The Tiger Sisters Get Honest About Money: Going 50/50, Becoming Millionaires & Building Two Businesses

0:00The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Hey, y 'all. Welcome to Growing Interest. Today, I'm sitting down with the Tiger Sisters, two serial entrepreneurs with the top of the charts podcast and a sister matcha brand. But what fascinates me most is that they're sisters. As you know, I have three sisters myself, and we're starting to build businesses together and build a brand together. And so going into this episode, my intention is pretty much that, to figure out how they are dealing with interpersonal financial relationships. We all know money is hard to talk about, and we all know that sometimes family dynamics are hard to deal with.

0:36So I'm really going into this eyes wide open to figure out how they have structured their sister relationship, how they separate that from their business relationship, and where the money fits into it all. All right, let's get into it, y 'all. Let's grow.

0:54Welcome to the show, Tiger Sisters. Thank you. We're so excited to be here. Oh my gosh. I'm thrilled for today's conversation because Sisters in Business Together, you guys have built such a successful podcast. Thank you. So exciting. And now you're building or you launched Sisters Macho, which is y 'all's business together. So I'm excited to see how the interpersonal relationship works with building a business. Obviously, I have three sisters. and we work together, also live together, also do everything together. So it's insane. You guys get it. Yeah. But I want to start with a question that I ask a lot of my guests, which is your money story, kind of where you came from, how you grew up with money.

1:34And you guys grew up with first generation tiger parenting, hence the name Tiger Sisters, which is so clever. But I'm curious what messaging you absorbed around money specifically and which ones you had to unlearn, you know, as you entered business together. So much to unlearn. Well, so Gina and I are seven years apart. I'm the younger sister and she's the older sister. So she left for college when I was 10, like when I was in fifth grade. And so there has been a part of our life where we've, you know, had that relationship growing up and she was my babysitter. But then a lot of my childhood too was like kind of like an only child.

2:12But I would say a similarity between us is that growing up with immigrant parents and also a tiger mom, so much of what we learned was based around prioritizing our education, which is why I think the tiger mom, tiger sisters really make sense for us, where it's education or going to good school, getting good grades, getting the job out of graduation was just like, that is the way to succeed and grow in socioeconomic mobility. And so that was where we started from. We had to go to a good school. We didn't really have any backup plan or anything to fall back on. So it came from a place of like, you must do this or figure it out, which I think really served us.

3:00We worked really hard in college and getting that job after school. But I think going into adulthood And especially as you're a new grad, figuring out things on your own, like so much to unpack and unlearn when we become adults on our own and we get to choose how we want to spend and live our lives and have financial stability and financial independence. Yeah. And I think that was a really big thing that we learned growing up with a single mom, just kind of observing that and living with that every single day. I think something we really embodied almost subconsciously was building financial stability for yourself and being financially independent because that was what allowed our mom to change her life in a positive way, right?

3:45For her to leave her a bad situation. And so for us, that's something that we've always, always sort of lived our lives by and really prioritized. So even for, you know, our first jobs out of school, that was something that we knew we have to optimize for something that isn't just interesting to us, but something where we can financially support ourselves. No, like, because like, I was like, I need a high paying job out of school to like pay my loans. Like, it's literally not an option. I have like no other choice. And like, I really loved my first job out of school, but I felt like that was totally a constraint for me.

4:22Whereas I could only find or go through these certain industries where I could have my own check in that way. I mean, that's the only reason I entered finance. Let's be real. I was like the highest paying check. And financial independence equals freedom from bad situations that was instilled in you from a very young age. Flash forward now, you have two huge major businesses, Macho Company, top business podcast. From a financial perspective, I am curious, which of those businesses is more lucrative? Absolutely, the podcast. It's been in biz for a while. And the backstory around the matcha business where Gina and I started our podcast around two years ago, and then the matcha business is about a year and a half old, but it came from very, very different origins.

5:10So we have a matcha company together called Sisters Matcha. And I interned on a Japanese matcha farm when I was a student between my first and second year. So like I lived on the farm, like literally it's in the middle of nowhere, an hour and a half outside of Kyoto, like the most beautiful place where like the neighbors are like 80 years old and don't speak any English. And I've been like, you know, 13th generation tea farmers. It's like a really beautiful like heritage. And I became so, so deeply ingrained in that matcha world. And Jean and I wanted to bring it to life with Sisters Matcha. That being said, it is so, I mean, it's a very premium product because there's like different types.

