Handling finances can be a daunting task for many coaches, but Jo Lott emphasizes the importance of approaching this topic with a fresh perspective. She shares her personal journey of overcoming limiting beliefs about money and highlights the significance of connecting emotionally with financial goals.

Episode Timestamps:

• [00:02:00] Emotional connection to finances
• [00:06:00] Overcoming fear and knowledge gaps
• [00:13:00] Pricing strategy discussion
• [00:15:00] Price increases and value exchange
• [00:16:00] Planning for profit

Financial success isn't about numbers—it's about mindset. Your beliefs shape your business's financial potential.

Bonus: Download the exclusive financial goal-setting spreadsheet mentioned in the episode!

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Hello and welcome to Women in the Coaching Arena Podcast.

I'm so glad you're here.

I'm Jo Lott, a business mentor and ICF accredited coach and I help coaches to build brilliant businesses.

I know that when you prepare to enter the arena there is fear, self doubt, comparison, anxiety, uncertainty.

You can tend to armour up and protect yourself from vulnerability.

In this podcast I'll be sharing honest, not hype, practical and emotional tools to support you to make the difference that you're here for DARE greatly you belong in this arena.

Hello, welcome to the 91st episode of Women in the Coaching Arena.

I am so glad you are here.

I want to start by thanking you for rating and reviewing the podcast.

It has had a huge impact because I am now number four in the podcast marketing charts which is crazy considering there are huge people like Amy Porterfield and I'm ahead of Gary Vee by several steps.

So thank you so so much for rating and reviewing.

I am reading them all right now and I am so grateful.

Today I am covering how to handle your finances as a coach and I am covering this from a very different perspective than the expert perspective that I usually speak from in this podcast because I will admit that finances is my least, least favorite topic.

I have been stuck with limiting beliefs about not liking things like that that I am working through.

So I'm really excited to have hired a finance coach who I started with yesterday and I'm already seeing that it's a bit like when I first had my Kartra portal which is where I host my course and send all my emails from.

I absolutely hated logging in because I didn't know how to use it and it felt really techy and complicated.

So I would honestly be hyperventilating before logging in to send an email to you.

And now I know how to use it and it's fine.

So my finance coach assures me that by the end of our 12 weeks together I will enjoy my finances and I can really already see that by understanding more.

We enjoy things more.

So excited to share with you today my learnings because this week in my business of coaching group, I had a former client, Anja Langsch, run a workshop for us about finances.

So I wanted to share my insights from that workshop.

So the workshop was divided up into three areas.

So the first was connecting emotionally to your numbers.

We started by thinking about what feelings and emotions the thought of your company finances evoke in you.

So take a moment to think about what word comes to mind when you think about your company finances on the Day, we had a lot of comments like, overwhelmed, don't like it, stressed.

So there were many negative emotions coming up from the room around the feeling and emotions that come up.

The thoughts varied from not being particularly money driven.

I wouldn't say I am money driven.

I am experience driven.

So I love to buy experiences rather than buy goods.

Like, I'm not really bothered what car I have or clothes I have.

But what I do love to do is have an amazing time.

So I'm really excited to have booked onto Vicki Knight's retreat in Spain next year.

So it's things like that that are the reason that I have my business.

But it can be a bit of a blocker because therefore I'm not really thinking, oh, this is my financial goal.

I'm running short of meeting it because I haven't really got a purpose for the income.

So one thing Anja helped us with in the workshop was actually noting down all of our expenses.

So the things that we do need to pay.

So my Kartra, my podcast hosting, my virtual assistant, or people that help me, all of the things that I actually do need to pay.

And the part I really loved was noting down the things that we really do want.

So I would love to have an amazing holiday with my family, for example.

So why don't I put that in my spreadsheet as an actual thing that I would like to spend money on so I can actually choose a financial goal that is based on something rather than a figure plucked out of the air, which doesn't really drive me.

I was really successful at setting a goal and reaching it when I wanted a new front door.

So I used to have a white PVC front door, and I hated it.

And I had someone over to give us a quote for a new front door.

I was kind of thinking, oh, this is a bit extravagant.

You know, the front door's fine.

I don't really need this.

