More Money Podcast - 074 Finding Your Path to a Happier, Wealthier Life - LaTisha Styles, Money Expert & Business Coach

Episode Date: November 16, 2016

I chat with LaTisha Styles who went from trying to make a living after graduating university during the recession to now working for herself and loving every minute of it. Long description: LaTisha Styles is proof that you don't have to be stuck on one particular path even if it seems like the odds are against you. Getting a degree in Spanish and trying to grow her career during the recession wasn't easy, but instead of throwing her hands up and giving in, LaTisha powered through and is now banking serious bank! How I got to know LaTisha was through her YouTube channel. There really aren't that many people making interesting personal finance focused videos these days, but she got the formula right. It's not surprise she has close to 8,000 YouTube subscribers! LaTisha is funny, entertaining, but at the root of it she just offers some really good advice. Simple stuff like trying the envelope budgeting method. Or only buying stuff on her list and avoiding going to the mall as a social activity. Simple stuff we can all integrate in our lives right now to start saving a bit more. But as I mentioned in this episode, there comes a time when there's nowhere else to cut back. You can only budget so much, and when you get to that point, it's time to start looking at other avenues to make money. For me, I've always had a second (or third) job on top of my full-time job. Honestly, if I didn't have my side hustles, I know I wouldn't be where I'm at right now financially. So if you're in need of some major motivation and some helpful tips on how to fix your finances, make sure to check out LaTisha's YouTube channel and website. And if you consider yourself an Actionista and want to follow in LaTisha's footsteps towards entrepreneurship, she has an awesome Facebook group you need to check out. LaTisha's Top Money Tip You have to become the type of person who can handle more money [...] Continue investing in yourself, in your knowledge. Read books from people who have been where you want to go [...] Just learn more. Follow LaTisha on Social Follow LaTisha on Facebook Follow LaTisha on Twitter Subscribe to LaTisha on YouTube For more podcast episodes, check out the Podcast page. Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/74 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Episode 74 of the Mo Money Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me for this fabulous episode featuring an awesome lady that I was so lucky to meet in person at FinCon 2016 back in September. Her name is Letitia Stiles. Damn, that's a cool name. I wish I had a last name like Stiles instead of Morehouse. Not the same ring to it, right? Anyways, she is a finance expert, but she's also kind of at the same time turned into this awesome, inspiring, motivational business coach. And I have her on my Facebook. I follow her on all of her platforms. And man, you just get pumped up. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I can do that. Let's do this. So we're going to talk about

kind of how first she grew her YouTube channel to one of the biggest money, personal finance focused YouTube channels around and how she's kind of shifting her focus still on money management, personal finance, but also to helping women start businesses and entrepreneurship and all that great stuff. So very exciting to talk to Letitia coming up. But first, before we get to that episode, a big thank you to Lowest Rates for sponsoring this episode of the Mo Money Podcast. Now, Lowest Rates is where you can find the lowest rates in Canada for your mortgage, auto insurance, life insurance, and more just like that. I've done it to find the best quote for my personal life insurance, so I highly recommend

you check them out at lowestrates.ca. And without further ado, let's get to the interview, shall we? Thanks, Letitia, for joining me on the show today. I'm excited to chat with you. Yes, I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about yourself. I've known your name and your blog and your whole brand for years now. So I'm very excited

to chat with you. But tell me in your own words, kind of how this all started for you. Yeah, sure. So I graduated from college the second time around with a finance degree into the Great Recession. So it was about 2010. And it wasn't the best time to graduate with a finance degree, but it was a much better degree than my previous Spanish degree. So, you know, I was like, I'm going with it. And I tried to find a job. I was having a really hard time finding a job. And so I just decided to create my own job. And that's where my personal finance blog started. It really started as an investing blog because that was what I was most interested in. And then as I started getting feedback from readers, it morphed into more of a personal finance site. And I started that towards the

