How I Built My Small Business

Farnoosh Torabi is SO MONEY: Mastering Mindset, Wealth, and Financial Freedom

• Season 1 • Episode 49

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Today we’re joined by Farnoosh Torabi, America’s leading personal finance expert who is dedicated to helping others become unapologetically rich.

Farnoosh is an award-winning financial correspondent, television personality, and best-selling author of You’re So Money, A Healthy State of Panic, Psych Yourself Rich, and When She Makes More.

Her Podcast So Money was ranked a Top Female-Hosted Podcast by Entrepreneur Magazine, described as "a Podcast Your Wallet Will Love" by The New York Times, and has been downloaded over 35 million times, earning multiple Webby awards.

She is a former CNBC host and has been featured on NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, and numerous major news and talk shows.

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Farnoosh Torabi:

No one else is in their minds going. She's not enough or she's not worthy. Really, people are too busy. It's not that they don't care about you. It's just that all the voices in your head that are taking up rent-free space in your head that are negative self-talk, just know that nobody else is thinking in that way about you in the capacity that you are, to the extent that you are, that this is mostly all you, if not all you. So you need to again turn inward and quiet the sound and go in there and show up and do the work. It's not something that can be resolved externally.

Anne McGinty:

Welcome to how I Built my Small Business. I'm Anne McGinty, your host, and today we're joined by Farnoosh Torabi, america's leading personal finance expert, who's dedicated to helping others become unapologetically rich. Farnoosh is an award-winning financial correspondent. Farnoosh is an award-winning financial correspondent, television personality and your wallet will love by the New York Times and has been downloaded over 35 million times, earning multiple Webby Awards. She's a former CNBC host and has been featured on NBC's Today Show, abc's Good Morning America and numerous major news outlets and talk shows. You can find a link through to her business in the episode's description.

Anne McGinty:

If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend, follow the show or leave a review to help me reach more listeners. As an indie creator, I'm working with just under $20 per episode to bring you the most insightful, educational and inspiring stories from entrepreneurs who are out there making it happen. Take a moment to explore the other episodes in the lineup. Each one offers a unique story and it's my hope that something here resonates with you. Let's get started. Thank you to our listeners for being here today. Farnoosh, thanks for coming on the show. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me so going back into your childhood. What was your parents' philosophy about money and the lessons that stuck with you.

Farnoosh Torabi:

Well, my parents are immigrants from Iran and they came here in the late seventies. I was born in 1980. I was an only child for a while. My brother didn't arrive until I was about 10 and a half, and so I was very much a partner in crime with my parents as they were trying to build their American dream in the eighties and they believed that money was not taboo. We talked about it a lot. We talked about it at the dinner table, we talked about it in the car. You have to remember.

Farnoosh Torabi:

My parents are from another culture where I think I would say generally in the Middle East, money is not as forbidden to speak about. We like to negotiate, we like to ask questions about money. It's a different culture, and so I'm very grateful that I had that immersive experience with my family. That's not to say that we didn't have issues. My parents didn't fight about money. They absolutely did.

Farnoosh Torabi:

There was a tug of war within their marriage around money. That I think is universal to some extent, which is not a cultural thing, but it's just a gender thing, where my dad was the breadwinner, my mother was the homemaker for a while and the economics was very much tipped in my father's sort of domain and that resulted in a lot of disputes and arguments and I again, as like sort of the only child my parents were also quite young, I was just around for a lot of that and witnessed that and I think that also informed my adult relationship with money and that was a beginning lesson in the importance of creating financial independence, financial autonomy, before and during being in a relationship.

Anne McGinty:

Oh, that's very interesting. I didn't know where you're going to say it impacted you as an adult. Well, so now, how would you describe your relationship with money? Is it healthy?

Farnoosh Torabi:

It better be right. I built a career helping others feel empowered with and about money and I think, like everybody, I have my moments. I'm an entrepreneur and I think there are unique financial experiences as a small business owner right that there is this sometimes like scarcity mindset shows up right when you're worried about your future. There isn't a consistent paycheck. Your financial success is really entirely based on how strategic you are, how hard you work and all of that, and I've been up for the task for a long time. But there are seasons where I start to get a little worried and I catch myself.