So I set myself a goal of getting that £2,000 for the front door within the next week.

And it was amazing because I was on holiday at the time, so I obviously couldn't do sales calls or anything.

So what I did was created a quick sales page, put out an offer for a short program that wouldn't require people to have sales calls with me, and actually made 3,000.

So I think I paid for more than just the door, maybe the doorstep as well.

So it was the most exciting thing to really visualize what I wanted the money for and actually do something to reach that goal.

So for you, think about what you really, really want.

What can this money do for you?

Is it the freedom to not have to go back to a job?

What is it for you that's really going to drive you if you aren't particularly motivated by just the figures alone?

The other reasons for resistance around numbers is that fear of failure.

If you set a goal, then what if you don't reach it?

There's also often a lack of knowledge or skills around finances.

I loved yesterday when we logged into my Xero.

I learned how to create reports, really see how much I was bringing in each month, how much I was spending, what I was spending it on, what headings.

We spent time dividing up my sales which were just all bundled into one into specific programs like my seven pound onboarding guide and my Signature Solution online course and then my business of coaching program.

And it started to feel really fun actually seeing where the money was coming in, which will help to make really logical decisions about where I need to double down my efforts.

Anja shared a wonderful quote from Albert Einstein which was the world as we have created it is a process of our thinking.

It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

And so therefore we need to get rid of those limiting beliefs that we aren't driven by money or that we don't understand our finances or all the things that we can end up saying to ourselves which are not going to be helpful in us really mastering this.

And it's funny I say I'm not money driven when actually my entire business is built on the premise of helping women make money.

Because I believe that when a woman makes money they have a greater choice and voice in their life.

They have freedom, they get better rights, they are heard more, they are respected more.

So actually it's really important to start to figure this out and really step into being a successful businesswoman, which I definitely do and am.

Then it's something to really work on and it's a daily practice money mindset work because there will always be your next level.

For me, for example, I went over the VAT threshold.

So essentially when you earn more than £90,000 in a 12 month period, you have to add 20% VAT onto all of your prices for your clients to pay.

And I just couldn't face putting my prices up 20%.

So for a really long time I have been paying my clients vat.

It's not something that the organization pays, it's the consumer that pays vat.

But because of my own money mindset beliefs that a 20% rise out of the blue was too much I stayed there for a really long time and paid that 20% for others.

I have now become accustomed to that price jumping up by 20% and I have added that VAT now on all of my prices and surprise, surprise, people are still buying.

I'm making just as many sales as I was before.

So it's interesting that actually it was all in my mind and therefore the world was a product of my thinking.

I was holding myself back.

I could have put those prices up many, many months ago and saved myself probably £12,000 that I paid out of my own income to ensure that my clients didn't have to pay their own vat.

This limited thinking has really held me back.

Have a think about where it's holding you back in your business.

What are your stories about money?

How did your earliest memories of money shape your later beliefs?

How do you feel when you communicate the cost of your services to a new client?

There were so many great questions Anja asked us on the day to really help us get underneath these feelings that can really limit you in your business.

And you covered the CBT cognitive triangle so that our emotions, thoughts and behavior are all interlinked.

Just like I have said.

My thinking was no one will ever buy again if I put my prices up by 20%.

Therefore I felt anxious.

Therefore my behavior meant that I pretended I was too busy to go into my site and figure out how to add vat which led to the result that I essentially am down £12,000 in VAT.

So really think about what your beliefs are around money.

I think the most dangerous ones I have seen from clients perspective is oh it's okay, my husband earns loads of money so I don't need to do this.

And what happens is they don't do it, therefore they go out of business and they don't get to do the work that they are here for.

So a lot of the time I love to think about Taylor Swift doesn't need to show up in Wembley because she is already a billionaire, but she chooses to do that because she has a talent and wants to motivate, inspire people and use her God given talents in this world.

So it's not about sitting there going I don't need the money, she doesn't need the money.

But she's not just sitting on the sofa because she doesn't need the money.

So again, really dangerous beliefs.

So have a think about whether you have any of those beliefs and if so how are these beliefs holding you back in your business?

And just shared another brilliant quote which really resonated with me.

It was financial success is not a hard science.

