Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us here on following the Gong. I'm excited to welcome in personal finance authority, best selling author and one of America's go to money experts, Farnoosh Tarabi, class of 2002. We're recording this here at the Business Building, home to the Smeal College of Business with a live audience of students and faculty.
We are really happy to have you back here on campus to receive the Penn State Alumni Association Alumni Fellow award. Congrats.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: So I always like to ground these conversations and hopefully you appreciate this as a journalist by having guests give a bit of relatable backstory. So can you share how you ended up here at Penn State and as.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: A Schreier Scholar, kicking and screaming? No. Is that relatable enough?
I was a resident of Pennsylvania, living in the suburbs of Philadelphia, a very ambitious young girl in high school.
And I, you know, Penn State was sort of like the obvious choice that I hadn't really considered, I think because I was so mystified by some of the like Ivy Leagues and brand name schools and much to my dismay because I think had I gone that route I would have graduated heavily in debt and maybe not have discovered who I am as much as I did at Penn State and of course meeting my husband here. So it all worked out and I landed here.
Really it was a no brainer once I did get into the Schrei Honors College as well. So getting into main campus is a huge deal. It's a huge accomplishment. And then on top of that to get the opportunity to work with really motivated, extra motivated students, get smaller class sizes. And there was this, I got a letter that said starting this fall or this winter we'll be doing our inaugural trip to London where you can apply to basically learn theater and go to 11 different shows. And I thought, well, if nothing else, I'm going to Toronto.
This is happening. I'm signing up for that program. And, and I did so immediately upon getting to campus. Within a few months I was on a flight to Europe thanks to the Schreyer Honors Program and the amazing programming that they have for their students.
So that's the short story. I think hopefully the relatable part is that sometimes you take a leap of faith and you do something that you don't have all the answers to. But if you come tonight or you watch our livestream of the awards tonight, I'm going to talk a little bit about that in my acceptance speech. Just how you know the importance of just staying curious. And if you're At Penn State, you're in good hands, because here we have the resources, we have the.
The relationships that you'll forge to just change the rest of your life for the better.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Absolutely. And want to give a shout? I think Tim is in the back.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Of the room, right? Yes, he is. I told him, I said, go, because we don't. You know, we came to campus a month ago, but it's not often that we come twice in a year. I said, please go and explore. He said, nope, I want to be here fact checking.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Well, I'm sure as a journalist, you appreciate that, but you obviously were here at Smeal, not at a Belisario facility. So how did you end up picking finance as your major?
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Well, it was not the first choice. I think that, again, what you'll learn about me is, like, I have a lot of interests, and I kind of created a career that has amalgamated a lot of interests. But at college, picking a lane was very difficult for me, picking a school. And initially I thought, well, maybe I'll be a lawyer, and so I'll study political science, because that would make my mother really happy. And then I did not enjoy those classes, and then pivoted to, well, can I do theater? And I'm the daughter of Iranian immigrants. That is not going to fly.
And so, okay, that was an immediate no. And then my father actually had a conversation with him. I said, it's getting time to pick out a major. If I delay this any longer, I might have to be in college for, you know, forever. And he said, look, college is an investment.
Pick a major where you're going to learn something and you'll be able to enter the job market and apply yourself. And, you know, again, it's that sort of immigrant mentality of just get a rate of return. And my father's a physicist, so he's very familiar with numbers. He likes a good equation. And I said, okay, well, what could be more.
More of a proven track record or a place, a degree that I could study, that I could start making money pretty quickly. That was finance. But what I didn't realize at first, what ended up being the reason it was such a great fit for me, was that I didn't see myself represented at the time in the majority. And that's my advice to anybody, whether it's at school or at work or in life, is that sometimes we fear being the one, the only, the singular person in that path. We don't see ourselves super represented. But that ended up being the best possible sort of playground for me because Smeal really wanted to encourage more women to join the college at the time, particularly within the finance department department. So me being there, I felt like they kind of rolled out the red carpet. I got a lot of access and opportunities, and I saw that actually with my roommate who was a mechanical engineering major, and she got a full scholarship and again, really just was able to leverage so much of the opportunities here. And I think that was a product of a byproduct of being singular in who you are in that field.
So that was great. And I think that I took that with me in a lot of the different arenas that I went to later off and later on in college. I mean, even just choosing to be a financial journalist at the time, it was flooded with men.
People who give financial advice typically have been and still are men. So that didn't frighten me. It actually really made me excited and more interested in pursuing.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Awesome. Now, Parnous, you mentioned trying to stay in your lane, Right. But obviously as a Shrier scholar, kind of impossible to do that. And our dean, Pat Mather, he always likes to highlight, like he's an engineer, but he's a musician. So you took a similar approach to diversifying your campus involvement. Can you talk about some of the things that you did here on campus that may have influenced your career down the road, whether that's clubs or work opportunities.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: I worked at the Daily Collegian in sales.
Again, this was early on when I thought that I wanted to pursue a career in business, business and sales finance. So that felt natural to me. Even though in high school I was the writer, I was the. I ran the school paper, and I was very creative and literary and all that. But when I got to college again, I felt like I had to really, you know, do the more rational and ROI sort of things. So did that. But honestly, that experience, what I had to do, basically what I had to do with the Collegiate was I was in charge of clients around town, business owners, getting them to invest, advertise in our daily collegiate paper.
