loud budgeting is essentially, like, what Girl Math wishes it was. Uh, we are suddenly now in a social era where it's cool to talk about money, where it's cool to talk about your finances and your budgeting and the things you're saving for and what realistic boundaries you need to set with that, you know, friend who's got her bachelorette in Cabo, the wedding in Milan. She's got that engagement party you have to go to, the bridal shower. Like, it's suddenly cool to talk about money, and that's the whole point.

Sonali Karmarkar 23:04 Yeah. Um, and I think you also do such a good job of it in your book.

Vivian Tu 23:09 Thanks.

Sonali Karmarkar 23:09 So, um, let's talk about your book. Uh, you just published your book in December, Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life. Can you take us through the process of writing it, and what inspired you to take the leap into the publishing business?

Vivian Tu 23:25 Yeah. So don't ever write a book.

Sonali Karmarkar 23:27 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 23:28 Um, I'm just joking. It- I think the actual pitching of the book and the writing of the book was great. So I, I'll give you the background. Um, I have, uh, a book agent, a literary agent, and I put together a, I wanna say, like, 20 to 30 page, single pa- single-spaced pitch. And this was basically what Rich AF was going to be about, who the target demo was, an intro of, like, what the table of contents looked like, uh, wrote the introduction, all of that stuff. She then shopped it out to a bunch of publishers, and I ended up signing with an imprint for nonfiction books at Penguin Random House. Um, that all went great. And even writing the book was not that hard, because I have a 300-plus single-space Google document that, which by the way, freezes and crashes every single time I open it now.

Sonali Karmarkar 24:21 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 24:22 Um, it's so long. It's absolutely ridiculous. I need to make a new document. But- Every single short-form video, every single long-form video, every single podcast outline that I've ever done lives in this th- this, this is, now I'm saying out loud, I really need to make a backup for this.

Sonali Karmarkar 24:39 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 24:39 Um, it all lives in this document. And so I actually didn't start from zero. Half the book was already written. Um, so I was able to write the book pretty easily. And the part that nobody tells you is that book publishers are not paying you to write the book. [smacks lips] Book publishers are paying you to sell the book. And so then came the two to three-month sprint of trying to push pre-orders of the book, marketing it. Um, I'm very lucky my PR team was able to set up a bunch of interviews. I was on Today, GMA, ABC PrimeTime. Like, I was on all of these shows. Um, but I did not shut up about this book for, like, a solid three months. So shout-out to Google for buying a bunch of copies. Thank you, guys.

Sonali Karmarkar 25:30 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 25:30 Enjoy. Um, we love a corporate book buy. Uh, but it was good. It was really good, and I think it was almost cathartic because there were so many silly stories, but things that I had made mistakes on, i- like, especially in my early 20s, and I was lucky that I learned those things in my early 20s early on because I had a mentor to teach them to me. But, like, there, I have so many friends who are smarter than me. They are surgeons, lawyers, engineers, doctors, uh, you know, like, they don't know these things, and they are all smarter than me. They are better educated than me. They have more degrees than me, and it is really atrocious that they don't know these things. People that smart don't know these things. So I wanted to have this book be that. I wanted to mentor in the way that my rich BFF mentored me.

Sonali Karmarkar 26:21 Yeah. I love the encyclopedia of all the content you've ever created.

Vivian Tu 26:25 Oh, my gosh. That is a single s- source point of failure.

Sonali Karmarkar 26:28 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 26:28 I need to fix that as soon as I leave. [laughs]

Sonali Karmarkar 26:31 Uh, no, but I think for so many people, f- personal finance is something that they put off a lot. So it's nice to have one single place that, in a really fun, easily digestible way, you can kind of figure out, "How can I get started? Where do I go?" Um, and something I found so funny about your book is the dedications. [laughs]

Vivian Tu 26:52 [laughs]

Sonali Karmarkar 26:52 I absolutely love them. For those of you who haven't read it, um, you can just open it up to the dedications. Um, I love the tongue-in-cheek note to the man who told you you were too girly to succeed in finance, and how, as you put it, your book is a love letter to anyone who has ever felt left behind, forgotten, or taken for granted. Um, could you share a little bit more about the story of being too girly and how you're hoping to change that through your book?

