Today's episode comes from our Freshbooks Live in Toronto Being Boss event. Recorded live from the headquarters of our favorite accounting and invoicing system, there couldn't be a better place for us to talk about money. Money is the biggest stressor for creative entrepreneurs, so today we're talking about what to do when you're freaking out about money and how to get in the right money mindset.
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Listen to more Being Boss shows on our website, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Today's episode comes from our Freshbooks Live in Toronto Being Boss event. Recorded live from the headquarters of our favorite accounting and invoicing system, there couldn't be a better place for us to talk about money. Money is the biggest stressor for creative entrepreneurs, so today we're talking about what to do when you're freaking out about money and how to get in the right money mindset.
---
Listen to brand new episodes of Being Boss on the main feed >>
---
Listen to more Being Boss shows on our website, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow Being Boss on Instagram: @beingbossclub
Join the Being Boss Community: beingboss.club/community
Hello, and welcome to being boss episode number 94. This episode is brought to you by fresh books, cloud accounting. Being boss and work and life is being in it,
Kathleen Shannon:it's being who we are doing the work, breaking some rules. And even though we each have to do it on our own,
Emily Thompson:being boss is knowing we're in it together.
Kathleen Shannon:We are live in Toronto. So with that, today, we are going to talk about money. Emily and I were going through some of our past episodes, and which ones seem to do really well and which ones you guys wanted to hear more about. And money is the thing that is constantly coming up. It's the biggest stressor. And people are just freaking out about it.
Emily Thompson:Right? Well, and as whenever you combine creatives and money, something you have to do money, you have to play the money game, when you're running a business. There's a lot of tension there between the two mindsets of being creative and just making art or doing your thing or whatever it is, but also asking for money for it. But to be a creative entrepreneur, you got to do it. So this a bit of tension is something that Kathleen and I run into a lot whenever we talk to our bosses. And so it's a conversation I think will continue forever until all of you are just making bank and feeling great about it.
Kathleen Shannon:Alright, you guys, I want to take a moment here and talk about how awkward it can be to ask for money doing what you love. Early in my career. Whenever I started using fresh books, cloud accounting, I found that it almost felt like I had my own assistant or personal accountant, asking my clients for money instead of me doing it myself. I love how at freshbooks you can really customize your invoices with your own brand and look super professional whenever you're asking your clients for money. So I just want to remind you that you can try your free trial at fresh books by going to freshbooks comm slash being boss and enter being boss in the How did you hear about us section? I cannot recommend it more and still use it myself to this very day. We're so excited to be here. freshbooks has been with being boss since almost the beginning. And we could never have imagined. Well, maybe we could have we did we imagined it
Unknown:downplay.
Kathleen Shannon:It's funny, because whenever we first started working with freshbooks, we had all these ideas. We were like social media takeover events, we're gonna go crazy together, we
Emily Thompson:get your newsletter, and they were like,
Kathleen Shannon:no, but now Look, look where we are. It's all about just asking for what you want, right and
Emily Thompson:waiting for people to get comfortable with it.
Kathleen Shannon:We really appreciate freshbooks and everything that they have done for being boss and for our community. Okay, so we're gonna be talking about what to do whenever you're freaking out about money. But before we really get into that, I really want to get underneath some of the money attitudes that are happening in this room. So I want you guys to grab your notebook. And I want you to write this down. And for our listeners at home, you can do this to grab a pen and a notebook. I'll give you a minute. All right, write down money is blank. And then fill in that blank with how you feel about money or the first word that really comes to mind. Money is blank. Don't overthink it. Just write down what comes to mind. All right. Next I want you to write down I feel blank about money. I feel blank about money. And again just write down the first thing that comes to mind. So what do you guys write?
Emily Thompson:I want to know how many of you guys wrote down money is evil.
Kathleen Shannon:Okay, we've got one money is evil
Emily Thompson:or money is stressful. Couple of those or something else that's just relatively negative.
Kathleen Shannon:Right? Like what did you guys put?
Emily Thompson:Wait, wait, wait, what?
Kathleen Shannon:absent so we've got money as absent money's lacking. Money is freedom. Yeah. All right.
Emily Thompson:All right. So negative positive. Let
Kathleen Shannon:me see like Show of hands who's feeling positive about money? Okay, and who's feeling kind of neutral? Like maybe you wrote down something positive, but maybe you don't feel like you have it yet or okay. Okay, good. I feel Blank about money. What did you guys put there? Excited? Excited? Good.
Emily Thompson:Different good and different gotchas. Okay.
Kathleen Shannon:Concerned?
Unknown:Yeah,
Emily Thompson:that's a false answer. Barbara, I give you a hug Barbara. Right? We're gonna fix that. Okay, good.
Kathleen Shannon:All right, so I wouldn't get into and we'll come back around to those feelings about money. But I want to define money a little bit. And, you know, it's before we get there, I kind of want to have this conversation that I used to feel like I had to be an economist, or have some sort of degree or whatever, to talk about money to think about money. But I just want to put on the record here that I'm not really a money expert. But maybe,
Emily Thompson:maybe, if you make it happily and you're not like, killing people in the process, are you?
Kathleen Shannon:Well, and thanks to fresh books, I don't have to be right.
Emily Thompson:Well, and I think what makes us an expert in money is we're okay with trusting other people with helping us with our money, which we'll get into.
Kathleen Shannon:I think that we're also okay with making money. Yes. But that's not to say that we don't have our own money insecurities, okay, but let's get into defining money. So some of you defined money by saying that it's lacking or by saying that it's freedom. And I used to really, whenever I first started freelancing, it really flipped me up about what money is, I really started thinking about money in a whole different way, it wasn't just this thing that somebody was giving me, after coming in for a good day of work from nine to five, it was this thing that now, I had so much more control over. And I really had to think about what it was. So I started thinking about money as energy. And some of you may have heard me say that before on the podcast, but I've decided that I've changed my mind. I mean, I still believe that money is energy, but I want to get a little bit more specific. So today, I really want all of us to think of money as the exchange of value. And money is just whenever it comes to value, then we start getting into topics of worth, right? Money is just one metric of worth. It's just one metric of value. But it's an awesome metric.
