WOMEN, LET'S TALK ABOUT EARNING MONEY

I have NOT always felt excited to talk about this, let me just say that. I know that this topic is not something that is overly comfortable for so many of us to talk about for lots of reasons and I want to preface this episode by saying this has been my experience too.

When I first started running my business, the money stuff was absolutely the thing I buried my head in the sand about the most. Coming from decades of working in the non profit sector, to go from having a set salary and applying for funding for different causes that I worked in to creating products and offers where I was asking people to pay me was a big leap. A really big, uncomfortable, hard leap.

I had to learn pretty quickly because the truth is, if your business isn’t making money, it’s not a business.

More than that, if your business is not making money in strategic ongoing ways, it is not sustainable and that’s a really hard place to operate from – when you feel like things are so unstable. That’s when we feel like we need to scramble, to undersell, to contort what we do to suit what we think people want.

So I want you to know that me feeling comfortable talking about making money in my business is something that has been about 4 years in the making. I took on a coach to help me with this stuff, I started opening the conversation in my community about money and I’ve learned a huge amount about the massive importance of being money literate and assured in my business so I want to share some of that with you in case you’re in that position too – where making money or talking about your work or selling or pricing feels hard. You’re not the only one, trust me.

 Why do we struggle to talk about money as women?

I think a large amount of our hesitation or fear of money conversations comes from women having been kept out of money conversations for many many years. It really is a new phenomenon in western society that women are able to earn good money on their own terms and have economic autonomy. It’s only in the last 40 years that we have been able to have our own bank accounts or mortgages in our names without male signatories. I imagine if you look down your family tree, there are only a few women who have been able to access the opportunities women now have to run their own businesses or work their way up in terms of earning.

So even though we have more access to earning money and having a financial say in our own lives, it makes sense that it still feels really taboo or new for women to be talking about this stuff because it IS still so new in terms of our access.

And when you’ve been kept out of the conversation for as long as we have, we naturally will feel timid about entering into it or feeling like we have any authority to do so.

And many of us have complicated relationships with money; with poverty, with debt, with guilt about our upbringings or privileges. Many of us women likely carry all of those experiences and feelings into our businesses and can recognise that they have an impact in how we show up, how we price, how we ask people to buy from us etc.  In order for us to get more comfortable with all of those things, we have to face them, acknowledge and own them as part of our story and also believe that it’s important for us to be paid for our work and to earn money with autonomy.

And our culture sends women messages about our relationships with money too, right? It plays us off as the spenders, the shoppers, demonising women’s relationship to money in really patronising ways. We also know that women who are financially successful are also scrutinised more, and the conflation rests in our mind that being a woman who makes money means you are going to be perceived as being less likeable. We know how much likeability can be a safety lever for us so we can see how women are likely to shrink when it comes to money because the risk of not being liked feels too much.

We also are managing the reality of seeing how money and power works in the world, and it doesn’t take long to observe that the accumulation and distribution of wealth is so screwed up and toxic. It has resulted in an individualised, patriarchal, capitalist society.

It’s likely that because of what we see now that our associations with money are that it can be detrimental and corruptive rather than being something that allow us freedom and greater opportunities to be generous, to change systems or create new and better ways of working.

And so with all that, it is natural that we fear money, or we fear what having money or asking for money will bring. Will it lump us into the same patriarchal, capitalistic society that we know isn’t good for the world? Will it show US to be unlikeable if we ask for things or desire more?

Women and money

What is crucial to know is that actually women operate really differently from men when it comes to wealth. Research shows women are naturally more generous, better at handling money than men and more attuned to using our money wisely and for good.

We are more likely to give to charity, give to more charities, and give more often.

Households headed by single females give 57% more to charity than those headed by single males.

Men tend to favour charitable contributions for their tax advantages. Women tend to give largely out of empathy and connection to certain causes.

Women in the top 25% of permanent income status give 156% more than men in the same category. 

One quarter of high net worth women support causes or organizations aimed at benefiting women and girls. They say that their number one motivation for this giving is their belief that it is the most efficient way to solve societal problems.

Women tend to view wealth as a means by which to articulate their value set.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?! WE ARE TO BE TRUSTED. WOMEN ARE TO BE TRUSTED WITH MONEY!

