5 things to do NOW if you are stressed about money

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

I’m hearing a lot of nervousness in the online and business world right now with interest rates, the way that they are, inflation skyrocketing. Some business owners are feeling that consumers are being a little more cautious at the moment. Maybe you’re experiencing a dip in sales, or you’re finding that business is a little bit harder than usual. Or maybe personally finding that you’re feeling a bit stressed about money at the moment. If so, stick around because this episode is for you and I’ll be sharing five things that you can do right now to take back the power if you are feeling stressed about money right now.

if you follow me for a while, you will know that I have a term that I have called fangxiety. fangxiety. Probably not a real word, I think I’ve made it up myself, but essentially the way that I am using it is that it is an anxiety around finances . If this is something that you are experiencing right now, if you’re feeling nervous about money. If you’re feeling like business is hard right now, I want to bring open a conversation about it and have a chat about some things that you can do to help you navigate through those feelings that you are having.

So, the first thing first, I am such a big believer in business that so much of it comes down to mindset.

And when it comes to worrying about money, mindset has such a strong part to play. So the first practical thing that you can start to do is be mindful of the words that you were saying. And even the thoughts that you are having a lot of times, what we are doing is speaking things into existence. And let’s be clear here, I am not talking about being Pollyanna and pretending that things aren’t going on in the wider economy or in your very own world. But what I am saying is that we don’t want to spend too much time and energy playing into it. And often what happens with anxiety or with stress is that we are making something bigger than it needs to be.

And let me share an example. Something I heard someone say the other day, they said everyone in business is struggling right now. And because I’ve done a lot of work around money mindset and whatnot, I stopped them and said, well, actually not everyone is struggling right now. I don’t want to take away from people who absolutely are however, not everyone is struggling right now. So one of the things that we can do when we are feeling emotional is create blanket statements. And if you’re in a relationship, I bet you’ve made a blanket statement before. For example, you might say you never changed the toilet paper roll. And maybe there is the odd occasion where your partner does. So what we want to do is avoid using blanket statements or making mass generalizations, because what that is doing in our subconscious mind is creating more drama and stress around it. See the different energy that sits behind it. As if I say, Everyone is struggling in the online world right now, or if I say some people are finding it, you know, they’re having to do things differently, or some people are struggling in the online space right now. See how instant, instantly it creates a different emotional reaction in you.

And what we’re trying to do with our mindset a lot of times is regulate our own responses to what’s going on. I know that I can have a tendency to catastrophize and that’s one of the things that happens with fanxiety or anxiety in general is that we are looking into the future and looking at or imagining a worst case scenario. What happens with that is that we then have a spiral of thoughts. For example, the online world is doomed. My business is going to go bust. This whole entire industry that I’m in is not going to exist. We really can start to go downhill very quickly. So first thing that I really urge you to do, if you’re feeling stressed about money right now is start to catch your words and your thoughts around money. Yeah. Okay. Things are different to the way they used to be a couple of years ago for me. This is an opportunity for me to start to do things differently myself. Really start to become a master of your mind and a great place to start is in the words that you speak and even starting to catch them when they are thoughts. One of the first steps that I think is really helpful in this space is to start to notice what other people are saying, is sometimes so much easy to see it in other people has like the example that I said earlier, someone said, everyone is struggling right now and my brain, because I’ve been programming it to not think like this, I said, well, no, not everyone is struggling right now. It’s really learning how to shift your perception around what’s going on. And again, I don’t want to say this in a way of pretending that things aren’t going on. Absolutely not. If that is what you’re experiencing, and we’re going to talk about some really practical strategies of how you can start to shift things up if you are wanting to grow your sales right now.

But I wanted to lay this as the first step is to be mindful around your own thoughts and your words. And particularly, start to notice what other people are saying, start to notice the effect that it has on you as well. It’s really interesting how swayed we are by the people and the energy around us. If you have listened to this podcast for a while, you will know that on average people earn the average of the five people they spend the most time with. So if you are so influenced by your peers that you can actually earn a different amount of money because of them, imagine what impact their words will have on you. Food for thought.

Alrighty. The second thing that I would love for you to do, if you are feeling stressed about money right now is to track your time.

Now, I don’t mean that you have to have a little spreadsheet and write out what you do with every few minutes of your day. However, I want you to start to notice how you are spending your time. And The first step was to notice how your brain is spending its time. This one is about how you are physically and practically spending your time. Because when times are changing, we need to do things differently. And we will all have our own habits or patterns that we use. So this is why starting to notice and be mindful of how you are spending your time can be really helpful in starting to shift the outcomes that you are creating in your life.