Farnoosh Torabi:

I think it's normal for all of us to feel sometimes disempowered, disenchanted. Think it's normal for all of us to feel sometimes disempowered, disenchanted, but it's important to catch ourselves in those moments and remember that money is just a tool. It's here to serve us, but it's our job to sort of assign it a role, and that we all deserve to be financially independent. And I'm speaking now specifically to the women in your audience who may have grown up not feeling as though money was an area that they had permission to want to learn about, to want to have right this idea that I want to be rich, I want to be financially successful is a narrative that I think a lot of times young boys and men, it's like inherent to them. It's like, of course, obviously because society expects them to become breadwinners and provide financially, and it's not so much the expectation of women, and so we don't give ourselves that expectation either that we should and could want for money. So I just want to put that out there as well.

Anne McGinty:

So I just want to put that out there as well. Yeah, and so is this part of the reason why you decided to make a career out of financial literacy. Like when did you decide that it was time to start a business educating people on personal finance?

Farnoosh Torabi:

It appeared to me pretty quickly. Just to go back a little bit more, you know, as we're all kind of growing up and figuring out what I want to be when I grow up, I think I always wanted to be a communicator, be a storyteller. I always wanted to be in a service industry, I wanted to help, I wanted to guide, and journalism for me felt very natural, it felt like the right fit, like all the stars were aligning. Pursuing journalism. It's a field where it's important to like identify a problem, it's solve it, find an audience, tell a story, give information and communicate.

Farnoosh Torabi:

So, boom, I had like my dream career and then, as I got into it pretty early on, in my first job in fact, as a financial journalist, I realized just how underserved the market is when it comes to young people and women and anyone who isn't kind of the traditional audience for financial advice and you can guess it's a lot of people and I myself too felt like I didn't have anyone that was communicating to me, for me, and so I realized just a void in the market and, being also within the trenches of that audience, right as a young person, as a woman, I was invested in learning for myself and figured well. Since I have this incredible platform and ability to reach people and talk to them and get answers, let's do this. Let's create a career around empowering other people through information and through advice about money, so that they can go and have everything they deserve.

Anne McGinty:

So then, how did you do that? How did you make the pivot happen?

Farnoosh Torabi:

Well, first it began working in traditional media as a journalist and going to audiences through my writing through television. I worked in a variety of mediums I worked in magazines, I worked at a news station, I worked in digital and then I got laid off in 2009. And as so many pivots begin is like when someone tells you you are forced to make a pivot, like there is actually no option here, I can't go back to my job, and so in that moment, I had to make a decision, and I didn't make it right away and I gave myself permission to be sad for a while and commiserate. It's not a good feeling, right, being laid off, and that's. I empathize with everybody who gets laid off and, unfortunately, some of my friends have gotten laid off recently, and while part of me wants to say congratulations to them, because I think that it's only going to lead to good things, I also want to let them hold space for that feeling of sadness, because it's a grievance, right, you're departing from a life that maybe you weren't ready to. So it was 2009 for me, which, at the time, if you remember, there weren't a lot of jobs being handed out at the time and, in some ways, while I think part of me always wanted to go out and strike out on my own. The timing also forced me to, so it was a kick in the pants that ended up being really, really good for me. But I realized I have everything it takes. I have the relationships, the resources, the ambition, and the market is still there. Even though maybe I don't have the job with the title and the salary, the audience is still there, wanting this information, and I had written a book at that point as well, so I had had developed a platform beyond working within the media world For a company. I had my own intellectual property, so I felt like I had all the ingredients and resources to strike out on my own, and I just did.

Farnoosh Torabi:

It was 2009. I incorporated. I decided I'm going to continue to build on the momentum that I built in traditional media, but doing it for myself and directly for my audience. And so I wrote more books. I launched a podcast, I started to speak more on stages, I started doing more television work. I had a show with CNBC, I was a columnist for Oprah and my podcast is turning 10 years old.

Farnoosh Torabi:

I've written four books. So every year, I feel like my ambition is to try to find a new way or a creative way to continue to make an impact, and whether that's making an impact through another book or something special on the podcast or committing more to speaking, you know that's sort of for me to decide, but that's what keeps me going. I think that's always an exciting thing to figure out and part of it is like what I want to do, but I think part of it is also trying to see where the world is going and headed and where my audience is going and what they need. And trying to find where those two circles overlap is where I like to show up over the years.