Emily Thompson:It's one of my favorites.
Kathleen Shannon:Alright, so let's go back to those sentences from before. And let's try out the word money. With my value is. So maybe some of you who said, money is lacking. If you said my value is lacking? Is it a mind flip? A little bit? or what have you said, I feel blank about my money. Instead, you said I feel blank about my worth. So my value is evil. My value is a necessary evil. And that's something that we hear a lot about money. I feel sad about my worth. Like money is just one of those things that it's just kind of like the how you feel about money can often be a symptom for how you feel about what's really going on as a creative entrepreneur. So last week, Emily and I were in New Orleans speaking at a conference down there. And it was such a good time. It was such a good time. It was the best. Toronto's coming in as a close
Emily Thompson:Oh, right. It was like a second best.
Kathleen Shannon:we're digging Toronto a lot. And our friend and business mentor Tara Gentilly was giving the keynote speak speech at this conference. And she said this super eloquent thing about money. And she's also written some great stuff about money. But at this talk, she said money, you gotta want it.
Unknown:Right?
Emily Thompson:Yes.
Kathleen Shannon:So before we get into the nitty gritty of what steps to take, whenever you're freaking out about money, I really just want you all to think about what it might feel like to feel really good about money, to love money, to want money. To know that your money is just a metric for the value you have to exchange and that that exchange is completely worthy. All right.
Emily Thompson:Now my turn because here it comes, guys. So whenever it comes to your money, and the feelings you have around it, like one of the ways that I've gotten over it, because I was definitely one of those people growing up, like, my family was not very well off, they did not have a good handle on their money, I was not taught the way of like, getting money and handling money and spending money and being or equating worth with money in a healthy way. But I got over it. And I got over it by really learning how to how to understand when to and when not to freak out about money. Because a lot of times whenever bosses are freaking out about their money, it's because they don't know enough about it. But whenever you can get really clear about what's going on with your money situation and how it ties directly to your business, which is the thing that you have the most control over, then you can learn when to and when not to freak out about money. And you'll probably learn that you don't need to be freaking out about money as often as you do having real clarity around your money situation, how much you're making, how much you need, how much you want. And what that means for your business, is how you get rid of that issue and really gain control over your money. So I'm going to be talking for a second about how you're not allowed to freak out about money. If you don't know what you're freaking out about. Just chill it, it's good for you. And I also want to talk about getting your money shit together, like what it means to actually have it together. So you know what you are and are not freaking out about. And the way that you know, what you're freaking out about is you know your numbers, period. There's such clarity that comes from your day to day operations, your month to month operations and your yearly operations. Whenever you know what your numbers are.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, have any of you all ever practiced intuitive banking? Yeah, am I the only one know what it's like, you just you just kind of feel if you're good to go. And maybe you can buy something, you just kind of feel like okay, maybe I should tighten up a little bit, maybe not spend. This is why hire people.
Emily Thompson:This is why we have a David because Kathleen and I both do this. And that's part of really getting clear about your numbers as well. But we'll get to that in a second. Because I know that as creatives, we are not all number nerds. And that's a completely okay thing we have our jobs to do. And that's you know, making an impact on the world. And it may not be the bookkeeping. But that's why there are tools like fresh books, and people out there who are here to help you. And I seriously believe we've talked about like business investments a couple of times. And as we have this conversation over and over again, I'm coming to the hard core belief that the first thing you should invest in, in your business is your numbers in getting them in order hiring someone to assist you either with bookkeeping or an accountant or a financial advisor, or in getting some good tools so that you can do it yourself. Because I do think that there is a lot to say about doing your bookkeeping and accounting yourself for a while so you know how your business is operating, and then handing it off to someone else.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, whenever ice first started freelancing, that's actually and you guys, I promise that this isn't like one big ad for fresh books. But we started working with them, because I actually use them. So I was using fresh books at the time. And at the time, you could I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this. You can have three free clients in your freshbooks account. And I would delete them and like add a new one as it came so I wouldn't have to actually pay for freshbooks.
Emily Thompson:How much time were you wasting? No, but
Kathleen Shannon:not but I definitely is definitely not a money person. But it really did help me understand the basics of income and expense. It's not that complicated.
Emily Thompson:To run a successful business, you need to be making more than you spend. It is as easy as that. And if you don't know how much you're making, and if you don't know how much you're spending, you don't know if you have a profitable business. And that case, you're not a great business owner. And that's what we want you to be we want you to be making money doing what you love as simple as that. But we also don't want you to be spending it all plus some and then putting your own self out of business. So how many of you guys only look at your financial situation during tax season. You can put up a little hand if you want to, like you know it doesn't have to go all the way up
Kathleen Shannon:good. They're looking at it good. often are you guys looking at your money every day? Raise your hand every day. My husband's raising his hand. Right,
Emily Thompson:Jay? Okay, four times a day, David. Maybe gotcha.
Kathleen Shannon:Like I make a charge. What's this?
Emily Thompson:Right I get the ball. David started sending me little Jeff's of like, Who was it George Clooney like looking over a fence really creepily. Right? Because Because he's watching me.
Kathleen Shannon:I love it. It helps. It helped. Okay, every day. So every week, are you looking at your money once a week? Okay. There's a good portion of people raising their hands every month. Okay, every quarter. Okay, you guys are good. Like you're good looking at it.