And the only way we can turn things around in terms of how money is shared in the world is if we harness our courage and are brave enough to ask for what we want. To put our hands up and say, I’ll have that. I can trust myself to earn this.

We have an opportunity to reimagine how the world could look it we had more women earning money, creating new solutions to the worlds problems and getting paid for it. But to do that have to be willing to step into our own space and ask for what we want.

And even better, by doing this, we can begin to show younger women coming up in the world how women can earn money, have autonomy, shift inequality and use their earning power for good.

If we continue to shrink around money, neglect to offer our work out and keep our heads buried in the sand about this stuff It’s going to be harder for us to create a new collective narrative of the importance of women having equal earning power.

Why do we need to talk about money?

Here are some other REASONS WHY IT’S IMPORTANT for us to care about money and getting paid:

+ So we can offer the best and maintain your integrity.

When we get paid for what we do it allows us to bring ourselves to our work in a different way or energy. We show up differently when we feel like our work is valued well. Always doing stuff for free or discounted is going to lead to resenting your work and losing steam.

It’s also important because women need to be more integrated into economic spheres.

We need more women in boardrooms, making decisions for fairer worlds, investing in good, sustainable ways, having a seat at the table. We need more women using their money to create change, to even things out in our unbalanced world and enconomy!

+ So we have sustainable businesses to offer

Another reason it’s important for you to care about money and get paid for what you do is this reality: if you don’t, you will not have a business or offering to enjoy and serve. Plain and simple. If you continue to undercharge, not ask for what you want, not be clear about your money situation, you wont be able to continue doing the work that you love because you wont be able to afford to!

We also need to remember that when we offer our work out to people, we are giving others the opportunity to invest in things that might solve their problems or help them. Someone out there really needs and is ready to invest in you and whatever product or service you have to offer. Shrinking from money conversations is actually denying people the opportunity to get the thing they might really need from you! Don’t patronise people by playing small with your gifts and skills, assuming they won’t pay for them. You may have just what someone needs.

 + Because women can be trusted with money

And finally, this conversation is important because you are absolutely to be trusted to earn good money. You can trust yourself to remain the amazing, generous, creative person that you are if you ask for what you want. Selling what you do, offering your products out to people, pitching for business, calling in clients, earning money in ways that you never imagined does not change your goodness. You can be trusted to do that. In fact, we need you to do that.

I wonder if any of this is stirring something in you right now, or if you’re feeling a shift with how you’ve been feeling about earning money or asking for what you want in your business? I hope it injects a little courage into your soul today and I’d love it if you’d pass it on to a friend who needs that too.

THE TROUBLE WITH HUSTLE CULTURE

I want to address Hustle Culture today because this is something that I’ve become increasingly aware of in online coaching spaces.

The idea that our productivity is measurable.

Or that if you work harder and faster and more that somehow your value increases.

It’s the message that if we just keep pushing through hard stuff, we’ll be met with success on the other side. It’s the quotes on Instagram that encourage us to ‘rise and grind’ or ‘Don’t stop when you’re tired, stop when you’re done’.

The reality is that lessons on the dangers of hustle culture and quotes like these are often learned by burnout. This message, which is often found in the entrepreurial world, dominated by masculine voices, lacks so much nuance, context and real life grounding.

We are sweeping these pressurised ideas of what it means to achieve success or go after our dreams over the lives of real people with a huge spectrum of differing responsibilities, of access, of mental health needs, of time constraints, of financial obstacles, of physical abilities. And when we hold this culture up as the one that is the pinnacle, and fob all of that contextual stuff off as ‘excuses’ then the damage is absolutely real.

It leaves people questioning their worth, the value of what they have to offer, their ability to do things, their competency and it quashes their passion, their desires and their motivation. Hustle culture has a temporary dopamine hit of motivation, but it’s not a sustainable way to work and it’s a toxic message to peddle.

So today I want to talk through four ways that I see hustle culture seeping into how we are expected to work today, why it’s a troubling message and what the alternative is.

 The problems with hustle culture and what the alternatives are

The first thing I want to raise about hustle culture is the idea that if you are someone who is building a business, a community or creating something to put out there and offer.

1)     Feeling like you need to always be on and available.

