Big Money & Simple Ease: I Want to Prove You Can Have It All Without Spending It All

$25,000

That’s how much a Subaru Forester costs.

Can you picture a Subaru Forester? You need to own a Grade A beaver pelt in order to qualify, but these cars are a dream when you: (a) Live in Maine; (b) Live in Colorado; (c) Have no interest in ever being mistaken for Beyoncé again.

Now. I want you to humor me here—and by “humor me” I mean “A LOT OF HUMOR”—and imagine going out to your nearest dealership and buying yourself—drum roll—a brand new 2021 Subaru Forester. Let’s make it delightfully stereotypically green. You plunk down $25,000 and run away with your new beauty.

Success!

Except now, your partner wants one. Greedy slug! So the following month you go back to the Subaru dealership, and plunk down another $25,000 on yet another Subaru Forester. Woooooo, part-ay!!!! You are living your best life now! Two Foresters for the win! #twins

The following month, things get so wild that you think: “Jeez, why should we have all the fun? Maybe our 16-year-old daughter would also like to partake in these superb automotive festivities.” And so off you go, one more time, to buy your third Subaru Forester. (This one can be beige. The joy!)

The month after that, you also decide to give a random person you once met from Australia their own brand-new Forester. Mate, they definitely deserve one: it’s the cousin of the Outback! The OG Subaru! The Forester’s great grand-mammy!

So, you do. And yes, people definitely talk about you. (Who wouldn’t talk about this? This is WEIRD.)

Then you get your holiday bonus. You’re like, sweet, I know just the thing! So off you go to buy one more 4WD legend. In fact, you’re so obsessed, you start buying one every single month, handing them out like Tic Tacs. You are the Subaru Forester MASTER. Everyone in the neighborhood knows you. You’ve got at least 12 in your driveway. (Who’s laughing now, MTV Cribs.) Eventually you just ask to be put on a subscription plan.

One new Subaru Forester. Every single month. Cash.

Obviously this is a ridiculous scenario.

But until recently, it’s how I was running my business.

***

It was 2013. I was crushing it. And then she came along.

I hired her. Immediately. She knew things I didn’t know, like how to file S-Corps. Filing an S-Corp made me feel legit. Working with her made me feel legit. We did all sorts of fancy things, like registering trademarks and writing formal letters to misbehaving contractors. For being 28 years old, I had accomplished a lot. And now, I had this Person of Importance to verify it—the human equivalent of a blue check.

It was going so well, in fact, that within just a couple of months we decided to do more. We went into business together. Created a product together. She gave me the legal know-how, and me and my company turned it into a dazzlingly hip, smart, fun-to-read book that was marketable and fresh. We agreed to split the proceeds 50/50. She would handle the financials, and I was happy to tell all of my awesome email subscribers because this was going to be so helpful for everyone. And it was. It was a hit! Something like 98.92871739% of our initial sales came from my readers.

It seemed like such a useful idea at the time; I didn’t realize being in business with your lawyer was a conflict of interest. I just assumed it was a handy plus, like if you happened to have a hair stylist in the family. Or a cheese maker.

All that changed one day, however, when I logged into the copyright office and saw that, to my surprise and confusion, my Person of Importance—who had power of attorney for both my business and our joint business—had filed a mysterious change to the record. An amendment had been filed listing an 'error' to the original application. That I had never been the co-author of our product at all; that I was to be changed to work-for-hire status. My intellectual property rights were revoked.

I stood dumbfounded. I was sure I wasn’t seeing this correctly. I hired outside counsel to understand what I was looking at.

That led to what can only be described as a pissing match of egos between my Person of Importance and my new attorney: apparently, attorneys don't like it when you bring in other attorneys to question them. I watched in horror as I sat there, feeling helpless, unsure what to do—but feeling like something was very, very wrong.

Then, my share of the payments started being withheld.

Then I was told I would be paid only once I signed a buy-out agreement.

Then my name was erased from the cover.

Then my Person of Importance instructed her calling service to send our calls to voice mail.

Then, one thing led to another—more disputes and more payment withholdings—and, eventually, at the advice of counsel, we rescinded the agreement. I was told to sell the book on my website like normal, to prevent monetary damages, until we could come to a new agreement.

