Overcoming Money Mindsets to Generate Wealth as an Entrepreneur (Financial Stability for Creatives Series) with Natalie Bullen
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Do you have a good relationship with money? Most entrepreneurs do not, which makes today’s episode extremely relevant. Money mindset coach, Natalie Bullen joins us to share how entrepreneurs are already wealthy, even if our bank accounts don’t reflect it. Listen in as she shares many money mindset blocks that entrepreneurs face, how they’re hindering your business, and what steps you should take to align your goals and offers with your audience.
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Guest Bio:
Natalie Bullen is a wealth identity and money mindset coach from Mobile, AL. As the owner of Unapologetic Wealth LLC, she teaches service-based entrepreneurs to prioritize peace and profit and view sales as service so they can step into the wealth they deserve and desire.
Today’s episode is brought to you by my Client Hub Template inside the DIY Systems Template Shop. Business owners often have their client information spread across a variety of different tools, making it hard to access the information they need to make critical decisions. That’s why I built the Client Hub Template for Airtable, to take the guesswork out of building your own!
Here are the highlights…
[1:24] Get to Know Nat
[2:52] Money Mindsets
[3:30] Biggest Misconceptions Around Money Work
[5:20] Auditing Your Social Media
[8:48] Finding Your Ideal Client
[10:15] Money Mindsets & Beliefs that Hinder You
[14:38] Money Goals as Business Owners
[16:23] Mindsets Natalie Won’t Work With
[23:21] Aligning Your Offers with Your Audience
[28:30] Funnels, Pricing, & Graduating Students Out of Your Program
Mentioned in this Episode
Episode 50: Lessons in Mindset and Money with Natalie Bullen
How to Price Ethically Blog Post
Connect with Nat
Website: unapologeticwealth.com
Instagram: instagram.com/unapologeticwealth
Facebook: facebook.com/Ladylyricist06
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Do you have a good relationship with money? I feel like most of us entrepreneurs do not, and that is why I am super excited, not only about today’s topic, but today’s guest. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the business first creatives podcast. Y’all. I am super excited about today’s guest with me today is Nat Bullen, a money mindset coach.
She’s got a lot of other different titles that she going to tell you about, but like she is here to talk to you about sales. And very quickly, I’m going to tell you why she’s here and how I found her because I feel like that’s going to give you guys like a peek into what this conversation is going to be like.
I am in a peer Mastermind, and one of the people in my peer Mastermind is Sarah Vartanian, and she has the Launch Playbook Podcast. And so I was feeling like some of y’all, I’m not going to name names, but some of y’all need some help with some sales. And so I went into my peer mastermind group and I was like, guys, like, I really need to find someone who talks about selling, not selling in your emails, not selling on Instagram, but just selling in general.
And Sarah’s like, Oh, I’ve got the perfect person for you. She told me the episode number. Y’all five minutes of listening and I was in Nat’s DMs on Instagram, like, girl, will you please come on my podcast? I don’t think I’ve ever begged anyone to come on my podcast, but I came really close. Nat, good morning and welcome to my podcast.
Natalie: You did not beg me.
Colie: I practically did. You didn’t say no.
Natalie: First of all, I am notoriously difficult to get booked up.
Colie: That’s all right y’all. I’m not gonna tell y’all that story. I’m gonna wait till the end. We rescheduled quite a few times, but I’m still
Natalie: you should just be thankful I’m here. Okay. I’m serious now. Now listen, I love talking about sales. I love making money and you’re right. I started off money mindset. I’m a die on that hill. It doesn’t matter how much money you make if you don’t feel good about it. So I’m super excited to be here to talk through how people can really get in tune with the side of them that’s already wealthy.
Cause that, that, that has already happened. You’re already wealthy. Even if your bank account hasn’t caught up yet.
Colie: Ooh, we gonna talk more about that. Okay, Nat, first question, and it’s funny ’cause I don’t normally like write down questions, but I wrote down questions for you. So, number one, how do you work with online business owners and what is the biggest misconception about the work that you do?
Natalie: Okay. The biggest conception that people have is that Sales is unethical, that it’s hard, that it sucks, that they have to lie or manipulate. They have to be someone that they’re not to make money. I think a very close second is that money is going to tarnish you. Money is going to do something to you.
When you become rich, you’re going to change. You’re going to change who you are. You’re going to leave your husband. You’re going to stop caring about your kids. You’re going to stop going to church. Morally, you are going to become bankrupt. if you become rich. That is a very close second and then the third is just an outright lie and that’s I’m not in it for the money.
That, that’s the quote of the lie.
Colie: One thing that you said was confidence, and that is something that I feel like. I mean, I’m a very confident person, and so I sometimes struggle to recognize that that is what other people are seeking. Not only for me, but like from any coach that they hire or just in general, like, what is holding them back is confidence.
