218 | Live Money Coaching: Money Habits Holding You Back from Financial Success

Hilary Hendershott: What you’re about to hear are excerpts from my first two sessions with Nicole. For the most part, Nicole has been self-employed her entire life, but in various roles. She’s in her late 50s. She hasn’t saved much for retirement, though she and her husband do have some equity in their home. Nicole is an intuitive and you’ll hear her talk about that. I didn’t even know what that was when I met her. But what I’ve discovered is that Nicole does really powerful work with her clients.

When Nicole started with me a few months ago, she really saw that she had been pricing her work so that she just barely makes ends meet and she’s ready to do something new. In order to get there, she’s going to have to say no to some of the clients she’s been working with so she has space and energy to say yes to the clients who will pay her new prices. She’s being really great with me at being so generous and vulnerable and so open about her life. It really is a great way to kick off these episodes. You’re going to love these.

These lessons for Nicole may not be the right ones for your business. Maybe you’re doing something completely different, but it’s going to be really amazing for you to be a fly on the wall for this conversation. I hope you enjoy. And if you want to be a Money Coaching client, there’s no website, no landing page, no launches, just email coaching@hendershottwealth.com

[INTERVIEW]

Hilary Hendershott: We met a couple of weeks ago. And as they say, the program begins when you register. Tell me what’s happened since then. Has anything come up for you? Anything happened that you want to share with me?

Nicole: Yeah. Well, just going through the exercise and typing and the information for you. I get present to the reality of I’m just kind of winging it and without a plan, right? Like, we’re not going to get anywhere without a plan. So, I think I never really had a plan. And I’ve read so many books on money and I know how to make money. And so, I think I’m usually going to just, well, if I have something I’ve got to pay for, I’ll just find a savings to pay for. I would do it, right? So, I’m just not organized and I haven’t got organized and it’s time to do it because I need to figure out retirement in the next 20 years. But still. So, I’m just really present to the lack of preparedness I am. That’s where I’m at. And then there’s a fear like, “Oh, my gosh. Can I do this?” kind of thing.

Hilary Hendershott: And where you’re at is where we meet many people and you seem incredibly powerful. So, I have all the faith in the world in you. Let me just answer one of the data questions. It said, “What quantity did you sell last calendar year?” And you said $130,857. But then for last year’s business revenue, you put a question mark. Is the $130k last year’s business revenue, do you think?

Nicole: The $130k is this year. And last year, I pulled out my file and so I can tell you that number right now because I just didn’t have it when I put it together. And we’re still finalizing our tax returns for the year. But I had my, well, let’s see, ordinary income was again minimal, but my total income was $130k, oh yeah, that was for last year, $857k. That’s my total sales. That’s just total sales in my business. I don’t know what income. Again, I have a negative income. I have a lot of write-offs. Mostly everything gets paid through my business, frankly.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And so, you’re one of these who is and it’s very common following the advice of the tax people to write-off as much as you can, show negative income, which unfortunately leaves you with literally negative income, a zero tax bill.

Nicole: Right. Well, yeah, maybe a grand but, yeah, you’re right. It’s minimal. Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Right. Okay, good. And you said $200 per hour. And when we met, my memory says you came to me and said, “Look, I do this for a living but I’m really an intuitive.” Do I remember that correctly? So, you’re doing two things. What are you actually doing?

Nicole: Yeah. I’m doing multiple. So, I became a mediator. So, I’ve been mediating since ‘09. So, I’m just really good with people and their emotions and I can kind of high conflict, I can dissolve. So, I do that. I used to be a paralegal. I was going to be a lawyer and then I kind of had a dream I’ll just move to California, and I literally quit my job as a paralegal and went out there. And I realized I was always an intuitive. So, I did some training. It changed my life but I’ve always had this love for the law. So, I mediate but I also do counseling, clearing.

I’d love to have like a portal and a training and, I mean, I can see I have so much content. I mean, truly, I have a ton of books of content I’ve written, but I just haven’t really organized it. Most of my day is spent one-on-one with people. My calendar is usually pretty full. There’s a waiting list for people to come to see me. So, I’m popular, I’m busy, but I’ve got to still carve out the time to really build a future income, not just trade my time for money but, yeah, I’m a psychic. I do psychic readings.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And you actually typed it in your form that, that is the limitation of a business like the one that you’re running is if you’re meeting people individually and you don’t have a technology that lives outside you. Really, it’s more like a therapy practice and you can’t take a vacation or get sick.

Nicole: That’s right. I can’t. I have to pay bills.

Hilary Hendershott: Right. So, we need to work together to build, to have the business look a little bit differently so that it throws off more money than you need and so that you can take time off. Now, tell me these questions may come out of order but as a psychic, I imagine you need rest, time off. You need to feel organized and put together. Tell me, are you working harder than you should be to do your best work?

Nicole: Of course. Yeah, absolutely. But this year, I’ve really taken some massive effort to sunrise, get up in the sunrise, and then I’m tanning. I like being out in the sun. I’m just trying to have a long time. So, I’m having earphones. So, that really is critical for me to just have no noise. And I’m journaling. I’m writing. I tried to scale back. I used to be 150 an hour. I raised my rates so I can work less with the same amount of money. And I said, “I’ve got to cut back.” So, I have at least a day or two off a week that I really just work on me.

Hilary Hendershott: Great. That’s actually heartening. Most people don’t come to me with even that much. So, good for you. And do you need those two days?

Nicole: Yeah, I do.

Hilary Hendershott: And what happens if you don’t have them? Does your effectiveness go down? Or do you never really have them?