Then I received a lawsuit suing me for copyright infringement of my own work.

***

I filed three separate countersuits: one against the individual, one against the law firm she owned, and one against our joint business that she now controlled.

In the years between that time and when I was eventually offered a settlement for malpractice, I experienced things that very few 28-year-olds do:

• I proofread legal briefs
• Attended depositions in Manhattan
• Paid for my lawyers to stay in hotels
• Testified in federal court
• Refused settlement offers containing gag order after gag order
• Explained to a judge what an email list was, and why my long-time readers at The Middle Finger Project list could not be "owned" by anyone, as was being argued by my opponent; that they should not be compelled to be removed from my email list, purely because they had also opted into the list of our new business (I have never written such a passionate personal letter in response)
• Discovered more emails during the discovery process that had been sent to my Person of Importance’s assistant, directing her to minimize the number of days my cookie would give me credit for my sales, along with a sweet note attached: “Fuck them.” (This piece of evidence was particularly disappointing—it made the malice real.)

But perhaps what was most difficult? Two things:

• The day I attempted to blog about my experience, omitting names but doing what I had done for so many years—teach from my own life experiences—a defamation claim was filed against me within hours. It was immediate. It was intended to silence; to keep me quiet and preserve another person's reputation while I was being muzzled. And it worked. I was much too scared to say anything else, anyway, for fear that it would distract from the main event: the reason we were there in the first place. (Years later, my Person of Importance would take to the mic to criticize a number of leaders, demanding that the internet “call them out.” I wondered, in private, if she recognized the irony; if she had thought about the way she had leveraged her position of power to bully me into submission for doing something much less.) This was, by far, one of the most harmful events of those years: feeling like the one thing you have—your voice—has been taken from you.
• The second most difficult thing, however, was the burden of paying $30,000 a month in newfound legal fees. It cost $2,000 a month just to store the discovery documents alone. Legal opponents love to do this thing where they try and bury you with enough expenses so you eventually just give up—hence an impromptu extra claim here, an impromptu emergency hearing there. Yet, I never gave up. I managed to carry that burden for four whole years. I was 32 by the time it was over.
  
  By then, I had purchased 48 Subaru Foresters.

***

Forty-eight cars in 4 years.

With money I worked very hard to make.

As a child, really.

That just slipped out of my fingers.

The day I was offered the malpractice settlement, my Person of Importance called and suggested that, in what felt like a sick twist of reality, I should give her the money I was being awarded, that she would use it to pay her legal fees, and in exchange, would drop one of her remaining claims.

Fortunately I was an adult by then, and I knew exactly what to say.

***

I recently reviewed my business financials.

I use You Need a Budget because it’s amazing for keeping track of everything you’re spending. I have every subscription, every contractor, every outgoing payment listed in the order of due date, and how much is due, and then I “assign” dollars to those categories every month for as many months as I can so I can see how far in advance our cash flow is going to last. (It’s sort of like doing a simulation.)

But then I saw a new number.

It was way too big.

$25,000 big.

It sat there, mocking me. Surely this couldn’t be right.

I toggled and I clicked and I added and I subtracted and, sure enough, the number was dead on: somehow, at some point along the way, while having been distracted writing The Middle Finger Project book, doing all the publicity for the launch, buying a house, getting consumed by politics, getting sick with COVID while abroad, launching new projects, and trying not to be a complete sedentary lump, I had been too busy to notice what was right in front of my eyes:

Our business expenses had ballooned right back up to where they were during The Lost Years—sans legal fees.

$25,000 is what my business had been eating every. single. month…for just one employee (that’s me), an assistant who works 1 hour a day, a designer who works 1 day/week, and some apps.

WHAT.

There is no reason for an independent business my size, operating online, without an office or even so much as a lap dog, should have such large overhead.

It’s one freakin’ Subaru Forester a month.

And it really, really shook me, seeing how out-of-control things had gotten when I wasn't looking. Despite having a clear picture of each individual expense, I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the overall output—I have been grateful to have had enough to simply just fill the categories and move onto the next month. “Look, ma, I’m planning!”

I wasn’t planning.

