Ivory & Slate Consulting

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My name is Amanda Slate. I did not begin my professional life with a five-year plan, a finance degree, or a clear understanding of cash flow. I began as an art major.

In college, I studied studio art. Many long hours in shared spaces, hands covered in charcoal and paint, chasing ideas that felt bigger than words. Creativity was currency, expression was success, and money was something that existed vaguely in the background. I was taught how to critique form and concept, but not how to price my work, manage income, or plan for sustainability. Like many creatives, I assumed passion would eventually “work itself out.”

It didn’t.

By my junior year, financial reality forced a reckoning. Tuition, rent, materials, and basic living expenses didn’t care how promising my portfolio looked. I made a decision that many people judge but few understand: I started exotic dancing.

It was not a reckless choice. It was a pragmatic one.

The income was immediate and, on paper, significant, far more than any part-time job available to me. Yet what struck me almost immediately was not the money itself, but how little guidance existed around it. The women I worked alongside were intelligent, resourceful, and hardworking. Many were earning more in a night than they ever had before. And almost none had been given the tools to manage it.

There was money everywhere but financial literacy was nowhere.

Cash came in fast and went out just as quickly. Taxes were an afterthought. Savings were abstract. Long-term planning felt irrelevant in an industry that already carried enough social stigma to make people feel invisible, disposable, or undeserving of stability. The narrative was simple and damaging: this isn’t “real” work, so why plan for a real future?

That disconnect stayed with me.

After college, I transitioned into a more traditional environment, joining my uncle’s company. I did not start at the top. I started where many people do, handling administrative tasks no one else wanted. Filing. Scheduling. Reconciling. Learning the unglamorous mechanics that keep a business alive.

And something clicked.

For the first time, I saw how money actually moves. How systems create order. How margins, processes, and documentation protect not just profits, but people. I learned payroll, compliance, budgeting, forecasting, operations. I worked my way steadily through the financial and administrative side of the business, gaining fluency in an entirely different kind of language. A language built on structure rather than spontaneity.

That education changed everything.

What surprised me most was how familiar the patterns were. The same creativity I used in art applied to problem-solving and systems design. The same hustle I saw in unconventional industries existed in boardrooms. It just wore a different costume. The difference was not intelligence or effort. The difference was access to knowledge.

I never stopped making art. I never stopped spending time with people who live and work outside traditional boxes. The artists, performers, freelancers, sex workers, entrepreneurs, creatives of every kind. And across all of those spaces, I saw the same issue repeat itself: income without infrastructure.

There is money to be made in unorthodox industries. Often, there is a lot of it. But without financial education, administrative systems, and strategic planning, that money rarely translates into security, growth, or long-term freedom. Social stigma compounds the problem by convincing people they are temporary, illegitimate, or undeserving of professional tools.

That belief is wrong.

It is also costly.

My company exists because I have lived on both sides of that divide. I understand what it means to earn unconventionally and manage conventionally. I know what it feels like to be underestimated, judged, or excluded from “serious” financial conversations while doing serious work. I also know how transformative it is when someone finally explains the systems behind the curtain.

Financial literacy should not be reserved for people with the right titles, degrees, or industries. Administrative excellence is not about “respectability” it is about sustainability. Everyone who earns deserves to understand how to keep, grow, and protect what they make.

This business is not about shame or reinvention. It is about translation.

I translate complexity into clarity. I translate income into infrastructure. I translate hard-earned money into long-term stability. Especially for people who have been told, implicitly or explicitly, that their work doesn’t count.

It does.

And when people are given the tools to manage their money with intention, confidence follows. Options expand. Futures become negotiable rather than accidental.

That is the work I do now. Proudly grounded in lived experience, informed by systems, and driven by the belief that financial competence is not a moral reward. It is a skill. One that should be accessible to everyone, regardless of how they earn.

Contact us today for a free consultation!