We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ellyce Fulmore a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ellyce, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
The story of how my business came about is definitely not conventional, but I think it really highlights how the most important thing you can do is just START. As you make decisions, fail, get rejected, try again, succeed, rinse and repeat, you’ll learn more about the direction you want to go. My story begins when I was in my 4th year of my kinesiology degree, and just admitted to myself that I no longer wanted to pursue a master’s in physiotherapy once I graduated. I was feeling very lost and confused, so I threw myself into personal development. I started listening to podcasts, reading books, and attending local entrepreneurial events. Through that, I stumbled across the world of life coaching, and immediately felt a draw towards that. But it still took me over a year after graduating before I finally had the courage to launch my life coaching business in January of 2020. I knew I wanted to help people who were in the same situation that I used to be in- feeling lost after doing all the “right things”, unfulfilled, drowning in debt, and seeking purpose in their life. I had a couple clients, and was also working a part-time job when the pandemic hit in March 2020. I didn’t feel comfortable pitching my programs right when the pandemic hit because so many people had lost their jobs and were struggling. So instead I created a TikTok account and starting sharing career and financial advice – because that is what people needed the most. I was posting sporadically until around August, when I decided to take my social media more seriously. I had my first viral video in October 2020, and gained 75K followers overnight. That’s when I started to realize that people really needed this financial content, and I was delivering it in a new way. My comment sections and DM’s were FULL of people seeking financial education from someone like me- a millennial, queer, neurodivergent human delivering non-judgemental advice in an accessible way. That’s how I transitioned into financial coaching, and now I own my own financial literacy business Queerd Co. There’s a lot more financial coaches out there now, but when I started my business, finding young women talking about finances were few and far between. I guess you could say that I didn’t really “come up” with the idea for my business in the way in exists today, it just sort of happened as a result of taking aligned action. I was creating content I enjoyed, on a topic I was passionate and knowledgable about, and I listened to my audience and what they needed. From there, my business was born, and I’ve pivoted a couple times since then, always listening to my intuition about what felt good.
Ellyce, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a financial educator, content creator and the owner of Queerd Co., a financial literacy business. The mission of Queerd Co. is financial equity, and I aim to achieve this through financial education and awareness. I take an intersectional approach to finances by recognizing and addressing how privilege, race, gender, sexuality, mental health, disability and more can affect your ability to build wealth. I am passionate about stopping the cycle of shame and guilt around money and providing simple and accessible financial education. My business is different from a lot of the traditional personal finance advice out there because it really focuses on the identity of the person first, and not just the numbers.
We have paid products such as our financial literacy mini course library, which features 6 mini courses to choose from: Manage Your Money, Build Your Budget, Tackle Your Debt, Grow Your Savings, Master Your Mindset, and Change Your Habits. Priced at $47 each, these mini courses are an awesome (and affordable!) way to start taking control of your financial future. Also available is my signature self-led course, Thriving on a Budget which includes all the education from the mini courses and more, plus access to our student facebook group where you can ask me questions.
We also have free resources such as the Financial Audit worksheet, and tons of recommendations for useful money tools.
Additionally, I provide free education on Instagram (@ellyce.fulmore), TikTok (@queerd.co) and through my podcast- Keep Finance Queerd. Keep Finance Queerd puts the “personal” back in personal finance through complex and nuanced guest interviews and solo episodes. The goal is for listeners to walk away with tools, strategies and a new perspective on embracing their identity so they can make money work for them. I’ve also signed a book deal with a top 5 publisher for my personal finance book, which will be out in early 2024!
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One of the biggest lessons I’ve had to unlearn (and that I’m still unlearning!) is how to stop attaching my self-worth to my productivity and escape internalized capitalism. When I started my business, I felt like I had to work extremely hard to prove myself, and to be successful, and that if I wasn’t grinding, I was going to fail. Now don’t get me wrong, hard work is important for owning your business, but I was doing it in an unhealthy way that was actually hurting my business. I would put way too much on my plate, so I was always stressed and burnt out, and it ended up taking a lot of the joy out of my business. I was burning out quickly, and it was hard to sustain the workload I had created for myself. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to be my own boss was that I wanted to have freedom- especially time freedom. I wanted to be able to go on vacation for a week without stressing, and take the day off to relax when I wanted. But I had created a business for myself that was taking away all my freedom. That was my epiphany that I needed to take a step back and re-evaluate the business I was building and what kind of life it was creating. I have to constantly remind myself that my worth as a human and a business owner is not about how much I can get done in a day. It’s not about work output. I’ve learned to celebrate rest, and celebrate non-financial wins. I’ve learned to be more flexible with my schedule, and work on my mindset so that I can take a day off in the middle of the week without stressing. This will probably be a lifelong journey, but I’m happy to have learned this lesson relatively early on in my business. I’m currently restructuring my whole product suite and business to support my ideal life better.
My advice to you is to think about what your ideal life and schedule looks like. Think about WHY you created your business in the first place. How many hours do you want to be working? What do you want to be doing in those hours? How can you create a business that will be working towards that, instead of against it?
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I’ve been building my audience on instagram slowly and steadily since 2012. I started out posting personal content back in 2012, and I’ve been through many phases. I had a wellness and lifestyle blog, then I was talking about sustainability and body positivity, and then I had a thrifting youtube channel and my instagram revolved around that. Now, it’s the instagram for me and my business Queerd Co. It’s taken me a long time to grow my audience to 13.9k (which I know still isn’t a ton) but it’s an amazing, engaged community.
Tiktok, on the other hand, I grew my platform to half a million in only 1.5 years. I created my TikTok account in March of 2020, but I was posting very inconsistently and not putting much effort into it. In August of 2020 I started to take my TikTok account more seriously and post consistently. At the time I had around 1200 followers. Then in October 2020 I had my first viral video and my account grew to 75K overnight. Then I had another viral video in November, and December. My account was at 350K by the New Year. I’ve had a few more viral videos, and a ton of valuable and consistent content that brought me to 498K today.
If you’re just starting out, create a plan for yourself and start posting and experimenting with content. Pay attention to the analytics and see what your audience is responding best to. Don’t be afraid to ask them exactly what they want to see as well. For both platforms, my biggest piece of advice is to be yourself and have fun creating content. The content that always performs the best for me is when I’m enjoying myself and sharing about a topic I’m passionate about. Don’t get hung-up on trying to push out tons of content, focus on what you can do consistently. Consistency is more important than volume. On Instagram I’ve found people are more interested in my personal life, and love when I share stuff from my daily life. I will take my audience with me everywhere, and talk to them like they are my besties. On TikTok, people want fast and helpful advice, or entertaining content- so be creative here! I’ve also found you can be a lot less curated on TikTok, so feel free to show up exactly as you are in any given moment- although I recommend that on IG too! Another piece of advice is to be as authentic and vulnerable as you can. Let your audience in on the good days and the bad days. The more they can connect with you on a human level, the more they will trust you and want to buy from you.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ellycefulmore.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellyce.fulmore/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellyce-fulmore/
- Other: Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/keep-finance-queerd/id1612398194?i=1000552656426 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@queerd.co
Image Credits
Aly Oaks and McKenna Layne