And that included creating ad campaigns, being really, really creative, but also business savvy. Also being putting your fears aside and just walking into business owners and being like, I like to talk to the owner, right? And 18 years old, and you should take me seriously. And that was such a learning experience and it really trained me for the real world.
So if anyone gets the chance to do any kind of sales job before they graduate, I would highly recommend it then. I did a lot of theater while I was here. I worked, I played with the Norwe fund theater kids. We had a lot of fun. Got to direct and star in shows and work on production.
That, again, was a leftover from high school, that, okay, well, if I can't major in theater, I'm gonna just explore all the extracurriculars I can around it. I traveled abroad, and I think once I was a sophomore, that was when I sort of had the light bulb that, okay, I don't think I want to actually use my finance degree in the traditional way of working for.
As an analyst or an investment bank or in business. Business. But that what I really love about financial markets and the economy is kind of explaining it all, learning it, then explaining it and teaching it and the storytelling. You know, at the time when I was in college, the business news became front page. News became. Because there were all these scandals.
There was Enron, there was Tycho, there was the Gosh, the Era Brockovich film. Right. And so we got to sort of see the behind the scenes of.
Not the best of the behind the scenes, but it was interesting. It sort of sparked your curiosity. And a lot of journalists who broke those stories, we were very grateful for that.
So it inspired me to go, is there a way, like, what if I could continue studying finance? But now that I have this consciousness that I don't want to. That I want to sort of maybe be a journalist or a storyteller, I don't know what. But not, you know, somebody who's behind a computer. With my finance degree, how can I start to get on, get these experiences now to kind of create the narrative at the end of the day that, like, I had the foresight, I did want this, and I'm going to start to connect some dots for myself. And so. So when I had that light bulb, I thought, okay, well, I don't want to study, go into the communications department. I don't want to pivot and then have to delay my graduation. I'm going to finish finance, but I'm going to, along the way, intern at a magazine. One summer, I'm going to do my honors thesis with the Meeks College of Media and Communications.
I'm going to start exploring graduate programs for journalism and what that might take, take to apply and what are they looking for in candidates so I can start to reverse engineer some of those things. And when I graduated Penn State, I was able to go right into journalism school because of sort of the seeds that I planted. Again, you have to make a case. Right.
I didn't know if I was going to be a financial journalist forever, but for right now, this is the story that's going to get me to the next thing. And then when I get to the next thing, I'll figure it out. But I needed my. I needed a way to kind of get my foot in the door in the journalism world without the degree.
And even when I went to journalism school as a journalist, it's not your degrees that really matter at the end of the day, it's your experience, it's your bylines, it's a trade. And so when I was in journalism school, and now I'm fast forwarding a bit, I wasn't the smartest in the class by any stretch. I wasn't the best writer, but thanks to my sales background, I was the one who was the best pitcher of my ideas to newspapers, to magazines. So by the time I graduated, I had actually published quite a bit with bylines. That's what got me work. Whereas my classmates who were the star literary brightest of minds, they didn't focus on the sort of business applications of what they were doing, the entrepreneurial requirements of what they were doing to see succeed. It's like we talked about before we were recording. It's like when you're an artist or creative, you, for whatever reason, you don't sort of take on the business savvy that's really required because we always talk about the starving artist or I'll never get paid or you don't value your work, you have to be the biggest advocate for your work. Of course you want to make an impact. So with the training that I had at Penn State, I carried that into my journalism school and then later on in life as I built my business.
[00:11:58] Speaker B: Awesome.
So, Fernish, I want to take a step back.
I have two questions about your time here at Penn State. So first, one of our mission tenants in the honors college is building a global perspective. And you mentioned you're the daughter of immigrants from Iran and you also studied abroad at least once in London, which is still a program we offer.
How did those experiences contribute to your time here? First at Penn State, how did you navigate that? And then also in your career, how has that influenced you? And obviously go much more in depth in your book that I have sitting here. But you give us like the 90,000 foot version of that.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: I think it just, it flexes your empathy muscles. It really does. You get to see how other people live. I remember coming to campus and my name is Farnoosh Tarabi and we're in central Pennsylvania. So there were definitely some classmates who were like, what Are you. What is this? Who you know? And I understood that, you know, it's like, well, they haven't left their town ever. So I guess we can't really expect them to have the same level of sort of awareness that I grew up with as an immigrant. And a lot of, you know, people I surrounded myself with were from all different ethnicities, religions, backgrounds, nationalities.
So it was really important to me to kind of build upon that. Coming to a university that offered a broad study abroad programs to take advantage of that. I ended up studying abroad in Paris for a semester.
And that was always like a non negotiable for me. I want to do that so that I can, you know, come back to campus. And it was. It made it easier, made life easier. You know, Penn State's a huge campus, and no matter where you come from, whatever city or big metropolitan area, you went to a high school with 30,000 kids. Guess what, there's like 60,000 people here. So is that still like 50?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: There's a lot.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: A lot.
