Latest / WOC and Allies: Business and Career Realtalk with Elaine Lou Cartas / 123: Let’s Talk Money: Technical, Psychological & Cultural Truths for BIPOC leaders with Uchechi Kalu

Transcript

123: Let’s Talk Money: Technical, Psychological & Cultural Truths for BIPOC leaders with Uchechi Kalu · WOC and Allies: Business and Career Realtalk with Elaine Lou Cartas

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Money.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: How does that word make you feel?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: I did not mean to trigger you once you were gonna put your headphones on to listen to this episode, but that's what we're gonna be talking about.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm excited to have back my client, friend Ucechi Kalu, certified financial planner, 2024 Olympics poet, and a really great friend now, where we talk about money and planning as a woman of color.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because we all come from different backgrounds, the stories that we create, and money is a relationship, and how we get to redefine that.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting because as a first-gen immigrant myself, I'm actually getting ready to go on vacation.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm recording this October 9th, so in two days I get to go to Philippines for two weeks.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I grew up in the work so hard and then you go on vacation.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I've had to unlearn it and learn how can I also enjoy money and time.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm excited to enjoy for two weeks.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm excited for you to delve into this conversation.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say get a pen and paper, write down the powerful questions you're gonna be asked.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want you to just like listen to it, I want you to be able to journal right after.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: All right, grab your coffee, tea, or boba, and let's drop the beat.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Money, money, money.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, I think I lost people because I do not sing well.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the bad Filipino.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's not a great singer.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: But you sing, you can carry a tune, can't you, Ucechi?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit, a little bit.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: See that humble brag?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: As your now officially former coach, I'm trying to like push you up and like, no, girl, give yourself a compliment.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: You're a good singer.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: We already heard you from the last episode.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like this is Ucechi month of my podcast.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Officially.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we're here to talk about: money.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: And you are a financial planner, you work with women of color, creatives, business owners.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you shared this a bit in the last episode.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't checked that out, definitely listen to it.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, what got you into this?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: Why'd you want to why do you want to deal with money, especially as a poet?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: As a poet.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want the long of it or the short of it?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you the truth, the real hard truth of it.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is called real talk.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm I'm not looking for lies.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well you know, in my early 20s, uh, right after college, I moved to Beijing.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I lived there for four years, and it was amazing.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll tell you, something that happened when I got there was I got this immediate feeling of shock.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you would think that it was about like living in China or something being different.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no, like China felt like home away from home.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was just that I I had this fear of like, what if I run out of money?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I just I didn't really have so much awareness about money.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had had a study abroad experience some years before, where the dollar just did not go as far as maybe I imagined it would, just being an American thinking, you know, this is the you know most strong currency.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that stuck with me.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when I got to China, I was like, oh my God, who's gonna bail me out over here on this other side of the world?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: At the time, I didn't even speak any Mandarin.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: There was, there would have, I I still don't know who would have bailed me out, to be honest.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how I would have gotten money from us to China.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that fear put the fear of God in me.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I read Ramit Seti's book.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: We share the same passion for him and his fangirl, true fangirl of him.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Yeah, we taught the book is I Will Teach You to Be Rich.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that book helped me get out of$30,000 in undergrad debt.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't about saving five dollars on coffee, like everyone thinks.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: But continue Chechi.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I read that book, and it's um, I think it's like a eight-week program or something.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I worked through it for whatever period of time that it was.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I worked through it, and just step by step, I started to feel this real deep sense of freedom that I had never even felt even from the time I was a child.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: My family are immigrants, so everyone knows knows what that means.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you get the shoes from Walmart and your parents send the other money to your cousins back wherever, you know.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like, oh gosh, I have so much about that.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's like, and then you enable them not doing work.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just being real, real with all of you.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, then they come to this country and they're like, What?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Money's not on the street.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, No, we work hard here.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, and actually, yeah.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I you know, that was the environment I was I was growing up in when it when it came to money.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I so I never felt that money was giving me a sense of freedom.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I always felt that it was tight, that I was stretched, or something about that.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I started to have this real freedom.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And once I moved back to the US, um, I was in my late 20s, I got a job and I was earning maybe like$15,000 less or something in the US and even in China.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, this is weird.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've never had to stress, I've never had to really budget in a serious way.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've never really had to to to really plan so deeply.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time I was also living in the South because I grew up in the South, so I moved back to the South.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Define South, by the way, I have a lot of people in LA, people from all over South Bay.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, see, they're like, oh, South Bay, that must be so hard for you.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: South Bay is a really rich area in LA and the Bay.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's two South Bays in California.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm from the deep South.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm from South Carolina.