Entrepreneur Archives

Latina Styles

Over the last couple months I have interviewed a growing number of top bloggers and writers to get their input on personal finance (e.g., the founders of Budgets Are Sexy, The Broke And Beautiful Life, Frugal Rules,Debt Roundup, and Modest Money). Today, I’m excited to share with you another terrific interview with one of the top personal finance writers on the Internet.

LaTisha Styles founded a popular website called Young Finances. Since 2010, she has become an Investment Analyst, entrepreneur, and was featured in a variety of publications. Here’s my interview with her. Thanks again, LaTisha!

What inspired you to begin Young Finances?

I started Young Finances because I graduated college in 2010 and I was having a hard time finding a job. I had a degree in Finance and learned a lot about the correct way to manage personal finances after recovering from several bad decisions I made with my money. I decided to start writing about what I learned to help other young adults.

How did people (friends, family, etc.) react when you first started? How long have you been blogging?

Almost all of my friends were supportive. I used to share each post on Facebook and I got a lot of good feedback and encouragement. I started the site in December of 2010, but I have been blogging much longer. I started an e-zine when I was 14 and I just found an old issue! It was such a blast from the past.

What was your experience with design, code, web work prior to starting your site?

I graduated with a business degree, and had to learn the basics of HTML and CSS in our business information systems class. We had a group project that involved creating a single page website from scratch using Dreamweaver. I later taught myself more using W3 Schools to understand the basics of PHP and Javascript for WordPress. I personally did a few customizations to my site but on the next redesign I would probably hire a professional coder.

What advice would you give to those thinking about starting their own site?

Don’t be afraid to just get started. You don’t have to know everything when you are first starting out and you won’t know everything. If you don’t like the name of your site you can always change it. More than once. I started out as Financial Success for Young Adults then moved to Young Adult Finances and now my happy home is Young Finances. I think this is where we’ll stay.

How do you make money from your site? Where does most of your revenue come from?

My site generates revenue primarily through affiliate marketing. When I first started, I sold text links and sponsored posts but I decided to focus on more stable revenue. If you’re like me and interested to see income reports, I share the income that comes from my web properties each month at TravelTish.com. Mostly I learn about the best financial tools and I test them out for myself before recommending them to my audience.

What do you think you’ve learned from your readers and fans?

I’ve learned not to be so scared. I used to be really scared about putting personal information out there and sharing my money mishaps. But once I starting sharing, more people (and even close friends!) started reaching out to share their stories about money. It makes me sad that personal finance is such a taboo subject because I think that we could all learn a lot from the mistakes and successes of others.

How I Work Youtube Latisha Styles Office — *LaTisha’s workspace where she films YouTube videos*

How can somebody in lower incomes best overcome financial hurdles and prosper?

I can only speak from my own experience here. I come from a low-income family and I was determined to set the bar high for myself. I was fortunate that my parents made school a priority and taught me smart study habits. I decided to learn about how money works and how banks and businesses make money. Learning the system is the best way to beat it.

Wherever you are starting, you can do it. I always imagined that someone held me back at the starting line of my financial life, but I just had to exert that much more effort to win and achieve my own financial success. And I’m still gunning for first place.

I had to be willing to be different. Turn off the TV, start reading about successful people, figure out the formula. It will take time but you can do it. And look for role models and mentors. Tell them about your goals.

“When you really want something to happen, the whole world conspires to help you achieve it.”

That’s from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho one of my favorite books.

Who are your financial role models?

I admire the stories of ‘regular people’ as my financial role models. People who started with nothing and worked hard. Author J.K. Rowling who worked day and night on a book that helped pull her out of poverty and rapper B.o.B. who came from humble beginnings in Decatur, GA and played no name venues as he gained his fan base. I really admire that strong work ethic that unites successful people.

What personal finance sites do you read?

