2021The Financial Alchemist
Interview by Mike Nicholls | Edited by Louis Rawlins
Tonya Rapley is an internationally recognized millennial money expert, mom-preneur, and founder of the award-winning site, My Fab Finance. She is the author of the Amazon best-seller, The Money Manual: A Practical Guide To Help You Succeed on Your Financial Journey and co-host of the Colorful Lives podcast. Tonya has appeared as a financial expert on Good Morning America Strahan & Sara and CNN. She is co-host of the award winning series Going From Broke, executive produced by Ashton Kutcher. Her work has been featured in Forbes, The Washington Post, Glamour, Essence, Business Insider, Vogue and more, making a powerful impact on the financial lives of audiences of all ages.
In this conversation with Mike Nicholls, Tonya talks about her journey, helping people change their money storms and her vision for the Black liberation.
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Mike Nicholls: I’m really excited about this conversation. When I first heard you several years ago, I didn’t remember your name, but then when I realized the Wealth issue was gonna happen, I was like, “Yo, I gotta find her.” So I went to Twitter and tweeted, “Who was that woman talking about finances on The Combat Jack Show podcast?” And then the producers responded back and you chimed in too. So because of Black Twitter, we’re here!
Tonya Rapley: How amazing.
Let’s start at the beginning. When was the first time you put money in a savings account?
I didn’t put money in a savings account until I was going off to college and I received money for graduation. And then that money was quickly used. My parents had me put money towards my first car, so that money went towards my first car. Other than that, I had my first job at fifteen but all my money went to buying Jordans and getting my nails done. It wasn’t till I was getting ready to go to college that I started putting money into a savings account.
Back then, did you have any money heroes? Anybody that you were inspired by in terms of how they moved, within wealth?
Honestly, in my life I was always surrounded by people who were middle class –folks who did relatively well – but no one who was really breaking the pack and doin’ it, except for my uncle and his wife.
As far as wealth heroes, I didn’t have many that I knew. It was reading Black Enterprise magazine and these people who own companies and everything else, but I didn’t know them intimately. Growing up, I knew I wanted to have money and be comfortable with money, I just didn’t know the path because I was surrounded by people who went to work every day and made a decent living, but no one who was really “doing it.” It wasn’t clear to me until I moved to New York City and started interacting with people who were making money when I realized, “Okay, these are everyday people. Let’s figure this out.”
When I started My Fab Finance, I was at a conference and I had my light bulb moment that, “This is attainable for you too.” A woman was talking about how much she had made that year. She had made $35,000 blogging. And at that point, I was making about $35,000 a year at my non-profit, and I said, “Wait, she made my salary in a month?!” [exclaims] “Game over. Let’s figure this out. I don’t need the cheat codes, but give me a code.” So it’s been a series of unlockings for me.
It felt like your breakthrough was that conference and that was the moment where you got going. In your journey to building wealth, what was your approach?
When I moved to New York City, I had a music blog called The Eargasm. My goal was to highlight and break unknown artists kind of like Pigeons & Planes or Ashley Outrageous. So that was my goal and it didn’t make money. It wasn’t ever profitable
And I was like, “I am not going to start another blog that’s not gonna be profitable.” So I was strategic in researching, “How are people making money from blogs?” Talking to people who are making money from blogs, “How are you making money? How are you doing this? What do I need to do to be able to make money? Who’s giving money out?”
Understanding your relationship with money is key to building wealth, but there are times where it can be really vulnerable. What are some of the best ways you think people could take that first step?
You know, honestly the first step for me was inundating myself with examples to see that it was possible. Inundating myself with examples that, “Okay, this person was here and they did this.” And I’m not talking about hip-hop moguls like 50 Cent or Diddy. I’m talking about everyday people that made it happen because I knew I didn’t wanna be an entertainer. So I just started inundating myself with that: reading stories, listening to podcasts, following them on social media. Really, really, really surrounding myself with examples of what was possible.
From there, it was starting to address the little things with my finances. Starting small. Starting to address things such as my credit score, starting to address things such as not having an investment portfolio. Getting up to using my tax return– I think I had like $5000 – and giving that to a financial advisor. Just getting started.
