Ep #116: The 2026 Income Strategy That Beats Any Planner: Your Money Word of the Year

Hey, Coach. Before you write a single goal for the new year, you need one thing, and that is your Money Word of the Year. It's the word that sharpens your decisions, cuts your overwhelm, and moves your income forward faster than any planner ever could. Trust me, I know. So in this episode, I'm showing you how to choose your Money Word of the Year and 5 specific ways to use it to create a more profitable year starting right now. It's all here for you in this episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. Let's dive in.

Welcome to The Money Coach School Podcast. To really excel at coaching women, you have to be skilled, confident, and even fearless at money coaching. If you're passionate about women holding genuine money power and love supporting women entrepreneurs, then this is the show for you. Now, here's your host, money feminist Kendall SummerHawk.

Hey, Coach, if you're listening to this as it drops, we are right at the edge of a brand new year. And my brain? Yeah, it's already doing that thing. That part of me that loves possibility so much. Oh my God, I love possibility. And that part of my brain is making these gorgeous lists of everything I want to create and launch and upgrade and learn and earn and experience. And then about 10 minutes in, my nervous system is like, what? Absolutely not. This is way too much.

Maybe you can relate. Because if you're anything like me, you love potential. You love possibilities. You love ideas. You love becoming that next version of yourself. Oh my God, do I love that? And you love thinking about what's possible for you with money, with your coaching, your business, your life. And you also know that too many possibilities with no clear focus can quickly turn into anxiety, decision fatigue, and a whole lot of spinning.

So let's talk for a moment about the planner graveyard and why it matters for money. So for years, my solution to all of this, possibilities and ideas and all that, was to buy planners. Oh my God, I loved buying planners. Gorgeous, gold foil, tabbed, color-coded planners. I'd buy one, and then I'd say, "Oh, I love that, but this one over here looks really great too." So then I'd buy it, and sometimes a third one. Because this one was going to be the one that turned me into a perfectly organized CEO coach with all of my income-making opportunities blocked out on my calendar, flawless launches planned, all done, right? And then they would sit untouched, looking gorgeous on my shelf, and contributing exactly zero to my next income level.

Because every planner started the same way: write down your goals. Which is fantastic unless you're like me and you have 100 goals. And then it's just a very expensive way to trigger overwhelm and self-doubt. And as a highly creative, high-earning woman, one of the emotions that I dislike the most is that anxious, kind of buzzy feeling that comes from having too many options and no clear filter. And also because I am deeply protective of my energy and my emotions and my money, I finally said, okay, this is not the path. I need a different way. Not more pages, not more boxes to check, not 3 top priorities for the day. I needed a different lens. A sharper one, a more profitable one. And that's where Money Word of the Year was born, not really as inspiration, even though it is really inspiring, but as strategy.

All right, so we're going to get into this, but before we do, if you haven't done so already, go ahead and click that follow button right next to where you're watching or listening to this podcast. I'm your money coach and every new episode is here to strengthen your coaching, your cash flow, and your clarity in your relationship with money. So, you don't want to miss an episode. Click that follow button right now. And let's continue on.

So, most people treat Word of the Year like a fun New Year's game. It's cute, it's inspiring, 2 weeks of energy, and yeah, then it disappears into the background. I don't do that. I use my Money Word of the Year as a profit lever in my business. It's more than just a vision board vibe. It is a money tool. And I use it to elevate myself as a coach, as the CEO of my business, as a high-income, 7-figure woman, as a multimillionaire, which I am, and as a woman building a business that protects my freedom, my time, and my emotional peace. Like those are the things that are of the highest value to me.

So when you choose and use a Money Word of the Year, it can definitely give you a clear, feminine, powerful direction inside your business so that you're not spinning all year, so that you don't lose direction and focus. It can give you support in making significantly more money without needing 47 new strategies. It can give you a way to make every decision in your business easier and faster because you have a lens to decide through. And it can cut out the mental chatter, the comparison, the second guessing, so you stop leaking time and money and emotional energy.

So in today's episode, I'm going to walk you through what your Money Word of the Year is and what it's not. I'm going to give you 5 secrets to using it as your primary money decision tool and some juicy tips along the way for choosing a word that actually upgrades your income and your life. I also have a download for you. Yay. I have a Money Word of the Year checklist, and it's really like a mini coaching journal that you can download to go with this episode. So the link is there in the show notes. Make sure you grab it as you listen.

