Most people associate money conversations with savings, debt, or salaries. But achieving financial goals is more than just making money. In today’s episode, I share the importance of having a money team. Your money team goes beyond just having a financial advisor. You need a group of people who have already accomplished what you want to do and who can challenge you to think bigger.
Everyone needs a money team, and in this episode, I share examples of how my own money team has pushed me to look beyond limiting beliefs, leverage my skills, and ultimately earn more money and achieve my financial goals. Are you ready to start assembling your money team? Listen to learn how!
The main points discussed in this episode are:
[04:47] What is a money team?
[05:58] Example: negotiating salaries
[08:47] Example: raising business rates
[10:55] Finding people who challenge you
[16:37] Six questions to help you build your money team
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn what a money team is and the difference it can make in achieving your financial goals.
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 HOW TO BUILD A MONEY TEAM, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW THE SKILLS KAREN LEARNED DURING FINANCIAL COACHING CONTINUE TO SUPPORT HER!
Transcript for “How To Build A Money Team”
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. I just want to say thank you so much for tuning into my podcast. Whether you found me today, whether you found me a year ago, two years ago, wherever, however I got into your ears, I just want to say thank you so much for allowing me to spend time with you and talk to you about money. As a part of the work that I do I have a belief that if I can help you shift one thought about how you think about money, how you think about how you manage your finances, then my work here is done. Of course, I also want you to work with me in my one-to-one coaching partnership because I know that when we take this work deeper, everything changes for you.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the legacy that my work has and the legacy specifically for you and the way that you think about your finances. I’m so fortunate that I still get to talk to a number of my clients that I’ve worked with in the past, and one of the things that I get most excited about is when they’re sharing a win with me, whether it’s “Hey Keina, I got a new job and I’m making $40,000 more. Or, I’m doing things with my money that I never thought were possible.” That really excites me and I know that it has to, it starts with the decision that you decide you want help. And I’m always really honored when clients say yes to working with me because I know that your money can feel very vulnerable.
I always talk about on consults, I get it. It’s like showing somebody your underwear drawer, you’re like “no, no, no, don’t look over here. Look over here. Not those, look at these.” And so I am grateful for anyone who’s welcomed me into their space and I just wanted to give you that little moment of gratitude for myself. And then we can dive into today’s podcast episode.
So on today’s podcast, I want to talk to you about having a money team. And this might not be, I mean it’s a concept that I have and it may not be the traditional team that you’re thinking of. I think that especially for business owners, when we start to think about numbers, we think about, oh, okay, I need an accountant or I need a bookkeeper, or I’ve heard I need a financial advisor. A lot of people find me because they think they need a financial advisor and that’s the person that’s going to help them. And so I think that people commonly know those people if we’re thinking about a money team. But I had a client years ago and she was like “Keina, you’re on my team.” She was going through a divorce and she knew that one of the areas in her life that she wanted to improve was her money.
And so I was on her team in the seat of someone who was helping her shift how she was thinking about being a six figure earner, how she was thinking about being a recently divorced woman. That’s the role that I played in her life at the time. And so when I think back to my own life, and specifically when I think about money, I think about the fact that I have had a money team and you could call it a silent team if you will, but I am someone who, I thrive on relationships and community and there are people in my circle whom I trust. I will go and seek information when I am trying to shift or change something in my own life.
And so when I am thinking about a money team, specifically, money impacts every single area of your life and your money team doesn’t have to just be focused on how much money are you making or how much debt are you in. I think that a lot of the times when we think about talking about money, that’s where our brains go is, that, oh my goodness, I’m going to have to divulge about my debt, or somebody’s going to ask me about my salary. And I have the philosophy that you can be talking about money in many different ways. You don’t have to just be talking about how much you make or how much debt you’re in because I believe that money touches so many different areas of our lives.
And in my life, when I think about how I’ve engaged a money team, and I should say, let me actually back up and say the money team, it’s a team of people that you have in your life that help you gain traction on an area of your life that you want support or that you’re going to want some outside opinions. And so I can give you some examples of areas in my life where I’ve used a money team. So one area would be when I was negotiating a salary. Another area would be when I was raising rates in my business. Another area is when I was working on hitting five-figure months, another area that I have is buying a home. And I would say the two things that I’m working on right now when I think about a money team are scaling my business.
