Ep #89: 4 Better Money Decisions to Make in Your Coaching Business

Hey Coach, let's get honest. The way you spend money in your business, it's shaping your future income, your confidence, and definitely your sense of freedom. I'm Kendall. Every dollar you invest is a chance to lead with strategy, not self-doubt, with intention, not FOMO, fear of missing out. So in this episode, I'm sharing four better money decisions that will support your growth and five self-coaching questions to help you invest in ways that feel clean, powerful, and definitely profitable. This is how you turn spending into self-trust and step into the kind of financial leadership that creates true success as a coach. It's all inside 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 beautiful coach. One of the advantages to being in business for as long as I've been in business, which is like twenty-three, twenty-four years, I am definitely losing count, is that I get to witness cycles, which I love, actually. Cycles with the coaching space, of course, and cycles with women entrepreneurs. And here's one that I am celebrating right now in a very big way: women making smarter money decisions. Women are done with that thousand-dollar win that cost twenty thousand dollars to create. They're done pretending that breaking even is normal. And they're done with the idea that paying yourself is optional, because it's not.

I learned that really early watching my mom run her successful solopreneur hairdressing business. She kept it really simple, and she was crazy profitable from day one. Now, this was back in the day when women did not have their own credit cards. Women could not get a mortgage on their own. They were not considered good candidates for a line of credit or a business loan. So, she had no other option other than to be profitable every single day. So, I grew up watching her be profitable, create a beautiful space out of which she did her hairdressing, cutting hair, have a high-end clientele. She was booked out weeks in advance and bring home the money every single week.

And this is the point I want to make here: having a thriving coaching business isn't one big leap. It really comes about from daily, small decisions. So today we're going to talk about making those decisions be smart ones, because every dollar you spend has a job to do for you, which is to help you make money. So, let's make it all count, right? So here are four better ways to invest in your business, plus I've got five self-coaching questions that you can use to make sure your money decisions stay clean, aligned, and profitable.

Now, let's be honest, I could have listed ten better ways to invest, but the four that I chose for you today will get you started. And definitely, if you like this episode, send me an email and let me know with a brief message. I would really appreciate hearing that. You can send it to kendall@kendallsummerhawk.com. Now, if I know this is helpful for you, then it could be just the inspiration I need to give you even more ways to better invest and to do that in a future episode.

All right, so overall, the smartest money decisions you can make in your coaching business are to invest in structure and in strategy, not just inspiration. Now, I love inspiration. Oh my God, I love feeling inspired, and it's a wonderful thing. But too many coaches are spending money trying to feel like they're growing, instead of investing in what actually helps them grow. So, let's dive into this.

Smart spending decision number one: prioritize programs that teach you how to deliver transformation, not just give you feel-good ideas. So, before you buy, you can ask yourself, is this program teaching me something I can use with clients again and again? Or is it just another high-vibe download with no real backbone to it? And definitely pay attention to how you're treated before you invest. For example, if I email a question ahead of time, and that email takes four or five days to be responded to, yeah, that's not so good. That tells me everything I need to know about the support you'll get after you pay, because typically, you are not treated better once somebody has your money. I don't mean to sound jaded or skeptical, it's just I've been in this business a long time, and that's really quite a telling indicator for you.

All right, smart spending decision number two: invest in coaching or training that gives you skills or strategy over worrying about your brand aesthetic. Now, I know it's tempting to think a new color palette or a Canva template will change everything, but strategy comes before styling, always. If you don't have clear offers, strategic pricing, messaging that speaks to your soulmate client, and a way to consistently enroll premium clients, then I'm here to tell you, graphics won't save you. You build the business first, you fancy it up later.

Smart spending decision number three: invest in mentorship that challenges your thinking and upgrades your identity. So just recently, I participated in a group VIP experience. It was just a few hours long, with a mentor that I've worked with a few years ago and continue to learn from through her webinars, through her podcasts. And the promise was every participant would receive a ten-minute coaching slot. Ten minutes. That's it. But ten minutes completely changed my entire business model strategy, and I am so excited about what we are shifting into. I can't wait to share it with you. Definitely, you will be hearing about it in the upcoming few weeks here.

So that's the power of investing in mentoring that challenges you and your thinking and upgrades your identity. The right mentor isn't just going to cheerlead you. I have had mentors do that. That's a waste of time. The right mentor is going to stretch you. She's going to call you forward. She's going to help you see what you're avoiding, which is so key. She's going to help you see where you're undercharging and where you're ready to rise. And she's going to hold the mirror up to the coach that you are becoming.

Smart spending decision number four: look for containers, coaching containers, coaching programs that offer both teaching and implementation. Because let's be honest, you don't need more courses to collect. You need application. Inspiration is fabulous, but it won't build revenue. The best investments help you use what you're learning in real time, inside your business, with actual clients. And if you're only learning but not implementing, then you're just collecting information, and that's not how you grow, okay? Now, I'm not saying don't invest in things that are inspiring, but there has to be an implementation component to it to make it worth the investment.

All right, so now let me give you some smart spending decision questions that you can ask. So, before you hit that buy now button, take a few minutes to ask these five questions. And the end result will either be a yes decision that you know is beautifully aligned with your personality, how you like to learn, plus you know you're making a powerful decision for yourself, no regrets. So clearly, I could give you twenty or thirty amazing smart spending decision questions that you can ask, but let's start with these five, which I think you're going to find really useful.

