Money mistakes! (We’ve all made them - here’s how to fix it)

Let’s talk about money mistakes.  You know what I’m talking about. 

When you realize the payroll and rent for your business is due tomorrow and you don’t have enough in the account, or you try to pay a bill online and your credit card declines.

That feeling in the pit of your stomach – UGH…..

It happens to all of us – we make big mistakes and small mistakes – but we are guaranteed to make some mistakes, no matter who we are. You think the most successful entrepreneurs don’t make mistakes?  They absolutely do - theirs are just for larger amounts of money than yours are!

Quinn is with us today talking about money mistakes and why we don’t need to be afraid of them and how we can actually use them to improve.

You are not the only one that has these struggles. So ditch the shame, open the curtain and let’s talk about money , mistakes, mindset and making the journey a bit smoother.

Let’s get into it!

Get your Free Money Mindset Makeover guide HERE

Connect with Quinn HERE

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Transcript

Let's talk about money. Mistake. You know what I'm talking about? When you realize the payroll and the rent for your business is due tomorrow and you don't have enough cash in the account, or you try to pay a bill online and your credit card declines that feeling in the pit of your stomach, ugh. It happens to all of us.

We make big mistakes and small mistakes, but we're guaranteed to make some mistakes no matter who we. You think the most successful entrepreneurs don't make mistakes? They absolutely do. Theirs are just for larger amounts of money than maybe yours and mine are. Quinn is with us today talking about money, mistakes and why we don't need to be afraid of them and how we can actually use them to improve.

I promise you are not the only one that has these struggles. So dish the shame, open the curtain, and let's talk about money, mistakes, mindset, and making the journey a bit smoother. Let's get into.

Kristy: Quinn Driscoll is a business coach, money mentor, and founder of Value 

Quin: Gal, where she brings Wall Street knowledge to Main 

Kristy: Street [00:01:00] business owners through coaching programs that teach financial skills and strategy. She's a frequent speaker and guest expert on financial topics, 

Quin: including building a valuable business money mindset.

And goal setting 

Kristy: for business owners, and I'm so excited you are here with us today. Thanks for 

Quin: joining us, Quinn. Thank you, Kristy. I'm excited to be here. So I, I gave a very short introduction 

Kristy: there on, on what it is that you do, but I would love to hear a bit of your backstory on how you got to where you are now and exactly what it is that you're doing for women entrepreneurs.

Quin: Yeah, so my background is as a cpa, so certified public accountant or chartered accountant, I think in Canada. And so I started in a very traditional accounting path where I worked as an auditor working with really large companies and. Definitely saw myself being kind of the cubicle dweller working for a big company.

I live in the Twin Cities in Minnesota where we have a lot of really [00:02:00] large employers, and so that is what, you know, most of my friends do, and it seemed like the path that I would be on as well. But about probably 12 or so years ago, I kind of randomly found myself working for a very small consulting firm where instead of doing audits, I was working with small business owners.

And so I was working as an expert witness in business valuation. And so helping business owners who are going through. Legal issues understand the financial state of their company and the value of their businesses, and so. It was like doors open to me that I never really knew existed. I didn't have that like anyone in my life who owned their own business or anything like that.

And so I just started to be in [00:03:00] that world a little bit and have business owners as my clients, and it was so. You know, interesting and exciting sometimes, and also stressful and like kind of the worst thing for a perfectionist, where it's like, no, seriously, it's your job for people to try to find out how you're wrong.

And so after about 10 years of doing that, I. Knew that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the next however many years of my career. And so I kind of just realized like, hey, I actually know a lot about small business and I could probably have my own small business and use what I know to help to help the small business owners who were not.

Being catered to by the firm, you know, like the firm that I was working for, where it's a very [00:04:00] expensive process and just the information that you get out of it is not really forward looking in terms of being helpful. And so I really just, you know, sat down and thought about how can I structure what I'm doing to help people.

Really understand their financial situation of their business and use those tools to make it what they want and to just understand the very, very basic financial issues that a lot of us don't get exposed to. If you're like me and you don't anticipate being a business owner and kind of find yourself falling into.