end of 2010. But then I was able to secure a job a couple months later. And I just continued to write on my blog and continue to grow it as a side hustle as I worked full time. That's awesome. That's awesome. And I think that's something that lots of people can probably relate to is like I absolutely like me personally, for sure. I graduated also during the recession, and it was impossible to find a job. It took me a year to find full time work. And it was really demoralizing. And I think part of the thing that kind of got me through it was having a creative outlet, which was blogging. So I'm glad that we kind of have that in common. That's awesome. I was also snooping on your LinkedIn. And it seems like you have a

pretty cool, you've had a couple other cool roles, like you did some, you were a therapist at one point and also volunteered in Mexico. Yeah, so I worked a lot of different jobs while I was in college. And one of those jobs was working as a quote unquote therapist for a little girl with autism. And so, you know, that program was set up by her parents. And, you know, we came into the program to help her, you know, sort of overcome, you know, the struggles that she had. And that was a really, really challenging and rewarding experience. And, you know, I just have a love for children. So I also volunteered my time as well, building homes in Mexico. And that also integrated my love of, you know, the Spanish language and Spanish culture. And I just, I had a lot of time, right?

Like when you're in college, you have more time on your hands than you can see. You know, I really had the time to sort of explore all of my passions and, you know, really sort of go after those things that I was interested in doing. That's awesome. That's awesome. So you started the blog in 2010. When did the YouTube channel come into play? Because it's huge. You have like, I checked today and there's like over 7,000 subscribers.

Yeah, so the YouTube channel, I started maybe a year, a year and a half in. And I had started creating some sort of tutorial type content, but it wasn't until I went to FinCon for the first time. And I heard Jeff Rose from Good Financial Sense speak about video as a great way to connect with your audience. So I said, okay, I'm going to get out there, start doing video. And I started creating a couple know, a couple of videos here and there. And then I got really, really serious about it. And I, you know, researched all the ways to make

a YouTube channel successful. I started creating consistently one video every single Tuesday. Wow. And, um, the channel continued to, to grow with people who are interested in, in learning about personal finance. And I tried to make it funny and entertaining as well. And it has. It's continued to grow. It's continued to be a way that people find me. I've gotten several major brands and work with Fortune 500 companies because they found me via YouTube. And I think it's also a medium that a lot of personal finance bloggers and experts haven't really tapped into. And honestly, I'll be honest, like I've always known your blog, but when I was just doing some research on YouTube,

just to see what's out there. And also like, sometimes I just like need to know an answer for something and I'll go on YouTube because I'm a very visual person. I found you immediately and I love your videos. You're very kind of to the point and this is how it is. So I think it's awesome that, you know, kind of in conjunction with your blog, you also have videos to really kind of explain terms and just like important things people need to know in a visual way, which I think is very important.

Yeah, and what I found is that, you know, my audience really, really enjoys video and I prefer creating video over writing. So it was sort of a perfect fit. You know, the content that I was writing, it was great. And I was getting, you know, some responses, some traction, some, you know, comments. But once I started creating video, those people who are not interested necessarily in personal finance, but want to know about it, and they're definitely not interested enough to read about it. Those are the people that were coming to the YouTube channel. And they were commenting, they were interacting, I was getting, you know, emails all the time, like asking more questions. And it was a really great way to connect and

engage with my audience. Absolutely. No, I completely agree. So at what point, because now you have your own business, your own kind of personal brand, at what point did you switch from working full time to just being a solopreneur? Yeah, so I was working full time for about three years, about three and a half years. And my background's in institutional investing. So I mean, it was a great position. It was a great company to work for right in line with my degree and my talents. And I just, I couldn't shake the passion that I had to, you know, number one, create original content to number two, connect with an audience that was hungry for this type of information because the, you know, the, the clients that we had in institutional investing, you know, we were working with banks, with,