So it was intimidating. And I think being able to go to London at 19 and learn the tube and be able to navigate a city by myself and a map of a foreign city and to come here, it's like, oh, I can get to east halls from, you know, wherever I am, I'm good.
It just helped me build my confidence, but really also just my appreciation and empathy for people from all different walks of life.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Excellent. And then you mentioned the honors thesis. This is an honors college podcast, so we have to talk about that. You've written several books. You have written probably countless articles and videos. But a major milestone as a writer must have been your honors thesis. Can you tell us about what you researched and how that has affected your career?
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Well, again, you know, this theory thesis comes into play. I'm a senior now, and I've already decided I want to go into journalism school. I want to pursue financial journalism, at least in the beginning.
So how can I take advantage of this thesis opportunity to further prove my case and solidify that narrative to graduate admissions boards? So I decided to write my thesis about the relationship between editorial content and advertising content across financial journals and magazines. Popular financial journals and magazines. So Forbes, Fortune, at the time there were only. I remember we had magazines back in the day. They're all probably digital now, but the paper magazine, I would be at Petit Library, like just getting all these volumes of magazines and going through them and scientifically trying to kind of understand, okay, how are they spacing out the advertisements for the automobiles with the content about cars and the reviews about cars or the advertisements about investment firms and then the stock picks in the magazine. And so, again, the climate in the world, like the macro, the global frame of all this was again, like the scandals that are happening and the sort of ethics breaches. And I kind of brought that in and sort of in a smaller way. And I think at the end of the day, the conclusion was like, the separation of church and state is not so separate.
And, you know, that I think, was.
I was very proud of that. I think I wrote about that in my college, in my graduate student essays to sort of show that I have been thinking critically about not just how to be a good writer or a good reporter in my field, but somebody who can be objective and somebody who understands the forces of advertising. I mean, these are real forces. And sometimes you have to.
It's all in balance.
There are real pressures out there to fund a newsroom, to provide funding for journalism. It's important. But that comes out of, you know, there's relationships with brands and advertisers that you have to sort of toe a line. And I do that now in my career. I work with brands, but, you know, we have to clear. Create boundaries, and there's a lot of disclosure that has to happen, and so that your audience understands sort of, okay, what's going on here. I understand the relationship between you and this sponsor or you and this brand, but at the end of the day, you want to convey truth. You want to be trusted. So how do you do that? And it's been a learning journey. And I didn't know this in college or even in the first few years in writing my business, but you learn. And I think the thesis sort of gave me the preliminary understanding of this is something that's happening, so kind of look out for it. And I think it impressed the admissions folks. I mean, I got into Columbia and Northwestern and nyu, but picked Columbia because it was the shortest program.
And, you know, Roi, just get out and start working, making that money. And, you know, being in New York was a big, big draw.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: So I wanted to ask, how did you decide that you wanted to go to grad school first thing out of Penn State and not, you know, go to a newsroom right away?
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Right.
Well, it was right after 9 11.
And I think I was scared. I think I was scared to put myself out there and try to be honest. I was trying to find work in.
I was. I was trying to play both lanes, two lanes at the same time. I was like, well, if I Don't get into graduate school. Well, what am I? What's my backup? Right. So I signed parallel to applying to graduate school in the fall of 2001. No way. Is it 2002?
No, 2001. Right. So it's like 9, 11 happens, and I'm like, everyone's losing their jobs. The people who had jobs lined up, they're being rescinded.
So I wasn't very confident that I could find work in general. But nevertheless, when there were career fairs here, and it may have been from PricewaterhouseCoopers or the banks, I showed up with my business resume, sort of, you know, just in case I couldn't go into the journalism field at that point. But luckily it worked out. My plan A worked out. I was able to go to journalism school. I got accepted. But I had in my back pocket this idea that if that doesn't happen, I mean, I had that internship at Money my junior year of college. I was probably gonna make some phone calls there and say, hey, you know, can you take me? But here's the thing, too, daughter, immigrants, Iranian. My parents would have never really supported pursuing a quote unquote, creative field in college. But when I told them I got into Columbia to study journalism, they were like, oh, maybe you're good at this. Maybe you can do this. People who are smarter than us and you think you can do this, who are in the field. So let's give it. Let's, let's, you know, we support you. And I've heard this from a lot of immigrant kids, kids of immigrants where they pursued theater, but, you know, only because they went to Yale to pursue theater. You know, it's like there would have been no support if they were like, I'm going to pack up my car after college and drive to Hollywood and cross my fingers and audition. You know, they want you to sort of marry your creative ambitions with some academic credentials.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Well, I think Smeal Schreier, Columbia. That's a good combination right there.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah.
[00:20:04] Speaker B: Now, I don't want to spoil too much your books. I have most recent one here. I've read most of it. It was really good.
But can you share some, like, an example of an early win that you had in your career?
And then also, I'm going to call it a learn from your mistakes moment from early in your career, especially for the students in the room who are about to go into internships or their first jobs in the coming months.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: I want to start with just giving a really broad tip that if you're ever Looking to pursue anything professional in your life. And maybe it requires a pivot. Maybe it's like you have a seat of an idea, but you don't really know how to get there. Tell people. Don't hold it close to the vest. Don't think that, like, oh, it's.