Hustle culture is not really interested in boundaries. It talks a lot about how you can’t miss opportunities, you have to seize them no matter what and offer the very best, most responsive output to your clients, customers or community.

This idea that human beings have the capacity to always be responsive to the needs of their business is dangerous and is a quick way to send your nervous system into high alert which is a really harmful state for our bodies to be in consistently.

We are not bots, we are humans. We do not owe our IG followers or inboxes quick responses. To think that we need to reply to every single question, response or request that comes our way lest we miss something is scarcity mentality dressed up as being attentive to our community.

This scarcity mentality is rife in hustle culture, but it’s often disguised as not letting opportunities go by. But behind this is the reality that often we believe that if we don’t make ourselves available at all times, if we don’t respond to every single DM, if we don’t reply to every question from potential customers or clients then they will go away and there’ll be less for us.

That’s simply not true.

They may go elsewhere but it doesn’t mean there’s less for you. I don’t know about you but I want to build a business where my clients know, appreciate and respect my boundaries about my availability to respond to them. I want them to see me as human, with complex and widespread responsibilities outside of my work. A lot of my own work around this has been about trusting that my work stands up, even when I step away from it or take breaks. It’s been about trusting that the value I have to offer isn’t connected to how available I am to be all things to all people. I wonder what shifting around you might need to do in your head or in practice to reroute the idea that you shouldn’t be expected to be on and available in your business all of the time.

2) Using guilt or shame to attract customers

The next message of hustle culture that I want to address is the practice of using guilt and shame to attract customers or clients. No no no no no.

I have seen this SO much in the online business world – the language that is put out through copy, sales pages, Instagram etc is all about focusing on the dissatisfaction and pain of the potential customer or client. It’s a technique that works, for sure. I’m not saying it doesn’t work. But using tactics to rush people into buying from you or alluding that there is something wrong with them in order to sell your stuff is manipulative at best and ethically wrong at worst and isn’t actually creating a culture of business honesty and integrity.

This kind of marketing preys on peoples vulnerabilities as a quick way to get conversions and close the sale. Again, it treats people like commodities to accumulate from. It’s scarcity driven, not authenticity driven. This type of communication comes in all different forms but usually it’s packaged up with some sort of urgent but arbitrary time frames and pricing. It also plays on language that would have you believe that without this thing, you’ll be less than, stuck, or left out.

What we need is more business owners communicating about your business from a place of trust and honesty, highlighting the value of what they do, speaking to what their product or service offers and allowing people space to make up their minds, rather than hustling people into things as a statement connected to their struggle.

3)  Assigning worth or value to your output

There is definitely something satisfying about giving your best to a project or idea, right? That is a great feeling. Knowing that you’ve committed yourself to something and seen it through and are really proud of your work. But with hustle culture looming around us we have to be careful that we aren’t conflating working hard with hustle.

Because in hustle culture, it’s more about showing that you’re working hard, glorifying your output and your ability to grind more than it is about the quality of your work and your dedication to doing a good job and preserving your capacity limits. It’s Instagram posts about how busy you are, more as a humble brag nod to how much you work. It’s a reinforcement of the idea that if you’re not struggling, you’re probably not working hard enough. Which we know is bullshit.

When we assign work or value on someone’s ability to push their mental and physical capacity to the limits or on how productive someone is, we are bending to the capitalism playbook that would have us think that the only thing that matters is accumulation and increasing the bottom line. We know that humans are made for more than just working. We were made for community, to experience pleasure, to enjoy rest, for curiosity and innovation. Not to grind away as a badge of honour to the detriment of all of those things.

For those of us who have grown up with messages about our productivity being a measure of our worthiness, it takes a great deal of unpicking. It’s hard for our systems to go from filling up empty space with stuff to do, always improving or striving for something to relaxing into the margins and being at peace with our efforts in the different seasons of life.

It takes some practicing being able to slow things down, being OK with not always doing, setting limitations to our work days and what we do. Hustle culture creates an addiction to doing and elevates it as the most important part of the human experience. Reality is, if we love what we do and we want to have energy to sustain or even regenerate ourselves in our work, we have to practice knowing what is ‘enough’ for us to take on and do so we can be fully present, attentive and aligned with our work.