Vivian Tu 27:18 Yeah. Um, [smacks lips] when I started at JPMorgan, I was so lucky. My first manager was the only other woman on the team, only other person of color on the team. They really said twofer for both of us. And she took me under her wing probably because she saw a lot of me in herself. Um, she grew up in a very middle-class family, got a full ride to Stanford, you know, obviously incredibly smart, but she had worked in, on Wall Street ever since she graduated. And she made more money mistakes than I even could count because she really didn't have that type of guidance, and I got to avoid 50% of those mistakes because of her. And she was the one b- being like, "Come over here," and, like, clicking the investments for me to purchase in my 401 [k] . And she would tell me how to, [smacks lips] you know, use the corporate catalog to, like, stay at hotels for cheaper, and I was like, "Oh, wow, this is a real hack." Like, I was, I was really staying at hotels that I certainly could not afford. Um, and there was just a level of closeness there that I couldn't replicate, and then it was gone. Um, overnight, the head of my desk, not her, not her boss, not his boss, but this guy up here got let go. Um, oops, sorry. Uh, he got let go. They brought in a new guy. That guy fired 50% of the team. And keep in mind, this is the team that I had interned with, that had hired me. These are people who I'd already curried a year's worth of favor with. Like, I had done special projects, shit that I was not responsible for, for people that I did not report into because I wanted everybody to like me. I wanted to give everybody a reason to want to give me opportunities. [smacks lips] And suddenly it looked like a completely different team overnight, and one that I did not have any sort of goodwill with. And the new manager found out that before I was in trading, I had done a summer in banking and was decent, knew my way around an Excel sheet. And so he was like, "Oh, you know that. Like, do you wanna come work for my right-hand guy?" And when the new head of the desk, after you just watched your old boss's boss get fired, um, asks you a question like that, it's not really a question. It's kind of like a, "Do you still want your job?" And so I was like, "Yes, I would like to kee- I would like to remain gainfully employed, so I'll go work for your guy." And that was the beginning end because he treated me with such disrespect, and he would leer over my shoulder as I would work through an Excel sheet, clean it up, make it right, do all the things he was asking me to do. He would then present it in a meeting and, like, not even be able to present it well 'cause I had built the entire thing, and he didn't even bother to ask me to walk him through it. He just felt like he would be smart enough to understand. And he didn't like anything about me. He didn't like that I was a woman. He didn't like how my nails click-clacked on the keyboard. He didn't like that I would, you know, put a little bit of makeup on in the morning. Like, things that I certainly was not going to stop doing for him. And one day I came into work with a long cardigan on, um, [smacks lips] and he looked at me, [snaps fingers] touched his hands together, and then bowed and said, "Ooh, is that a kimono?" Which by the way, walking HR violation, this man.

Sonali Karmarkar 30:48 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 30:48 Um, but that was kind of just, like, the moment that I needed, and I'm so grateful for that moment. Can you imagine being grateful for that moment? But, like, I'm so grateful because he made who he was abundantly clear to me, and that allowed me to make the decision that I needed to get out of there that day. And so I told my mentor, I was like, "I'm quitting my job right now." She's like, "Don't be an idiot. Don't quit your job right now."

Sonali Karmarkar 31:13 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 31:14 And so she was like, "Just wait. Just wait. We'll talk after work. Just, like, chill." I end up talking to her, and I always say this, like, your network is your net worth. Um, she was like, "Okay, I have a friend who left her job in Wa- at Wall S- in Wall Street, and now she works at a media company. Do you have any interest in chatting with her?" I was like, "I would chat with a brick wall if it meant I could get away from this man."

Sonali Karmarkar 31:37 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 31:37 And so I chatted with that woman, and she ended up becoming my first boss at BuzzFeed. And so I'm grateful that he made me feel so unwelcome, and essentially made it so hard to work underneath him, because without that moment, I don't have this.

Sonali Karmarkar 31:58 Oh, that's such a... Yeah. [claps]

Vivian Tu 32:03 [claps]

Sonali Karmarkar 32:03 That's such an amazing story, and I think it also speaks volumes of how you've then made it your mission to not other people, and include all sorts of different people in the finance narrative.

