Making money fun featuring Anita Siek

One of the biggest reasons that small business owners don’t dedicate the time and energy to working on their money is because they find well, financial is boring. In today’s episode, I’ve invited along my good friend, Anita Siek to interview me and ask questions about how you can make money management fun. This episode is full of practical tips of how I do my money practices and rituals, and how you can make managing your money fun.

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guest share about money mindset, financial successes, and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers, and build the business of your dreams, so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving, and global impact.

CLARE:

For today’s episode, I decided to invite one of my very good friends along onto the podcast, Anita Siek, the founder of Wordfetti and a master of words to come along and interview me on the podcast. Because sometimes, it gets a bit lonely. We sit here in front of our computers with our microphone, recording an episode on our own and I thought, “Do you know what, it’d be really fun to bring along a friend of mine to ask me some questions.” Before we dive in, maybe you should do an official intro to yourself.

ANITA:

Oh, about me? Okay. Hi everyone, I’m going to be poking questions to Miss Clare Wood, but my name’s Anita. I am the founder of Wordfetti. I guess my little spiel is the fact that we help brands who don’t do normal stand out and make more sales through the power of psychology and words. I’m all about the words, and I’m all about I guess the powerful language when it comes to connection with our audience and driving sales.

CLARE:

Do you know you’ve got a podcast voice?

ANITA:

Do I? Do I?

CLARE:

I know that I’ve got one too because people often say that to me that my voice changes on the podcast.

ANITA:

I feel profess.

CLARE:

So profess. I’ve actually had Anita on the podcast before as well. I’ll pop a link into that episode if anyone wants to go and listen to a little bit more of her magic, but we’d known each other for years, but I think we really became friends a couple of years ago when our mutual friend Steph said, “Let’s go on a retreat together,” and that was such a fun, fun weekend. And since then, we are in a group chat all the time.

ANITA:

All the time. That’s pretty much all the time, and then you had to leave Brissie and on the GC now, but little moments like this that we get to have good conversations and yeah, chat about deep things which we like.

CLARE:

We love deep conversations, don’t we? The reason I thought you’d be a perfect person to chat to about this is because you’re obviously very creative. You’re very clever with words, and something that I’ve sometimes… I know this is a big generalization, but a lot of times, creatives feel a bit awkward and icky around money. And I thought that we could have a bit of a chat about how we can make funny one, how we can… I’m clearly not the words person, am I? How we can make money fun, and how accounting and finances and things don’t have to be boring. I’m going to stop rambling. I’m going to hand it to you, and let you sit in the driver’s seat.

ANITA:

Love it. Well, this is going to be fun. I’m so honored to be able to poke you with some questions. We’re going to get into some nitty gritties, and I’m going to try to ask you all the questions I feel like the creatives would be wanting to ask you. I’m going to first of all start off with this podcast episode by asking I guess the question of why do people get so triggered by this idea of money? We want to make it fun, right? So, let’s reverse engineer it a little bit. Why do people get triggered by money?

CLARE:

I think there is so much emotion behind money, and we have stories, we have judgments. And I’m going off on the money mindset tangent, but we do have a whole bunch of beliefs around money that’s come from what’s been programmed into us in our upbringing and also our experiences in life. In your childhood, I’ve spoken about this before on the podcast, but my dad talks a lot about the rich and the elite, and how they think they’re better than everyone else. And that’s a very safe story to have when you don’t have a lot of money yourself, right? It’s something that was really programmed into me growing up is judgments of wealthy people. Then what comes with that is a whole bunch of stories or fear around it because you think well, if I talk about money, then I am greedy, or I’m showing. And we don’t want to be that person. So, that’s what I believe is that we have fear around money because we have stories around money and we don’t want to be judged. We don’t want to have people looking down their nose at us, or thinking we’re too big for our boots.

ANITA:

It’s such a delicate dance hey, because I feel like I resonate so much with that. Because I mean when we look at why… I mean I’ll put my hand up. Money used to really trigger me. And when I talk about it, triggered me quite a lot. There’s the trigger between me growing up, seeing how things are supposed to be always 50/50. Then everything was always 50/50 and this was ingrained in my head, and how it’s hard to make money. You’ve got to work hard for your money. This is continuously the thing that I grew up with. It’s almost like I make it hard to make money in a way sometimes, because that’s what I’ve grown up with. Okay, so money triggers are really rooted in I guess what we would’ve observed, while we were growing up.