And then I also have a goal of getting an investment property. So those are areas of my life that I want to gain traction in. And when I think about the money team, I want to know okay, who do I have in my life that can help me with any one of these goals? And I can walk you through how I’ve done this before. So let me just actually walk you through negotiating my salary. So in, gosh, I can’t remember, I want to say 2019, I was working in my business, but I also realized that I was going to have a job and work at the same time. And I specifically knew, I had an organization in mind that I was going to work for because I could actually build my own schedule. So I knew I wanted flexibility, but mostly I wanted a job because I was like I need healthcare and I want to contribute to my retirement.
And so it’s the thing that I wanted at the time of my life to feel secure building my business and I wasn’t going to have to be worried about money at the same time. So because I had negotiated, I shouldn’t sa,y I hadn’t negotiated a salary before, not in this capacity because I was in education, education is kind of really clear cut on how you’re going to go. Like you have ladders and if you’re at this year at this step you know how much you’re making. I was aware of negotiating salaries because I have a background in business and I’ve interviewed with business roles, etc. But that’s not the important part here. The important part is I wanted to negotiate my salary and I knew that I also wanted to negotiate benefits. If I couldn’t get the salary that I wanted, I wanted to make sure that I could get the benefits that I wanted and really build a total value proposition that was going to be something that I felt good with at the time.
And so at that time when I was negotiating my salary, I actually talked to one of my friends and just kind of talk through where I was thinking, how I was thinking about negotiating my salary. I ask her, is there anything that I’m missing? Is there anything from your point of view, is there anything else that you would say? Like how can I pull on my strengths to also advocate for the money that I want to make? And so we had, I mean I didn’t tell her “you’re on my money team,” but she was someone that I knew that was in my circle who has been where I had been and she had achieved a result that I wanted to achieve. And so I went and sought out her support to help me in negotiating my own salary.
So I was able to actually be successful with my salary negotiation. And she was also really helpful in helping me see what opportunities I was gaining with this job, especially because it allowed me the flexibility to work in my business. I wasn’t working 40 hours a week. It met a whole bunch of other markers for me. So success looked different at that time. So that’s one way that I’ve used a money team in my life before. In my business I definitely used a money team in raising my rates in my business. And so, gosh, I don’t even remember what my rates were in the beginning when I started my business, but I remember that I want to say it was maybe my second year of business, I was still doing one month intensives and I was actually working with the business coach at the time and she told me, we had a one-off session that she did.
So we did this one-off session together and she told me, “she was like Keina, you can be charging $1,500 a month.” And I was like “what? I can charge $1,500 a month.” At the time my brain couldn’t conceptualize charging someone $1,500 a month. But she was there to push me beyond my limiting beliefs and she made me really uncomfortable in a positive way. But I remember her role in my life at the time was she held space for me to listen to her talk about how I could charge $1,500. I was still baffled how I could charge $1,500, but she held space for me. She also allowed my brain to see that it could be possible. She was also the same coach who told me it was possible to create five figure months in my business. And so I’m telling you this as well because I want you to know my growth when it comes to money, sometimes we think our growth is only in okay, we need to make more money or we need to pay off debt or we need to learn how to save.
But when I’m working with clients, the growth can also be shifting limiting beliefs maybe about how much money you make. It can be shifting beliefs about the prices in your business. It can be shifting beliefs about how much money you can make in your business. And so if you’ve heard my story before, I’ve even told you when I started business, I was like I only need to replace my salary that I was making in the past. And so I’ve had people who are informally on my money team who challenge me. And I think that’s what I want you to hear the most, is that you need people in your life who challenge you to do better. And sometimes you may not even notice who’s in your life and who’s speaking into your life about what you’re able to create because it’s kind of like you have this air that you breathe, you have this oxygen that you breathe and you don’t know, you like don’t know it’s bad until you get some new air.
You’re like oh, I didn’t even know. An example I’ll tell you is I go to the gym at five in the morning and one of my friends that goes with me and we have like a specific treadmill that we use, but I went on Saturday morning and I used her treadmill and when I was on the treadmill I was like “oh my goodness, the belt on this treadmill is terrible.” I was like, “does she know that the belt on this treadmill is terrible?” My treadmill runs so much better than this one. And she like spends 20 minutes every single morning on this treadmill and it’s terrible. So I ended up telling her, I was like you know you have a bad treadmill, right? You can have a better treadmill in our gym. And then she got on a new treadmill and it was a different experience.