Nicole: Actually, I’ve never really lost my effectiveness. I could sit, but it’s really just sitting for 10 hours straight with people, right? When I get in that zone, I mean, I’m go, go, go. And I’m better with as long as– I really don’t lose that track. I can really feel people, but it really is taxing on my physical. So, sleeping has been like the thing, right? So, I’m pretty good now. I take my magnesium. I make sure I am getting good sleep and that if I have to sleep until 9 o’clock the next day because I’ve got two days off, that’s what I’m doing to make sure I got at least eight hours.

Hilary Hendershott: Right.

Nicole: So, I listen to good videos, just positive stuff, and then I just have silence. And I thought if I had like a month off and someone to kind of coach me daily, I could knock out. I mean, I could do so much. I just got to have the money in a sitting, I have to have the effectiveness program to make me do it, but I think I could really create some amazing products that I probably could sell. But I just don’t have a team. I need a team.

Hilary Hendershott: Correct. You do. And so, what I see is just some money operating system issues that are holding you back. For example, where did you come up with $200 an hour?

Nicole: I think it was just more of what our average mediator’s getting 200, 250.

Hilary Hendershott: And that’s divorce mediator, correct?

Nicole: Divorce mediator or civil in any sort of dispute, really.

Hilary Hendershott: Oh, okay. Just divorce or civil. So, I assume that was what you were also charging for the intuitive work. Are they the same rates?

Nicole: Yep, same rate.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And you have a waiting list of how many people do you think?

Nicole: I’m probably about two weeks. I could be sometimes a month out because I have so many hours I can book in and I’m not doing 10 hours a day like I used to. So, I’m probably about 10 days out right now. So, people are having to wait at least two weeks to see me.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay, good. We’re going to increase that. Lovely.

Nicole: That’s good.

Hilary Hendershott: What do you want to tell me about what it was like for you growing up with money? How did you learn about the nature of money? What lessons are you left with about money, about yourself in relationship to money?

Nicole: So, farm girl. My parents got married at 18, pregnant with my sister. I’m number two baby. They had four kids. Never had money. My mother was scrounging for pennies or something. We got 20-cent hamburgers or something. So, we were just always struggling for money. And my dad was a young guy but he hustled and very suppressive grandparents, Mormon, depression. So, again, money was everything. We just didn’t communicate at all. And so, I was working like a man. I mean, my dad had three girls and a boy. So, we had to work on the farm. And so, I was slaving away. We’re doing apples and cherries. We had two seasons. It was fall season and summer season. I worked like a man. I’m not kidding.

So, I put a roof on with my grandfather. I have a belt and a hammer and I’m 16 putting a roof on. And my grandmother, who hated my guts for some reason, “You children, you kids but there’s money on the ground. Money on the ground like you’re costing us money.” So, I’m a burden. And it’s like to get money, I’m always paying back. I’m always paying more than my share. I’m always giving back out of guilt or shame or something. And so, I almost feel guilty like there’s a guilt always with money for me. Like, I can’t charge too much. Some people can’t afford me. I give a lot for free but I feel like I’m always guilty when it comes to money. Like, I can’t charge too much or I don’t want them think I’m a greedy b*tch or something like that goes through my head with money.

And when I joined a gym when I was younger, my sister, I mean, we got woke up at three in the morning. My dad got the bill in the mail. “How dare you work hand-to-mouth? Who’s going to pay for this?” “Well, we are. We have jobs,” but it was this freak out about, “You’re going to take care of yourself. You want to work out? You work on the farm.” Like, there was no luxury. There was no self-care. And the guilt trip. And this was like $400, right? We’re going to spend $18 a month on. But for them, it was, “How dare you?” And so, a lot of it is just unworthiness, guilt, frankly. I love my parents. They died young, 59 and 62.

Hilary Hendershott: Wow.

Nicole: So, not healthy people. I mean, I became a counselor, mediator, intuitive to survive, literally.

Hilary Hendershott: And did you go to college?

Nicole: So, I got my paralegal certification. I, again, was going to be a lawyer and this dream really derailed me. I had a dream when God said, “You move to California.” I go to California. I woke up, I was making 20 whatever an hour in the 80s. I was doing really well at the county. First paralegal ever hired at the county. And this dream, I was that profoundly hit and I quit my job.

I went to California. I didn’t know what I was doing. I got there on my own. I still had to earn my way to the top there. So, I’ve been doing kind of legal stuff, training. And then I just started my own business in 2000. It was ‘99 and 2000. I’ve been doing that since.

Hilary Hendershott: When you say you clear people, I think I know what that means, but I don’t want to make it up. Where do they start and where do they finish with you?

Nicole: When they come and talk to me, I’m looking to see where they’re stuck in their life. They’re on a routine, like a perpetual cycle. They never seem to get above something. Whether it’s a financial level or a relationship cycle, they keep getting suppressed or they got the wrong people. I’m looking for the patterns. And so, a pattern is usually tied to a trauma or a program from early on. It could be past life if you believe in that. But people are looking to get out of there where they’ve been stuck. They want to have a breakthrough from what they’ve had in their past. So, I kind of help strategically figure out, well, what happened, and then I help them organize and see, well, no wonder, right? It’s hard to see myself. But it is kind of like a one-on-one forum leader-type stuff, right? So, that’s where it’s at.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And your business is filled by referral only. You don’t do marketing. And you have a book out there. You don’t have a YouTube channel or an Instagram.

Nicole: I’ve started it. I have Instagram. But again, I don’t fill it every day. It’s just not padded like I need it to be. But I do have social media, I’ve got Facebook, I’ve got Instagram. I started a YouTube channel. Again, I just don’t have the videos on there. I don’t have time to shoot them but, yeah, I can have all that stuff, yeah, but I just don’t.

Hilary Hendershott: No, I don’t think Instagram is the place for you to be right now at all. I think the first place you need to focus is raising your prices so that you can hire someone because you can’t do this on your own because you’ll wear yourself out.