you know, family offices and, and, you know, large corporations. And it was hard to see the individual one-on-one impact, right? Like you might help a company figure out how they can restructure their 401k plan to benefit their employees, but you'll never talk to that individual employee that received, you know, the fruits of your labor. So I really, really was passionate about actually seeing the people that I was helping. And I, you know, I set a goal, I set a deadline to save enough money and earn enough, like a base minimum. I wanted to earn, you know, at least $1,000 per month for my blog before I, you know, made the decision to leave with, you know, at least six months of income saved. And once that happened, I took the leap and, you know, it was pretty rocky at first, I'm completely honest, because one of the income streams that I had kind of dried up after, you know, the first couple of months. And it really kind of threw me into the fires of entrepreneurship,

and I had to learn quickly how to generate income so that I didn't have to go back to a full-time job. And so what did you do to figure out how to, like, what did you do? Yeah, of course. So the entire story front to back is actually on the front page of Young Finances, if your listeners are interested in getting the video version. But, you know, basically, you know, I started out with the passive income affiliate income, and that gave me a base of like $1,000 a month. From there, like I said, one of those

income streams sort of dried up. So I started freelance writing. And then freelance writing brought in another, you know, one to $2,000. And then I figured out that I could actually sell my personal skills and services to other entrepreneurs. And when I figured that out, my income really exploded. I started making five figures per month. Wow. And it really, it made like such a huge impact that I was like, okay, this is it. I finally figured out my business model. And that's what I do now. I help business owners with their, you know, with their online marketing to help them generate new leads. And the business owners that I work with are usually financial advisors because that's

essentially my background. So that's been a really great way for me to build my business. Yeah, that sounds like kind of a perfect marriage of all of the stuff you've learned in terms of digital marketing, but also your financial background. That's awesome that you found like that perfect niche that, you know, they're probably looking for exactly you and you're looking for exactly them. That's awesome. That's awesome. I want to kind of get into why are you so passionate about personal finance, but also specifically educating millennials about personal finance? I really wish that I had known a lot of different things before I turned a certain age, before I got out of school. There's just stuff that I really wish that I knew.

And that drives a lot of my passion because if I had known more, maybe I would have done something differently. I don't know, but maybe maybe I would have done something differently. I don't know, but at least I would have had that knowledge. And, you know, I got my first credit card at the age of 18. I didn't know proper, you know, credit management. At first I was paying everything off in full, but then I started paying the minimum. And then I went to an ATM to withdraw cash, not understanding the different interest rates for cash withdrawals versus purchases. And, you know, I ended up racking up close to $32,000 of consumer debt between my credit cards and, um, in my car loan. And it took me, you know, three years and a lot of discipline, but I paid every

single dollar of that off. And I really want to help millennials in particular to, so that they don't have to experience that, or if they're already there, so that they know that there is a way out. Because, you know, as millennials, like we're the largest generation since baby boomers, but baby boomers got the advantage of a growing economy when they were coming of age. Whereas with millennials, you know, we were sort of dumped with the great recession and, you know, and I don't, you know, I don't feel like a victim, but it definitely presents a different set of challenges. Right. So that's why I'm so passionate, because I do want to help millennials get to the point where they can be comfortable about their income, comfortable with their retirement and just like making more money, because there's there's plenty to that you can do in order to earn more. Exactly. I think we're, you know, although we were sort of at a disadvantage with the recession, obviously, that is, you know, really crappy timing.

I think on the other side of the coin, yeah, we have this really great opportunity where our parents and our grandparents never had. But we can find other streams of income a little bit easier if we want to be a little bit creative, you know, such as like, we wouldn't be able to, I mean, you wouldn't be able to probably have your business if the internet didn't exist, you know? And so now it's like, there's so many ways where you can figure out a way to make extra money on the side, which could really, really help you achieve some of your financial goals. So, you know, we got you win some, you lose some kind of thing. I mean, we have such an advantage because all of the new technology that's coming out, we're able to just learn it so quickly. And we've invented a lot of it. I mean, Facebook was created by a millennial, but the, um, the knowledge that we have, you know,

