Vivian Tu loves talking about money. She’s a content creator, a New York Times Bestselling author, and podcast host dishing financial literacy wisdom in videos built for the digital age under her “Your Rich BFF” banner.
Her audience, including 10 million followers across social media, YouTube, and Substack, has been the basis of the business she’s built up from a single TikTok post five years ago.
Today, she is more than rich. She’s the boss.
Charting Her Own Path
Vivian Tu’s determination to create a financially fruitful life began as a teen.
“My parents both dealt with layoffs, with job changes, with uncertainty of how they were going to make certain financial moments happen,” Tu recalls. “[In] our house, the conversation would always be around saving and scrimping, and the growing-our-wealth, getting-rich conversation was for other people.”
The family’s talk about money hit a tipping point for Tu one day in her teens, when her mother yelled at her for spending too much money on a pair of ripped jeans. It stung.
“I made a promise to myself that day… When I grow up, I am going to be so rich. I’m going to be filthy rich to the point that no one can ever tell me that I don’t deserve ripped jeans,” Tu recalls.
The Road To Riches
Vivian Tu’s unique career path started after college, when she landed a job as a trader at J.P. Morgan. From there, she took a job with Buzzfeed as an account executive. She hustled and eventually earned 6x what she made as a trader.
“Sales came so naturally to me,” Tu said. “You get to be scrappy. You get to decide whether or not you get paid, and I was always willing to stay an extra 45 minutes and send that email. I was always willing to take one extra call.”
Tu’s tenacity led her to launch “Your Rich BFF” five years ago. In addition to creating content for TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, she also released her second New York Times Bestselling book, “Well Endowed: The Secrets to Strategic Spending, Building a Financial Foundation for You and Your Family, and Creating Lasting Generational Wealth.”
She also hosts the “Networth and Chill” podcast and has brand deals, including being named Chief of Financial Empowerment at SoFi. And if that wasn’t enough, her first New York Times Bestseller, “Rich AF,” is being made into a television series for Amazon.
Building A Winning Team
Vivian Tu is mindful of her past experiences as she builds her own company. “I have worked for a lot of different people. I have worked for great managers, I’ve worked for crappy ones, but I’d like to think I lead by example,” Tu says. She notes that anything she may be having her team do, from ideation to editing, podcast production, and more, she’s done at one point herself as she was growing the company.
Tu is also a big believer in hiring slow and firing fast. She recalls one early hire she made that lasted less than two months. “I think I had to come to a realization that … nobody is ever going to love my business as much as I do,” Tu admits.
These days, she has one main trait she looks for in potential employees for her mini empire: “I like to hire people who want to win, who have this deep, innate desire to be the best and are competitive for no good reason, “she said. “Because those are the types of people who are willing to put in the extra mile… and that makes all the difference.”
She also has another measure for potential employees: the airport test.
“During my week, I spend more time with my employees than I do with my husband. And that means I got to like you,” Tu said. So she asks herself: if I were traveling with a potential hire and our flight was delayed by three hours, would I want to wait at the gate with them? Or, would I head to the lounge?
“I have to feel like I can hang one-on-one with someone,” she said. “We don’t have to be the same; we don’t have to have the same views on everything, but I do have to feel like I can spend time with you.”
Planning For Her Family’s Future
“When you work for yourself, you eat what you kill. If I want to work more, I can; if I want to downshift, I can.” Tu acknowledges that working with a team means, “if I decide one day that I don’t want to do this anymore, people have to find new jobs.”
Those considerations extend to thoughts of building her family. She has been open about the fact that she and her husband chose to freeze embryos a couple of years ago.
“I think it’s such a shame that a woman’s prime earning years coincide with her prime fertility years. It sucks, right? Especially now that I work for myself. There’s no such thing as maternity leave. There’s no PTO. The O is my apartment. I am at the office right now,” Tu says. But she understands she was lucky to have the option.
She calls freezing her embryos “one of the best things I’ve ever done.” But she acknowledges that “we need to find a way to make it more accessible and more affordable for women.”
Looking ahead, Tu admits there could be changes on the horizon for “Your Rich BFF.” That includes considering stepping aside as CEO one day. “I’m starting to think maybe it might make sense to even hire someone to handle the business portion so I can focus on being the best creator I can be,” Tu admits. “And it’s just something that I’ve wanted to think [about] and explore, because if I wanted to keep growing, I don’t know if I’m the best woman for the job.”
A Thank You Gift
The most rewarding thing Vivian Tu’s success has given her is the ability to be generous with her parents. Among other things, she sent them on an all-expenses-paid vacation for their 30th wedding anniversary.
“My parents feel such relief,” she says. “A lot of their peers are still supporting their kids. I don’t need that support anymore. In fact, it’s the reverse. Now. I am buying them things,” Tu says. “It’s a privilege I do not take lightly, and it’s the promise. It’s the payback of the inheritance that I got very early on because of all of the things they were willing to do to give me the life that I now have.”
MORE ON HERMONEY:
- What It Really Means to Be Well Endowed According to Vivian Tu, Your Rich BFF
- Ask Jean: Should I put monthly expenses – like utilities – on a credit card?
- First-Time Investing Tips With Vivian Tu
Want more of this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for the HerMoney newsletter at HerMoney.com/subscribe for the latest on investing, budgeting, and making your money work for you.
