Episode 166: From Survival to Significance: Let’s Talk About Money

Expand Your Fempire Podcast #166 Transcript

From Survival to Significance: Let’s Talk About Money

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire podcast. I’m your host Caterina Rando, and I am blissing to be with you today. We are gonna have a special episode of this podcast today. I want you to imagine. That you and I are at your favorite cafe or sitting on your favorite park bench or waiting to [00:01:00] have a meal at your favorite restaurant. We are gonna have a conversation about you and money.

Now, as I say that to you, did you just get excited? Did you say, “oh, I’m gonna skip this episode.”

Were you interested in having this conversation? Were you curious?

What feeling or reaction did you insta have when I said we’re gonna talk about money? Because in all my years of doing my thing with women.

Helping them grow businesses. Helping them get clients. Helping them use speaking to build influence and gain clients more [00:02:00] quickly. Do you know what I found?

Women don’t talk enough about money.

I wanna tell you the biggest challenge I have seen over the many years of doing my thing, the biggest stress factor, the biggest thing that has women worry, the thing that has us not feel strong and powerful is money.

Now that might be not looking at your numbers, but knowing you’re supposed to. That might be looking at your numbers, not liking what you see. It might be feeling like you’re doing so much, running your business that you’re not having time to get clients.

It might be you love your clients, but you don’t have [00:03:00] enough, or you think you have to raise your prices. But you’re not sure if your market or your clients will accept that.

There’s a lifetime supply of hot topics around you, your business, and money. And maybe you are doing great at running your business, but you’re not taking any money to upgrade your personal lifestyle.

Or you’re running your business, you’re serving your clients, but you have no revenue for extras, for expansion, for coming on a retreat so your cup can get full.

I wanna ask you a question. Right now, if we were to have the privilege to sit down and talk about you and money for your business, for your life, what would you like to talk [00:04:00] about?

Lemme tell you why this hot topic is so important to me. As I said, I have seen this is the biggest stress factor for women. You may know that when I was married and then got divorced, that a big part of that was the extreme and significant mismanagement of funds and actually financial betrayal that I went through in my marriage.

Now we’ll save that long story for another day. What I will tell you is today, thriving financially, going through that was very empowering for me.

And I feel that for every woman, not only embracing the financial empowerment that is available to you will be great for your business. It will also be great for your life, and it’ll be great for your confidence and it’ll be [00:05:00] great for you securing your own future, even if you have an amazing partner.

Do you know one thing that makes me unhappy that I hear from some of my female friends who have partners? When they say to me, “Caterina, I just let my husband put his attention on all that.”

My friends, I did that. Never will I do it again.

I want you to be money informed. I want you to be money empowered.

My friend Joan Perry, she wrote the book, “A Girl Needs Cash and The Heroin’s Journey,” and I’ve interviewed Joan on a previous podcast. You can do a search at www.Caterinarando.com and listen to that podcast, or you can of course listen to my episode with Joan [00:06:00] wherever you get your podcast.

Joan reached out to me a few months ago and she said, “Caterina, let’s do an event about women and money.”

Now, the truth is I want it to be an insta yes, because I think it’s very important. From a strategic perspective, wasn’t necessarily a good idea for me and my business because I don’t have money, products and services to sell. At the same time, of course, you know, I teach sales and there’s a direct correlation between your ability to sell and your ability to grow your revenue.

So I said yes to my friend Joan and a couple weeks ago, we did a phenomenal event called Amplify. It was all about amplifying your income, your influence, and most importantly your [00:07:00] impact.

And we got the most VIP group of gals together and we talked about money all day long. Part of it was money mindset and part of it was our money story. Our money blocks. And some of it was simple education about what’s going on with money in the marketplace.

As we’re in this part of the year, I want you to choose that you’re gonna amplify your money confidence.

And you know what comes after getting started on your money confidence? Amplifying your money mastery.

I also want you to amplify your sales mastery. We’ve got several other podcast episodes on that hot topic, so please [00:08:00] listen to them and be hungry to master your money and master your ability to earn more money.

But it’s not just about earning. It’s about earning, saving, protecting, which means you know all about taxes and you know about, or your accountant does better, your accountant than you knows all about taxes and all your deductions and how to be compliant in your business and industry.

So there’s earning, saving, protecting, and then there’s growing.

And part of that as an entrepreneurial woman in business, is looking at how else can you build revenue through your business without working harder?

Now, that might be collaborations. It might be a new [00:09:00] income stream. I’m thinking that we added a sponsorship for our Amp Up retreat in August. You’re invited to come with us, our mastermind cruise for Women in Business on a Mission, and I added sponsorships so that we could keep the price down and make it affordable for more gals to come. That’s all part of revenue strategy.

This year, we reduced the cost of our sales program. Why? To get more gals in the door. To help more gals with sales.

