Do your business together, get yourself into what you do, and see it through
Emily Thompson:being bosses hard. Running work in life is messy. Making a dream job of your own isn't easy.
Kathleen Shannon:But getting paid for it, becoming known for it. And finding purpose in it
Emily Thompson:is so doable if you do the work, being a podcast for creative entrepreneurs, with Emily Thompson, and Kathleen Shannon, welcome to Episode Two, what to do when you're freaking out about money?
Kathleen Shannon:Welcome to episode number two. This one is all about money and what to do whenever you're freaking out about it. I'm Kathleen Shannon and I co own braid creative.
Emily Thompson:I'm Emily Thompson and I own indie show biography.
Kathleen Shannon:Last episode, we talked about doing the work and this episode is more about money. So specifically what to do whenever you're freaking out about money. And you and I, Emily, both coach lots of creative entrepreneurs. And I don't know about you, but without fail, me and my clients, we always end up talking about money. And most of my clients are usually freaking out about money. It's like they want to live this abundant and fabulous life. But they aren't drowning in the income and the dream customers to get there. What do you what do you think about money?
Emily Thompson:It's funny, my my look on money has changed immensely. In the past couple years. Actually, I remember being a part of one of your mastermind groups, I guess was a year and a half ago now. And I remember he made us fill out this little worksheet about money. And it was like it was like money is blank or some Yes.
Kathleen Shannon:And you said money is a necessary evil.
Unknown:That is exactly what you said money is a necessary evil.
Emily Thompson:I did I did. And at that time, it is totally what I felt like it was it was the stuff that I had to like, you know, use to barter what I do for you know, food and and being able to live and at that time, I totally saw that. Because I didn't understand it. I didn't know what it was? Or how to get it, I guess and what you did with it. I mean, it did, but it was a very, like, very immature relationship with money. Yeah, if that's I like
Unknown:I know, I like how you say that.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, well, and I think that we all sort of have that place. And, you know, I, I guess I wasn't really raised in a in an environment that really understood money a lot. So I really had to teach myself everything that I know about money. And so since that worksheet, I guess about a year and a half ago. I know money. Yeah. And I actually remember like being in a mastermind group and talking about money and, and hearing other people's stories about money, but then also starting to talk to my own clients about money, because money conversations are definitely the sort of things that I talk to my clients about a ton now. And it's totally changed my perspective on money. It's really, really great stuff, if you know about it,
Kathleen Shannon:for sure, for sure. And I want to talk a little bit about your attitude towards money. So one of the things that I have said before and truly believe is that money is energy. And I don't think that money is good or bad. I think it's completely neutral. So money is energy, kind of like electricity. And I think that you have to have the capacity for it. So for example, we just bought a new house. Well, it's actually an old house is built in the 1950s. Last summer, and we had to have our electric service updated because our house could not handle all the things going on in our house, like our stove and our fridge and a hairdryer if we had everything going at once we would blow a circuit. So I think that as a creative entrepreneur, you have to have the capacity for money. And what that means in practical terms, is that if you have a big job, you have to be able to handle the pressure. You have to be able to meet deadlines, you have to have the capacity to handle the kind of energy that comes with a really big paycheck. And so money is energy. I think another way that that affects attitude, and you might remember this from the mastermind is to replace the word money with energy. So,
Unknown:Emily, you
Kathleen Shannon:said a year and a half ago, money is a necessary evil. So what if you said energy is a necessary evil? Oh, it's completely untrue. Right? And so some other money statements that you can make is there's not enough money. So replace that with energy. There's not enough energy. Is that true? And that actually might be true. If So don't look at the money, there's not enough money, it means that there's not enough energy. So what is lacking in your life? That is not allowing you the energy to produce something that makes money? Oh, yeah.
Emily Thompson:No, that's, that's really, really good. I like the idea of replacing money with energy. Because of anything, I almost feel like that puts it in that more neutral space, where you're turning someone like me, who at least used to think of money as this necessary evil. And you're making it really plain for people like that, that it's not evil, that it is this neutral thing and replacing it with something like energy, a genius, just genius.