5:54Let me nerd out for one second. Please nerd out on the matcha. Different types of matcha because there's more commercial farming where all the land is like very flat and you can have these like giant tractors and you can get large grade, large amounts of matcha, whereas the farm that I lived on is in like the mountainside hills of Kyoto. And so there's no industrial farming there. It's all handpicked and very, very small batch. So in that way, our matcha company has a very limited, has a constraint on how much we can have. So we say our matcha is small batch, it's premium, it's first harvest. And so it's really something we feel very, very passionately about, but we know in our heart of hearts, there's not really a scale to it.

6:37There's a limit to how much it can scale. I mean, I actually think it's funny because if you look at our podcast business or our media business, Tiger Sisters and Sisters Matcha, they're actually complete opposites. And the fact that we designed and strategize and built Tiger Sisters so that it would be a huge scale, right? We talk about our goal is to empower and uplift 1 billion women. So to do that, you need to get to a pretty big scale versus Sisters Matcha is by design, we only source from that one family farm that we worked and lived on. And so unless we really change the sort of values of the Sisters Matcha company, it's never meant to scale.

7:19Right. So every single time we source from them, we sell out because there's just not that much matcha available from that one farm. And that's by design. It's more of a passion of you guys, It's like a passion project. Like, are you guys making money off of it? We make money off of it, but that's really not the goal of it, to be honest. It's more so that we love the story. We love the heritage. There's so much that they're doing at the farm, which is they're reinvigorating the farming culture of that area. Because a lot of those farms, like Sheree said, they're 13th generation farms. Right. That at this point, the people, you know, the children who are our age, they don't want to live in the countryside anymore.

8:00They don't want to run a farm. They want to move to the city and have corporate jobs. So a lot of those farms are becoming almost abandoned and they're losing that entire culture. And so the farmer that we work with, he's coming in and he's sort of helping to revive those farms. So it's just something that we've had the privilege of being exposed to and being really close to. And we think it's so special and important in the world that we want to bring it to as many people as possible. yeah there's this huge problem of an aging population in japan okay where so many like jean said of these farmers they're like 80 years old and no one will take over their farm and so um the farmer that we work with daiki san and he's like an entrepreneur in his own right he is um expanding his farm and making sure that um it's done in a way that really honors the people who owned it before okay oh my gosh i didn't know all of this history about it there's so much geographic like nerdy component to it i'm like so so passionate about okay wait last question about the matcha because I'm just so hooked.

9:01When is the best season? Just so we know. It's first harvest, which is spring. And first harvest is when the leaves are the most supple and have the most nutrients. They're the most nutrient dense. And what happens is when they harvest it, they shave it off and they collect it. And that is the first harvest matcha. Is y 'all's podcast popular in Tokyo? Like, does it reach that far? Actually, yeah. It is popular in Japan. Well, that would be cool to do like a live show on the farm. Wait. Wait a second. not to pun it but we love a pun no that would be sick and like give everyone your matcha combine the two brands oh my gosh okay i could talk about the matcha the whole time but we'll get back to what i'm supposed to ask you guys have talked about having an operating system between the two of you and this is where we get into like the sister dynamics yeah which is basically an agreed upon set of money rules that you abide by if a conflict does happen so i'm curious if you guys only created that because you entered business together?

9:56At what point in starting the podcast were you like, oh, we actually might need some written rules, like a little constitution between the two of us? And have you tried to implement, like, has it worked in implementation? Yeah. I love that you asked about it because I do think an operating system is something that is so important and everyone can have in pretty much all of their business relationships and even beyond because we have a business relationship and obviously a sister relationship. And it's very funny because as Sheree mentioned, we live together, we work together, and we pretty much do everything together.

10:32We vacation together, we go to the gym together, we willingly hang out with each other every time. It's like everything is combined. Which is interesting because now we're in our 30s, and the last time we lived together, she was 10 years old, and I was 16 or 17, and I went off to college. So it's very funny to come together again. And for me, at least, see Cherie as an adult and not only an adult, but a highly, highly competent adult. Right. I'm highly functioning. She's not 10 anymore. She's not 10 anymore. She's so amazing at what she does. Yeah. And for us, our, I guess, operating system honors that.