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I was living in South Carolina at the time when I moved back from China in my late 20s.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember sitting in my apartment and just doing the math.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I like I'd calculated my yearly salary, I'd calculated all my bills, and then I somehow I didn't don't even know if I ran a calculation for inflation, but I was like, inflation is real.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized that by the next year, I would be paying the state to be live because my salary was not gonna go up.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: All of my other expenses were gonna go up.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, what was gonna cover the di the difference?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt this old, old, old, old feeling of constriction again.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'm very grateful to China that I had the experience of what for me felt like real freedom to have was this counterbalance and understand that things did not have to be this way, but that I might have to make different choices.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when I went around, I started to do kind of like money workshops with some of my girlfriends there, all black women.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it was basically the blind leaving the blind.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I just had like, you know, a half an eye open.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I realized it was like, oh my gosh, there's not many people like us that we can go to that we trust.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're just not, and not who are fully credentialed, not who have truly done the work, not who have thousands of hours of experience and client hours and different scenarios, just not.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I reached a point where I was like, I love you, Ramit, but I there has to be more than this book because there's a whole economic system out here.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: But most of all, I think the thought that galvanized me when I was sitting in my apartment on that day was that I feel and I still feel this way, and I felt at the time that one of the worst things to be in the US was a poor black woman because there is not one entity that has sympathy for you.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: No one is coming to save you.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, we are, you know, the pariahs of society are seen as.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: We're seen as these parasites of society, not as human beings.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I knew I had to change my situation now that I was back in the US.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And after seeing my friends and seeing where they were, super high achieving, even high-earning women who still didn't know the basics, was like, well, we're actually all in the same place.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So if we don't have someone who's already out there, then I will be that person.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I am dedicated enough to do that work.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the long of it.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: That part, yeah.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I mean, similar to me, I became a career coach first before being business and executive because in my 20s, managing people who are diverse, different, being a leader, I I realized I couldn't act like other leaders because of the lens.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just being real.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's subconscious biases.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And is it my responsibility to educate other people that you're perceiving me and communicating to me in a different way because I'm a woman of color and an Asian woman, just being real.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: That I'm not.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: I am not that expert.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not here to educate you because you're gonna you're gonna have to spend a lot of money to do that.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, and here's the unfortunate thing, and I mean why I love Kendrick Lamar's halftime show is I learned how to play the game.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, okay, this is how you perceive me, this is how I'm gonna do it.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: But then, and then I I got full time into this, similar to how you got full time.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, how can we create work and money in a way that helps our people?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because there's a lens and perspective that we have from lived experiences and even feeling comfortable to talk about money.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's a big, big, big part.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, to that, I don't think that part is like learned.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we necessarily learn how to be comfortable to talk about money.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's just something that's demonstrated.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's either just demonstrated in a friendly environment, people just demonstrate having conversations.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of the reasons why my clients like working with me or love working with me is that we get to rewrite that story.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: I get to be this place of There's the poet.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: You you help rewrite some bars with them.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's like I'm a place of of safety, I'm a place of trust.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I do not judge anyone according to their financial situation.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I say that very strongly now because when way, way, way back when, when I was just reading the books about the so-called rules of money, and when I was just watching the videos and the Dave Ramsey's and all that stuff.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: I was so deep into it.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like everyone gets into that.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: You get deep into it, but it does I know what you're about to get to, so go get there.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: But then a big part of it is judging other people around these ideas of you know, the things that they've done well or good, being good and being bad, and shaming people around that.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so it this is also why I I just hark on like working with someone who's a really a professional, because a true professional, a real true professional who's worked with so many people that then understands that life and money can go any kind of way.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's no judgment needed, there's no shame needed, just the hand holding, just the support, just the strategy.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: That is real professionalism around this topic.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm also very, you know, I'm very grateful for this journey that I took because I think had I just stayed in the I'm someone who reads about this, I'm someone who's online about this, I don't think I would have learned the importance of helping, first of all, myself disentangle shame and judgment with money.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'd never be able to demonstrate that with my clients.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they would never be able to be safe with me and never be able to work with me for years and years and years and years as they do now.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been a really great journey.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've learned a lot.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this actually helps in the context of you being a woman of color.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think is so unique for financial planning with woman of color?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, before we hopped on the call today, we were talking about the fact that you know, in the year of this recording, there are stats that say around 300.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: 2025, by the way.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: 2025, right?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: Repeat this stat again.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: I just want to say what year you guys are looking for.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, or I'm probably gonna live that long, knowing how old my grandmas have lived till year 3,000 or whatever.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, we were just talking about that in this year of 2025, there's stats that say over 300,000 black women have been let go from their jobs.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: 300,000 black women.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to an event just last night where um it is it was run in three parts of the of the country.