Living paycheck to paycheck even though your coaching business is making 6 figures?

Does it never seem like there’s enough, even though you always have juuuuust the right amount to cover everything? When there’s no wiggle room you feel like you can’t breathe: everything has to work perfectly or something will bounce.

Checking your accounts always causes your blood pressure to go up so you hate logging in, but you find yourself checking every day (or multiple times a day) just to make sure you are still in the black. 

If you do manage to ignore it, things inevitably fall through the cracks and the money seems to disappear faster. You don’t even know where it all goes! 

But figuring it out seems like a monumental task, so you stay busy with sales and fulfillment instead hoping that you can outearn the problem. 

This constant state of stress has a cascade failure effect - worry about not having enough keeps you playing small and avoiding necessary risks in your business... Probably because you’re avoiding your money and it’s escaping as fast as possible

This is a perfectly logical response.

If your experience has been that there isn’t enough money, of course you’re going to believe that there isn’t enough and act accordingly. 

The disconnect between what you’re seeing come in through your sales dashboard (which looks like it should be more than enough) and the balance left in your bank at the end of the month (which may be enough to transfer to yourself, but usually is not) creates a schism in your mind and the mental frameworks you use to think about your money.

This is part of the reason why you avoid thinking about it or engaging with your money. 

Your emotions recognize those jagged edges and since your mind can’t immediately find an explanation, your gut reaction is to avoid it until you can figure it out. But figuring it out seems overwhelming and scary and like it will take forever - and you don’t have forever because you’re busy running a successful business and also successful businesswomen shouldn’t be having these issues.

(And then the guilt and shame that you secretly don’t have it all together is more overwhelming than the prospect of dealing with money, so you go back to what you’re good at - selling - and hope that everything will work out as it always has seemed to so far.)

The unfortunate truth is that ignoring it is the main problem. 

Money is the lifeblood of your business (and ultimately, your life). Without money, you wouldn’t be able to keep your programs and marketing going, pay your team members, do fun things like team retreats - or pay for more fundamental things like electricity and groceries for your family. 

Letting money flow out of your system without taking the time to figure out how it’s getting out and where it’s going is like bleeding out from a main artery, ignoring it, and drinking more water hoping that your body can produce enough blood to make up for what you lost. 

Money leaking is a business-ending scenario.

It’s a compounding problem that will grow as fast as you do.

The only way to fix it is to plug the leak at the source.

Most money coaches focus on the spiritual side of money: 

your beliefs and feelings about money. And while I do think that those underlying vibrations greatly affect your perception of money, I think there are also some very practical, hands-on, immediately effective things you can do to fix mortal issues like money leaks. 

If you can’t get yourself to take action on these very straightforward steps, you should take some time (not forever, a week at most) to take inventory of your core beliefs about money.

What did your parents say? What did your culture or religion say? What lessons did you internalize when you were growing up as a child? When you started managing your money for yourself? What emotional shortcuts did your body encode to run these background functions of your brain? What situations and scenarios trigger those emotional protocols and how are they directly opposing your ability to take positive action? How can you counteract those opposing emotions consciously and temporarily (because it will be friggin HARD) long enough to take the action anyway?

Thinking or journaling through these questions will give you a HUGE head start on understanding where you are coming from. You’ll be able to predict your own avoidance techniques and install guardrails to make sure you can’t wiggle out of doing the thing anyway.

Then you’ll need to take concrete action to change your situation. You can intentionally plant new beliefs about money (affirmations like “I have enough” and “I’m good with money”) but they won’t grow or bear fruit unless your reality also affirms these statements as true. 

So let’s make some true changes around here 😉

Step 1: Explore your current money system.

Think of this like cave exploration. Right now, most of the places your money is flowing is underground - out of sight, out of mind. You know where it’s coming in - your sales cart and merchant account (Stripe, Square, etc) - but not all the places where it’s going out.

Take half a day to follow the trail. Start with your merchant account, check which bank account your payouts are going to. 

Then find all the places where it’s going out. Do you have any automatic payments or transfers set up? Which account is initiating it? 

Sketch out a list of your expenses, taking special note of services or subscriptions that you don’t use anymore. Check for transactions that look weird or that you don’t recognize. Look for bank charges, merchant processing fees, and overdraft penalties. 

Step 2: Plug the leaks.

Cancel the services and subscriptions. Stop the automatic transfers and payments you don’t want anymore.

Step 3: Design a new plumbing system.

I go into FAR more detail on this in my full program, but the basic system is an account for income (I call it my “Pool” - all the income goes here so I can see it all at once), and then connect the accounts for the income to waterfall into: operating expenses, your compensation, savings, and taxes. Set up automatic transfers (I explain how to do this in the program) to those accounts, and to pay off your business credit cards in full every cycle.

Step 4: Maintain the system.

When it’s humming along, you won’t have to do much manual work. But you do have to regularly inspect it for leaks or else you’ll end up back where you started.

If you want much more detailed instructions on the system design and how to set it up, consider joining my monthly bookkeeping service. We do far more than just reconcile your bank!

We’ll create your system from scratch - using your existing accounts to set up the account structure and connecting them all via automated transfers 

Set targets for each category - both realistic ones for your current situation as well as stretch goals to work towards

Schedule the maintenance tasks so you never forget to check in and you can keep everything running smoothly (it’s so satisfying to see those numbers growing steadily!)

Interpret your numbers so you can make informed decisions for business priorities and launch goals

If you’re interested in getting help with your finances, >>click here to apply<< for a monthly package! 🙂 There’s only 4 spots left!