Overcoming the Most Common Money Blocks (ep. 42)

When you’re a caring coach or healer, you have challenges the average business owner doesn’t have. Charging high-ticket, quoting your fees, and even just making more money can trigger the subconscious to throw up blocks. In this episode of the ‘Success from the Inside Out’ series, Pamela uncovers the most common money blocks, and walks you through how to overcome them.

In this episode, you will:

• Learn the 5 most common money blocks coaches & healers experience
• Discover the secret to overcoming your own blocks, even if you’ve had them for years
• Identify the #1 shift you need to make in money mindset in order to be well-paid for the work you do

Timecode Guide:

• (02:29) Learn The 5 Most Common Money Blocks Coaches & Healers Experience
• (16:00) Discover The Secret To Overcoming Your Own Blocks, Even If You’ve Had Them For Years
• (18:04) Identify The #1 Shift You Need To Make In Money Mindset In Order To Be Well-paid For The Work You Do

Podcast Transcription

Episode 42: Overcoming the Most Common Money Blocks

Intro

Intro (00:00):
You’re listening to A Profitable Impact. When you’re a caring coach or healer, you have challenges the average business owner just doesn’t have. Whether it’s charging high ticket, quoting your fees, or even just making more money, you have to overcome those blocks to succeed.

Gene Monterastelli (00:15):
Welcome to A Profitable Impact, where every single week we help experts like coaches and healers to expand their reach, to increase their impact in the world and to be well-paid for their extraordinary skills and talents. My name is Gene Monterastelli and I am the lead coach of Pamela Bruner’s Impact Accelerator coaches program. And so now please welcome my friend, my colleague, and the CEO of Attract Clients online, Pamela Bruner. How are you doing today, Pamela?

Pamela Bruner (00:38):
(singing).

Pamela Bruner (00:42):
Well, that song always comes to mind when I think about money blocks. I love that whole thing of if I were a rich man. Which you if you grew up in Broadway theater like I did, you know every note of Fiddler on the Roof. But whether you recognize the song or not, the truth is when you are a caring coach or healer, you have particular money challenges the average business owner usually doesn’t. So whether it’s charging high ticket or quoting your fees or whatever, we need to get over those money blocks or the truth is not only will you not be as successful as you want, but you actually will end up not serving the clients you want and not making the difference in the world that you want to make.

Pamela Bruner (01:19):
So today I want to talk about the five most common money blocks that most coaches and healers experience. So excited to unpack these. And what is the secret to overcoming your own blocks, even if you’ve had these blocks for years? And then what’s the number one shift you need to make in money mindset in order to be very well paid for the work that you do?

Gene Monterastelli (01:40):
And if you’re in a situation where you have a complicated relationship with money inside of the work that you do, we would love for you to have a free conversation with one of our coaches to help you to sort through that so you can have a healthy relationship, so you can grow your practice in the way that you would really love to. If you’d like to have one of those conversations, all you need to do is go to bookmybreakthroughcall.com. That’s bookmybreakthroughcall.com. And again, absolutely free. You can talk with one of our coaches that can help you to sort out and transform that relationship so it’s easier for you to receive in the work that you are doing. And I know Pamela the work that we do with our clients a lot, these ideas of money blocks come up. And you and I could probably sit here and come up with a list of 35 or 40 of them. But from the time that we’ve spent with clients, what are the five most common you see showing up with our people?

Learn The 5 Most Common Money Blocks Coaches & Healers Experience

Not Fair

Pamela Bruner (02:29):
Yeah, it’s such a great question. So the first one that I see coming up all the time, because it is literally hardwired into human consciousness, is this concept of fairness. And so it’s the belief that if I make more, it won’t be fair to those people who don’t make as much. And I’ve had numerous clients say this to me, that I’m uncomfortable with the thought of making more than a certain amount, whether that’s 3,000, 5,000, $10,000 a month, or if I charge over $2,000 for a particular service of mine, it’s not fair to the people who don’t earn as much money. And I feel like this fairness kind of tears me up. And so with each of these common money blocks, I’ve created a reframe. And I’m sure you’ve got an endless supply of reframes as you always do Gene, but one of the reframes for this concept of fairness, or it would be unfair if I made more money than other people, is the truth is you can do more good with money than you can without it.

Pamela Bruner (03:42):
This is a quote I got from Jack Canfield, who I’ve had the privilege of working with. And he said, when you are poor, the good you can do is limited to your physical presence. Now that might be a significant good, but still you are limited in that you can’t write a check, you can’t help a friend. You can’t contribute to charity in a financial way. You can do much more good with money than without. So when you think it won’t be fair if I make more than other people, how you use the money you make is up to you. Whether you use it for yourself, your family, your community, the world, is entirely up to you. But making that money is just an indicator of value. One of the things I like to say is just say thank you. If you’re being well-paid, if you’ve got a successful business, you don’t have to ponder the fairness question, just say thank you for my abundance.

