Ep #56: How to Money Coach When You’re Not ‘Money Perfect’ Yourself

Hey coach, when the topic of money comes up with a coaching client, do you freeze? Do you shy away from it? Or do you jump in with both feet and say hey, bring it on? Coaches often do shy away from money coaching because of believing the myth that you somehow have to be, quote unquote, perfect with money before you've earned the right to coach other women on their money relationship. That is so absolutely not true.

I'm Kendall. Tune in to today's episode where I'm dispelling this completely inaccurate myth resulting in giving you permission to money coach, which also opens the door for you to attract and retain higher paying, amazing quality clients. It's all here for you in this episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. Let's dive in.

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 coach. I am thrilled as always to have you here with me today because we're talking about money and coaching. My two absolute most favorite things in the world to talk about, except for horses, of course. Now I want to open the door today to a myth that is prevalent in the coaching space and it is time to dispel it, like banish it, get rid of it. 

Because if you believe in this myth, it's going to hold you back from standing in your worth. It's going to hold you back from offering the full measure of value that you have within you to offer clients. It'll hold you back from signing on amazing clients and hold you back from experiencing your next level of confidence and sense of self-worth.

So what is the myth? It's the myth that you have to be perfect, and I'll put quote marks around that word, with money before you've earned the right to coach other women on their money relationship. By perfect, this myth tells us that we have to be debt free or always living far below our means or have years of savings in the bank or investments in place and a high net worth and that we never stress or worry about money.

Really? I mean, really? I don't know anyone like that. I am not like that. I have a lot of success with money. I certainly did not have any real success with money when I first started money coaching. That's because the myth that you have to be perfect with money before you've earned the right to coach other women on their money relationship. It's just that. It's a myth. It's not true. It's not accurate. It's not a requirement. It is not necessary.

So in this episode, I want to dispel this myth for you by giving you both practical and a from the heart perspective on why it is essential that you not wait to start money coaching other women in whatever way or to whatever degree that looks like for you. Then I'm going to share with you five consequences that arise if you avoid money coaching, even just a little bit with your clients.

So my first question for you is how do you see money coaching being part of the coaching impact that you want to make? So, for example, money coaching may be something that you want to dive into as a vital and consistent part of your coaching business, meaning that it's something you talk about regularly and you want to become known for. It may even be the topic you focus your coaching business around as the centerpiece.

Now I have trained and certified thousands of women who are in that category. They felt a pull to make money coaching either a centerpiece of their business or at least a consistent piece of their coaching business. So they run workshops and challenges and masterclasses and masterminds and VIP days, and they have private clients and group clients where money coaching is very bold, very centerpiece.

The certification they typically complete with me is my Sacred Money Archetypes because it gives you as a coach a money system that you can coach on using the power of the money archetypes, the money personality quiz and the ready to use coaching exercises and handouts and training to step into and use and money coach on a woman with her relationship with money with just a few weeks of training. So I will link to Sacred Money Archetypes in the show notes for you, and you can check that out.

Now it may be that your vision for money coaching in your business is a little different. It may be that for you it's not something that you want to do that often, but at least you don't want to feel uncomfortable or nervous or lacking confidence when the topic of money comes up.

I mean, let's be real here. If you're coaching women, money is going to come up. How can it not when women are working or running their own businesses and seeking independence? Money is now a vital and integral part of a woman's life. So it's definitely going to come up in your coaching, and you want to be prepared for that and not worry or feel uncomfortable or lacking confidence when it does come up.

You get to decide whether you want money coaching to be a vital part of your coaching business or the centerpiece of your coaching or if you just want to have a good level of confidence and comfort coaching on money. But one thing you don't want to do is shy away from it for reasons that I'm going to give you in a checklist in just a few minutes.

So first, let's get to the five reasons why you can absolutely coach on money without being perfect yet yourself. Number one, you can see things for your client that they can't see for themselves. Great coaching is great coaching and has little to do with the coach being a subject matter expert. Being a subject matter expert is being more of an advisor or consultant. That's great, but it's not coaching. As a coach, it is 1,000 times more important for your mastery to be in the skill of coaching, not in the skill of the subject matter.