I'm scared to share this. People will laugh at me, or, you know, who's gonna care? Why would anybody help me? People want to help. People will listen, and good things will come out of that. That has been such a through line in my narrative every time I've been thinking about my next steps, and I don't know how to exactly get there. I'll talk to friends, I'll talk to colleagues, I'll talk to people. And maybe you got to be strategic about it. Talk to people who. It's like, your mom can be. Your parents can be loving, but are they going to be strategic for you?
No, maybe not. So talk to people who have an edge in that world or have experience or perspective or a network.
When I was out of Columbia, finished my graduate program, I did go back to Money magazine because it was. It was like sort of the path of least resistance. I'd already worked there. They offered me a gig, and I was like, all right, it's gonna keep me warm in New York, paid, and just kind of figuring out my next steps. And I knew it wasn't gonna be my forever job, but I took it because again, it was benefits and all the things.
But while I was there, I was like, I really wanna get out of here. I don't know how. I really wanna work in television. I don't know how. And I remember talking to colleague, my classmates, former classmates about it. And one day a former classmate forwarded me a job opening that I hadn't even come across. And it was like my dream job. It was my absolute dream job at the time to go to the local New York TV station to run their business news division.
So it was at New York. If anyone's from the New York area, it's New York one.
And it would have been a huge step, step up for me. And I knew I had.
I knew it was gonna be a learning curve. And I knew women typically don't apply for jobs unless they feel like they qualify for every single bullet point, whereas men, it's like 50%.
So I maybe qualify for 40%. And I still applied and. But I really, really went for it. I'm really proud of myself because there were a lot of people who applied. There were a lot of people who were way more experienced than I was. But there were a few things that I did that I think really helped me seal that job. One was I researched who worked there and realized that there was a high up editor there who had visited my university and given a talk at one point that I had been at, but I had kind of forgotten, I didn't remember. So I wrote to him and not only did he speak at my university, we're from the same hometown. He's from Worcester, I'm from Worcester, Massachusetts. So, you know, just kind of, you got to use all the things, right? So I sent him an email and not only like buttered him up, but I also talked about why I would be a great. It was basically a cover letter before sending in the resume.
And I didn't hear from him, but he apparently did forward that to the news director. And then a week later I got a call from her office saying we'd like to interview you. So I knew that that had, you know, channeled its way, way to her desk. I've saved that email because it's like, it's like, wow, if I had my daughter grows up, I'm gonna show her that, you know, take this email, this is a template.
And then I go to the interview and I bring a PowerPoint presentation because I know I'm green and I gotta really go the extra mile. And it might have been a little weird, but I came in with decks and we went through it and in the deck I had, here's, I've been watching the programming, here's what's great, here's what I think is working, here's what I would add, here's how I could be innovative here. I treated it like a business, you know, as opposed to a creative job. I treat it like you have goals, right? You want to increase viewership, you want to be known as sort of a go to destination for business news. Here's what I would propose. Now, of course, if you end up doing any of those things, probably not, but it really resonated and it made them remember me.
So I got the job. And then about a month or two into the job, I pulled aside the woman who was in the room with the others who I had shown the PowerPoint presentation to. And I said, was it the PowerPoint presentation?
They said, actually that was great. You know what? You were one of the only, if not the only candidate who did not either pick up her phone during the interview or brag about like who their father was or just come completely unprepared So I was like, so it was just, I could have been like so basic and gotten the job. And you know what? That is still true. LinkedIn just did a survey and found that employers hiring managers, their biggest pet peeve is that people come in disheveled late picking up their phones.
So listen, come in with a sharp outfit, be on time, put your phone on silent, you're like 90% there.
And this was 25 years ago. It's still true. I can't believe it, but I don't regret having done all of that. But it was to this day. And actually the woman who wrote my letter as we were applying, I had no idea she for this honor tonight that I'm getting from the alumni association, you need a letter of recommendation. And they reached out to this woman who had hired me back at New York One and like she remembers that it's like it's become folklore at this point. Like the girl who walked in with her PowerPoint, you know, and the suit was not much. I mean it was like a $19 suit from Marshalls, but it was like the PowerPoint that really in the end of the day. And also I didn't pick up my phone.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: So that's good advice for any situation. Right?
So I'm just going to read this question verbatim because I'm going to brag on your resume here a little bit as a Schreier grad and as a Smeal grad. So it's safe to say you are quite used to being on both sides of a conversation like the one we're having right now. First, creating video content at New York One, the Street and even CNBC at various points. You also produce and host the Radio Webby award winning podcast so Money as well as the Smeal's Better Business podcast. You can go check that out when you're done watching or listening to this.
And you're also what I call a frequent flyer on news and talk channels like cnn, ABC and countless others.