Kathleen Shannon:Okay, so that said, I'll sometimes freak out about money, and it becomes this Boogeyman, right? And I've always found that whenever I start to feel fear around the topic of money, that I just need to get really honest. And look at the numbers. And I feel like this is very much in line with your worldview, Emily, whenever it comes to analytics, and crunching the numbers. So do you find that to you that whenever you're freaking out about money, if you just look at the numbers, like look at your budget, and your income and expenses, and really just see where you're at, and that it helps. Even if you're not in a good place? At least you're not afraid? Absolutely,
Emily Thompson:actually, just just I don't know, right, actually, right before the holiday season. So maybe three weeks ago, I got an email for one of my coaching clients. And actually, she's a new coaching client, she actually didn't, you know, start until I guess, this week. But um, but it was even before we started coaching, and she just sort of had this issue where she had, I think, like$8,000, like tied up with projects that were not going to end before the holidays that she needed them to. And she was one of having a freakout moment, she was freaking out about money completely and utterly, just sent me this really just not a freakout email, but this email, it's like, I'm a little concerned, I don't know what to do. What sort of advice do you have? And I sat there, I thought about it for a few minutes and actually ended up writing her one of those like genius emails that I really liked to write because they're super concise and very well outlined, and very easy to turn
Unknown:that into a blog post.
Emily Thompson:I plan on it. I have great email writing skills. But But this email is I outlined these sort of six steps of what she needed to do to get over this like money issue that she was having. Ooh, what
Unknown:did you say? It's a good one.
Emily Thompson:It's a really good one. So first of all, I told her number one, you have to breathe. Because whenever you are thinking about money, it tends to sort of freak you out a little bit money freaks people out, because it's this sort of intangible thing. We don't know how to get it. We don't know. Or we think we don't know how to get it. We think we don't know what to do with it. What do we you know, do what once we have it. And so I told her, I was like, first thing you have to do is stop stressing out because you're choosing to stress out and you can't solve a problem if you're stressing out. So whenever it comes to money and freaking out about it, stop freaking out about it. Because freaking out about doesn't actually help anything. So number one is to breathe. Number two, I told her to clearly define the problem. So she stated that this problem was that she had all these projects that weren't going to be finished, and she wasn't going to get this sort of final payment. And he had this big huge number of $8,000. Which is really overwhelming to me. I was like, Well, I don't know what you're going to do. That's a very big, scary number. But I told her I was like, how much of that do you actually need, though? Because she was talking about wanting to you know, pay her employees, for her to be able to take her holiday off all that sort of stuff. It was like what what is the exact number? Not this $8,000 of like potential money? But what is the exact dollar amount that you need to pay your employees, you know, satisfy whatever outstanding bills and take your holiday vacation? Um, because I think what people usually find is once you actually look at what the number actually is, it's rarely going to be as big and scary as you think it is.
Unknown:That's so true.
Emily Thompson:So step number two is step number one was brief. Step number two is clearly define the problem. What is the problem? How much money exactly do you need? So step number three, find the solution. So you're not stressing anymore. You know what the problem is. And if you're a smart entrepreneur, and you are because you're an entrepreneur, then figure it out, solve the problem. And so I gave her a couple of a couple of options. You know, go do some marketing, go figure out what you can do to make money right now. So and she's she's a web designer. And as a web designer, I know there's always sort of these sort of lingering tissues that you have that you can do quickly for easy maintenance money, sort of Cashen for dough really easily so you know, what sort of, what sort of things do you have of those that you can cash in to help make payroll, whatever,
Kathleen Shannon:I'm just going to jump in real quick and Say that one of my to do strategies never I don't know what to tackle first is sometimes I will tackle what will make me money first. I love that. That's even just I have approval from a client, but it's just packaging up their files and sending it to them. Which is like the least favorite part of anybody's job is packaging up the files. But it means that I can get a paycheck.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely. And I think we all have those things. We all have those like the follow, you know, who can you follow up with? Yeah. What can you finally deliver? What sort of small edits or tweaks? Or who can you check in on, we all have things that we can do, we just have to stop stressing, yeah, figure out what the problem is, and then find that solution. So step number one brief. So remember to clearly define the problem. Step number three, find the solution, and four is committing to solving it. And this is, you know, sort of the overarching theme of everything that we do and this idea of do the work. So you have this plan in place, you know that you have clients you can contact you know that you have maintenance to do so just do it. Absolutely, just do it and cash in, build people and collect and all of those things. So So commit to solving the problem and actually doing the work. Step number five, and I put this in the email, I was like do a happy dance because you just solved a grown up problem. You know, once it was once you get there once you do the work. And once you've solved this problem, you have to celebrate and that's and I did I put that in an email. I was like once you do this, do a happy dance. So step number one brief to clearly define the problem. Three, find the solution for commit to solving it five, do a happy dance. And six learn from it.