Vivian Tu 32:16 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 32:16 Because I think this is so common, and so many people experience similar things.

Vivian Tu 32:20 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 32:21 Um, so in your book, you also talk about a rich person versus a broke person mindset-

Vivian Tu 32:26 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 32:26 ... encouraging your audience to emulate how rich people think. Um, can you speak to what this means, and tactics we can use to apply a rich person mindset?

Vivian Tu 32:35 Yeah. Um, I think when people say this, they're like, "Well, yeah, rich people who have money are rich." Like, duh. Um, you can have a ton of money and still have a really broke mindset. Uh, when I say a rich mindset, it means someone who's constantly feeling abundant, someone who is able to think big picture, thinking about growth versus trying to scrimp and save. And so a couple examples of this are, like, rich people are entitled. Um, we know this. We've seen the videos of Karen at the front of the McDonald's line, like, berating an 18-year-old because her fries are cold. We've seen it. I'm not talking about that type of entitlement, but I'm saying rich people understand the value of their business. So they will go, and they will call their credit card company and say, "Hey, I, I got charged a late fee. I've been such a good customer for the past 10 years. Would you mind doing me a favor and waiving this one time?" I guarantee you that late fee's gonna get waived, and anybody in the audience listening can try that as well, and I promise you it gets waived. Um, they understand the value of their business and what they're able to ask for, and I think many of us, as regular people, don't. That's why rich people are such staunch negotiators. I promise you, they're calling their Wi-Fi company, their utilities, their medical, the people who provide them medical services, all of those places, and asking for rebates, asking for discounts, asking for waivers. Like, of course you are doing those things, because it allows you to spend less of your own money. Um, rich people also feel that people at the top are collaboration, not competition.

Sonali Karmarkar 34:18 Mm.

Vivian Tu 34:18 This is something that I struggled with, especially for a very long time, and, like, this is quite a humbling thing to say out loud, but, like, for a while, I felt like other women were my competition. And I was like, "There can only be one young woman junior trader on the desk-

Sonali Karmarkar 34:31 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 34:32 ... and it's going to be me."

Sonali Karmarkar 34:33 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 34:34 And, like, yeah, I think we do get kind of put into that box of, like, the token girl, the token Asian person, the token person of color, you know? It's hard. But what rich people know is that it is way better to have friends than enemies, because once you're at the top, it's lonely at the top. And suddenly when you need a favor, and you've treated everyone with respect and dignity and kindness instead of that com- competitive mindset, somebody's gonna be willing to scratch your back. And the fact that rich people are so willing to be generous and share, I think people are very surprised by that. Because when you see a job listing, and you're not qualified for it, you're like, "Oh, that's a bummer." Rich people see that, and they're like, "I'm gonna stick one of my best friends in this role, and then once they're there, they're going to hire me to be, like, the contractor for this bus-" Like, there's always some sort of schemery happening, but that schemering d- that schemery essentially helps you and your community, your friends, your circle level up all at the same time. So I think there's a lot for us to learn, and there's a lot of negative stuff that we can leave behind. It's kind of like when, you know, you learn how to parent from your parents. You're like, "Okay, this was great, but then this was kind of weird, and I'm not doing that for my kids." It's the same thing, that we can learn a lot, but there's also a lot of behaviors that we should certainly leave behind.

Sonali Karmarkar 36:00 Yeah, and I think it's such a shift in mindset to go to this abundance mindset, because so many of us from middle class households or lower income households grew up with the scarcity mindset.

Vivian Tu 36:11 1,000%. You know, when your parents are talking about sticking cash under the mattress for, you know, the next World War III, like, you may roll your eyes, but when you come from an immigrant background and your parents literally fled a war-torn country, like, that's not, like, out of the realm of reality for them. That's why they're doing that. But, like, that's not your life. That... You're not play- you're not living the same movie anymore. The ending gets to change for you. And on top of that, if you grow up low income and you see your parents, you know, skipping meals so that you can eat or- Taking on an extra shift so you can have a backpack to go to school. Like, there are behaviors that you have internalized that you're like, "I need to be doing these things." But like genuinely, every single person in this room is living a different life than the one that their parents probably lived, and you are allowed to behave differently and learn different things because of those circumstances. And I think frankly, if you spoke to your parents, my guess is that they would want better for you than what they were able to provide and what they were able to do for themselves, and that's the hope, right? Every generation gets better and gets smarter and gets richer. And, um, it's really important for us to understand that we don't have to carry all of that trauma on our backs. It's going to be a much easier and softer life, which we all deserve, if you just kind of let them go.