Anne McGinty:

It sounds like you've found some real purpose in this journey, and I know that there are a large number of Americans at least and I don't know what the stats are internationally but who really struggle with getting ahead financially. I think I read a stat somewhere that said over 50% of Americans have less than $1,500 in savings. Oh yeah, what do you think about that Like? What do you think is the root cause of this problem?

Farnoosh Torabi:

I think it's a bunch of things. I think if you had asked me this question 10 years ago, before the pandemic, before 2020, before we had this sort of cultural and racial reckoning in our country and systemic reckoning, I think I'd say, well, if people could just have more discipline, if we could just learn to live within our means, and absolutely that has a lot to do with it still, but I think that we have to also hold accountable our government, our systems and the limitations that are not within our control. It does influence our ability to get ahead, whether it's because you borrowed an incredible amount of money to go to college, because you were sold a false bill of goods right, I understand that maybe there should have been sort of a calculation like, well, should I take out $100,000 in the student loan debt to get this degree? And I think that we as a society have failed, right, a lot of these, especially young adults, and we have sold them in some in part, a false bill of goods. And if you just sort of go to college, even if it means leveraging a lot of your life and that you're going to get the job and you're going to be able to buy the house, but we don't account for things like massive inflation and that the cost of living is rising exponentially, right? So like even just the cost of a home, the cost of milk, the cost of a degree, it's all rising faster than inflation, than standard inflation. And so we've been unfair to a younger generation in telling them that if you just do things in this traditional way, that you too can have everything that you want. That's not the whole story, right. A lot of times it's luck, a lot of times it's you were in the right place at the right time, sometimes it is all your hard work, and other times it's a mixture of things.

Farnoosh Torabi:

As I write in my book, a Healthy State of Panic, that we recognize what those limitations are and maybe even create our own blueprint. Right, knowing what the limitations are externally, it's not to say sorry, you can't have that life that you want, but it's maybe about trying to figure out how to re-engineer your blueprint, your map, to get there. Maybe it takes a little bit longer, maybe it means making some trade-offs you weren't prepared for. And it also means holding our policymakers accountable right, voting in the right ways and not letting our employers either get off the hook, right? So if you've only been getting a standard raise every year or no raise, or if you've been burnt out at work and you haven't seen financial benefits from that, I think that you need to have a conversation with your employer, right?

Farnoosh Torabi:

So much of our livelihood stems from how we work and where we work. It's a laundry list of reasons. It starts with a lack of financial literacy, which is also something that our country is really behind on. We're not making this a requirement in schools federally. Some schools at the state level and local level are doing great work, but why aren't we requiring this of our high school graduates, I don't know. And then we expect them to understand how to manage a student loan.

Anne McGinty:

Yeah, I have always wondered the same thing why aren't they teaching personal finance to younger children and also personal development skills? My first day at college, there was a credit card table in the hallway and they were giving people credit cards with fill in the blank how much credit you want on this card, and the person in front of me put 30 or $40,000. And I was just like Whoa, wow.

Farnoosh Torabi:

Whoa, what year was this this?

Anne McGinty:

this is. This can't happen. It can't happen now. So I graduated from high school in 99. So you and I were about the same age.

Farnoosh Torabi:

Yeah, I remember that too. I remember going to campus at Penn State and all of the different credit card tables, and I think I graduated with a variety of credit cards. I only realized when I pulled my credit report for the first time in my early 20s and realized I have all these dormant credit cards and, luckily, one silver lining from the Great Recession in 2009 was that there were more consumer protection laws that came about, one of which was the CARD Act, which prohibits financial institutions from directly marketing to people under the age of, I think, 21, or even being present on college campuses. You can no longer have a table on College Avenue or be on campus marketing your credit products, your banking products, so I think that's a good thing.

Anne McGinty:

It is a good thing. I kind of wish they would also tackle the other problem, which is just the education, as you're saying, right. So what are your thoughts then about college for your kids, like, do you see the current cost of college education worth the money?