Nicole: I’m there. Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: So, from my initial thoughts right now, it seems to me like the first couple of conversations we have and will follow, of course, any space that’s already filled can’t be refilled. So, there’s going to be a process of getting what’s in you out of you and kind of recognizing, simply said how the ways you’ve been behaving around money. Your business and your money are inextricably tied, of course. You’ve always been an entrepreneur. You’ve never followed a traditional route. You’ve had a wild life full of fundamentally famous people, very successful people, but who’ve kept you in a sort of subservient role. And you’ve followed a pattern in business that’s very common, which is, “Let me just go do as much as I can do and see what I can sell,” versus reverse engineering, “What is it going to take for me to have the financial life that I want to have? And how do my prices need to look and what kind of value do I need to provide and, therefore, to whom do I need to market in order to do that?” And so, if you come with me on this journey, there will be a major shift. I want to use the word transformation but that word is very…

Nicole: I get it, yeah. I don’t use that either. It’s landmark, yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Like, really the way you think about and talk about money and who you work for and how you charge will be completely different. And it’ll happen slowly. So, talk to me about – how was the process of filling out the discover sheet. You already talked a little bit about that. You said you’re present to being… I believe the word was “disorganized”. Was it emotionally hard for you? Some people stop at the discover sheet. You know that?

Nicole: I’m sure.

Hilary Hendershott: Right?

Nicole: I’ll plow through. I have a high pain tolerance. I’ll plow through it, right?

Hilary Hendershott: Okay.

Nicole: It taught me something. It’s like, yeah, there’s a logical process to money, and I have been doing it haphazardly. So, that’s how I see it is there’s just something I just don’t know and I can learn it. So, I didn’t feel like I was a complete failure. And I think that I’ve got this far and I’ve raised two kids on my own, like I really have had no help. I’m not kidding. And so, I think I’ve done all right. I’m going to work smarter, not harder. That’s kind of what I got mostly out of it, yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Perfect. And then you mentioned that you and your husband are completely separate financially.

Nicole: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Tell me how that came to be and how you feel about that now.

Nicole: He’s a car collector. He has a horrible ex-divorce. And so, in the beginning, we mingled, and frankly, he was just not honest and did some stupid things. And we separated and I came back but ever since I came back after, I was gone for about 18 months, he got sick. And so, I came back knowing that he was not well. So, financially, he does the same thing I do. The CPAs just write everything off. And he has basically one account. So, we share bills. I mean, we pay our share here and we have one account better. But there’s just not a lot to go around from him. I’m financially really in the hole here. He’s not well.

So, he’s got to stop working as much, frankly. So, he’s got such a fire to put out all the time in his life. I just can’t count on him. That’s just the truth. And I’m used to being on my own, right? But when I did give him certain things, it just doesn’t come back for me. So, I kind of know I just can’t do that with him. Look, I know I’m going to end up being a widow. So, that’s where I’m at, frankly. And I have a life insurance policy. When he passes, it’s $300,000. I pay for it. He’s never paid a dime for it. I pay every penny. He lives life to make sure a wife doesn’t ever get anything out of him unless he dies. His ex-wife really did a number on him.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Are you legally married?

Nicole: We are married and then we have a trust. And I’m a beneficiary in the trust. So, I know that I’m secure, if he passes. I’m not on the house. Again, he’s not gonna put me on the house. That’s risky for him. But I’m in the trust and the house is in the trust. And so, it’s not paid off, but if he passes, I’ll have a little bit of money I can do something with.

Hilary Hendershott: Great. Okay. So, a couple of things I hear, just what’s called for, what’s needed is a rearrangement in how you think about the business’s income. So, you may need a new CPA. I heard you say the CPA says, write everything off. Here’s the problem with that. In order to have high income, you have to have high taxes. A lot of CPAs I’ve met measure their own value by how small their client’s tax bill is. And what I see is that those clients have no savings because they don’t pull any money out of their businesses that they can save in their own names. So, for example, I’ve met people with millions of dollars of CDs in the name of their business. But the problem is you don’t own that money, right? The business does. Now, that’s not the situation for you. You’re spending down both the business. You could say your financial life is a stranglehold because there’s just no generosity. There’s no abundance. There’s no mountains of money, right?

Like, someone with your skill set should have– I have a former client who I got in her car one time. She had $100 bills in her glove compartment, which I do not advise. She said, “Hilary, I surround myself with money because now I’m a magnet for money.” So, think about a very high-income business and, unfortunately, a very high tax bill. And it may be that you decide to move to a lower-income tax state to maximize that while you’re alive. So, together we can reverse engineer that high-income business. So, now, a couple of things I want you to do. Where do you bank?

Nicole: Credit union.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. How many bank accounts do you have?

Nicole: I think I have like five bank accounts.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Do you have a consistent practice of how you use those bank accounts?

Nicole: Mostly, I put money in to pay the car payments. That’s where the car payments are, where my business account is and my personal and my daughter’s account so I can help her because she’s going to college. So, it’s like I can put it in a business account and then I transfer it to personal or to my daughter. But yeah, so I do that. And I’ve got a handful of credit cards.

Hilary Hendershott: We want to build a wall in between your personal and business accounts. So, I’m an absolute yes for having everything you can, be a business deduction. You are the business in many ways. So, lots and lots of things about your life should be and are a tax deduction, not your clothes, not your hair. There are certain things that are just personal expenses, right? You can’t really argue with Uncle Sam that you have to X, Y, and Z cosmetically. Now, there are some business owners who have uniforms in their business. Those are a business expense because those are custom to the business. But a portion of your travel, I mean, as the business owner, any time you go on business and talk about business, of course, that’s a business expense. So, I’m not taking away your business deductions, but I do want to build a wall in between your personal and business accounts.

Based on how rigorous you know yourself to be, do you think based on that conversation that you should keep? So, for example, I do my business banking and I have my personal. Do you think you should have your financial institution separate or can you be relied on to have them at the same bank?

Nicole: I think I could be relied upon, and I’m open that I can have two banks. That’s not a problem. So, yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. Yeah. And then how are you spending money? So, you spend on the credit card to get the points and then pay off the credit cards?

Nicole: Not so much. I mean, I probably should do that but I haven’t. Like, your husband’s great at counting every point in everything. I’m like new at this, like, “Well, that’s cool,” but it just seems so tedious. I don’t want to clip coupons. I used to. But I’m just more like, I’ll Amazon shop and I’ll use my, again, debit card. I’ll try to never use a credit card if I can help it. But I mostly just debit card it or Amazon. That’s kind of mostly my shopping, frankly. And I’ve got an Amazon card and then I’ve got my debit card.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And probably a good amount of your Amazon expenses are business expenses, right?

Nicole: They are. Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. So, in my Amazon account, I have a business card and a personal card. So, we want to start the process of just putting a wall in between those expenses. So, this is my mobile phone in this wallet right here. I have three things. I have my driver’s license. I have a business card and a personal card, and that’s it. I don’t have a debit card right now. However, for many years, I did live off a debit card. The decision of whether or not you can use credit cards on a daily basis is a function of whether you pay your credit cards off on a monthly basis. I’m looking at some credit card balances. I don’t know how long those took to amass. Frankly, they’re not large relative to what we’ve seen. So, I’m not terribly concerned. The car debts are a bit onerous. So, we want to start the process. So, while we’re working together, before you talk to me, don’t take on any more debt.

In the beginning, I would recommend just so it’s super, super clear to you since you mix with your daughter’s account there or maybe leave your personal account there. And you don’t have to close the business account. Just take it to a zero balance and choose one of the other institutions for your business account. Is your business an entity? You have an S Corp or an LLC or anything?

Nicole: LLC.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. So, then you’ve already gone through the trouble of titling the account to the LLC. Okay. Then probably just leave it there because that is such a big job.

Nicole: Pain in the butt, yeah. I might get a couple of business accounts and just see if I can do that. But it is onerous. It’s a pain in the butt. I got articles in incorporation, all these things to send them, right?

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. And the next step in the next month or so, I am going to ask you to open multiple accounts. And so, you may start by asking them, have you ever heard of the Profit First system? And if I have four or five accounts here, will you just charge me for one or will you forgive the account fees on the other four? Like, I don’t want to pay 40 bucks a month for bank accounts. It’s just electronic in their system. It doesn’t cost them money to have an extra account. I have, I think, five accounts at x and I believe four accounts at y, and we only pay one account monthly fee. Okay.

And so, what we’ve found is that these major national banks, first of all, are the most willing to work with a system like that. Second of all, do the best at feeding into the financial dashboard that you may choose to use with my firm. The financial dashboard allows you to aggregate things in one place. We can see all the bank accounts, all the auto loans, all the mortgage– well, I mean, depending on if you have the login for the mortgage on the house. I don’t know if that’s exclusive to your husband.

Nicole: It is. Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah, no problem. But anyway, all of your stuff in one place, and then you can share it with us so we can see it. We’re never going to get into judging your transactions. I’m never going to talk to you about the little line items that you buy, right? I mean, people get a little hairy about that sometimes.

I think Chase is a great institution we’ve seen. And so, what you start to think about are the large financial institutions have these data feeds that come into this financial dashboard. The name of the dashboard company is eMoney. It’s paid for by me. So, you won’t get any ads or promos or anything like that. You can, of course, restrict access or terminate it at any time. It’s a lot like Mint.com or Personal Capital, if you’ve heard of those. And I just want to set you up to win.

We’ve seen some of these smaller local credit unions not have reliable data feeds that come into eMoney. So, it just depends what you want to set yourself up for. If that’s something you feel like you want to continue to work with the smaller credit unions, the regional financial institutions, it seems to me like they’re all getting swallowed up into the big boys anyway. So, it may be moving deck chairs around on the Titanic kind of a thing.

Let’s keep our focus small. I would like for you to buy even a used copy of the book, The E-Myth Revisited. This is a book that the E is short for entrepreneurial. So, it’s the entrepreneurial myth. And revisited just simply means it’s his second version. This will blow your mind. I’m also going to send you some didactic learning but your homework is to do the bank accounts in between this week and next week and see if you can read that book, the E-Myth, because we want to talk about how to structure your business so you can get out of this, paddle fast, paddle like heck, like a duck underneath the water and seem graceful on top because we want to reverse engineer.

What you’re offering is really in demand for people, has always been, and in my opinion, will always be. And by the way, you’ve kind of self-insulated against the threat of artificial intelligence, right? Like, the engineering and technical jobs are going away. I mean, the fast food jobs are going away, too, but no AI that I can conceive of will be able to do what you’re doing right now. So, we’re going to elevate your position in the market. I have someone who’s running a similar business. I’m going to see what she’ll share with me about her business. But when I engaged with her, she was $12,000 minimum, like ticket to enter, right?

Nicole: Holy sh*t.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. And I think what she does is very similar to what you do. So, I’ll see what she’ll share with me in between now and next week. Would you also begin a money journal?

Nicole: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Write down the things you say and think about money. And that’s to clients, to prospective clients, to your husband, in your mind as you reflect this conversation, as you go to the bank, right?

Nicole: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: So, there’s probably a lot of fleeting thoughts, even feelings about money that come up. And I’d love to dig into those with you.

Nicole: Thank you. I’ll do that.

Hilary Hendershott: So, how did we do?