I guess let’s look at it from a lens now to a business sense. Of course, when you are building a business as much as I don’t love maths and I nearly failed maths, and I don’t love numbers, it’s something we got to know. It’s something we got to know when it comes to how much something’s costed, how much revenue versus profit and all of that. My next question then for you Clare is when it comes to then growing, let’s just say we’re growing a business and we are scaling and we’re growing, and the revenue’s coming in, but we are also seeing it going out and you’re in that thick of growth, where money’s coming in money’s coming out, but we both know that the magic is in the profit, right? How does one balance and play in this arena?

What would you suggest to the people who are listening when they are seeing money coming in, but they’re also seeing money out? First of all, what’s your tip around increasing profit? And two, how can you make this idea of looking at numbers, or looking at money a bit more fun? Because I don’t know about the listeners, but it’s something that me and my husband, Dean have such a different approach to it, but I look at it every day. Dean never looks at it. It’s so interesting, he’s almost scared to look. And I ask him about his numbers and he doesn’t know it, but I try to look at it, but would I say that I make it fun? No. I’m curious, how can we make it a bit more fun? I look at it because I have to.

Why people get so triggered about money

CLARE:

Yeah. There’s a lot going on there. I’ll start with having a look at your numbers. And the reason I think why a lot of people get really scared and overwhelmed is because they don’t understand it. And this is one of the biggest things that I say to people is getting powered, become literate when it comes to your financials. And that would be the very, very first thing that I say is that you have to understand what’s going on. And this is the case with a lot of different things in business, right? When you don’t understand, it’s very, very easy to get really overwhelmed by it.

The next thing is that when you are growing, this is something I talk about again and again is people think when I hit, when I’m making a hundred thousand dollars a year, when I’m making a multiple hundred thousand dollars, when I’m making a million, things will get easier. And I’m like, “But it doesn’t.” I don’t want to be disempowering or discouraging people from growing, but this is what you were saying before, right? What happens is you start to grow, the expenses start piling up…

ANITA:

More money, more problems, but also different stuff. It just looks like different things. The problems have different masks, hey.

CLARE:

Well, what happens is that as you start to grow, you go, “Oh my gosh, okay, cool, I’m going to bring on some team members.” And then you go, “Okay, cool, I’m going to invest to work with this coach, or do this program, or redo my website, or hire an amazing copywriter, or whatever it might be,” because you can see that that’s leading you into the next level. Then what’s happening is that our expenses are piling up, and we’re suddenly going, “Oh my gosh, I’m making all this money, but it feels like I don’t even know where it’s all going.” And then you’re like, “What’s the point? I’m working, it’s so freaking hard and it feels like I’m not even getting further ahead.”

My suggestion with that is it’s being intentional, and this is why I’m such a fan of planning. Because again, the reason why we feel helpless is because we’re flying blind. We’re like, “Oh my gosh, I think how much money have I made this month? Oh my gosh, I shouldn’t have spent so much.” Whereas when you have a plan and you are investing and you’re going, “Cool, I’m going to hire someone to do this for me. I’m going to bring on a new team member.” And because you can see it all laid out in your financial plan, you know that you can afford to do that. You feel a lot more in control, a lot more in the driver’s seat, and also having the ability to be able to pull levers if things don’t go to plan. Because let’s be honest, even the best laid out plans sometimes don’t play out that way, right?

ANITA:

Totally. Okay, so having a plan then. For someone who is like, “Ugh, I mean I like planning for other things like where I go on a holiday, but planning for my finances and whether or not it’s team hiring, whether or not it’s investing in, I don’t know, marketing or investing in insert whatever, just the idea of planning my finances again. I’m just um, yeah, can we ask some sprinkles?” How would you say I guess when it comes to planning finances? What would you say are three things then, and hopefully one of them in there is going to make this a bit empowering, exciting.

It doesn’t have to blow out rainbows and unicorns, but how can we really make this idea of financial planning, or planning for our numbers and all of that a bit more actionable, a bit more practical, not something that we leave until the end of financial year, or not something until we leave until we need to hire someone that we usually look at?

