In this episode, I continue my podcast series about underearning. You need to audit your money team to feed your earning potential. Surrounding yourself with the right people and resources is essential to getting the salary you deserve.
I share the three most effective ways to audit your money team. Finding people who positively contribute to your mindset about earning more money will help you aim higher professionally. Whether it is someone you know personally, a voice that inspires you, or a learning resource, building a money team that shifts limiting beliefs and encourages your growth significantly impacts earning potential.
Are you ready to unlock new opportunities and transform your financial future? Listen to learn how a support network and money team can help you earn more.
Stay tuned for insights on these topics:
- [01:14] Recognizing our thoughts about money come from the people around us
- [11:29] Auditing your money team to feed your earning potential
- [15:06] Cut out people who confirm your biases
- [15:49] Invest in a book or podcast about earning more money
- [23:12] Find someone who inspires you to earn more
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how to audit your money team to feed your earning potential.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON, 3 ESSENTIAL STEPS TO AUDITING YOUR MONEY TEAM FOR FINANCIAL GROWTH, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW ELLIE GOT OUT OF THE PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK CYCLE AS A SIX FIGURE EARNER!
Transcript for “3 Essential Steps to Auditing Your Money Team for Financial Growth”
Intro: Hi and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. So we’re in the middle of an underearning series and today I want to talk to you a little bit about auditing your money team. And so since we’re specifically talking about earning and if I’m talking about underearning, I am clearly talking to you about earning more money. I want you to audit your money team through the lens of earning more. And I want us to be thinking about who is on our money team. If you want to hear the full breakdown of how I talk about a money team, go and listen to episode 95 on How to Build Your Money Team. But what I recognize and I want you to recognize is we have thoughts about money and those thoughts are created by those around us.
Even the people around you that you see that you’re like, oh my goodness, like they’re making a million dollars a year or like they just, bought this really nice house or they’re so good with investing or whatever that is. Those people have a money team and they may not call it a money team, but there are beliefs that they have. There are people that they connect with that have helped them believe things that you don’t believe about your finances. In this series we’re talking about underearning. When you hear about people that may be younger than you, they may be the same age as you, they may be older than you, wherever that is, like when you hear about people and where they are in terms of their career and you admire them, they have different thoughts than you. That is the simplest difference between where you are right now and where you desire to go is that they simply have different thoughts.
They’ve been exposed to different things. Given my experience and where I come from in terms of just growing up. And I think the most pivotal experience that I think about is college, believe it or not. But I was in education and I talked to you a little bit on the last podcast about how being in the nonprofit space you can see, like it is easy to fall into this underearning mentality. One of the things that I think was a blessing for me is that I actually have a major in management and finance. I did not set out to become a teacher. I became a teacher because it ended up being like a passion project and a passion calling. In my senior year of college, I was about to say high school, but that’s not true. But in my senior year of college, I had a couple of goals. I was either going to go get my MBA/MHA, I was going to get a job or I was going to join Teach for America.
Those are all the irons that I had in the fire and they were connected to goals that I wanted to pursue. And with Teach for America, Teach for America was really big for me because somewhere in college I went to a conference, they did a presentation. I was like, oh my goodness, that’s like a great opportunity to give back and I value community. So it was like, it could be this two year opportunity and then I’m going to go do whatever I want but through the transition and how I set myself up my senior year I was actively interviewing for jobs in the oil and gas industry. I’m from Oklahoma and that’s the only thing you do in Oklahoma is some kind of way you fall into working for like Baker Hughes Center Lift, Conoco Phillips, that’s where my friends ended up working in oil and gas.
I was interviewing for these oil and gas companies and y’all, when I would go out and interview, they would give you a per diem. They paid for your flight, they paid for your hotel like they were wining and dining you in an effort to get you to come work at their company. So me being in the world of business and not being in what I will call a broke mindset, profession, let me know one level of how you can be treated. And even when I was looking at, I was actually looking at the consortium fellowship when I was graduating and I went to a couple of different universities to look at their MBA programs, but they were also wining and dining, like my fights were covered, my stay was covered, like you had these weekends on the college campus where you were doing some work as though you were a MBA student, but they were really wining and dining you in order to get you to say yes to like applying to their institution.