Kathleen Shannon:Yes, wrap up your projects before the holiday next year.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely. Or, well, in this case, you know, she had tied all of her final final payments to two deliverables, which is usually fine. But all of these clients had been you know, putting it all for one reason or the other. It was the holidays, Simone I think wanted to like, redo their stock photos. Um, so in a way she had kind of like screwed herself over a little bit. And I told her I was like, you know, take this as an opportunity to learn what you can do to keep these sort of situations from ever happening because whenever it comes to money, I'm actually David is reading a book. It's the Tony Roberts book.
Kathleen Shannon:I'm robbing it's Tony Tony Robbins. Money master the game is David like, so David is Emily's baby daddy. Yeah. And so it's all about like investing and paying yourself first. And yes, he telling you all about that. Are you rolling your eyes at him? Like Joey's rolling his eyes?
Emily Thompson:Absolutely not. I see. I bought it. You told me about it. Yeah, so I bought it because I was gonna read it. And it's a massive book.
Kathleen Shannon:I have it on my Kindle. So I don't know how big it is. It's a
Emily Thompson:honkin big book. So um, so I gave it to David. And I was like, I really want to read this. But I can tell like I literally read this book because he's, he's, he's my business manager. That's his job anyway. So he has been reading it and one of the things that he was but he was telling me about in this book is how there are some people who literally just cannot keep money. And this idea that you know, people I think the example I gave was of this of this wrestler who had you had made like millions of dollars, and he was the kind of guy who would literally carry around like a million dollars of cash like in his backpack.
Unknown:Yes, I
Kathleen Shannon:want a million dollar backpack. I know. Well, that's a lesson I learned from that. It's probably the opposite of what Tony Robbins that's exactly
Emily Thompson:the opposite. No, but but this idea that that people people struggle with money. And I
Kathleen Shannon:think what the point that Tony Robbins is making there is that no matter how much money you make, even if you are a millionaire, and you have enough money, that you can be carrying a million dollars in a backpack, that you can still live a life of scarcity. And that even if you're broke, you can live a life of abundance and a lot of it is in this mindset, but a lot of it is in practical things in looking at the numbers and crunching them. So everyone check out that Tony Robbins book it is quite a hefty read, but it's really good. I've I've been enjoying it so far.
Emily Thompson:Yes. So as David and I've been enjoying his stories from vicariously enjoying this book. So now whenever it comes to learning from it, I mean, we're all you know, in this business thing, creative entrepreneurs, most of us have no idea, the business side of what we do. We're really great designers and writers and artists and makers but whenever it comes to managing managing money in our business, we all sort of look at each other like what do we do next? But it's it's it's coming into things like like this client of mine where you know she was in a tight place and helping her solve it but also making her realize that This is the point where you learn from it and you and you make sure that you don't ever get in a situation with money again, and you do that by not freaking out. Period.
Kathleen Shannon:Agreed. One of the things that I think separates a creative who's as talented from a creative entrepreneur who's making money doing what they love, is the ability to make money, and to be able to handle the business side of those things. And so some tools that I use to manage my money, and they're really super basic, but it's fresh books. And fresh books is really good for its accounting software. And it integrates a lot of different things like PayPal. And it's just really good for keeping track of how much you're making, I feel like you can't make as much as you want, if you don't know how much you're currently making. Mint is a great app that you can download straight to your iPhone, and you hook it up with all of your different accounts and credit cards, and even your 401k if you have one of those leftover from your day job. Anyway, you can hook it up into all of your accounts. And it will tell you what your total worth is. And it also helps you keep track of it's a really great budgeting tool, it tells you how much you're spending on groceries and on different sorts of expenses.