How to see your numbers as fun and manage them through growth

CLARE:

Yeah. Look, in the corporate world, because I come from a corporate background and planning is just an integral part of business. And it’s been really interesting for me. I’ve been a coach for six and a half years now, and it’s been really interesting watching how very little people plan things in small business, right? I work with a lot of really successful clients, and they have never done a budget before we’ve worked together. And the thing is when I sit down and with my private coaching clients, it’s something we do together. And they’re like, “Oh, it’s really not that hard. You can knock out a budget in an hour or an hour or two.” It’s really not that hard when you sit down and just go, “Okay, cool. What revenue of I got coming in? What expenses do I want? What investments do I want to make to help me level up to get there?” Firstly, it’s not over complicating it. And I think this is the thing that I see is that they try and plan everything to the nth degree, and make it a really, really big deal. And it’s like it doesn’t need to be that complicated. Keep it simple, keep it top line, focus on the big stuff. And also, when you were doing it, the way that I believe you make money fun is you think about what money represents to you. For example, at the moment, hubby and I are talking about going on a holiday. What we’ve done is we’re like, “Well, why don’t we set yourself a profit goal for the next quarter? And if we hit that then the reward is that we can go on a holiday?” Rather than it being, “Let’s sit down and do our budget,” it’s like, “Well, what does money represent to you? What are you going to do with the money?” If the money to you represents, “Oh, I then have make that match, then that’s not very exciting. And it’s not necessarily saying that you need to spend it, but it’s like what does it represent to you? It represents that I have savings. I don’t need to freak out because I know that we’ve got a buffer there. It represents us upgrading the car. It represents us going on holidays. It represents me being able to take a day off once a week, because I know that I’ve got a bit of a buffer there. Think about what the money represents to you. And again, this is something that I’ve done with clients of mine is that when we sit down and I’m like, “Let’s review numbers,” and they’re, “Oh.” And I’m like, “we just found $12,000. Don’t tell me that isn’t cool as hell, right?” And this is how I like to play with it is I’m like, “Think about what the money represents to you when you are creating your plans, and when you’re mapping things out.” And that’s a way that we can inject it a little bit more fun and play into the process is what does money represent? What are you going to do with it? Why do you want to get there?

And focus on those feelings to get through the process. And let me compare, I know your background is that you’re a lawyer. I am such a fan of contracts, right? Love contracts, but people just have such a resistance to it. And I’m like, “Stop thinking about the contract, stop thinking about the conversation with the lawyer, and start thinking about the confidence that having your legals in place represents. How good does it feel when you know that you are legally protected?” It feels amazing. It’s like, “Great, I’ve got a very clear agreement that I know has been prepared by a professional. I feel safe, I feel protected.”

And when you focus on that rather than the, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to pay money and I’ve got to talk to my lawyer.” No offense, that’s not something that excites a lot of people. But then thinking about the security and the safety that’s on the other end, well that is exciting. And it’s the same with money. I’m like, “What’s exciting about it? What does it this represent? It represents confidence It represents safety, and maybe it represents some really cool sexy things like a holiday or a savings account, or whatever that is that does excite you.”

ANITA:

Ooh, I really love that lens, actually really taking a bit of a pause and thinking about what money represents to you. I don’t think it’s often that as we grow up. and maybe even those who are listening right now that we actually pause and consider what it means to us. I think so often, the automatic association is the fact that money equals you are successful. You just keep on being on this hamster wheel of trying to make more, more, more, more money so that you are more successful, but the thing is money is really… I think this is a conversation you and I have had previously. In a way, it’s a exchange. We add the emotion to it, which is why we become so triggered when there’s money conversations.

But when we can look at what making that money, or having that money, or the profit can actually result in and it could mean maybe, ooh, you get to actually give yourself a bonus, or maybe you actually get to do this with the family, or going on a holiday and all of that. It does add a bit more of that zing and it’s almost like a little bit of a game I guess that you could… you can gamify. It’s what you just told us…

CLARE:

It’s a game.