It's a soft skill where how you behave is more important than what you know.

So as I've talked about here, my own mishap with my finances was all because of my own thoughts, feelings and emotions, rather than the practical thing of knowing that I need to be vat, therefore I should go into my system and add it.

So again, if you have those thoughts, you're not a numbers person, then think about it as various different skills and not just those number skills.

There are so many other things involved.

We then moved on from the emotions of finance onto pricing strategy.

We talked about the value of what we provide, thinking about our target market as well as competitor research.

And what it really helped me to think about is actually working out how much time, effort and energy I put into each and every client that I have.

So for example, working out how much one to one time is every single client costing would really enable me to think, gosh, you know what, like this is an absolute bargain.

So if you really, really monitor everything people get and the value that they receive, then it will help you to actually own your prices.

I'm recording this episode on Black Friday and we talked about discounts and special offers.

I did put out a Black Friday deal today, which is not my usual style, but I have these beautiful images where I'm standing at this black wall, so it's like the perfect time to use them.

So I though never discount the price of my program because I feel like it's unfair to anyone who's already in the program who has paid full price.

So what I did instead was introduced an extended payment plan so it reduces the cost and you can start from 270 pounds plus fat.

So it just helps people to actually be able to take that step.

I also said that people could start now, but their official support period from me won't start until January.

So they can get started now, come to our calls, book their one on one with me, but they will still gain their full six month support from January.

So essentially it was a way of talking to action takers that really just want to get moving now and be ahead by January.

So that is how I approach discounts and special offers.

So never discounting the price, but thinking about bonuses and other things to help people to take action.

Now we talked about whether you increase your prices regularly.

I have increased my prices probably every year.

I don't always do it in January, I just do it when I want to.

I think I again am A bit of an emotional person and I raise my prices when I get to the stage that I start to feel resentful of my time and energy into each client for the price I'm offering it at.

I believe that buying a service is an energy exchange and I literally feel it in my body, my mind, my soul when that energy exchange is off.

So that is, to be honest, when I raise my prices.

Like I said, this is an episode from a non finance type of person.

The final part of the session was planning for profit and financial management.

My favorite part of this section was asking yourself, what does your business need right now?

And I love that because if I had asked myself that question, what does my business need right now?

My business needs that the clients pay the VAT that the tax man has put on.

That is what my business needed.

But I let my emotions get in the way of like, they're going to be paying me.

No, no, no, they're not paying me, they're paying the tax man.

If at that period I'd have been able to ask myself that question that Anja asked us on the day, what does my business need right now?

It would have been an easy decision because my business needed that to happen.

So I really love that reframe from it being people paying you personally to paying your business like, this is your business.

I don't take home what my business brings in because I have a team, I have a podcast to pay, I have corporation tax, I have vat, I have other tax and expenses.

So it's, it's that switch which is really happening for me at the moment as we record this episode to see my business and my company finances as exactly that.

A business which has needs, has expenses, and has financial targets which need to be met for that business to thrive.

Anja has a brilliant financial goal setting spreadsheet that isn't on her standard website.

But she kindly shared it with my group and has agreed that I can share it on this podcast.

It's an extremely valuable tool.

So I would get over to the show notes to the link because it will help you to set goals that actually mean something that therefore drive you forward.

So I hope today's episode was helpful and you appreciated my honest share that even as a business coach myself, we all have our strengths and weaknesses and what you can do to improve those weaknesses is hire brilliant people to educate yourself.

As a woman in finances, a lot of it is down to those beliefs that we were raised with about money and girls not being good with numbers and this type of thing.

So I'm so, so glad that there are people out there doing this important work.

And like I say at the end of every episode, trust yourself, believe in yourself, and be the wise gardener who keeps on watering the seed.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Women in the Coaching Arena.

I have a mass of free resources on my website Joannal coaching.com that's Joanna with an A and lot with two T's.

Joannalottcoaching.com and I'll also put links in the show notes below.

Let me know if you found this episode useful, share it with a friend and leave me a review and I will personally thank you for that.

Remember to trust yourself, believe in yourself, and be the wise gardener who keeps on watering the seed.

Get into the arena, dare greatly and try.