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Earning More but Still Not Feeling Wealthy? · Fun Money, Smart Wealth

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Remember how exciting money felt before it became a list of things that you should be doing?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: When I was about eight years old, I'd spent the morning washing my uncle's car, helping my granny around the house, and just as we left to go on holiday, she handed me this five pound note.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now I looked at this paper money and my eyes opened.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was not something I'd ever thought about before.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Some pocket money, but back in those days you got a handful of coins and you went to the sweet shop and you got a few bits and pieces, but this was more money than I had ever seen in my entire life, and suddenly I felt like the world was my oyster.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I put it in my pocket with that little smile and we headed off on holiday.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I did spend the fibre at the airport, and I'll tell you more about that another day.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, when you first have that level of excitement around money, it just means that you feel like anything is possible.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the feeling that I want to bring back.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because money can make life more fun now and give you choices later.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Claire Sweet and this is Fun Money Serious Wealth.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Each week we'll take one money question, make sense of the numbers, and find something useful that you can actually do to bring the fun feeling back whilst building wealth.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hi and welcome to this week's episode of Fun Money Smart Wealth.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a podcast for people who do money differently.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when you've got to that stage in your life and your business where you're earning more money, but you feel like you're not making any progress.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is the thing that we need to be taking forward.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of our clients find that they've got this idea in their head that they need to be making a certain amount of money each month, and it's often things that they've heard about in the media, stuff they've seen online, or other arbitrary targets, that somebody said to them, Do you know what you should be earning 10 grand a month, 20 grand a month, 50 grand a month, whatever the number is, and that's what they've been aiming to do.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But what they found is when they get there, they don't actually feel any more wealthy.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing I want to chat about today.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things that it takes people a long time to realise is that how wealthy you feel is nothing to do with how much money you're earning, which is a bit of a shock, really.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And how much money you're earning is often nothing to do with how much your business is taking in sales, and it's really important that we think about our business as being separate from ourselves when we look at money.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the mistakes that people often make when they start out in business is that they fall into it.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: They've not sat down beforehand and worked out what type of business they want to run, what type of product or service they want to sell, or even what type of income they want to make.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: They've often ended up in business almost by accident.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: People get made redundant, they go on maternity leave, decide they don't want to go back to the job, or they just have enough of that boss where they're like, do you know what I could do this better myself, and then sometimes with a friend, think, right, I'm going to set up a business and I'm going to go from there.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if they're good at what they do, which most of my clients are, before long they end up in that situation where they've got a high income, but they don't feel any more wealthy than they did before they started.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: They've got money coming in, but it seems to go out very quickly, they're not quite sure where it's going.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And often they're at the stage where they don't really even know what progress they're making.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: They feel like they're sort of stuck a little bit.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem is they're so busy, they just get on doing the job.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: They don't take the time out to have a look at it, and then they just sort of get stuck.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that can really hold them back over time.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I talk normally talk to my clients about in this type of situation is making sure that they look at their numbers regularly.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter what regular looks like.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: That can be weekly, that can be monthly, but actually, you know, getting out of the job often enough that you can see what's going on from the outside.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that's easier said than done.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've done it myself.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've built a business up from nothing.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And at times I was just so busy doing the work and doing the job that if somebody had turned round to me and said, Well, how much profit are you making?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is this actually worth it?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't have told you.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I really couldn't.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: You just got on with it.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, now having a high income is is one of those things that we sort of dream about, isn't it?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: People say, Oh, I just need to make a bit more money, I need to make a bit more money.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know why we need to make a bit more money.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that we're going to come across in a future episode.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk a bit more about how much money is actually enough.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And do we really need to strive for these targets that everyone says is the magic number?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's easy to get caught up in the bandwagon, especially if you spend any time at all in the online space, which all tends to be very, very shiny.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: People are talking about their posh holidays and the things they've bought and the number of staff they've got and how much they've expanded, and it's all sort of exciting.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath that, you have to have a look to see what's going on with the numbers and with the profit, because the profit is the number that is going to tell you whether you get paid or not.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be the difference between an expensive hobby and actually running a business that works.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're thinking about how much money you want, I think the thing to be thinking about is what does money allow you to do?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's easy for the world to say, oh, it's not all about money.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is sorry to be the blunt bearer of bad news here, but it is all about money.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: We all need money to pay our bills and to live our lives.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you want to live a life that involves you setting up a donkey sanctuary on a Greek island, you're going to need some money to run that.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we all need money for something.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a good thing to make money.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good thing to be profitable in your business or to get paid well in your career for the job that you do.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: It allows you then to use that money to do other good things in the world, whether that's by setting up charitable things or even just through the clients that you help.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: You running a profitable business allows you to help more clients doing that thing that you are amazing at.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And by doing that, you're having a better impact on the world.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: The thing I suppose I want you to think about in each of these episodes that we do is what's the one thing I can take away from this?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're anything like me, you read books or you listen to audios or podcasts, and you think, yeah, that's that's all really, really good.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if I asked you six months later what that book was about or what the takeaway was from that podcast or that episode, could you tell me?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And often we want to take big steps forward, but the big step is just made up of a combination of small steps.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the gifts that I've got is being able to take tasks that seem big and overwhelming and a bit scary or or intimidating and break them down into component parts so that you tick off each little part one at a time and move yourself closer to the goal.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that I've been really passionate about for a very long time.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I made sure that when I wrote my book, I did exactly that.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Each chapter has got a task that you can do, so that if you do nothing else but do that one task, you're gonna be slightly further ahead than you would be if you've done nothing.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And my expectation from each of these episodes that you'll hear from over the coming up the few weeks and few months to come is that each time you'll hear something, you'll think, yeah, I'm gonna go and do something with that.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I want to actually make myself better than I was before I started listening to this episode.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So today's episode has been quite short, but it is just the introduction to something new and exciting and something that is coming.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the task for today, if you just needed something little to get your teeth into over the weekend, and something for you to think about before next week's episode, is what does wealthy actually mean?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you were wealthy, what would you be able to do that you can't currently do now?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Is it about the having the money to buy things?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is it about uh time to do things?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you had more money, would that enable you to spend more time with people than you you do at the moment?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it something else?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be really interested to know if you've got comments or suggestions.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to drop them below in the notes.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll catch up with you next week.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to be a huge decision, just take a few minutes and get curious about what your money is doing for you.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode made you think, subscribe to Fun Money Serious Wealth and check out the show notes on where to follow me so you don't miss the next one.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know someone who's earning good money, who's wondering what to do with it, send this their way.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the fun of it, build the wealth from it.