Nicole: I tried to get a bank account. For whatever reason, they said, “Can’t do this at this time,” I don’t even know why. So, don’t know why. And so, I check that out. I’ll get that sorted out with my bank, though. And I do get my taxes done this week. So, we got that done, filed yesterday. As I journal, I journaled more today this morning actually. And I started listening to all the little podcast things. I’m getting a whole world of what’s my money story, my money program. I operate on I have to earn it. I can’t just have it easy. Oh, no, no. It’s got to be hard, grit. Like, I got to sweat for my money, baby. And I can’t let anybody know that I have what I have because I’ll be a little greedy pig or something.

I mean, it’s like, and it’s going back to being a farm girl and you don’t waste and you can’t waste food and you can’t waste money, you can’t, because we were just poor. And so, it’s just this whole mindset, my grandparents. Yeah, my grandfather was a millionaire in cash. When my dad was 16, he wouldn’t buy him skis. I have this just the mentality, it’s just like the shaming, I have to pretend I don’t have what I have.

I was the only one in my family that had my own business in my 20s. And I didn’t want to work for the man. I didn’t want to live like a slave. I could make more money on my own, and I always have. I just started a business. I didn’t have ramp-up time. I started doing readings on people in my 20s when I had my son and my little girl. And my husband at the time was like, he didn’t really work, so I had to make the money. And I made money the first month out, I paid all of our bills, and I consistently at that time, made $12,000 a month. And I was working for like, I think, it was 75 bucks an hour. Do you know how many hours I was working for that? But I had to do it because he didn’t work. I want my kids to be taken care of. I killed myself for my family.

So, all this stuff about money, it’s like I’m an earner. I can earn. This is so valuable and so needed for me to really get into a space of really getting paid for my contribution, not just for my time or it’s just that mindset. Everybody else is taken care of around me, totally taken care of, but me. And I have what I need. But even just time for myself, like, I’m just finding, I need a few hours a day just for me, work out, read. I mean, I have to spend time listening to these videos. I need to learn. So, I’m just seeing how I’ve got to get off that treadmill that I’ve been on. Just go, go, go. Got to make money. Got to make money. I’ve been doing this for 30 whatever years, so it’s exhausting.

Hilary Hendershott: No, I get it. I get it. I mean, what I hear is all the thoughts that you were having in between our conversations, of realizations of the things that you’ve done. Now, I’m looking at my notes about you, but is my memory telling me correctly? But I think you’re still at $12,000 a month. Is that correct?

Nicole: I’m about there, yeah. Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. So, there’s like something about this number or this ceiling for you because $12,000, 20 years ago, was a lot more money than it is now. So, it’s something numerical for you.

Nicole: Yeah. Basically, how many hours can I work a day? My schedule used to be, I was a single mother most of my adult life because I got divorced, but I would get up, feed the kids, take them to school, go to work 9 a.m., done by two because I had to be home to get them from school or whatever. I never took a lunch. I had breakfast and then something little for dinner. But my schedule was around my kids. So, how many hours can I work that day? My rate was 75 to 150. Then I just went to 200 for half the clients. Half the clients, they’re still 150 because that’s where they’re grandfathered in at, right? I didn’t want to raise all their rates. So, I just hear myself feeling so sorry for these people. And I’m a luxury ticket.

Hilary Hendershott: And not feeling sorry for you.

Nicole: Always. Like, I’m always the one. I don’t want to be a burden. My mother was always poor me, poor me. And my dad was killing himself, so prideful. But just weird. Like, money, we just don’t talk about it. And even with money, like with my dad, you need to get a job. You got to have security. You need to have retirement. I, f*ck that. I don’t want to be a slave to somebody else and make the money for them. I want to make for myself. And I knew what I needed to do. I needed to help people.

So, I was even like this with my dad. It’s like, and I loaned him money one time because his job wasn’t paying him. So, I do think, the last thing he ever said to me before he died was, “I never had to worry about you. I’m proud of you.” I’ve always been this independent thing, and I feel like I’ve got to quit hiding. I just have this innate intuition. I can make sh*t happen and I know I can. So, if I think, well, if I can create $12,000 a month and that was just based on how many hours I was going to kill myself for money, well, I got to make money some other way. I decided, like, I got to quit just doing time one hour at a time. I got to make money in a different way, right? And that’s what I need to learn is, what should I do? What can I do? Like that needs to change immediately.

Hilary Hendershott: There’s a couple of things I want to reflect back to you because our relationship is about money and it’s all intertwined and just recognizing and seeing the briar patch and the mess of broken beliefs. Probably, your grandfather got his broken money beliefs from his father and so on and so on, right? And so, your opportunity is to sever that dysfunction. And what it takes is, and you said releasing all of it. And I am grateful that you’re willing to even say that because a lot of people feel like I’ll never get out of this.

My experience is it takes time and it takes producing different results. So, there may be things we decide you’re going to do in these conversations that are not comfortable for you, like raising your prices. And part of that is just re-engineering everything about how you think about money, because none of your clients, the ones with feet, the ones without feet, the ones with money, the ones with celebrity, the ones without it, none of them are going to make sure your bank accounts are full.

Nicole: No.

Hilary Hendershott: That’s just you.

Nicole: That’s all me. Always has been. I don’t have anyone around me that I could really lean on. Not my parents. So, I was like, “Well, if it’s going to be, I have to figure it out.” And I have. And I’m proud of myself. I love paying my bills. I love organizing. And I mean, I know exactly what’s what. And I’m very meticulous about that. And I’m proud. I’m proud that I can do that. And I haven’t had anybody help me. So, I’ve had such a betrayal, betrayal, betrayal with money.

Hilary Hendershott: And even your current marriage.

Nicole: Yes. Oh, it is.

Hilary Hendershott: It’s just you’re willing to accept I’m a non contributing partner. It’s almost like a critical criteria for you. I wonder what you would even do with a partner who had assets and income and a conservative financial outlook, right? I don’t know what you would do with that.