Emily Thompson:Yeah, we've, we've used mint in the past, we're currently using wine app for business and personal David loves it.
Kathleen Shannon:What is it called? Again?
Emily Thompson:It's why NAB it's a it's an acronym for you need a budget? Oh, nice. Yeah. And, um,
Kathleen Shannon:it will include will include all of these in the show notes.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely. We we've really enjoyed that for budgeting and just sort of seeing how like cash flow, like how much money is coming in and out. I personally, tracking money for me is huge. And that really is what has super changed. I guess my own viewpoint, I guess from that idea of money being an unnecessary evil to, to really being super comfortable with money is really getting into tracking it. For me, if you run a business, you have to track your money, you don't have a business, if you're not dealing with money, well, your business is going to go out. You don't deal with money. So, so yeah, tracking it is absolutely necessary. And with business, being money and keeping track of it, you can always know you know how your business is doing. I once had a client who, who I think literally went over a year without knowing how much money she was bringing in. And like had stacks of invoices that she didn't she wasn't invoicing people, or she wasn't collecting on those invoices. And I think whenever she finally did, when I talked her into finally tracking her money was very disappointed, not surprisingly, and how much money she was making, because she realized that she was making much less than she thought she was. So whenever it comes to when it comes to running like a profitable, sustainable business, getting over your money freak out and really getting comfortable enough to tracking it makes all the difference in the world.
Kathleen Shannon:I also think that it helps you tackle things that creative entrepreneurs have an uncomfortable time doing like raising your rates, if you have only so much time, and you can only do so many projects in that time, you have to charge a certain amount to make whatever it is you need to make to sustain your lifestyle, or to reach financial freedom, whatever your money goals are. So I have no problem charging what I charge for my one on one clients or for my e courses or anything else because I know exactly how much money I need to make, to sustain and maintain the kind of lifestyle that I want. Just last
Emily Thompson:spring, I took away all of my all of my web design projects, and launched indie boom for that very same reason. So I did I actually, I guess, tripled, no quadrupled, I quadrupled my project price. And most people raising it a little bit is a hard job. I literally quad and I quadrupled it because I sat down with you know how much money I want to make. period and how much money I want to pay my employees. And I realized that under under my current structure, I was going to have to launch a website every two days. And I know at at that price rate, I was going to have to launch a project every two days to get to where I want to be and that's that's launching is it's getting a project every two days that's finishing. I mean, impossible. So I sat down and I looked at what I can do what I was doing what I could offer. And I completely restructured my offering and quadruple my project rates and exceeded my goal for the year.
Kathleen Shannon:Okay, I want to jump in and say that, even though we're talking about quadrupling our prices, or raising our rates, and looking at the numbers and crunching them, I still don't believe that there is an exact formula for what you should be charging. And it's kind of like, if you're a graphic designer, and you work in Photoshop, there are about 20 different ways that you can design something to achieve the same look, and every designer goes about it a different way, I think that the same comes to the business of money, there are a lot of different ways to achieve your goals. So I just want to tell anyone who's listening to this, like, I wish I had the right formula and just knew exactly what's what, there is no right way to do it. So the best thing that I can recommend, though, is to know what you're working with. Now, by tracking the numbers, like you said, Emily, knowing how much you spend, knowing how much you make, it's pretty simple math, really, whenever it comes down to it. One of the ways that I track my income is actually a little old fashioned. And if you've been following braid, or have taken my dream customer catching ecourse, you might know about the magical chalkboard. So I thought I would just share a little bit about that in today's episode. So whenever I first started braid with my sister we were working with, with an executive life coach, his name is Jay prior. And he told us we didn't have any clients rolling in, and we were kind of freaking out a little. And he was like, you have to make space for them. And we're like, What do you mean, and he's a little woowoo. But he said, the universe abhors a vacuum. And so you need to create space for these clients. He said, Take a big poster board and draw blank spaces on it. And that's where your clients go. And so I have this large chalkboard wall in my office, and I drew 12, big empty spaces on it. And that was a really vulnerable and honest moment to create these blank spaces. It was me admitting one that we have no work. And to that we needed a lot of work. And so looking at that every day was a little overwhelming to look at those blank spaces. But it only took a week for us to fill those spots. Now that was a week after three months of hustle and getting our business started and launched. And But to this day, we continue having a chalkboard with blank spaces on it. We also include other metrics on our chalkboard, such as our social media numbers, and other sorts of internal projects that