ANITA:

It’s a game. It’s like you’re gamifying it. I do have a bit of a curly question to that though. Let’s just say you’ve got a goal with what you want to do with the money, and you make it fun. Let’s just say you don’t reach it. Let’s just say you don’t reach that goal. Well, then you’re just like, “Merr, I really wanted to make, I don’t know, whether or not it’s 5K, 10K, 100K, whatever? You set yourself a goal and you’re like, “If I reach that, then I get to go…” but then you don’t reach it. So, then what happens Clare? What happens then to this? You’re like what was exciting is now depresso.com. You’re just like, “Wahhhh, I’m a failure. I suck.” And come on, everyone who’s listening right now would be like, “Yes, I resonate,” and I resonate too. You set yourself this audacious goal, “Yeah, heck. Yeah, I can do that. This is exciting,” but then you don’t reach it and you feel down. How do you navigate around that?

Making your money represent something fun when planning

CLARE:

Well, this is where this money mindset work really comes into play, isn’t it? And I honestly have seen such a transformation in me over the last couple of years, the more that I’ve done this work is how much less I am attaching success to the outcome of a goal. And this is where we get to do this work, because what happens if you set a target and you don’t get there? And how much emotion do you attach to it? Some people get to it and go, “Oh, I didn’t get the holiday.” For me, if we miss this goal for our next quarter and we don’t get to go on the holiday, it’s then like, “Okay. Well, what are we going to do next? How are we going to get there? How do we get to turn this story around?” And I do not go, “Well, I’m never going to have a holiday again for the rest of my life.” Right? It’s just like, “Okay. Well, we need to revisit this.” And this is why I really believe in sharing the challenges along the way as well, because it’s so easy to look at the person living in their house, driving the car with the business that’s doing all of this stuff. Trust me, everyone fails.

And something that happened to me recently is we went to buy a boat, and we’d put the money in the budget. It was in the plan. We knew that it was part of the plan, and I insisted on getting a boat inspection done. And the boat ended up being a massive dud. We didn’t end up buying the boat. Am I a massive failure? No. I don’t know, are you? No, no. Of course not, right? It’s like, “Okay. Well, that wasn’t the boat, so there must be another boat out there.” Is the boat coming in one month, three months, six months, 12 months? I don’t know. Do I have absolute faith that I am going to get a boat? Yes, I do. And this for me is where this mindset stuff comes into play is that just because I don’t get a goal by a certain period of time does not mean that I’m not going to get it. I am going to get there and maybe it’ll take me one month, three months, three years, I will get there. And this is where we get to release the attachment to the particular outcome.

And Anita and I actually bought our houses at about the same time and gosh, it’s such an emotional journey. We very nearly got a house, and then we missed out on it. And it was nearly 12 months later before we actually did find our house. And again, that would be I set a goal, it didn’t happen, but it’s like, “No, it will happen. I know it will happen. I don’t know when, but it will happen.” And this is the same that we get to do with our numbers. It’s one of the biggest objections that I find that people have to not setting budget. They’re like, “I don’t want to set a budget because what if I don’t hit it?” And it’s like…

ANITA:

Yeah, that’s it.

CLARE:

But what difference does it make whether you’ve set the budget or not? You’re either going to hit an income level, or you’re not. And if you have a plan and you have an action plan of how to get there, you’re a hell of a lot more likely to get there than if you just aren’t setting a goal, or a plan in the first place. If you don’t hit your goal, it’s like, “Bucker, miss that. Cool. What are we going to do next? How are we going to turn it around?” And a lot of times, what I find is that when people have a plan is that they didn’t stick to the plan. They go, “I want to get this much money and to get to that income goal, I’m going to hire a full-time team member. And I’m going to put a ton of money into Facebook ads.” And then they miss their goal and I’m like, “Well, you didn’t end up hiring that person, and you didn’t actually invest anything into ads, sometimes” or sometimes it’s like, “Well, you did those things. It didn’t work out. We need to come up with a new game plan here.” And it’s being empowered because at least then, you’re going, “Okay, cool. We had a plan. We either didn’t execute it, or did execute it, or it didn’t work,” and that’s okay. Failure is part of success. We just need to revisit it, but at least we had something that we’re working intentionally towards, rather than just like, “Shit, can I afford to invest? Can I not? I don’t know, I’m just throwing spaghetti to wall here, and hoping something sticks.”