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And at that event, all across the country, there were a total of a thousand black women who were seeking jobs, who were seeking connections, who were seeking a way to start over.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of them were in fields like DEI, a lot of them were in project management, a lot of them were in tech, like these fields that one take tend to be like they are caretakers of other folks, or fields where they are being outpaced by AI, or just fields where they can be the first ones to be cut, like DEI.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was on another call with someone else today, works at a at an academic institution, and they had just gotten word that they can't say black anymore.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Who's gonna be affected by not being able to say black if not black people?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I paint that picture to say what I find is really unique about financial planning for women of color is that we actually have to be preventative.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: And do you mind if I shared the story before we hit record?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because Chachi shared this, or we were talking.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: We just keep talking all the time, even though we're not working together anymore.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: Because I told you last call, we're like, we we friends, and uh and I recorded that for validation and contract purposes.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm kidding.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I was talking to some peers of mine, other coaches, and we were talking about B2B versus B2C.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't know what that means, it's business to business versus business to client, and how I've been trying to get more B2B contracts, which has been happening, but I've been getting a lot more B2C.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: I've been getting more women of color who are in this, they are either two, they're they got let go or fired, not to their fault.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: And you've met my other clients, which actually you're not gonna share their names, obviously, for privacy reasons, or they are being preventative, they might be in a quote unquote safe and secure job.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting, my my my friends and colleagues like, oh, that's interesting.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: I don't see that because they're staying there.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: They realize the job market is bad.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: But the difference is that I'm a woman of color and my clients, I serve are women of color, and a lot of us have gone through trauma in our childhood, and we know this feeling when if we can't control things, then we have to control it.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then seek out other avenues.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is exactly what is unique in financial planning for women of color is like you know that things could change.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was I just signed a client recently who's a lawyer in their 30s, and this is a second career.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And while she doesn't have the an asset level yet, doesn't have a lot of investments.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: The reason why she came to me was because she was like, I want to do the best that I can with this now that I'm here.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: We know that things are not always gonna last forever.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: We know that we're gonna be on the chopping block, that we can't just rely on mommy and daddy and a trust fund or whatever from the past, right?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the folks that come to me are folks who want to be proactive.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: This is a huge, huge, huge part of it.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I also work with creatives, um, and creatives tend to be small business owners.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think the way reason those folks come to me is because running a business is a lot.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: You want to focus on what it is that you started that business for.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: And like most businesses are started by practitioners, and then suddenly you're like, oh my God, but taxes, oh my gosh, but bookkeeping, oh my gosh, but cash flow.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so those folks come to me because they're like, I'm a self-starter, but I am not a DIYer.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I need to know how to make the best out of my income.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I need to know how to make the best out of my taxes, and I need like a money manager, a money partner that can do all this stuff for me so I can focus on actually earning more to take care of my life.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, to validate even what you said earlier, I didn't meet you yet, so that's why I didn't hire you.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: But when I was looking for a financial planner, and I'll be honest, I I feel like I've I'm educated in myself that I didn't want to just go on Instagram or TikTok and get one of those financial planners.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just knew.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: I know what CFP means.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I want a certified financial planner, I want a woman of color.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I did find a woman of color.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: I found a black woman who not who Chechi, but I know.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: But I needed that lens and that understanding and that perspective.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like I have met other financial planners where they're condescending.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, you don't know this?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like, gosh, I know, and I know you know this because you know your industry, but uh it's kind of the same thing with me.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, there's a lot of bad people in an industry, but you're like, you know, I'm still gonna call myself this.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still this because there's some good people.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: No, If they're look, I'm I'm here.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good people.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: That that's what I'd be telling folks.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I can't speak for everyone else.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what their practices are like, but I do know that very often the folks who come to me are those who said, Well, I worked with someone before, but they didn't take me seriously.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about a client of mine right now who's backwards.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: A client of mine who their advisor saw their business as like a side hustle.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so never even asked, and this person was a CFP, never even asked very what I what I feel are foundational tax questions that need to be implemented in order to actually increase someone's overall take-home pay and payout, but decrease their taxes.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like these are just foundational questions, and that CFP, a man, a Caucasian man, and this person was a woman of color.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: He told her that her business was just a side hustle.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is someone who's pulling in over 200k in a creative field as a side hustle.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So this is what we're dealing with, and you know, for my clients, the way I think about money, I have two different frameworks that I use.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: One, I it kind of harks on the heart space of the clients.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like I focus on the technical, like what should I do?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is the main question that people have.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then I focus on the psychological, like what's actually getting in the way.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: I okay, hold on, pause.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: I want you all to, if you need to rewind it, go back.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Or actually, I'm gonna have Ucechi probably repeat it right now because these are powerful questions.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: We before we hit record, Ucechi and I were just talking about like people think, okay, financial plan, you tell me what to do, give me the action items.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, it's the questions you need to ask yourself because you are a different individual.