Farnoosh Torabi:

No, In a short answer. No, I just don't. I'm sorry, and I don't know what it is going to take to fix this broken system called the cost of college. I think that there are ways around it, but the sticker prices that these colleges are asking, yeah, there's a lot that you benefit from when you go to college and still, to this day, those with college degrees over the long run earn more than those that don't have college degrees. They have more job options, but the world is changing really rapidly and I think that this idea of higher education can be achieved in many ways, and higher education can mean going to a four-year institution, college institution. It can mean getting a vocational degree. It can mean getting skilled in AI. It can mean getting trained in UX design, which is not a four-year college degree. Right, it's like a six-week boot camp at a place near your home and you don't need to go and get a second apartment or live on campus. Right, it's like a six-week bootcamp at a place near your home and you don't need to go and get a second apartment or live on campus, right? There's a lot of ways to figure out how to advance your career using education, and I think that, again that false bill of goods that going to a four-year college and necessarily paying what they're asking for is the best way or the only way, I think is incorrect, and that's a piece of the literacy that I think young people need and their parents so for us.

Farnoosh Torabi:

My husband and I both went to college. I went to grad school. I come from a family of people who really emphasize education. My dad has a PhD, so I really value higher education, but I'm not going to be strict about how my kids achieve that. I think it's more important for us to have conversations at home about what is the impact they want to make in the world, what do they want to learn, what is their passion? How do they want to be in service, and then figuring out the best way to get there in terms of where they go and what they're paying as well.

Farnoosh Torabi:

My father, even though we were big on education growing up, he was very insistent on college, providing an ROI, a return on your investment. So I did get into other schools that I didn't go to because they were too expensive and they were fancier schools, but they would have required taking on student loan debt. And my father just said well, what other options do you have? And I did have a great other option. Was it my first choice?

Farnoosh Torabi:

But it was a viable option called Penn State, and we were living in Pennsylvania at the time. So I qualified for in-state tuition Plus I got a little bit of a scholarship. So it was the sort of thing where my parents could cashflow that out of their salaries and as opposed to them taking on debt or I taking on debt. So it wasn't at the time my favorite idea, but I did it and I'm so grateful that someone in my family, someone in my orbit, had the foresight and control to say you really can't and shouldn't do this, because it can be heartbreaking right To tell a young person that going to X school is going to solve all your life's dreams, and I again think that that can be true to an extent, but not if you're going there and then leaving that school with six figures worth of debt and your degree is not plugging you into a job or a career path that's going to allow you to pay that down responsibly on time.

Farnoosh Torabi:

And so now you've just derailed in many ways your ability to advance in your life because you can't buy a car, you can barely rent an apartment, right, and so I just think it's important to do the math which so few parents and college goers do.

Anne McGinty:

I think you're very right. It's emotional in this country and I'm the daughter of immigrants as well, so my parents also emphasize that ROI, which is logical. I mean, that is what you are paying for the degree for. So people who are now in like their twenties, thirties, forties anyone that's listening in what are you seeing as the most significant financial mistakes that people make that are preventing them from getting ahead with their money?

Farnoosh Torabi:

I think it's not having a plan. It's the first step we often skip and we think that we're not ready to make a plan until we have all the money and we're out of the debt. But guess what? You need a plan for your debt, you need a plan for your budget, you need a plan for your retirement, and I think there's a variety of plans. So it's maybe not just one big plan, but just having an understanding of what your values are, anchoring your financial directionality in that you know. So, whether that's like I come out of college and in five years I know that I want to start a business or I want to relocate, or I want to get married, so these are important goals and these are the goals that can then inform how you spend, how you save, your investing strategy, your debt payoff strategy. So it's really that very sort of baseline figuring out what is important to me, what are my values, and I think that often those in their 20s, they race past that, because it's a lot of times people telling them what they should want and what they should need, right.

Farnoosh Torabi:

So we're listening, we're being influenced and we don't feel, or we didn't even think, that our opinion could matter and we're also scared, right, because what if we want to do something that's not culturally acceptable or it's counterculture?