ANITA:

I feel like the first few years when I was really growing the business Wordfetti was very much, I knew it was important to understand numbers. But I think on reflection now, I look back and I’m like, “I really wish I did take the time to look at okay, so if we’re making that much, then how much can we reinvest?” I think I was just so much in that mode of saving, saving, saving for that rainy day and all of that which is part of my money story originally. And gosh, that could be another topic in itself, but it is something that I was saving, saving, saving for a rainy day. And then it got to the stage where that could have been something that we could have invested in X for or Y for, but I think there was just that gap in confidence because to what you said, there was no plan when I was starting the business first year, second year.

Even it wasn’t until probably the third, fourth year that I was just like, “Oh, hang on a second. Ah, should probably hear my poor accountants.” Literally, I’m messaging them all the time being like, “What does this mean? What does that mean? End of financial year is always crisis mode. Should I be spending my money? Should I be doing this? And should I be doing that?” Whereas now I think there is that feeling of I can make informed decisions. Yes, it could be an investment in that, but at least I know and feel comfortable being able to hire that team member, or being able to invest in X, Y, Z. And that’s I guess the power of having a plan. For those who are listening who are like, “Okay, I hear what you guys are saying and I want to have a plan and all of that,” but where does one begin? Where do you begin when it comes to creating a plan or a budget? Where do you start?

How to make a plan and use it to track your progress

CLARE:

I can’t resist the urge to do a self-plug, because we did not set this up by the way… but I have created a program that’s launching very soon and it’s called The Profit Academy Foundations. And the reason I created it is because of this exact reason. I don’t know where people go to learn these skills, and to do it in a fun and easy way. Yes, you can go to your accountant, so that would be the first option optional port of call, but I really wanted to create a place where people can go, “How, the hell do I do this stuff,” and learn how to actually be able to create a financial plan themselves, to be able to create a budget, to be able to understand their money in simple terms because something that I find… I’m a qualified accountant. Sometimes, accountants can use really big scary terminology, and not break things down into a really easy way of understanding it.

Look, I would say get empowered, get educated, do a course, talk to your accountant, talk to someone who does have accounting experience would be my recommendation. It’s all well and good to sit down with a friend of yours. But if this isn’t something that they are trained in, I’d really make sure that you are working with an expert, but literally the process of creating a budget or a financial plan is this essentially. What you do is you map out month by month, your revenue projections and then you map out your expenditure. And it’s as simple and complicated as that. It really is going what’s the game plan, and what does that look like? And then how much profit is that going to be delivering me? And then again in my program, I show people how you get to play around with money. How you get to go, “Oh my gosh, that’s not what I want. How can I start to drive my investments to achieve the sales that I’m after and the profitability that I want to get?”

ANITA:

Mm-hmm and no, that was totally not planned.

CLARE:

I loved that. I love it.

ANITA:

Oh gosh. Okay. Is one supposed to check in on their plan then every, what, week, day, month, quarter?

CLARE:

Yeah, absolutely.

ANITA:

Once you’ve got a plan, what do you do?

CLARE:

Once you’ve got your plan, what I always suggest is that you don’t then stick it in the corner of the room and forget all about it. You actually put it into your accounting program. So, upload your financial plan into your accounting program and then what you do every month is you track your progress against the plan. So, really starting to go, “Okay, cool. How am I tracking against the plan that I said at the start of the year? How am I going? Oh my gosh, I’ve missed that target. Okay, why did I miss that target?” And don’t just look at the numbers, but really understand and ask the questions behind it. Really start to understand, “Well, what’s happened? Has something happened in the wider market? Has something happened in my own business?” And rather than just then falling into the victim mode of, “Oh well, I’ll just throw my toys out of the cotton, go get a job back in the corporate world.” We then go, “Well, this is what it is. What am I going to do about it?” And you and I were chatting about how the business world is changing a lot at the moment, and it’s like, “Cool. So, I’ve missed plans of mine recently and what do I then do?” I go, “Okay, things are changing. What am I going to do now? How am I going to adjust? What am I going to tweak in my business to start to course correct, and start moving back towards where I want to be?” And this is the thing is that we are not flying blind anymore. We’ve got the numbers, we’ve got the detail.