Gene Monterastelli (04:33):
And I think there’s another really interesting version of this fairness question. Not just others going without, but you glanced off of it. It’s like the relationships that we have and is it fair for us in the relationships we have? I’m currently working, one of my clients is a commercial real estate agent. And we’re working on these projects that he keeps tanking and he keeps sabotaging. And we came to the realization that he didn’t feel safe if he was making more money than his father ever did in his life. That he felt like he was dishonoring his father by doing better than his father because in his mind, he had this idea that his father was supposed to protect him.

Gene Monterastelli (05:08):
And as long as it felt unfair and dangerous for him to be successful beyond the point that his father was, he was never going to be able to move beyond that place. And so when we recognize how we see ourselves in the world based on the money we have, it makes it really easy for us to realize, “Oh, this is something I need to clear because this is something that’s holding me back from my success.”

Access

Pamela Bruner (05:30):
Beautiful example. Great. Closely related to the concept of fairness is the money block called access. And the way that I word that is if there is anyone who can’t afford me, I charged too much. And this will get you in a really interesting slippery slope with your pricing. I know some people will try sliding scale of pricing, but there are people who will always try to get it for free. It’s like anything more than free is too much. So if you’re looking at this and saying, if anyone can’t afford me, well, I can’t price at $2,000 or 3000 or $5,000, because there will be people who can’t afford that. And that means I’m charging too much. This one actually has, I think, a pretty easy reframe.

Pamela Bruner (06:17):
The truth is you can’t serve everyone. There are 7 billion people in the world, and there are numerous people in the world who would not be able to afford your services, and some category of people who will be able to afford your services no matter where you price them. So if you price your services at $5,000, there will be people who can afford that. If you price your services at $50,000, as one of our former clients did, there will be people who can afford that. So wherever you price, you will serve a certain number of clients. And because you can’t serve everyone, you get to create the level that you would like to work with. And you get to set the price and you get to say, “These are the people for whom this is appropriate.” And then if you’re being well-paid and if you’re taking care of yourself and you’re growing your business, the truth is you can create resources for others with the money that comes into your business. I’ll give an example of this.

Pamela Bruner (07:19):
When I started my coaching business, I made about 50,000 my first year and my second year into the business, I took two days a week and wrote the book that I wrote with Jack Canfield. That’s called Tapping Into Ultimate Success and it was very much a privilege to work with him. So for two days, Friday and Saturday every week, I sat down and I wrote about 5,000 words a day. And it took me about six months to write that book. And then I worked on my coaching business Monday through Thursday and Sunday was my day off. And that book has served countless, countless thousands of people and the work within it even more. And so I would not have had that ability to write that book if I hadn’t already started creating success in my business. And in fact I quadrupled or more my business that year just working in four days a week, and took the other two days to create something for which relatively speaking in my business I haven’t been paid nearly as much. But has served people very well.

Gene Monterastelli (08:24):
And as you say that, I have a comprehensive content library on my website as well, which I love being able to give away for free and knowing my business allows me to do that. The second piece of access it gives us is it gives us the ability, like you said, to give back in a different way. As we were talking about when I have more, I can give back more. When I lived in Baltimore, Maryland, I used to teach an anger management in the county jail to a bunch of inmates, where I sat with guys and I got a chance to tap with them. And it costs me about eight hours a week to be able to volunteer my time and doing that, between getting into the facility, teaching a class, getting out of the facility, doing my class prep, driving to that part of Baltimore.

Gene Monterastelli (09:02):
And I was able to show up wholly and fully to a community that would not be served otherwise. And the work that I was doing was about giving kids their dads back, because if we help them manage their anger, they were less likely to commit more crimes, which means they were less likely to end up back in jail. And that was only because I had structured a business where four days a week I was making the income I needed to make serving clients that I loved, that it created the capacity for me to give back in a different way. And so by charging high ticket, it created the space that wouldn’t have existed otherwise for me to be able to do that powerful work.

Identity

Pamela Bruner (10:11):
And you know, I’ve had clients say, “If I make more than X amount per month or X amount per year, my family will disapprove of me.” And with that kind of pressure, it’s really important to create a new identity as someone who has money and uses it for good and you can still love your family. Even if they disapprove of you, even if they don’t like it, even if they want to make negative comments about what are you doing with the money, or who do you think you are or anything like that, you can still love your family anyway. And you can have this new identity.

