Why Making Money Feels So Hard Right Now — And How to Simplify It

If you’ve been wondering why it feels so hard to make more money right now — or how to actually increase your income without burning out — this episode is for you.

In this solo episode, we break down why making money feels harder than ever (rising costs, too many side hustle options, and information overload)… and how to simplify the process so you can start earning more now.

Key takeaways:

• Why making money feels so hard right now
• Simple ways to increase your income using what you already have
• How to turn your existing skills into cash (without overcomplicating it)
• The key steps to making more money — and actually keeping it

This episode is about more than just making money — it’s about building confidence in your ability to earn, grow, and manage wealth.

Because wealth doesn’t start with how much you have… it starts with how much you trust yourself to create and grow it. 

You don’t need 10 income streams or a perfect plan.
You need one clear path to increase your income, a few defined actions, and a system for where your money goes.

This episode is sponsored by Toneit Pilates — a studio I personally love. Their classes combine reformer and mat Pilates for a strong, balanced, and intentionally challenging workout.

Because just like building wealth, building a strong foundation in your body starts with intentional movement.

Thanks for listening!!

Connect with Kate:
Instagram — @theinnercapitalpod & @katelynnicolee
TikTok — @theinnercapital

Support the Show:
Rate, review, comment, and share to your IG stories.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to The Inner Capital, the podcast where money, mindset, and mastery meet. Because your greatest asset is within. I'm Kate, your host, and together we'll explore the stories and strategies of founders, visionaries, and leaders who are redefining wealth from the inside out. Thanks for tuning in. Welcome back to the Inner Capital. Today's episode is sponsored by Tonit Pilates, and I've personally actually taken their classes, and they are the best Pilates studio that I've ever been to. What makes them really different is that they combine both reformer and matte Pilates into each class, so you're building strength in a way that feels really intentional, really balanced, and honestly really challenging. So just like we want to build a strong foundation of inner capital in our mind, you also should be building a strong foundation in your physical body, and that starts with really intentional movement. So if you're local to Michigan, definitely check out Tone It in Northville. It's genuinely one of the best workouts I've ever done. Now let's get into today's solo episode. This was honestly one of my favorites, and I think it was very therapeutic for me to record as well, because this concept of it being so hard to make money is a mindset, and it is something that I have been feeling and struggling with. So honestly, structuring and recording this episode was a way for me to also process why it feels so hard to make money and how to simplify it down. Because whenever something is overcomplicated, it can feel really stressful, and that's not how we want money and wealth building to feel. So in today's episode, we are talking about why it feels so hard to make more money, some ways to activate income that you already have, and most importantly, how to simplify all of this down. The ultimate goal of this episode really is to help you feel more confident with your money, and that starts with your ability to make money. So let's start with why it feels so hard to make more money. There's obvious reasons in the world and the state of the economy right now, but let's not focus on that. Let's focus on the concept that there is probably also more noise now than ever for what to do with your money. Start a business, do a side hustle, invest in this and that. We're over-consuming information and we're undertaking action. And when you over-consume information and you don't take any action on it, you're left with feeling like it's just really hard to make money. It's really hard to do anything, and you're also just chipping away at your money confidence, right? Because you feel like there's so much to do. What do I do that you do nothing? And that doing nothing is actually doing more harm than good. Even if you were just taking a few simple action steps towards making a little bit more money, that would be fueling your money confidence. So that's what we're gonna learn how to do today. And to do that, we're gonna figure out income that you can activate as soon as possible. And I want to break that up into two buckets leveraging what you already have and then turning the skills into cash quickly. So, what does leveraging what you already have mean? Basically, if you already have a job, maybe that looks like asking for more hours or taking on more responsibility. Maybe that looks like applying to um the next role uh at your at your job. Maybe that looks like applying for another role at your job, or that could look like negotiating your pay. This is also looking at your existing network. So leverage what you already have. You already have a network. We are you already have friends and family, or you have people who like least follow you on social media. You already have a network. So use that to build could be a freelance gig, and it could be way more simple than you're probably thinking right now. This could literally be babysitting, pet sitting, yard work, painting, cleaning, anything like that. Use the existing network you have. You know, you probably at least have 15 people in your phone. You reach out to five of them and ask if any of them need yard work done. It's spring, you could come over and you could rake up some of their leaves, or you could help plant flowers. You can do whatever. That is a simple way to use your existing network to make more money. I'm not telling you to do this for free, right? This comes at a cost, but that is a way to use people you already know to make more money. Another idea is selling items you no longer use. There is a good chance you have a ton of stuff in your house that you don't use that could either go get donated or go to the the garbage, or you could resell