So let's look at what your Money Word of the Year is. Your Money Word of the Year is a money directive. It's a word that sets the standard for how you make decisions, create income, and step into your next level. So let me go through 3 elements here. Number 1, your Money Word of the Year contains energy and images and meaning for you. Plus it elevates you into who you're meant to become. And this is how you become that high-income earning coach. This is how you elevate your standards so much higher than you have right now. And high standards are a good thing. So that anything that's misaligned doesn't even get through the door.

Number 2, Money Word of the Year, it is a practice that creates results for you by helping you release obstacles and non-productive habits and to really help you spot opportunities and create soul-sourced success. Your word is meant to teach you about you.

And number 3, your Money Word of the Year becomes your energetic standard for everything that you do or don't do inside of your coaching business. It really pulls you forward, it opens opportunities, it eliminates confusion, it gets rid of fear of missing out or FOMO, and overwhelm. Okay? So that's 3 things about what it is.

Let's talk about what it's not. And I want to clear up a couple of things here because this is where most women really dilute the power of this tool, and I don't want that to happen for you. I want you to get the full power of the Money Word of the Year tool. So let's go through 3 things here.

Number 1, it's not something you choose and then forget. Your Money Word of the Year is not something you write in a journal on January 1st and then never look at again. I actually put mine at the top of my to-do list. I'm old-fashioned. I do print out a to-do list every single day. I actually print it out the night before for the next day, and at the top, it has my word of the year. So I'm looking at my Money Word of the Year for 365 days, the whole year, every single day.

It's definitely something also that you're not trying to control or quote-unquote get right so that it, you know, somehow magically fixes your whole life. I remember one year I tried to engineer the perfect word, the word that would make everything just perfect, the word that would guarantee success. Yeah, that did not work. I was so up in my head trying to be strategic instead of really listening to my intuition and desire. And the moment that I relaxed, I took a breath, I exhaled, the real word that I was supposed to have this year, it dropped in effortlessly. Your Money Word of the Year is perfect because it's for you. And really, it's not the word itself that's powerful. It's your interpretation of it and how boldly you use it. That's what changes everything.

Number 2 about what your Money Word of the Year is not. It's not Words of the Year. Okay? Did you notice the plural in there? It's not Words of the Year. It's not a buffet. You don't build a 7-figure identity by giving yourself 12 different directions. If you have 3 or 4 words, you don't have clarity. You have split attention. Even if you're multi-passionate, and I get that, so am I, and you love doing all the things, one Money Word of the Year will serve you in every area where you want to grow. You want to trust the power of one.

And number 3, it doesn't have to sound like a money word. Your Money Word of the Year does not have to be a word that initially sounds like it has anything to do with money. So instead, for example, it could be a self-concept type of word, like leader, communicator, sovereign. It could be more of a thematic word, like independence, accumulating, overflow. It could be a money-specific word like sales, wealth, profit, empire. It could be a growth word like elevate, focus, expansion. The point is, it's a word that you're going to apply to money and watch how it catapults you into new ways of thinking and taking action with money, even if the word itself has nothing on the outside to do with money. That's okay.

All right, so let's go into how to choose your Money Word of the Year. So the best way to start is with this coaching question. The coaching question is this: which word comes to you first before your brain tries to make it cute or reasonable or strategic? Yeah, that's usually the one with power, the one that comes to you first. Don't overthink it. Just notice what pops in, even if it doesn't seem logical yet. So the question really is just, what word is my Money Word of the Year? I mean, it's nothing more complicated than that.

And then you want to start playing with it. Like I start doing this a little bit before the end of the year, and I start playing with it with these questions. I'll ask, if I choose that word as my Money Word of the Year, what do I need to let go of? The next question I ask is, how does this word ask me to show up differently with money? And the third question is, what kind of decisions does this word invite me to make in my business? So I love just saying, what's my word? Boom, noticing what pops in. And then kind of testing it out, playing with it, using those 3 coaching questions to see where it takes me and how it supports me. And usually, you're pretty clear after that, yeah, that's my word.

So this past year, my Money Word of the Year was simplify. At the time of recording this, I'm completing one year of the word simplify. And simplify, I loved having this word. It asked me to stop trying to work within the confines of complexity and to start treating simplicity as my standard for money and for everything in my life and in my business. So for example, I scanned my entire business, and I saw exactly where complexity was holding us back. Too many offers, too many moving parts and launches, too many little tasks that ate my time and didn't move the needle, and too many unmade decisions as well. I will add that.