Farnoosh Torabi:

So everybody in your family did it this way, you want to do it that way, and that's scary. So we, rather than facing it, we ignore that desire and we just sort of go with the herd. When you look at sort of the psychology of money, the herd mentality is often what derails so many people from financial success and also just life success and career success. Right, it's this idea that I have to do things the way that the culture has determined, and that culture is could be like the media culture, your friend culture, your family culture or just the voices in your head, culture, the way that we've been raised and the messages that we've gotten over the years. And I think that if you can get a grasp on that and look, you're going to make mistakes along the way. It's not like all your financial choices will fall into place, but it's an important first step because it will help you find clarity in how you spend and save and think about money.

Anne McGinty:

Essentially, it sounds like you're saying that people should go internal and evaluate what it is that they value in their own life and kind of quiet the noise around them.

Farnoosh Torabi:

Yes, yeah, yes, easier said than done, but yes, it is but it's the work that you need, and I think this is actually good news. I'm not giving you any financial advice here. I'm giving you sort of personal advice. We're all able to do this. This is not requiring a course. This is not requiring money. It's just getting, like you said, quiet and figuring out who your core group of people that you can trust are, and I mean as simple as just muting on social media. That's something that, after this podcast, we can all do. I did, I did something like that this morning when I was just getting fed too much from this one particular influencer and I wasn't ready for it anymore and I was like done, I'm not unfollowing, but I'm muting because I feel like it's giving me too much information that I can't manage right now. I can't hold space for this advice right now.

Anne McGinty:

It's not where I'm at, that's all of us I mean adults, children, teenagers we've all got too many inputs coming our way. So, with your kids, how have you begun teaching them lessons about money, Like what is your philosophy on allowance chores? Is it working? What are you hoping that they get from being your child?

Farnoosh Torabi:

Well, it's funny, my son or maybe it was my daughter, I can't remember which one said the other day said Mommy, you're obsessed with money. And I was a little nervous about that because I thought, well, what are they? And so I always say to parents, when your child brings up something financial to you whether it's what my son said, or they say, well, how much money do you make, or are we rich? Something that unsettles you rather than comment, ask them more questions, because there's probably something behind that curiosity that you haven't picked up on which often is reassuring, I think, to parents. When I asked my son or maybe it was both of them they cornered me. And I think to parents, like, when I asked my son or maybe it was both of them they cornered me. And I said why do you say that? I'll tell you my fear, which they were going to say, because you're always counting your money, you're always on your bank website, things that I don't necessarily think are healthy associations with money. And they said well, you wrote all these books about money, you have a podcast about money. Your podcast is called so Money.

Farnoosh Torabi:

I was like, oh, they're saying that I'm focused on money in my career. And so I just I said what they said to me back to them, but in my language, right. I was like, yes, it's true, I think money is important and I've dedicated my career to teaching people about money. So I've got books and I've got a podcast. So I guess I'm obsessed, but it's a healthy obsession. I'm helping people. I guess I just care too much about helping people with their money. Okay, all right.

Farnoosh Torabi:

So moving on, I felt like I got out of that one, but I guess that's the first thing is that when my kids ask questions about money and they've asked me all sorts of questions I don't shut them down, I engage, I foster the curiosity and I think that when I talk to adults about their money memories growing up and their negative associations with money and where it came from, it's often because they felt they grew up in a home where they could not talk about money. They were literally told it is not polite, it is rude, what kind of question is that? I remember Fran Leibovitz, who you know she's a famous New Yorker writer and she's in her seventies now, so she grew up in a different era, but she tells this famous story about growing up and asking her mother how much her father made and her mother slapping her across the face. So that's a different era. But I don't think that is a singular event. Like I think that that maybe parents aren't slapping their kids across the face. But you know, metaphorically, when you ignore your kid or you're like that's a silly question, you are dismissing them and that stings and that is what ends up showing up for them when they're adults, when they're curious about money and now the stakes are higher. Right, they really need to know, because they are about to take on a loan or they're about to enter into a relationship and they need to talk about money with their partner and they freeze because they're worried about the reaction and the judgment. So that's number one.