So you could also say that you are an expert in residence with a lot of publications like O Magazine for Oprah. So what strategies have you employed to position yourself as the go to expert for personal finance, particularly with your emphasis on female empowerment.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Well, thank you. That was I fact checked and you were very good at that. And I'm going to use frequent flyer. That's. I like that. I like that a lot.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: All yours.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: So a few things come to mind, I think firstly, being really easy to work with, I will say that there are a lot of divas in the the industry, you know, and I just try to make everyone's life easy. I. I think having been on all the sides, I understand when I'm working with someone, collaborating with someone what they need. And I will deliver, I will anticipate and bring that to the table so that, for example, we're right now, I think I'm gonna be on the Today show on next Friday. And the idea that I initially pitched, they wanted to revisit do and the producer said, don't go crazy. You don't have to like, totally rewrite it. Just a couple things. I said, I'm gonna rewrite it and I'm gonna give you graphic ideas. I'm gonna give you questions for the anchor because you're busy producing a live national program, and I really want to be on your show. So I'm gonna make it easy for both of us and a slam dunk. And so I sent her yesterday, like a completely revised with all of the. I call it putting it on a Silver platter for your. For your people. So that, you know, I may not be the person with the most TikTok followers. I'm definitely not. I'm not the most. You know, I'm successful and I have earned a lot of my merits. But, like, there's always someone who's going to be more, quote, unquote, successful, bigger than you. And the brands, the TVs, the shows, they have a lot of choices. They have a lot of people they can reach out to. But I've been fortunate. They consistently come back to me. First of all, I feel like the world's abundant. There's room for everybody, and there's always room for the person who's remembered as being the one who shows up, the one who delivers well and she's easy to work with and we like her. I mean, I like to think that, you know, I can't say I work, I want everybody, but I think I leave a good impression. So that's one thing. And then the other thing that I have done, I feel like this is my most important job as a creator entrepreneur in media, is to create and generate and not to sort of react or sit back and wait for the phone to ring, is that I enterprise, whether that's a new piece of thought leadership.
Where, for example, my previous book to this one was about women who are primary or learning more in their relationships and their male partners, which was very taboo at the time to talk about, but now we're talking about it. I like to think that My book kind of helped to turn the. Turn those squeaky wheels.
And so every year it's like, what's going to be the new. The new thing? It could be a new way of sharing the information, like starting a podcast or coming out with a book, or it could be a new thesis, which is, for example, this book of how fear can be an instrument, a tool in helping you find answers to complex issues in your life that you're afraid to tackle.
And so that is my advice. I actually coach now others who are looking to build their personal brands, whether that's in finance or health.
And that's my big piece of advice is like, you have to move the needle for yourself.
And when you put your work out there, there are positive things on the other side.
People don't know what your work. Like, how do you. As they say, if you have a great idea and you don't tell anybody about it, you don't share it. Like, well, did it even happen? Is it really even an idea?
So don't be afraid to just put your work out there. People, for example, who are looking for press and they want to be featured, I said, well, we have all the tools now to be our own press, right? You have social media. You have. You can do a newsletter, you can do a podcast. Like, you don't have to wait to have your own show.
That said, there are, you know, there's like the networks that can hire you now, but it happens because you've already kind of shown them what you're capable of. They don't have to guess. And so you want an audition, well, go do it. You don't have to wait for the film to ring. It doesn't happen like that actually anymore. You know, like, I just was reading about my friend who's getting potentially her own. She's a comedian and she's getting her own show on cbs.
Title of her name is the sitcom.
And I remember talking to her about it, and she's like, oh, the writers strike this. I don't know if it's gonna happen. She's like, but you know what?
I'm gonna just do my own thing. I have a show basically on Instagram and TikTok where we.
I talk about my life all the time on social media. And she has a podcast where now she talks about her life and her family. So this network, it's happening now because the network's like, oh, my gosh, if we don't step in, she's just. I mean, you know, so this is. I see this Happening all the time. And it's just that entrepreneurial mindset that supersedes any other skill set that you may have acquired.
[00:32:21] Speaker B: Next. Excellent.
Now you kind of teed up my next question.
So you have your own business, you're managing a team, but you're also the face of the brand. Right. Like your brand. And how do you balance those two things? How do you decide what to delegate and what to keep? Which I think especially for any Sapphire students, any Smeal Schreier students, that's probably something that they're trying to navigate as the go getters.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: What recommendations do you have?
[00:32:48] Speaker A: So I have a very lean team. You're looking at her. I'm the only W2 in my company.
I used to not be. But you learn quickly. I've learned a lot about myself that I don't like to be delegating and managing. I like to delegate. I have freelancers, I have people that I contract. For example, I don't edit my own podcast, but I love being in it sometimes. Like I love using Canva and, and making my decks and creating my social badges and doing. I just love I. Because again, I think it goes back to the collegiate making those ads, learning Adobe Illustrator, all the things so. And it's faster. I feel like I know I could delegate so much more, but then that means also managing people.
And I'm not, I wasn't built for that.
I, you know, some people love to demonstrate their success by saying, I have 13 interns and 400 people on staff. And God love, you know, that's great. But like I'm just hearing that and going, HR problems, you know, people coming in all the time with their, you know, concerns. And then who's. Then can I do the work? You know, can I actually be in the work?