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: So bring it back, Ucechi.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: Replay yourself.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And also, I'm thinking I'm just gonna scare share one framework because I think it might be easier to understand.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So a framework that I use in my practice and all of my client relationships is three-pronged.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: The first part of the prong is technical.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, what should I do based on my situation, based on my income, based on my business, based on my taxes, based on my family?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: What should I do?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is a technical question.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: But then we want to ask and figure out some psychological questions.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: What's getting in the way of me achieving these goals?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: What are the challenges I'm actually facing on an internal level?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third is a cultural question.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: What influences my money beliefs?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll I'll give you an example of how this might work.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was chatting with someone yesterday.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, truly, you know, I was chatting with someone with someone yesterday.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: They learned that I was a financial planner and they said that they wanted to have a call with me.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just, I just, you know, I'm a human.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I just asked them a few questions to understand a little bit more about whether they should even have a call with me.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll watch it.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because your time is worth it, girl.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it is, and also their time is worth it.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not here to waste anyone's time.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so here's here's kind of like what I learned about them.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And you can ask this to your, you know, you listener, you can ask this to yourself to learn something deeper about yourself around money.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And why I want to hark on this is because very often when things aren't working with money, our first step is that we just shame ourselves or blame ourselves or shut down.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: That becomes that becomes the next step.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that feels like an action step of being like, oh, I'm bad.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: At least I'm punishing myself.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't move forward.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: So here's an example of what that could look like.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: I asked this person, you know, well, what is it?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what what is it?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: What what's that true challenge that you want to fix?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, Oh, well, it's My spending, okay?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that's you know, what should I do about that?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe it's gonna be budgeting, it could be something else.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: But now I know technically what it is that we even need to focus on.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's spending, right?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now moving on to psychological, I asked him, okay, well, you how do you how do you feel when all this is going on?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he said that it actually turns a mirror back to him as to how he feels very stressed and how he feels really anxious, uh, and that he will buy things when he's really stressed and anxious as a way to just kind of like alleviate the problem.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: So now I know what's getting in the way psychologically.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Stress is getting in the way, anxiety is getting in the way, maybe some fear is getting in the way.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so if this person does become a client, then we can dig in deeper into like, okay, uh, beyond the financial planning relationship, there might be things that we should be doing to just alleviate stress in your life, actually.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: That might be even more important than a budget.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: A budget might find itself, figure itself out if we eliminate stressors.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: I know this episode is so good.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, how can I get more of this?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I have a newsletter that comes out every Thursday that's free, fun, and full of real talk.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's a live journal Zanga on leadership and life with actual scripts, behind-the-scenes stories, and lessons from mistakes I've made so you don't have to for work and life.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: Just go to ElaineLew.com forward slash join.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's E-L-A-I-N-E-L-O-U.com forward slash join.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: All right, back to the episode.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I want to be vulnerable here.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I have completely improved my profit margins.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: But before and when I say recently, I mean like this past two years, but I had to ask myself that technical question, like what what needs to happen here?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, ask the harder question.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: What what do I really need?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like really, really need my business.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then it was two questions I had to ask.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: What do I really need that actually supports my clients' results?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then what do I really need to help support me in providing these services?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I just started cutting everything out.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think in my lot, I think it was like 4,000% profit margin increase, like year to date, which is insane.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: But I will say the old me, what was happening is as an immigrant, first-gen immigrant, I was like, I need to work harder.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: I need to keep working.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like even when my partner and I started dating, he was like, uh, you're not eating lunch.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: We need to put this in the count.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, uh no, why?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: I could just meetings.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I actually do muy thai more.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I know it's for fitness and self-regulation because it forces me to pause and it forces me to ask harder questions.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like we were on a call, you and me, and another client on office hours, and I was I invited Ucechi to this really cool event.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: I there was gonna be a lot of big players there that could lead to contracts.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I see Ucechi smiling because she already knows what the story is.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I was gonna go, but I stayed up till midnight the night before, not by force, but by choice, because I just had a creative mind and I just I needed to let everything out of my brain.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but then I get I got into bed tired and I played like a lot, like I did alarm clock roulette, which is if I'm gonna wake up at no alarm on, if I was gonna wake up at 5 a.m.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna go to this event.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if not, I'm just gonna sleep in.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I woke up at 8 and I didn't go to the vet because I just had to listen to my body.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's so it's these, like I said earlier, we think it's about figure out the answers on how to make more money, but it's like, no, are you asking the harder questions?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: What is your situation right now?