the people who are older, who are not as quick to adopt or they don't really know how to understand it, we can show them how to use all of this new technology. And if you can figure out how to help them make more money with it, if they're a business owner, then you have a business right there. Absolutely. I'd even say, think about investing. It's so much easier to, A, get the information about investing so it's not so scary and complex. But B, it's actually really easy to find different ways to invest. There's all these different robo-advisors out there that didn't exist. You had to go to an advisor and go at an office and figure out your finances. Now you can go online and do it yourself. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. It's huge. And yeah. Okay, so now, although this is awesome, I'm kind of curious,

because you know, you've gone through a lot. And you've learned a lot along the way. What are some of the biggest money mistakes you've made that you've learned from and you want people to learn from? So biggest mistake, obviously, was opening a credit card account before I even had a job. The only income I had was the income my parents were sending me. And that I would definitely change. Mindless spending. So I used to go to the mall on the weekends and that was my activity was buying stuff. And so that's definitely something that I would change. And, you know, honestly, credit is the big, big thing, just using credit wisely. You know, I do have a video about how to use credit

wisely and it's all the things that, you know, like I said, I wish I had known that I know now because I do have credit cards now. I pay them off in full every month and, you know, I use them as a tool within my budget. And those are the things that I, you know, that I would like to share, you know, so no one else has to have that, you know, those credit problems that I did. So what did you adjust in how you spend money to make sure you didn't get back into credit card debt? Like, did you, I know I saw your video about kind of the envelope system of cash. Do you do that or what's your kind of system? Yeah. The first thing I did was, you know, I, I put myself on an all cash budget. That was when I was trying to pay off all of my

credit cards and kind of get rid of them. And there are a couple of shifts that I made sort of mentally so that I wouldn't get back into the same credit card debt. One big one was I eliminated all impulse spending. So my rule was if I went to the store, I had to have a specific list of what I was going to the store to get. So I don't just go to the mall just to look around, right? If I need to go get a dress, I have on my list a dress, right? And then if I go to the mall and I happen to see a shirt, I'm like, oh, this shirt will look really nice. I wasn't allowed to purchase that at the moment. I had to go back home, put it on a list and go back out for it. I like that. I like that. Yeah. That was huge for me because most of my spending was coming from impulse shopping.

So then from there, what I did was I sort of graduated into better habits. After that, once I got my credit card, my new rule was, okay, if you want this shirt, for example, that you didn't come to the store for, you can get it, but you just have to pay cash for it. And so that was after my credit cards were paid off, that was sort of the new adjusted rule. And that's sort of what I use now. So I'm still allowed to impulse shop, but I have to pay cash for it, which is a lot harder than using a credit card. I'll tell you. It is. Yeah. Because you have to actually physically look at the money. I think that's a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. So that doesn't happen a whole lot. I'm like, well, I don't really need this. And so that was a big one that I changed. And the other big rule was just making a commitment to myself to pay my credit cards in full every month. And in card to shop and using it for stuff like a cell

phone bill. Those are the things that I would have already been spending using cash. And that allowed me to keep up with my credit cards and clear them off in full every month and stay on budget. No, that seems like a pretty good system that I'm sure some other people will be starting right after this episode. So those are kind of your big money mistakes. What would be one or two of your big money successes? One of the biggest successes would be me just starting Young Finances. I never thought it would grow into what it is now because it's sort of morphed over the years. And something that I started as a blog just so employers would view me as, you know, a better candidate turned into a, you know, a side hustle income that helped me to pay down my debt. And then after that turned into a way for me to get, you know, features with, with major companies, like who would have thought

that a major bank would fly me out to New York, do my hair and makeup and put me in front of a camera just because they saw me on YouTube. That's pretty freaking cool. Yeah. And, and pay me also. Yeah. Oh yeah. Also that. So like stuff. So. So that I would say that was one of my biggest, you know, one of the best decisions. And then beyond that, one of the best decisions that I made was, you know, to make the commitment to stick with my business and just keep trying and keep trying until I found what worked. And, you know, figuring out the model of helping business owners, you know, doing that coaching and consulting. That's what really, you know, helped to just grow and expand my business. And it's so crazy because last year, like every dollar that I earned last year, I earned this year by the month of June. Wow. So it was like I had already doubled, I had already doubled my income by the middle of the year. And it was