So I never aspired to scale and I know that's not a sexy thing to say. I aspire to be lean and, and I. Because I have other things I'm interested in. I have two little kids, I have a house, I have family. And I think I'm so grateful that things happen in the timeline that they did in my life where I. In my 20s and 30s, at least half my 30s, I could really like go 100 miles per hour.
But I've invested my money. I've been trying to be real half deer. I'm like sort of the person who talks about it. I'll tell you, some of the people don't always do what they say, but I'm benefiting from some of that now.
And I see everyone else in my world who's, like, maybe a little bit younger or maybe doesn't have dependence, and they're just going a thousand miles per hour and they're getting all these opportunities. And there are times where I'm like, that looks fun. I'm like, I have to remember that I chose this.
And the grass is always greener. But you have to really, like, living in the now is really important. And I don't think I did that for a while because I was trying to build and build and build and always looking for the next thing. And this is actually the first time in a very long time where I don't have the next thing yet. I know it'll come and it'll happen, and I trust that because. Because I'm 44 and I know that I have a history of being able to make things happen. But I was going for a run yesterday, and I had just learned that, like, I was potentially up for this TV gig and I didn't get it and someone else did. I was really bummed. I went for a run, and I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna. If this is really important to me, which I haven't decided yet, if it is. I don't know if I was just kind of caught up in the success of being able to brag about that. You know, like, sometimes you just want the thing to be like, I got the thing, but then you're like, I got the thing, the thing. And now it's going to be, like, a lot of time and not even a lot of money. So I thought, you know, if I actually want to pursue that, I know how to do it. I've done it before. And the key is to come up with your own ideas and demonstrate and hustle, which I haven't admittedly done. So that's on me. But if I want to do that, then I'm going to do that. But I. I have to still figure out if that's really important to me or if I was just sort of caught up in, like, the winner, loserness of it.
But, yeah, I'm thinking. I mean, I thought about.
I was on the way up here, I was like.
To be able to teach. That's something that I've always maybe wanted to do to.
I don't want to say slow down, but, like, create your impact in different ways.
And I've always been the person. This was actually a professor at Penn State, as a theater professor. She pulled me aside, she said, you know, you're really Creative. Do you want to be in, like, my summer play? And I said, oh, I can't. I'm interning at Solomon Smith Barney. And she said, okay. But she was the teacher who would say to me, you know, she would give us a lesson, like, something to do in class, like pretend you're, you know, do a scene where you're, you know, upset about something.
And I would do it, and she'd say, oh, my gosh, every time you don't want to do anything that anyone else would potentially do. That was not what I saw coming.
She just had. She knew in me there was this rumble of needing to always do something different. So, well, maybe I'll come back next year and I'll tell you what it is.
[00:37:23] Speaker B: Well, one of those things that you did have as the next thing that's part of your repertoire now that really stuck out to me from your book is that you kind of took this zig when everyone else zagged approach in terms of online courses and small group workshops. So you lean into small group workshops when a lot of other content creator folks. Online courses are sexy. Right?
So not to dive into the nitty gritty of those from a content perspective, but more from the business perspective. How did that jump out to you as, like, this is the unmet business need. This is the opportunity that I can latch onto.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Well, so I write about this story in the book in a chapter about FOMO. Fear of Missing Out. And I was in my 30s, had accomplished a good bit, and I looked around, and I feel like I kind of missed the Internet wave of, like, so much of my work was analog, like magazines and, of course, television. But this Internet thing I'd yet to figure out. And I felt like everybody in the thought leadership space was quick to come out with a course this, and of course, that.
And the more I. And so I, For a while, I was like, okay, I need to do this, because I'm not legit if I don't have a course. Like, who are you? You don't have a course, and you're leaving money on the table. And so I kind of looked into the mechanics of it all and what it would actually entail, and I'm like, this is not what I like doing.
Can I be honest about that? You know, can we discuss how this requires a lot of marketing, behind the scenes, ab testing, spending a lot of money on Facebook, throwing darts? And it's not really about the education, really. It's about the race of trying to get people to sign up and this rat race And I just thought I had to hire all these people.
So.
But I was like, I sat with the fomo. You know, when the FOMO comes, it's sometimes a calling to say, say, okay, something's got you, you have an itch and you think. The mistake we make with the sphere is to assume we have to copy paste the experience that we see before us. Oh, everyone's in Greece. I gotta go to Greece. Everyone's starting a course, I gotta start a course. But it's really deeper. It's really about.
There's maybe something in you that's saying, hey, let's start something, let's create something, let's make an impact, let's teach. Those are all the elements that are in the sort of online course world. But it's the mechanics that we're not speaking to me. And you can create new mechanics. I mean, there's a market for everything. It's just finding it and making sure it's aligned. I realized that there was such fatigue around online courses that there were people who were willing to pay big money to go in person somewhere in a more intimate setting and learn live from the teacher.
So I decided to take my course idea, but make it a workshop and sell it to 10 people instead of 10,000, charge a lot more, but at the end of the day, still do what I wanted, right, which was to teach, make an impact and really deliver.
And it worked.
So I think that we are under the assumption that success equals scale.
And I just think it means specificity, being really specific about what you're trying to accomplish.
