I wish Tanara had taken a more disciplined, deliberate approach to entrepreneurship.

But the path she's taken is a path that many people take because nowhere in the education system are we taught entrepreneurial principles (or personal finance principles, for that matter), so most people go into entrepreneurship without any real knowledge of how to run a business.

Tanara’s Making TikTok Videos

Some people work two and three jobs to earn their living.

How is it that Tanara cannot work just one job and do TikTok videos on the side until she’s built a business that replaces ALL of the income from her job?

And that doesn’t mean for one pay period, that means for enough pay periods over a span of months to know that she has a sustainable income source.

I’m all about pursuing freedom, but pursuing it responsibly.

I would never advise a 47-year-old to pursue entrepreneurship this way. This is the harmful “take the leap” philosophy that gets promoted on social media and, in this case, on national television because it makes for an inspiring story.

But what they never talk about is all the people who quit their job to take the leap and end up crawling back to ask for their job months later when they’ve burned through their savings because they didn’t know how to build a business.

That’s how these stories most often end, but they’ll never do a follow-up story and take a camera crew to Whole Foods to talk to her if she ends up back doing the job that they’re celebrating her quitting.

I’m Not Hating on Tanara

I hope she succeeds.

I’m just pointing out that the way she’s chosen to do this is a well-worn path to failure. Doing it the way she’s doing it does not work out for most people.

I want you to be inspired by her success at using social media to create visibility and opportunities for herself.

But I want you to learn how to build a business before you quit your job so you don’t end up compromising your family’s finances and so you never end up having to go ask for your job back or applying somewhere else and having to explain your gap in employment because “I quit my last job to do TikTok” is probably not going to go over so well with potential employers.

Here’s what I would have recommended for Tanara if I were advising her:

Build An Email List

You do not have a business if you do not own the relationship with your audience.

When you post on social media, you do not own the relationship with your audience, the social media platform does because there's an algorithm between you and your audience that decides who sees what.

With an email list, if you have 100 people on your email list, 100 people receive your emails. If you have 10,000 people on your email list, 10,000 people receive your emails.

This is why email marketing has a 40X return on investment, compared to social media marketing.

It's an important point, so I'm going to state it again: You do not have a business if you do not own the relationship with your audience.

Create a YouTube Channel

What Tanara is succeeding with now is creating high-energy, short-form videos.

That type of video is going to be difficult to create on an ongoing basis and stay fresh and new and interesting. It is really hard to imagine her being able to earn a full-time income making that type of video on an ongoing basis...especially since she's not even doing it now. 

TikTok is designed for mass production and mass consumption of content at a breakneck pace. And it's highly trend-driven. And you're only as good as your last video and you have to publish frequently.

YouTube, on the other hand, is designed for you to succeed by publishing just one video per week. And YouTube actively promotes your old videos, right along with your current videos, so your success is determined by your body of work and not just your most recent video.

Monetization Plan

Tanara should develop a product or service to sell and build a system for selling it consistently.

A successful business does not mean you did something and made some money. A successful business means you have a system for making money consistently and can predict your revenue on a monthly basis because you know exactly where your revenue comes from and how.

The most effective way and the fastest way to maximize your revenue with social media is to create a product or service to sell.

And your email list is the most efficient and effective way to sell it.

Chase Your Dreams Responsibly

I encourage you to quit your job to pursue a more fulfilling life if your job is not delivering that fulfillment.

But I teach my clients how to use a cooking show to build an online business with predictable revenue before they quit.

By the way, I teach you how to do this in my Celebrity Chef Masterclass. Click here to learn more.