That's not our area of expertise a lot of times. So, yeah. So it's been a few years now that I have been. On my own coaching business owners and just developing my programs to help the teeny tiny [00:05:00] business, the solopreneur, and especially women who maybe haven't felt welcome or haven't felt listened to by who you think of as a traditional business advisor.

Kristy: There's such a need for all the reasons you just said, and I think so many, especially women start businesses because it's something that we love and very rarely is that thing we love finance , right? Right. With all of this other expertise and all of these other incredible skills and all of this passion and.

And that's the piece that's missing for so many you can't afford to hire a, a cfo. And, and we may have accountants and bookkeepers, but they're really, they're doing the work, but not necessarily, helping us with the bigger picture.

So I really love what you're doing. So you do coaching now, and you do, do you have programs as. 

Quin: Yes. Right now I am mostly focused on coaching one on one with business owners. That's such a great point to bring up about the distinction of, [00:06:00] you know, a lot of people think about I have a financial person or a financial guy.

But there are so many different roles that that people have that can help you. So the accountant, the bookkeeper, the tax preparer, are so critical to get the foundation. To have good information to make financial decisions. But what I do is really the next level where it's, okay, we have the information now how do we digest it?

How do we understand it? How do we use it to make decisions you know, to move our business in the direction that we wanna go. 

Kristy: And you say that you're a money mentor, so is that how we would describe a money mentor, or is there more to it than that? 

Quin: Yeah, I describe, I just describe it as a money mentor because I am here to answer questions, to ask questions to really help my clients understand what they want and how their [00:07:00] financial goals and financial plan.

Can help them with that. And so it's more than just, giving you a report of like, here are all the things you're doing wrong and, and try to fix them. It's really understanding and guiding and helping you get a better understanding of what you're trying to do and how you can do that successfully.

Oh, I love that. Now we're 

Kristy: gonna talk about money mistakes today, before we do that though, I would love to do just at a, as a, at a high level so that we can kind of walk into this with a, a better understanding of, of this part of it.

Is money mindset, because that's really the heart of so many of our struggles. And, and if you're listening and you're not sure what I mean by money mindset, I wanna see if either of these statements speak to you, because I think you're gonna, you're gonna see yourself in one of these, and we hear this so often.

You, I, you always believe you are bad with money or math. You know, are you that person that says, you know, oh, I just, I'm not a money person. I'm not a, I'm not a numbers person. Or if [00:08:00] you're constantly hustling, if you're, if you are trying to solve your money mistakes by bringing in more money instead of managing the money that's coming in and you just, you're never sure if you're gonna have enough money.

I think those are two things that people strongly identify with. And if either of those feel like a direct hit , then the, the problem might be money mindset. So can we, can we kind of talk about that, what money mindset is and how we can identify if we have a money mindset problem. Yes, 

Quin: so money mindset is really the stories that you tell yourself about money, and that can be your ability with money, whether, you know money is inherently good or bad, or the type of person who feels a certain way or acts a certain way about money.

It's really those. The stories that are running through your brain when it comes to money. And if you are, like most people, if you have had bad experiences with money, negative [00:09:00] experiences or, you know, grew up hearing about how. Hearing about or feeling that there's never enough or things like that, those experiences stick with you.

And it's, you know, it's a scientific bias called negativity bias that says that our brains are wired to remember the bad things. Five times more than the good things in all areas of our life. So you need basically five positives to offset one negative. And so if you have those experiences where you're feeling bad about your abilities with money or feeling scared, worried, ashamed about what's going on and how you're managing money, A lot of us will just, you know, just shut it down.

Like I don't want all to be swimming in all of that negativity, so I'm not gonna think about it. And then what [00:10:00] happens is that leads you to decisions that are reactive instead of proactive. So you're always feeling those negative, you know, stress emotions, feeling like you're in an emergency type of situation and it just keeps, you know, keeps spiraling and building.

And so it's really one of those things where you. You have to stop and identify those thought patterns when they're happening so that you can consciously make your decisions about how to change them. And it's really, you know, it's, it's like anything with habits. It's identifying something that you're doing and then choosing something different and doing it over and over and over again until you kind of rewire your brain a little bit to do the new thing that you want.