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: Your situation right now is different from like maybe undergrad like me when I was 30k in debt, paying that off.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: What's your situation right now?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you are a mother.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: I know you work with a lot of mothers too, or you have aging parents.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Or hopefully this doesn't happen to you, but I know you've shared this with me with other clients, or maybe you're going through a divorce or separation.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: And all and it tends to be these other, these other spokes of the wheel that are influencing this question of what should I do.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: And for me as professional, I mean, that's why again, I'm like, I think a true professional, a true financial professional, is not just telling you, here's, you know, here's this like one-stop shop, one-stop solution for this thing.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Our solutions are very, very bespoke, they're very unique from what's going on.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I would add, and you kind of touched to this and and what you shared, there is a cur there is a cultural component.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: This question is hard.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like what influences my money beliefs?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: So for you, you're, you know, you're working, working, working.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're burning out, even your profit margin isn't as high as you'd want it to be, but it's this belief that I have to continue working hard.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for the person that I spoke with yesterday, they said that it was their what had influenced them the most was that they grew up in an environment where there wasn't a lot.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so they feel that things could disappear at any time.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so when they're buying something now, it's that feeling of having control again.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so then when we come back to what should I do, it's not just budgeting, it's not just cash flow.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's so much more complex than that.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I brought this up is to really demonstrate the transformation that folks can undergo when they work with their relationship around money and actually put tools in place.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: I I really want to emphasize what you just said relationship with money.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think people think money is like a thing.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because we I'm serious, like a now.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: We think it's a now, well, I mean, like it is, but like cash and coins, like but um, we don't think about a relationship.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, one of my former clients shared this with me.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if you've heard of this analogy, but money is kind of like a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a partner, right?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: So, do you really want your partner to be with you all the time?
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like that, like go home, Roger.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like, do you want your partner there when you're doing number one and two at the toilet?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, no.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like when your partner goes out with their friends, like, okay, bye, have fun.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, even that the first of every month paying rent or mortgage, it's like, oh, have fun.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like once you pay that off, you don't want to be a jealous partner and like that with money.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then you could just define it.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: But can you talk more about relationship and money?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think that our relationship with money, it starts, you know, it's it does of course it starts in the home, as with all our relationships do.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I would I want to start high level and say that and this is just a new chatchy belief.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, I don't, I've never even heard another sort of financial planner talk about this or do we need a trademark those?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: What will I do?
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think I need to trademark it.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a personal belief that the challenges that we have, the psychological challenges that we have, the traumas that we have around money.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I don't personally believe that they all need to be uprooted and quote unquote fixed.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: We don't believe that we are problems.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And many of our beliefs, many of the things that we're dealing with, we are just a natural outcome of our experiences and our environment.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I believe my job is to help you understand where your trigger points are going to be, what your influences are, and then create the best system, like the best technical systems and strategies to help override that.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because I am always going to be an immigrant's daughter.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: You are always, Elaine, going to be an immigrant's daughter.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: There is no, I don't see a world wherein I don't feel like, oh my God, I have to make money, I have to work, all I don't, I don't see a way, but I can create systems to override it.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I can make sure that I'm doing more Thai every day.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: I can make sure that I'm doing yoga all the time.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: I can make sure that I close my computer at a certain time.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: I and all of that stuff then creates the life that I really want for myself.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: So when I address this idea of the relationship with money, for me, it's more so to understand the understanding a landscape that we're really truly in.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then holding that space and holding that understanding, I can come in with the right technical things to do to help you keep going forward, even if you never really rectify this thing that you're quite dealing with.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so our relationship with money does tend to start in the home.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: It does tend to start with the people that raised us and then is sort of amplified by all the experiences that we learn.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: I believe there's a stat that says that our idea, our like our idea of what money is, is solidified by age 15 or something like that.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: So relatively early.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And as a business owner, because we have business owners listening, obviously both of us are.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: I love always bringing the analogy of the notebook and Ryan Gosling talking to Rachel McAdams or yelling at her, like, what do you want, Ellie?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: What do you want?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I had that in my own business when it was 2022, 2022, 2023, when I was so burnt out because I felt like I was following the model of other coaches.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: And and I had to ask myself that question, pretend Ryan Gosling was in front of me, which was great to fantasize, and ask myself, what do I want, Elaine, in my business?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then just even owning the fact, you know what?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: I serve women of color.