So basically I developed this wine or dine mindset, like this is how I need to be treated. I think that that served me really well even as I went into the educational space. I think I accepted also that there were some limitations to how much I could potentially earn, but it also left a door of curiosity where, yeah, I went to St. Louis and I started making, I think it was, I always say like 30 or 33, I can’t remember exactly where I landed, but it was one of those numbers. It doesn’t matter if it was 30 or 33 because it was the same small number. But I had accepted a job in the oil and gas industry that was making over $50,000 a year and when you’re 21, that’s a lot of money. You’re like, oh my goodness, I’m going to be so rich which that’s not really true. But there was a $20,000 difference basically a whole other teacher’s salary in between me going into like the oil and gas industry and me going into education.
I oftentimes just think back to that experience in my life. And I’m thankful for that experience in my life because it let me know, like for myself, I guess some of you could be thinking right now, well Keina you were under earning or making less, like you gave up $20,000. It was an intentional decision guys, it was an intentional decision in order to be able to pursue something that I was passionate about. But sure, sure enough, I stayed in education in St. Louis for two years. Y’all, the number one thing I knew I needed to do was to make more money after those two years. I was like, I cannot stay in St. Louis and just be making like $38,000 a year. I have goals and I won’t accept that for myself. And I started interviewing and asking for more money. And here’s where it comes back to this wining and dining. I had interviewed at a couple charter schools. One of the charter schools, they got the wine or dine memo and they paid for per diem, they paid for the hotel and everything to have us come out and interview. I say us because it was me and one of my other girlfriends. We went out there to interview for a school in New York.
Then one of my friends, she came out to DC to interview and she’s like, oh, Keina, you’ll probably like this school. So I remember applying and y’all, they weren’t trying to help me. They weren’t trying to pay for my plane ticket, they weren’t trying to do anything. I said, oh, I can’t come, period. I basically was like, I could do bad all by myself. I don’t need to come and spend money to interview for you guys because I knew my value. You need me as a teacher and God knows I still needed help as a teacher. I had taught for two years. That was the beginning of the negotiation process and the boss that I told you guys in my last episode that, I told him like, why would I go from making $80,000 a year to basically making a few thousand dollars more as a vice principal was the same boss that hired me several years before and he already knew my temperament.
And so that’s why it’s also, I mean like culture is so, so important in the workplace and to be able to work with people who support you and have your back. That’s definitely invaluable but I know before I went to actually come and fly out here and apply for the role, I was like, hey, if you guys aren’t making sure that my stay is covered and that I have a hotel, like I can’t come out to DC and interview. I think that showed my boss how to treat me. Just me being able to hold my ground and going back to this component of like, I was managing, even though I wasn’t making that much money, I was managing my money well enough that I wasn’t worried about hearing a no. I also had a belief in my ability as a teacher, like I would find a job, people need me, I’m good.
So even within a sector where we talk about people being underpaid, I was still negotiating, I was still very mindful of how I was allowing people to treat me when I thought about my finances. I mean as the story goes, I ended up coming out here to DC and I started making more money, granted, cost of living and there were some other pieces that changed, but overall it was a really good financial move for me to come to DC at the time. I did make more money and I was able to position myself differently, especially once I decided that I was staying in education and all those MBA programs, I was never going to attend. So I just want to give you that perspective because I know what it’s like to earn money.
I think that maybe you could say like, but Keina now you’re a business owner. No, no, no. I remember and I know the W2 experience because I’ve been there along with you and I’ve had multiple opportunities to have conversations about how much money I make and there’s been some pivotal things that I did while I was still employed by someone to make sure that I was getting what I wanted. And like something wasn’t just happening to me. Like I said, I did take a pay cut when I decided to become a teacher and decided not to take an oil and gas job, but it wasn’t because I had thoughts about my ability to earn. So that’s one of the differences. But where I want to dive in with you today and you thinking about, okay, I hear you Keina, I’m underearning and I want to shift where I am.
I need you to think about and audit your money team. And we all have a money team. Like in my life I have people that I go to for different things. So in this case we’re going to look at who are we going to when we are thinking about our earning potential, when we are thinking about how much money we want to make, when we’re thinking about the jobs we want to apply for, when we’re thinking about putting our resume together, when we’re thinking about networking, like those are some of the things that go into earning more money so I want you to take an active approach to think about who’s on your team. And I would suggest that you actually have some pen and paper out and you name these people for yourself and it doesn’t even have to be like, it’s great if it’s multiple people, but if it’s just a person, that’s okay too.
