The Secret to Motivating Yourself to Learn About Finances

If you have a poor relationship with money, it’s going to be hard to talk yourself into how to manage it. Whether you view money as boring or you have a hostile relationship with it, getting financial education is probably one of the last things you’ll want to do.

It’s difficult to be motivated to learn about money if you don’t see how it can bring meaning into your life. Here are a couple of my tips for changing your mindset to see how money can be a positive force for life satisfaction:

Get Honest About Your Relationship With Money

First off, it’s important to get a clear idea of your relationship with money. So, how do you feel about it? What are some beliefs you hold about it? Here’s an excerpt from my article “How Your Relationship With Money Affects Your Finances (and What You Can Do About It)”:

If you want to get a quick pulse on your relationship with money, think about money or say “Money,” out loud to yourself, and then keep track of what emotions come up. More than likely, there will be several that come up in a quick succession: anxiety, avoidance, excitement, compulsion or repulsion, etc.

The goal with this exercise is not to suppress or judge any of the feelings as good or bad. Simply take note of them as they come up. Try this several times to get a full emotional picture.

Once you’ve tried this out, reflect on how your current feelings about money can give you insight into how to improve your relationship with it. I list a couple ideas for doing this in the article mentioned above. 

Brainstorm Your Life Goals

Think about your goals for a moment. What are the most meaningful things you can dream of doing? Maybe you dream of supporting yourself as an artist, building a beautiful home, or going on the adventure of a lifetime.

Those dreams are possible, and they are financeable. Your income can be the financial engine that brings those dreams to life! By reflecting more deeply on your goals and connecting them to your finances, you can begin to more clearly see the equation between money and life satisfaction. 

Get Inspired

Many people are able to do amazing things with money. This is where finding your “money crush” comes in. What’s a money crush? Someone you know, or know of, who handles their finances in a way you admire. This could be somebody you know personally who has the kind of financial setup you want. It could be someone who writes or speaks about money in a way that inspires you. A money crush is essentially somebody who models the things you want for your own financial life.

Try thinking about the most generous people you know. Imagine being able to give like they do, from a place of abundance. One of my personal money crushes and favorite resources on this topic is Lynne Twist’s book, The Soul of Money. Check out my book review if you want more inspiration to improve your relationship with money.

If you enjoyed this article and you want regular tips and insights about doing money in a way that feels meaningful, you’ll probably enjoy being on my newsletter list. Click below to subscribe! 

By |2022-07-07T15:57:16-07:00July 7th, 2022|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Why You Need to Consider Your Hourly Wage As a Business Owner

How much does your business pay you, hourly? Whether you’re working on a pricing strategy or just feeling burnt out by your business, this can be an important thing to consider.

Why Think About Your Wage?

Knowing your hourly wage can help you be more aware of the time and effort you’re putting into your business, and what kind of return you’re getting. Calculating your hourly wage can be a great tool for a perspective shift. For many business owners, even if they work 12-hour days and have just enough to cover bills, they might not see that their business isn’t paying them enough until they’ve figured out their hourly rate. If your hourly wage would make you want to leave your position if you were an employee, that’s a great clue that some new thinking about your pricing is in order!

Appropriate Pricing

Understanding what your hourly wage is (and what you want it to be) can be a huge help in pricing your products appropriately. First you need to understand your money why, or why you earn the money you take in from your business.  This will help you understand if your current prices can really sustain the goals that you have financially. You can learn how to set informed income goals here. Once you understand what your income target is, you can work backwards and see how much of your product or service you would need to produce and sell in order to make that income. 

Take a moment to consider the cost of low prices, too. Look around at what other people in your industry are selling their product for. If you’re giving your goods away because they’re priced so low, you’re not doing anyone any favors. Remember, selling more doesn’t mean you’re necessarily making more. You aren’t making money, you’re reducing the value of what you do in the eyes of the buyers and you’re making your industry fellows unhappy.

Consider Your Time

When you are considering how to price your product or service, you may take into account the cost of supplies, transportation, and other materials. However, you must also take into account the cost of your time. If you were working for someone else and getting paid, you would receive an hourly wage, so consider that just as important in your own business. If you hired someone to help you with production, you’d need to pay them an hourly wage too. If you’re planning to scale up a business you’ll need to be able to hire other people and your prices need to be able to sustain that.