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because I serve women of color, I'm not gonna follow these other coaches or the copy and paste framework.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like, sure, sure, they're women of color and allies, but each one has their unique goals, challenges.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm just gonna own being bespoke and white glove and individualized.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: Owning that has helped me with my relationship with money.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I just looked at my PL report.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's not a 4,000% profit margin, it's an 8,000% profit margin.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you can hear this, but I'm slapping with but it's it was uh I had to undo it.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: The the unlearning of like the immigrant mentality of working hard.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, wait, let me not work hard and let me ask myself the tougher, harder questions of how I want my business to be.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: And more importantly, not just business, how do I want my life to be?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like I own the fact I only work with 15 clients at a time.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: And because I worked my numbers backwards.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: How much do I need to live and work by?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: So 15 B to C, 5B to B, and then work backwards from there.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think actually I want you to, I would love to hear your perspective as a financial planner because capitalism runs right here.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: And and for me as a business owner, I just kept thinking more, more, more I need to serve more.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: Let me be like other coaches and create a pyramid scheme of ML, MLM, coaching, coaches, coaches, coaches.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would love for you to share that perspective.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think this speaks to maybe a piece of advice that I would give everyone is that I always tell folks to figure out the cost of being you.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I call it.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: The true, true cost of being you.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Especially if you're a business owner, this is incredibly important.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say this for and I and I say that just because you know you're eating what you kill, so you you're gonna need to figure out how much you really need to kill the eat.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: But this is incredibly important if you have children, incredibly important if you're if you're on your own.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: What is the true cost of being you?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so what is that?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's all of your fixed expenses for an entire year.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's all your variable expenses for an entire year.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's the taxes that you're gonna have to pay for an entire year.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I want you to also think about a few other things.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's all of your savings, any contributions to savings and investments for an entire year is in that.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And think about the gifts and contributions, the supporting family, all of that goes in there.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you think about the cost of being you, I'm not talking about just like, oh, these are the bills I have to pay.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, what does it take for Ucechi to fully live this life in the way that she's living it now?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not like ideal, I'm very, you know, following a budget or whatever.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, how am I actually living it now?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're door dashing, I need you to put door dash on the cost of being you.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's what you do.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you go on lots of trips, I want you to do that.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you spend a lot of money on like hair, nails, whatever, that is the cost of being you.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: The point of this exercise is to actually put a number value to your life.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: And this value is not the value of your life, but it shows you what it is that you actually need to maintain where you are.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're a business owner, you might get a number and be like, okay, well, that's actually my target, and that's how I define enough if I feel that what I have now is enough.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it gives you some parameters to either strive for if you need more, or say, I'm good.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: I get to sit back, I get to slow down.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think what also tends to happen in this process, and I'll I'll give you an example of just how to do it in this process is that you're gonna look at the things that you're spending on and start to ask yourself, does this truly add value to my life?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Does this truly add value to the lives of my kids?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: Are some of these spending items attached to some psychological things that I'd like to start dealing with?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Some cultural things I'd like to start dealing with.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do I just spend a lot of money on my kids because I didn't have a lot growing up and I want to, I never want them to feel what I was feeling before.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: These are the kinds of questions I want you to ask yourself.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're a business owner, it's like, am I just buying every latest technology because in fact I feel like I have a deficit in this area and like I just like I have imposter syndrome.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's like keeping up with the Joneses.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was there.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: If nobody knows what keeping up with the Joneses modern days called, I guess, keeping up with the Kardashian.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: The Kardashian.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but oh wow.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: I now put two and two together.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're welcome.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: What did what was your takeaway in this episode?
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: We're keeping up with the Kardashians came on.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: Just in case um there's young people here listening.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Keeping up with the Joneses is just a term of like, I need to have the coolest dunks, just the newest, latest thing.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was there.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh, everyone's using this system.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: I need to use this system, everyone's using this email platform.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: How I got to the 8,000% profit margins, I uh I was spending probably a hundred a month on this email provider.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I had to ask myself the hard question.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, I'll just give you that example.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, did I really need me spending a hundred a month?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then I found something else that was 29 a month.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, I'm gonna go for the 29 a month.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then there was other things.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how like is this really bringing clients?