So for example, when your client is talking about money, what are you hearing? What stories is she telling herself? Where is she not seeing opportunities for herself? Where does she need to take back her power or to create a boundary? Where does she need to challenge herself out of her comfort zone?

Money coaching is rarely about the dollars and cents. It is about boundaries and self-worth and permission to grow and thrive. It's about thinking bigger. It's about cleaning up relationship messiness. It's about all kinds of things. You, as the coach, are the one who can explore those areas no matter what your current money life looks like.

Which leads me to number two. Your money situation has nothing to do with your clients. You may have debt, and your client doesn't. So what? You may not have savings, and they love to save. So what? They may be a spender and you're not. So what? You may have made money mistakes that you can't imagine someone else making, which is likely not true, but regardless, so what?

Putting yourself in a position of needing to be perfect or adept or better than someone else in order to coach them is ridiculous. Trust me, there's always someone who's going to have less debt or more savings or better money habits. But that does not mean anything about your ability to see what that person cannot see for themselves about themselves. It does not mean anything about your ability to coach, to be curious, to see the humanity in someone and to see their desire to create a new result for themselves and then to coach them on creating that result.

My coaching for you here is simple and blunt. Stop holding yourself up to some false ideal. There's always a next level ideal and if you're chasing that, you're never going to achieve it. In the meantime, you're going to cut yourself off from your own development and your ability to coach others here and now.

All right, number three, money coaching is not about money. It's about self-respect, boundaries, elevating goals, you know, all the things that you can coach on. So, as I said earlier, money coaching is rarely about the dollars and cents, and that's what makes money coaching so soulful and deep and transformational. It's about the person, not the dollar amount.

It's about what they are valuing, what they are ignoring, what they are afraid of or what patterns they're in. All the fun juicy stuff that we coaches geek out on, right? We're just applying it to the topic or the context of money, which inherently has a boatload of emotions tied up with it. Yay, bring it on. You can coach on all of those things.

All right, number four, coaching others on money will support you on your journey. Maybe you want to clean up and empower your own relationship with money. Maybe it's time to put into place new boundaries about money or create what I call bankable beliefs.

Coaching others on money gives you a way of hearing what others are going through and how others think about money, which I have always found to be incredibly illuminating to support me on my own money journey. It's like with every coaching question you ask a client, what if you later apply that question to yourself? How much would that support you? Amazing, right?

Number five, do not expect to pull from your own personal experiences. You're coaching a client on what they are experiencing. It doesn't matter if you have or have not had that experience yourself. Again, that would be relying on turning yourself into an advisor or a consultant, but it's not coaching. You do not coach on what you already know. That's ridiculous. You coach on what you can see as possible for your client.

All right, so now let's look at what happens when you don't coach on money. Now these are the consequences that arise if you avoid money coaching, even just a little bit with your clients. Now I'm bringing these up because I really want you to deeply consider the impact money coaching can have and counter to that, the impact that not coaching on money can have as well, only not for the positive, right?

So consequence number one, you cut yourself off from being part of the feminine money movement. Money has become a prime topic that all women need help with now more than ever. That's because of the economy. It's because of a woman's ability to now make money and to make fabulous money.

It's because of the collective awakening women are having about money and how much of their emotions about money impact their mental health and influence their lifestyle well-being as well. Now this is a movement. If you're not part of it, then you're watching from the sidelines, and I truly believe that's not what you want.

I have a personal example for you. A couple of years ago, I was in a large group business coaching mastermind, and the coach assigned to our smaller pod spelled out early on that we could coach on ourselves, but that we would not be coaching at all on money, full stop, period. I remember thinking, uh-oh, I'm in trouble here because how on earth can we receive business coaching without coaching on money at some point? That made no sense to me.

Now this was a high five-figure investment. So, the idea of being in a business coaching program that disallowed any coaching on money was quite honestly truly weird for me. So anytime someone in that group brought up money, they were quickly diverted away from the topic.

I'll be honest with you. I was shocked because when there is that much energy of no we're not going there on such a fundamental business topic and a topic that women truly, truly need coaching on, it felt like a really important door was being slammed shut. So it wasn't an ultimately positive experience for me. Obviously, I did not renew, but I did share with the business owner why I wasn't renewing.