Another thing for product-based businesses to consider when looking at your pricing is your interest in wholesaling. When selling wholesale, you will typically  sell at 50% of your retail price. If, at this price, you’re not covering your costs, labor and making a profit that supports your financial goals, you need to raise your prices. 

Taking your hourly wage into account can help you accurately price your products and meet your income goals. If you’re interested in learning and thinking more about pricing formulas, I encourage you to check out my interview with Megan Auman. Our talk, plus my articles on how artists define their own success and how business skills and artistic sense can coexist, are great resources for anyone with a creative business looking to tinker with their profit model. Enjoy!

 

☮

Angela

Photo: bruce mars 

This blog post is a tweaked and re-published version of the original, posted in 2019 as part of a series for creative business owners. Check out more articles on that topic here. 

By |2021-05-17T11:25:55-07:00May 17th, 2021|Categories: Cash Flow, Small Business, solopreneurs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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The 4 Components of a Restorative Money System

The purpose of your money system is to help you meet your financial needs and keep things organized. A good money system is financially and emotionally restorative. It helps you keep your money going where it needs to go, and it keeps you from stressing. It helps you integrate your personal and business finances seamlessly and without worry. There are many different mechanisms to a money system that help us achieve these objectives. Today, let’s talk about the 4 key ones:

A Spending Plan Aligned with Your Values

Having a clear spending plan that helps you align your expenses with what you care about most is an essential part of a restorative money system. Take the time to assess what you value most in your life, what feels best to spend money on. Oftentimes, there are things we’re paying for regularly that we don’t really value, or that don’t add value to our lives. Discerning the underlying desire beneath your expenses can help you better define your values. For more thoughts on this concept, I recommend reading
The Soul of Money by Lynn Twist.

Once you’ve assessed your values, it becomes easy to cull what doesn’t truly align with you from your spending. From there, you can make the moves to create a spending plan that will keep you on track financially, and in alignment emotionally.

Clear Income Target

Another wonderful thing about creating a spending plan is that going through the process means you get a good idea of what your monthly cost of living is. This means that you have what you need to create a clear income target for your business that corresponds to your tangible needs. Having an income target grounded in your financial needs and goals is a restorative element of your money system because it keeps you in touch with your reasons for putting in the work to take care of yourself financially and run your business. It’s much more powerful than the grand-but-vague “have a 10K month!” approach, because it’s personalized. Your income target reflects the amount of money you need and the amount of work you need to do to live a life aligned with your values.

Your Money Why

Absolutely key to a money system that seeks to restore and enrich your life, your money why is the purpose of your income. This is especially important for business owners, because whether your business is your side-hustle or your full-time income, your income needs a purpose. Vague goals like, “make extra money” tend to have vague outcomes. Your money why is a clear goal or intention you plan on using your income for. After thinking about your values and desires, identifying your money why is simple. For example, maybe you value adventure above all else, and you want your business to make enough to support you and pay for a grand cross-country trip. One of my values is family, and I started my business to support my daughters as they went through college.

Your money why is connected to your values, but it’s goal-based. It ensures that you have a goal connected to your money system that will lead to fulfillment and financial growth. It could be paying off debt, a big purchase, or supporting your family. Whatever it is, your money why keeps you focused and helps you create a good life for yourself.

All Needs Met – Especially Yours

A restorative money system helps you stay organized and save to meet needs – yours and your business’s. This means having a system that helps you save for taxes, pay operating expenses for your business, and pay periodic expenses in both your business and personal life. A restorative money system also prioritizes its creator – you. Your money system should not only account for those important expenses, it should also provide a regular paycheck for you as the owner of your business, even if you have fluctuating income. My ideas around this aspect of a money system are based on Profit First. This system also calls for a way to collect a portion of your income as profit, and distribute it to you, the owner, as a reward for your hard work every financial quarter.

If you enjoyed these ideas about a restorative money system, you will probably also like my series on money-mapping. Here’s part 1, part 2, and part 3 of that series. If setting up a system sounds like the thing to do right now, but you’d like to work with an expert accountability partner, check out my offering, 4 Week Refresh, which is designed to help business owners review 2020 and plan for 2021 from a systems perspective. I’m offering this through the end of January and I invite you to join me!