It was baby steps. It was slowly inching myself towards making better financial decisions and making those better financial decisions combined with a changed mentality of what was possible and a changed mentality of how I was able to make money. I started to increase my value. Instead of being like, “Okay, well, somebody can pay me $33 an hour. No, you wanna pay me $125 an hour.” Then it goes from making $125 an hour to speaking at a conference and making $10,000 an hour.
It was doing the small things that gave me financial competence and started on the financial momentum towards better financial decisions, and then it was unlocking my earning potential which allowed me to contribute more to my financial goals and the things that I love doing.
Amen. With that being said, in your opinion what comes first: Learning how to budget or getting therapy?
Mm! I think it depends on the individual, honestly. Finances are so subjective. What type of financial trauma do you have? Do you have deep-seated financial trauma? And you know what? Everybody has some financial mess or some financial residual of their life experience. It’s just, How much does that affect your day-to-day? So with me, my first step was budgeting.
Budgeting for me came first, five-day financial therapy came second. Budgeting allowed me to afford financial therapy, but in other instances, it might be that someone needs financial therapy first to even be able to set a budget.
You mentioned the breakthroughs and people having these breakthroughs to understand their potential. When you’re talking with people, you kind of have to be a therapist to walk them through it to get them to think bigger.
Yes, absolutely. A lot of people are carrying around financial shame and they’re like, “Well, how can I even do this and I made these decisions in the past?”
See, a lot of people don’t give themselves grace when it comes to their finances, and as a financial educator and as a coach, it is walking that line between giving yourself grace and holding yourself accountable. Giving yourself grace for past decisions that you made before you had the knowledge that you have today and holding you accountable for making better decisions based on the knowledge that we now have.
A lot of people don’t give themselves grace when it comes to their finances...it is walking that line between giving yourself grace and holding yourself accountable.
I’ve read on your website and it stood out to me: “Transform your money storm.” I’m thinking of Storm from X-Men. I’m imagining you’re changing the weather, you’re performing alchemy, you’re changing people. You’re helping people change their situation. Even though your financial situation was different when you were younger, it’s still the same Tonya. Did it come natural in your journey or did it take effort to get to where you are now as this superwoman? [laughter]
That’s an excellent question. I think that there’s moments where I feel like an alchemist, especially when I reflect back on the trajectory of my career and I literally created something out of nothing. We generate over millions of dollars of revenue from My Fab Finance and I’m like, “Wow, I really made something out of nothing, out of a WordPress blog.”
I’ve been working for myself since 2015. I had my child and have been able to parent on my terms. We’ve hired a nanny who we pay a salary that my parents didn’t even make. And when I sit back and think about things like that, it’s like, “Wow, that was you. You were there.” But I have to reflect. It’s in the reflection that I realize my power.
Okay, let’s stay here a little bit. What does the representation of that power looks like? What are you dressed as? You know what I’m saying?
That’s a good question. It has different layers. It’s ancestral garb, because I know by fact that I’m here largely ‘cause of the power and the guidance of my ancestors. It’s like a business suit with a flare of me, with a flare of hip-hop culture. My father was a DJ. A lot of my early influences were people in the industry. So it has that air to it but then it also has the spiritual element to it. That would be a hell of a costume.
I’ll see if I can get a fashion stylist to work with you and come up with something. [both laugh] You just said you work for yourself for six years now. Being an entrepreneur, do you feel like it is more challenging to manage or sustain a healthy relationship to money versus working at a full-time job making good money?
No. I feel like it’s harder to have a full-time job making good money because at a full-time job, you’ve bought into the idea of, “If I just work harder, or if I could just get people to approve of my raises and everything else, I can move to that next level financially.”They give you jobs so you can pay your bills and do what you need to do. But I do feel that with a lot of successful entrepreneurs that I talk to, there is fear like, “What happens if I wake up and this all disappears?” Because you created something out of thin air, there’s often that fear that it can easily disappear into thin air as well.