But the first thing I want you to do is I want you to identify at least one person that you have when it comes to your career and like your earning potential who will call you out when you’re playing small. I just signed a new client and I remember on her consult I was like, you know you’re underearning, right? And sometimes I really can’t help myself guys, I I try to bite my tongue, but she was telling me what she was doing. I was like, you’re underearning. If your friends aren’t telling you that, then you need to get new friends. And so on our first call she actually came back to me and she was like, okay, I told one of my friends about what you said in our consult and she is challenging me in this area. And she also came to our first call being like, you know what? I know that I want to apply to some chief of staff positions and that’s where I want to go next when I think about career and where I desire to be professionally.
But she clearly has someone in her life who will call her out on playing small and sometimes the people that’ll call you out on playing small, they might be waiting for permission to call you out. And so this is where when I’m having you identify your money team, I want you to identify people that you feel safe with so you can also share with them your goals about wanting to earn more. Because as you share your goals with them, I want you to be creating that opportunity for them to be like, oh my goodness girl, I have been waiting, I have been waiting, I’ve been waiting for you to say this. Because I can guarantee you have people in your life that they know that you’re playing small when it comes to where you are professionally. And I think the thing that I love about people that do this for me is they know me fairly intimately and they can just like say, they can call me out lovingly and then I get to choose what I want to do with it.
And this even shows up in business when I’ve had to raise my prices or to set goals around my revenue where someone can lovingly call me out and they’re going to tell me that I’m playing small, but specifically with you as a W2 employee, I want you to at least have one person that you know who will call you out, especially when you extend that invitation ,where they’ll call you out on playing small because I want that person, for you to be able to enroll that person to be like, Hey, Keina said I got to go for nos this year so I want you to call me out if you know that I’m not doing what I said I wanted to be able to do this quarter in terms of earning more this year. Please call me out.
So that’s the first person. Make sure that we cut out the people that are okay with what you make. And when I say that, they may say things to you that feed into your mindset about your ability to earn more money and they confirm your biases that you have about your ability to earn. So those are the people that we got to cut off your team. You can’t talk to them, not about this area of your life. You can go and have other conversations with them, but you cannot have this conversation about earning more money because they’re not going to pour into you in the way that we need them to pour into you or hold you accountable in the way that we need them to hold you accountable.
Also second thing in terms of auditing your money team, I want you to make sure that you have a book or you have a podcast for this quarter that you are invested in, that is about earning more money. I have a couple of podcast episodes that I talked about, negotiating salary and changing careers. I’ll make sure that those are linked into the show notes. So if you’re new here or maybe you just need to refresh because maybe you lost sight of your goal, but my client Kim and one of my friends Shameika just have some phenomenal thoughts about being able to increase your income and helping you really position yourself. And especially if you are a woman listening to my podcast, like I really want you to listen to them because I think so many times within the space where we talk about earning more, women think about themselves differently than men think about themselves.
I’m going to have to get someone else on here to talk to you guys as well about women that make money. I don’t bite my tongue at times when it comes to talking about finances, but I have been able to have conversations with friends that I’ve made, especially coaches that came out of careers and then started coaching. But to hear women talking about making, 150, 170, 180, 200,000 and being in their early thirties, being in their mid thirties, some of them even being in their late twenties. Those are the things that I want you to be listening for because those are examples for you of what’s possible. And we need your brain to see those examples because right now you’re probably so consumed with all of the counter examples that say you can’t make money.
So you can find a book, you can find a podcast that really helps encourage and feed your earning potential or even if you are someone who you’re like Keina, you don’t understand, I really am tapped out at where I can earn. But maybe your thoughts about earning more are more so focused on your desire to create like a side hustle or a business. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that. If you’re like, listen Keina, I got my main job, it pays me 150 and I want to get a side hustle that’s going to pay me another $100,000 a year. I am okay with that too. But even when it comes to your business or your side hustle that you’re trying to start, I want you to make sure that you have people feeding you and in your ear and thinking about books that will inspire you.