Kristy: So let's talk about money mistakes. So what do you mean 

Quin: by money mistakes? Yes. So money mistakes that I'm talking about are [00:11:00] simp. The oh crap moments, right? So when something happens and you immediately feel that in your body where it's like the, the cortisol starts pumping, you feel you know, you feel like, oh no, this is a disaster.

I can't believe I did that. So it can be, big things are small things. It can be, you know, you log into your bank account and you see, you overdrew the account and you got hit with a late fee or if you're in a store and your credit card is declined or something like that, where it's that instant moment where you feel like, oh no, I did something wrong.

And you feel that viscerally in your body that that was a mistake. Got it. So why are, why are most of us afraid 

Kristy: of money mistakes? 

Quin: So we are afraid of money mistakes, number one, what we talked about with money mindset, because we have we have those stories that we're telling ourselves about how we [00:12:00] are the problem.

So it's personal. It's when I do this, that means that I am. Not smart, cuz I couldn't manage, I didn't do the math right, or I'm not responsible because I let this happen. So it's, we're really make it personal about our character or our abilities or our inherent characteristics rather than understanding what the real problem is.

somebody else who was, you know, more successful wouldn't have done that. Someone else who was smarter than me wouldn't have done that or all of those negative things that make you feel like.

You personally are the problem. Yeah. And we tend 

Kristy: to exaggerate too, don't we? It's like I always do this and it never, never works out and it, which is not true. We need to, we need to take the emotion 

Quin: out of that. So 

Kristy: you think you should not be afraid of money mistakes? You've got three reasons for that, and you share 

Quin: those with us?

Yeah. [00:13:00] So the first reason is because money mistakes are inevitable. You are going to make the mistakes, right? I'm gonna make. You're gonna make them. Your Uncle Gary, who is like, you never should have quit your job. You know, he makes them okay. We all make mistakes. It's just part of. It's just part of the deal, you know?

Kristy: You've met my uncle Gary . 

Quin: Yeah. Guess what? I guarantee you that Uncle Gary has made a few mistakes himself. Maybe that's why he's so like, you know, on it. He's like, I don't want you to make the same mistakes that I did. Right. But we're all gonna make them so it's okay.

You know, you don't have to get it right all the time. Because that, that's just impossible, right? It's impossible to get it right every single time. So the, the second thing is that no one who is gonna help you, like really wants to help [00:14:00] you with your money, expects you to be perfect. So this is, kind of that.

Setting too high of an expectation for ourselves and an unrealistic expectation of what someone else is going to think, right? I think about I don't know if you are a fan of Marie Condo tidying Up. But I love like organization and all that kind of stuff, and so it just reminds me of on her Netflix show, she walks into these rooms that are just like floor to ceiling with stuff, you know?

And the people are like, oh, I'm so embarrassed. And she's like, this is the best, like, this is my favorite thing to do is help you go through the piles. And so I feel like that's a great example of how. You know how if somebody who really wants to help you understand your money and get a good handle on it so that you can make fewer and fewer mistakes and smaller and smaller mistakes they just wanna help [00:15:00] you and they don't expect you to have everything figured out, they don't expect you to come with the solution, right?

Like if you knew what to do and exactly how to do it, and had no roadblocks in the way. , you wouldn't be needing help. And that's just, you know, it's, it's one of those mental things that's so hard to ask for help when you don't actually know what you're asking for. But anyone who really wants to help you, does not expect you to be.

Kristy: And if they love what they do, I have a friend that that does bookkeeping and she's like the Marie Condo that you just described of bookkeeping. The bigger the mess, the more she loves to help them sort through it. So 

Quin: yeah. You're you're giving them a gift, . It is. It's fun. It's, yeah, it's great. I can go on all day, but I just love people helping people figure things out.

And then the third thing is that money mistakes. Are [00:16:00] not inherently the problem. They are an indicator of the problem, right? So when the mistake happens, let's use the overdrawing, your account and you get hit with an overdraft fee. Okay? So that happens. You log into your bank account, you see that and you're like, oh, man, I can't believe I did this.