Emily Thompson:I think we're making an impact. Kathleen,
Kathleen Shannon:has anything to do with that? I'm gonna
Emily Thompson:pretend it does. So if you are only looking at your at your financial situation during tax season, or like even quarterly, like quarterly is not quite often update. David, how often do you think people should be looking at their financial situation of their life and business, but specifically business? Once a month? Gotcha. All right. So David suggests bi weekly, monthly for most businesses bi weekly, weekly if you're making some transitions and need to keep a finger on the pulse of your financial situation. So monthly.
Kathleen Shannon:So one thing that David does for us every month is what's that called?
Unknown:a financial report. An email
Kathleen Shannon:he says in emails and email, though it doesn't have to be complicated. And he basically says, This is what's coming in. This is what's going out. This is kind of what's on the horizon. Maybe you guys should chill here, or you have actually money to spend here like on like, if we want to do some Facebook advertising, he's like, Okay, I think that we have this much available there. But you can do that yourselves. And so even at braid creative, my sister does a quarterly report and then a huge end of year report, where she will actually compare this year with last year, and it's nothing fancy, like you don't have to have a degree to do that sort of thing. Definitely, even though I don't think I could do it,
Emily Thompson:some of us are not able to do it. And that's okay, too. So if you are not looking at your finances super often, monthly, for sure, then I would say that you're probably not the best entrepreneur in the world. Right? If you want to claim the business owner, part of being a creative entrepreneur, you need to know what your money situation is.
Kathleen Shannon:This is why Emily's my business partner.
Emily Thompson:This is why I'm here, guys. So do that. Otherwise, you're just a hobbyist, which is also fine. If that's what you want to be then don't look at your money all the time, but also have somewhere else where you're having money come from, because you cannot depend on something that you don't know. So taking constant looks at what it is that you're doing is super important. I just did this exercise recently with my rock your web design business students where and I this is an exercise that I did when I was at about three years into my business and things weren't really meshing well. I just got David on to do my bookkeeping. And he was getting everything in order. Because really, like you're allowed to hire someone to keep up with your numbers. And I was
Kathleen Shannon:and this came after you like broke down crying, right? Yes,
Emily Thompson:yeah. So it was a meltdown. There was a meltdown. It was tax season. And for a long time, I had been doing my bookkeeping every Friday morning. It's what I did. I came in did my bookkeeping, so it was always up to date. And then I stopped doing it because I'm creative. And, and tax season came around and I was sitting, I had my laptop in my hand, I had like, a 60 inch TV that was hooked up because I needed this big screen to lay everything out. And it was this big mess of tears, because I was doing all of this bookkeeping to get me ready for tax season. And David comes in and I'm crying and I can't do this anymore. And what am I going to do? Why have I done this? Forget this business, just go get a job, like it's gonna be, it's gonna be great. Except not because I'm crying and David's like what can I do? And I push the laptop out, I'm just do this. Just do this. And he did it. Thank you, honey. He did it. And he then he did it forever. And so he really took over the money part of my business. But this is also something that you can do for yourself. Because what he did was he got everything in order. And he looked at what I had been making in my business and how my business was growing in terms of I had an office space, I was hiring my first employee, but I wasn't making any more money. And so we got really clear and he he got really clear. He was like Emily, if you if you want to do this, if we're going to do this, we have to like you can't be selling websites at this rate. You can't be doing only this many projects a year. Like we need to up this a lot. So I figured it out. We sat down together and I was like alright, what are our business expenses? What are our personal expenses and how much do we want to be saving and Putting back into our business and how much profit do we want to make, because that's a totally separate thing. Like you can add money on top of all those things as a lot of profit. And then I figured out what that number was every month that I needed to be making my ideal revenue. And I figured it out for the entire year. So multiply it by 12. And I came to realize the by doing this by like having that ideal revenue number, that if I broke it down into how I was currently doing projects, I would have to be launching a website every three days. And if you name your website, people did I just put anyone into like, do break out in hives, like the idea of launching a website every three days, right? Or better yet, try selling a website every three days.
Kathleen Shannon:And then designing and coding a website every three days, right? Oh, getting all the content together every three days is never going to happen.
Emily Thompson:So at that point, I realized there's something a little messed up in my business. But that was a moment of absolute clarity, and the numbers that ran my life in business. And from that I was able to make the most informed decision ever, around what I needed to do in my business, to create a business that actually fed me and gave me the life and business that I wanted. Knowing your numbers in that way is absolutely imperative for you to create a life in business that lets you live and work the way you want.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, I'm curious to hear from you guys. How many of you feel like you struggle with pricing your services or offerings or products? Raise your hand? Yeah, so Emily, maybe struggled with that a little bit until she ran the numbers,
Emily Thompson:then I no longer had an issue pricing my products or my services by any means. At that time, I tripled the price of my projects without batting and I never went back to doing the cheaper projects and never felt anything weird about it. Because once you actually know your numbers, and if you want to put on your big like business girl pants, you're going to be completely okay with taking the emotion out of it. And just doing what you have to do to make this work,
Kathleen Shannon:can I come back to a little bit of mindset whenever it comes to that exchange of value, when it comes to pricing your product. So one thing that I'm seeing happen a lot in the landscape of being boss, and even on the bigger Facebook group is, everyone's freaking out about how to price their products, or they feel bad, like they're taking money from somebody. But you should feel so good about what it is that you offer that you're going to give whoever gives you money, like they would have paid you 10 times for what you're giving them. And remember that that exchange of value. I mean, for example, whenever I do a branding project, and someone pays me, you know, let's say$6,000, I know that by investing in branding, by the end of the year, they should be able to make their investment, like tenfold. And it's not that I have a hard ROI number to give someone whenever they invest with me. It's not like oh, well, I promise you can make this. And the same goes for whenever I invest into something like a mentor or a business coach, I go into it knowing what I want. So that's all about goal setting, right? So it doesn't feel like an hard cost. Let's say I invest 15 $100 in a business coach, I don't think oh, well, let me think of all the things that I can't buy. After I invest in this business coach, it's more like I think about how is this going to make me that next level of money, or next level of project or scale my business in the way that I want to scale it like how is that going to help me do that. So it works both ways, really, whenever you're providing the service. And whenever you are receiving the service, it's again, just that exchange of value, that exchange of energy and that exchange of worth.