Farnoosh Torabi:

We do have an allowance system. It's kind of a squeaky wheel in my house, like it's just, it's rickety, we go in strong and then there are weeks where it all falls apart and then I'm patching things together. But I do think that, on allowance, this idea that you're paying your kids for work at home is healthy, and I know there's a divide around chores versus what is work right, like some parents are like I don't want to pay my kid to make their bed or clear the dishes, because they should do that. It's part of being part of our household, it should be expected of them, and that's cool. You decide this is the beauty of the allowance parents. You can design it whatever it is it could be.

Farnoosh Torabi:

Some parents will do projects. So, rather than chores, they'll say look, you want to make money because you have all these wants now and it's not your birthday and it's not the holidays, and you want something in between. That's fine. You have to use your money and you're going to earn it. Go around the house, identify some problems, like, let's say, the Tupperware drawer is a mess, or mom's filing cabinet is a mess, or the basement is a mess. So come to me with a plan, a project plan. How much you want to charge for this? What's the timeline? And now you're raising entrepreneurs right, you're raising problem solvers and you're raising kids who are being trained in how to kind of make a case present, attach a dollar sign to a project. I think that's brilliant. I think we're going to do all of it, all of the above, in our house eventually.

Farnoosh Torabi:

But right now they have a chore chart.

Farnoosh Torabi:

They get paid $2 for every year of age and I get partially in cash and mostly in an automatic account that is attached to my account, because one thing that we establish with the allowance is that 60% of it, 70% of it will automatically get saved. They're not making this money so that it can escape their fingers right away. A little bit of that if they want $5 a week, but the rest goes into savings and they have to wait to be able to crack open that safe. They can't just like use it at any time. So there are parameters that we've decided as a family, that it's rooted in the values that I wanna teach. I have to almost force them to learn the benefits of saving. You'll learn a lot about your kids along the way, like I've learned that my daughter she gets it and she's okay with delaying gratification. She likes to save. My son wants for a lot and wants that instant gratification is more impulse driven, and so you know we have different conversations and different, maybe even rules for each kid around around money.

Anne McGinty:

I like that suggestion of having them come up with problems. It actually reminds me of growing up. My parents did that. Yeah, check this drawer, check that drawer, let me know what needs to be done. That's a great idea and I like the entrepreneurial mindset of it. So, aside from your business, how do you allocate your own funds when you invest?

Farnoosh Torabi:

I commit to maxing out everything I can max out. For example, I have a SEP IRA, which is a retirement account for self-employed folks. It's similar to a 401k but the maximum contribution is much higher than a 401k and my accountant always insists that I max it out and knock on wood, every year I've been able to, and every year the limit goes up and every year I hit that limit. That alone will get me pretty far in retirement. But additionally we've supplemented that with a joint investment account, a brokerage account. So he has his workplace 401k, I have my business retirement account and then together we also have a brokerage account. That is not retirement specific but it's extra. And it's where I knew that I didn't need this money for at least five to 10 years so I could invest it, I could take that risk, and it comes in handy. It gives us a sigh of relief just to know, gosh, if I have a slow year or he gets laid off, we have this, that, if not, we just keep contributing and then it'll help us out in retirement or when our kids are older. Maybe it's going to help them. But I would say the rate at which I'm investing for our future retirement et cetera is about 20% of our income. And then separately we invest for college, which I know we talked about.

Farnoosh Torabi:

And the good thing about the 529, which is where we invest is that over the years it has become more flexible. So it was very strict in the early stages where it was like strictly for college, and now it's expanded where you can invest and that money can be used for other kinds of higher ed, even primary school education. So by middle school we decide we want to send our kids to high school private. We could pull from the 529 for that and whatever you don't use if you don't want to roll it over into another child's account or another beneficiary's account I think it's like 35,000 of that you can roll into a Roth IRA over the course of five years, which is great.

Farnoosh Torabi:

So that, knowing that, I don't feel bad about overfunding it and hopefully I am overfunding it, hopefully I'm not falling short Again. I have to plan for college rising at a six to 7% annual rate every year and I revisited our savings rate and I realized we might have a shortfall if our kids want to go the sort of traditional four-year private school route. So we increased that a little bit this year just to err on the side of caution, and also maybe a market decline. And my son is about 10 years away from college, so we have time. But I just started to get a little suspicious of the math. I was like we set this up so we thought college was going to be X by 18 years old, and now I feel like that's where it's at now, because the rate of increase has just been crazy and who could have imagined Right?

