Have you ever shied away from selling a bigger price point to a customer because you didn’t think they could afford it? Or what about putting off investing in your business because you have a psychological issue with debt? Believe it or not, your thoughts on money can affect more than your business’s bottom line.
Your personal beliefs about finances are what Kristen calls your money story, and this week she’s going to explain how your own money story can keep you from showing up in your business. And (of course!) put you on a track to healing.
Here are a few highlights:
- The 4 phases to work through in order to heal your relationship with money
- Kristen’s personal book recommendations for anyone needing guidance in how to create their money story
- Explaining Appropriate vs Inappropriate vs Strategic debt
- Why you should never stop investing in your business
- How to know when you’ve healed your relationship with money
Without healing your personal money story, you put fear and anxiety in the driver’s seat. This affects how you sell and serve your audience. Before you give someone else the keys to your success, try and heal the narrative and live your own money story.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://kristenboss.com/question
Connect with Kristen:
Do you have a business full of customers and almost no builders? You’re in need of a reboot! Learn the three skills you can learn that will completely change your recruitment game. Check it out here.
If you’re ready to learn the simple process of running your social selling business online, you have to check out Kristen’s live group coaching program! The Social Selling Academy: www.thesocialsellingacademy.com
Interested in Kristen’s exclusive mastermind for six-figure earners in the network marketing industry? Get all the details and join the waitlist here.
Transcript from Episode #68: Healing Your Money Story
Kristen Boss (00:00): Welcome to Purposeful Social Selling with Kristen Boss. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. I’m a mindset and business coach with more than 15 years experience in both the product and service based industry. I believe that social selling is the best business model for people wanting to make an impact while they make serious income. This is the podcast for the social seller, who is tired of feeling inauthentic in their business and desires to find a more purposeful and profitable way of growing their business. In today’s social media landscape. In this podcast, you will learn what it takes to grow a sustainable business through impactful and social marketing. It’s time to ditch the hustle and lead from the heart. Let me show you the new way.
Kristen Boss (00:48): Hey bosses, welcome to another week of the podcast today. Before we dive into the episode, I want to shout out some amazing academy students. We had them, I know this is a little later, but we had them do a goal challenge for the month of August and they learned to commit to a goal. They decided the goal at the beginning of the month and they held to it no matter what. Which has me thinking, I’ll probably do another podcast episode, particularly I’ve done a podcast episode about goals prior to this, but I’m definitely thinking about more nuances that people struggle with when it comes to goal setting that I’m super excited to talk about. But I just want to give a shout out to a few students in the academy. This one’s from Erin. She said it was an awesome month for my team. I doubled my volume and ranked up with a huge bonus.
Kristen Boss (01:39): My team made new ranks. We enrolled a ton of new members and I focused solely on service mindset and systems. It was gold. Thanks, SSA. I love it. And then we had this one from Becky. She said she had a record breaking sales month for her. She also had her first level to recruit and she’s so excited that her downlines are starting to build her teams. Another one, I have the name missing here, but they said woke up and I made my rank and then found out today I had the second highest enrollment in our bigger team of 7,000 people. And one of my members tied for third moral of the story. I love this, calm your butt down and also serve breathe, serve, offer value. Do a model serve, repeat so good. We get a lot of celebrations inside the academy at a regular basis.
Kristen Boss (02:35): Just people having breakthrough and realizing that they can still hit their goals when they learn to work at the goals from a different mindset. So huge congrats to the students. And we had a bunch of people join with our new book bonus. So exciting a little bug. I want to put it in your ear, cause I want you to be thinking about the last 90 days of this year. And I want you to ask yourself when you sat down and wrote out your goals, January one, this year, are you where you wanted to be at this point this year? And I want you to get honest with yourself of why you think that is, and maybe what story you might be telling yourself of why you haven’t either gone as far as you thought you would, or you haven’t hit your goals, or may maybe why you’ve started to negotiate on your goals.
Kristen Boss (03:21): But you know, the last 90 days of the year, it’s the last quarter of the year. And it truly is a really critical time for you to dig in, create a lot of consistency and create your sustainable business habits. Now, because the work you do now is going to position you for the fruit that you’re going to see the first of the year because that’s when a lot of people, you know, they have some Christmas money they’re ready to buy. You know, if you’re in the wellness industry, that’s when a lot of people are ready to recommit to their health goals. The new year is a really big time of year for this industry. So I really want to encourage you to be thinking about that now and how you need to be serving and adding value to your audience. Because like I said, the work you put in now is going to help create the results for the first of the year.
Kristen Boss (04:09): So there’s going to be something pretty fun happening in the academy for the last 90 days. And what is also super fun is it’s the Social Selling Academy. It’s the birthday, it’s its first birthday. It’s been around for a year and it has just been so fun. It has evolved a ton. I am constantly just observing my students in there, watching what’s going on in the industry, watching what’s happening in their companies and then their teams. And I’m always looking to improve what is happening inside the academy, how I can better the assets and better the tools. And we are always improving it. It is not the same academy that launched a year ago. So it’s just been super fun seeing that evolve. All right, without further ado, let’s dive into the topic for the day. So I have talked about money before on this podcast, but I really wanted to do a deeper dive because I do have a lot of people asking me more about the money mindset.
Kristen Boss (05:06): And honestly, it’s one of my favorite things to coach on. If I could coach exclusively on money, mindset, and money stories, I would maybe that’s another book coming from me. I don’t know. But I will tell you that when it comes to money beliefs and a money story, I had to do so much work and all of my thoughts and beliefs about money before I started my business three years ago. And to be honest with you money, especially the topic of money, felt like it was something I couldn’t talk about. It also was a very emotionally triggering topic. I feel like I had a lot of beliefs and stories around money that had me feel really uncomfortable for a long time. And I just remember it really limited how I viewed goal setting, how I viewed building a business, and even, even if it’s not my own stories, there was, I think stories I had from others about money that I carried with me.
Kristen Boss (06:10): And to this day, it is one of the mo- I’m, I’m so thankful. It is one of the most important things I think I did work on before my business got to where it’s at today. And I constantly think had I not done this work years ago. I’d probably be self-sabotaging in really ugly ways right now. So what I want to break down with you is because a lot of people are like, how do I know my money story? How do I change the way I think about money, the way I feel around money, how I have conversations around money, how my you know, how I talk about money in my marriage or in my partnership, a lot of people do ask me about that. And I thought you know what? Let’s, let’s really dive into this topic a little bit more. I want to recommend two books that I really loved that were really helpful for me.
Kristen Boss (07:01): And we’ll link them in the show notes. But the two that were, that really helped kind of open my eyes a little bit to all the stories I had about money and how it was kind of getting in my way and creating a lot of drama. I’m going to say unnecessary drama. So the two books I read that were super helpful, it was you’re badass at making money by Jen Sincero and also money, a love story by Kate Northrup, both of those were incredibly helpful. Money, a love story. She is it’s, you have to really do the work. And she asks a lot of really great questions to really have you unpack why you believe what you believe. But from that, I went on my own journey and it’s still something I work on still, something I evaluate and just observe.
Kristen Boss (07:51): And so I thought I would share with you how your money story is formed and how to heal your money story and there are phases when it comes to healing your money story. And the first, phase one is owning your money story. And that’s like being super honest with yourself about how you talk about money, how you see money, and all the stories you have around it. So if you are, you know, you feel very triggered or you have a lot of spiritual beliefs or maybe society beliefs or cultural beliefs around money. The first step is really just acknowledging it and seeing it for what it is. And then when you acknowledge it, you can actually do the work to uncover it. Why do I have this story? And I had to do that. And it w I don’t mean to like you know, glamorize this word or misuse this word.
Kristen Boss (08:49): But in some ways, I feel like I had some money trauma that I had to really work through based on how other people handled their money when it came to their relationship with me. And I started viewing money as something that harms people or harms relationships. And that was just my own context of my own story that was coming through and creating that belief. So in order to find your story and understand it, there are four parts for understanding and uncovering your story and the first part of a money story, and it’s four eyes. And the first eye is your inherited money story. And that is often from your earliest days, your most impressionable age as a child. And oftentimes your inherited money story is how you heard your parents, or whoever raised you talk about money. It was when you were most impressionable.
Kristen Boss (09:49): So and when we are children and we’re hearing our parents talk about things in the world, we’re not as children. We take those thoughts as facts. We assume they are true. We assume whatever our parents tell us is, is absolute. It is concrete. And then it is not until much later in life where we go out into the world and we see, oh, you know, that was how mom and dad interpreted things, or, you know, and then we form our own beliefs. Money’s the same way. But most of us just never think to challenge our thoughts about money, because we think, no, this is a fact, and this is true. So the first one is definitely inherited money. And, and it’s definitely what you hear your parents say when it comes to money. So you might, you may have heard like, you know, money doesn’t grow on trees.
Kristen Boss (10:35): You have to work really hard for money. You have to be a good steward of money. Just sit down and think about what are some things I heard my mom say about money? What are some things I heard my dad say about money? How did my grandparents talk about money? How did this person, this mentor in my life? How did they talk about money? And that’s oftentimes, and not just money, but the best way to draw out. True thoughts about money is getting your thoughts about debt. What, how has your family talked about debt? Is it wrong? Is it bad? Is it shameful or is it like everybody has debt? It’s not a problem. You just put everything on a credit card and it’s no big deal. And then the other one, so unpacking the thoughts around debt and then unpacking thoughts around wealth, or, yeah, I’m going to call it wealth because, you know, rich feel like that’s another term for it, but I would, let’s just sit with the word wealth today and just notice what comes up.
Kristen Boss (11:31): What have you heard your family say about wealthy people or rich people or privileged people? What have you heard people you love say about those things and what comes up for you when you think about wealth? And most of us have a very blue-collar mindset when it comes to money. Like you have to work really, really hard. You have to a lot of sweat equity and over time, and it’s based on your exertion. And so you form a belief based on that. So that’s your inherited. What you hear from it’s kind of passed on to you at an impressionable age, and we tend to carry that around with us until later in life. And then we kind of dismantle it and sit with it. Okay. The next I is your interpreted money story. It’s an experience that you had, and it was an interpretation you made about that experience that had to do with money.
Kristen Boss (12:30): It’s how you interpreted you know, maybe someone with money or someone without money, but it’s definitely from your own personal experience where you had a certain experience with someone with money or without money. And you CA you interpreted that experience and it helped reinforce your money belief, your money story. And when it comes to interpretation, you’ll know you’re starting to heal your money story. When you can actually look at debt from a really neutral lens without shame, and look at wealth through a really neutral lens and without shame. But I tend to see a lot of it’s very emotionally charged, and there seems to be more Allity assigned to wealth assigned to debt. You know, I know for me, I had assigned a lot of morality with how I handled money, view of money. I thought debt made me a morally inferior person.
Kristen Boss (13:35): I thought being debt-free and only off pain with cash made me a superior person or someone who was a good Stewart. And really, that was just my, my context and my, my own story that was from, and we’re going to get into the other two eyes, but it was a little bit inherited, a little bit of my own interpretation of the way I saw things going on around me. So I’m going to give you an example of an interpretation. So let’s say you are at a hotel and you see someone with a designer bag who’s very well dressed. They look like they have a lot of money and you watch them maybe have an unkind encounter with a member of staff at the hotel. And as you observe that, if you are looking for evidence to support your money story, you may interpret that scenario as see people, rich people are snobby and rich people are selfish and rich people don’t treat people well.
Kristen Boss (14:39): And so that was part of your interpretation of what you saw instead of asking, okay, what might be true here? And it’s just like, okay, what about the other person in line behind them? How did they, how did they treat the staff? What if someone else who isn’t dressed to the nines and doesn’t look like, you know, money walking in the door, they’re just as capable of mistreating the staff as somebody who has money. But again, it’s all through interpretation, how you interpret how you interpreted that experience continues to inform what you, what your beliefs about money currently at present. The next one is your influenced money story. And this is from people you respect or look up to. It’s not necessarily your family. It could be someone that is who’s an influencer or influencer or an expert or a teacher or a professor or a pastor.
Kristen Boss (15:39): These are people who influenced your thinking about money. And it could be, you can have a really positive influence on someone who helps you think about money in a very different way. Or you can have someone who kind of created a negative influence in your mind of like, money’s really bad and you shouldn’t want money. And money’s the root of all evil and money is the devil and money changes you. Or you may have been around somebody who influenced you to say like, you know, money allows you to be really impactful, allows you to serve people. It allows you to give to things that you really care about. It allows you to make a bigger impact, you know, when you’re able to write a check in some things or whatever it’s, so you might have, but those influential conversations, again, kind of help reinforce your money story.
Kristen Boss (16:30): So again, you might have to, like, as you’re kind of sitting with, what are all my thoughts about, again, debt and wealth? Where did I hear this from family? How was this inherited again? What are circumstances that I interpreted that further, like cemented my current money belief, and then who were people that influenced my money thinking? I know, I know for me when I was in my early twenties, I watched, you know, the financial peace university DVDs, and I was really impressionable at the time. And while there are really amazing principles that are taught there and we still, my husband and I still, you know, follow a few things from that. We do believe every dollar has a job and, you know, there’s, there’s great foundations taught there, but I took everything. He said as truth as fact, and it further informed my bias or my story of like debt is shameful.
Kristen Boss (17:26): Debt is bad. And so because of how I, again, interpreted what I was hearing and how that person influenced my thinking, my money story only felt more concrete, more cement, and harder to undo later on. And then the last I is what I’m going to call. And I think it’s really a part of the healing process is it’s your informed money story. That’s where you have gone out on your own in a proactive way to, instead of like just taking what you, everything you hear at face value, you go out and you deconstruct everything and you gather evidence and you create your own new money belief that is based on your informed decision-making of you actually going out and doing research and doing the work. That is what I had to do. I actually sat down and once I understood like my inherited money story, how I interpreted things and how I was influenced, and I put it all on paper, and then I really had to look at, okay, how do I deconstruct this?
Kristen Boss (18:37): How do I dismantle this? So the first thing is getting it all on paper, that’s owning the story, like whoop, here’s the story. Here’s what I have. And here’s what I currently believe. And then in order to heal the story, I went out and I was willing to challenge everything I believed when it came to money. And so I went and I got in conversations with a lot of people. And I know for me, I used to think like money made you bad, or, you know, rich people were unkind. I just, I just had negative thoughts and feelings towards people that had a lot of money. So I actually went and, you know, sought mentorship and, and went out. And I took people to lunch. People that I knew were incredibly successful and people who I admired. And I still felt like they like contributed to society, raised good families.
Kristen Boss (19:33): They were really involved in their communities. And I went and just sat with them and ask them questions. And, what that did was it started to dismantle the beliefs I had around people that had a lot of money. And I was like, wow, I’ve made a lot of really unkind, unfair assumptions of people that have had money. And then I did the same with people who had a lot of debt and I’ve been like, wow, maybe I’ve had really unkind, unfair stories of people that have debt. So what I, I went out and I was willing to challenge everything I assumed was true, even on a spiritual level, if you are. And I think, I think if you are someone who has faith of any type like I do think religion and money tends to have a lot of conflict with each other. And it was my own inner conflict.
Kristen Boss (20:27): Like I really thought I’m going to hell. If I make a lot of money, I’m going to go to hell. And you know, maybe not that extreme, but I was very afraid of becoming a morally compromised person. And it was when I realized when I sat with people I really respected and people who were sincere to vow, humble people, it really, the, it took away, I guess that belief of like, if you have a lot of money, you’re bad, it kind of took the legs out from under that belief and it no longer had enough support. So part of healing that money story is being willing to go out and challenge it and you’re going to be uncomfortable and that’s okay. And some things you might still land on and say, yes, I still think this is true. I still think this is wise.
Kristen Boss (21:15): You know, for me, debt was really shameful to the point where it kept me from investing in my business because I thought it was so bad and I had to have cash on hand and it was much better to save for it. And now, and you know, it really challenged a lot of my stories I had about myself when I charged $2,000 on a credit card to work with my first coach. And what’s interesting as society has just created a lot of narratives around debt too, like there’s appropriate debt, inappropriate debt. And then debt’s just like everyone, like sure, put it on a card. So I had to find, well, what’s true for me, what works for me. And my story now is like, I actually believe in something called strategic debt. And there is strategic debt that helps you improve a skill set in the workplace furthers your education keeps you ahead of the game.
Kristen Boss (22:06): As far as in the workplace, that is strategic debt that is designed to help you bring more value to the marketplace and actually ensures that you get a pay raise and you improve your earning potential. It increases your earning potential. So I will never, I never pause at, you know, borrowing in order to further my skills, my knowledge, and business when it comes to how I show up in the workplace. But for me, when my story was very like, debt is a very bad debt is shameful and it’s, you’re responsible and you should only pay cash for things. The problem is I was, I was viewing that lens. I was viewing, saving up for a couch, and saving up for a vacation, which does not yield a positive return. As far as my future income potential. I was making the decision around investing in my business the same way I would around going on a vacation.
Kristen Boss (23:09): Like I was viewing those the same when they are not the same. So now, like after I healed my own money story, it’s like, yeah, I’ll absolutely put, you know, now I pay a lot to my coach to continue to further my skill and serve better and further my knowledge and continue to be, you know, at the front, you know what’s the word I’m looking for, be at the front of what’s going on in the industry. I want to be you know, at the front, I can’t think of another word right now guys. So, but for me, I’m like, yeah, I’ll gladly pay that money. And now like, as far as debt for like furniture and those things, I’m like, yeah, no, I’m not going to do that. I’m, you know, I’m want to pay with money. I have, because a couch, me spending X amount of dollars on a couch, isn’t going to further my, you know, my future income potential.
Kristen Boss (24:06): But if I invest $2,000 with this coach or, you know, $5,000 with this software, it’s going to help leverage my business and increase the income potential. But when you’re two and your money drama, and two in the belief that all that is shameful, it keeps you from making strategic decisions that gets you further ahead. This is why healing, your money story is so important. I want you to notice if you’re viewing your income with your online business, are you viewing that as business money or as personal money, like a little personal checking account where you’re like, okay, and now it’s going to pay for groceries. And now it’s going to pay for manicures or are you actually viewing that money as a business account where you’re, where you’re actually strategically setting aside money for, this is what I plan to put back in the business.
Kristen Boss (24:55): This is how I plan to further my skill set. This is the training that I planned to do. And then the rest of this, this percentage is what we’re going to live on or put towards our home. But most people don’t think that way. And that’s something that I really challenge. Particularly in my mastermind members, I really teach them strategic investments, strategic debt, and really actually thinking like a CEO, because any other business owner and other businesses that are making multi six figures, seven figures, it’s not even a, it’s not even a question that if they’re going to invest back into their business, it is how they view their business money. So again, healing your money story. Isn’t just a personal thing. It actually completely affects how you show up in your business and the results you are capable of creating in your business.
Kristen Boss (25:44): But you can’t change that unless you heal your story first. So again, part of the phases is one owning the story, looking at your inherited story, the interpreted story, the influence story. And then the last part is the informed story. That’s the story you create. So owning your story, then healing your story, being willing to challenge and dismantle all of it. And then creating a new story really sitting with, well, this is what I believe, and this is where I land and here’s my reasons. And here’s why I feel good about it. But just notice if you allow lack or fear to be the driver of that decision-making, that’s still not going to be a fully healed money story. Because if you sit there and believe like money comes, money goes, or, you know, easy come easy, go then of course, you’re going to make decisions because you’re always afraid that money’s about to leave you.
Kristen Boss (26:45): So if you ha, if you have that thought and you haven’t healed it, you’re going to continue living out that thought as if it’s true. You’re always going to be freaking out, you know, hoarding money or afraid to make decisions because you’re so terrified that money is going to leave because you have this very true belief that, or not very true. It feels true to you that this belief that the money is about to go, right, or I have to work really, really hard or money doesn’t grow on trees, or, you know, just whatever story you’re telling yourself, you have to be willing to heal it. So owning healing, then creating your story. And then the fourth one is living it like, it’s one thing to say, okay, this is what I believe about money now. But then when it actually comes to living out your life, it’s making decisions from a healed and different money story.