Let me go a little bit deeper on this. How you are spending your time is really important. And again, as someone who is known to, experience anxious thoughts myself, I know that when I’m worried about something, I will go down rabbit warrens, trying to find more information about it.

So for example, if there is something going on in the world, I will often be reading articles around it, which of course is very unhelpful in terms of shifting you out of a state.

The other thing that I know that I personally can do to, avoid taking uncomfortable action, to avoid doing something a bit different is that I do something that’s mind numbing and easy. And for me, I’ll stick my hand up and say it is doom scrolling, particularly watching Tik TOKs or scrolling through reels. Watching something that’s providing little dopamine hits after little dopamine hits, but not actually shifting the needle in my own business. So I wanted to volunteer those two to give you some perhaps thoughts around what you might be doing with your time, but I want you to start to really critically look at your own business, your own time management, and start to ask yourself, Hey, if I’m ready to create different outcomes, if I’m ready to up level in my business right now, what are some things that I can be doing? Am I doing them or am I feeling my days with unhelpful things? So to start to really notice, how am I spending my time? We’re going to talk later about some actions that you can take, and there’s no point even talking about those if you’re not going to be able to create the space to actually take action. So the first thing is to clear up some time or at least start to notice, hey, how am I spending my days? Some other things that I know that people can often do is really get stuck in their inbox. They’re addicted to their inbox or their phone, checking text messages, replying to DMs on Instagram, feeling that need to get back to things quickly and not creating the space to do some of the strategic work. So become a master of your mind and become a master of your time.

Alrighty, let’s chat about the next thing that you can do to help you stop stressing about money and it’s this focus on what you can control. So a lot of times when we are stressed, we are focusing on things that are completely outside our control.

Oh my gosh. The economy, interest rates. Unless you work for the, unless you work for a, one of the big banks, even then you probably have very little control over what interest rates are set up there. There’s no point spending your time and energy stressing about things that are outside your control.

So what are the things that are inside your control?

We spoke about earlier creating some space in your calendar, in your day, what can you do with that space? Are you being present to your audience? Again, I know that this is one of my own self sabotaging things that I do when I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed, I step back from social media. And it’s funny because often that’s the exact thing that we need to be doing, hey, why don’t you show up and share with your audience, even if you share a little bit about what you’re experiencing, that’s a connection point. And you can even share your solution if you are in a B2B space. So be present on your social media, post about your services.

And there’s other things that you can do as well in this space of action around managing your own energy. Are you doing the really basic practical things like meditation that help to help you to feel better about yourself? Are you working on your manifestations? Are you taking out time to dream? And do vision boarding. I know for me, when I’m feeling a little bit in the space of lack or I’m feeling stagnant, it feels so weird to be thinking about the next level. I’m not manifesting the next big thing when I’m like, Whoa, I feel like cash is really tight right where I am. But actually that counterintuitive thing, it’s often exactly the thing that you need to start to switch your energy. I know for me, when I sit and update my vision board or go and take action towards one of my big goals, oh my gosh, it’s so energizing and exciting for me. So, in the space of managing your stress, your energy levels, and even taking practical action around your offers, around your business, what are some things that you can do?

Another great tip that I’ve got for you. If you’re feeling stressed about money, if you’re feeling a bit of lack, lean into the space of celebration. Often we’re so focused. On what we don’t have, on where we want to be, on what we’re wanting to create. That we forget exactly what we already have.

One of my favorite little rituals to do is to write out and thank everyone who’s been paying me. So I, I get down, I get a coloring pen and I actually track my sales for the month and I name each person individually. Thank you, Annie, for that $49 payment, I appreciate you. Even the small amounts. If you can’t be grateful for the small amounts that are going to be coming in, well, it doesn’t allow a lot of space for even more abundance to flow in.

And the last thing that you can do in the space of things that you can control in terms of taking action is to play around with some offers. Now, a word of warning here, one of the things that I’ve seen people doing at the moment that I saw people doing through the COVID period is creating super low cost offers. And if that feels aligned for you, amazing it’s your business, you know your audience better than anyone, but sometimes we just need to be careful that we’re not doing something out of a state of desperation. Because it could be damaging to your brand in the longterm. And secondly, sometimes that doesn’t even solve the problem.