Emily Thompson:Amen? Well, and i and i will say to whenever whenever I did triple my project pricing, it wasn't for the same project, I certainly looked at how I was giving value to my clients and how I could up the value that I gave my clients to a place where I was only launching six websites a year instead of whatever 365 divided by three years now. That's not the right math, scratch that. But But I was really able to look at how I wanted to work with my clients to give this to give them that amount of value. Because that's the really great thing I think about us and how we all do business is that we get to define it for ourselves and come up with these creative ways of giving that value. And it's not about going with industry standards. Like I was doing the industry standard web design project like where we have the set number of deliverables. As I give you these line items, I sent a proposal, it's all great and fine screw that I was wasting a ton of time doing it, and was not really communicating the value that I was providing. So I was able to create this new way of working with clients to give them these websites, but also the value that I was there to give and didn't have a problem selling them like I had had to do some sales coaching, because that is legit. Like you had to hire someone to teach you how to sell is what you're saying. I didn't have to
Kathleen Shannon:work to get to help get over that price hurdle, right? Yes,
Emily Thompson:or not even for me to get over the price hurdle. But for me to be able to communicate what I was selling in a way to get clients over that price hurdle.
Kathleen Shannon:And I'm curious, because a lot of creatives struggle with this as well, whenever they start to raise their prices, they think, well, whenever I'm charging this, what does that mean that I'm taking away from this person who's paying me?
Emily Thompson:Did you ever struggle with that? Absolutely. I mean, a car is what I was taking away, like, but you can't think like that. Because with what I was providing, they could go by four cars after they put it all to use. And that's where you have to make the switch. It's not about what you're taking away from them now. It's what you're giving them in the future.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, so recently, in the Facebook group, someone was talking about getting really transparent with our clients about what whenever their clients pay them what the money is going to, and it's like, to my, to my family, to my daughter, to getting married to my husband, like this is what I'm working for. But I don't think it matters like and your client doesn't really need to know what you're going to spend your money on. Like I could be spending my money on
Unknown:boots, or
Kathleen Shannon:daycare, or it could be on anything frivolous or not, it doesn't matter, because the value that I'm exchanging has nothing to do with what they can't buy. And what I will be buying the exchange happens in that financial transaction right there for the services and goods received.
Emily Thompson:Yes. So when you're thinking or so when you're freaking out about money? What do you do?
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, so like, let's, let's get really into this, like, what do we actually do whenever we're freaking out about money? And I had a little freakout just a couple of weeks ago.
Emily Thompson:Please tell me about that. was either for that.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah. You caught it was your fault.
Emily Thompson:Right, because I wasn't freaking out about
Kathleen Shannon:Emily wasn't working out. Can I share the stories do. So David ran our numbers. And he was like, so we need a little more money by the middle of November. And I was like, Oh, my God. And Emily sends me this like nice little sock. And it's like, so real talk, we need a little bit more money by November. like freaking out, I'm up
Emily Thompson:all night, I slept like a baby slept like a baby.
Kathleen Shannon:So I wake up the next morning after a sleepless night, and I start sending some emails. And within an hour, I had gotten us some more business,
Unknown:right?
Kathleen Shannon:So whenever I'm freaking out about money, I start emailing, I start emailing potential prospects, contacts. And really my goal is whenever I break it down in my head to not freak out is all I need to do is make $100 there's nothing that we offer, that's $100. But I think if I can just make $100 Today, we will all be fed. And usually that $100 or like thinking in it that way makes it feel less overwhelming. And it leads to a whole lot more money than $100. And back in the day, I mean, five years ago, it really was literally $100 like can I do a logo for $100 no one do a logo for $100 this was five years ago, I was young. So I think that more than anything, I just want to like tap into the flow of money. And that's what the make $100 does for me. It allows me to just like, open the tap no matter how little it is. I literally think of it like turning on a faucet. So how can you turn on that faucet? What does it look like? Does it look like sending out an email does it look like calling a potential prospect does it look like wrapping up that project so you can finally invoice them? I always like struggle with even in remodeling my house like I could tear down the walls and get some drywall back up and I've never done that. I feel like Jeremy's here to call me out like we've never done that. But then whenever it comes to like the molding around the edges, you know, like the finishing touches. Or like, actually, I'm about to get real deep in this house metaphor. So I'm just going to stop. But finalizing that project or finalizing that sales page so that you can finally launch, emailing your wolf pack and saying, hey, I've got this thing. Do you guys know anyone who might be a good fit for it? This is another thing that I find interesting about creative entrepreneurs is that it's not real. If it's your friends that are hiring you. Does anyone else feel that way? Like, oh, but that's not real. Guess what? business is just a bunch of friends hiring each other. That's how it works.
Emily Thompson:I think the most real work I ever did was with braid.
Unknown:For sure. You're still doing it. I'm
Kathleen Shannon:still Emily quit working with clients recently. I was like, but not me. I'm like one of those clients that will not let her break up with me. I
Emily Thompson:wouldn't. And I would never let anyone else touch your website. And so I'm fine with that, as well. And so let's talk a little bit then about about this transition, the CAD Kathleen up for for an all nighter and worrying about worrying about money. Because I did just stop, just stop doing one on one projects don't talk about huge transaction transitions, and why David is checking in the bank account every
Kathleen Shannon:day. I also want to mention that I still am doing one on one client projects. So holla.