Anne McGinty:

It's astronomical and I remember when they made that plan where you could convert a 529k plan into a Roth and that is a huge, huge benefit to anybody that's out there. So I just have a couple questions. I know we have to wrap up shortly here. You've been running your business now for it looks like about 15 years or so. What advice would you give for aspiring entrepreneurs that you've learned in your journey?

Farnoosh Torabi:

Your relationships really matter Really. I think that it's a long game, and so treating every relationship like gold is really important. So what I mean by that is really be proactive, show up, follow up, do the work, go the extra mile. I have found that those investments I made in really fortifying relationships early on in my career it has been an incredible ROI. To this day, I am still getting work and working with people that I worked with 10 years ago, 15 years ago, eight years ago, and I think it's not just because I'm good at what I do. I think it's really because we have a good working relationship. They trust me, they know I work with integrity, they know that I'm values driven and I'm not transactional. So I think that it's not a quick return, but it is the sort of thing that if you're looking to build a sustainable, long-term business, especially one in the thought leadership space, in the content space, any space really but I can speak for myself that it has been invaluable.

Farnoosh Torabi:

Before I became an entrepreneur, I remember leaving to step into my next job and at my goodbye party I remember someone said you've been the sort of colleague that everyone just likes to work with. It's like, yes, we have our differences and, yes, we don't always see eye to eye, but you're collaborative, you're someone we always want to go back to and I think it was the highest compliment. I'm not here to burn bridges, I'm not here to compete. I'm just here to do good work and find ways to collaborate and that's it Like. I just think that, at the end of the day, what could be more important?

Farnoosh Torabi:

I also know that when you work with people in one capacity, people move on right.

Farnoosh Torabi:

They go to their next company and their next company and their next venture, and what they take with them are their relationships and their experiences. And if they have high association, positive association, with you and they want to show up at that next job and deliver, they're going to want to work with you because you make them look good, right, you're a sure bet, and I remember this great piece of advice I got from a guest on my podcast so Money, and she said that, as an entrepreneur, when you're thinking about scaling, think less about market share and think more about mind share, which means my goal is to create as many positive associations for my brand in people's minds period, and so wherever you show up, however you show up. Just keep that in mind. It's not about getting all these products on the shelves. That's a good thing, but it has to also mean that the association with that product is good and healthy and positive, and that all stems from how you operate and your relationships. So that's my advice.

Anne McGinty:

And that also is just kind of like the true ticket to happiness and fulfillment. It is a much better way to navigate the world if you're connecting with people and you're not just making everything so transactional. It feels empty when it's transactional and it feels more fulfilling when it's about more than that.

Farnoosh Torabi:

And I think these days you will stand out when you are that person. I forget that people can be this way, you know, because I think I've experienced so much of the transactional from being out in the world. When someone comes to me and they just want to be curious and helpful, I like don't know whether to trust this person. But they're really coming from a good place, right, and typically they're like an older school mentality, right Before we had the internet or everything was like email and digital and instant and you could find all your answers and chat, gpt, and I think that there was an old guard in the world of business that I'm Gen X, gen Y, I'm right on the border. I know what life was like before the internet when you had to like pound the pavement, knock on doors, make phone calls, and there is a talent that you develop in the way that you communicate, in your listening skills, in your patience and bringing that to the modern world. It can be a superpower.

Anne McGinty:

Yeah, I wish for it almost every single day with my kids and just in the world. Well, so just for a final question here, and this one is not really business related or finance related. It's more just kind of like if you could go back and talk to yourself when you were in your early twenties, sit across the table from yourself, what life wisdom would you give yourself that you haven't already given?

Farnoosh Torabi:

I would say that whatever fear you are having and I was very scared in my twenties. I wrote a whole book about it, a Healthy State of Panic. I had a lot of fear growing up and it came into my young adult life I would say, whatever fear you have about your worthiness in a room right, I think I had a lot of insecurity around whether I deserved or I had earned my right to speak up, to have an opportunity to be in the room that no one else is concerned about you actually, no one else is in their minds going. She's not enough or she's not worthy.