we want to launch such as our E courses, or the DIY coaching for creatives, email sessions. So anyway, this chalkboard is just a really great way to see in a big way with your eyeballs every day, kind of what you need to come in, like how many projects you need per quarter. So if you want to learn more about that I will include a link to a blog post I've written about the chalkboard. And then you might also be interested in one of our E courses. But I've written enough free stuff about it that you don't have to take the course. And then one other thing that I just wanted to jump in and say whenever it comes to money, the advice that I always give to any of my creatives that I'm coaching is to just make$100 today, like what can you do to make $100. And so for me the other day, I wanted to boost our newsletter subscribers for the podcast. And so I sent out an email. And we got I don't know maybe like a couple 100 new subscribers to the newsletter, and it was huge. And so I do the same thing with our E courses or with my DIY coaching for creative sessions, I will literally send out an email to my list, something that has value something that is giving away my gifts of knowledge for free. But then I also let people know how they can buy more. So I'll send out an email and make, you know 40 bucks here and there on my DIY coaching for creative sessions. So that's another thing is that a good way to make money, if you're freaking out about it is to package up a service. have it available to buy people need to know how to hire you, and then reminding people that you are available and for hire and so that might look like sending out a tweet, sending out a blog post, picking up the phone, sending out some emails and just letting people know Hey, I'm for hire, and here's how you can hire me, here's how you can click Buy, and making it really simple for your customers to make the purchase. And I'm sure that we'll talk a lot more in future podcasts about dream customers, because that absolutely relates to making money.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely, I think and the $100 $100 rule, there's like a name for that somewhere around. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, well, no, I've heard of it before. I think the way I've heard it, though, is, is that every hour is worth $100. You know, more or less for most creatives, you know, our hourly rate is about 100 bucks. So I've heard it similarly, I love it, I use it in like my daily life. Whenever I sit here, I just want to like binge on Netflix for an hour or whatever. I think you know, doing that, I'm going to lose 100 bucks, I'm not going to lose it. But I'm not going to make 100 bucks sitting here for an hour watching, you know, an episode of whatever. Right? But you know, what can I do that that would that would bring in that 100 bucks. And whether it's Yeah, whether it's a follow up, or whether it's wrapping up someone's you know, the end of someone's maintenance, or, or we're sending out a newsletter, sitting down writing up a newsletter or a blog post, and doing some marketing, I think, I think as creatives we work in this, you know, day to day environment, and sometimes hour to hour, what are we going to do next? I love the $100 rule, or whatever you want to call it this idea of what do you have to do to make money now? And if you want that money, then do it?
Unknown:Yes.
Emily Thompson:For me, whenever it comes to thinking about money, it's it is it's a big scary thing. Whenever you're when you're just starting to get used to money. I actually wrote a blog post about it, I don't know, maybe a year ago, and it was it was titled stop being weird about money. Because Because as creatives like we don't only talk to ourselves about money, and some of us don't even do that, but we're also supposed to be talking to our clients about money. Yep. So if we can't talk to ourselves about money and be like really truthful to ourselves about how much we need and how much we have and how much we want, which is a really huge one, then it's going to be really hard for us to talk to our clients about money. We can't so yeah, if we can't talk to our clients about money, then we're not going to make money.
Kathleen Shannon:I some of my some of my coaching clients have literally had an eight hour meeting with a potential client without ever bringing up money. And wow, like talking about $100 an hour times eight hours, that's $800. You just wasted I mean, maybe not if it if it was like a really great meeting and turns into a huge project. Anyway, one of the things that my sister always said that she got from an expert consultant that she worked with, was to talk about money early and often. Yes, I've experimented even with putting my prices on my website. And you just very early on in the conversation with my clients, I tell them how much it costs to work with me, before we ever go a step further, because I just don't have the time to go further. If they can't afford me. I think a lot of younger creatives are terrified of their potential clients not being able to afford them. And so I get this question a lot. Well, what if they can't afford my prices? Well, if they can't afford you, they're probably not a good fit.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely. I have worked with a sales coach before. And that's one of the things that she talks about. It's like whatever, like wonderful preaching points, is this idea that whenever you talk to a new client, the idea that you're automatically assuming that they can't afford you is completely wrong. That's like one of those money being neutral things, but you don't know that you write you literally go into a client conversation, expecting them not be able to afford you. So why did why bother. So whenever it comes to talking to clients never make assumptions about what they can and cannot afford.