Gene Monterastelli (10:47):
And it’s interesting also as part of that identity piece. Not only does it show up because of culturally where we sit, it could also be the culture of the work that we do. You and I hear all the time of, “Well, I’m a healer and I should be giving back. And because of that, I should be of service.” And they equate making money and being of service not as things that are congruent with each other. And so if you are in a circumstance where you believe that I need to be providing this health in a way that I am doing it thoughtfully and generously and being successful is not that, then you’re going to prevent yourself from moving forward, being successful in that way.

Money

Pamela Bruner (11:22):
Yeah, exactly. Which leads us to the fourth money block, which is money itself. I just don’t like money. It feels like it’s evil. It will corrupt me. I’ve taken people through exercises where they’ve expressed this kind of thing that there are phrases, money corrupts, or money is the root of all evil. Actually it’s the love of money is the root of all evil. Either way, you’ve got that juxtaposition between money and evil, and this feeling like if I make more money, I’m just going to be interested in money and somehow it will corrupt me. Because as I said in a previous episode, society tells us all the time that people with money are usually the bad guys and the underdog ends up with money at the end of the movie or the book, but we don’t get to see whether they are corrupted by their money.

Pamela Bruner (12:10):
So I love this reframe for this money block, which is that money is a tool and a magnifier. So if you are a good and decent human being and you get more money, you will be able to do more good and create more decency in the world. If you are a nasty, greedy, selfish person and you get more money, you’ll probably be more nasty, greedy and selfish. So I know so many people who have money and it magnifies the good that they can do in the world.

Pamela Bruner (12:42):
Even if we think about people like Louise Hay and Jack Canfield and Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer. These are people who have made a significant amount of money and done beautiful, wonderful things with it. So money magnified their good. And then there are people who are selfish and greedy, and those are the people who were portrayed in the Hollywood movies as they use money to magnify their greed or selfishness. And so the truth is how do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as good and decent, and can you trust yourself to have a relationship with money where you keep an amount that serves you and supports you and has you feel abundant and grateful and do whatever you want with the rest of it.

Gene Monterastelli (13:29):
And it’s interesting you use the word tool there. And I really love the fact that you use that word tool, because there is no morality to a tool. There’s no morality to a hammer. With a hammer I can build a house or I can break someone’s kneecap. The hammer itself is not intrinsically good or bad. It’s the way that I use it. Money is no different. It is a tool. It is not intrinsically good or bad. It’s in the relationship that we have. And when we’re able to transform that, then it’s easier for us to have it. Because we just recognize, “Oh, it’s a tool in my tool chest to do the things and create the things I want in the world.”

Getting Enough

Pamela Bruner (14:00):
And the fifth money block is the concept of getting enough. And we kind of hinted this before when I said, if you get fed too much by working with your clients, you don’t want money in addition. If you have this idea I love what I do, so I shouldn’t be paid that much for it, in fact, I’ve had people say to me, “Money is something you get for doing something you don’t like to do. But when you do something you love, you shouldn’t be paid for it.” I actually think the exact opposite is true. And one of the kind of silly examples I use for this is if you wanted me to do your books for you, I could do it. I am not an accountant. I don’t like accounting, but I have enough understanding of PNLs and business and books that I could do that. It would be very difficult. And so I should then charge you a lot of money. Would that be reasonable?

Pamela Bruner (14:53):
Actually, it would be ridiculous. You should hire an accountant. Somebody who loves doing books, somebody who revels in spreadsheets, which I do not do. And that person should be well paid, even though it’s going to take them a fraction of the time and they’re going to have a heck of a better time doing it, then I would. So the controversial thought here is you should be paid the most for doing what you love and what is easiest for you, because it is your gift. It is your genius. And from spiritual standpoint, I believe it’s what you were put on the planet to do and therefore let the universe shower you with abundance, let yourself be rewarded for putting your best gift and your genius out there into the world. That’s why it’s your genius. It’s your gift. You should be paid the most for doing what you love that is easiest for you.

Gene Monterastelli (15:40):
And so as we kind of glance our way through those five big blocks, I’m guessing as people are listening along they’re noticing the ones that are kind of lighting up and taking off for them. When you’re encountering clients in this way, Pamela, what’s the first thing you encourage them to do to start overcoming and transforming these blocks so that it isn’t something that keeps showing up in the background all the time?