And let me share an example. Many years ago, I think it was about five years ago. Now I was going through a period of time in my business where things felt really tight. And I thought, do you know what I need to do? I need to create a low cost offer. So I launched a membership at $99 a month, and they were getting a ton of inclusions at that price point. They were getting calls with me, all kinds of things and I thought this is going to have hundreds of people in it. Spoiler alert. It didn’t, and I realized that I’d created this thing because I was trying to help people, I was trying to come up with a way that people would work with me in my world. And I realized that people weren’t looking for a low cost offer, a low cost way to work with me at that point in time. So I’d gone and marketed, created this whole big thing, and it didn’t even resonate. So, if you are going and creating some new offers or playing around with new ways to serve your audience at the moment, just really check in on the energy of why you were doing it. And are you doing it because you think this is going to be a really quick win and get me a ton of sales? Or are you doing it because you genuinely feel aligned to the thing that you are creating and you think that it really is something that your audience will want right now.

The next thing to do, if you want to stop being stressed about money, and you want to take back control. It sounds so simple and yet it’s so difficult, and it’s this, to do things differently. I shared on the podcast recently about my business makeover that I’ve just been through, how I’m doing a ton of things differently in my business to what I’ve done over the past eight years. And oh my gosh, it feels so fun. So fresh. And for someone who is as entrepreneurial and who loves to do new things like me, I’ve realized on this journey, how much I was actually kind of doing the same thing. Instagram and my podcast have been my prime marketing strategies for years and years, and I haven’t really mixed it up that much.

So I challenge you to think about what are the things that I kind of do on autopilot and what’s some things that I could do differently. What about reaching out to that person for a collaboration opportunity? Can you pitch to a magazine? I shared in the business makeover masterclass, I’ve started posting to Tik TOK. I’m going through the journey of reinvigorating my Pinterest that’s been inactive for years. I’ve now got my YouTube channel up and running. I’m doing a ton of work around AI and learning how to use AI, both in my business and for my clients and students.

So go and do things differently, do a course, hire a new coach, reach out and try and market your business in a different way. When you’re feeling stuck and stagnant. Doing something different feels great energetically, but it’s also a potentially uncapped opportunity to make more money.

And the last thing to do right now, and of course I had to throw this one in here, being an accountant, being a money mentor, this is so damn important, and it’s this, please don’t ignore your finances. Dig out your numbers, have a look at them. Do your cash flow forecast. And even if it does make you feel a bit stressed, at least you have the knowledge and you can feel empowered to make decisions around what to do differently. At the time of recording this episode, I did my cash flow forecast meeting this morning, and I’ve got a ton of actions at the back of it. Go and follow up those potential clients, get that thing underway, go and price up that other alternative that’s a lower cost than what you’re currently doing. Don’t ignore your finances because money problems do not go away on their own.

When you actually start to look at what’s going on and come up with a bit of a plan and particularly a plan looking forward. I like to do my cashflow forecast eight to 12 weeks in advance. And what you can then do is look for new ways that you can bring in cash, and you can also look for opportunities to cut back on unnecessary costs.

Another thing that you may want to consider if cash is feeling a bit tight right now is have a bit of a look at some, consider some financing options. You know, can you chat to some of your suppliers about , their current costs or about putting together a different payment plan? Can you even consider getting a loan or some short term funding? Think of what you can do that is helpful.

And I want to wrap up with something that my therapist said to me once, I think that it’s really, it’s, it’s really helpful, something that years and years later often springs to my mind. And it’s this, she said, “is that a helpful or an unhelpful thought?” And I love that. We can use that in business. If you are starting to spiral, if you’re starting to feel anxiety, is this a helpful or an unhelpful thought? And I also apply this to actions. So when I’m sitting there doing my doom scrolling, I can say, Clare, is this a helpful or unhelpful thing to be doing to move your business forward? I’ll leave you with that to wrap up this episode.

Look, if you do want some one on one help with your business, one of the things that I do offer is my VIP days. These are in person days where we sit down. I have a look at your business with a bird’s eye view, and we create a tailored action plan to help get you from where you are to where you want to be. I’ll pop a link in the show notes for today’s episode if you do want to find out more about a VIP day. Maybe it’s the thing that you might need right now to help get you unstuck. Maybe it’s not. Either way I hope that you found some great tips in today’s episode that you are feeling empowered and excited about removing your stress around money in your business right now.

Thanks so much for tuning in to today’s episode of the Clare Wood podcast and I will chat to you again next week.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio