Up Levelling Your Money Mindset Changes Everything in Business
Your money mindset in business is either the root of all evil or the reason a business owner flies. Okay, I’m being a little dramatic. But money mindset really is key to business growth — and notice I said business growth, not financial growth.
Your relationship with money is the difference between investing to grow and holding onto every last penny like your life depends on it. It’s literally how you will expand, or how you will retract.
What is mindset?
Before I talk about money, let’s talk about mindset itself, so you can start to understand how your relationship with money is impacting your business and your life. I say “start” because this might be the first time you’ve considered the effect your thinking and feelings about money have on your business. I also say “start” because this is ongoing work – never finished.
So, what is mindset?
It is a collection of beliefs, attitudes, and thought processes that shape how you perceive yourself and the world. It’s built through your upbringing, inherited from your parents and grandparents, shaped by what you heard, what you were told, and what you experienced.
How a money mindset is built
When I was growing up, hand-me-downs, second-hand clothes and your mum making things for you were normal. But perhaps for you, it felt shameful wearing your older sibling’s clothes. Maybe you were bullied at school for a second-hand uniform.
Growing up, you might have been told things like:
- Money doesn’t grow on trees.
- Things are tight right now.
- Money doesn’t buy happiness.
- It’s rude to talk about money.
These messages feed your money mindset alongside your own experiences. You might, for example, spend your wages the minute they land, because things were tight when you were growing up. Maybe for you, it’s hard to reach out for help around money, because you were taught it’s rude to talk about it. You might spend everything on clothes because of what happened at school, only to find yourself unable to pay rent and feeling like a bad money manager as a result.
How it shows up in business
The habits I’ve described above- overspending, spending money the moment it arrives, or even before it arrives, if they happen in your life, they will happen in your business in a similar or the same way. You might find yourself struggling month to month, stuck in a feast-and-famine cycle. And that, in turn, feeds all the negative feelings you already have about money.
But there’s an opposite extreme too: being such a brilliant manager of money that you restrict it to the point it can no longer breathe. Avoiding investment in your business, buying cheap to save, and not paying yourself. You’ll likely have more than enough sitting in your business current account and tax account, but in life, you’ll be struggling to pay your bills, saying no to treats, telling anyone who’ll listen that it’s “too expensive,” and putting yourself last on the list for anything and everything.
That last example was me.
It took my daughter repeating my own words back to me, hearing “it’s too expensive” come out of her mouth in a tone that was unmistakably mine, for me to realise I needed to change my relationship with money. That was the moment it stopped being an abstract idea about business strategy and became something I couldn’t ignore.
What is it costing you?
So many business owners, myself included, don’t realise their mindset around money could be exactly what’s holding them back. It could be:
- The reason you haven’t increased your pricing.
- What’s stopping you from hiring a VA to support your growth.
- Why your business is still limping along on outdated systems and software.
- The reason you discount on discovery calls and pile on extra bonuses.
- Why you’re always doing things on the cheap or hunting for the free version.
Money mindset can be the thing that keeps you stuck, or the thing that lets you expand into your next level, where you bravely raise your prices and start attracting higher-level clients. You start saying no to discounting, valuing yourself and what you offer, and begin to experience momentum in your business.
When you adopt the right mindset, you shift from merely surviving to truly thriving.
Your Money Mindset in Business: What Needs to Change
I’ve been on an incredible journey to understand my own relationship with money — working with coaches, reading books, doing “the work,” as they say. This is just one little blog, but if anything here has resonated, here are a few books I’d recommend:
- You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero
- Deliberate Receiving by Melody Fletcher
- Get Rich, Lucky Bitch by Denise Duffield-Thomas
- It’s Not About the Money by Catherine Morgan
I read the first three many years ago now; the fourth only recently, because you should never stop exploring this relationship, and there is always more work to be done.
If you’re unsure whether it’s your money mindset holding you back, I’d invite you to book a Discovery Call. We can explore what’s really going on and, if it feels right, I’ll share some of my favourite exercises for shifting your money mindset.