But I feel like that’s what can be true in your life, is that you are so intimate with what’s going on in your life that you don’t know that what you’re experiencing could be better because you’re simply unaware. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s just fast. You are unaware of what could be because you’re so intimate with your current situation. And so that’s why it’s so important for you to have a money team and people that are challenging you because you need new thoughts, you need new ways of thinking. You need to know that your current situation can be different. And I’m going to say it over and over again. It doesn’t just have to be about how much money you make or how much debt you’re in when we’re talking about possibility. Your money team is going to help you create a legacy in your life.
Your money team is going to help you create generational shifts for the things that you’ve experienced. You might know, like “oh my goodness, I experienced my parents telling me that we couldn’t afford things.” I experienced me always having to give my parents money when I first got a job. That could be your experience.
But when you tap into and you build a money team, you can have a different experience and you can create a different experience for those in your life right now and those that come after you. That’s why when I’m talking about this money team is because I am not just thinking about where your life is right now. I want you to be thinking about the generational shifts that you’re creating. For me, I think about in negotiating my salary, not only do I build more confidence in negotiating my salary, I’m also really confident helping my clients negotiate their salaries. I have nieces and nephews, I have friends and I’m like no, you’re asking for more money. Because I am willing to step up, then I’m able to help those around me. Also, when I look at my business, no one in my family has a business, I am the first one in my family that’s like hey, or the first one I should say, I know of, maybe some ancestors or something that.
But I am the first one that’s like I’m leaving my job and I’m going to work for myself. And that’s my dream. And so now my nieces and nephews, they get to see me in this space where it’s possible for me as a black woman to be working for myself. I don’t have to work for someone else. My nephew asked me the other day, he’s like “Auntie Keina, who do you work for?” And I was like, “I work for myself.” And he’s like “you’re your own boss?” And he’s in third grade. But just to have that conversation, it happened because I have people in my life that pushed me and I have this money team. I would even say I had a money team even in thinking about starting my business. And so I want you to also have a money team in your life. And if you’re like “wow, Keina, this is such a novel idea.” I want you to take it and even just like I’m going to give you some prompts and some questions to think about who already in my life can be on my team? How can I incorporate new people onto my team? But I want you to have a money team because I don’t want you to end 2023 the same way you started.
And I don’t want you to go through 2024 just having complacency in your life, especially when it comes to your finances. You are in the space in which you’re in to do something great. No matter your circumstances. I work with single moms, I work with divorced women, I work with couples, I work with people that are like, “this is the first time I’ve ever made six figures or I’m making a million dollars in my business and I want something to show for it.” I work with all of these people and in your life you are creating the things that you’re creating because you have a why. I need you to make it a strong why. And maybe you haven’t sat down with your why in a moment, but I want you to know what is your why? Who is the version of you that is rooting for you, who is a year away, two years away, five years away, what advice is that person giving you right now with where you are? That person is definitely telling you, “Girl, get it together, you’re going to make it through this. I got you. It may be uncomfortable but keep pushing.”
So let me talk a little bit more about the money team. So with your money team, I want you to think about a goal that you have in your life. So I gave you some examples that I had in my own life, buying a home, hitting five figure months, raising rates in my business. But think about specifically a financial goal or a goal where you’re going to need money to achieve it. Buying a home, I need money. And so think about the goal. So you can just do a brain dump, nothing’s wrong or right, just dump things. And then I want you to think about who do you naturally seek advice from? For me, the person I naturally seek advice from is my mother. And my mother and I are really, really close. And so she’s someone that I seek advice from. I also have a good group of girlfriends that I seek advice from. I have business colleagues that I seek advice from, but my mom is pretty much at the top of that list.
And then on step three I want you to think, or the third question I want you to ask, I should say is do the people that you naturally seek advice from, do they help or hinder you? And you can think about this in relation to the goal that you wrote down. So for instance, raising my rates in my business, if I was thinking about my mother, she actually hinders me, if I’m thinking about raising my rates in the business. I mean now I’ve told her “Mom, I’m not really asking for your opinion, I’m just telling you this is what I’m doing.” But she hinders me, my mother’s wonderful, she was on the podcast as well, but she hinders me in the fact that my mom can put me into the circle of like “well Keina, you should be helping people. Some people can’t afford that.” And so she can feed limiting beliefs if I’m just listening to her about whether or not I can raise my rates.