When you started your business, you probably, like most women, didn’t start your business ’cause you said, “okay, I wanna be a billionaire.”

No, you probably started your business ’cause you wanted to help people. That’s what I’ve seen. In the thousands of women that I’ve worked with [00:10:00] personally. The many more thousands of women I’ve spoken to in audiences.

Women are on a mission through their business and their mission is not usually massive monetization. And I wanna ask you, are you my girlfriend massively monetizing in your business? And if not. I wanna invite you to make that as important as doing a great job for your clients.

If you’ve ever heard me give a speech, and I’m sure we have lots of episodes on this earlier ones, I believe that you have five jobs in your business.

Speaking in the [00:11:00] broad sense of the word. Of course, you’re the one that’s a podcast guest. You are the one that does the podcast. If you have to have your own. You’re the one that does the videos. You are the one that does the speeches. You are the one that brings value, if not exclusively, to your clients.

I like to say you’re the Beyonce of your business. You are the talent. You’re the Taylor Swift of your business. You’re the talent. You don’t have a celebrity spokesperson. You’re the spokesperson.

That is why speaking is your job. Selling is your job unless you have a sales team, right? Strategizing is your job. Deciding what you’re gonna offer, when you’re gonna offer it, what you’re gonna charge for it, what you’re not gonna do.[00:12:00]

Strategy, that’s your job, right?

And of course, serving your clients is your job.

And the last one is self-care. These are five things that are absolutely your job.

Now, I was just in Portland doing a couple talks around influence and we talked about money too. Bing, bing.

I was staying with my good friend and techno expert, including security, my friend Bobby Deetz.

And they and I have been having a debate for the last few years and the debate is that Bobby says “there’s another pillar, Caterina, and that one is systems.”

Now, I do not disagree with my good friend, Bobby, [00:13:00] that systems are absolutely required for you to bliss and thrive and be efficient, be productive, and massively monetizing your business.

However, where Bobby and I disagree is that it’s your job to make the decision, the strategy around what systems are important. I want you to have support to implement those systems and use them consistently.

And in fact, if I was gonna add another pillar. Speaking, selling, serving, strategy, self-care. It would be support, creating support.

When I say five jobs, these are your five jobs.

Your job is to get some support, and I hope you have [00:14:00] lots of support because do you see that those five jobs are big? And you’re never gonna scale your business or grow your revenue if you’re doing all the jobs.

And I gotta tell you something, I got gals that I have known since I’ve been around for a long time, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years running their business, and they’re still struggling. Why? Because they’re doing all the jobs.

And I am hoping my friend, that our chat here is having you look at what are you doing that is really not the highest and best use of your time. Because here’s what I want you to know.

As you are, fooling around with Canva, doing [00:15:00] your bookkeeping, doing all your admin. When you are doing it, it is actually taking time away from revenue producing activities.

Here’s what I want you to look at with me today. And you know what, we’re gonna talk more about this ’cause I got so much more to talk to you related to this hot topic.

In my work over the years and talking to so many women, I’ve determined that there are seven stages of you and money and your business.

And I wanna look at with you each of these stages, but more importantly in having our girlfriend chat about money. And let’s even say, I want you to come away from this girlfriend chat with some actions to take. [00:16:00] I wanna look at with you, which of these seven stages are you in?

More importantly, I wanna look at with you how long you’ve been in that stage. ‘Cause the whole point is to progress.

The first stage, which I’m hoping you’re not in my fabulous friend, is survival.

Survival is when you are struggling to pay your bills. You are not having the resources. You don’t have enough money to take care of yourself and your business, and you have to make sacrifice. And it certainly doesn’t feel good. I n fact, [00:17:00] your housing, your transportation are at risk.

Now, I’m hoping that that’s definitely not you. You’re at risk of a lot of things. Maybe you don’t have choices. Maybe you’re not happy in your relationship. You can’t leave ’cause you can’t afford to leave.

Okay. Enough with the depresso, you know me, I don’t like the depresso stuff, but sometimes we have to hang out there. That’s Survival.

The next stage is Struggle. Where you are having financial inconsistency. You don’t have savings. Every month, you’re wondering if you’re gonna be able to pay your bills. You are again, not having choice, not having surplus, not blissing in your business. Trying to attract clients from a place of stress.

You gotta take every Mary, Jane and Sheila that wants to work with you ’cause [00:18:00] you want the money more than you wanna have a great client. I’m sorry for you.

By the way,. If you’re not blissing with somebody, don’t take them on as a client. You wanna be loving the people that you work with. You wanna be excited to serve them, and they of course have to meet your client criteria.

There’s the survival, there’s the struggle.

The next one where I’m hoping you are or will be soon, is Savvy. This is where you’re doing those things that you know support you. Where you’re looking at your bank account every day. Where you are projecting your revenue in the door this month and your revenue for the next six months or more.