We had our plan and maybe we need to change the plan, and that’s cool. We can do that as well, but it’s really having something to hold ourselves accountable to rather than just every month going, “Oh, is that a good month?” And this is sometimes what I see people. They go, “Is that good?” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t know What was your plan? Is it good, or is that what you were hoping to achieve for this month? Is that how much profit you want to be making?” Most people don’t really have a good ballpark of what it is that they were actually trying to achieve. And when you’ve got your budget or your plan, then you can track your results against it.

ANITA:

I’m curious then what would you define as good? Is that something that you can share? What is if a business was to be like, “Am I doing good?” How do you measure that? Is it based on profit? Is it based on is there a particular, I don’t know, you should be making at least X amount of profit, or X percentage of profit? How do you define if a business is going good?

CLARE:

Well, something that I would say that’s a bit contrary to a lot of other people is that I’m like truthfully, I believe it just depends because let me share some examples of what I mean. And this is why having your plan is really important. Because for some businesses, they don’t run at a profit. They might intentionally not be running at a profit for a period of time. Look at companies like Facebook. They didn’t make a profit for eight years. Now, I don’t think that that was them every month going, “Oh, bugger.” I’m pretty sure that they were like, “We’ve got the plan. We’ve got investors. We know exactly what we’re moving towards. We’ve got our revenue projections in place, and this is why we’re investing so heavily into ourselves right now,” right?

As compared to other businesses I know for me, right from the start of my business, I had a massive mortgage. I had a baby right from when I started, and I had to be making a profit. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to say, “I’m going to invest heavily back into my business.” Every single person’s circumstances are different. Some people have massive big goals. I know that I do, I know that you do. We’ve got really cool things that we want to create and achieve. This is why your plan is so important is it’s like what do I want? What’s important to me? And then creating your plans around it. Something that I will share is that some of my most successful clients have a safety net. They have perhaps a partner who makes a lot of money.

They have parents that support them or whatever, and they are able to go all in their business, because they know that they have that opportunity, right? They’ve got that safety net there. And this is something that I’ve observed is it’s like if you can really go all in, you can invest heavily in your team and your marketing and your coach, then you might be able to grow faster than other people. And then there’s other people, I did not have a safety net. I do have a partner, but he’s also self-employed with a very inconsistent income. For me, I couldn’t invest into my business as much as other people could and that’s okay, that’s my journey. I’ve got young kids. I’m not going to hold myself against other people’s growth, expectations, or opportunities because I’m playing at running a different race. Success to me looks like what you want success to look like for yourself. How much profit you make depends on how much profit you want to make, and how much profit you want to make short term and long term. The thing that I’m a big believer in is it’s like what am I moving towards? And how is this supporting me to get there? Some people like I said are going to be able to go, “I’m going helpful leather. I’m investing heavily and I’m happy to make a bit of a lower profit margin in the short term.” Whereas other people are like, “Do you know what, I am here to make profit? I want to make money, I want to enjoy it now.” They might be saying, “Well, I’m going to run my expenses a bit leaner and really focus on taking a much heavier profit margin.” It’s different to what some of the advice out there is, but that’s what I believe. I believe it’s really going what’s right for me, what’s right for my business. And then am I happy with the outcomes that I’m achieving?

ANITA:

I love that because I think so often, we base our money decisions and investment, we go, “Well, that was a prime example.” Literally going straight to, “Well, what is the good benchmark? Give me a benchmark, so I can measure myself against that.” And when really the heart of the question is well, what is it? To circle back to our conversation, what does money actually mean to you? Not like with all due respect to your parents, but what does money actually mean to you? What is enough for you, instead of what is going out there searching for the answers on the big wide web. What does it actually mean to you?

ANITA:

And what does actually making money actually result in for you in terms of fun, or maybe you can actually go on holidays and all of that and actually thinking about profit wise, well what is it for you and what’s, I don’t know, risk appetite is otherwise the right word to use-

CLARE:

Yeah, hundred percent…

ANITA:

… what the risk appetite is for you, and what you feel most comfortable with. Because at all different stages of our life, I think it all ebbs and flows. I feel like I was at a stage when I just left my corporate job, I literally used my last pay slip. Do not recommend this by the way. Use my last pay slip to literally buy a car, a house. By then, I was like, “I have to make this work. I have to make profit with this business,” but it goes up and down. It goes up and down, and that is part of I guess the journey. So, don’t ever compare from what I’m taking away from what you said. Don’t ever try to compare I guess your journey here to what someone else is over there, because you just never know what they are comfortable with either.

