Women & Money Pt.3: Build Financial Confidence as a CEO

Your business can only grow as far as you're willing to lead it.
And that includes leading the financial side—not just the creative or operational side.

In this Soul Spa reflection, we continue the conversation around women, money, and financial leadership. Building on our previous discussion about emotional avoidance and business growth, we go deeper into what it means to step into financial leadership as a woman entrepreneur. Many founders are comfortable serving clients, creating offers, and showing up visibly in their business, yet feel uncertain when it comes to financial decision-making.

The truth is that financial leadership isn't about becoming a financial expert overnight. It's about developing a relationship with your numbers, understanding the story they tell, and becoming willing to engage with them consistently. As your business grows, your ability to lead financially becomes just as important as your ability to create, market, or serve. This episode offers a gentle invitation to expand your capacity—not through pressure, but through awareness and ownership.

In this episode:

• Why financial leadership is a critical part of business growth
• The difference between managing money and leading financially
• How avoidance can show up even after revenue starts increasing
• Why confidence with money comes from engagement, not perfection
• A grounded approach to developing your financial leadership capacity

This episode is part of The Soul Spa — short solo pauses you can return to whenever you need a moment of grounding.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hello beautiful people and welcome back to the Empower Her Business Podcast Soul Spa series where our intention is to bring you food for your soul. This is your space to pause, to breathe, and to come back to yourself. Here we navigate through the nuances and internal challenges of building a great business, bringing inside clarity, and tapping into our inner guidance. I am your host, Lynette Catrell, founder of Empower Her Bookkeeping and Advisory, where I guide women founders from overwhelm and avoidance to confidence, clarity, and what I call wealth capacity. And today we're continuing our conversation around women money and financial leadership. Last time we talked about this truth. You cannot scale what you emotionally avoid. And we also elevated and clarified the term numbers in your business to what it really represents, the quantity of dollars coming in and going out of your business. So today I want to go a little deeper because I believe there is a human circuit that keeps many brilliant women founders financially stuck. Not because they're poor leaders, not because they're irresponsible, and not because they're bad with money, but because the emotional relationship with money often runs much deeper than strategy. There is a pattern I see often. A woman knows she needs to look at her numbers, those quantity of dollars. She knows she needs to understand what's coming in, what's going out, what's profitable, and what's sustainable. She also knows she needs to make a decision, but there is something happening internally. Her body tightens, her mind starts racing, she feels that dread, that intimidation, that shame, that pressure. And before she even opens the report, logs into the account, or asks any further questions, her nervous system has already decided this does not feel safe. So she delays. She says, I'll look at it later. I need to get organized first. I don't have the energy today. Or I'll wait until I make more money. Even I'll deal with this after this busy season is over. So what looks like procrastination on the outside is actually protection on the inside. That's the circuit. Fear creates avoidance. Avoidance creates intimidation. Intimidation creates more fear, and then the cycle repeats. The longer we avoid financial clarity, the heavier it feels. And the heavier it feels, the more we avoid it. So many women are not stuck because they don't have the ability to understand money. They're stuck because shame has entered the room. And once shame enters the room, learning becomes harder. Curiosity becomes harder. Decision making becomes harder. Even asking for help becomes harder. I've seen this so often. I'm in a room full of founders explaining what I do and how I help. I hear founders talk about how behind they are with their numbers, the quantity of dollars coming in and out of their business, and in the same breath, they say, Oh, but I don't need any help. I I get it caught up eventually. So this becomes an issue because now it's changed from what do my numbers say to what do my numbers say about me. Because those numbers that represent that quantity of dollars flowing through your business, those numbers are not a character judgment. They are not a measure of your worth. They are not here to shame you. They are here for information to assist you in the process of running your business to be as profitable as you desire it to be. They are communication, they're telling you the story, giving you the information you need. They are your business speaking to you clearly, or at least trying to speak to you clearly. And if you begin to listen without attacking yourself, everything can start to shift. Because the goal is not to become perfect with money overnight, or perfect with understanding your business financial reports overnight, or perfect with understanding the flow of money in and out of your business overnight. The goal is to become present. Present enough to look, present enough to ask, and present enough to learn. But you also have to become present enough to tell the truth. This is not failure, this is awareness. And awareness is the beginning of a powerful leadership. So today I want to offer you a compassionate reframe. What if the part of you that's been abard in your finances is not the part that needs to be judged? What if she is the part that needs safety? She is the part that needs support. What if she is the part that needs a slower, kinder doorway back into financial leadership? Because many women have only experienced financial conversation through pressure, through criticism, through fear, urgency, through judgment, through someone making them feel like they should already know it all. But what if your financial leadership could begin differently? What if it could begin with compassion? What if it could begin with one question? What is one financial truth I am willing to gently look at this week? Not everything, not the whole system, not every report, and not the entire year. Just one truth. And this may be your bank balance, this may be your monthly expenses, maybe it's how much you actually paid yourself, and maybe it's how much debt you're carrying. Maybe it's where money is leaking. Maybe it's the truth that your business is busy but not yet deeply profitable. And I know some of this may feel tender, but tenderness does not mean danger. Sometimes tenderness simply means this matters. This is important. And your business matters, your peace matters, your capacity matters, and your ability to lead with clarity definitely matters. This is why I'm so compassionate about being compassionate when addressing accounting and female-founded businesses because women do not need more financial shame. We need financial safety. We need places where we can ask questions without feeling small. We need support that helps us understand without making us feel behind. We need systems that help us reconnect, not shut down. Because when a woman begins to feel safe enough to look at her money, she begins to reclaim her leadership. And when she reclaims her leadership, she starts making decisions differently, not from panic or avoidance or survival, but from truth, clarity, from wisdom, from grounded power. So today I want you to remember this. The cycle can be interrupted. Fear does not have to keep leading. Avoidance does not have to keep deciding for you. Shame does not have to keep narrating your relationship with money. You can begin again. Gently, honestly, and just with one financial truth at a time. Let's take a breath here. What I want you to know is that what I've internalized about businesses that are founded by women is the value we bring to changing the world. In my research, I came across a couple of studies that show that when women build wealth, 80 to 90 percent of them give back, not just to their families, not just to their community, but to organizations they care about. And now for men, that percentage is 30 to 40 percent. So think about it. If you want to really change the world, you can help women founders build wealth, and that changes the world greatly. So if today's experience resonated, I'm glad you're here. I invite you to trust what's stirring inside you. We will continue this walk together, and next time here in the Soul Squa, we're gonna talk about rebuilding wealth capacity, not through pressure, but through safety, support, and small financial truths. Until then, take care of yourself, and I'll talk to you soon on the next episode of The Soul Spy. Be well,