Even when I was thinking about how much money I wanted to make in my business, I am mindful of talking to my parents about that because I shared on another podcast, I grew up and my parents are people that give, they are really big givers, which I love and it’s something that I’ve also adopted. But with that, I feel like I’ve picked up on this undertone of money is evil. Even though my mother would be “Keina, I’ve never said that” and I’m telling you this because we’ve had this whole conversation as well. But just knowing, I know that there are certain things that I don’t filter through my mother, I don’t filter and ask her for help on it. She’s not someone who I need to talk to about raising my rates, but buying a home, definitely “Mom, what did you and daddy do?” All of those things, she doesn’t hinder me in that area she helps me. Even when I’m thinking about this investment property, she’s like “yeah Keina, this is a great idea, be bold” and those things. So I just know where I can include her and where I shouldn’t.
And I say that because a lot of us have family members or really close friends that we listen to about everything in our life and we don’t realize how they can be hindering us. I was actually talking to one of my friend’s moms and I was talking to her about raising her rates in her business and she was like “oh well I meet with this group of women and we all have the same business and I am the one who charges the most out of all of them.” I said, “great, they’re not allowed to give you advice about raising rates in your business because they’re going to feed limiting beliefs for you.” I said, “I want you to find someone on your money team who can encourage you to raise your rates and who’s going to make you feel uncomfortable. Who are those people in your life? And so she was able to identify two people and I said, “those are the people that you need to be talking to, not the people that you guys compare notes about your business in terms of your actual practice.”
“I want you to fire those people from your money team because you can’t ask them for financial advice or ask them about building a business that creates more revenue because they’re going to provide you with all the reasons that that’s not possible. They’re not going to provide you with possibility.” So the next question I want you to ask yourself is, and I’ve kind of gone into it already, is like do they cause you to shift your own limiting beliefs? So you may not know all of your limiting beliefs, but if someone says something to you and it makes you go, “oh, I’m not sure if that’s possible” and it makes you feel uncomfortable and your belly kind of swells up or knots up, they’re probably pushing a limiting belief in your life. They’re pushing a button and you are not sure if that’s true. You’re like, “oh my goodness, they fundamentally believe that but I don’t believe that this is interesting.” They’re identifying a gap for you and so if that person in your life does that, then you probably want them on your team because they’re going to help you.
Just like I was telling my friend’s mom, “she was like yeah, this person that she named,” she was “they told me that I need to raise my rates and she told me I should do some group coaching.” And I was like “yeah, we need her in your life.” And she can’t see how it’s possible but guys don’t worry, I’m going to come back. I’m going to tell you she’s going to totally do it because I told her I was going to follow up with her. But the next question is, what other voices can you add to your team? So there are people that are naturally in your life and that you go and seek out help. And maybe some of you are like, “Keina, I don’t have anyone that I can ask for help.” Your team doesn’t have to be even people that you know. If you listen to my podcast and I’m helping you shift limiting beliefs, I could be on your team. All of my clients, I think they would tell you that I’m on their money team.
When I was building my business, my business coach that I had, not the one I’m currently working with, but Stacy Batman, one of the business coaches I have worked with, I would’ve said that she was on my money team. She was the coach I was listening to when I was building, when I had my first 100k year and she was talking about making 200k and I was like okay, I can make 200k. But I was listening to her podcast, I had it in my ear every Wednesday and I remember it was December of, I think it was December of 2019, I was like I am going to pay this woman $25,000 and I’m going to work with her. And that’s exactly what I did. But she was on my money team and I would listen to her in my ear, I would get ideas from her, from her podcast, I would go and implement those. But she helped me shift a lot of limiting beliefs and it was through her free content at first and then it was through her paid content.
And so you can even be thinking about, are there podcasts that can help you shift your limiting beliefs If you are building a business? Maybe you have a business coach that you’re listening to and they are someone who encourages you because maybe you don’t have someone who physically that you know that will help push you beyond your own limits. And then the last thing I would say is just identifying where you need support. So you know what the goal is, what support are you going to need along the way? And if you can identify the support you need, then you can put people, you can build your money team out from there. So I think what’s really important to think about when you’re adding people to your money team, you can be asking yourself questions like have they been where you are? Have they achieved the result you desire to achieve? Do they make me uncomfortable in a positive way?