Unknown:Right. I am not freaking out about money.
Emily Thompson:Except for when it comes to comes to me. So we just
Kathleen Shannon:are your family's fed, we're fed, we're
Emily Thompson:good. We are so good. So just stopped doing one on one project so that we could focus on being balls. But also I have the rocky web design digital product. It's really awesome. So web designers holla. So we launched a digital product that gave us you know, four months of income, which is really fantastic. Plus what we're doing at being boss like, and I know this because we know our numbers like I know when money's going to run out. And I sent Kathleen that that message just to get things going. I did not mean for her to stay up all night thinking about Hungary living by any means. But I think the reason why I was so comfortable with it, because it didn't faze me, it's just it's math, it's numbers, it's business, you don't always have income power for a year in advance. Like, rarely that happens, actually, four months is actually pretty good thing. So I learned a long time ago, just trust the process. There have been many times in my not many, several times in my business, especially in the early days, where I actually had calls to freak out about money, about not having a next project coming about not knowing who the next client was going to be. I haven't even started that courting conversation yet, that can sometimes takes take weeks when it comes to large projects. So several times in my business, I didn't know what was coming next and actually had cause to freak out. And what I found myself doing, and this is before I was any kinds of Whoo, I did not own a crystal or anything. But I would literally lay in bed at night and this happened a couple times. This is the last straw to this is like the last thing I did my like come to Jesus gotta have a project, lay in bed and I would meditate on money. I did this a couple of times where I just like thinking about drawing that next client to me and I would fall asleep. Having meditated about my Did you know I did this? I used to do this. Okay, good. Um, I would meditate on what
Kathleen Shannon:were your feelings about money at the time? Did you still feel that it was a necessary evil? Like, do you feel like you had to, because Okay, if money is a necessary evil, and you're meditating on bringing that to you,
Unknown:right now
Emily Thompson:it was it was much less of unnecessary, I'd come to target over that I had come to terms and knew that I needed it. But literally just didn't have the next project lined up, which happens we've all felt it. And I'm not saying that like meditating on money is the thing that got me jobs. But it always worked. Always. And less. So about the whoo behind it, and much more about the fact that I would wake up the next morning, ready to go,
Kathleen Shannon:I want to make your $100 ready
Emily Thompson:to make my more than $100. And I would have woken up remembering you know, a client, a potential client that I talked to six months before that wasn't ready at the time, but maybe ready now and it goes into an email. Or I would remember that thing that hour of maintenance that I hadn't invoiced yet, and I needed to follow up and see if they needed anything else. I would wake up the next morning with all of these ideas that would bring the money to me. So it's trust combined with doing the work. And so whenever it comes to like November, which for me still feels so far away. I Trust, well, at least a month
Kathleen Shannon:of november 2017, we're in October 2016. And November 2017, next year feels like it's like right here.
Emily Thompson:That's because our calendar is nuts. But I, it's, it's a combination of trusting the process, trusting yourself that you have the chops to do this, and doing the work to make it happen. And I never had to go get a day job. That was never something that happened, I always had an email come in with a new, exciting project that filled the hole. And it just kept going until I got really tired of playing that game really ran my numbers and restructured my business to actually make it work.
Kathleen Shannon:So, okay, that's what I was gonna say. So whenever you wake up in the morning, it's about doing the work. And one of the things that I do whenever it comes to freaking out about money, and even whenever you told me the November thing, I thought, Okay, it's time to do a chalkboard. Are you guys familiar with the chalkboard method? Yeah, okay, you can go to being boss club slash chalkboard, if you're not familiar, we have a downloadable there that you can download. But it's something that I've been doing since the beginning of my business, where I had a chalkboard painted on my wall. And I feel like I've told this story so many times, so I'm not going to go too far into it, but basically made space for my clients by drawing blank spots on the chalkboard wall that I could fill with what I want. So whenever Emily said, we need to get to work, I thought, you know, what I haven't done for being boss that I'm always doing for braid creative is the chalkboard. So I went downstairs, this is where my chalkboard was, it was downstairs hanging on a wall. And I started drawing spaces for clubhouse members, for sponsors for thank you for special projects. One cool thing that happened is that Emily and I are in the works of writing a book for being Boss, I drew a little book in the corner, and I wrote being bought the book, December 2016. And I didn't even know what that date meant. And the very next day, we had an agent contact us. And we had talked to a couple other agents that were terrible fits for us. But this one agent contacted us and it was the perfect fit. And we are now in an agreement with her. And we're finishing up our proposal. And that's all going to be done soon. And so probably will be in bids with our publishers by December 2016 is what that timeline looks like. So again, just like Emily said, there's a little bit of magic maybe but more than anything being confronted with a bunch of blank spots you have to fill will make you start to think about how you can do the work to fill those spots. And so one of the things I do whenever I'm freaking out about money, aside from like doing the work, is I asked myself, what's the story I'm telling myself. So I get underneath what I'm really having anxiety about. I my husband Jeremy's right there, and he, he's checking our money every day, and it's fine. Like at any given time, I could be freaking out about money. And he's like, what are you freaking out about? And so I think that I put it on the money because it's just a hard metric that I can look at and freak out about. Um, but I, whenever I start to get underneath that, I realize that I'm actually freaking out about my worth, or my value, I think is what I'm doing. Like I'm, I'm podcasting. Like, what does this even mean? You know, and we all I think we all have these moments where we start freaking out, especially in a creative industry, because society doesn't entirely value art, or life coaching, or design. It podcasters podcasting. I mean, most people like we're coming through customs, what are you doing? podcasting? What's that? It's like a radio show on the internet.
Unknown:For who?
Emily Thompson:We teach creative entrepreneurs how to do business online. pinkeye got some positioning.