that. That is also money that's in your pocket. Put uh create a Facebook marketplace account and start selling items you no longer use. There are so many ways to use leverage things that you already have in your in your phone, in your house. Use that to make some more money. Also, turning your skills into cash quickly. So I know that when we think about making more money or increasing our income, we think I have to start this big elaborate business or anything we think about starting, we always go from zero to a hundred. But the key is taking that back down to the first few steps and the ultimate goal of what you're trying to achieve. So when I say turn skills into cash quickly, I mean what are the skills that you already have in your back pocket that you can just start charging people for ultimately. It could be maybe you're really good at writing or editing or design or you're really good at admin work. Maybe you want to become a personal assistant, maybe you're really good in the fitness space, too. Maybe you're really good at math and you want you want to tutor. There's so many different skills that you likely already have in your back pocket, and all it's doing is turning that into an offer. I will do X for Y. You don't have to overbuild. Start with the focus on what your skill is and what you're delivering, and then ask yourself how much you'd like to make for that realistically. So I'm gonna give you an example. If I was really good at planning, planning parties, I would call up all of the people in my network that I think are gonna be having parties soon, which is probably a lot, right? If people have, if you know somebody who's pregnant, maybe they're gonna have a baby shower. If you know somebody who's planning a wedding, maybe they could use your your planning services, anybody like that in your network, friends, family, you can post it on Facebook, all of the above. You just start offering your services to people within your network. Figure out what you want to charge for it and put it out there. Another option is cleaning. Like there are so many simple ways to increase your income. And it's about what is accessible and not what is perfect. For a lot of people, me, especially, because I fall into this bucket of being a perfectionist and wanting to do the absolute most for something. Sometimes that creates a more of a blocker to starting something than just starting at ground one and making it very, very simple. So the goal with this income you can activate as soon as possible is run through leverage you already have and then skills you already have and pick one thing. Like a lot of the times, too, the issue is we we like to have multiple different things going at once. Pick one thing, pick one thing for the next third and commit to it for the next 30 days. Because the hardest part is the commitment. And so these are the two steps that I think are most often missed when it comes to finding ways to make more money or side gigs in general. And these are the two steps that are gonna help you simplify making more money. That is defining the actions and directing the money immediately. Because ultimately, it doesn't matter how much more we make or how much more we increase our income if that money just gets spent. The goal with increasing your income is to build wealth. And the goal, and to do that, you have to know and be really strategic and intentional with where you're directing that money. Because trust me, it is easy to increase your income, get a higher paying job, do this and that, and watch your money be in the same situation that it was when you were making way less money because you have found more things to acquire, more you bought a boat, you bought a car, you bought a bigger house, you bought this, you bought that, you increased your lifestyle spend and you didn't actually direct it in into places that are going to help you get ahead with your wealth building journey. So let's go back. Let's go back a step. The two action, the two um things that are gonna help you simplify it. The first one was defining the actions. So now that we picked your income route. So let's just for the sake of this example, say planning parties. You're you're a pl a party planner. And let's say you start with the uh, you know, wanting to charge$100 to$200 per party. Maybe it's more. Maybe you've had a lot of experience planning parties and you say, actually, my services are$300 or$500, whatever it is. You set your rate and you say, This is what I'm gonna do. A lot of times that's where people stop. They think about the idea, they think about what they want to do, how much they want to charge, and then nothing comes from it. And that perpetuates the cycle of why it feels so hard for you to make money. It's really not about actually doing it, it's about the steps and getting really clear on what you need to do to get there. So let's let's just say you're gonna, you're gonna pick your path and then you're gonna define three actions. So if I was planning parties, these would be maybe my actions. I would reach out to five people in my network with upcoming life events. That could be birthdays, that could be graduations, that could be baby showers, battle showers, any of the any of those things. Reach out to five people in your network, connect with them, let them know that hey, you're starting to offer party planning services. And if they'd be interested, you know, you would love to help them plan a party for whatever event is coming up. And if they're not, but they have somebody in their life who might be planning a party soon. If you could, if they could send your name over to that person or your contact over to that person, it's really simple. That could be your first action. So you've got written down your list of five people and you reach out to those people. Your second action could be you're posting your offer on social media. So that could be of like on your Facebook or on your Instagram telling people that you're starting, you're starting, you know, to help with planning parties and you'd love to help somebody plan their next upcoming event and to reach out to you for more information. Nice and easy. The third one could be, hey, maybe on the back end you want to feel a little bit more comfortable or confident, you know, when