11:08It honors the fact that we are now both adults and we see each other as equals and as equal business partners. So for us, it's very simple. We're honestly just 50-50. So we've kept it really simple. But it's more so to say that for everyone who is going through building a business, it's more so the exercise of thinking about it and being intentional and saying what works for us versus what doesn't work for us. For us, it was keeping it simple. And being just overly communicative, like at the very beginning, whether it's a business partner or a family member. So if someone brings a brand deal, let's say 50-50, the person who brings it It doesn't get more.

11:47It's 50-50. And I would say that like we also we have Tiger Sisters and we also have our personal like Instagram accounts and TikTok accounts. Right. But it all is kind of just like one big bucket to us where we do 50-50 because I do more brand deals on my like Instagram account. But I would say like throughout my like content creation career, which has been over the last five years, Jean has brought so much value even in the behind the scenes. like when I'm writing like a script or something for like an ad read like I'll always ask Jean for help on it right and in that way like yes I am the person who is in front of the camera like doing an ad read for my Instagram or some sort of brand deal but like she brings so much more value that isn't on screen but is off screen and I think that deserves 50 50.

12:33Yeah I mean the Nader sisters are a little different because Brooks my older sister. I'm so curious. Yeah wait tell us. I'm really curious. I am really curious. How do other sisters do it? Our older sister, Brooks, kind of put us on the map. You know, she'd kill me if I didn't say that. She did put us on the map for real. And so she has obviously like millions of followers and it has much more celebrity than any of us. She is an EP on our show. So she kind of like spearheaded it. And we get so many, like most of my brand deals as it stands. Hopefully that's changing because I'm starting to be my own person on social media.

13:06But as it stands, most of my brand deals are sister deals. So it's like one brand will do a campaign with all of us. And usually Brooks gets much more than us, which is assumed. And then the younger three split it three ways, which sometimes is a point of contention because like we all have different engagement, different amount of followers and like different audiences. So I think that in season two, people will see also that like we're trying to find our own deals and our own identities. With four sisters, it's definitely a little bit bigger. That's why the operating system, I think, is so fascinating.

13:40It sounds like you guys, your values are so aligned. Does it come into one combined bank account for businesses or is it separate business bank accounts for Sisters Matcha and Tiger Sisters? It's all on pop because we see Sisters Matcha as a broader part of our narrative of Tiger Sisters, right? So it's kind of all part of the same story. It's part of our offering. It's part of what we're passionate about. And it's just the two of us, too. We don't have any outside investors or investment in either Tiger Sisters or Sisters Matcha. And so to us, they really feel like the same sort of cohesive storyline in that way.

14:17That makes sense. And so Giuga, I assume it's like an S-corp. that you guys pay yourself a salary out of. Okay. Love it. Is that what you're doing? I have outside investors for Mary and Pip. All of that is completely separate. I actually don't pay myself a salary yet because I'm making money on brand deals and stuff. So I just obviously don't want to dip into company money. We've only raised, you know, our friends and family we're raising again right now. So that's a C-Corp. So that's a C-Corp. Yep, exactly. Because there's equity involved. And then my LLC for my personal brand deals is actually still an LLC.

14:50I'm only just this year crossing that threshold of like making enough to make the extra paperwork and the extra tax accounting worth it to pay myself a salary and get those tax incentives. Yay! I know! Thanks, guys! Proud of you! I officially crossed the threshold. Proud of you. I get that question all the time, like S-Corp, C-Corp, or LLC. And I think a lot of people jump right in and they're like, oh, if I have an S-Corp, I can have all these tax incentives. But an individual who's making under, let's say, 200K, like does not need to worry themselves with an S-Corp. Yeah. It's so funny. I was just having this conversation with two of my girlfriends on a, we did a girls trip in Portugal.

15:28And we had this exact conversation, like one of my girlfriends was grilling the other one about, should I do an S-Corp? Do I need to do this? And she was, I was like, I should film this. The reason to do an S-Corp is because you can basically pay yourself. if I paid myself$100 ,000 salary and I was making$500 ,000 this year, I would only be taxed on $400 ,000 of it. Like you basically lower your tax bill by paying yourself a salary. And the negatives are it's a little bit more to upkeep. It costs a little bit more to maintain. And you really do need kind of a tax accountant to be helping you run that payroll.

