Ep #73: How to Make Peace with Inconsistent Income

Hey coach, if you keep hearing that you're supposed to be in pursuit of creating "consistent income", I'm here to tell you that's a myth and a total waste of your time. Inconsistent income is what we as business owners experience on the daily, and trying to make it consistent is a fallacy that will only frustrate you and take your focus off of where it should be.

I'm Kendall. Tune in this week to hear four insights on how to make peace with inconsistent income so that you can breathe easy, you can stop chasing something that is too elusive to ever catch, and instead learn the skill of creating overflow. 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 coaches. So here's the thing that happened. I broke my wrist two weeks ago as of the time of recording this episode. Obviously, this was not a planned event and it's the first time I've ever broken a bone. And I'm here to tell you, living in a cast from my wrist all the way up to my elbow is challenging. And of course, it's on my right hand and I'm right-handed.

I'm now able to type with one finger on that hand. So basically my left is doing most of the work. I still can't hold a pencil or a pen. I'm using the dictation feature in Word some, but it's definitely less than easy. So suffice it to say everything has slowed down and I've had to dramatically lower my expectations of what I can get done in a day.

And the biggest thing I'm noticing is how many mental calories I'm burning just doing small things like getting dressed or one-handed braiding my hair. Everything is different. Everything feels challenging. Everything feels bigger than it really is. But the reality is this break could have been much, much worse. I don't need surgery. My horses are being ridden by my trainers and I'm healthy.

So even though everything feels in upheaval and incredibly unfamiliar, it's actually all good. And that was actually the catalyst for this episode. And I wanna talk with you today about inconsistent income. Before we dive in though, if you can take 1 to 2 minutes to leave a five-star review for me, I would so greatly appreciate it.

It tells the algorithm to put this podcast in front of more women like you, compassionate, intuitive women who want to make money and make a difference. It also lets me know what you think of the podcast. So I would love it. Just click on whatever platform you're on, preferably Apple, and leave me that five star review. And thank you so much for that. I really, really appreciate it.

All right, let's dive into talking about inconsistent income. So I could talk about this topic for about two hours, three hours, four hours. I'm gonna keep it really short today and cover four essentials about understanding inconsistent income so that you can start to make peace with it.

So number one, inconsistent income is what we as business owners experience on the daily. It's a fact of life. It comes with the territory. And your ability to accept it and work with it is what's going to make the difference between you feeling stressed or just matter of fact about it. You can fear inconsistent income or you can embrace the thrill of it. And this is what makes entrepreneurship so exciting.

What having inconsistent income requires of you is grit and a wider bandwidth for change than the average person possesses. But you are not average, you are a coach. And being a coach and running your own business is not a job, it's an opportunity. So when you embrace that this is an opportunity and you acknowledge that inconsistent income just comes with the territory, you can stop trying to tamp it down. You can stop trying to tame it. And instead, you can look at the door that's open to you to make incredible income and you keep that door wide open.

Now you see a lot of coaches trying to sell you on joining their coaching programs with the promise of teaching you how to create consistent income, but they can't do that. They can teach you how to make more sales, which is fabulous thing, and of course increases your income, but it's not going to be consistent like getting a paycheck. Because that's not how income as a business owner works.

And I'm here to tell you, I've been in this business for, I think it's 23 years now. I have made tens of millions of dollars, and I don't know anyone, including myself, who has ever experienced consistent money, you know, same amount of money, in and out every single month. It just doesn't work that way. So number one is having the insight that inconsistent income is just part of being a business owner and deciding how you want to feel about it, scared and stressed out or excited about what's possible. That's what you get to do.

All right, insight number two, inconsistent income swings both ways, up and down. So here's the problem. The phrase consistent income is used a lot in the coaching space to create this idea that the money coming in can be consistent. That's a fallacy, it's a myth, it's not true. It's trying to take something that by nature is inconsistent and force it to go against its nature. That's not going to work and it will frustrate you trying to make it work.

So instead, what you're really seeking is to have overflow, meaning more than enough coming in to cover all of your expenses. More than enough means not just enough, and it doesn't mean below just enough. It means more than enough so that there's always a surplus. There's always an excess. There's always an overflow of money.

With overflow, the inconsistency of income is still present because that can never be stopped, it just is. But what you want to have is an amount of money coming in that always exceeds what you need to cover your expenses and to pay you as the business owner and of course to save, which I'm a big, big, big saver.

So some months you're gonna have more than enough to cover all of that, you'll be in overflow. Other months, you may not. What you do with the money in the months where you have overflow will determine what you do and how you feel in the months where you don't.

