Ep #5: Money Lessons From She Who Raised You

If you've ever wondered how to free yourself from a past money story then you're going to have to look deeper than just at the usual common phrases you may have heard about money when growing up. Words have power, and the words you heard create emotions you are likely carrying around with you today. Stay tuned to find out the three levels of money messaging you received growing up as we take our first look together at the money imprinting you experienced from the primary woman in your life when you were growing up.

I'm Kendall, and I'm going to share with you my own personal money messaging I received plus show you how you can start taking your power back by choosing how to correctly interpret your own past money story. It's all here for you in this episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. I have to warn you, I'm likely to get a little emotional as we dive into today's topic.

Welcome to The Money Coach School Podcast. To really excel at coaching women, you have to be skilled, confident, and even fearless at money coaching. If you're passionate about women holding genuine money power and love supporting women entrepreneurs, then this is the show for you. Now, here's your host, money feminist Kendall SummerHawk.

Hello, beautiful coaches. Welcome. Here we are with episode number five. The launch of this podcast has gone so well. I can't thank you enough. We hit most of our launch goals, which is super exciting. We hit number 62 in the US for entrepreneurship, which is amazing because it's a very competitive category. We ranked number 21 in the UK. The reviews have been streaming in. They're all five star, which is amazing.

But what really has touched me so deeply is what you have been writing in the reviews. I've read every one of them. What I keep reading over and over is how much you love the quality of the show, and how this is exactly the money wisdom that you've been looking for. So thank you. I'm thrilled you and I get to share space and connect like this every week talking about you and money.

So today, I want to talk about what we learn from the women around us. I have so much to say on this topic. I decided I'm going to break it out into separate episodes because the women we grew up with imprinted us in so many ways about money. The women we spend time with now imprint this as well. Then, of course, there's social media and how that influences us. So lots to cover in future episodes.

Today, I want to focus on the main woman you grew up with, and how you experienced her with money. I'm going to give you a way of creating meaning from that experience in a way that serves you now and doesn't hold you back, which is such an important aspect of creating peace with your past money story.

So I know everyone tells you to look at what your family said about money, but I want you to get much, much more clarity than just that. I want you to think about first who was the central woman in your growing up? For me, it was my mom. So whoever it is for you, there are three levels of money messaging that you get from your early money imprinting.

Level one is what the central woman in your life said about money. Level two is how this woman behaved with money. Level three is the emotions about money that you picked up from her. All three layer together to create a money story from your past that has made a significant impression on you guaranteed. Here's why.

When you were younger, you heard whatever those words were that were being said. Let's be honest, you either understood them or you didn't. But what you did do is you felt the emotions that came with those words. You picked up on the vibe that was in your household. Maybe those emotions that you felt were feelings like fear or confusion or disappointment or insecurity.

Or maybe it was the opposite. The emotions you felt were confidence control, care, respect. No matter what the emotions were, here you are as a girl hearing and seeing things that you may or may not have understood, but you knew how you felt. Then what happened is you unconsciously began linking those feelings to money. Then you carried those thoughts and feelings about money forward so that money wasn't just money anymore. It was something that sparked thoughts and feelings which are still being sparked today as a grown woman.

In my family, my mom was a successful hairdresser. She worked for herself since I was six years old. I looked it up recently. The money that she made each year back then is the equivalent of over $200,000 per year in today's dollars. That is amazing. Like, I can't even begin to describe to you how proud I am of my mom, especially back then.

Let me tell you, my mom did not go beyond high school. She was very, very young when I was born. Then she had my brother a year later. Then she was divorced with two toddlers at the age of 20. So I had this role model of my mom being independent, making money, and having full autonomy with her money. It brings tears to my eyes to think about it because it was such an incredible experience to witness that.

So every week, she would “do her books”, which meant sitting in the living room at the coffee table and counting cash and creating a deposit slip for the cash and the checks. I have to be honest with you. I loved helping her count that money. I loved it. On Monday then she would go to the bank, she would make her deposit. Sometimes I would get to go with her if I didn't go to school that day. So I got to experience walking up to the bank teller, watching the teller handle money, depositing money into a checking and a savings account.

I got to experience firsthand the primary woman in my life, my mom, making money, saving money, having money, and spending money. My mother dressed sharp. She still does to this day. She bought her clothes at boutiques. She was very fashionable, she was very pretty, and she was really cool. She didn't have tons of clothes, but what she bought was very high quality and very chic. We lived in a really small place, but the furniture was chic, and it was modern.

So I want to bring this back to the three levels of money messaging we each received from the primary woman in our growing up so you can see how we carry this forward unconsciously into our lives today. So level one, what the central woman in your life said about money? Well, my mom didn't talk much about money. But when she did, the message was clearly not to talk about money outside of the family. There was a feeling of secrecy to it. Like we were not supposed to let others know that we were doing well.