I was pretending to plan. I figured that if I had enough to put into those categories, all was fine—but I had neglected to look at the big picture and say, “Wait, what’s this actually costing?”

Because $25,000/mo is ridiculous.

I was so blind. So put-head-in-sand-y. So stupid, frankly, because that’s $300,000 United States dollars in expenses a year—for what? For a girl who publishes blogs and newsletters and sells online books and courses? Really?

It, too, was hard-earned money that slipped through my fingers.

At some point during The Lost Years, it had become normalized to spend $2,000/month on one app. (Lookin’ at you, Logikcull.) It had become normal to pay excruciating sums to vendors. It had become normal to overpay everyone for everything—usually as a grand gesture of gratitude, born from feeling so helpless. Like anyone who I paid to help me was my savior, even though in reality, I am often theirs. And it had become normal to hustle and bleed and work myself to the bone just for the thrill of keeping up with it all; this tiny relentless fire of fury that hadn’t been extinguished because testing myself in that way had made me feel invincible. I didn’t need to go to Louie Vuitton for my thrills: I could do it under the facade of it being “necessary.” These were business expenses, after all.

I wondered if I had created some kind of homeostasis, forcing things to remain hard—because hard is what I feel most comfortable with. I know how to handle hard. I know who I am when hard’s around. I can rise to that occasion and morph into a perfect warrior, every time.

Easy is much more challenging for me. If I only had $1,000 a month in expenses, what would that mean? That all of this extra money would be mine? That I wasn’t bleeding as hard for it? That maybe I didn’t deserve it? That it was too easy?

Easy makes me uneasy.

But still—I realized I was going to have to make some big changes, because otherwise? I couldn’t respect myself anymore.

I went on an immediate mission to cut 50% of our expenses across the board. Had some uncomfortable conversations with people I respect. Downgraded whatever I could—things that felt frivolous, extravagant, silly, overboard—like paying double the money for A/B testing in Sam Cart when I have never used that function in my life. And really took a hard look at what the smartest, leanest way to run this business is: because, honey, if you’re spending $300,000 a year on nothing, you’re doing it wrong.

I’m so grateful my business even earns enough to even be in a position to spend like some drunk NFL football player. But that doesn’t mitigate the very real fact that, hi: just because I have it, doesn’t mean I should spend it. Somehow, “business money” doesn’t feel as real as “personal money.” It’s easier to throw around, like it’s supposed to be used for the business. The separation is actually harmful in this way. You can find yourself spending so much money you would never spend in other contexts, justifying things you’d never justify anywhere else.

And that’s dangerous. Business money isn’t Monopoly money. It’s your money. It’s your freedom. It’s your dreams. It’s the quality of your life.

One of the most important lessons of all is not just knowing what you're worth, but knowing how to KEEP YOUR WORTH.

It really is about working smarter, not harder, and I’m not sure how KEEPING AS MUCH MONEY AS YOU CAN somehow escaped the conversation. Instead, we’re inundated with a world full of entrepreneurs bragging about their click funnels and promoting their latest affiliate links and asking you to buy their $900,000 mastermind and eventually, all of this gets normalized, too. You find yourself trapped inside this culture of spending, where it’s expected that you will have the slickest online course software! And the coolest new community chat apps! And the latest webinar technology! God forbid, should you ever launch something without the perfect logo!

That adds up to a lot of money.

I think there’s a better way. I’m opting for the simple way this year: simple tools, simple solutions, simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. The way I should have opted for a long time ago, when it was clear that I could finally exhale.

Except I never did.

And you aren’t, either. You’re there holding your breath every second of every day, running around frazzled trying to get it all done, and spending way too much money in the process.

I want to prove that we don’t need to spend all the money on the fancy tools to make a gorgeous online business that earns a generous living.

I want to prove that you can do it the simple way.

I want to prove that ease is the most profitable thing you can do for yourself.

And I want to prove that, even though I don't spend like a baller….I still am one.

Because, really, it’s not about the money: it’s about what you do with it. You can spend a lifetime using it to prove yourself, or you can spend a lifetime using it to LIVE.

And I’m on a new mission to start living more than ever.

Now all I need is a Grade A beaver pelt.