Kathleen Shannon:So whenever I'm freaking out about money, I've learned that I'm just freaking out about frosty feelings. And these are feelings that we all have about what it is that we're doing. And I think the more we care about what we're doing, the potentially the more frati we might start to feel about it. So I look at the money stories that I've learned from my parents and from my peers. I look at the people I'm hanging out with what are they saying about money. So one of the things whenever I was really young that my dad would always say, is Kathleen, you can do what you love, and maybe not make very much money but you're going to be so happy Or maybe you can do something that's like kind of sucky, like not as much fun. His idea was that I would be like a farm pharmacist like I would make drugs for a living. And that was his heard that was his real dream for me, he wanted me to be a pharmacist. Can you guys imagine?
Unknown:I can see it. Me too. So
Kathleen Shannon:you wanted me to be a pharmacist and he's like, or you could be a pharmacist, and it might not be as much fun. But you're gonna make so much money. So the money story that I told myself was, if I'm doing what I love, I'm not going to make very much money, and I had just accepted that to be true. And it's not true, you can do what you love. And you can make a lot of money, and you can be happy. All of it's kind of tricky.
Emily Thompson:But you have to do the work and like, and not just the outer work, but the inner work to get there. Because it's not, it's not just about knowing your numbers, because you can still know your numbers and freak out about things. But it's knowing that you can know your numbers and allow that to dissipate your need to freak out about things. It's about doing all levels of the work to get you in a place where you're comfortable asking what it is that what you do is worth because that's where you make good money doing what you love.
Kathleen Shannon:I kind of want to talk about content a little bit to
Emily Thompson:go for it. freestyling
Unknown:Whoa.
Kathleen Shannon:Um, so Emily and I have always written a lot of content that helps position us as experts in what we do. So whether we're writing content, or podcasting content, that's something else that are emailing content. Those are things that we do also, too, whenever Emily was saying, you know, a client would email me or potential client would email me, it's because she's writing a newsletter every single week, she's writing a blog post. Well, that's different. It depends on what her strategy is that he or she may or may not be writing a blog post, we've got this podcast. So we're still putting ourselves out there in a way that draws people to us as well. So you can't just meditate on something and wait for it to show up. You have to put yourself out there as well. I just want to reiterate that because we're not trying to tell anybody that you can just manifest
Emily Thompson:well, and Paul Jarvis always says this hysterical thing about like I put in, I put in words into my computer, or the internet and money pops out. Because that's what a lot of people think this is that we just like, put words into the Internet, and money pops out. And it's not quite like that. But it kind of also is in a lot of ways. So I think there is something to say too, about like giving it all away for free.
Kathleen Shannon:Oh, yeah. That's like our biggest thing is giving it all away for free. Yeah, that's the content part. Yes, sir. See, I can't even like really see where my thoughts are going this way. Have an Emily.
Emily Thompson:Right. This is also why we usually have an agenda. Once you freestyles, Cory has to edit a whole lot out. So yes, like content is certainly part of it. And that's the joys of internet and putting words in and money popping out is, is when you're on the online platform, when you're doing business in the online space, you have the opportunity to give a lot of value for free, that will elevate the value that people pay for, which is huge. And it also super positions you as the expert that is even more worth value. It makes selling so much easier, so that you can get that plant get into that place with your money that you don't have to freak out about it anymore.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah. So I would challenge all of you to go home and write a piece of content or record a video or whatever it might look like for you that is worth $100 something that whenever you hit hit, hit publish on that you'll feel like you're afraid you're giving away all your secrets. You want to feel like why would anyone ever hire me if I'm giving it all away for free? I want you to write something that really challenges you to like, oh, man, this is like intellectual property. Someone's going to take this. That's how you want to feel. And whenever you start producing stuff like that on a consistent basis. I remember I mean, it was just about a year ago, my sister wrote an E book. And we laid it out within a week and it was so good. I was like, why are we not selling this?
Emily Thompson:I said, Why are you not selling this? Because it was amazing, but it was free. And doing things like that is what really gets you to a place where you can really you can find value in what you're giving whenever you're getting that feedback from people saying you know this, this free content has helped me so much it really He elevates your ability to say, okay, that I am worth what I know I'm worth and it's much easier to sell it.
Kathleen Shannon:So I also think there's something to like. I'm trying to get my thought clear here, but it's something about I've definitely given away or reduced my prices, especially when I first started that I knew I was worth more, but still giving away what I was at a lower price, because I was just starting out, I was trying to build a client base. And so I always have to remind myself, how am I being compensated. So you can give things at a reduced price, or you can give things away for free, but you always need to understand and be clear on how you are being compensated.
Emily Thompson:And I think that's the other metrics. so freaking out about money and money being the one metric is definitely part of it. But there are other metrics. And I think this comes to like, we're making his living a rich life. But also, whenever you are creating things, whenever you are chatting with your people, or making your products or putting things out there for free, you can and should think about the other metrics of your value. Whenever we create free things and put them out there, we're thinking about how that's going to come back to us in the future. And it may not be money, it may be really awesome weekend's in Toronto. So we certainly go at things with this idea that money is not the end all of what we do. And that also takes a lot of pressure off our necessity to make all the money. Because we can we can look at what we create in other ways as well, I think I call them non monetary benefits. And it's it's the things that you get back that aren't money for what it is that you create, for me, you know, really awesome. This is totally like self involved, like the great feedback emails that we get for the content that we create. Whenever I put out a really great email. I want to be paid and awesome responses. Or
Kathleen Shannon:not even just awesome responses, but engagement because what we do and why we do it, it's about connection. Right? I mean, that's, that's what it's all about, we're all gonna die, I feel like I end every podcast with that we're all gonna die
Emily Thompson:is that we know it's over. We're gonna be sucked into a black hole anyway.
Unknown:That's where it always goes.