And I think it was Tim Ferriss who came on my podcast, one of my first guests, who said, there's always a market for expensive.
There is always a market for people who will pay more if the value is there. It has to make sense, right? Like, and I conveyed the value well enough. And it was a different marketing strategy. There was no ab testing Facebook ad gets. It was networking, going to events, which I like doing. Going to events where I knew the clients were there, having real organic conversations with them. Hey, what do you do? Oh, well, I, you know, I'm running this workshop, blah, blah, blah. It was about how to write a book and then use the books have become basically a brand. And it was the question that I was getting a lot as I was out and about in the world that had nothing to do with personal finance, but more about, like the behind the scenes of my career. So I always say, you make money from what you do and you can make money from what you know, and that was my way of doing that. But no, I didn't do the course. So grateful. I do run an online community now that is part of like, it's an extension of the audience from the podcast. So if you want more access to me, you want to learn deep dive on topics. Every month I have a whole curriculum, but it's, it's like 29, 39 bucks a month. It's not, it's not like a three thousand dollar thing.
But that, that may change. I don't know. I'm not going to say I'm never going to do a course.
And I have done a course for other bigger organ. I did a course for Investopedia. They couldn't sell it, so sell my own course. You know, like someone like an Investopedia with marketing teams and advertising teams and budget people to buy a course.
It's a lot of work and I'm not lazy, but I didn't want that kind of work.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: The return was not there.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: No, no.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: So we've talked a lot about your day jobs, but job number one you've referenced in passing here is being a mom. You're a parent. I can relate to that. As a dad, what strategies have you employed both successfully and unsuccessfully as a working moment?
[00:42:46] Speaker A: Oh my God, how much time do we have for the unsuccessfully part?
[00:42:50] Speaker B: Maybe this is your next book.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Well, someone's like, you should write a parenting book. I'm like, it's full of questions, there are no answers. This book is gonna use a Socratic method.
So I would say that I got really good advice before I became a mom from other working moms who said that if you're going to ever like sort of take a step back from your career or slow down or reprioritize or, you know, that do it sort of in the middle years. Because in the beginning, yes, your babies are vulnerable and they need you, but not as much as you think because they're not asking you questions yet. They're not dealing with the pressures at school, they're not studying yet. They're not dealing with their emotions yet. They have like two emotions on the world, right? Happy, sad. So that's, you know, cold, warm, hungry. Hungry. Yeah. Is that an emotion? And it's like, yeah, they have very basic needs as a child.
So I was around, of course, and my husband, but we had full time care that we invested in. I consider it an investment not to justify the cost of child care, but it's like gonna wrap your head around it, like this will pay off. And it did. It allowed us to continue working in our careers and, you know, taking risks in our careers. To have that stable caregiver full time was a game changer. I think that that was one thing.
And now, as they're older and in school, you know, this.
I can't say, you know, it's been consistent, but this fall I've made a commitment. It's been hard to just like, be more around after school, whereas, like last year I was sending them to an aftercare program or just feel like particularly our. Our son needs us more right now. He's just, you know, he's 10.
He's just, you know, kids are like a lot.
And so I feel like that's a derivative of the hard work and the investments we've made to be able to get to this place and be like, okay, we're going to transition this and be more present without childcare. We have no childcare, but we can afford it, you know, energetically, financially.
So let's make this investment.
And the unsuccessful things.
I think that I hear this from other parents too, where, when your kid's having an issue, and I don't mean like a medical issue or a health issue, but just sort of like, like there's this expression of like throwing money at the problem. Do you know what I mean? Where it's like, oh, well, I can't even give it a good example of this. But, you know, maybe it's like, well, they're not that into school, so we're gonna send them to the best school. We're gonna go to a private school because they're not getting what they need at public school. But maybe it's because it's not the school. It's more the sort of like the kid who's not getting the resources at home or outside of school or whatever, or talking to the teachers and really making the investment where you are instead of like completely derailing the school and. Or like assuming the school is the problem. You know what I mean? So, like, then I hear this from a friend who did this with her son. He.
She sent him to a very, very small private school where there were like 10 people in his grade. And, you know, he's a kid that really doesn't have a lot of friends now. And she realized like, the trade off she had gotten was she went to this very prestigious school. But unless you're getting along with these nine kids, who are you gonna make friends with, right? So she fears that maybe she threw money at a problem.
It wasn't the academics, it was really like, let's focus on the fact that our child is very like outgoing and needs a lot of social stimulation. And this school wasn't the right fit for. Maybe it's prestigious, maybe it's got all the academics, but like actually, you know, he's suffering now because of that.
So it, you, you don't know your kids all that well until maybe in hindsight you're like, oh, that's what they needed. But I don't know, can you tell I should not be writing a book about parenting, but I don't know.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: You could.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Does this resonate with anyone in the.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Comments, getting the questions going? And for the students, this is something to think about down the road if you're considering parent.
[00:47:02] Speaker A: I think it's really important to have a village. I mean when you say you've heard that expression a lot, but the village can be your daycare, but can you can be.
It's your fam. I mean I, I get it now why people move back to where they lived as children to be closer to family.