Discover The Secret To Overcoming Your Own Blocks, Even If You’ve Had Them For Years

Pamela Bruner (16:00):
Well, although we went into the reframes, I don’t think you actually start with the reframes. That’s the way most coaches, especially business coaches, tend to do things. They’ll say, “You have this money block, you just need to get over it. Look at it this way.” But a block like that does not come without an emotional charge, as we both know. So one of the first things to do is reduce the emotional charge around these issues. So if you think about something being unfair, you probably get a little panicky. Maybe your heart beats faster. Maybe you get a little shortness of breath. And it’s going to be very hard to entertain a different idea that you can do more good with money than without it, that you should be paid most for what is easiest for you. Those ideas can be very disturbing when you have an emotional charge around it.

Pamela Bruner (16:48):
So how can you reduce the emotional charge so that you can consider the possibilities from a calmer place of mind? Now, my modality, Gene’s modality, we love EFT tapping, and we do it all the time and you don’t have to be an expert at it. You can just tap and tap and tap until you feel calmer. And then maybe try on some of the reframes and see. And there are other ways to reduce the charges. Meditation is another way that many people reduce an emotional charge. Some people use deep breathing or breathing exercises to get themselves in a calmer state so that then they can take on reframes. Most of these reframes that I delivered are ones that are not unknown to coaches and healers, and certainly not unknown to our clients. And still we need that emotional charge reduced before we can do more.

Gene Monterastelli (17:37):
And so now we have this opportunity to think about, “These are the places that I’m blocked. These are the tools that I can use to respond to that.” And oftentimes we can be faced with all of these options. And we don’t start because don’t know where to start, because it feels like we have to start at the exact right spot. With all of this that you’ve laid out, where do you encourage folks to start as the first shift that they need to be working on, which will then enable us to create a cascade where we can go after all of these things?

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Uncover The Paradox Between ‘What You Love’ And ‘What You Have To Do’

Gene Monterastelli (10:51):
And so as we navigate this idea of this identity piece, you mentioned at the beginning, there’s this, how do we uncover the difference between what we love and what we have to do? And we’re stepping into that. How do you in your business, Pamela, reconcile that stuff to allow you to be in the place of both of those and still be able to grow your business in the way that you’ll love?

Pamela Bruner (11:10):
Well, one of my favorite sayings, and I think you love this saying too, is growing a business is the graduate school of personal growth. So your business is actually part of your growth practice. And I don’t know many coaches or healers who aren’t in some kind of growth practice. They’re in personal development or they’re in a spiritual pursuit or they’re expanding themselves and trying to grow and better themselves in a way with some kind of self-help. And so if you’re doing all of these things as practice, why not consider business as part of your growth practice? And looking at it that way, especially if you get some help from somebody who has this orientation in business as we do, as Gene and I do, the thing to look at is, “Wow, when I get better at business, I DO serve my clients better.” It’s kind of what you were saying before Gene, but it is, when I’m a better marketer, I am speaking to my ideal clients better.

I am reaching them better. I am speaking their language so they feel heard and understood. And that is a wonderful practice. The same way you might say, “I am studying communication so that I can communicate with my spouse better.” That’s a lovely thing to do in your life. Why not just take that into your business and consider business as part of your growth practice?

Gene Monterastelli (12:31):
And it’s funny that you say that because as you know, Pamela, I’m in the process of changing the way some of my business works and I’ve brought on a significant number of staff to help me with a number of tasks. And it has been a struggle of letting go of things that I should not be doing just because there’s this controlling, “I must have control over my life in order to do this transformation.” And in my business as I’m learning to let go of tasks that I don’t need to be doing and finding people I can trust to do those particular things, that is not a skill, that is just something that is happening in my business, that I also recognize the fact that in my personal life, I’m really bad at asking for help. I’m a person that likes to be self-sufficient in doing stuff.

And so, as I have expanded my ability to do that in my business for business needs, I’ve been sharpening that particular skill in my personal life as well and it’s been easier for me to reach out for the support and protection that I need for my loved ones who happily want to give it, but I’ve just been really crappy at asking for it in the past.

Pamela Bruner (13:29):
That’s such a great example of how business mirrors life. I love that. And a couple of other things to consider when we’re looking at the paradox of what you love versus what you have to do, you generally won’t love things that you don’t do well. Now there are exceptions. Sometimes there’s a game that you love playing even though you play it poorly. I’m not very good at pool and yet when I shoot pool, I still have fun, even though I’m not very good at it. But I do like it when I really hit a ball hard into the pocket. It feels great. But the truth is mostly, we don’t love things we don’t do well. We especially don’t love things we don’t do well when we feel like there’s stakes involved, when it matters, when I’m going to feel like a success or failure or when it’s going to mean how much money I bring in or don’t bring in. You’re not going to love things you don’t do well.