Emily Thompson:No, but you can and should think about what you're creating. And not only money that though, you should absolutely be thinking about the money, knowing your numbers, how you need to create what you need to create, to make what you need to make, but also think of the work that you do. And then non monetary benefits that will leave you fulfilled in ways that money never will.
Kathleen Shannon:So with that, I want to end on maybe a little bit of a high note, I want to ask, what is the best thing you've ever spent money on? And how much did it cost?
Emily Thompson:Any good answer? Oh, man.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, you I'm looking at
Emily Thompson:you about this. What is the best? Okay, I'll
Kathleen Shannon:go first. Um, okay, so the thing I bought recently that costs a lot of money was actually my car, and I bought it. It's now been three years. And I had driven so when I was 16, I drove a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, it was bright yellow, and I loved that car. I drove it for seven years. Then after I graduated college and got a day job, I needed a more reliable car to drive on the highway with. So I got like one of those really boxy little Cylon x bees. And I drove that for another 10 years. And so a few years ago, I was telling my husband and I had had a good year, I said, I want a new car. I'm over this car, but it was completely frivolous and unnecessary, because the Scion probably would have driven for another 100,000 miles and I wish I was the person that didn't care. I felt like I was vanity tripping so hard. And I was like, Okay, what car Am I going to get? And so I'm usually just like, this is the car I want, and I go and buy it. But after talking to my husband about it, we decided to stress test drive a few cars, and I thought I was gonna get an Subaru Outback. I had dreadlocks at the time, and I just thought it like fit my style. That didn't feel quite right to drive. And so then I was like, Okay, I'm in test drive a BMW. That didn't actually feel quite right. And then I test drove Oh, like one of the salesmen made me get in like a Honda CR x. It's a beautiful car. No offense to anyone that's driving a Honda CRF could not see you in a car x. Ever. Definitely a mom car. Maybe he put me in it because I was like nine months pregnant at the time. He was like, Here you go, lady. And then finally I test drove a Mini Cooper. And I was like, This is the car right? And so it felt Really frivolous. And in all transparency. This is another thing. I think that creative entrepreneurs aren't talking enough about money, how much they're making. So you guys find, find a business bestie and tell them how much money you're making. Talk about how much you're charging for your products. I think that whenever we start talking about this, we can just shine a big light on a topic that is charged with shame, right? So my car cost$30,000. It feels like a lot of money, it felt totally frivolous. But again, I thought, how is this car going to make me feel more boss? How is this car going to make me more money, and I really do feel more confident in that car. Like whenever I drive up to a meeting, I'm like, Yes. So that was like, I really loved spending money on that. But then whenever I really think about what I love spending money on is probably vacations and adventures. And so I spent six years ago $6,000 on a trip to Nepal, and hiked up to Mount Everest base camp, and it changed my life. And in the grand scheme of things, $6,000 is not a whole lot of money for what I got, the value that I got out of that was completely priceless. And so I'm gonna write start to think about the things that I've really spent money on that have changed me to the core, like spending money on my kids, like burning him into this world. Totally worth it. And the money I've spent on vacations, totally worth it. And so then I really start to think about whenever I spend money on experiences, I can do that stuff with not a whole lot of money. I can have a beautiful jungalow style house filled with like beautiful plants for not a whole lot of money. And so that's another thing that I think about a lot is that my lifestyle isn't necessarily about the Mini Cooper and the BMW, it's about the experiences that I'm trying to build. It's about moments like this in Toronto. So what about you? I want like one like, thing like Mini Cooper and then 109
Emily Thompson:I don't do a lot of things. Like I'm not doing things, David. What I do buy a lot of books. Is that what you said books, books, get a library card? No, I like to have them I have a bit of a book collector, but like not like signed or anything, just just books.
Kathleen Shannon:I'll sign a book for you. I'll go in your house and just sign all your books.
Emily Thompson:Like Lily did that too.
Kathleen Shannon:Well, he is my soulmate.
Emily Thompson:I know. Um, no. I think adventures like travel and the things that I've gone and done. And again, not even things that have cost a lot of money. And I whenever we all talk about money, like I know there's again, shame or like this, almost like an necessary newness that comes from like, wanting so much money and like we're not trying to talk you into making these like half million dollar business goals, though. Hi, fi bosses do. Because I know there's like, I don't need half a million dollars a year? I do I know, like we do. But I also don't like in order to be happy. I don't. So I think about the adventures and the travel that we've done. our road trip last summer, how much does that cost? Like 40 days on the road? 30 $500. And I mean, that's traveling the country eating anywhere, whatever we want doing anything, whatever we want for 40 days. That for me was is absolutely my favorite thing we've ever done and well worth the cash. And every day spent sleeping in a tent.
Kathleen Shannon:Yeah, I think like I feel rich whenever I can buy sushi on a Tuesday like that's like, or like an avocado at full price. Like
Unknown:Yes. I've made
Kathleen Shannon:it. So what about you guys? What's the best thing that you've spent money on? And how much did it cost?
Emily Thompson:Yes.
Kathleen Shannon:Hang on. Hang on pause. I want to get this on the audio.
Unknown:I know right? Damn. I just recently got back from a trip to Hong Kong in Bali. Just this past August. I spent 12 days there for my 30th birthday with my best friend who lives in Hong Kong. And that cost me I think I wasn't really tracking it too tough but about $3,000 and like the like you guys said like the experience it was like I was just throwing money and I didn't care because at that point, we call that priceless. I did but like the most ridiculous things like high tea at like the Ritz Carlton. These are things that I don't do on a regular basis, but I thought 30th birthday. Let's get it. So it was the One of those amazing experiences so yeah, but definitely worth the 3000 probably plus dollars.
Emily Thompson:Yes.