So, smart spending decision question number one: will this teach me how to create money, momentum, or mastery? So write these down, by the way. That's the filter. If the answer is no, it may be just another distraction, dressed up as, quote unquote, growth. So let me give you that question again. Will this teach me how to create money, momentum, or mastery? And when I think of momentum, I think of list building, I think of sales strategies, I think of things like that, and visibility things.

All right, smart spending decision question number two: will this strengthen my skills, sharpen my message, or expand my income? Now, this is you being clear that you're going to monetize and make great use of what you're investing in. If it doesn't hit at least one of those, strengthening your skills, sharpening your message, or expanding your income, it's probably not worth your money right now. One point of distinction I want to make here is this: you may not know the how-to yet. That's fine. In other words, you may not know the specifics of how that investment will expand your income, but you know that it will expand your income. And I think that there's so much power in just making that decision that, yes, I don't see one hundred percent clearly how this is going to expand my income, but I'm making the decision that it will, which means I will look for ways that it will. I will make sure that it does.

Let me give you a very personal example. I will never forget the very first time I invested in a high-end mastermind. The amount was thirteen thousand dollars. I put it all on a credit card and then had a complete and total meltdown. I was really freaked out about it. That number represented a significant portion of the money I had made in my business up until then. So, in part, it made no sense for me to do it. Like, technically, that was something I, quote unquote, couldn't have afforded. But I knew that to expand my income, I needed coaching at a higher level. And that mastermind helped me in many, many ways, most of them unexpected. So, the point, before I get into what happened here, I want to make sure you understand, I made a decision ahead of time: this will expand my income.

So, the mentor and I actually ended up not getting along at all. We had a lot of friction between us, and most of her ideas were the polar opposite of what was a fit for my personality, that matched up with my ambition, my interests. It just wasn't a fit. She was trying to put me into a little box, and I'm like, I am not a fit-into-a-box kind of girl. But here's the thing: because I was clear going into the mastermind that what I wanted out of it was a new business model where I could have significantly more clients, and I wanted to be coached on team, that is what I got from the coaching in a very kind of weird, roundabout way. What's funny is that, or ironic, I should say, is that the mentor's idea of team was so opposite of mine, and she was dead set on that team should look a certain way and this and that. It really challenged me to find my own truth and how I was going to add team, because her idea of how to do it was really not going to work for me. Every fiber of my being said, no, this is not right.

And another idea that she had was so opposite of what I wanted my business model to be that it challenged me to create my own premium coaching mastermind, to launch it, to fill it. And I made over six figures literally overnight. Now, that's not what she had envisioned for me. You know, I did that actually within the first two months of being in her program. And plus the piece that's like to me hysterical is she told me, "Oh no, you should not focus on money coaching." This was just a few years into my business, and I was not explicitly doing money coaching at that time, and I really wanted to. I felt this burning desire, this drive, like that was what was coming out of me.

She said, "Oh no, no, that's not for you. That's not your thing." And clearly, she was entirely wrong. This is what I was born to do, was money coaching. So, I rebelled against her assessment of me. I started money coaching. I came out of the money closet, as I called it back then. I made millions and millions, nearly thirty million dollars from that decision, and I never looked back. Now, she was clearly the grain of sand in my shell that created a pearl. And for that, I will always be grateful to her for that experience. Could I endorse her as a coach? No. But my point is, when you're clear what you want from a mentor, you're going to get that. You will get what you need, but not always in the way you may have expected.

All right, let's go back to these smart spending decisions. Question number three: would the future version of me, who's already successful, say yes to this? Now, I love this question so much because it's using your future self to support your decision-making. This is identity-based decision-making. And I did a whole episode about identity, and I'll put a note in the show notes with the episode number there so you can go find that.

So, when you do identity-based decision-making, it will open up new possibilities for you that you'll never think of otherwise. Use her vision, your future-self vision to guide you. Let your decisions reflect your next level, not your current fear. This is so, so exciting.

Smart spending decision question number four: am I buying this to avoid making a harder decision somewhere else? Yeah, this one is a gotcha. This one uncovers emotional spending disguised as strategy. It's really often a sign of fear or avoidance, delay. So be honest. And if your answer is yes, then take a deep breath. Be brave. Look at that harder decision because that is what is really calling out to you to give attention to.

All right, and smart spending decision question number five: what skill, result, or capacity will I walk away with, and can I clearly name it? If your answer is vague, the transformation probably will be too. When you make decisions from this place, from this, you know, smart spending decision place, using these questions, not from a place of fear, not getting caught up in hype, but clarity and intention, that's when your spending becomes an investment. That's when your business starts creating compounding returns. That's when your growth becomes inevitable. This is how you make better money decisions in your coaching business and create results that feel as powerful as they are profitable. This is your new standard. These are the money decisions that turn ambition, all that beautiful ambition that you have, into actual income.

All right. So, real quick, if you can do me a big favor, if you could leave a five-star review on Apple, I would so greatly appreciate it. This really helps get this show in front of other women like you: soulful women, ambitious women with a deep love and desire to coach with purpose, even if they're just putting their toe into the water with their coaching journey. So, if you could do that, I would so appreciate it. Thank you so much. And I will see you here in next week's episode. And remember, coaching changes lives, starting with yours.

Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you follow so you never miss an episode. Also, I would so love and appreciate if you would leave a 5-star review. Your review supports women just like you in discovering all of the juicy tips and insights I’m sharing here on how to coach women on money.

And if you want to learn how to excel at coaching women on money, definitely go to KendallSummerHawk.com and check out the wealth of money coach trainings that we have for you. Thanks so much for being part of this money coaching movement and for tuning into the show every week.