Now we lived well below our means in a very modest neighborhood for a very long time. So there wasn't any peer pressure to show off or to have more or to be better than anyone else. My mom drove a funky older car. We didn't live life large to put it bluntly. We did not upgrade where we lived until I was 12. That's when my mom bought a piece of property.

She had a beautiful house designed and built. It ended up being featured in a magazine here in the US, Sunset Magazine, a couple of times because the architect of the house was a little famous. It was on the other side of town from where we originally grew up. So we were now on the side of town where the fancier people lived. But we moved into that new lifestyle with the values we had growing up. So really not a lot changed.

Level two is that messaging of how this woman behaved with money. I witnessed every week my mom handling money that she had made. That makes me tear up because my mother knew how to make money. I just am so, so grateful of how empowered she was. That it wasn't like my mother was a highly ambitious person. She was just very, very motivated. She had two babies to support. So this is what she did. She ran a great business.

I watched her depositing money into the checking and the savings accounts. The messaging here was definitely that you respect money, that you give money attention weekly, that you don't ignore it. You take care of it, and it will be there for you. I definitely got the messaging that money can be made by a woman. That a woman has money, and that she is in control of it. Also that money was something that you earned by working.

Now in a different podcast, I'll talk about that because that imprinting definitely caused me to work very, very hard for a lot of my life. But we'll save that for a different episode. So let's look at the messaging level three, the emotions about money that you pick up from that primary woman in your life.

So the emotions I picked up were acceptance, normalcy, and a sense of appreciation, but that messaging of secrecy was also there for me. That got interpreted by me as shame and as worrying about what other people will think if they knew we had more than they do.

So when you layer the messaging of one, two, and three together, it creates an overall money story growing up that a woman can make money and have money authority, but best not to tell anyone outside of the family about it. The overall emotions I carried forward are certainly of opportunity and independence but also of secrecy and shame.

So I highly recommend that you take a few moments to go through this exercise for yourself. The reason why that you want to do this is because your money story from the past is a part of your history, but you get to frame up the meaning of it. Because even though now as a grown woman and in business for yourself, below the surface at an unconscious level, your business is being run by the thoughts and feelings you took on from the main woman around you when you were younger.

So no wonder money blocks may be springing up unexpectedly getting in the way of you achieving your highest potential and of you experiencing your greatest earning power. Even for me, because while my money story past certainly has a lot of positives to it at a very unique time in our history when nobody's mom I knew worked. They didn't work. I didn't see other girls’ moms having money, working, going off to work, and having that level of financial independence. So I certainly am extremely grateful and appreciative that I got to experience that growing up.

But the secrecy and my interpreting that to mean feeling shame has stayed with me and has definitely held me back. I can feel that it has put a lid on what I've allowed myself to make and to have. So even though I've made tens of millions of dollars, and I have savings, my retirement is fully funded.

I know without a doubt those feelings of shame have created a glass ceiling that I still want to break through. It's like if all that is what I've accomplished while feeling money shame, imagine what is possible by releasing that shame. How many more people's lives could I be impacting? How much bigger could my reach out into the world be?

Whatever your money story from the past is, you first want to get crystal clear on what it is. Then you want to see with eyes wide open how it's impacting you today. Then you make a new decision.

Here's a paradigm shift that I want to leave you with here today. You can reframe the meaning given to your past money story because you are no longer willing to stand for it defining you. You can celebrate the parts of your past money story that are helpful and supportive for you today. The rest? Well, it's time to give it a new meaning.

You can take back your power from what happened long ago. The primary woman in your growing up was no doubt doing her best with money. Let's be honest here, women have not had it easy with money. They haven't been taught how to make it, keep it, save it, have it, or have autonomy with it, which makes this your moment to choose that as your path.

You can speak about money purposefully, powerfully, and positively. You can create money actions that signal respect and appreciation and caring for money. I mean, it is a relationship after all. Don't you want all of your relationships to have respect, appreciation, and caring integrated into them? Of course you do.

You can consciously choose the emotions that you want to feel when you think about money. This is your money reinvention. All right. So thank you for listening, and I can't wait to connect with you again next week in our next episode.

Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you follow so you never miss an episode. Also, I would so love and appreciate if you would leave a 5-star review. Your review supports women just like you in discovering all of the juicy tips and insights I’m sharing here on how to coach women on money.

And if you want to learn how to excel at coaching women on money, definitely go to KendallSummerHawk.com and check out the wealth of money coach trainings that we have for you. Thanks so much for being part of this money coaching movement and for tuning into the show every week.