Kathleen Shannon:I love that Who else? Hello. I was just laughing You said buying an avocado for full price. So yesterday when we got in our in our Airbnb we went out to get food and I found this awesome like natural food organic market and I just put the shopping cart in and just started putting stuff in. I swear I didn't look at any of the prices. I'm like, we're in Toronto. Have an amazing time. I'm
Unknown:with my boss bestie here,
Kathleen Shannon:and I'm gonna regret avocados too.
Unknown:I went back, you know, like two drinks, organic hummus. I don't like a whole loaf of bread 12 eggs when we eat all the eggs, I don't know. But I just wanted us to eat like really well, you know, and have good food and I'm pregnant. So I'm like, this baby needs some good food. And it was awesome. So I actually don't know how much I spent and I don't care. I know it was okay.
Kathleen Shannon:Anyone else? Three. Here we go. So I'll come back. I'll come back. Melissa.
Unknown:I recently had the opportunity to house it this summer in Switzerland. It came up really randomly. And I just decided to go and bought a flight and went and it was cool that I was able to do that. So I went to Switzerland for two weeks, and I just hung out. And then I really wanted to my boyfriend to join me but he couldn't afford it. So I paid for him to come for two weeks. And we went to Paris and Berlin and I just paid for it all because I could and that felt great.
Kathleen Shannon:Sugar Mama. Anyone else? Here we go.
Unknown:So this is Danielle. So this is an exciting as Hong Kong or Bali but it my boyfriend travels a lot for work. And in the depths of February, he was going to Ventura, California and I was like I need to leave Toronto even if it's for three days. So I hooked a I got a red eye on the Friday and I got to work in a co working space in LA for work like on the Friday and then we like wandered around Santa Monica we just ate and wandered on the beach. And then we went to Disneyland the next day and I came back and we've never had like a random spontaneous vacation like that. And it was a way for me to like join. Like he was already down there working. And so we made it into like just like a mini vacation in everyone remembers what the end of February was like this year, right? Yep. So it was never been able to do anything spontaneous like that. It was awesome.
Kathleen Shannon:I once went to Long Beach, California with my husband on a work trip. And I ended up working from a stranger's boat. So that was something anyone else Lindsay. Okay.
Unknown:I swear this wasn't planted because it's a braid. It's a braid expenditure. But I recently spent $6,000. We all know that that's how much it costs to do branding with braid. And I had sent an email in saying somebody somebody had braid, Marie Kondo. My whole business life, my website, everything. And for those who don't know, that just means picking up what finds you joy and throwing out what doesn't, you know, or recycling or whatever. So anyway, that's what braid did and just sort of bossed me up. How do I say it just made this incredible branding platform for me. So I just feel like everything I do now has, like, purpose and just, I don't know, like his bosses. So word I've been Marie Kondo is great. It was worth it. Well,
Kathleen Shannon:thank you for that. My sister who is my business partner at braid is a big fan of Marie Kondo will take will transcribe everything you just said and put it on our website. Thank you. Um, anyone else want to share? Barbara? Yeah,
Unknown:I have a very sentimental one. My partner and I recently just finished paying off like our layaway costs on my engagement ring and our wedding bands. And as a queer couple, as a woman who has like raised in Moscow, which is like a very homophobic country. For me, it felt like profoundly important to be like, yeah, you know, we're just gonna drop a couple$1,000 on this, like beautiful antique wedding band, and engage ring because like, I get to be married to my partner, and I get to have kids and I get to build a family. And I get to define what that means for me. And I don't have to be robbed of all those things. Just because my family may not approve or I was raised in a culture that doesn't support that. So that was really big and felt really good to be like, yeah, that's worth it. Like look, this shiny thing. So I'm like, really excited for that.
Kathleen Shannon:So I hate Canada
Unknown:right now.
Emily Thompson:I think the thing that I want to point out here is whenever we made you define what money is for you, like all of you who wrote down negative things, look at the people who wrote down freedom. Because that's exactly what everyone just described to the freedom to define their business however they want or the freedom to go wherever they want and experience whatever they want, or the freedom to buy wedding bands, and marry whoever they want. Like, this is what we want your creative business to give you. It's not fear, or insecurity, or any of those things. It's Freedom, freedom to make money doing what you want, a myriad.
Kathleen Shannon:for the month of October, Emily and I will be hanging out live to continue the conversation every Wednesday afternoon, and we'd love for you to hang out with us. In these free Hangouts. We'll be talking about money authenticity, online and redefining success. We'll also be answering any questions you might have about being boss in work in life. Learn more and reserve your spot for these hangouts at being boss club slash events. So what's the secret to being boss? The secret is that there is no secret. There is no single formula course or book that will teach you what you need to know in order to have anything and everything you want.
Emily Thompson:But here's what we've learned along the way. Being boss is setting up a solid foundation built on intention. It's understanding how to define success on your terms. It's committing to big ass goals. And it's breaking those big ass goals down into small actionable steps.
Kathleen Shannon:It's about making faster decisions, trusting yourself to see it through enjoying the process along the way, knowing how to measure what's working and what isn't. And surrounding yourself with smart, ambitious friends along the way. Those are the secrets to how bosses get what they want.
Emily Thompson:We know you want an online business that allows you to make money doing what you love, and boss we've got you. The being boss clubhouse is where we teach you how to be boss of your life and work.
Kathleen Shannon:The being boss clubhouse is a two day online real time retreat, followed by 12 months of ongoing community support, monthly master classes and secret podcast episodes. We're only accepting 25 members for our next online retreat. Learn more and apply to join at being boss club slash clubhouse. Thank you for listening to being boss. Please be sure to visit our website at being boss club where you can find Show Notes for this episode. Listen to past episodes and discover more of our content that will help you be boss in work and life. Did you like this episode, please share it with a friend and show some love by leaving a rating and review on
Emily Thompson:iTunes. Do the work. Be boss and we'll see you next week.