I always do this. This is the worst. I'm so irresponsible. Instead, let's stop and think about what is, like, what is this telling me? Is it telling me that I don't have a big enough savings balance in my account? Is it telling me that you know, my business is cyclical or seasonal or something like that, where it's like when I'm really busy in the summer?

I need to be banking a lot more savings for the leaner time later in the year. You know, things like that where it's like if you step back from the [00:17:00] thing that happened and understand what is this thing telling me? It. It just, opens the door and shows you something that you didn't know that you can work on.

So instead of negative thought, spiraling, like and, and thinking like, well, maybe I shouldn't, I just shouldn't log into my bank account anymore. You know, you can stop and think, okay, this is telling me something. I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure out what that is. Immediately what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna call the bank and I'm gonna ask them to waive that overdraft fee or a late fee or whatever it is.

I mean, if you don't ask, you don't know. A lot of banks will be very happy if you say, I, you know, I, I've deposited the money to cover it now. I'd like you to waive the late fee. They might do it, and then you're no worse off than you were before. Right? So it's Yeah, it's just a, a matter of [00:18:00] learning how to separate the emotional part and start thinking like a little detective about what is this telling me about things that I need to be doing differently and thinking about differently.

Right? Like put on the lab code, do do your scientific research. Yes. So what else should 

Kristy: we do when those money mistakes happen? 

Quin: so money mistakes are, are a good indicator of a place that you can get creative and really examine your money mindset and how that is directing what you're doing.

So A lot of people don't think about money as being an area for creativity, but it really, it really is. I mean, it can be as easy as, like I said, picking up the phone, making a call. It can be something like an example for myself is, like I said, I worked for many, many years in.[00:19:00] In a job where I was an employee, so I got paid twice a month on the first and the 15th.

And I, that's how I had things set up. And then when I started my business, obviously that was not the case anymore and it was much more variable and, and different schedules and things like that. And it was like pretty stressful for a while until I thought, Hey, wait a minute, what if I. Re, you know, like called my credit card, called my vendors that I work with and whatever, and got all of my due dates at the end of the month.

So instead of having them sprinkled throughout the month, I knew that they were all gonna be like basically all my payments happening on the same day. . And then I could plan for that much easier. That all I needed to know was what amount needed to be in there on that. and it made a huge difference.

Right? Cause then it's not a daily, like trying to figure out what's going [00:20:00] on. Yeah. And it's a simple thing that takes a little bit of time to implement, but it's really just thinking creatively about how to arrange things and put the puzzle together a little bit to make things work. 

Kristy: That's great advice.

You say there's only one real money mistake 

Quin: that we should avoid. What's that? Yes. That is just avoiding thinking about your money altogether. So please log into your bank account even if you don't like what it, you know what it shows. Talk to your bookkeeper if you have questions that you think are surely the dumbest questions in the world.

They are. Just, you know, you, you have to have a person that you're comfortable with. Number one, if you are, if you have a person who makes you feel dumb when you ask a question there are so many other people out there who will not make you feel dumb when you ask a [00:21:00] question. So really just, using those resources and making sure that you're getting your questions answer.

is just so helpful and it's gonna take you much farther, feeling dumb for a minute and asking the question, but then having that knowledge to help you make decisions. 

Kristy: And it, and it, it's like a whole different language. Honestly, if you didn't, take, financial studies in, in school or in university, college, et cetera, and you're just jumping in now.

In the middle of your business journey, it can be like an entirely different language. So you didn't study it, you're not supposed to just automatically know it. You weren't born knowing it. Right. It's okay to not know it and, and, and use the experts and, and of course learn as you go.

But I think we just, we get so intimidated by the language and the, the processes that we just don't, we're not familiar 

Quin: with. We do. And another thing to remember is that, you know, as an accountant, I [00:22:00] understand the kind of the mindset of your bookkeeper or your tax preparer, which is you gather up the information and you put it in a standard format because that is what you have to do to check the box, and then you move on if their standard format doesn't make sense to you.