because I had figured out, you know, this, the model that works for me. So that's the, that's the one major thing I would say for, you know, for your audience, like, if you're determined to make it work, just keep like, keep going, keep trying and learn from someone, you know, get a, you know, get a mentor or someone that can help you and show you exactly what you can do in order to earn more income. Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like yes, sometimes in the personal finance sphere, we focus a lot on saving and debt repayment and budgeting, but not maybe enough on making money because sometimes that could be uh you know there's only so much you can cut from a budget and sometimes you just need to figure out a way to make more money so it's it's you know inspiring that you were able

to do it yeah because i mean when you think about it it's like there's a floor based on you know there's a floor how much you can budget like once's a floor, how much you can budget. Like once you get to the floor, like you're done, you can't really go any, any deeper or the ground, whatever it is. But for earning more income like that, the sky is the limit, right? You can earn, you know, as much as you, whatever skills and talents you have, you know, that's the only limit to how much you can earn and your hustle, whatever you're willing to, you know, the work you're willing to put in. Absolutely.

All right. And your hustle, whatever you're willing to, you know, the work you're willing to put in. Absolutely. All right. So before we go, I would love to know, because you offer so many great tips on your YouTube channel and your blog. What would be, I guess, the biggest tip you would want every millennial to know about money management? You have to become the type of person that can handle more money. And when I say that, I mean, you have to continually work on yourself. You have to become a better person. You have to become more knowledgeable. You have to understand what it is you're working with so that you can handle it. So my, you know, my major tip is continue investing in yourself, in your knowledge, read books from, you know, people who have been where you want to

go, biographies, read inspirational books, development books, and just learn more. The stuff that I know now, you know, even if I had tried five years ago to do the business that I'm doing right now, I wouldn't have been able to do it because I don't have that. I wouldn't have had the knowledge that I have now. And that knowledge came from not only trial and error, but it came from me investing in myself and my knowledge and growing myself as a person. So that's my that's my major tip. Grow into the person you need to be in order to earn more income. Yeah, damn, that's a good tip. I was expecting it.

That was really, really good. I'm like pumped now. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me. I'm excited for all the new videos I'm sure you have coming out. I'll be anxiously awaiting. Yeah, thank you so much. If anyone would like more information, you can catch me at youngfinances.com. Everything is there and I look forward to connecting with you. And that was episode 74 of the Mo Money Podcast with Letitia Stiles. Make sure to check her out

at letitiastiles.com. And you can also check out her YouTube channel, her Twitter. She also has a Facebook group. She has all this great stuff, and I'm going to link to all of it in the show notes. So make sure to check that out at JessicaMorehouse.com slash 74. You will not want to not check it out, okay? Check it out. And a big thank you once again to Lowest Rates for sponsoring this episode of the MoMoney podcast, Lowest Rates. It's where you can find the lowest rates in Canada for your mortgage,

auto insurance, life insurance, and more just like that. So make sure to check them out at lowestrates.ca if you are looking to find the lowest rates on everything. Okay, lowestrates.ca. Thanks again for joining me for another fabulous moment in podcast episode. And I will see you back here tomorrow for another special listener series episode. And again, you know, call out I need to get some listener series episodes for season four in 2017. So if you're listening to this episode, if you're a longtime listener, even not a longtime listener, this is the first episode you've ever listened to. If you have a story that you want to share that is about personal finance, about your journey, and you want to share it with my listeners, people like you, email me,

Jessica at JessicaMorehouse.com. And let's chat. I think that it would be really fun. Okay. Okay. Well, I will see you back here tomorrow. Have a good rest of your day. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.