Nicole: Provision or protection for me, I know, right? I don’t either. So, I really think I have an avoidance to receiving because I don’t want to give. There’s, what is that? There’s a tradeoff or it’s not really a gift. It’s, I’m now trapped but I really– and so, money and weight are really intertwined with me and I really work so much that I haven’t had time for my health. I’m surprised, knock on wood, I’m doing as well as I am at 57. And I think it’s because I love, love, love what I do and I love people and I pray a sh*t ton. God walks with me, I feel it.

But I think, honestly, I just look at all the sh*t and I want to be as good with people as I am if I didn’t have all that misery to ministry. And I know that. But I think that that was really where I got this thing, I don’t want your money, because I don’t want to give you what you’re paying for. Nothing comes for free. And that was, again, as a farm girl, we didn’t have anything. My grandfather that was sitting is a miser. He’s got a million dollars in the bank. Proud of that. But that’s a secret.

So, it’s like, all this dysfunction, but I was already working on the farm at five. I’m spreading fertilizer with my dad and we got to get the trees taken care of. And I had a dog that we had to take care of. So, I’m a farm girl. You’re walking, you can work. Oh, it was, that’s the mindset. I told you I can walk.

Hilary Hendershott: You’re walking, you can work.

Nicole: You’re walking, you can work. And if I want something, I will buy it. I’m not afraid to buy sh*t and figure out how to pay for it later. That’s kind of what I do. But I can see myself just going in circles, going in circles. I cannot go in circles anymore. I just want to just jump the fence. Literally, just jump the fence.

Hilary Hendershott: Well, it’s just like in the seminars, how the theme is. The first three or four sessions are always getting you to be real about how it is. And then they’re like, “So, guess what? It’s time for a breakthrough,” right? That’s where I feel like you are. Jump the fence like a sheep.

Nicole: Exactly. I can see the treadmill and just that mood of monotony. Okay, assume the position. Here we go. What’s going on with you? I just take on so many people. So, oh, my gosh. And I love it. I could do nothing different. I don’t know any different. So, something spiritual has always been there to kind of preserve, right? My calling is people experience the presence of the divine and destiny is honored. And I’ve had that moment over and over and over and over in my life. I know I am watched over. I feel like I work for God, no sh*t.

So, it’s a little weird marketing for me because when I try to market because I think, “Yeah, I need to set my rate, I need to raise my rate, but I need to have somewhere I need to share the stuff.” And sometimes, people, it’s not about money. I know why I’m here on the planet, but I do want to, I think I get so on that treadmill with people and I’m living to make the money to pay the bills. I need to live to really be bigger for people that are calling on me for real help. Does that make sense?

Hilary Hendershott: Yes. And there are people who have celebrity and have millions who also need you. And so, what we’re going to do is we’re going to re-engineer your business so that you’re charging 90% of your clients a price. I could say a number. It sounds to me like you could talk to God and get a number. We need to start raising your prices and then you can have 10% of your business be pro bono, right? So, 90% of your business doubles your current income, and then your bank accounts are filled because that’s your job, not theirs. And then you have enough to save for the future, pay your bills, and give what you want to give away. And you have the intuition, it sounds like, to know to whom you want to give that.

So, the thing about business is a literal business, the traditional definition of business is a set of systems, proprietary technology processes or systems that lead to profitable outcomes. So, real estate brokerage, they hire real estate agents who go out and sell in the ways that they sell. The brokerage takes a cut or a manufacturing business. We manufacture widgets over and over and over again. We make 2% of what we sell, but we sell billions, so we make millions, right? You don’t have a business in that sense. You are an iconic practitioner of a thing that can’t be repeated. Forgive me if I’m assuming incorrectly, but it’s not like you can hire other intuitives who work for you. So, the nature of this business, because it cannot be sold and you are it, is we have to elevate you so that you’re making so much money when you are working that you can, again, pay your bills, save for the future, but also take time off, take luxurious vacations, and get sick because you’re a human being, right?

Nicole: Yeah, you’re right. Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: And my experience is going back to talks about how the nature, the container inside which a biological organism changes, you could say the engaging of neuroplasticity requires time, recurrence, environment or time, recurrence, intention. And so, for our purposes, these calls and everything you do in between these calls is our environment. It’ll take some time. So, I would like to ask you in between now and our next call, just make a list of the clients that are currently seeing you. I don’t want or need any identifying information, just the first initial of their first name or whatever. And if the answer is 100% referrals, I want to know where they came from and I want to know how often they’re seeing you and what they’re paying.

Nicole: Okay.

Hilary Hendershott: And I want you to start to think about what’s the highest number you’re willing to raise your rates to right now. And the way I’ll ask you to do that is and this I’ve always had great experience doing this with my clients is I tell people, “Hey, look, inflation, business is  full, I am raising my prices. I’m giving you a 60-day notice.” So, they have a transition time, right? Everybody knows prices go up over time. We, the business owners, the women who keep ourselves small, who don’t think we deserve money, we’re the ones who struggle with it.

Nicole: I know.

Hilary Hendershott: The men who build empires for themselves, they don’t struggle with price increases. And it’s okay. So, at the same time, we’re going to think about like by next week. I want you to have a number. My inclination is to tell you we need to go to 250 in 60 days and tell them you’re going to go to 350 in 60 more days, right? So, we’re doubling your prices or almost doubling your prices over 120 days. But I’m only doing that because– and I’m flawed, I’m thinking to myself, she’ll say yes to this, but it sounds to me like you have a higher power who is your guide. And so, now that that entity must be engaged with us in this process, I want to know from you what’s the highest number you are willing to go to. And what we need to do is kind of reverse engineer, how much money does Nicole need to pull out of this business? And then, based on that, what do we need prices to be? So, would you tell me, when people come to you, do you do 50-minute sessions? Does it look in practice like a therapy session?