☮

Angela

By |2021-03-09T11:48:00-08:00January 26th, 2021|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset, Profit First, Small Business, solopreneurs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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How to Create A Business That Restores You

A lot of people start their business with hopes for a better life in mind. More freedom, more money, a better schedule, and a legacy to pass on are just a few things that people starting out on their solopreneur journey might hope for. However, once a business gets going, whether it’s a full time project or a side-hustle, for many it becomes a demanding enterprise. My goal is to bring the solopreneur’s relationship with their business back into balance, by making sure the needs and desires they set out to meet in the first place are organizationally and financially prioritized.

So, how do we do this? The path toward creating a business that is restorative to you, the owner, combines intentional decision making and organizational action. Here are a couple key factors I’ve identified through my work with clients:

Boundaries

I recently review Jennifer Armbrust’s awesome book, Proposals for the Feminine Economy, in which she introduces twelve principles for feminist business. Principle number one is very simple: “You have a body.” While this can be interpreted in a number of ways, to me, it’s a reminder to slow down and set reasonable expectations for myself. By keeping my physical and mental limits in mind when setting up my schedule, choosing my daily tasks, and considering the scale of my own business, I’m able to avoid exhaustion and burnout. Some solopreneurs leave the corporate world or another industry in hopes of finding better work-life balance on their own. Healthy boundaries around when and how much you work can help you realize that dream and restore mental and physical wellbeing.

Clear Objectives

Consistently, I ask my clients to consider their “money why” – the clear financial objective they aim to achieve through running their business. Your money why can be a very specific goal like saving to buy a house, or it can be more general, like sustaining your budget. I have an article all about how to set income goals based off your needs. Reading it and doing a check in can help you establish your own clear objectives. By keeping your efforts focused on those, you can make sure specific needs and desires are met.

Quarterly Profit Distributions

This is one of my favorite practices from the Profit First system. To use this practice, during a fiscal quarter, you collect a portion of your profit in a specific account. At the end of the fiscal quarter, you take whatever money has collected and use it to reward yourself and celebrate your hard work. This is a great way to stay energized in your business. You can take this reward without guilt because you have the system in place to know your business is healthy, and this money is specifically set aside for you. If you’re intrigued by this concept, I encourage you to download the first 5 chapters of Profit First and play around with my allocations calculator!

I hope these ideas help you see a path towards your own restorative business. If you’re interested in learning more about what I do with my clients, you can check out my Services packages or schedule a call with me.

☮

Angela

Image:  Meghan Schiereck

By |2019-09-13T22:50:43-07:00September 13th, 2019|Categories: Financial Clarity, Profit First, Small Business, solopreneurs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Why You Need to Consider Your Hourly Wage As a Business Owner

Have you paused to consider what hourly wage your business pays you? This might not seem important – maybe you think that as long as you have your bills paid, you’re all set.

Why Think About Your Wage?

The thing is, this is really about pricing your products appropriately. First you need to understand your money why, or why you earn the money you take in from your business.  This will help you understand if your current prices can really sustain the goals that you have financially. You can learn how to set informed income goals here. Once you understand what your income target is, you can work backwards and see how much of your product or service you would need to produce and sell in order to make that income. The next step is to see whether that’s realistic. 

The Cost of Low Prices

Look around at what other people in your industry are selling their product for. If you’re giving your goods away because they’re priced so low, you’re not doing anyone any favors. Remember, selling more doesn’t mean you’re necessarily making more. You aren’t making money, you’re reducing the value of what you do in the eyes of the buyers and you’re making your industry fellows unhappy.

Consider Your Time

When you are considering how to price your product you may take into account the cost of supplies, transportation, and other materials. However, you must also take into account the cost of your time. If you were working for someone else and getting paid, you would receive an hourly wage, so consider that just as important in your own business. If you hired someone to help you with production, you’d need to pay them an hourly wage too. If you’re planning to scale up a business you’ll need to be able to hire other people and your prices need to be able to sustain that.

Another thing for product-based businesses to consider when looking at your pricing is your interest in wholesaling. When selling wholesale, you will typically  sell at 50% of your retail price. If, at this price, you’re not covering your costs, labor and making a profit that supports your financial goals, you need to raise your prices. 

I hope these thoughts of mine have helped you consider how taking your hourly wage into account can help you accurately price your products and meet your income goals. If you’re interested in learning and thinking more about pricing formulas, I encourage you to check out my interview with Megan Auman. Our talk, plus my articles on how artists define their own success and how business skills and artistic sense can coexist, are great resources for anyone with a creative business looking to tinker with their profit model. Enjoy!