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: No, minus 29 a month subscription for something else.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just went line by line on other things.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: And going back to, I love what you shared.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're not, we're not both mothers yet, if we want to, but there was another client of mine, and I she does all the things with her kids because she doesn't want her kids to feel that experience that she's fighting for.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: But it was interesting because that's I'll tell my clients to rest, as you know, Chechi.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and she's like, Elaine, there is a weekend where we were invited to like three different parties.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: There was like a soccer practice.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, No, we are resting, and you know, it was amazing.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't just her, it was her kids that told her, Mommy, thank you.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to be at home.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: And they just cuddled and napped.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like, so it's not just the money part, I think it's this perceived thing that we have to do every single sport with our kids.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: But how we actually asked our asked our own kids, like, what do you want to do?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: And ask ourselves, why are we motivated to make certain decisions?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the more we do this, because my it takes money to do almost anything, honestly, especially if you live in a city like LA, parking your car takes money.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, girl, I just paid off a parking ticket.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: I have one staring at me, just you know, yeah.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: I have changed my relationship with that parking ticket.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: Was you know what?
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is my relationship has not changed.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, I I share gratitude.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, this is gonna pay for a pothole.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is it?
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it or is it a grift?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: I hope they're listening.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't changed my relationship with them.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Even I have my limits, but you know, so that's I would say that's my first piece of advice, and that's where I start with anything, any relationship with a client or anyone asking me a question.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm used to just like, well, what's the true cost?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: What's the true cost?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: Looking at it front, back, up, down, sideways, everything.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: What's the true cost?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: And from there, again, not only then can we make tons more super technical decisions, really niche decisions that are only available to certain kinds of clients.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we can do all that stuff.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: But the true cost of living your life tends to hold the answers to some some of your largest sort of psychological and cultural challenges that you're dealing with.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we start there.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: I know we talked about relationship with money, but there's also the relationship with the partner and money.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: Romantic relationships.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: So now you got two money stories, two different people who grew up with money wanting to not necessarily I say combine.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like in this modern day people also have things separate, but any advice and tips here.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, do we need another an hour?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: We only got 10 minutes.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have to go.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you a real example from my life.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I gave a a presentation last week to the Princeton Club of Chicago, and I focused on the money personalities, which are it was not created by me.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's an organization.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: No, I was like, is this like inside out but for money?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's what I thought of right now.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of, actually.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to be honest, yeah.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a little bit more of a Myers Brig.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I again I did not create it, it's by the Money Coaching Institute.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there are eight different money personalities that they've discovered.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: Each one that has its strengths and its challenges.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: And just like Myers Brig or any kind of like 16 personalities or Enneagram or whatever, we tend to like really in the heat of things, embody a certain personality, even if we have traits of the other ones.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit of like zodiac-ish kind of stuff.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: So my partner was actually in the audience because we were both in Chicago at that time.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he's ever like been in anything that I've that I've given.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: So he was a I think he has been before, but he was like helping me with a Zoom chat.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: But he was fully a participant.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Aw.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was so cute.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: And oh happy anniversary, by the way.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, thanks.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: And but I was facilitating it.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: So people were having small group discussions as they were talking about their personalities.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: And he and I had had actually never had this particular question, question answered, like between us.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: We'd never talked about it.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I remember thinking, ooh, I wonder what it what his is.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then I forgot about it.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the next day we were walking around Chicago, my favorite city, and he was like, Oh, I want to talk to you about what I learned yesterday.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And he told me what his money personality was.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he also said, you know, one, that that was the first time that he'd ever been able to build like context around like who he is with money, and even explain it to himself.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because we we kind of know our habits, but but we don't really know how to describe them and don't always really know where they're coming from or what they might be related to.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he told me how like so like super empowering it was.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: But then he also mentioned conflicts he'd had with past partners, where they felt that he was behaving in certain ways or that he had like negative habits or traits around, or you know, framed them as like negative or habits or traits around money, and how he he felt like he didn't have the language to explain where those habits were coming from and where he was coming from.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so instead of it opening up conversation, it just became a source of conflict.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so I say all that to say, and then I, you know, he knows mine because I shared it in that talk, and we got to talk about it more.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the first thing I would advise for couples is actually, and you're gonna see this again and again if you're at the end of this, you know, podcast, is that before you even hop into the technical, have that conversation about what is your money personality?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: What is your money story?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Where did it come from?