16:05You have to run payroll on yourself. So it's a way like, you know, cost benefit analysis like anything else. But I always say like, unless you're making bank, you know, an LLC should be just fine. Yeah. Well, it's a good place to start. Yeah. I also love that we're talking about it now and that you brought up that you talked about it with your girlfriends in Portugal on your trip because like it's the conversation that like women founders, entrepreneurs and like business owners are having probably in private because you like talk, you have a girls chat or like you're talking to your other friends who are founders.

16:34It's good because we're talking about it, but now we're making it more public that like even if people aren't going to start a business in the next year or so, at least it's like in the back of their mind, it's percolating that like when I do start a business, I should look into that. Yeah. Or even if you are starting to make money on the side, consider an LLC. Just separate your finances so you can write stuff off. Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's the whole point of this podcast, right? Like just normalize money conversations. Wait, you did say something. Y 'all haven't raised any money. So that's called bootstrapping for those listening, when you just use all of your own money.

17:08Can you, I don't know if you guys know this off the top of your head, but how much money have you guys invested into the podcast or Sisters Matcha? I mean, a good amount. Luckily, the two of us are just by nature similar to you. We're really scrappy. Yeah. So up until even today, we are the two only full-time employees of our own company. Edit, you do it all. Well, so up until the beginning of this year, Sheree edited every single episode. Shut up. Sheree. It was a lot. I'm so impressed. Thank you. I wish I could clone you. And she was making short form. And we were filming the episodes and we were writing all the episodes.

17:45Like it was crazy. So now we've started to work with a part-time producer and now we've started to work with a part-time editor. So we have built up some of these systems. Yeah. But I think the reason why we have built up a really good machine is because we did everything ourselves at the beginning. Even though I was really probably only like 25 % as good as editing as Cherie was, I was still doing it. I was still editing some episodes so that we could both learn the craft and know what good looks like basically or have an opinion ourselves of what we think good looks like. Yeah. In your taste.

18:19And I think when you're being like super scrappy too, and you're like, this is my own money on the line, like it kind of puts you in a mindset where you're like, I have to, it's like kind of do or die. It's just like, it's the two of us. And I kind of think about it like if, you know, it's a small company and you're driving the bus and there's no one driving the bus. If Jean doesn't do it, I got to do it. If I'm not going to do it, she's going to do it. Or it's just not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Like, whereas like if you're working at a big company, it's like I think about it like you're on a boat and like everyone's rowing.

18:48And if you're like taking a break, the boat still moves forward. Right. But when it's like scrappy, the two of us and your own money, it's just like, wow, kind of everything is on the line and it makes it way more exciting and way more scary. Yeah. Do you guys work better that way with the pressure? I don't know. I think I'm just used to it. I've always I've always worked that way. So we just put so much pressure on ourselves, sometimes unnecessarily so. But I think we are just really used to that. And we also feel, honestly, a lot of urgency. Right. We feel like we have this huge goal of uplifting, empowering a billion women.

19:22And we just want to run at that with as much energy as we can. I'm like, if I have got to do this, I have these hours in the day. And it is like my voice and like my videos that are helping people make more informed decisions or, you know choose whether or not they want to study computer science versus something else or whatever it is I'm just like this is like kind of the greatest goal of my lifetime and what an honor it is to be like a part of someone's journey in that way even if it is a very small part that I feel very called to do this whereas like I could go back and work my corporate job but would I be working this hard and this like insanely hell no yeah like it's not the same I mean what you guys both just said there is like y 'all have a purpose why like having that tangible we want to make an impact on 1 billion women and then having the sense of purpose of like, I have this platform.

20:14I was given this platform for a reason. I built it myself for a reason. I'm going to use it for good. And I feel like empowering women to use their expertise and their platforms for good is also what you guys are doing by giving them the tools to build businesses and things like that. So it's truly inspiring. I want to talk about y 'all's inflection point because I too left a prestigious job to enter this grind and a half of building a business and, you know, having much more of a purpose, but coming with a lot more responsibility. You both left very prestigious, you know, high ranking jobs, Snap, Goldman Sachs, LinkedIn, for something that was super uncertain.