While there are challenges that exist in entrepreneurship, I think that working in a traditional nine-to-five setting has more mental financial challenges.
“While there are challenges that exist in entrepreneurship, I think that working in a traditional nine-to-five setting has more mental financial challenges, ‘If I just work harder I could get people to approve of my raises.’”
How important is it to you as an entrepreneur to build a community and find the right team? If you can give people an idea of what to expect during this journey as an entrepreneur building your team, what would you tell them? How did you go about that?
It’s critical. I know early on, I felt very alone in being in personal finance. I remember there were all these beauty blogs and makeup YouTubers, and I’m like, “They got so much engagement and so many followers and they’re doing nothing for nobody’s life. What in the world? Here I am trying to change people’s lives and it’s like pulling teeth!” It felt very lonely and I was very resentful early on with the feeling that this information wasn’t received and appreciated. Finding that community of other people who share those frustrations reminded me why I opted to do this work. It’s so important to have a community who understand what you’re navigating and having people who can lend resources and people who had made some of the decisions that you’re trying to make.
I’m working on being better about hiring for my needs and not just feeling like I can throw money at the problem. Even though I have help, I’m still the bottleneck. I’m still making all the decisions in my business and I don’t want to be the person making all of the decisions. I wanna be the person who makes the final decision, but not the smaller decisions like, “What software are we gonna use to operate this?”
At each phase, your needs change and it’s important to notice that. At each level, your needs will evolve and your involvement in your business will evolve and you will need different support.
That struck a chord because nobody’s gonna go as hard as you.
Yeah.
How do you go forth knowing that, “Yo, nobody’s going to go as hard as I am in the thing that I’ve created.”?
I think that gets to a point where you do encounter people who will go as hard as you. For me, that’s required spiritual work – I’m really big on alchemy and manifestation – and believing that I’m gonna attract the person who will go as hard as me. And believing that they’re out there.
I’m in the process of attracting that now. My social media person, she gets just excited about shares and everything else. She’s like, “Oh, this post blew it out of the frame! Look how many re-shares!” She goes hard. She’s obsessing over how we can really drive engagement and drive the numbers and what kind of content resonates with our audience. She takes it personally when things don’t hit the way she thought they would. But that took years to find her and sometimes it will take years to find that person. And not that this person goes as hard as me for My Fab Finance, but they go as hard as me for their integrity and what it means for what they bring to a company. If they don’t do what they said they were gonna do, they can’t sleep at night, not ‘cause they care about my vision necessarily, but because they care about their integrity. I don’t need you to care as much about My Fab Finance as I do, but I need you to care as much about your role in my business as I do.
[chuckle]
Tonya, this has been awesome. I love your perspective and getting to sit and talk with you. I’m seeing your brilliance, I’m seeing your dedication and your focus, and it’s a beautiful thing. I have one last question. In your work, what world are you trying to see? What world are you trying to create for yourself, for your community? What does that look like?
It is a world in which we recognize, and walk in, and own in our power. And our power being our economic power, our worth. It’s where we step into our privilege and we have the confidence of mediocre white men and we walk into situations entitled. It’s a world where we are raising entitled Black children who have no limits because they know they’ll be supported in whatever decision they make. They are fearless in creating solutions for the next generations because they don’t have to worry about, “Well, if this doesn’t work I’m gonna be homeless.” They are privileged and they know, “My parents set me up for this.” It is a world where Black people have more privilege and more freedom to make decisions that are in alignment with their truer selves because they don’t have to worry about making money. They don’t have to worry about the fear of not having enough or lack. That is what I’m creating specifically for Black people.
Sometimes I feel like our work and our revolution gets co-opted and we always feel like we need to loop other people into ours while other people don’t feel like they need to loop themselves into ours. They may be allies, but they’re not fighting for Black liberation. They’re fighting for their own, but we feel like we’ve got to fight for liberation for everybody else. But my work – and I can’t do work for everybody – is centered on direct descendants of African slaves because that’s who I am. That’s who my ancestors are. That’s who my children will be. U
To learn about Tonya visit www.myfabfinance.com
Instagram: @tonya.rapley
