Hello, everyone.

It is Monday. And that's the Financial Confessions day.

And especially if you're listening to this on your podcast listening audio platform of choice, you're like, what the hell is this Chelsea? This is not what I've come to know and expect from my Mondays with the Financial Diet. And you're right.

We don't have an episode of The Financial Confessions today. We will be back next week with a really awesome guest. It's all about MLMs.

It's going to be very, very cool. But I'm actually here kind of preempting myself and using up this valuable real estate on our YouTube channel and in our audio to be sort of honest with you guys. So I want to share for those of you guys who maybe don't know, I am not the Financial Diet.

I'm a big part of it, but I'm not. The Financial Diet is an actual business. We're an all-female company.

We have an office here in New York City. We have a dozen employees, some of whom are working moms, all of whom are really, really cool. And as you guys know, probably the most important thing to me as a business owner is running, what I feel is a very ethical business.

And so that means, as I've mentioned before, my take-home pay is actually kind of smack in the middle of what we pay our employees. We've never had unpaid interns or really interns of any kind. We pay extremely competitive salaries.

Almost everyone in the company engages in some kind of profit sharing. We have four month maternity leaves, six weeks of paid time off, really good health care that we pay for the majority of. And generally, we run the kind of business that I think is really important to run, especially in an industry as exploitative as media and in a city as expensive and difficult to live in as New York City.

It's also worth noting that we are totally independently funded. My co-founder and former co-host, Lauren Ver Hage and I built this business together from basically literally nothing, and have never taken any kind of investors or VC money or anything like that. Because being able to run a business in an ethical way, the way that we feel is fair and fairly compensates the people we work with, often goes against the extreme profit and growth incentives that those investors would come with.

It is also very important to me to have the TFD workplace be somewhere that is really paying people enough to have a decent life on. Because so often in these creative industries, the only people that can afford to take these really low paid or unpaid jobs are people who come from financial privilege, whose parents are helping them pay their rent or God knows what else. I worked with plenty of people like that before in media.

And I don't want TFD to be that way. I want the people who work here to come from all kinds of backgrounds and maybe not have those kind of financial resources, because it's very important that those people are represented. But also, I don't think it's cool to have a company full of just rich people who can afford to work for free.

That sucks in my opinion. So that means that we need to earn a lot of money to exist, which is OK, because we can. We're a pretty big platform.

And brands want to work with us. And that's great. But we also do take a lot of stances here as a company across our platforms that don't always make it the absolute easiest to have the widest possible pool of sponsors.

We will for example, never take money from crypto, which is currently flooding our industry with absolutely bonkers ad money. I'm sure you guys saw all those commercials at the Super Bowl. I talk pretty openly about my politics.

We will touch on all kinds of issues around race and gender and class, and things that are often totally avoided by people in our industry so as to remain as brand safe and value neutral as possible. We also critique the hell out of capitalism. And sometimes brands don't like that either.

Now again, don't get me wrong. We've been very lucky to be able to support ourselves doing the kind of partnerships that we really care about. But we do turn down quite a lot of them and have to walk away from other ones, even when we may have liked to work with them because we would have to compromise some of those values.

We do have other ways of making money. We have our events and our classes and workshops and conferences. And all of that kind of stuff, which we can do directly with you guys, and those are amazing too.

But in 2022, especially with all the volatility of COVID and wanting to lean into doing even more things that aren't necessarily totally perfect to sponsor like content in Spanish or a mini series about all kinds of social and political issues that are a little too hot to handle, we need to lean into the fact that we are ultimately a community-oriented digital media platform and be, at least in part, sponsored by viewers like you. So as some of you might know, we have for a while had a membership program here at TFD, our society at TFD, which we have decided to totally overhaul in order to make it both more financially accessible to different price points and also give you more bang for your buck. And probably the biggest change that we're making is once a month there is going to be a totally exclusive video that's just for our members at that slightly higher tier, either me going off about whatever subject the members pick that month or more bonus questions with one of our TFC guests that members themselves get to ask.

We know that more bonus exclusive content is what you guys really want. And so we are going to make sure to give you that plus a lot of other stuff which I will get into here. So if you'll permit me, this is my little sales pitch and my request to you formally that if you enjoy what we do, if you get a lot out of it, If you believe in our mission and would like to help to support us, I cannot stress enough how amazing it would be for you guys to join our society at whatever tier is accessible for you.

But that's enough of my spiel. Here's what you're getting for your money if you join. So if you join our famous society at TFD, there are two different tiers and here's what you get for each of them.

Our $2.99 a month supporter tier includes 40% off of all of the studio at TFD events. That's conferences, workshops, classes master classes, everything in between, monthly 45-minute office hours with Chelsea-- that's me-- where you get to join live, hang out, ask me anything, they're always super fun, access to exclusive monthly downloads like wallpapers and staff picks plus the fun Monamojis that you can use in the comments. But our 4.99 membership tier-- and this is very important-- gets you the following-- 50% off of all studio at TFD events, that same 45-minute office hours with me once a month, access to all of those monthly downloads, plus an exclusive quarterly download bundle for longer form stuff like workbooks and tools to manage your finances, one bonus video per month based on your own input.

So we will have either a monthly Chelsea Sounds Off, where members get to suggest the topics they want to hear me talk about that month or exclusive questions asked to our TFC interview guests that the members themselves get to choose. Plus you'll get a dedicated slack channel with like-minded community members to talk about all things money and personal finance, and of course, don't forget, those Monamojis. And don't worry, if you're already a member, you will see those increased benefits rolling out over the next couple of weeks.

Anyway guys, if you are still here, thank you for watching this, because I seriously tried to do as much as I can to shield you guys from the reality of running sustainable independently-owned media business in 2022 that tries to treat everyone really fairly. And if you guys can help be a part of it, that is the most amazing thing you could possibly do. And I would be so forever grateful and so would our team.

But it's not just about gratitude, we're giving you cool, in exchange, trade offer. You give us a little tiny bit of money every month, and you receive so much cool stuff. Anyway guys, that's my spiel.

Please join the society. Maybe even tell a friend to. It would mean so much.

And anyway, we'll see you back here next week for a regular degular episode of The Financial Confessions. I'll see you later.