Let me tell you something. Every Monday in my business, my team produces it for me, I get what we call the Monday [00:19:00] report. The Monday report has all of our signups for the programs this year, has signups for my upcoming workshops, has signups for any events that we’re doing that we’re running through my CRM. And it has revenue in the door for the month, what’s projected to come in for the rest of the month, and revenue that is projected to come in for the next six months at least. Sometimes we run for nine months.

And so what does this mean? This means every Monday I get a report on the financial wellbeing of my business. And I know how much it costs to run my business every month. It’s not a small number.

E very Monday when I look at my Monday report, I can see [00:20:00] bing, bing, bing, that we are more than covering our expenses every month. And I can also look at it and I can see, bing, bing, there’s gonna be probably some extra for surplus. Some extra to put in savings, some extra to take care of any challenges that come up, some extra to give us more freedom to make upgrades. That’s what I want for you. That’s savvy.

The next stage is Sustainable or Sustainability. Where you know you not only are smart and you have the systems in place to take care of your money, but you also have put this money to work. And part of the sustainability is not just about [00:21:00] your business, it’s about sustaining your lifestyle and taking care of yourself, and taking care of your personal financial future because your business is thriving.

That’s what I want for you. You’re enjoying the peace of the financial flow. You’re having the confidence you, you have probably invested in some asset classes to support your personal wealth.

Asset classes are different categories where we build wealth, bonds, CDs, real estate, the stock market, commodities. These are all different asset classes. Even the insurance that you buy that gives you dividends is an asset class.

That’s a whole [00:22:00] nother topic for another day.

But when you’re in the sustainable stage of money and your business, you don’t only have business revenue and money, you also have now built it in your personal life.

The next stage, is Surplus. Where you’ve got plenty and now you can begin to think about making different choices to scale. You can think about embracing philanthropy more regularly in your business. You can have scholarships. You can do all kinds of things that surplus allows you to do.

You can go on more retreats with other women in business. I love going on retreats with women. I love hosting retreats for women. I love going on retreats. My friend Stephanie, who’s also my client, and she says, “Caterina come to Thailand with me for a yoga retreat.” I [00:23:00] could be a insta yes for that. I don’t even have to look at everything in my account ’cause I know, ’cause I’m in there regularly. I know I got plenty to go to Thailand. Are you following me?

That’s what I want for you. Surplus, real financial freedom that you’re blissing at, the choices you get to make because you have surplus.

The next category is Soaring. You have complete clarity and confidence around your money. Your money’s abundant. It’s working for you.

And you know what? You have other income aside from your business revenue, from these other asset classes that, hey, if you wanna slow down, if you wanna take a break, if you wanna take a vacation, there’ll still be money coming in.

You feel [00:24:00] so supported and you feel like you have so much financial power. That’s what I want for you.

And then the last stage is Significance. When you have handled your money in all the areas for yourself, for your family, for your business, and then you get to focus on giving back more, helping more people at your own expense because you got plenty. That’s significance and that my friend is what I want for you.

Take a deep breath.

I want you to think about what you’re gonna do based on our time together today.

What have we talked about in our money chat that you said, “Caterina? I’m hearing you. I’m gonna put some attention on that. I’m gonna make a change here. I’m gonna embrace doing [00:25:00] this more regularly.”

And guess what? You, my friend and I, we’re gonna have another chat in a couple weeks and we’re gonna get more into all the different ways that are gonna support you more with your business and your money. More of a roadmap and an action plan.

Because I want you to massively monetize in your business. ‘Cause the more you’re massively monetizing, that means the more impact you’re having. That means the more people you’re helping, and that means also the more you’re blissing and that’s why you started your business, to help others to bliss and thrive in your own life.

And let’s get you to more significance.

Your business is your ticket to having the ideal life that you want, and part of that [00:26:00] is creating more money empowerment for yourself.

By the way, if you are not on my list so that I can invite you to any events we’re doing and any exciting locations, or I can invite you to my monthly free workshop. Hello! Do a workshop on speaking, do workshops on sales, do workshops on retreats. On how to host retreats on all kinds of hot topics.

We’ve done over 150 episodes. If you’ve not listened, please subscribe so you can get all of our latest episodes. I’ve got gals telling me they’re listening to my podcast twice a day. That makes me bliss. Hopefully listening to more episodes will make you bliss.

Reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn. I’m happy to connect with you. I’d love to have you join us at one of our amazing retreats for women on a [00:27:00] mission.

Remember, you’ve got massive value to bring. There’s a lifetime supply of people to serve. Let’s amplify your money savvy. Let’s amplify your bank account so that you can bliss and thrive more in your business.

Caterina Rando, sending you some love. Can’t wait to hear what you’re doing to uplift yourself in your life.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.