It’s confidence in their marketing. It’s confidence in their pricing, which brings us to like a bigger picture of. Most people lack confidence in their offer. I don’t know how they develop their offer. I don’t know how they decided what to go into it, but like at the end of the day, if you’re not confident in your offer, you are not going to be confident in marketing that offer, or I mean, asking for that actual sale, or, even having confidence in your pricing.
So I know you said that one of your offers is an audit. And I love the ideas of audit. I mean, I have done an entire podcast on auditing your systems for like service providers, but if I wanted to take an audit of like everything in my business right now, what is the first thing that you would suggest that I do to see where I am struggling that would help me hmm.
Natalie: I love that. The first thing I would tell you is to audit your social media presence. consistency, for congruence. Often, we try to be cute and clever and quirky instead of being clear. Okay? Quirky is cute if people understand what you mean. But calling yourself a thought unicorn? I don’t know what that is.
I’m not going to hire that. Oh, you know, I’ve seen people be like money mages, I’ve seen wealth fairies, um, idea doulas. I’m just baffled by these nouns that people choose. What was wrong with consultant? What was wrong with coach? What was wrong with advisor? People have just, so I would say audit that. Go to your LinkedIn, your Facebook, your Instagram, check for three things.
Check. Is there a title in your bio? Not what you do for people, not the name of your book. Your bio should not be buy my book out now, God is powerful. That’s not a bio, okay? Your bio needs to have who, what you do. So mine likely says high ticket sales coach and messaging strategist. Is that consistent? The only thing I will say is, sometimes people’s LinkedIn is different because they are targeting a different client on LinkedIn and that’s okay.
So if your LinkedIn is different, for instance, my LinkedIn bio is all encompassing because I get speaking gigs over there. So it talks about the money mindset and the sales, that I was a former financial advisor because that matters to decision makers sometimes, that I’m still regulated by FINRA. But I noticed that too.
Check for broken links. You’d be surprised how many of y’all are posting. Click the link, click the bio, and there the links are broken your Instagram Like just check to make sure every link that you have referenced works and then three What is it that you want people to feel ask yourself if the words you are choosing evoke those emotions?
So I’ll ask people how you want people to feel when they work with you and they’ll say, oh empowered, powerful, strong, confident, intelligent, you know, well off, rich. Then you go on their site and it’s broke, busted, disgusted, overwhelmed, struggling, unhappy, overwhelmed, scatterbrained. And it’s like, do those words evoke the emotion that you claim you want people to have?
A lot of us still message like it’s 2019. Real cringe at this point.
Colie: I mean, I feel like I am all about everything that you said, but like, when I try to sell people on a systems offer, I want them to know that the most important thing is that when we are done working together, you are going to feel confident making them live because a lot of people struggle with.
creating systems. And even if they have a recipe that was given to them at the end of the day, they still don’t want to hit publish because they’re not sure that things are going to work correctly. And so I do think that your language does matter. I shouldn’t tell them how they’re constantly struggling.
I should be telling them how they’re going to feel when they have really good systems at the end, because that is what you’re selling them. Even though you’re solving a problem for them, like you are trying to bring them to like a new level. In how they feel about themselves, how they feel about their offers, how they feel about the people they work with.
So I am with you on this language, Nat. I think everybody needs to give themselves an audit and I’m gonna do that on my website to make sure that I don’t not
Natalie: Well, because here’s the thing. If I’m overwhelmed and stressed with my systems, I’m not going to pay you to fix them. I’m going to keep tinkering with them because that is my identity. I have identified as a person who is not tech savvy, but yet I’ve also identified as a person not smart enough to hire some help.
So because of these two conflicting identities that I have chosen, the likelihood of me paying you is zero, right? So you really don’t want to call out somebody who… has a moral conflict with hiring you. A person who has tied their identity to sucking at tech and systems is not going to hire a done with you solution.
They’re just not, they might hire a DIY solution, but that also leads to people making content that’s totally educational, which drives me crazy. It’s nails on a chalkboard. I don’t understand why people who want to do it for you spend all of their time trying to convince you how easy it is to do yourself.
It’s like the worst form of self sabotage.
Colie: oh my god. That’s going on a quote
Natalie: It’s the worst form of self sabotage. Like, if you want to make your life miserable, spend your entire life trying to position a done for you solution to a DIY mindset. That has got to be a new level of hell.
Colie: Nat, I couldn’t agree more. So one thing that I’ve heard you talk about in a previous podcast, and also we hugged each other at make your mark live. It was amazing. , but one of the things that I’ve heard you talk about is making sure that your earning potential is in alignment with your beliefs.