But I was thinking just to this last question of where do you need support? I have a client right now and she is in education. She is not sure if she wants to change careers completely. I am very clear that I want her to make $200,000 and she’s getting on board as well that she can make $200,000. But she is at a space where I know what her limiting beliefs are and we’ve talked about what are the things that she thinks she can do and not do and she’s unsure of how she can change and get out of education and is that possible? And you know I was in education so I’m like “girl, you can get out of education.” I know a lot of people that have not necessarily even starting their own business, but I have friends that were in education and now I have a friend that’s an executive assistant. I have a friend that works for Amazon. I have proof in my life that people can get out of education.
And so I’ve told her in thinking about building her money team, I’m like “look around you for proof.” And the proof doesn’t necessarily have to be with people that you know but your brain needs to know it’s possible because right now your brain’s not sure if it’s possible.
And so because it’s not sure if it’s possible, it’s making you freeze and it’s making you be like I’m fearing taking the next step. Also she is getting ready to do a program for career changers. So we are starting to build out her money team and just thinking about where she needs support. So when I am talking to her and coaching her, the place she needs support is really to be able to see possibility of what could be. And we’ve also talked about the money side and what does $200,000, what does that mean for your life? What will it create for your life? What are the possibilities there? Because I want her body to arrive at the place where she’s already the person who’s making $200,000 where she’s already the person who’s changed careers because it’s going to fuel the conversations that she has as she navigates this change. And so we’ve just been able to, like I said, identify who she needs, what additional examples that she needs.
And so there are some people in her life that she would turn to advice and I’ve been like “nope, you can’t ask that person. Nope, you can’t ask that person” because they’re not footing the bill, they’re hindering you, they’re not helping you and I need people that are helping you. So she thinks that she doesn’t know people right now but the thing that I’ve been telling her and I’m challenging her on is where can she make new connections? So I’m like how do we use LinkedIn to have coffee chats with people? What podcasts can you be listening to that help you feed this goal that you have of changing careers and increasing your salary? Are there past mentors that have left your job that are now in different spaces and different career fields that you can also talk to and you can plug into and they can be a part of your money team?
So I feel like I have talked a lot today, but we all need a money team and you’re going to need. Your money team can shift over time and it can shift with each and every goal. But today, I really just want you to be aware that you probably already have a team. I need you to actually vet whether or not we like these people on the team. And I need you to think about do I have a team of people that I actually know or do I need to actually build and include new people on my team? Do I have podcasts where I may not actually know the person, but I am going to use this person as a way to keep inspiring me. Because what we need is an inspiration and we need to have possibility. Do I need to hire a coach to help me? I gave you a couple examples where I’ve hired a business coach and coaching is some of the best return on investment I’ve ever had in my entire life.
I think I definitely have a podcast where I’ve told you that I’ve invested over a hundred thousand dollars in coaching. It’s the best money I’ve ever spent and it has gotten me out of my own way. If you went and talked to me in 2017, she would’ve been like “Keina is not going to spend a hundred thousand dollars on coaching, she doesn’t even know what that is.” But coaching has fundamentally changed my life in just helping me to see new things and create new results and having people that push me beyond my limiting beliefs. And so I’m a coach and it’s the thing that I also help my clients do inside of my one-to-one partnership. And so yes, we talk about budgeting, but the client that I was just talking to about changing careers and increasing her salary, one of the things that I want all of my clients to do is earn more money. And so we are in that phase of our coaching. She has her budget together, she is saving more money than she’s ever saved before.
And now we are diving into her earning more. And her being able to earn more is going to help her to be able to invest more, invest in other areas of her life. So thank you so much for tuning in and if this podcast was just what you needed or you didn’t even know you needed it, I would love it if you would share it on social media, tag me, share it with a friend. And if you have been listening to a podcast and you have kind words to say, well, you go on Apple Podcast and leave me a review as well. And as always, if you want to take this work deeper, I would invite you to apply to work with me in my five month coaching partnership. And like I said, I don’t want you to end 2023 the same way that you came in. And so we’ll have five months to work together and helping you just learn how to budget and create wealth, but also you’re going to have a money team when you come out of this entire process. So thank you so much for tuning in. If you go to the show notes, you can grab the link to apply to work with me or if you just go to my website, www.wealthovernow.com, you’ll see at the top it says “Book a call.” And I look forward to chatting with you soon. So have a great week.
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.