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there are tons of resources online if you're looking for.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Guided questions.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: And as much as possible, I would really, really advise that you do this at a time when you're not stressed, where you haven't just had an argument about something.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you make it a romantic occasion, like you go out on a little hike or you take a little weekend trip and build the environment around it because money is inherently emotional.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: And there might be things that your partner says that are gonna make you be like, what the heck?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, and vice versa.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: There might be stories of shame.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: There might be feelings of like, oh, I wish I were further ahead than I was, or oh, I wish I I never had done that thing.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I thought I never would have, but then I was in that situation.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you just want to be in the best possible place to truly hold space for them and for yourself and for what will be created in between.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really where I start.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there, I mean, there are tons of resources about what to do next.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna get married, you might want to consider a prenup.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like you might, there's different ways of um structuring your account so that you have a joint account and separate accounts.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: All that stuff is the technical, but that is gonna be determined by the psychological and the cultural.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what I would really focus on.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: And having been in this work long enough, I can tell you that people that you don't think will separate or get divorced do.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people separate because of money.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: They just do.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the research shows, right?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's money, number one's always a challenge.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the research always, always, always shows.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'm thinking about a someone I met recently who thought that their partner, after having a child, that their the partner's relationship to money would change and that they would be more generous and more giving even to the family.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it still hasn't changed.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: And now they have another dependent.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it goes back to even before I asked the question about relationships.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: It goes back to understanding your questions that you asked, right?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_02: Which I do based on my situation individually, right?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: What's getting in the way?
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: Asking those questions yourself.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: Then when you have another person in a relationship with, you get to ask those questions together.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: But have it similar to how we have consistent meetings at work with team members, with clients, is to also have that in your relationship too, which is what we do consistently.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: Revisiting it.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like Brian and I, we have check-ins and like we actually don't we we have conversations about money.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't tied our finances in yet.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to go deeper, but we already have conversations about money.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I will say that, you know, if you're listening to this and you're trying to imagine this framework, think of it as a wheel.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, think of it as an absolute wheel, and that it starts with like, what should I do?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you're just gonna know on a on a very baseline level, what should I do?
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna know, like, ah, I got to focus on my profit margin.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Then you go down, what's getting in the way psychologically?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: Then you go over what influences my beliefs about money.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when you go back up to what should I do, you should have a much more intuitive and aligned understanding of what techniques that you really need to solve that problem.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you keep going around the wheel, keep going around the wheel, keep going around the wheel.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's really the psychological and cultural parts that are truly going to inform the technical.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting because I do Muay Thai, you do rock climbing, and you'll we both do lifting.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: I compare this as an athlete.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not saying you have to do the Olympics, by the way, but it's like consistently asked the question how can I improve my form?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, like both like my back needs to be straight.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_02: I need to be breathing in, breathing out longer.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing with money.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's the little tweaks to ask yourself questions, and that's how you get better.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: And yesterday someone called me an athlete, and this is amazing because I actually am an asthmatic child that can barely run on the screen.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: I just have good-looking shoulders.
• 48:26
  unknown: I think.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: You do.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've complimented them many times during her.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: I did not, I did not even correct them.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, mm-hmm.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I know everybody fell in love with you because this is the month of Ucechi and my.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: I fell in love with them all.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: And if people want to get to know more of your work, reach out to you.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: Where can they find you?
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: I am on the interwebs.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you can find me on my website, greenlightfp.com.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: My company is called Greenlight Financial Planning.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think my LinkedIn is just like the backslash, and then it is ucechi-kellu.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'll put it in the show notes as well.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're gonna share another.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: And lastly, you can find me on Instagram at dear ucechi.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: You're welcome so much.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: All right, did you write those questions down?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: And just in case you didn't, I'm gonna summarize it for you.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like a circle.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: Remember, that's what Ucechi said.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: So on the top of the circle is the technical question: what should I do based on my current situation?
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: Then the second question is psychological.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: What's getting in the way of me achieving these goals?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then third is the cultural.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: What influences my money beliefs right now?
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like being an athlete or a musician.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's going through that play.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm using an analogy with sports and seeing what edits need to happen.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's how I've been able to improve my profit profit margins by 8,000%.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: Insane.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is the most financially healthy year in business I've had in eight years.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm very grateful for that.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: I had to have hard conversations with myself and my financial team.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: So if you got a lot from this episode, well, sharing is caring.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: My team and I created this podcast as an accessible resource for others.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: So click that share button, share it with a friend or two, and send them a personal message on why they should listen to it.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: And if you enjoyed this episode, you've listened to other episodes, it would mean so much if you could leave a five-star rating in review, because this does push it out to other people like you who may find this valuable resource, this podcast helpful.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if you are interested in wanting to create an aligned business career in life, then schedule a call with me and we can see if it's a good fit to work together.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: You'll get three action items.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: To schedule that call, go to elanelu.com forward slash call.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's E L A I N E L O U.com forward slash call.