Psst! This is part of a That’s What She Said podcast series about befriending all the things you spend in life: time, money, and energy. Enjoy!
Just like you might not feel like the phrase ‘time is your friend‘ is true, ‘money is your friend’ might strike you as a bold-faced lie. AND. I do not know of a single person who operates completely outside the realm of money. I know no one who doesn’t think about, spend, save, worry about, or use money to operate their lives.
Part of what fucks with our heads about money is what we were taught about it growing up; how much our parents had or didn’t have, how our family used or didn’t use money.
I grew up going to both protestant and Catholic church each week (more about that here), where I was taught that money is the root of all evil. That wanting money is bad. That having money is bad. And that giving money to the church is good. Like, WOW GOOD.
It’s taken decades to unravel those early ‘money is the root of all evil’ teachings from the reality of how money operates within spiritual belief systems, so I want to briefly address this issue. (Side note: THE LOVE OF money is described as the root of all evil in the Bible, not money itself. Editing and context matter. Words are really easy to truncate and manipulate, particularly by people who have access to a spiritual text and a pulpit.)
If church of some kind messed with your head around money as a kid: two quick facts.
Fact #1: The Roman Catholic church is estimated to have assets worth a minimum of $30 billion dollars.
Fact #2: A 2016 study found that the U.S. faith sector “is worth $1.2 trillion, more than the combined revenue of the top 10 technology companies in the country, including Apple, Amazon, and Google.” (Source)
So…money is bad, says (much of) religion, BUT ALSO WORTH 1.2 TRILLION to the U.S. faith sector.
Money is VERY VERY BAD, say most places of worship, but also please buy our books, programs, services, belief systems, and political candidates. (Guilt trips included at no extra charge!)
I’m talking about this not to bash religion in any capacity, but to point out a place where you may specifically have been coerced into shutting down around money.
If you’ve ever been taught that having, using, earning, spending, or worrying about money messes with your spiritual side, can we let that shit go?
Treating money as purely bad is both untrue and unfair. Worse, that belief holds us back from doing our truest work in the world.
I grew up in a trailer and bought all my clothes from thrift stores, the mall being reserved for a Back to School Outfit and new sneakers once a year. Money was always scarce. I wasn’t taught money skills, money tips, money tricks, or even basic budgeting. Junior high and high school classes failed to teach practical money skills in any capacity, but WOW DID CALCULUS COME IN HANDY (kidding). College led to my discovering the world of credit cards, which really amounted to racking up tons of debt with no solid plans for paying it down. Owning a business has revealed that while I am a consummate earner, saving and budgeting are still skills I struggle to manage.
Absolutely everything that I know about money has been hard-won, and I hope my sharing three ways I improved my relationship with money will be helpful for you.
MONEY HABIT OF MAGNIFICENCE #1: LOOK AT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT(S).
This might seem like a REALLY small thing if you’ve grown up without having experienced poverty, overdrawn bank accounts, or massive debt. But to those who have experienced the warm wash of shame that happens when you open up your banking app and feel like you don’t have control over your life because you don’t have control over your money, it’s a big deal. (Read: I actively avoided checking my bank account for a number of years in my late twenties. Once every few weeks is more than enough, right?)
I know you don’t want to look at your bank accounts when the chips are down. I know how your pulse races, your cheeks blush, and your fingers shake when you login to see how little money you’ve got or how much the overdraft charges are for today.
I get it. AND. The only way to get better at money is to face it directly.
Logging in to your bank account every day, even when the balance that’s waiting for you is drastic or terrible, is better than avoiding your money reality. Hoping your money issues will go away or miraculously be fixed actively harms Future You.
Being willing to look your money in the face is a HUGE step. From there, we move on to some simple numbers.
MONEY HABIT OF MAGNIFICENCE #2: KNOW WHAT’S ENOUGH.
Business owners often come to me for coaching (details of working with me here!) without knowing how much money is ‘enough.’
Enough is the point at which you can pay your business expenses, your salary, and your taxes without drawing from savings or going into debt.
Enough is the bare minimum upon which you can operate a profitable business. It’s often a smaller number than you’d think, but you can’t know until you actually do some math to find it.
🔥I’ll happily help you break down Finding Your Enough Number in this podcast, and you can pick up the workbook in which I walk you through Finding Your Enough Number for $10.
We’ll dive into your numbers, find your Enough number, and take one more step toward befriending money as a business owner. With that number in hand, we can move on.
MONEY HABIT OF MAGNIFICENCE #3: BE VERY SPECIFIC ABOUT THE MONEY YOU WANT.
When coaching peeps want to make ‘more’ money in business, we first spend time getting to a VERY specific earning number. Then we break down how to reach that number in the coming months of business.
We don’t say we want Barbara to find ‘more’ clients. Based on her Enough number, we want her to find 13 clients in the coming 6 weeks.
We don’t say we want Krysta to book ‘more’ weddings. We want her to focus on booking 3 weddings in the next 3 weeks.
An amorphous ‘more’ can never be reached, and therefore you’ll never feel satisfied with regards to money.
Based on your Enough number, how many products or services do you have to sell in the coming month? And next month?
This is the unsexy way that business is done! You can have all the bells and whistles and coaches and programs in the world, but being an entrepreneur really does come down to knowing your expenses, your income, your tax burden, and your needs — then marketing your work accordingly.
Your Enough number provides the baseline for running a soulful and profitable business.
The people I work with don’t want to make seven figures in the next 22 minutes using THESE 8 STEPS THAT ARE AVAILABLE ONLY THROUGH THIS LIMITED TIME OFFER.
My peeps want to create and nourish a demand for the work they create that allows them to be both well paid and time affluent.
Today’s deceptively simple approach to money allows you to reach Enough without having to scale your business to include 17 employees, AND it gives you the time you need to do your work in the world. (Or to fuck off and do nothing at all!)
THE MONEY IS YOUR FRIEND ACTION RECAP
🌈 Login to your bank account. Face what’s there. Login again tomorrow. Repeat. You’re building a muscle and this will become less scary with time.
🌈 Find Your Enough Number if you own a business so that you know exactly how much you need to make in order to run a profitable operation. (Listen to the podcast and pick up the workbook, too!)
🌈 Work backwards from your Enough number in order to create Very Specific marketing goals for the coming months.
Hugs,
K
P.S. Want to dive deeper into selling from here? Try That’s What She Said podcast episode #100, Stay on it.