All right, so consequence number two, avoiding money coaching can create a boogeyman for you and for your clients. Avoiding money coaching, whether you do it overtly like what I experienced in that group, or you do it more subtly by just redirecting away from the topic when it comes up, it turns money into a thing to be avoided, something difficult, something troublesome, something to be afraid of. Now, you don't want that.

That idea is completely polarized to a basic tenet of coaching, which is about shining a light on difficult topics, shining a light on shame or guilt or boundaries, and absolutely shining a light on where a breakthrough is possible. 

Consequence number three of avoiding money coaching, what you skip persists. Every time you avoid something, what happens? It comes back stronger, with more force, with more power, with more ability to trigger you or your clients. Now, I believe in your courage. I believe in your willingness to explore difficult topics, or maybe just to explore topics that are new for you. I believe in your innate curiosity. That's all money coaching requires. That and skills training, like in my Sacred Money Archetypes certified coach training. 

Consequence number four, you deny yourself the ability to create awarenesses and transformation for yourself. Now in full transparency, I would not be half the person I am today with all of the self-awareness and humility and compassion and coaching abilities if it wasn't for coaching my clients through their stuff. Money coaching clients means I look at my relationship with money. Money coaching clients means I examine my own money stories. I look at my own money habits.

I am so incredibly and eternally grateful for my clients because they help me stay curious about my own money journey, which helps me to be a masterful coach. It keeps cycling round and round in this incredibly empowering, inspiring, and beautiful way, like from my client to me, from me to my client, from my client to me, from me to my client, like that. I love it.

All right, consequence number five. This is unusual, by the way, for me to do consequences. I'm usually full of positivity, but I actually feel very positive about giving you these consequences so you can really see what's at stake here. All right, consequence number five. Cutting yourself off from higher-end clients and more income in your coaching business.

To be clear, money coaching is not being a financial planner or an accountant or anything like that. Money coaching is having a way of pinpointing a client's money personality. Now we use the quiz with Sacred Money Archetypes because it is profoundly accurate and illuminating and people love it. It also is having coaching exercises and coaching questions designed to create a breakthrough for a client with their money habits, with their beliefs, with their boundaries, all the good things.

Now having that kind of coaching ability, it makes you more valuable to women clients in today's market because we're not going backwards. We're only going forwards. By being curious and open to money coaching, even in small ways in your business, it means you are more adept. You're more flexible. You have more to offer that is a value to your clients as their coach.

So to wrap up, the myth that you have to be perfect, in air quotes, with money before you've earned the right to coach other women on their money relationship, it is just that. It is a myth. It's ridiculous. Money coaching is deeply soulful, and it is based on coaching fundamentals like beliefs and boundaries and identity and habit change.

So for you as the coach, money coaching focuses on your willingness to walk with your client on their journey. Really take that in. It focuses on your ability to embrace the imperfections of your clients and of yourself in the process. Money coaching is not a litmus test of how good you are with money. It's instead a calling in your heart to create transformation both with and for your clients. It's a calling in your heart to expand your coaching skills and to know that there is nothing that you can't coach on.

So whether you're new to coaching or you're already seasoned and you know you want to add money coaching to your skill set, I encourage you to check out my Sacred Money Archetypes certified coach training at sacredmoneyarchetypes.com, and I will absolutely link to that in the show notes.

I hope this episode has opened the door for you to embrace money coaching as just one of the many topics you coach on. To embrace that money coaching someone else is in no way a reflection of your current relationship with money and to embrace that what we coach others on, we expand and improve for ourselves. So remember, coaching changes lives, starting with yours, and that includes money coaching.

All right, thank you for listening. Thank you for your loyalty. I appreciate you for being on your coaching journey and on your money reinvention journey with me. Be sure to share this episode with somebody you know, and if you feel inspired, I would love for you to drop a five-star review there for me. It helps me so much get this podcast out to other women in the coaching industry, other women who want to reinvent their relationship with money and to be masterful as coaches. All right, my beautiful soul, I will see you here next week with 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.