people do reach out to plan parties. Maybe you build an Excel out and you build a timeline for yourself. So you have a way to keep track of everything you need to order, everything you need to do. The goal here is like you are already experienced with planning, right? So you that's a skill you already have. So you're not learning a net new skill. This is something you already have. So this just might be like a resource for you to use and leverage when you're planning your first few parties for for other people. Those are the three actions. So you would write down those three actions and then you would give yourself a timeline. So over the next week, I'm gonna reach out to five people. And then the following week, I'm gonna post one that offer on social media. And in that same week, I'm gonna also work on building out the Excel, whatever it looks like. That's a great example of actually taking the actions towards the income. When you do that, and likely, I mean, you might find a couple people, or it might just point you in a direction of more potential people. Ultimately, the hardest part about making more money or making income is the way we overcomplicate it in our heads and we create this big, massive business idea. And that's not, you know, that's not bad. Sometimes that's right for certain people. If you're at a different point in your wealth-building journey and you have the money and means to invest in a business or invest in something like that, then wonderful. That's a that's kind of a different scenario. But this is just ways to increase your money as soon as possible. And when you start to really build the confidence in your ability to increase your money on demand, like when you decide, no, you know, I need to make a little bit more money the next couple months, and I can. That is like it's like a domino effect. Building money and increasing your income is like a domino effect. Once you do it, it's like you trust your ability to continue to do it in any area of your life. So it's really, it's really important though to get the ball rolling. And to get the ball rolling, we have to start simple. Because when you feel like something's too complicated, you're never gonna put to it. You're never gonna jump into it. If it already, the complexity of it is already too much for you to handle. It seems unattainable, it seems not reachable. Your brain is gonna find fears and reasons why it's not gonna work already. And then we talked about defining the actions, and I touched on this already a little bit, but the most important part of this entire thing is your ability to direct that money immediately. And that could be into any of the three places into high interest debt, if that's what you have, into your emergency fund or your cash buffer, or into investments. And so the goal would be already you have told yourself that and the money that comes in from this extra income is going to one of those three buckets. If you're in a place where you don't have any debt, but you're still kind of building up your cash buffer, then any of the money that you make, the extra income that you make from this, goes directly into your cash buffer. Or also if you're saving for a big life event or something specific, it can go into a savings account for that. Because ultimately the issue that people struggle with the most is you can make that more money, you can make more money. You can make more money at any time. And maybe you already trust your ability to do that, but you don't trust your ability to keep that money, to grow that money. So that's the most important part of this entire episode, really, is yes, money is actually easier to acquire than we make it seem because we build out these big complex stories that block us from even taking action in general. So once you do that, is trusting your ability to then use that money to grow more money. So fight and resist the urge to take that money and buy a new boat or buy a new car or buy this or buy that. Take that money and direct it towards your debt, your emergency fund, or strategic investments. Maybe you do have a, maybe you are gonna buy a house with it, but maybe it's an investment house. Or maybe you are gonna buy a car with it, but maybe you're gonna flip that car because you have the skills to do that. I don't know what that looks like, but ultimately you have to have a plan for where that money is gonna go and you have to hold yourself accountable to putting that money there. You don't need 10 income streams and you don't need a perfect plan to pitch to um venture capitalists to raise millions of dollars for this business. You just need one clear way to make more money, a few defined actions, and a decision about where that money is gonna go before it even hits your account. Because money confidence is like a domino effect. And the more you trust your ability to make money and direct it, the easier it becomes to build the type of wealth that you're desiring. Money is a mind game more than anything. That's why this podcast is called The Inner Capital. And starting to feel more confident with money is easier than you think when you have the right knowledge and tools. And that's what we talk about in today's episode, and that's what we share and talk about in every episode. So thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. And go out there and make some money. And also, bonus points if you're still listening. I just did this exercise and I would highly recommend it. If you're still struggling with this idea that making money feels so challenging right now, get out a piece of paper and write down all of the ways that you have made money in your life. And I guarantee you there will be things on that list that remind you just how simple it can be to make money. Like for me, I did this exercise and I saw on there that I was making money mowing the lawn. I was mowing people's grass in my neighborhood, and I actually made pretty good money doing that. So this is just your friendly reminder that like we don't need to overcomplicate making money. And I guarantee you, you've made money in very simple ways in your life. So remind your brain that the next time it feels like money is so complicated. Okay, now thanks for tuning in and listening, and I will catch you all on the next episode.