I want you to have people that are encouraging you when it comes to your pricing, when it comes to setting revenue goals, like we need to feed that part of your brain if the goal is to be able to start a side hustle or to become a business owner. And so maybe you’re thinking about like I’m going to work full-time and I’m going to have a part-time business or you’re full-time job might give you the space to feel like it’s a part-time thing and then be able to pour into having a full-time business opportunity. As I’m talking about this, I’m thinking about, if you listen to my client Lynne’s story, when she started working with me, she was working full-time in the school system and then she actually went down to part-time hours and she was able to lean more into the business that she had started and that gave her an opportunity to start earning more and increase her earning potential.
But like her regular role that she had, being able to lean in and be part-time in education, like it kept healthcare secure, it was making sure that she had 401k benefits. Like there was a lot of other things that we thought really strategically about and how she wanted to be able to do both. But she’s been able to build time freedom for herself because of how she’s thought about her full-time role and her business. So a book or a podcast on the last episode and I’ll relink them, but I talked about like Jen Sincero, You’re a Bad Ass At Making Money and then Overcoming Underearning. Those are two books that they have exercises in them that you can do. And really thinking about how do you want to use new knowledge and new information to inspire you to really Overcome Underearning in your own life.
And then the last person that I want to make sure you have on your team as you transition from underearning is I want you to have an inspirer, like someone who gives you inspiration. You don’t even need to know this person in real life. It could be somebody you saw on the internet, an article you read, whatever, but someone who inspires you that maybe they’ve built a six figure business or they tripled their salary in the last three years. Like my client Kim that I’m telling you about, if you follow her online, her Instagram handle is Your Work Inspires. But this woman, she is on it when she is talking about negotiating and the moves that she’s made strategically in her professional career. If I was still in the W2 world, she would be my inspirer because of the fact of just how she has conversations, I know with her employer about being compensated for the value that she adds to her company.
She is not scared to change jobs, like she is what I see as being fearless. So I would use her as my person that inspires me. The reason that you need an inspirer is because I want you to think about when you encounter challenges to keeping up the momentum, when you’re thinking about overcoming your own underearning, I want you to be able to approach situations from your inspire lens. And I want you to think about how do you think they would approach getting a no. How do you think they would approach applying for jobs from week to week? How do you think they would approach networking? How do you think they would approach negotiating a salary? How do you think they would approach talking about pricing like if you’re in the side hustle space, like how would they approach pricing?
And just like, you don’t need to know their real answer, but just think about how their answer might differ in comparison to how you talk to yourself right now. And so your money team with those three angles on your money team, they are going to help you build a healthy mindset around overcoming underearning. So you’re going to make sure that you have at least one person who calls you out when you play small. You’re also going to have a book or a podcast where you are taking in new information and you are learning new things or you’re going through exercises that are going to help you break down some of the mindset that you have about earning. And then lastly, you’re going to make sure that you have someone who’s an inspirer and really, like they’re kind of your role model, even if you don’t know them, put that person in your life to really think about approaching problems from their point of view and their lens.
So thank you so much for tuning in and if you want to take this work deeper, like apply to work with me. Earning more money is like one of the steps to drama free spending. I want to make sure that my clients, I want you to earn more money because I always love people just earning more money, but it’s tied to the goals you want to achieve. I don’t just want you to earn more money for the sake of earning more money. I want you to know the exact amount of money you want to earn and why. I love that. For my clients that have worked with me, I’m thinking about my client, Ellie, she got like a $30,000 pay raise. That $30,000 pay raise is turning into a $5 million opportunity for her because of the fact that her pay raise is allowed her to fully contribute to her 401k.
She’s in her late twenties, she’s going to go to fully contributing to her 401k and that one decision is literally going to turn into $5 million by the time she’s in her sixties. And so earning, I’m not just telling you to earn more money just because I want to tell you to earn more money. That’s not it, although that’s okay too. But being really clear on how much you want to earn and the impact on your life and being able to shift your literal legacy is why it’s so important to me. I want you to be able to shoot for numbers that scare you because you’re going to land somewhere and it’s going to be so much bigger than you ever expected. So if you want to take this work deeper, apply to work with me and like budgeting fits in here because when we know all of our numbers, we really get to go through and we get to run down and say like what’s the next number and why. So thank you so much for tuning in. All of the things that I talked about should be linked in the show notes and I look forward to talking to you next week. Have a good one.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
