Money is such a taboo. I’m already cringing sitting down to write this blog post. Why is that?
Whether it’s down to the British attitude to anything open book or my personal relationship with money, I’ve always felt a bit awkward about money chat.
Being self-employed, that’s not done me any favours. In fact, it’s really hindered me in the past.
When you have to:
- Regularly look at numbers
- Analyse your profit and loss
- Make decisions based on cash flow
- Ask people to pay you money
- Send (and chase) invoices
It gets pretty tricky to do this whole #GirlBoss thing when you want to run away from all the ‘serious business’ stuff.
But 2019 is the year I put my big girl pants on and get my financial sh*t together.
As a creative business owner, I have to learn how to exist in harmony with the financial side of my business and see money as an empowering tool
So when Build a life you.love reached out asking if I wanted a money coaching session as part of their March #MindfulMoneyMonth, I said YES, please!
(Isn’t it funny how putting an intention and goal out there brings the exact thing you need into your life? Thank you, Universe!)
Build a life you.love are passionate about women doing just that, building lives they love. And let’s face it, in the modern age we can’t do that without money.
So they’ve developed a digital guide called Embrace Your Money Personality* to help us out. This is centred around the Sacred Money Archetypes – essentially, our beliefs around money, our struggles, strengths and weaknesses with money and how we can embrace our approach to money to achieve our goals.
I took the quiz and made a ton of notes
- Being freaked out by numbers
- Sometimes wishing I could just be creative and get on with the fun stuff, forgetting about the rest of business admin that I struggle with
- Focusing on the big picture of my business rather than the nitty gritty (because sometimes those world domination plans feel way more motivating than having to send an invoice or get to inbox-zero…)
It also brought up some really positive things about myself that make me great at what I do:
- Being confident with calculated risk – building a business comes with huge risk, so it’s a good job I’m willing to invest some skin in the game
- Having an indulgent side of me when it comes to money and wanting nice things, which ties in with my focus on self-care and investing in ourselves, whether that be time, money or other resources
- Focusing on value and generosity, which is the lifeblood of my business
In the booklet, you get to read an in-depth view of each of your Archetypes and piece them together in a way that makes sense to you.
I thought a lot about my goals, what I need to put in place to make money work for me and also understood on a deeper level why I’ve been held back by money beliefs in the past.
I came away with my Sacred Money Contract, which combines your money strengths and challenges into an empowering sentence to take with you everywhere. As per Tracy’s advice, I’m going to write mine at the top of my bookkeeping spreadsheet, to add some positive money messaging into something that isn’t always fun.
I loved my 1:1 coaching with Tracy. As a life coach, it’s always nice to be on the other side of the conversation, and I got so many takeaways from our 30 minute chat. It re-affirmed everything I’d made notes on and I gained even more clarity on my goals with money and unique ways I can make money work for me.
Tracy had specific insight on my Archetypes that I hadn’t thought
What’s your relationship with money like?
*Thank you to Build a life you.love for gifting me their guide and this 1:1 session – I wasn’t obligated to write this post and all opinions are honest and my own. I just want to start a conversation around this because it’s such a taboo topic and it shouldn’t be.
PS for anyone intrigued and taking the test themselves, my Archetypes are:
The Maverick, The Romantic and The Ruler. And my bottom Archetype is The Alchemist