Sonali Karmarkar 37:38 Yeah. And thinking of kind of building that soft life and personal riches, you describe in your book how everyone has an FU number.

Vivian Tu 37:46 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 37:47 Um, can you elaborate on what this means and tips for everyone to calculate their own?

Vivian Tu 37:51 Yeah. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. Sorry.

Sonali Karmarkar 37:53 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 37:53 Okay, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it.

Sonali Karmarkar 37:54 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 37:55 Um, but your FU number is, like, truly the fun- most fun game to play, and you can do this with, like, a partner, a spouse, a friend, whatever. But everybody just close your eyes and imagine your perfect year. You get to live in your dream home. You get to eat exactly what you wanna eat. You don't have to buy the weird off-brand eggs that taste kinda funny. You get to do whatever you want. You get to take a amount of vacation or travel that you like. You get to purchase the things that you need but also want. You are able to take care of your family, your kids, your chubby English bulldog, Pickles. I see the photos at the lobby downstairs. So cute. I love all of your guys' dogs. Um, okay, now open your eyes. Think about what that year costs you, where you might be. Think about what that year costs you. Now, you can whip out the calculator that my teacher told me would never be in my pocket at all times, and take that number you just thought of and divide it by 0.04. And that, my friends, is your FU number. Because once you have that amount of money invested, that 0.04 represents 4%, and 4% is an incredibly conservative investment return. You can get 4.5, 5% right now from a high-yield savings account, which is virtually risk-free. The F- it's FDA and C- FDIC- IC insured. So there are certainly investment opportunities that you can get way more than 4% at, but anything above that is gravy. Once you have that amount of money invested, you will never have to work for money ever again. Sure, you might still wanna work. You might wanna volunteer your time. You might wanna start a charity. You might want to go, you know, save dolphins, whatever you wanna do. But you don't have to work for money ever again, and you get to work on your own schedule. No one can ever tell you where to be. You will basically have no obligations in your life because your investment returns will pay for your entire lifestyle. It's pretty good. I like to do the math for a bare bones FU number, a middle of the fairway FU number, and a I'm moving to Bora Bora, you will never see me again number.

Sonali Karmarkar 40:19 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 40:20 And it's fun. It's, it truly is fun because I think a lot of us, when it comes down to it, have smaller FU numbers than we previously imagined. Um, unless some of you guys were, like, pricing in a yacht.

Sonali Karmarkar 40:35 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 40:36 In which case, it's gonna be much higher. But, like, for most of us, our FU numbers are closer than we think, and if you can actually just get to your bare bones FU number, you can really downshift in your work life and still work a fulfilling, great job, but you don't have to worry about money ever again, and that is an unbelievable feeling.

Sonali Karmarkar 40:56 Yeah, and I think it's really nice to have this goal to work towards where-

Vivian Tu 41:01 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 41:01 ... as you said, like, you could figure out what's the point in your life you can kinda shift gears. I wanna focus less on money, maybe pick up more, uh, fulfilling work that earns less.

Vivian Tu 41:10 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 41:10 Focus more on life. Um, and then you touched upon investing to kind of help you get to this FU number, and a lot in your book you talk about making your money work hard for you.

Vivian Tu 41:20 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 41:21 Um, can you share what this means and tips you have for investing as a beginner?