And so I asked, what does the simplify version of this look like? I realized grammatically, that's not correct, but I didn't want to change the word itself. I'd rather have bad grammar and stick with the word so that the word itself is really reinforced. So what is the simplify version of this look like? And because of that one word, I retired several offers this past year. We streamlined our offer suite, and more importantly, I got so crystal clear, not only on our offer suite, but really who I am in this next level of my business and the kind of programs and trainings that I'm bringing to each of you. So that clarity is just priceless.

We simplified launches so that they felt more grounded. They were less work. We massively cleaned up systems and expenses that weren't contributing to revenue, and I simplified team, which meant letting people go, and I simplified our operations flow. There were tasks we were doing that we said, you know what? Will I really miss it if this task doesn't get done? And the answer was no. So we got rid of it. So the result overall was more profit, more ease, and more white space. And clearer evidence that simplicity prints money. It really does. I really believe without that word, simplify, in front of me all year, I would have continued to tolerate way more complexity, way more projects and people than was necessary, and I would have left money and time on the table, which is not what I wanted to do.

All right, so let's talk about 5 secrets to choosing and using your Money Word of the Year. And I want to get into the framework so you can actually use this. So, secret number 1, and I've already alluded to this, let your Money Word of the Year choose you. Don't try and force it. Instead of forcing it, start by feeling into what you want the next year of your life and business to feel like, especially around money. Not the goals yet, but the emotions. And then notice which word drops in. You do not need a logical reason. You do not have to understand yet how it connects to your money. You will in time. That isn't important right now. Any Money Word of the Year can support you in achieving what you want, any Money Word of the Year. So letting your word choose you is less about thinking and more about listening. So if a word arrives and it makes no sense, don't worry about it. That's your word.

All right, secret number 2, identifying what your Money Word of the Year empowers you to release. You know what you want, you have a Money Word of the Year pop up for you. So let's begin using it, right? And by the way, if your Money Word of the Year triggers anything, resistance or doubt or, I don't know, maybe a little internal eye roll, congratulations. That's a clue that there's something you're ready to release and you just found your growth edge.

So for example, a number of years ago, when my Money Word of the Year was the word focus, I immediately became aware of how much I had been stuck in fear of missing out, FOMO. So FOMO was causing me to doubt myself. FOMO sucks, by the way. It was causing me to doubt myself, which then led to me changing my mind frequently, thinking I should be doing other things. But by staying committed to my Money Word of the Year of focus, I replaced that FOMO with feeling calm and peaceful and on purpose. And I didn't get caught up in FOMO anywhere near as much as the year went on. And I started to really release doubting what I was doing, even when I was facing a lot of change that was really, really challenging.

The same thing happened another year when my Money Word of the Year was the word elevate. I released, released, released anything that felt energetically heavy or draining. And with elevate, I released overcomplicated strategies. We got rid of a bunch of funnels that were too hard to maintain. There was just so much we let go of.

I peeled back a whole next level elevated layer for myself and my business that yes, you can make 7 figures with less work, with more grace, ease, and a ton of time freedom. And, you know, that is just huge for me. I look at my life today. I have an enormous amount of time freedom, meaning that my calendar is really simple. I'm super busy and really productive, but I really dislike being hemmed in by a lot of appointments and time commitments. I like my time schedule, my way. And I love that. I have so much flexibility to be able to get the work done or to say yes to people and to be able to accommodate people sometimes when they need to change things, like no problem. My calendar has flexibility. There's a lot of people who can't say that. I can say that because time freedom is paramount to me.

And when I had the word elevate, I made decisions like completing working with a coach. I stopped working with her. She's amazing, but her whole vibe is hard work, putting in the hours or as she calls it putting in the reps, and a very complex business model with a lot of team. And at that time I said, yeah, I cannot do this. I tried it, didn't work for me. The word elevated showed me that I could do something different and still make money. So because of that one year, that one Money Word of the Year, that's really when my time freedom increased exponentially. And now it's just my new normal to have generous hours every day that I spend outside with my gorgeous Andalusian horses, with my trainers, coming in, being able to have something to eat, change clothes, and then start my work day at it usually around 11 o'clock, noon, like that type of thing.