CLARE:

Oh, a hundred percent. And look, my husband and I have taken risks and I’ve shed on the potty before about cashflow struggles that we’ve been through. And we’re doing really well now and people are like, “Oh, you’re so lucky.” And we’re like, “Well, we went in. We went in when it was really uncomfortable.” And I’m not saying that that’s right for other people. It was right for us, and I’m really proud of what we’ve done and where we are, but I guess that’s the thing is it’s like ultimately, you need to say, “Well, how much profit do I need to be making?” And that’s another thing that I like to do. I create a personal budget and I go, “Okay, cool. This is what we need to pay our household expenses, so that’s got to be the absolute minimum that we are making after profit, so that we can actually afford to live and sustain our lifestyle. And then on top of that, we get to play around with well, are we investing into things for our ourselves personally? Are we investing back into the business? What does that look like?”

ANITA:

I’m wanting to ask you, and I don’t know whether you might have already covered this in the podcast, but what are some money habits then that maybe you and Sean go through? I’m curious, but also potentially some of the listeners might be curious. What are some rituals habits that you guys do to keep track, or keep the motivation happening, but also make money talk, or money conversations part of day to day conversations? Because I think with couples, sometimes it is something that is a bit icky to have conversations about when it comes to money, especially when each of you have completely different and don’t work necessarily in the same business. How do you and Shannon navigate around certain money conversations, and do you have money habits or money rituals?

Money conversations and rituals for your business and life

CLARE:

Yeah. One of my favorite things is our money meetings. Every single Friday, me and Sean have a money meeting. And this is where we get to play with the fun of it, right? We go out. We go to our favorite coffee shop and we might grab a snack, we grab coffee. And we sit down, and we talk about all of these things. I write an agenda for our money meetings.

ANITA:

I love that.

CLARE:

We’ve got different topics that we are going to cover and sometimes, they’re really dry things. It’s like, “Insurance, where our insurance is at? Let’s do a quick check in on where our insurance is at.” And other times, it’s things like, “When is our next holiday, right? How are we going to fund this? Okay, let’s set our up a profit goal. If we hit this, then we are going to go and get a villa and go overseas and have an amazing family holiday.” We formalize that process, and have at least one hour every single week dedicated to working on money, every single week. Outside of that, we also have other little practices and rituals. And some of these sound bit talky, but I’ll share them anyway. But in front of our kids, we have little mantra things that we say. One of them is, “I love money and money loves me.” And our kids say it with us as well. The kids in the morning, they go, “I love money and money loves me.” And they’ve got a few other ones that they say personally. They go, “I’m the best. I love myself. I like myself.” And it’s become just a little thing that when we do drop off with our kids every day, they do a couple of pump up things to make themselves feel great. And they also lean into to the money. They say, “I love money and money loves me.” Other things that we do, other rituals is that we talk. We talk about our dreams all the time. Before we bought this house, we used to have a little song. Actually, as you know, we ended up buying a house on the same street ironically as the house that we lost in the first place. And we had a little song that we used to sing to each other. We used to write on our mirror. In a whiteboard marker every day, we’d write, “Our dream house looks this. It’s here. It’s located here. We can walk to the beach. It’s on water.” We constantly are focusing on what you we desire, and what we’re wanting to create. And some of it is materialistic the house and things like that. But other times, it’s things like… and again, this is one of the cool things that money enables you is to go, “What’s some ways that I can help more people with money.”

