Self-made millionaires share their secrets to success and having 'any kind of life you want'
Nicole Victoria and Isabella Kotsias discuss their viral, financial fame
Self-made millionaires spotlight creativity, mindset as their secrets to success
'No Budget Babe' Nicole Victoria and 'Baddie in Business' Isabella Kotsias speak to Fox News Digital about how they started their businesses from scratch and found million-dollar results.
It’s a decades-old question with a seemingly unanimous answer: Who wants to be a millionaire?
As it turns out, many of today’s young entrepreneurs are taking unique approaches in order to earn the title of "self-made millionaire" – and two social media influencers and money coaches have shared how you can do it, too.
"You can have any kind of life that you want to, but I think so many of us are focused on having the soft life right now, not realizing we need to do a little bit of work up front to be able to have that safety and security and freedom," Nicole Victoria, also known as "No Budget Babe," told Fox News Digital.
"Creativity is so much more important than capital," the "Baddie in Business" Isabella Kotsias also told Digital. "A lot of people think that they can just take a bunch of money and throw it into a business and it's just going to create passive income for them, and that's just unfortunately not true."
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Victoria left her corporate real estate job during the pandemic after six years to launch her coaching program on topics like emergency funds, best ways to pay off debt and how to grow your wealth. She earned the millionaire title at age 30.
"No Budget Babe" Nicole Victoria and "Baddie in Business" Isabella Kotsias speaks to Fox News Digital about how they created their multi-million dollar empires. (Fox News)
After having an e-commerce side hustle when she was in high school, Kotsias decided to go all-in on dropshipping in 2020 while in dental school. Today, she earns an estimated $80,000 per month selling accessories and gift bundles to consumers by purchasing the item from a third party.
Sharing financial advice and tips daily to their nearly 3 million social media followers combined, both of the millionaires spotlighted the importance of mindset over matter.
"I started this account completely from scratch, zero followers," Victoria said. "But I was like, ‘You know what? I'm just going to show up. I'm going to provide value. I'm going to teach people the things that I wish someone had taught to me in my early twenties.’ And from there, we kind of just blew up."
"I always had side hustles. I just didn't believe in myself to actually dive into them and do them full time," Kotsias added. "So when I restarted my e-commerce journey and opened up another business in 2020, the second month I had one viral TikTok, and because of that one viral TikTok, it basically took me from having no audience, no followers to having a $20,000 month my second month."
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Self-education also plays a major role in finding your path to financial success, both millionaires noted. While Kotsias relied on YouTube videos in her early years, Victoria opened books and podcasts.
"And not just on money and personal finance either," Victoria pointed out, "but on things like psychology and philosophy and happiness, and how to really find what your personal values are so that you can create a life that makes you happy instead of just sticking to the traditional way of doing things."
"A lot of people like to take the first step and they go and they buy investments and then they make a mistake because they didn't learn about diversification or they didn't learn about the right accounts to use," she continued. "It's so important that you work to close that knowledge gap before you take action with a tactic."
"My No. 1 piece of advice is to use the power of our technology, the phone that we have in our hands as a tool to continue to educate yourself on a daily basis," Kotsias said. "And it's just insane how much we can actually learn just from our phones."
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The biggest misconception around becoming a self-made millionaire lies in the belief that it’s too difficult or the everyday person can’t accomplish the same goals.
"The people that are more creative and actually put their heart and a little bit more creativity into what they're doing, is going to see better results long-term than someone that's just throwing thousands of dollars in," Kotsias argued, "and just thinking that it's just going to create something, when it just doesn't work that way."
"For them to think, ‘Well, all I have to do is simply click a button and it buys an index fund and my money can grow,’ it kind of goes against a lot of the money rules that we've been taught as a society," Victoria said. "If we think about it this way, a lot of us are taught that we have to work hard to make money. So when we're presented with opportunities to make money easily, it can feel like this can't be true."
Kotsias highlighted the "power of technology" in creating a multi-million-dollar business. | Fox News
Both of the money and mindset coaches started their booming businesses with little capital or influence, but emphasized the importance of knowing how to invest.
"You could start with $5 if you wanted to, even $50 a month if you give it enough time to grow, can turn into hundreds of thousands of dollars in free money just by putting it in the right places," Victoria said. "Pensions are far and few between now, and if you ever want to be able to have enough money where you don't have to work for money again, you have to buy income-producing assets to replace your income."
"I always tell people to really focus on picking one thing, whether it be an online store, whether it being a creator account, where you want to share a topic in your life, focus on that one thing and use TikTok as a funnel to funnel that audience to other social media networks," Kotsias emphasized. "That's really just my key and how I have found success in the past few years, is just that equation right there."
"I just find it really important that when you start making money," she added, "that you have to really think long term. You're not going to just go blow it to try to show everyone that you're rich."
TikTok has been the holy grail for these influencers in terms of growing their audience, learning new financial strategies and having their content go viral.
"I get hundreds of [direct messages] a day, but I have been getting some recently from people who are 15 and 14 and 18," Victoria detailed. "If you can learn this stuff at this age… if you can avoid those mistakes and you can start doing something to build your wealth now, you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of just good finances and a lifetime of freedom and a lifetime of safety and security… there's so many ways that this financial education could change people's lives and prevent them from making these decisions that a lot of corporations are pushing us to do because they want to part us with our money."
"Focus on TikTok. TikTok sets the trend," Kotsias said. "It's actually somewhat shocking because so many people that see my TikToks, they're actually younger teens… I spoke to elementary schools before about what I do... and a lot of the kids, that's what they say they want to do when they grow up, they want to be influencers or they want to be on social media."
The self-made millionaires reminded people of all ages and wages that they’re here to inspire and help uplift them on their financial journeys.
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"I really just want to show what God has done for my life and just to share my story, not only on the aspect of this is how you can make some money, I really want to show people and lead people to greatness in all aspects of their life as well," the Baddie in Business said. "It's not just about money, but just becoming the best version of myself. I hope to encourage other young women and young men to do the same and to not fall into doing unethical side hustles or things, because not all money is good money."
The No Budget Babe advised: "A lot of people think that saving money today means giving something up, going without. I want you to change your mindset from, ‘me saving money today is giving something up,’ to, ‘me saving money and investing money today is giving future me the life that I wish I had right now.’"