4) The fall narrative that hustle is a fast track to success

Another fall out of hustle culture is the idea that there is a fast track path or quick hack for growth or success. Hustle culture will try to whisper to you that there are insider ways that you can access the next level and you can do it with speed.

It’s important that we break down exactly what it is this message wants us to hustle towards? What is the end game of hustle culture and it’s promise of “success”? Is it to make loads of money? Is it to have thousands of followers? Is it to feel more freedom? Maybe it’s not even a consideration. Maybe the end goal isn’t even something clear but feels like a slippery slope we feel we should go down if we want to feel like what we’re doing is worth something.

“Once I crack 10k followers, everyone will take me seriously”

“Once I have sold out launches I’ll be known for what I do”

These illusions of fast tracks to growth or success, however you want to define it – are a fools errand. They are often laden with risky or unfounded business advice that have big promises but no real substance.

But the real fools errand quality is that it robs us of the joy (and pain) of being a beginner, a learner, of growing with your community, of trying things out on your own terms, of factoring in your own very nuanced life, of building steady foundations to your business that feel honest to you and reflect what you want to build.

We have forgotten that there’s nothing to win here. No one is going to be crowned fastest business winner of all time. It’s not even that the goalposts will keep moving, it’s that the goalposts don’t even exist. They are a construct that keeps us feeling inadequate and competitive and have us convinced that we are always too far away from it.

There is no hack to growing your business. There is only you and your aligned, trustworthy way of showing up for your work, doing your best and letting people know how they can connect with it.

Ultimately, hustle culture leads us down the path of always having to prove ourselves. Prove that we’re good, we’re hard working, we’re worth paying attention to. Hustle culture sneaks up on those of us who are ambitious and believe we have something to offer that is valuable. What it robs us of though is the ability to be present and grateful for what we have, because it will always insist there’s more to gain.

Happiness becomes a threat to our sense of achievement because contentment has been sold to us by hustle culture as laziness.

Don’t fall for it my friends, take the longer, steadier more honest path.

Don’t give up on your ideas and your beautiful work. Honour it by putting scaffolding around it that will hold it up, that will offer you spaciousness to stay creative and in your integrity and know that I’m right along with you, trying to do the same.

5 WAYS TO CULTIVATE YOUR INTUITION

What do you think of when you see the word ‘intuition’? I wonder what preconceived ideas or experiences you have with intuition.

Maybe it’s not something you’ve explored? Maybe it’s something that has felt a bit woo to you? Maybe you have had experiences where you’ve not trusted your intuition and regretted it? Maybe it’s something you really believe in and want to cultivate more – whatever it is, cultivating your intuition is an ongoing process but it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Learning how to access my intuition or my own inner wisdom or my gut sense is something that has transformed my approach to my business and my life and I want to share with you why it’s important. I also want to discuss what we can do to nurture it and use it to help us make decisions when we come up against that tough stuff and in every day life.

I believe intuition is a superpower.

We all possess it – a gift within us that is our most sacred, trustworthy, brilliant internal guidance system. Like a compass that we can use to understand ourselves more deeply.

And yet most of us dismiss it, or forget about it or override it because we live in such a fast-paced, quick fix society where we want other people to tell us the answers to all of our problems and how we should live.

Our rational brains are absolutely brilliant in their ability to help us find logic and make sense of things, but the place of intuition in our life means that it can be called on for a deeper connection to the world around us and most importantly a deeper connection to ourselves, our desires and our boundaries.

Most of us are familiar with our inner critics, I talk about that a lot – the voice that tells us our limitations, that quashes our enthusiasm, that tries to keep us safe from any risk, that works to pull us back in when we contemplate change or stepping outside our comfort zone.

If our inner critic is the voice of limitation, our intuition is the inner voice of wisdom and curiosity– the one that tells you that you should move towards the things that light you up, or avoid the person who seems great on paper but makes you uncomfortable. It’s that sense of knowing or feeling in your gut. And it's something we should all be not only paying more attention to but be learning to nurture and grow into.

I know that the world is noisy. Our social media feeds feel noisy. Opinions of others feel noisy. Our minds are noisy. We need to see getting connected to our intuition as an opportunity to retreat from that.