All right, secret number 3, do not change your Money Word of the Year mid-year. It's Money Word of the Year, not Word of the Month. There is no way you can get the value from not committing to living, breathing your Money Word of the Year for a full year. You just haven't learned everything that's there for you yet. It hasn't fully transformed you or your business results. It hasn't fully worked its magic for you yet. So please, don't be impatient. I know I'm often tempted this time of the year to say, oh, maybe I should choose the same word again for another year. And I did do that one time. It was with the word focus. But really, it takes, I think for me personally, maybe I'm just slow on the uptake here, it takes me several months of living with that word to really make the changes that word has in store for me.

So if you're tempted to switch halfway through the year, I really want you to pause and I want you to ask yourself, am I bored with this word or is it pushing me to grow and I'm a little resistant to it? Right? So most of the time, wanting to change your word mid-year, listen, it's just your ego trying to keep you at your current income level. Commit to one word for a full year. Let it work its magic for you.

Secret number 4, apply your Money Word of the Year to income creation. Remember, it doesn't matter if at first your Money Word of the Year doesn't seem to fit with income creation. Trust me, it will. You just keep looking for how your word is going to give you clarity. So the coaching question here I have for you is very simple. It's, in what way can my Money Word of the Year influence income creation? That's it. So for example, if your word is elevate, that might mean elevating your pricing to reflect the value of the results you get for your clients. It may mean creating a high ticket offer that feels luxurious and deeply supportive for your schedule and for your clients. It may mean calling in highly committed, motivated clients, you know, a whole new level of clients. Hello, it is the word elevate. It may mean designing a signature package that you become known for.

Different example, let's say if your word is focus, that might mean choosing one primary offer to grow instead of 10. It may mean committing to one powerful marketing channel. It may mean focusing on deepening one client niche instead of trying to be everything to everyone. Your Money Word of the Year becomes your money strategy filter. It filters what gets access to your time, what gets access to your attention, and of course, it filters really how you're earning money. So it's really your earning power.

All right, secret number 5 is use your Money Word of the Year to create new decisions, actions, goals, and habits. Your Money Word of the Year isn't just something you think about, it's actually how you move. It's putting thought into action. So you want to let it shape the decisions you make, the actions you take, the goals you set, the habits you build. Even if your word is something like rest or peace, that doesn't mean you check out from your business. It might mean making decisions from peace instead of panic. It might mean creating offers that allow you to work less and earn more. It might mean designing your schedule for more spaciousness while your income grows.

When my word was elevate, I saw everything through that lens. So I elevated our marketing and our ability to do launches. We got really good at a particular style of launching, elevating our pricing, elevating my messaging and branding, elevating the clarity and the focus of my certification trainings. This is how you turn one word into an entire year of million-dollar decisions. And that is something I cannot emphasize enough that you want to be making million-dollar decisions.

All right, so let's wrap up here. Making more money as a coach isn't about doing more. It's not about overposting, burning out in launches, or forcing yourself into business models that don't fit your life. Your next level of income always starts with this. It starts with you giving yourself permission to think differently, feel differently, and to choose differently about money.

Your Money Word of the Year is a simple, elegant tool that helps you do exactly that. It gives you a new lens to see your business and money through. It gives you a new way of stepping into your gifts and genius. It gives you a focused, feminine way to elevate your income without grinding yourself into the ground. And it does all that with one word that you connect with, relate to, return to all year long.

So your next step, be sure to go to the link in the show notes and download the Money Word of the Year checklist. It's really like a mini coaching journal that I have for you. Use it to choose your word, use it to clarify what it's helping you release, and there are coaching questions in there to help you do this. And use it to map out how it will guide your decisions in your income this year.

And I would love to hear from you. I would love for you to send me a message or tag me on social. You can go to Instagram, tag me at @KendallSummerHawk. Tell me your Money Word of the Year. I would love to hear that from you, all right?

All right, because when a woman sets her own money standard and uses it to guide how she earns and keeps and holds wealth, yeah, that's the heart of money feminism in action.

All right, my beautiful soul. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your loyalty. Thank you for being on this money journey with me. I would love it if you would screenshot this episode, share it on a social, and tag me at @KendallSummerHawk. I so appreciate you spreading this work into the world, getting this podcast into the hands of more ambitious, sensitive women like you. All right, I will see you next week with a brand new episode. And let me know what your Money Word of the Year is, all right? All right, my love to you.

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