Kathleen Shannon:And I've also heard it too, where Don't think about what they would be paying for instead. So let's say that your rates are $5,000 and you're thinking oh my gosh, will $5,000 they could be paying their mortgage and putting food on the table for an entire half a year. And don't don't even think about what you're taking away from them. Because you're giving them I mean, hopefully your services are so good, that whatever they invest in you they're going to make a tenfold return on.
Emily Thompson:Absolutely that's that's one of my own personal blogs that I definitely had to encounter with with raising my own prices. I think you know, people could like start paying for a car or like really crazy things. But whenever you whenever you're in the creative entrepreneur realm, you know, money, money is something that We are we tend to be very uncomfortable talking about, we should get much more comfortable and stop assuming what other people are going to do or would want to do or what they have and don't have. Because at that point, we're just giving ourselves a block before we even have a conversation.
Kathleen Shannon:So true. Okay, so we're running out of time here. Let's go ahead and wrap up today's show, by giving one little piece of advice like, which is what is one thing a creative entrepreneur can do today to make more money?
Emily Thompson:Oh, one thing someone can do,
Kathleen Shannon:I've got one, go for it.
Emily Thompson:I'll go first, you go first.
Kathleen Shannon:So this is something that you and I both believe in big time Emily is to invest in yourself. I think that whenever you spend money on yourself, you are able to then make more money. And in that same vein, I also think investing in other creatives. So for example, it was just the holiday season, I was really intentional to keep my money local and with small artists whenever it came to buying gifts for my friends and family, because I want to keep my money flowing in the creative world. And so I guess it's kind of it's a little woowoo. But I feel like it's a bit of building up good karma. And maybe you can speak more on Emily, I know you've said before, like, whenever you've bought yourself a new computer, you ended up making a lot more money or whenever I think for the both of us whenever we've invested in hiring an employee, we've made more money.
Emily Thompson:Yes, absolutely. I've written more newsletters and blog posts, I think about that, than just about anything but this idea that yeah, if you that's that idea of making space for money, if you're hoarding money, then you know, you're not creating that flow of money around you. So whenever whenever you can, you know, relatively freely like invest, invest in yourself, every time I've ever, you know, bought one of those crazy Adobe suites, or, or got a new computer or hired someone or you know, hired hired coaches, or, you know, gotten a part of large mastermind groups, I always see huge growth in my business and part of it is yes, you know, just spending money. But it also makes you do whenever, whenever I'm paying for, you know, a high price mastermind group, I'm going to participate and I'm going to learn and I'm going to grow so yeah, investing money for me is is definitely one of those things that helped me get out of that money is a necessary evil standpoint and into a place where flowing money is happiness. With You know, it, I don't know, money isn't happiness, but it creates security, and it creates and creates freedom and you know, this ability to move and, and, and support other people. I think my my big takeaway with money or not big takeaway with money, but something that I think everyone should do is just start talking about it. And you can start talking to yourself about it, that's fine, if that's where it needs to start. But, but really start getting getting comfortable with with talking to yourself about money and talking to your partner about money, talking to your clients about money, but it all starts with really sort of getting in it with yourself and knowing how much you want to make. How much are you actually making? How much do you need to make and how much do you want? I think whenever you can start having those conversations with yourself about money, then it makes it a lot easier to have those conversations with everyone else. Well,
Kathleen Shannon:I think that is a great note to end on. Thank you all for listening to being boss. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter at love being boss calm so you can be the first to know when new episodes are released. And you can listen to being boss at our website or subscribe via SoundCloud or find us on iTunes.
Unknown:So um Oh, I
Kathleen Shannon:had a thought I just lost it. Damn it.