20:50When I left Deutsche Bank, I had a bit of a cushion. I think I had 20 grand in my high yield savings account. And then I had, I think like, you know, whatever it was in my 401k from work, but it wasn't a huge cushion at all. You know, I was talking to a friend who's now leaving. She's looking to leave her Wall Street job. And she's like, I have 100K in savings. Is that good? I'm like, that's way too much. Put it to work. What are you doing? But yeah, invest that money. But it is really, really scary. And I resonate with her. I was super scared leaving the stability of a paycheck. So I'm curious what you guys had set up.

21:24What time did you realize like, oh my gosh, it's time for me to go out on my own. Was one of you more scared than the other before you made the jump? I want to get into all of it. Yeah. I came at it from a different point. It was less like me leaving a job because I had just graduated from business school. That's right. So that was already like a transition point for me to be like, okay, I'm in exploration mode. Like the world is my oyster. Like you go to like Stanford's business school and like, you know, these professors are in your ear. Like, what are you going to do to change the world? Like every single day.

21:53And so, you know, I come in with that attitude. But I would say like because I was in that transition point and I had been creating content before that, I already had it like growing in my mind that I'm like, I want to do something in the creator world. I wasn't sure whether or not like I wanted to build a startup for creators or help creators in some way. But at that point that I was graduating, Jean was also going through her own inflection point because she worked at Snapchat for six years. And I'll let you talk about that. But like, we really wanted to come together and do something. And so I think it's probably a lot scarier for Jean.

22:25I think I had a more similar experience to you where I had come straight from corporate and now you were in corporate for five years, right? Yes. So I had been in corporate for 15 years. Wow. So if you can imagine, I catch myself, I'm like, oh, I'm so corporate pilled. Yeah. Because I'm like doing something. I'm like, oh, that's so corporate. Like, why am I still doing that now? But she's like, hope you are well. Yeah. Okay, but actually, side note, it is very good to be professional. Yeah. Which like I will honor our experience and say that these days, it's so valuable to have that experience to fall back on.

22:59And I think a lot of people don't have that and it really helps you stand apart. Yeah. When you're entering. You can kind of tell when someone hasn't spent any time in corporate like at all. So you were leaving Snap. Yes. So I had been at Snap at that point for six and a half years, which in tech is like 10 lifetimes. Right. And I had just, I was just really at that point ready to try something new. I'd been in tech for a really long time. And I felt like I had had so many opportunities through that. And I'd done so many things that I didn't even imagine I would ever do. And Sheree had always said to me that she wanted to start a business together.

23:37And it was always me that was like, no, like the time's not right. The time's not right. Like I'm doing great at Snap. Like I don't want to leave. and it just so happened that it kind of all came together where she was graduating and I was ready to try something new. 15 years you probably had a healthy cushion. Yes. And you were working while you were in business school so you had you been making money or no? Well creating content and doing brand deals while I was a student but I was working for five years before going to business school and I would say that's like in addition to like having that professional background I would say like creating that cushion for yourself, like kind of how we started the conversation.

24:15Like we needed to have that high paying job because we didn't have a plan B or anything to fall back on with family or anything. And also like to pay off student loans. But then like unwittingly, like we created a cushion for ourselves so that 15 years after kind of like slaving away in a corporate job, she could kind of like do whatever she wants. I think a lot of the times too, like when people are in their career for five, 10, 15 years, I see a lot of my peers who take sabbaticals now they take like year long or micro retirement right kind of to kind of like explore like okay this chapter of my life this is what i learned what do i want to do for the next chapter of my life and life is so long so like a lot of my friends now are like living in europe for like months like figuring it out which they have the luxury to do that because they set themselves up with this job that they grinded away at for a while the tables have turned since our even our parents like we're growing up.

25:08But I feel like now the workforce is so dynamic. It's changing so fast. I mean, in 10 years, the job you're doing now very well might not exist. And you need to be OK with that. And in order to be comfortable with that, it goes back to the beginning. Financial stability and security is how you're going to feel calm in this chaos of the world that's changing around us so fast. If you have a cushion and a relationship with money that can withstand change, then I think you're set and you can take micro retirement because life is long and it's short if you slave away in corporate America for 50 years and then all of a sudden it's over.