Vivian Tu 41:25 Yeah. So when I say make your money work hard for you, I am talking about the overall amount of your income that is from labor versus from investing. So we all think that if we work harder, we can make more, right? Generally, that's what we're told, but there is a fine line of hours you can feasibly work in the day, brainpower or physical labor, before you're like, "Pthththt," right? Your money can work 24/7. It does not need a lunch break. You don't have to provide it benefits. Like, that money is working for you around the clock. And at the beginning of your career, think about your money as a pie chart. Most of your pie chart of where your money is coming from is through labor, and think about labor as red, okay? So it's almost a fully red pie chart, and there's, like, a tiny sliver of blue, and blue can be your investment returns. So you maybe put a couple hundred dollars here, couple hundred dollars there into your, like, 401 [k] that Google matches, and you put some into a Roth IRA or an IRA, whatever. Over time, as you put more and more money into your investments, that blue portion of your pie chart should expand and expand and expand while the amount of money as a percentage of what you're taking home every year for labor should become smaller and smaller and smaller. And the ultimate goal is to overall have a blue pie chart, like an entirely blue pie. And that just means your money is a better money-making tool than your body or your brain, which we know to be true, 'cause we're human beings, we're not robots. Um, and when it comes to investing, you know, I know it can feel super daunting. Everybody has in their hands right now my book, chapter five, I really do walk you through it step by step, like true foundational basics so you actually understand what you're doing. But if we wanna just skip to the end of that chapter, if you are too lazy to figure this out and you're like, "I wanna be rich, but I literally have no desire to learn about any of this," just go invest your money at a robo-advisor. You will take a quick quiz about your money goals, how much you make, how much you have, how old you plan to be when you retire, where you wanna live, what kind of life you wanna have, how much risk you can take, da da da da da, all of these things. Basically like a, you know, a, a, one of those, um, Myers-Briggs tests you get to t- about your entire personality. They will then spit out a portfolio that fits for you, and you will be done in roughly 15 to 30 minutes. And they will then send you that q- same quiz every year or two for you to take again, so it'll continue to rebalance at a regular, you know, interval. That's it. You don't have to worry about it ever again. Sure, maybe you wanna DIY. Great, you can learn more about it, but if you really just wanna leave it with a robo-advisor, it is still a great way to hit those financial goals without spending too much time or effort. And now that technology's made it so easy, there's no reason why anybody in this room should not be taking advantage of it.

Sonali Karmarkar 44:34 Yeah. And I love how you said, like, there's different levels of touch that you can do-

Vivian Tu 44:38 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 44:39 ... and time.

Vivian Tu 44:39 Yeah.

Sonali Karmarkar 44:40 And like, and you really outline it really well in your book how these are the different strategies based on how much time and effort you wanna put in.

Vivian Tu 44:46 Exactly.

Sonali Karmarkar 44:48 Um, so also in your book, um, what I really loved is, uh, there's a whole section that covers family money lending. And as a daughter-

Vivian Tu 44:58 Mm-hmm

Sonali Karmarkar 44:58 ... of immigrants, it's something that resonated so much, this common obligation of children to give back to their family. Um, could you speak to this, the financial challenges it presents children, how to establish healthy boundaries, especially in those cases where children feel so indebted to give back to all their parents sacrificed?

Vivian Tu 45:19 Ugh. Have your parents ever guilted you? Like, "Oh, you know, I f- I, we fled China so you could go to college here," or, you know, "I cooked for you every day." It's like, "Okay, Mom. Like, I didn't ask to be born."

Sonali Karmarkar 45:33 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 45:34 But, um, yeah, it's a real thing, and it doesn't necessarily even have to be in an immigrant family. If you are the first person in your family to, oh, I don't know, work at Google, um, there is a likelihood that you are the highest earning person your family has ever seen. And when that is the case, there are oftentimes expectations that when, um, what is it? Uh, entourage, like when the one guy makes it, he's gotta bring the whole crew with him, and that's great. I love that. We love our old friends, our old family. But especially at the beginning of your career when you are just starting to build that financial foundation, giving up 50% of your income to your family or even, you know, just friends, like, that is going to financially hobble you in a way that you are going to lose out on time, and that is the most valuable resource that any of us have. So my big thing is, is like you can never, ever, hear this, hear this one, ever lend family money. You can only give. And you tell them that there's no expectation that they pay you back. But in your head, you set an annual gift limit, and once that limit's reached, you're done. You're done. You do not give any more money, because when you loan money to family, I promise you there will be a fight. I promise you there's going to be tension. It's going to ruin Thanksgiving. And you're probably never gonna get it back anyway. So I think there are certain healthy boundaries you can set with family giving, and then on top of that, um, setting clear boundaries of, "Hey, I need this money to pay my rent or, you know, do this. I am allowed to want to save up an emergency fund before I send money home," is okay. I know it feels a little uncomfortable, especially saying that to your direct nuclear family, um, but if you don't set those boundaries early, y- it will be like you are working at a company that is a hose going into the bucket, but there will always be a leaky hole at the bottom of that bucket, and you're just never gonna be able to be in a place of where you get to be financially secure. And the best part is if you do set those boundaries early, once you are more a couple years into your career, realistically, you'll have a lot more means to then be able to help them in a more meaningful way than $100 here and $100 there.