And I think that that stems from like, you know, your money mindset coach, I’m telling everyone, you are the coach that they need, even if they don’t realize it. But when it comes,
Natalie: I keep telling people this. They’re just like, well, I don’t know. You do. You do, you do, you do. You have a belief. That is hindering you from going out and crushing your sales goals. You have a belief, you just don’t know it because you inherited that belief from somebody.
Colie: Hmm. I mean, and the thing about this is, I feel like a lot of the times, and granted, I work with a lot of photographers, and by nature, people feel guilty about charging for photos. Like, they think that when they come, that photography should be accessible to everyone, and that, you know, if you don’t meet their price point, maybe you should meet them, because everyone needs photos. I know, I, I don’t necessarily think that it’s all facets, but it’s definitely very prevalent in like family photography. We all feel like everyone deserves.
Natalie: Yep. He does all that. Yep.
Colie: everyone deserves to have the photos on their wall. And so sometimes people.
Natalie: with everyone deserves, like, I feel like unless it’s basic human right, I think everyone deserves clean drinking water.
Colie: Mm hmm.
Natalie: Yeah. I think that’s a basic human right. But to me, photography, professional photography is a luxury. My husband has cameras that are worth two, 3, 000. Why would everyone deserve to get their photos taken with his expensive equipment?
Colie: I agree.
Natalie: but I would be the most exclusive photographer ever. I would take like one photo a year. So you Don’t take advice from me photographers Okay Because I would be the most exclusive and I would take like a picture of like one Tom Ford shoe like one foot in one shoe a Year, like I would take one picture for British Vogue and be like, oh, that’s it.
I have a 17 year waitlist
It’s like the Olympics. You have to save up for like four years to have a chance again.
Colie: mean. I think that you would make, you would probably make a pretty fantastic brand photographer. I’m going to be
Natalie: Oh no,
Colie: you have the mindset.
Natalie: terrible. Oh God. You hand me the camera. I’m handing it back. I’m the least photogenic person that ever existed.
Colie: But you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t be in front of the camera. You would be behind the
Natalie: It’s going to be blurry child. I
Colie: teach you a thing or two. I mean, come on, Nat, let’s learn some new skills.
Natalie: only have two skills,
Colie: What are those two skills? I’m curious.
Natalie: being incredibly honest and keeping money first.
Colie: Those are
Natalie: Those are my two business skills. The everything else. Stems from those is why I learned how to sell. That’s why I mastered my money mindset because I, I, I’ve tried being broke. I have had a subscription to the broke life. Uh, I was an annual member, you know, faithful renewals and you know, I really hated it, I really hated my broke life subscription, so I am very happy to be, you know, in a, in a new magazine, but yeah, I just, I, you go into business to make money.
And I think we like to tell ourselves, well, no, I want to tell people, I want to change lives, but all of those things that people want to do, it takes money to do them. So just, I don’t know why only women get taught this. Men do not get pushed this rhetoric that they have to choose between making lots of money and making lots of impact.
Only women get pushed down into this rhetoric that becoming rich is somehow going to diminish the work that they’ve done in the community or change them. And I’ve literally had people tell me to my face and on Facebook, That once I become a millionaire, that I am going to change, that my moral code will slip, and that I will be a bad person.
What if I believe that crazy crap? Like, imagine thinking that being poor, it makes you morally superior.
Colie: That’s not something I want to subscribe
Natalie: At all, because I’m going to tell you if I don’t have food in my tummy, I am not a good person. So I don’t want to think about the version of Natalie that would have to literally be making decisions about whether we’re going to eat or whether we’re going to be able to maintain my home. I certainly don’t think it would be a good scenario.
So just, I’m always curious. I’m always reading. What is it that makes people think that being that there’s a nobility in being poor?
Colie: Have you ever had any clients? I mean, and. I realized that they can say that they went into business not to make money, but have you ever met anyone who like opened a business and literally their goal was not to like make money? Because I heard you talk about one time that someone wanted to make six figures in their business and you were like, okay, but what, what’s your paycheck now?
And you said that it was like 125 K and you’re like, okay, so you’re taking a pay cut. And like, when I heard you say that on the podcast, I was like, oh, but now that’s me. So I opened my business. Not because I didn’t anticipate making money. That’s not me. Believe me, that’s not me. But at the time I was a stay at home parent and I had already gone from being the breadwinner in this household to then becoming a stay at home wife for like a hot second before I was a stay at home mom.
And so when I opened my photography business, my goal was not to replace the money that I’d made before because I didn’t have the capacity to do what it would take to like replace that salary because I was already at six figures. But what I wanted to make sure was that every hour. That I spent on my business that I made the same amount of money.
My husband did per hour. Like that was my goal. I wasn’t making anywhere near as much as he was because I wasn’t working. I mean, I had Chloe. She was at home with me, but I feel like I work with a lot of people. Or I meet a lot of business owners to where they don’t go into business necessarily thinking that their goal is making money.