So as we consider business as part of our growth practice and we are practicing it and the have-to-do’s become part of our service, they become part of this growth process we’re in, learning to do them well gives us the opportunity to see if we can love them or at least like them. If we’re not going to do them well and the stakes are high, probably we’re going to dislike that opportunity. But the more we do it, the more we can get good at it. And then we have the opportunity not just to like it, but to love it. I can’t count the number of clients who have said to me, “Wow, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually really enjoyed the sales conversation,” or “I’ve never said this before, but I actually like networking now.” And that’s so rewarding to me because I know that means they’re set up for success.

Gene Monterastelli (15:06):
And when they’re speaking in that particular way, not only are they set up for success, it means that they’ve gone through that evolution from a practitioner into a business owner, because they don’t just love it because they enjoy doing the task, they love it because when I do this well, it means good things for me. It means good things for my audience. It means good things for my clients. And so that excitement is coming from a place of not just, boy, this task is now easy or fun, but we see it in the context of how it fits into who we are and how we’re navigating. And so as we’ve had this conversation, if you recognize that you would like to make that transition in identity of moving from a practitioner or a coach into a business owner who provides amazing services, but you are not exactly sure what those first steps are, we’d love for you to have a free conversation with one of our coaches so they can help you to navigate this transition in a way that allows you to be successful and allows you to serve your clients better.

Identify The #1 Shift You Need To Make In Money Mindset In Order To Be Well-paid For The Work You Do

Pamela Bruner (18:04):
I really think it starts with the value that you provide. And so that is getting clear on the value of the transformation. Now there’s one other piece you need in order to cement this idea of the value of the transformation you provide. And that is an understanding of your own money set point. A money set point is the amount of money you feel it’s appropriate to pay for a particular transformation. Or particular anything. Like you have a money set point for a shirt. You have a money set point for a mortgage or rent. Gene and I have very different money set points for mortgage or rent, because I live in the mountains of North Carolina and he lives in New York City. But we still each have a money set point for what we think is appropriate to pay for a place that we live. And we have a money set point for transformation.

Pamela Bruner (18:49):
What are we willing to pay for transformation? And when you look at your own money set point, what am I willing to pay for transformation? What do I think this is worth? Not in terms of how easy it is for me to generate or the work that I’ve gone through, but the value that I know comes from this. And one of the lovely ways that I like having clients recognize the value they provide is I will ask them, “If I gave you a million dollars and you didn’t have the skill set you have and couldn’t serve people, or you wouldn’t have gone through this transformation that you went through that now has you want to help others transform, would you take the million dollars to lose that transformation?”

Pamela Bruner (19:26):
And they’re like, “No. No way. No. I love what I’ve got. I love how I think, I love who I’ve transformed myself to be.” And I said, “Well, if it’s worth a million dollars to you, don’t you think it will be worth a few thousand to some other people?” So knowing your own money set point, examining it, particularly around transformation. And then based on that, how valuable is what I provide? That’s a great starting point for starting to become more comfortable with money.

Conclusion

Gene Monterastelli (19:54):
So as you heard the conversation we’ve had today, money is one of those things that is super, super fraught because it is something that we cannot escape. It is something that is the nature of our life. If you are in a situation where you have a complicated relationship with money, particularly inside of your business, we would love for you to have a conversation with one of our coaches, absolutely free, to help you to get into a place where you have a healthy relationship with money so you can create the success that you want. To have one of those conversations, all you need to do is go to BookMyBreakthroughCall.com. That’s BookMyBreakthroughCall.com. You can get on the calendar of one of our coaches absolutely free, and they will help you to start sorting this out so you can transform your relationship with money.

Gene Monterastelli (20:34):
And as we’ve had the conversation today, if you know someone else in your life, another coach, another healer, another private practitioner who you know is struggling with their relationship with money as well, please be our ambassador and pass this along. This might be the exact thing they need to hear today in order to move forward in a new way in their business. If you have a question, if you have a comment, if a topic that you’d like Pamela and I to tackle in a future episode, we would love to hear from you. All you need to do is go to AttractClientsOnline.com, click on that contact link up at the top of the page. In the message make sure you note that this is for the podcast and we would love to get to those questions and those issues on future episodes.

Gene Monterastelli (21:13):
If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the show and subscribe in podcasting is always free. You can find the show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, Audible, basically everywhere you get audio online. All you need to do is search for A Profitable Impact. After you follow or subscribe, make sure you turn on those notifications so each time a new episode comes out you’re notified right away so you can consume the amazing, useful information. For A Profitable Impact. I am Gene Monterastelli. Until next time, I hope you have an impactful week.

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