Nicole: Yeah, it’s an hour. Sometimes, it’s two hours. And they know they’re going to pay for two. Couples, that’s two hours. If I’ve done it before, it’s fine, but it’s a 60-minute.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. And do you have a minimum number of sessions that people see you for?

Nicole: I used to do a 10-hour package. I got a couple in California. It’s 10 hours for, like, 200 bucks an hour, but I cut a little off, $1,750 for 10 hours for them. But I’ve done packages before. I’ve trained 45 people to kind of learn how to clear people. Not intuition, but I have a clearing process, those eight grand. And this $300…

Hilary Hendershott: So, it’s eight grand per person?

Nicole: To train them, yeah. And that was about 300 hours. I mean, it’s a lot of time for me, but I do love coaching. I mean, I love training people. I’ve got counselors that come to me. So, it’s like…

Hilary Hendershott: When was the last time you did a clearing training?

Nicole: It was probably two years ago, the last time I did a training.

Hilary Hendershott: So, that’s not really current. Are you planning to do it again soon?

Nicole: I could. I have the books and stuff. I could. I just want to do something that really is going to have a lasting impact. And again, that’s a long training. It’s hundreds of hours. So, getting people that committed.

Hilary Hendershott: Well, I’m trying to figure out. So, if you’re charging $8,000 for 45 people, that’s $360,000, divided by 300 hours, it’s $1,200 an hour. That’s all right.

Nicole: Well, that was 45 over the course of years. I did two people because I couldn’t do all of them at once, so I didn’t. But you’re right. If I did a big training like that, well, hell, yeah, that’s good money.

Hilary Hendershott: Our work together is to free you up, to give you a bountiful, abundant experience of life so that your frequency increases. So that when you’re with people, you naturally give more because you have more, right?

Nicole: Yes.

Hilary Hendershott: What people are paying for is the frequency that is you. You could interchange any spiritual word with that word frequency. But you know what I’m saying? The energy of you. And when you’re not paid fully, you are not at your energetic capacity, but you don’t require a certain number of hours. And how do you select who you’ll work with? You do pretty much work with everyone?

Nicole: Everybody. Yeah, I will adapt. I mean, it’s like, pick up your bed and walk with me. Let’s go. I know everybody’s secrets, I mean, and people find me in the weirdest ways. And again, it’s all referrals. And I think it’s pretty, like big extraordinary conversations are what keep me going. And it’s like we bring God into it, right? But I’m…

Hilary Hendershott: Do you like the two-hour sessions?

Nicole: I like two-hour sessions because I can really start delving into what’s really going on with people. I prefer that, frankly, yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Well, maybe we go with that because that’s something that separates you from a therapist, right?

Nicole: Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: I mean, most therapists are like 50 minutes, the bell rings, bye-bye. And not like that’s bad, but I’m looking for differentiators. Have you published podcasts?

Nicole: I have a few. I still want to do my podcast and have just real conversations with real clients, real people I know, and what their transformation through something was. Normally, people come up with their spiritual solutions for their own life problems because the doctor can’t help them. So, I just want to have like real conversations about healing and how they healed themselves or what it took to get through something to give other people hope. So, if you said what…

Hilary Hendershott: That made me all the marketing you need.

Nicole: But I’d love a podcast like that. That’s kind of what’s next. This is what I wanted to do. I want to figure out how to get paid to be in front of the camera and do a podcast. That’s what I want to do.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay, well, I’m doing that so I can help.

Nicole: Very cool.

Hilary Hendershott: I want to talk to you about this thing we call the BMW effect. So, the BMW car is not, if you break it down to its nuts and bolts and metal pieces, it’s not worth twice what a Toyota Celica is worth, right?

Nicole: Right.

Hilary Hendershott: A portion, I mean, of course, it’s branding and marketing, but people take price as an indicator, an indicator of value. And again, if you’re a car expert, I mean, I drove a BMW briefly. It’s a lovely car. That’s not the point. The point is, in economics, we talk about this thing called the BMW effect, where price is an indicator. So, when I think about you working for celebrities for $200 an hour, I think we’re missing an opportunity to indicate your value because that celebrity and what you may not be thinking about, and I’m saying celebrity, rich person, successful person, whatever, insert any term there, person with money who has friends with money who also need you may not want to refer someone who charges $200 an hour because that’s perceived as a Toyota Corolla.

Nicole: Gotcha.

Hilary Hendershott: And we want you to be pick your car, Mercedes, BMW, Aston Martin, right? We want you to have a price-based brand. You don’t need a website. In fact, you can have not having a website if you’re doing a business on all referral. That can be one of your selling points. “Honey, I don’t have a website. I’m too busy. My waiting list is too long.” And I almost want you to really think about over this next week. And I know you have intuition. I don’t know how accurate you think or know that you are about people’s bank accounts, but if you do have accuracy about people’s bank accounts, you could have price breaks, right? Like a bit of a sliding scale.

So, for rich people, I’m 1,200 bucks an hour, whatever that number is for you, right? You just have two sides of your business. And then there’s this 10% pro bono, or maybe it goes to 5% pro bono or whatever it is. But the point is, I want you to consider doing less or no pro bono work until we have your income, I would say, doubled. I want everyone I work for to be making at least a quarter million dollars a year.

Nicole: That would solve the money problems right now, literally. Like, that would be enough and a cushion and I could have the calendar I really want, which is time to create, generate, and write. I wrote a book, but I got another book I want to write. There’s so many things I want to do, just create something, lasting products that I, again, that’s residual income too. I just haven’t had the time. Yeah.