 Ask them to put it in a d. Format that, you know, if it's not helpful for me to think about my expenses. In this certain way that you are putting them on my financial statement. It really makes a lot more sense to me. If these things are together and these things are together and these things are together, for example, ask them to run it both ways and give you the one that makes sense to you. And they keep the one that makes sense to them, they're just really doing what they have always. Because nobody asks for something different. So be the person who asks for what you want and what makes sense to you, because all of our brains, all of our brains work differently.[00:23:00] 

Kristy: And, and you're right. You know, as far. Avoiding looking at it. I think that the fear of the unknown sometimes is bigger than what's actually behind the curtain.

If we pull it back and we have a look, right, but we just keep going on and pushing it back and pushing it back because we're afraid to look. And it might be bad when you look. It could be, but it, it's bad either way, so you might as well look at it and deal with it. Right, 

Quin: right. Exactly. Yeah. So. 

Kristy: We're gonna talk about your free resource in a second.

Anything else that we want to talk about as far as money, mistakes or money mindset that you wanna leave, leave everybody 

Quin: with? You know, I, I just wanna remind you that you are not alone. If you're feeling like. everything with running a business is so different than being an employee or being, you know, just being in your life normally.

It's all, it's constant and it's stressful and it's [00:24:00] everything. and you are not alone in feeling that way, and especially if you have always felt like numbers weren't your thing. If you know, it's like if I think about math, I just think about when I used to get in trouble for not knowing the answers.

That is so common and it's nothing that you can't over. It truly isn't. So, so once you're ready to kind of move past it a little bit, I know that it's, it's hard when it's something that you're not familiar with, but each and every person listening to this really does have what it takes. You already started the business, you took that leap.

You can really take, take the leap of understanding your money too. 

Kristy: what would you say to women entrepreneurs that are just getting started out?

Quin: Oh, that's such a good question. beyond money mindset, there's just a lot of [00:25:00] mindset shifts that take place when you become an entrepreneur, and to me, the most helpful thing that I have found to do. Really stop and reevaluate what I'm doing on a very short term basis.

Like at the end of a week, if it's been a crazy week, I'll stop and think like, okay, what happened this week? What went well? What was happening? That was. You know, kind of moving in the direction that I want to go and what was happening that was not, and what am I gonna do differently next week? And so kind of.

Keeping that short term view and the long term view and being able to, I kind of, I call it zoom in and zoom out a little bit on a really regular basis just to help. It helps unscramble your brain, I think. 

Kristy: that's great advice. And [00:26:00] I think especially when you're starting out, you tend to get so stuck in the weeds that you forget to kind of put your head up and, and have a look around at what's, what's happening and what's working and what's not.

That's fantastic, . 

Quin: Fantastic advice. 

Kristy: So tell us a little bit about this resource that you have for us. 

Quin: Sounds great. So the resource that I have is my Money Mindset Makeover Guide, and it is a really simple, really actionable guide to help you. Really understand what you are already doing right with your money.

So getting back to that negativity bias and, and really focusing on the fact that we need five good things for every one bad thing to start moving in the right direction. So let's focus on the good stuff and it's a really simple exercise to help you. Figure out how to do that for yourself and really start recognizing the things around you that you are doing already on a daily basis [00:27:00] that are right with money.

 It's a fun little guide. It is nothing too strenuous and it's really designed to help you make those positive changes with your money mindset. Love 

Kristy: that. Okay, so we're gonna link that in the show notes. And if you're on a platform where you can't see the show notes, you can always pop over to one step empire.com.

Just the name of the podcast, one step empire.com. We've got the link there for the Free Money Mindset makeover guide. We've got the link there to Quinn's website and all the good things that you need. you can always get them. And I just wanna say thank you. Thanks so much for being with us today, Quinn.

I think this is a topic that everyone can take something away from, whether you're really bad at this or you're, you're really good at this, or somewhere in between. I think there was a lot here that everybody can take away. So I appreciate you coming here and and sharing this 

Quin: with us. Yes.

Thank you so much, Christie. It was great to be here.