"I have never worked so hard in my life for anything," Tiffany Simms tells me in our monthly check-in, a smile breaking across her face despite the words. "Nothing ever."
She was eleven days into the month and had just moved $1,000 worth of products on TikTok Shop—without buying anything for herself to inflate the numbers. She'd been going live at all hours of the day, testing different time slots, trying to find her pocket. Her videos weren’t converting, but her lives were. The data was telling her something, even if it's not the result she expected.
And that's the thing about Tiffany: she's always paying attention to what the experiment reveals.
"I've always been fascinated by this concept of asking a question and then doing some things and seeing what happens," she says, her voice catching with emotion as the realization lands. "There was never a right or wrong answer. It just was what it was."
That fascination started in childhood, when science fairs became her creative outlet. She wasn't necessarily the best student—in fact, she struggled with reading comprehension—but something about the scientific method clicked. The idea that you could run the same experiment under different conditions and get completely different results? That felt like magic. Or maybe, more accurately, it felt like truth.
"I found it very, very cool that depending on the environmental factors, you could run the exact same experiment and get a completely different result," she remembers.
What Tiffany didn't realize then was that she was developing a mindset that would carry her through two degrees, a demanding career in nuclear chemistry, multiple business pivots, and now, a burgeoning creator business on TikTok. She was learning how to test.
When the Hypothesis Doesn't Match Reality
Tiffany's path to becoming a scientist wasn't smooth. College at St. Mary's College of Maryland hit hard. The girl who loved science fairs suddenly found herself drowning in organic chemistry, barely passing classes, wondering if her dream of being a scientist would ever come true.
"I had to repeat my whole first semester of sophomore year," she admits. "I got D's across the board. I was working so hard, and I could just barely get far enough ahead in one class before falling behind in another."
Even though her grades didn’t reflect her hard work, her professors noticed it. One day her molecular biology professor pulled her aside during one of many tearful office visits. "You will succeed at life over every other one of your classmates because they don't have to work for what they have,” her professor said. “You know what hard work looks like. You've had to learn how to learn."
With hard work and the support of her professors, Tiffany managed to make it to her senior year when she realized she was just one class away from a double major in biochemistry and biology. The girl who barely made it into college, who failed and repeated entire semesters, who cried through organic chemistry—she was about to accidentally graduate with two majors.
The Variable You Can't Control: Real Life
For over a decade after college, Tiffany worked in nuclear chemistry conducting research. She worked her way up from chemistry technician to staff chemist, managing $2.3 million in contracts, earning bonuses people said didn't exist, and getting pulled into boardrooms with VPs and senior executives.
Somewhere along the way, Tiffany noticed that the results of her career path weren’t ones she was interested in. She sat in one of those boardroom meetings, looking around at the leadership positions she'd aspired to fill. One executive had gained 100 pounds in eight months. Another's wife was leaving him, and his adult children didn't speak to him. A third looked good on paper, but his team was absolutely miserable.
"I remember thinking, I don't want that," she recalls. "I don't think that success in your career means sacrificing all the different parts that make you you. I feel like success is when you have harmony between your health, your relationships, and your career…not sacrificing one for the other."
Two years later, when Ozempic hit the market, something crystallized for her. She got angry that weight loss was a trillion-dollar industry and no one actually taught people how to be healthy. She gave herself a choice: either stop complaining and accept that this is the way it is, or do something about it.
"I was like, well I guess I'm quitting my job, and I'm gonna go heal the nation's relationship with food and exercise," she laughs. She calculated how long she needed to stay to collect her year-end bonus, gave her notice, and left. "I was scared shitless that I didn't know how to run a business," she admits. But she left anyway.
Testing Business Models
Tiffany’s wellness business wasn't her first brush with entrepreneurship. Years earlier, she'd discovered an unexpected passion in business books. "I wanted to know how I got my paycheck…how the company made money that allowed them to pay me six figures." So she devoured Grant Cardone, Brendan Burchard, John Gordon—lots of personal development and business strategy books.
She was running experiments again, just in a different domain.
After leaving the plant, she went all-in on her health and wellness mission, creating intuitive eating programs before transitioning into high-performance coaching. "I realized that I knew nothing about running a business," she admits. "I didn't actually get to help anyone unless I was good at marketing. And I'm horrible at marketing."
After frustrating attempts at multiple business models, her instinct to experiment led her to TikTok.
The Current Experiment: Building Community Through Testing
Today, Tiffany is a creator on TikTok, primarily focused on product reviews through TikTok Shop. But if you watch her content or catch her going live, you quickly realize she's not just selling stuff. She's testing and building community.
"My videos still aren't converting," she tells me matter-of-factly. "All my sales come from lives, where people engage with me talking." Anyone who knows Tiffany could see why she’d generate more from live interactions. The success of her science career and her long standing podcast, “Two Humans Talking” was largely due to her ability to build rapport with just about anyone.
"I have been live so many hours a day at almost all hours of the day trying to find my pocket," she explains. "Not because I'm working myself into the ground, but because I've got to test. I've got to figure out where my people are and then adjust myself accordingly."
What makes Tiffany different from a lot of creators chasing viral moments is that she's in it for the experiment itself. Yes, she wants to scale, but she's also genuinely curious about the process. "That's why I love all of this, even when it's not working," she reflects. "Because it is literally me just—well, let's try this and see what happens."
What Tiffany's Story Teaches Us About Purpose and Transition
If you're trying to figure out your next move during or after a major transition, Tiffany's journey offers three powerful lessons:
1. Your "failures" are actually data. Tiffany didn't waste her time in those businesses that didn't work out. Every attempt taught her something—about herself, about markets, about what she was really looking for. Stop seeing dead ends as failures and start seeing them as experiments that yield results. The result might be "this isn't it," and that's valuable information.
2. The same conditions won't work for everyone—or even for you at different times. Tiffany failed organic chemistry the first time and passed it the second. Same subject, different conditions—different result. Maybe the timing isn't right for your current dream. Maybe you need different support systems. Or maybe you need more skin in the game. That doesn't mean the dream is wrong; it may mean the conditions need adjusting.
3. Testing requires you to actually run the experiments. It's easy to research, plan, and wait for perfect conditions. Tiffany could have stayed safely in her nuclear chemistry career, collecting a six-figure salary and wondering "what if." Instead, she went live at all hours, tried different business models, kept showing up even when the room only had two people in it. Testing means you have to actually make moves to see what works. “You've got to be willing to be bad at something for a while,” she says. “You get better by doing it, not by waiting until you're good enough to start."
The Experiment Continues
Tiffany Simms has built a career and life around the same principle that captivated her in childhood science fairs. She asks questions. She runs experiments. She observes what happens. She adjusts.
When you're in the middle of a transition—between careers, between identities, between who you were and who you're becoming—it's tempting to look for guarantees. To wait for certainty before you move. But Tiffany's story suggests a different approach: treat the unknown like a scientist would. Get curious. Run the test. See what happens. Adjust.
She didn't need to know it would all work out. She just needed to be willing to test what was next.
And the same goes for me and you. Maybe the most important experiment is the one where we ask: What happens if I'm brave enough to keep trying?
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