Now, this may sound counter to what you're hearing in the online coaching space, but what you want to accomplish is not trying to make your gross revenue, that amount of money coming in, top line revenue, it's also called gross revenue. You're not trying to make your gross revenue consistent because that's not going to be possible. What you want to accomplish is making the amount of money you have available to pay all of your expenses be consistent. You want the amount of money you have available to pay yourself a fair and good salary to be consistent.

That's where you want to apply the concept of consistency because then you may or may not have the same amount of money coming in every month, but what you will have is predictability and how much you have going out. And when your overflow is consistent and stabilized, then you can focus on increasing the number of clients you're signing on. You're going to know how many new clients or re-enrolling clients you're focusing on attracting and bringing into your coaching business. And then you're not guessing and you're not wondering where your money is going every month. Of course, that's a topic for a different podcast episode, which I will get to, I promise. 

All right, insight number three, what you do with an upswing predicts how you ride the downswing. The key is consistently allocating a portion of your gross revenue to your overflow savings. Now I'll be covering in upcoming episodes how much to plan on putting into your overflow savings, where to put that money, and what exactly you'll want to use it for. And for years, my clients have called this the Kendall Cascade system. And I love that. It's like a waterfall cascade, water falling from one piece down to the next, to the next, to the next. So they've always called it the Kendall Cascade. And I'll talk to you more about that in upcoming podcast episodes. 

For today, what I want to share is that you can start by opening up a high yield savings account and linking it to your business checking so that you can transfer money between the two accounts. There are plenty of high yield savings accounts that do not require much, if anything, to open up, like $5, $10, I mean really very, very little. So for example, I really like Ally Bank, that's one of the online banks that I use. It's A-L-L-Y… if you just type in "Ally Bank" in Google, you'll see the link for it. So they offer you a high yield savings account for no minimums, which is so sweet, right? 

Insight number four, you can save on inconsistent income and at lower income amounts. I hear so many women saying they can't do any money management or any savings until they have more coming in. And that is just not true. In fact, I think that's a very dangerous mindset to be in because it makes you a victim of circumstance.

It's surrendering your power with money. How you handle a dollar is how you'll handle $100. How you handle $100 is how you'll handle a thousand. I think you get the idea here.

Now, I've been money coaching and training women to be money coaches for years. And I can assure you at first, it is not the amount that matters. It's truly not. What it is that matters is the action that you're taking. It's the mindset that you're stepping into. It's the empowering habits that you're establishing. So saving a dollar now is how you'll save $1,000 sooner than you think. And it's how you'll continue to have more cash in your accounts than you've ever imagined.

You know, I've always said it all counts. So do not let your current circumstances or you know amount of money flowing stop you from opening that high yield savings account. Open it with $5. Get started.

Alright so to wrap up here, number one, stop trying to fight the nature of entrepreneurial income by attempting to make it consistent. It won't happen. It's inconsistent by its very nature. Let it be.

Number two, you may think that you're the only one experiencing inconsistent income, but you're not. Everyone experiences it. It doesn't make you a bad business owner. It's just a fact of life as a business owner. Where you get to be money smart as a business owner is in how you create consistent outflow so that you're stabilizing expenses and stabilizing your business owner pay, which then allows you to experience overflow as more money comes in.

Number three, understanding what to focus on making consistent will help you enormously in calming your nervous system and putting your focus on the money skills that support you in making money, saving money, handling debt. You deserve the peace of mind your nervous system is seeking in your relationship with money. Understanding that inconsistent income is just a fact of life. It allows you to shift your focus to learning how to work successfully with it, freeing you to calm down your nervous system and experience money peace.

I am doubling down this year in teaching and coaching you how to be successful in your relationship with money. How you make more of it, how you save it, how you not waste it on expenses that don't add value to your business and don't add meaning to your life. How to be at peace with debt, if you have debt, which most business owners do, how to create values with money that are intentional and serve you on the daily to make the making of money easier, how you are in relationship with money, how to shift those emotions, and how you give yourself permission to be the woman who has a lot of money.

So to finish up here today, I want to make sure to have you go to SecretEnergyofMoney.com. We'll put the link to that also in the show notes. SecretEnergyofMoney.com. Get on that wait list if you're clear that you want to start making, keeping, saving more money.

Secret Energy of Money is my mastermind that is so special, so fabulous. It's usually within everybody's budget and we are on the eve of opening up enrollment for it. So you wanna get on that wait list.

Remember, money coaching changes lives, starting with yours. So thank you for listening. Thank you for your loyalty, and I'll see you in next week's 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.