Your intuition is the most wise, accurate, deep part of your true self and I want to share with you ways that we can begin to hone this part of who we are, to allow it to have a stronger presence or prominence in our lives and see how amazing, calming and discerning we can feel when we give ourselves space to understand it more.

Like courage, intuition can be cultivated. It can be strengthened with practice so I want to give you five tips that I know have helped me and I know will help you to amplify your trustworthy inner voice of intuition.

1.     The first thing that’s important is to identify which voices are NOT yours.

Before you can hear your own voice, you need to sift through all the ones that are not yours. Being selective about the type of content we choose to consume and being mindful of the amount that we consume helps to keep our own thoughts from drowning out.

The less unnecessary information we absorb on a regular basis, the more it can amplify our own voice and our ability to hear our own thoughts and the more meaningful it will become. The same goes for other areas of your life where there are many opinions filtering in – be aware of whose voices you hear when you think about the things you would love to do or how you want to move forward. It’s really important to have good boundaries around whose opinions matter to us and what we are prepared to engage in so that we can make sure we don’t lose our own voice and thoughts in the midst.

2. Secondly, honing your intuition is so much easier when you align with your values so get to know where you stand on things and what is of utmost importance to you as a person.

Your mind can often steer you away from your integrity in sneaky ways, but your intuition will not. We have all had experiences where we have or have been tempted to betray our values. Learn what it feels like to behave in alignment with your values, and you'll start to sense your intuition more clearly. The more that you connect to your core values, the more you will sense your intuition guiding you towards or away from things.

It might be worth spending some time writing down 5-7 values that are most important to you in life or work. What do you want to anchor your intuition? When you know what your values are, your intuition is more able to function - you can discern more easily what is for you and what is not.

3.     The third thing is regular journaling.

It doesn’t have to be long, It doesn’t have to be hard, but even setting five minutes at some time during the day and sitting down and writing out what is going on in your head, how you are feeling, what you are struggling with and what you want to feel or do to move forward is POWERFUL. It allows the brain to slow down – even the act of writing with a pen and paper nowadays is significant in helping us to slow down because we’re so used to fast typing or texting.

So many of us are resistant to this practice because we might not know what to say or write, but there are no rules and that’s the point. It’s about slowing down, allowing your brain to release some of the things swirling around and seeing what comes up.

To get the most out of journalling, the focus must be on self-expression through sustainable practice. So, how it feels rather than how it looks, and realistic consistency determined by you. There is immense power in habitually making time to listen to your thoughts, which only serves to strengthen the connection with our intuition.

4.     On a similar vein – the fourth thing is finding quiet space for ourselves.

Quiet space can be in the form of meditation or just taking five minutes outside with our feet on the ground or lying down for a couple of minutes, doing some deep breathing, feeling each muscle release and sending breath around your body.

Finding a few moments a day for quiet space, allows for an opportunity to quiet our mind and what's going on around us. These pockets of quiet can bring us back to the present and keep us focused on what we can do in that specific moment, which is so often all we have control of anyway.

There are some great free apps for this – I’ve been using Simple Habit for a while which allows you to really tailor your meditation for whatever time of the day or situation you’re in and whatever time you have. I did a 2 minute meditation before I started work today and it was a great way of just stopping, getting quiet and observing my breath before I began my day.

5. Finally, a really clever, simple but powerful tip for tuning into your intuition can be simply CHANGING THE "WHY" QUESTIONS TO "WHAT" QUESTIONS. 

When you come to the point of struggle or resistance or feel the urge to shame yourself (Hello, inner critic!) you can begin to return back to your intuition by framing your inner dialogue. So instead of asking "Why am I struggling with this? Why do I always do this? Why can I never get this together?" a more intuitive way to approach yourself might be to ask "What is it about this task that I'm struggling with? What is it that is keeping me stuck in this situation? What am I worried about here? What is it that I need to move ahead here"

Often when we ask why, the question is framed in a way to bring shame. But when we ask what – we are searching for deeper reasons to connect to and that can reveal some powerful answers if we are willing to listen closely to ourselves.

So – 5 ways that we can nurture our intuition and access the guidance, self-trust and wisdom that we want.