Farnoosh Torabi:

Really, people are too busy. It's not that they don't care about you, it's just that all the voices in your head that are taking up rent-free space in your head, that are negative self-talk, just know that nobody else is thinking in that way about you in the capacity that you are to the extent you know. Just know that nobody else is thinking in that way about you in the capacity that you are to the extent that you are, that this is mostly all you, if not all you. So you need to again turn inward and quiet the sound and go in there and show up and do the work and you will blow them away because they are not expecting failure and most people want to be helpful.

Farnoosh Torabi:

I think some people don't, and I think most people do want to be helpful and I don't think I was trustful of that. I think I was very skeptical because, again, I was put into a lot of positions young, early, and that was a great fortune that I was given these opportunities young and early to be in newsrooms and have so much like power in my jobs. I mean, there were people that kind of raised their eyebrows, but I just wish I had had more of an understanding of actually how people think. And the truth is most people don't care as much about whatever's going on in your head as you are. So just deal with it. It's not something that can be resolved externally.

Anne McGinty:

Yeah, it's so true, and it just reminds me of a lot of what we talk about at our house right now. Yeah, With you know, 13, 11 and nine year olds. We literally just had this conversation yesterday.

Farnoosh Torabi:

Yeah, I tell my son he's like oh, this is the worst, or I'm the worst, I'm so dumb when he can't get a homework right and I'll be like, if that's what you think, then that's what you are. I said he's probably getting tired of me saying this. But then I caught him in the act the other day. His sister was going through a spiral of like oh, I can't get this, I'm so stupid. And he goes if that's what you think, that's what you are. And I said you listened, he goes, that's what mom says.

Anne McGinty:

I was like, oh my God, hallelujah, my work is done. That is amazing. Yeah Well, farnoosh, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story and what you know with us. Thank you so much.

Farnoosh Torabi:

It was my honor and you ask great questions. Thank you so much. It was my honor and you asked great questions.

Anne McGinty:

It was so fun to be here. Today's key takeaways let's make money a less taboo topic at home. When your children have questions about money, don't shy away. Use it as a chance to foster curiosity. Have open conversations about the impact you want to make in the world, your passions and interests. Encourage them to see money as a tool, not a taboo. If they want to earn, ask them to find a problem around the house and come up with a project plan. This approach teaches an entrepreneurial mindset. Small business owners face additional unique financial experiences. Sometimes scarcity mindset shows up. So in times like this, remember money is just a tool. It's here to serve us, but it's our job to assign it a role.

Anne McGinty:

If you've recently been laid off or faced a career setback, it can feel like grief. Allow yourself to feel all the emotions, but consider this a moment to reflect on what's next. Ask yourself what skills do I have? What could I create that the world needs? And stay open to new directions when it comes to education. Think carefully about the return on investment Before taking on debt. Ask how long will it take to pay this off? What will my payments look like when I graduate? Do the math so you can confidently manage your future finances, from rent to car payments.

Anne McGinty:

We often feel pressure to do things the way society expects the herd mentality. Spend some time defining your values, knowing what truly matters to you, and let that anchor your financial decisions. Your relationships are one of the greatest assets in your career and life. Be proactive, show up, follow up and go the extra mile. Be the type of colleague that everyone likes to work with. Build trust early on with integrity, focusing on connection rather than transaction and collaboration over competition, to create positive associations with others. Remember, when people leave jobs, they take their connections with them.

Anne McGinty:

Finally, whatever doubts you have about your worthiness, know that nobody else is likely thinking them. It's often all in our own heads. Negative self-talk is our biggest enemy. This is life's work to turn inward, quiet the noise and understand that true worth can't come from external validation. That's it for today. As you may remember from my host introduction, which was the 22nd episode, I'll be wrapping up season one in the middle of November because I won't be releasing any new episodes during the holiday season, but I am already working on recording episodes for season two. Next week's episode is with John Kilcullen, the creator of the For Dummies series, as we enter the holiday season, remember to take some deep breaths and slow down. Have appreciation for those in your life, gratitude for the simple things, and choose peace and kindness in your interactions. Have a great day.

People on this episode

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Anne McGinty

Host
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Farnoosh Torabi

Guest