Sonali Karmarkar 48:03 Yeah. And I love kind of taking away the emotions from it-

Vivian Tu 48:07 Yeah

Sonali Karmarkar 48:07 ... and establishing this framework, because oftentimes there's so many emotions part of it, so it's hard to kind of separate what you should do versus what you feel like you should do. Um, so okay. So now it's going to be time for questions. So those of you who are live, if you have questions, you can line up at the mics on both sides of the room. Um, and then as people are lining up, we'll also turn to some of our virtual questions from the Dory. Um, so Lauren Paz asked- What advice would you give for folks who are beyond the basics, Berna Annance, Money Out Loud, and consistent with the intermediate, Ramit Sethi, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, but not sure if there's more we should be doing, especially if we like life simple? Also can't wait to read your book.

Vivian Tu 48:57 Um, that is a great question, and I think once you are past the basics, um, and you're at that intermediate level, I think the real emphasis should be placed on maxing out any sort of tax advantages that you're able to get. So this includes things like maxing out your employer-sponsored retirement plan. At Google, I'm assuming you guys get a 401 [k] with a great match, lots of... I mean, there's lots of benefits for working at Google. Come on, I've seen the kitchen.

Sonali Karmarkar 49:25 Yes.

Vivian Tu 49:25 Um, um, doing that, but also maxing out, especially if, you know, I'm making some assumptions here, but if you work at a place like Google, odds are good your income no longer qualifies you to contribute to a Roth IRA, contribute being the key word. You can certainly still have one. I would recommend using a backdoor Roth IRA. Essentially, you put money into an IRA. Instead of taking the tax benefits now, you say, "No, I don't want any tax benefits this year." You roll it immediately over into your Roth IRA, and then you get to have those benefits when you are 59 and a half and decide to start taking withdrawals tax-free. Um, in addition, one thing that I think very few of us talk about, and that I will certainly be chatting about in book number two, is planning for the future. So I don't... Who in here is, like, single? Okay. That's, like, half. Half. Um, but for, you know, filling out your entire life's financial wellness, one of the biggest things that we don't realize is that one of the most important money decisions you make is who you partner up with. And when you choose a mate, uh, you better be getting a prenup.

Sonali Karmarkar 50:39 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 50:39 I'm just saying. Holler. We want prenup. We do, because guess what? If you don't, if you don't make one yourself, you still get one. The government gets to write it. I don't throw the... I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, so, like, I want to write the terms of my prenup. I wanna make sure that on a sunny day, me and my beloved are able to sit down when we love each other so much and determine what happens if the most horrible possible thing happens in our relationship, and I mean that both from a prenup perspective of if we get divorced, but also what happens if one of us dies? What happen if both of us die? What happens to our kid? What happens to the money? How do our parents split that up? What about the house? And these are the things that you should be thinking about as you're building out your perfect life, because you're always gonna want a contingency plan. For context, um, my fiance and I have this paperwork. We just set up a living will. Um, we have a trust where our, you know, uh, apartment would go and, um, the money that we have amassed, a lot of it would be given to charity actually, and a modest amount of it would be given to our families, because neither of our families are ultra wealthy, and we felt that a large sum of money that they may not necessarily know how to manage well could be a bigger harm than a help. Um, you gotta have some of those thoughts and con- conversations, and it certainly is something that will get you to the next level of not just having financial literacy, but having that financial mastery so that you feel really comfortable in your life.

Sonali Karmarkar 52:14 Great. All right.

