How TikTok Ruins Your Relationship with Money

Happy Monday, Mariners!

Today, we talk about the big ones. The chedda. The dough. The Benjamins, as some say in America.

Captain Tejas, take it away.

The month of January I was in the red $6,000. Oof. In February, I’ll be on track to earn $37,000. Holy shit.

Since the day I turned 16 (the legal age to start working), my eyes were set on making money. Started at a Dairy Queen, then moved to Starbucks, then became a college tutor, then scaled my own haircutting business… and now, I am a ~creator~.

My parents rarely gave me money. If I wanted a $10 Chipotle bowl, then I had to earn that $10 myself. Because I saw at an early age that it was way easier to spend money than to earn it, I gave myself a law: Start viewing expenses not in dollars, but in hours.

Tejas, you want a Chipotle bowl? That’ll be one hour of work. Is that bowl worth one hour of work?

This became ingrained and I lived by it religiously… until I got paid $1,500 on my first brand deal for a one-minute TikTok video. Oh. my. God.

This was the first time in my life where hours worked did not equate to more money and it blew my mind. It felt like a hack, still does!

-

So I should be living lavishly, right? $37,000 is a LOT of money but I can’t pocket it and run.

Right now, I am a one-man media company and I know if I continue being just this, I have an end date. My operations are not sustainable if I dream to continue creating. I need to hire, scale, and make a company.

But if I can go from bleeding $6,000 in a month to making $37,000 in the next, how can I make any decisions? How can I have people rely on me for month-to-month financial security for their families if they join my team, much less myself?

These are the thoughts that haunt me every day. And just to remind you, one year ago today, I was a junior in college who had $4,000 in a bank account total, happy to make $10 on a haircut and spend it the next day on a Chipotle bowl.

Not only do I have imposter syndrome as a creator, but I also have it with money as well. It’s the first time in my life where $1 confuses me. What is it worth? Money is life’s ultimate game and especially as creator-entrepreneurs, we really are playing it on hard mode.

Being a professional content creator is great because you're running your own business.

Being a professional content creator sucks because you're running your own business.

Coming from two self-employed parents, as a child I was no stranger to the realities of irregular income.

Some Christmases I'd have just what I wished for, but the next summer I'd be wondering why all my friends were jetting off on holiday and we weren't.

Mind you, my parents gave me everything I wanted and more. Any financial concerns were never evident to me and they supported me to become who I am today. Nonetheless, those ups and downs of freelance life have influenced the way I create.

The first time I met real TikTok money was last summer. I was freshly graduated, living on my own for the first time, when a colour grading app approached me. We promptly negotiated a three video deal - for £1500. My inner thoughts went:

You're saying I get five HUNDRED pounds, for one TikTok??

Boy, this whole content creation thing is a breeze. Brands can reach out to me? I thought I'd cheated the system. High life here I come. But I'd forgotten the crucial lesson my parents subconsciously taught me: 

Nothing is guaranteed.

In October 2021 I made a little over £200. The brand deal money had all but soaked up, and I was realising that if I wanted this as a career, I'd have to also start seeing it as a job. Yes, filmmaking is my passion and I do it for fun - but it's also the only thing I’m good enough at to make money from. Better act like it. 

Those figures at the time felt a lot - but the reality is: if you get decent, consistent views on TikTok with a good community of fans - you should negotiate at least three times the money I got.

Transitioning a hobby into a business is no easy feat. I'm still working on it! Surrounding yourself with people like Tejas, with a business mind, is a good move. We talk about following your passion here a lot, but it’ll get a lot harder to follow if it doesn’t offer something in return. 

You’ll have to adjust what you make, or how you make it, in order to better package yourself. For me, the issue was never how TikTok ruined my relationship with money; it was how money can ruin your relationship with TikTok. But the way I see it, if you want to be here, in this creative sphere, for a long time - best give yourself a little breathing room.

Nobody owes you shit, especially big brands.

How cool would it be to say that I can make a living AND be the face of some of my favorite companies? I’d often think to myself as a young budding creator. Being raised fairly frugally, I knew that I had to get into a profession that was highly sought after in order to live the life I had always wanted. 

Hundreds of videos and years later into my start as a creator, a brand hit me up. A big one. Like, everyone knows this brand. It rhymes with shmoo-hoo yemen, they do activewear.

Finally - I’d made it. My big break, the big leagues. 

For a very fair price that I didn’t even have to negotiate, they wanted two separate videos for posting on the company’s TikTok and Instagram pages, which, cumulatively, had over 5 million followers.

Six months’ rent AND appearing on the company’s social channels? That’s a no-brainer. I imagined messages from friends and past lovers flooding my DMs after the brand made me their posterboy for a week. But importantly, I was thinking about the higher-ups at even more important companies emailing wanting to work with me. All these thoughts made my ego grow and grow until… “POP.”

After two months, countless back-and-forths via email, and an excruciating amount of edits to the videos later, the ONE email I never wanted to read pinged into my notifications:

“Dear Sean - after careful consideration from our creative operations team,  we’re unfortunately unable to reach common ground internally on style and direction.”

Ego: deflated.

A pitiful it’s-not-you-it’s-me play. What started as a promising kickstart to a career as a “real” internet superstar quickly turned into just another disappointing Thursday. 

The quickness with which this brand decided to pivot away from posting my creative taught a good lesson: we creators are nothing but pawns on a chessboard. Just front-line, top-of-funnel eyeball-grabbers that have high-reward potential for relatively low risk for the company.

More importantly, we’re a dime a dozen. Gargantuan companies have creators chomping at the bit for free product and a little cash money, making moving on from me, in their book, a no-brainer. 

Despite still receiving the payout (thank God), creators aren’t entitled to every brand or company’s every move, no matter how much they butter you up. By no means was this a “bad” experience. Instead, it was a learning one: when working with a company, keep your wits about you, and prioritize your self-worth and long-term goals over a company’s large offers.

But most of all, don’t depend on one single company to support you as a creator. Remember, it’s not the king’s job to look after the pawns.

To put it short - money fucks us up. Luckily, we are making enough right now to get by and continue pursuing this dream of ours but it haunts us that one wrong step and rent becomes an issue. But no good story starts with the main characters living comfortably! We are excited for what the future holds and could not stay resilient without you all.

Every comment, like, and read assures us we are on the right path so thank you, pioneers! As always, we will respond to every comment on this log - would you want to be a creator full-time? Why or why not? What other questions do you have about making money off of content? Let us know!

- T, D, S.