I'm not saying again, I want to hold the government accountable. I think we need, we have a broken sort of child care. We don't have a child care program in this country. We're like the worst when it comes to all like fully developed countries, economically developed countries, that we don't have any guaranteed paid leave on a federal level for parents and caregivers.
And I think that it's stupid and it's a cost, it's backfiring, we're not able to retain employees, it's just awful. So I hope that we see change there. In the meantime, as parents, you gotta get good at negotiating your own time. You got to get good at outsourcing. And I think for parents who decide to maybe take a step away from their careers, I completely understand that. But if your interest is to go back at some point to make sure that you're continuing to nurture your profession in some way, whether it's just like continuing to connect with former colleagues, staying on top of your industry, doing part time work, but not abandoning that altogether because we know the data shows it's very, very difficult to a, even get back in to what you were doing and to go back in making the previous salary, kind of have to, you know, start a little bit below.
So that's tough. But I just wrote a baby guide on how to afford a kid in America.
Yeah, it's coming out soon. I'll send it to you. Tell me what you think Well, I.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Think you also just found a new episode topic for the Better Business podcast as well to talk about.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: Oh yeah, I have a lot more questions than answers.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: So speaking of your involvement, you work with the Smeal College on that podcast.
You, in addition to being a mom, entrepreneur and creative, you're also a volunteer and donor here at Penn State. You've been on the Schreyer External Advisory Board, you're on the smieghl Board of Visitors.
You host the Better Business podcast, and you were even the homecoming Grand Marshal in 2019.
So why is all this service and philanthropy important enough to you to carve out such a precious resource of time to give back to dear Old State?
[00:49:33] Speaker A: Who doesn't want to come back to Penn State all the time?
I mean, I'm selfish. I think that's why I do it because it's so much fun and I think I'm an academic at heart. My parents, you know, always instilled the importance of academia. And then to have experienced Penn State, I think to graduate and to be able to come back, it's a whole new experience. It's, I think more fun because you have a little bit more money and you can like go eat at the Tavern if you want and not be worried about the credit card bill.
By the way, Tavern should raise their prices. It's like really still like, you know, I guess from you, you know, coming from New York, it's a great value. It's a great value. All those sides.
So I just, I feel like I got so I benefited so much and this is a cliche answer, but it's so true. Like I benefited so much from being here and it's just been this experience that keeps on providing me that roi.
And so I am always grateful to come back when I can to help students. I know when I was a student here to hear faculty or alumni coming back with their experiences was sometimes the best because you really need that real world perspective to inform what you're going to do when you leave here and then also what you're going to do while you're here to make the most impact for yourself.
So it's a no brainer.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Excellent. Well, as a development in alumni relations staff member here, I love hearing that. I'm sure my colleagues in the room do too.
We're gonna wrap up here.
We are well into long form content area here.
How can scholars who you know are here or watching the video, listening afterwards, how can they get in touch with you?
[00:51:20] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:51:21] Speaker B: Or really any Penn State student.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: Well, you can I'm on Instagram.
You can DM me there. It's like my text at this point.
And then every Friday if you have a question about money or career, every Friday I take questions from the audience and that becomes the show.
So I have a three day a week show, but Friday is just for the audience to answer their questions. And you can send me those questions by clicking a button on the so many podcast website called AskFarnoosh. It's on the right hand corner and you can email me Farnooshomoneypodcast.com I feel like I'm on the show.
Leave a review, say it, send it to a friend.
[00:52:04] Speaker B: Well, I'm about to get to that, but I have one more critical question here and a tradition on following the gone Farnoosh. If you were a flavor of Berkey Creamery ice cream as we sit a stone's throw away from their facility, which would you be? And as a scholar alum, why would you be that flavor?
[00:52:22] Speaker A: I did not prepare this answer and I feel like I like the mint chocolate chip one. What's that called?
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Bittersweet mint.
[00:52:31] Speaker A: Sure, that one.
[00:52:33] Speaker B: Why would you be that flavor?
[00:52:34] Speaker A: Because it's both sweet and tart. And like you know, as I said earlier, like I'm, I'm, I like multiple flavors and I like the color and it and it's just what I've always liked as a kid.
[00:52:49] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, thank you Farnoosh for joining us and thank you to the audience as well.
Before I let you share last piece of advice as we wrap up. If you're watching the video version like you said, make sure subscribe like all that stuff and same on the audio if you're listening engaging with us on Apple, Spotify, etc.
Now once you're done that then make sure you go check out some her other content you've mentioned so money, the Smeal Better Business podcast and others.
So with that, before we head off to the alumni fellow ceremony later today, why don't you close us out with a final piece of advice as one of our alumni fellows.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: Don't get too comfortable.
You know I like a good comfort zone but when you get a little too comfortable or a lot too comfortable, I think where the spark goes away a little bit. And I think having an appetite for innovation, it only comes when you feel like that rumble and you get a little maybe tired of the same old same old. Like I just, it's important, you know to feel constantly Inspired. Maybe not 24 7, but find your sources of inspiration. Latch onto them. Find new ones if you have to, because your ideas aren't going to just show up. You need to go out there and live and try new things and do it scared. So don't get too comfortable.