WHY WE NEED TO STOP FEELING EMBARRASSED BY OUR AMBITION

How do you feel when you think about the word ambition?

What feelings or image or emotions come up when you think of it? 

 Now take a moment to think about an ambitious woman. What feelings come up for you then?

It seems we’ve painted ambition with a dirty brush. By taking the toxic elements that we perceive about ambition and skewing its meaning, particularly when it’s used in the description of a woman.

For this very reason, I KNOW so many women who find it hard to admit they have ambition. This admission comes with a fear of being judged for having ambition because our society has historically never allowed women to voice, let alone celebrate, their desire to achieve and do more.

As if wanting more for this one life that we’ve got is greedy, needy or will make us unlikeable in some way.

In fact, there have been studies conducted by leading research institutions such as Harvard and Columbia University, dissecting the perception of ambitious women. The research shows that culturally, ambition is seen as a positive trait in men yet criticised in women. 

When presented with two case studies (one male, one female) with exactly the same goals, ideas and personality traits the female was found to be more scrutinised and rejected.

I see the repercussions of this culture affecting so many women in my line of work. In my programmes, I see women who are terrified to admit that they have ideas, aspirations and goals that they’d like to make a reality.

 The truth is that they have every reason to be afraid of owning their brilliance and their desires. This is because we

a) Have never made women feel safe to have or share their ambitions or to grow and desire their goals without attaching a negative connotation to it, and 

b) We have neglected to create support systems that enable women to do this without feeling like they have to compromise other areas of their lives when they do.

Unfortunately women have good reason to be fearful of coming across as ambitious. We have demonised women’s aspirations and appetite for more by reducing it to mean that she’s ‘bossy’, pushy, untrustworthy, competitive, maybe even undesireable to a potential partner or a bit too big for her boots.

And yet we see other virtues of womanhood celebrated and elevated much more for being the ‘traditional’ values of womanhood that don’t allow women to move outside of the roles created for them by society – things like self-sacrifice, and caring for everyone else.

So what happens for women who face that fear with their ambition?

Well, we go into self-protection mode.

We end up hiding, feeling embarrassed, dumbing down our ideas, people-pleasing, apologising or not taking credit for our efforts, handing things over to other people when we’re capable and want to do things for ourselves, doubting our abilities, feeling resentful and worse than that – this resentment often leads women to judge each other and being competitive or bitchy.

We fall into the trap that society has set up for us and it keeps us small and scared, not realising this is exactly the intention of society and it’s a cycle that continues on and on.

 This needs to change.

We need to normalise, accept, celebrate and give each other permission to thrive in the ways that we want to.

To break this cycle that society has set up for us, we need to find supportive spaces to be more fully ourselves where we can own our ideas and goals as well as find cheerleaders to encourage us as we pursue the things we care about. 

It has to start with us.

And we have a responsibility to both own the desires and ambitions we have for ourselves as well as make sure that we are a safe person and place for other women to share their ambitions with.

When we own our ambitions and become safe places for other women to thrive how they want to, it releases other women to do the same. 

It’s our way of saying: “there is plenty of room for us all.” 

We all have different ideas of what fulfilment and desire looks like but the desire for them as a group is how we can help each other to be brave.

Ambition comes in many forms and we should just accept that it goes hand in hand with the stereotypes we’ve been given. As soon as we realise that ambition does not equate to the stereotypes then we can actually allow ourselves to be really inspired by each other.

This is how we can challenge these cultural tropes that paint women with ambition in a negative light.

There will always be those that are intimidated, threatened or resentful when they observe or encounter a woman who openly displays her ambition. There’s no getting around the risk of potential criticism or the opinions of others but it’s important to remember that other people’s responses to your ambition usually have nothing to do with you.

Their responses to us only really ever tell us about them.

 And so the questions I want to leave you with today are:

-        Are you willing to be loyal to your own curiosities and ideas? Are you ready to be loyal to yourself and your ambitions?

-        Where can you bring those ambitions and dreams to that feels safe and empowering?

-        How are you going to champion other women who are taking the risk to stretch and grow as well?

I hope this gives you some permission today, to be ambitious in whatever way you need to. To know that your ambition is not embarrassing or threatening – it is important and necessary for us to witness and own it.