Hilary Hendershott: Right. So, podcast is marketing and then the books are, yes, residual income, also marketing. I mean, a lot of the nonfiction books these days are marketing for your ultimate business and, yes, a residual income. Did you say courses?

Nicole: Courses, yeah, like what you’re leaving like a coaching thing to do. Like, what you’re doing 90 days. I can do that. That wouldn’t be hard for me to do. I’ve got a lot of material. I probably have a room full of material. No kidding. Even talking about how to be a counselor, how to counsel people, truly how to, genuinely, without marketing. I’ve done this. and I’m not PhD’d. I’m not pedigreed. I’m just savvy. I have a high emotional IQ and I feel my way. And that’s, I think, what makes us mostly successful, is I can feel their pain. But a lot of counselors are book smart. They’re not people smart.

Hilary Hendershott: So, I want to know also, when you send me your list of clients– oh, by the way, thank you for your money journal. I can’t read all your handwriting. I did read a lot of, I’m afraid to be a greedy b*tch. So, I just want to acknowledge that and just ask you for your permission to work together to re-codify that. And I think you know, that’s why you’re here, that’s why you’re sharing it with me. But I don’t expect it to change immediately. I will tell you, every time I see my payroll, my payroll is like $24,000 every two weeks or something, I choke. And I’ve been making that payroll for years.

But my scarcity mindset still lives in the back room. Okay. So, it may not disappear completely. We’ll just get you used to responding to different stimulus, right? We’re making decisions with, okay, my first job, Hilary says, is to fill my bank account. We got to get to $250,000 a year in income and we can use the podcast to get there and then we can start considering other things. I also want to know what your marketing assets are. So, do you have an email list? Have you ever written a newsletter? No. So, you haven’t been collecting email addresses?

Nicole: No, I have text messages. I have phone numbers. I mean, I’ve got a sh*t ton of people out of me. I’ve got some emails, some phone numbers, but no, not a lot. I’ve got 10,000 people on Instagram. I’ve got a handful of followers, but I really haven’t ever put anything out there. And I got Facebook, but I don’t do a lot.

Hilary Hendershott: Nothing to shake a stick at.

Nicole: No. I just don’t do a lot. And I think I’ve posted 150 things. And I don’t want to post so much that people get used to me because that doesn’t feel right.

Hilary Hendershott: No, you’re not going to make your fortune on Instagram. But when I look at this, you have 150 posts and 10,000 followers.

Nicole: Most of it was generated from videos and people I know, clients frankly.

Hilary Hendershott: Okay. So, I would say there’s a goldmine here somewhere. It sounds to me like if you got serious about putting them into some– whether it’s a text message service or an email service, you could start reaching out to these people and say, “What do you want now? Do you want a course? Do you want to get cleared? Do you want to learn how to clear people? Do you want to–” these various things that you do and you offer and we could start figuring out where the money is now. So, this is starting to take stock of the assets that are sitting around you. And yeah, I agree. I mean, just from having 10,000 followers on Instagram, it sounds to me like you have a community of people who know– I hate to use a trade phrase, know, like, and trust you.

Nicole: They do.

Hilary Hendershott: Who love you.

Nicole: I believe that. And I know, I feel that. People do trust me and I know they really do believe me. They believe in me. But I also hate the email because I get so many junk things myself. But if there’s a text message way to kind of market, I think that would be– I’ve got so many text messages for years literally of clients on my phone. I don’t ever do…

Hilary Hendershott: I know that they are because I get the text messages from them.

Nicole: Yeah, I want to figure out that. Like, that would be something I could really utilize because I’ve got the text messages now from all my clients.

Hilary Hendershott: It’s perfect.

Nicole: So, I’ve got that. I’ve captured that at least, yeah. That’s my goldmine.

Hilary Hendershott: The most succinct way I can think of it is not necessarily thinking like a business practitioner. You just go along and you do what you do and you pick up people and money and trust and relationships, right? And so, now, we’re just getting strategic about what have you built that’s already around you. I will talk to my podcast production team. I’ll see if they recommend a start-up package. I love the podcast.

And then you just text people and say, “Please check out, rate, review, and refer my podcast.” Send it to people. And that would be almost free. It would take your time and it would get you started. And we could see if you’re able and willing to be regular because that’s what it takes for a podcast is consistency. The podcast, then you become someone people want on their shows. Then you meet authors, ghostwriters who want to help you publish your book. I mean, this is how you get your voice out there. It’s how you scale yourself.

I mean, we’re thinking about who’s this guy, the dog whisperer, right? He has the reality show and he goes to all the celebrities’ houses and he trains their dog. Do you think he charges 200 bucks an hour?

Nicole: No.

Hilary Hendershott: No. He’s on a pedestal. Other dog trainers are watching that show to learn from him, so they can go sell their services for 200 bucks an hour, right? So, he’s got the vibe. So, thank you for letting me compare you to a dog whisperer. You get what I mean?

Nicole: Well, dog and God, I mean, it’s the same. I am listening to your podcast. I listened to it twice. Something’s I got to, I’ll write it down so I just live it, because I really want to get this. I think it is, it’s a system. I just don’t have the system. And when I learn it, I will master it. I mean, I’m really good at that kind of stuff, so I’ll figure it out.

Hilary Hendershott: Good. Okay. Also, so a list of your clients, what they’re paying, how many sessions they’re doing, where they came from, a rough estimate of how many phone numbers you have. And then tell me what your household expenses are that you’re paying on an annual basis. Most expenses are monthly, but of course, some are lumpy, right? So, insurance premiums every six months, life insurance premiums, whatever. So, that’s why I say if you go back to 12 months and you just count your spending from your bank account, it can be pretty easy. Just take total spending over 12 months and divide it by 12.

Nicole: Okay, I can do that.

Hilary Hendershott: Yeah. So, I want to know what number we need to provide for. Thank you.