 

☮

Angela

Photo: JOSHUA COLEMAN

By |2019-09-06T16:22:07-07:00September 6th, 2019|Categories: Cash Flow, Small Business, solopreneurs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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There is No Wrong Choice

When you run your own business, you make a lot of decisions, mostly on your own. That grants you enormous freedom, but also leaves you with immense responsibility. This responsibility often hangs over our heads: what if we don’t make the right choice? We stall the flow of our businesses by avoiding tough decisions.

I, for one, have definitely struggled with this. When I was running my jewelry business as a full time project, I often put off making decisions. My avoidance of them was fear-based and emotional. I felt like I had to nail every choice and do everything by myself. Not having anyone else to bounce my ideas off of left me frozen and fearful. You can read more about my experience running my jewelry business here. 

Since then, one of my major breakthroughs was realizing that there is no wrong decision. No matter what I decide to do in my business, I am always able to learn from that choice. If something I do turns out to be a mistake, I find a way to recover and learn not to repeat the misstep. However, I find that the vast majority of choices I make in my business are not typically so high-stakes. Often, I’m making choices about how to utilize social media, what to include in a proposal to a client, etc. I can agonize over the details, but at the end of the day, every choice I make is just another step in a larger experiment: my business! And the purpose of my business is to support me and my life goals – the choices I make within it don’t need to be stressful or fear-fraught.

What are some strategies that could help you breeze through decision making with your business? Perhaps you can get comfortable trying out systems and ideas on a trial basis. Maybe it would be helpful for you to find an accountability buddy to talk to and discuss ideas with. Perhaps hiring on an employee or contractor and delegating some of your workload can take some of the pressure off. It could be helpful to journal and investigate the fear or emotions that are blocking you from making a decision. Simply approaching your business with the mindset that you can learn from all your choices can also help alleviate this.

Making decisions in your business confidently and with an air of curiosity and experimentation can make your business more fun for you. And really, isn’t that what we want?

I hope this post inspired you to go forth confidently and make any moves you’ve been stalling. Go get ’em, tiger! If you find you could benefit from an accountability partner and you’d like guidance around your financial systems, I absolutely love to support solopreneurs around these things. Head on over to my Services page, and schedule a call with me.

☮

Angela

Image Source: Amy Shamblen

 

By |2019-06-14T17:45:47-07:00June 14th, 2019|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset, Small Business, solopreneurs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Three Steps to Financial Clarity

3 Steps to Financial Clarity: At Peace With Money

As the holidays set in and the mad rush of preparation begins to slow, you might find yourself with a little time to reflect on your year. Why not take the opportunity to reflect on your finances? Your money, much like all the other pieces of your life, deserves your attention, thought, and critical eye. This exercise is meant to lead you to financial clarity. By completing it, you’ll gain a better understanding of what you want from your money, and how to get there.

Step 1: Define Your Destination

What’s your destination with your money? What are you planning to do with it? Is there something you’re saving up for? You might have vague plans, a well-defined roadmap, or nothing at all. This is the step where you can dream and imagine that destination. If you already have one in mind, check in and make sure it’s where you want to go. Make sure you investigate any current money goals you might have to make sure they really align with your desires. If you don’t have any goals, think of some you might like to adopt!

Step 2: Drop Your Pin

Pinpoint your current location. In other words, figure out where you are now financially.  It’s time to get clear and honest about what you have, what you owe and where your money is going each month. Use this step as an opportunity to total up your expenses and debts and track your recent income. Leave no bill unturned! If you want further instructions on this step, I recommend checking out my article on creating a spending plan, specifically the section on analyzing your expenses. 

Step 3: Plan Your Journey

3 Steps to Financial Clarity: At Peace With MoneyNow that you know where you are and where you’re going, it’s time to figure out how you’ll get there. This is the step where strategy comes in. Based on all the information you’ve already looked at during Step 2, you should be able to determine what will help you get to your destination. Whether that’s saving more money, paying yourself first, cutting out certain expenses, increasing your income, or a whole host of other ideas, identify your moves and decide when you’re going to make them. 

This process may take you a little while to complete, but it will ultimately bring you to a place of much greater clarity when it comes to your finances. This exercise can be applied to personal finances but it can also be applied to your business finances. I hope this season of reflection serves you well.

If you need any assistance looking through your finances, I’m happy to help you reach a place of clarity. Schedule a call with me!

☮

Angela

By |2018-12-19T00:43:10-08:00December 19th, 2018|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset, Personal Savings, Personal Spending|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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