Speaker 52:17 Hi there. Um, thank you so much for your time today. Before I get into, uh, the question, I just wanted to say both me and my dad are big fans-

Vivian Tu 52:25 [laughs]

Speaker 52:25 So just really appreciate-

Vivian Tu 52:26 Tell Dad I say hi.

Speaker 52:27 I will, yes. Uh, this went right in the family group chat, so thank you.

Vivian Tu 52:31 [laughs]

Speaker 52:32 Um, one thing I did wanna ask is, um, so, you know, I really like your content and as does my family, right? But I could imagine, um, it must be pretty stressful trying to survive in the, uh, content creator landscape, where I'm sure there's a lot of other people making similar content. Um, so I ask this not to know what makes you special, but rather what makes Your Rich BFF special?

Vivian Tu 52:57 Yeah. What makes Your Rich BFF special is that I am able to always be on the cutting edge of that content, because I see it. I see people copying my videos word for word, bar for bar. But guess what? When they're on that, I'm already on the next thing. I'm always keeping up with the trends. I'm always using my community as a renewable resource to figure out what they wanna hear about. And guess what? The people who are copying my content don't have that. They don't have that closeness. They don't have that relationship. They are not sharing about that awkward time that they got stranded in the airport and are crying in Houston. Listen, like, I feel like the reason why my content has hit in a way that a lot of other creators has not is because of that vulnerability, of that community. I don't have followers. I call them my BFFs, and that is why when I'm on tour, people will be like, "Okay, so my best..." Uh, and they'll, like, just start going off.

Sonali Karmarkar 53:53 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 53:54 And I'm like, "Oh, like, this person really thinks that we are friends," and I love that, because it creates a sense of almost loyalty, because you know me and I know you. And so I think the way my content evolves, if you even watched my content from two years ago, a year ago, it looks very different from what my content looks like today, and I promise you my content next year is gonna look wildly different as well. You can't always do the same thing. You always have to be evolving, and if you're not creating original content, you're always gonna be a step behind.

Speaker 54:27 Thank you so much for your time, Vivian.

Vivian Tu 54:29 Of course. Thank you, and thank your dad.

Sonali Karmarkar 54:31 [laughs] All right. So I wish we had more time, but I think this will be the last question.

Speaker 54:39 Hey, Vivian. How you doing? Um, my question kind of, uh, going off of that question, you talk about this idea of like, "Hey, BFFs," and you say it in the videos, obviously in the talks and all. When you have millions of followers, it becomes a little easier, right? To be able to say, "Oh, we've built a community, and you are one of my BFFs." When you're starting off, for those of us that are smaller creators, got like 2,000, 3,000 people-

Vivian Tu 54:57 Yeah

Speaker 54:57 ... looking at this, it's weird if I log on and go, "Hey, BFFs," and it's like-

Vivian Tu 55:00 [laughs]

Speaker 55:01 ... my cousins and friends, right?

Speaker 55:02 [laughs]

Speaker 55:02 How did it feel, right [laughs] ?

Vivian Tu 55:04 [laughs]

Speaker 55:04 How did it feel when you first started off, right? Like, did you just start off with just being like, "Okay, cool. I'm speaking into the black box. I'm just gonna say things. People resonate," or how did that shift? You talk about the content, but what about your approach to the community?

Vivian Tu 55:15 You are still climbing cringe mountain, my dude.

Speaker 55:17 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 55:18 Okay. So, um, I was very much, "Hey, besties," even when I had, you know, a, I was a micro-influencer.

Speaker 55:28 Yeah.

Vivian Tu 55:28 Um, and it was embarrassing. Of course, it was embarrassing. Like, can I tell you the fact that every single social media platform was like, "Hey, do you wanna add every one of your contacts?" And I'm like, "No. No. Do not add contacts."

Speaker 55:41 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 55:41 Like, your friends are gonna see that shit.

Speaker 55:43 Yeah.

Vivian Tu 55:44 And unfortunately... Okay, so hold on. We're gonna make a visual. Okay. This is where we all live. This is the little valley where our village is, okay? And when you try to do something cool that is still very weird and creepy and cringe at first, you are climbing cringe mountain, okay?