As a personal finance blogger, I like to read the sites that are very different. RomeoJeremiah.com has interesting posts about life and personal finance. I really enjoy reading AffordAnything.com. Paula really appeals to the rebel in me. I discover new blogs everyday but these are two that I come back to often.

To be honest, I would love to see more video personal finance bloggers. I enjoy watching FatGuyOnYoutube.com and of course, YoungFinances.com/tv.

What else would you care to share with the readers of Frugaling?

I would love to share my dancing skills! (And a bit of business advice). Please head over to this video and watch me do the hustle: youngfinances.com/sidehustle

Entrepreneurial Google Founders Wikipedia Photo — The Google Founders. Photo: Wikipedia

My first year of writing is nearly complete. In starting my own online site and business, I realized a few entrepreneurial secrets that aided in the success and development of Frugaling.org. Hopefully, some of these ideas inspire you to make more and take advantage of any downtime you have to achieve your own entrepreneurial dreams!

A fun alternative to a temp job

Finding time for extra income opportunities was daunting last year. I wanted to make and save more money to pay off an overwhelming amount of student loans. I was rapidly approaching $40,000 in total debt last May. I thought about getting a menial job that paid me about $8 an hour after taxes. I scoured Craigslist for random temp jobs, but grew hopeless as the opportunities didn’t often fit within the parameters of my challenging semesters. The debt was unmanageable.

Sometime in mid-July, Frugaling.org became a real second income for me. My advertising revenue and traffic skyrocketed. I felt a rush when I published articles that would get read by 10, 100, 1000, and eventually by up to 10,000+ people at a time. But the excitement was heightened because I knew this would perfectly sync with my busy graduate student schedule.

You make your own schedule

Here and there, I began to work on the site. I’d type a story between classes or when I finished work for the night. In a fleet of passion through my fingers, I’d hammer out intricate articles that were entirely my own desire. As much as I wanted to share my voice with others, I was writing for my own growth, too.

Unlike the Craigslist opportunities or strange side jobs around my college campus, writing online and becoming entrepreneurial allowed me even greater freedom in money-making endeavors. It was far easier to squeeze an hour of work where I could fit it, then worry about someone else’s overlapping or differing schedule. Frankly, it was empowering.

Entrepreneurial success is often predicated on fall back options

Graduate school, work, and my other job account for about 60 to 70 hours of work per week. At times, it was hard to digest how many hours were dedicated to my education. Until this academic year, I considered myself to be lazy. I didn’t want to work all that hard and found any opportunity to waste time.

By creating an outlet for my thoughts and conveniently forming it around my schedule, I kept my prior obligations while starting a new project. My grades and school experience hardly changed; actually, I was more diversified and felt grounded in life because of my entrepreneurial spirit.

Starting a business takes a certain gusto and risk, but having options helped insure against failure. If Frugaling didn’t work out, that would be okay. This wasn’t the only business venture going for me, and I wasn’t putting all my eggs in one basket. The failure of this would simply be a drop in the larger bucket.

Follow these examples to find your own achievement

I’m not alone in starting a business while staying busy. There are a tremendous number of tech titans that took to something on the side, and it turned into their main income. Here are two examples:

Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox

Houston was searching for a method to avoid the constant need for a flash drive. As a graduate student at MIT, he coded a rough basis for Dropbox.com. Basically, it would allow users to place a file online, and have access anywhere in the world to that same file, as long as there was Internet. Houston met his business partner at MIT and launched the company with the safety net of getting a masters degree from a top-tier institution with massive social connections. If Dropbox had failed, he would still be hirable at some terrific institutions. If it succeeded, he would get the best of both worlds.

Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Facebook

Zuckerburg’s story is legendary now. Through a series of startups and ideas, Mark created a site that was exclusively for Harvard students. It was originally entitled, “The Facebook.” This elite establishment became the perfect territory to foment incredible demand. From there, Zuckerburg and his partners slowly spread the idea from university to university. The elite model appealed to a variety of people, but if it had failed, he would still be getting a Harvard degree.