Kristen Boss (27:36): And for me, everything changed when I healed that money story and I view debt differently. I’ve viewed investment differently. I’ve viewed so many things differently and I was able to make completely different decisions. So when you have created your new money story, it’s a matter of you living out that new money story. Now you make different decisions. If your decisions don’t look different, it’s likely because you still haven’t healed your money story. And it comes up by the way, your money story comes up with how you sell. I had someone in the academy that was really struggling with selling the business model and, you know, recruiting people under her team. And she felt like it was, she couldn’t ask people to join because she thought they can’t afford it. And she felt bad for them. And when I really kind of dug in with that and asked her more questions and said, well, why do you think this what’s going on?
Kristen Boss (28:37): And what happened was she was, you know, investing in her business. She was buying products every month. And she felt like that was expensive for her. And it was harming her and she felt irresponsible and she felt bad from her money story. She felt like, oh, I can’t sell this because I’m causing, she really believes she was causing harm to others. So again, if you don’t, if you don’t have a healed money story, you’re going to be projecting your own money, beliefs onto everyone you come in contact with. And I think of another student, another story. And then I’m going to wrap this up. I think of another student who came to me and she, this was before I only started working exclusively with network marketers, but I had someone who came to me that wanted me to help her launch her coaching business and help her get her start.
Kristen Boss (29:24): And at the time it was $7,500 to work with me for six months. And she had reached out to me when I was only 5,000 at the time. And so she, him not, it was like, can’t do it, came back that I really want to do it. And when she heard my price, she’s like, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do that. And I just was like, how important is this for you? How much do you plan to make as a coach? She’s like, I wanna, you know, I want to make multiple six figures as a coach. I’m like, great. Then why is $7,500 a problem? If you want to make 200,000 and I watched her brain kind of like, what, what is happening? And then she told me, she said, well, I’m going to have to cash out my 401k to do this.
Kristen Boss (30:04): Now. I want you to think if my money story was still not fully healed and I still viewed debt as shameful, or I viewed decisions like that as irresponsible, I would have not. I would have coached her out of that. I would have said, no, you can’t do that. You can’t do that. I can’t have you do that. I can’t have you do that. But because I cleaned up all of my thoughts around money, I just, and I fully believed she would get the result. I said, okay, how is this not a problem for you? And that’s exactly what she did. She cashed it out and guess what? She’s made well over six figures to this day. And she made all that money back, but had I not healed my own money story, I would have projected my own lack on her. And she would not have worked with me.
Kristen Boss (30:49): I would have turned her away and said, Nope, go somewhere else. But I believed that she was making a strategic decision to further invest her skills to her knowledge so that she would be more valuable in the workplace and increase her future earning income potential. And that’s exactly what happened. So if you are noticing that you feel bad when you’re selling, or you struggle to sell, you know, a premium package or your highest offer, that might be an indication for you to explore your beliefs around money and how you might be projecting them onto your, onto your audience, because whatever we don’t heal, we can’t overcome. So you might need to explore why it is that you hesitate to sell. And it’s almost always, we cannot sell what we have not overcome ourselves. We cannot overcome objections that we secretly agree with. So this healing, your money story is so much more than what’s in your personal bank account. It actually shows up with how you serve and how you sell to your audience. So I really encourage you to listen back to this episode and really think about how you want to own your story, heal your story, create a new money story, and then fully live that out with how you make decisions. Because once you change your story, you actually change how you make decisions. And that, in turn, changes the results you’re capable of. Isn’t that fun. All right, we’ll catch you guys next week.
Kristen Boss (32:31): That wraps up today’s episode. Hey, if you loved today’s show, I would love for you to take a minute and give a rating with a review. If you desire to elevate the social selling industry, that means we need more people listening to this message so that they can know it can be done at different way. And if you’re ready to join me, it’s time for you to step into the Social Selling Academy, where I give you all the tools, training, and support to help you realize your goals. In the academy, you get weekly live coaching so that you are never lost or stuck in confusion. Whether you are new in the business or been in the industry for a while, this is the premier coaching program for the modern network marketer. Go to www.thesocialsellingacademy.com to learn more.