Speaker 56:02 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 56:02 And everybody in the village is down here laughing at you 'cause you're here. You're like, "Oh, my God. Look at this loser climbing cringe mountain."

Speaker 56:07 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 56:08 Okay? But at a certain point, you're gonna get to the peak of cringe mountain, okay? The peak cringe. Like, you are gonna be doing-

Speaker 56:14 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 56:14 ... so much embarrassing stuff. I literally had a girl from my high school sent, share my video back to me with the comment, "She's so cringe"-

Speaker 56:24 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 56:24 ... when I was building Your Rich BFF. And I responded to her, and I was like, "Hmm, assuming you meant to send this to somebody else, smiley face."

Speaker 56:32 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 56:32 And she like obviously started backtracking and like apologized, and I was like, "Mm-hmm."

Speaker 56:35 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 56:37 Anyway, you're still on cringe mountain, okay? You're gonna get to the peak of cringe mountain, and suddenly here, you're gonna start getting to do some really cool shit. Like, brands are gonna come knocking. You're gonna get some really cool press pieces. You're gonna get to go to a couple sporting events or fashion shows or whatever, you know, your content is about. You'll, you'll get onto the Food Network, HDTV, whatever your happy is here. And they're no longer gonna be making fun of you because everybody in the village down here making fun of the people trying to climb cringe mountain don't even realize there's an oasis over here-

Speaker 57:08 Mm

Vivian Tu 57:08 ... because they haven't seen it. They haven't climbed cringe mountain for themselves. They have no idea what is even available to them out there because they're too scared and too chicken shit to try, and I commend you for climbing cringe mountain. Because if you want something that is extraordinary or something that is beyond and different from what, you know, a lot of us strive for, it can be so, so isolating. I had no one to talk to about being a creator. None of my fr- Like, all of my friends worked in finance, worked in tech, worked in law, worked in, you know, they were, they had like the good jobs. And for me to even work at like a BuzzFeed and then make internet videos, like everybody thought I was a loser. But at a certain point, people stopped saying that. People started asking me, "Oh, how did you start your YouTube channel? How did, h- how, you know, how are you getting The Today Show to invite you?" And it's like you weren't asking me those questions when I was climbing cringe mountain. It's now that I've summited it, and I'm skiing my way down leisurely.

Speaker 58:10 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 58:10 Like, now you wanna know. Now you wanna call me, and now you wanna talk. The number of people from college who were not nice to me, which by the way, I hold a grudge-

Speaker 58:17 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 58:18 ... who were not nice to me, who are now like, "Hey, girlie, wanna get a coffee?" I'm like, "I literally don't like you."

Speaker 58:22 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 58:23 Like, no, absolutely not. Uh, I would rather sit in silence in my own apartment.

Speaker 58:27 [laughs]

Vivian Tu 58:28 And I just think it's really important for us to support our friends who are in the process of climbing cringe mountain, whether that's, you know, being a creator or starting their own business. Like, we love to shoot people down until they've already succeeded, but like we need to give more support to people who are in their process of success.

Speaker 58:48 Appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, three different metaphors all in one.

Vivian Tu 58:51 Yeah. This is-

Speaker 58:51 Oasis, skiing, mountain, right?

Speaker 58:52 [laughs]

Speaker 58:52 But thank you. It helps a lot.

Vivian Tu 58:53 Of course.

Speaker 58:54 And thank you so much for everything you're doing.

Vivian Tu 58:55 Thank you.

Speaker 58:55 Yeah.

Speaker 58:55 [laughs] [clapping]

Sonali Karmarkar 59:01 Well, I love ending it off as I think the takeaway is we all need to climb cringe mountain.

Vivian Tu 59:05 Climb cringe mountain.

Speaker 59:07 [laughs]

Sonali Karmarkar 59:07 Um, but thank you so much, Vivian, for this incredible talk, and I hope everyone comes away with at least one piece of advice to lead a richer life. And be sure to check out Vivian's new book, Rich AF: The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life.

Speaker 59:24 [laughs]

Sonali Karmarkar 59:24 Oh.

Vivian Tu 59:24 [laughs]

Sonali Karmarkar 59:26 Thank you, everyone. [outro music]