And even within my business, writing my book, this is not going to make me… maybe that’s a negative way to put it out there, but look, a lot of people don’t make a profit when they write a book, but it is for me something that’s really cool and exciting that I’m like, “I’ve now got the bandwidth to create something to help people at all stages of business. It’s going to be like $30 to buy a book. That’s something that is really accessible to a lot of people.” You get to play around with all of the things that you’re wanting to create, and talk in a really, really positive way about it. So, that’s something that we do as a couple all the time is it’s like, “Oh,” and we talk at the moment, we want to build our dream house. We found our dream location. We’ve bought a house there. All the time, we talk about the dream house. And we talk about it in such a way that it’s happening that our kids are like, “When are we getting the dream house? When’s the dream house coming?” We’re like, “Kids, we’ve just scraped in to get there, to get the local land here.” But because we speak about it in such an optimistic way, they think that we’re getting it tomorrow. Look, those are some of the… and again, the ways that we make it fun, we make it playful, it’s happening. “The boat, when are we getting the boat?” I don’t know, Let’s talk about the boat.” We send each other pictures of boats all the time. We talk about when we’ve got the boat, we’re going to do this. It’s not like if this ever happens. It’s like it’s done.

And this is where we get to marry these concepts of our money management with our money mindset is it’s like, “Yes, you got the plan. Okay, weird. Okay, didn’t quite get there. Didn’t quite get there this month, this quarter, this year. All right next year’s the million dollar year. Cool, pumped for that. How are we going to get there? What does that look like?” And it’s just really the plan is a guideline. If you don’t get there in the timeframe, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to get there. You will get there, but just a little bit at another time. And it’s just refocusing and recalibrating.

ANITA:

Yes, I love that money meeting. Every Friday, I didn’t know that. That’s cool.

CLARE:

Did you not? It’s all over my Insta.

ANITA:

I mean I see it, but I didn’t realise you guys actually do it every single week. That’s cool.

CLARE:

Yes. And look, honestly, once a week, we feel like we could even do longer. I could do two money meetings a week. I really recommend it. It’s just a really great way and do it somewhere fun is the other thing I say. Get out of the house, particularly if you work at home. Go somewhere nice. You can go and do it over a beer. And again, this is something If you’ve read The Barefoot Investor, he says have your money date nights and actually go and go sit in a nice fancy restaurant, and crack champagne and make it a beautiful indulgent experience. Because rather than looking at the cost of, “Oh my gosh, spending money on dinner,” he’s like, “You’ll be saving yourself thousands of dollars by intentionally focusing on your money.” It’s just the little steps that move you closer towards the big, big goal. So, carving out the time is just so important.

ANITA:

Yes, yes, yes. There’s just so many quotes coming my way right now. It’s like where your energy goes, it just rose. And then there’s the other one that’s almost just like what you believe about your life, you’ll make true about your life as well. Because everything that you mention about if you keep on saying that you’re scared of this, you’re scared of that, well you’re going to not charge your worth because of that. Clare, this has been cool, poking some questions at you. I have one final question for you, and that is I guess for the listeners that are tuning in. If you had to deliver, I don’t know, a Ted talk tomorrow about money, what would your angle be? What would that be that one message you want to leave with them?

CLARE:

I think my biggest message would be intentionality. When it comes to your money, being intentional about what it is that you want to create, and why you want to create it. And this marries together everything, being intentional with your goals. Oh my gosh, the dream house, the dream house, right? Very intentional, being intentional with your plans, being intentional with your time. So, many people tell me money’s important to me and I’m like, “How much time do you devote to it?” “Ah, I look at it once month.” And I’m like, “You tell me that this is so important to you, how much time are you actually dedicating to working on your money? How much time are you dedicating to creating a plan? How much time are you dedicating to tracking your results?”

If it’s important to you be intentional about it, be intentional with your time, be intentional with your investments, be intentional with what it is that you desire and you’re creating. So, that would be my big thing I’d say to Ted talk.

ANITA:

Ooh, I love it. That’s so good.

CLARE:

Get me on a stage. Get me on a stage.

ANITA:

All right. If anyone’s listening, she’s open. She’s open.

CLARE:

Oprah, if you’re listening, I’m down.

ANITA:

She’s down. Oh Clare, thank you so much for letting us pick your brain on all things money, on all things getting planned with your money, with budgets, and making things fun.

CLARE:

Thank you so much for coming on. I’m so grateful for your time today, and I’m so grateful your friendship. So, thank you very much.

ANITA:

Big love.

CLARE:

Thanks so much for listening. If you love this episode, please share it with your audience and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram at @clare_wood_coach. And, also make sure you hit subscribe, so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week and I look forward to talking to you again next week.