It is to work and not have to stay at a nine to five or not have to. Yeah. So how do you overcome that, that mindset? Like what does someone have to do to convince themselves my business should be profitable? It should be sustainable. And it is okay if I make money or that I asked for the sale.
Natalie: I’m gonna tell you the truth. That is not a mindset that I would actively try to overcome. I work with people who have already decided that they want to make money. Convincing people that they ought to make money is, is not my ministry. However, I do believe that underneath all of that, I want to help people.
There is still at least an awareness of economics where they know they need to be bringing in money. I would encourage somebody who is vehemently against charging for their business. Your mission will go further if it’s well funded. I would ask them to reconnect with their mission. Now, if the only reason you went into business was to quit your job, you hate your job, then you might not have a mission.
And that’s another problem altogether. But if you actually have a mission, if your business exists for a reason other than your ego. It’s here to accomplish something. It’s here to make people’s lives better. I want you to ask yourself how much more impact you could have if you were well funded. For instance, if you’re a religious type of person and you like to go to church and you like type 10 percent and your church needs a big fundraiser, they want to replace all the pews in the church.
They want to do a whole renovation and it’s 50, 000. What would it do for your church if you could end the fundraiser with one check that was 50, 000?
Colie: Okay.
Natalie: Like what would that do for the kingdom of God if that’s important to you, right? What would it do for you if you were a volunteer at the soup kitchen on the weekends instead of just feeding the homeless?
What would happen if you could actually give 5, 000 a month to the homeless shelter so that they could buy even more meals? What would happen? You know, I think a lot of times we think I don’t want the money because I don’t want it for me But you’re not the only stakeholder in your business. Your, your business has lots of stakeholders.
Your partner, your parents, your children, Generations to come, your city, your state, your community, sometimes your country. Oprah gets credited as one of the most famous billionaires in the United States. She’s a worldwide impact because of her wealth and so You can only get, you can’t get very far on your own personal money.
You can’t, you’re either going to have to leverage other people’s money or you’re going to have to generate more revenue. That’s just what’s going to happen. And so the sooner you come to terms with that, the better. I also think that a lot of times people go into business with like freelancer gig energy.
And I don’t judge that cause I definitely did. I just wanted to be a paid freelancer. I just didn’t want to be a broke freelancer. But just because you went into a business without a specific goal or theme doesn’t mean you have to stick to it. I went into business to earn more money, full stop. That’s why I quit my job.
I wanted to make more money. I didn’t want freedom. I didn’t want world domination. I wanted more money. And so. you didn’t want that, let’s say you went into business because you just wanted more time with your children. Great. When you don’t ask for the sale, how many hours do you spend lamenting about money, tinkering with your website, beating yourself up?
Looking at your financial statements, juggling things around, paying, credit carding. How much time do you actually spend doing the business you love versus stressing about the money? What if you could take all the time that you spend stressing about money and put it on something productive? Like how many hours could you get back if you were fully funded? That’s what I would ask people. So a lot of times people’s actions and their beliefs are out of alignment. Almost always, actually, when I was a money coach, I used to get people to do an activity that would prove this, but what are the most important things to you? And if they’re your kids, your spouse, your home, ask yourself how many hours a day, maybe do a time audit.
Run your toggle and see how much time do you spend with your husband? How much time do you spend with your partner? How much time do you spend with your kids? How much time do you spend with your parents? How much time do you spend doing hobbies versus how much time you spend trying to scrape together enough pieces to make your budget work and then ask yourself if you’re truly in alignment with what you say matters to you.
Me loving my husband makes me charge more money.
Colie: hmm. Mm
Natalie: Me loving to sleep. I sleep 10, 11 hours a day. I’m basically a house cat. so that, that makes me charge more money because I have less hours awake than the average person. Most people are sleeping five, six, seven hours a night. I’m sleeping three, four hours more than that.
I either sleep eight hours and take a two to three hour nap or I sleep 11 hours at night. So I’m losing a ton of time asleep. Like I have to charge more while I’m awake, right? Like that’s the only way that the math… Maths, but I don’t think people think that deeply. Lastly, I would tell somebody, I don’t care how long you’ve been making a mistake.
You can always do something else. If you were driving from New York to Alabama and you recognized that the GPS was wrong and you were actually driving to California. Would you keep driving there? I don’t care if you’re halfway to California. If you know you ain’t supposed to be in California, you got to get to Alabama because you got to see your mom.
You’re gonna turn around. So I think it’s interesting when I meet people who go, This is how it’s always been. We’ve done this for years and years. This program’s been free for 10 years. We can’t make it paid now. Yes, you can. If you realize that it’s a mistake that this program is still free and that the value is commensurate with Renumeration, why would you just say well, it’s too late to make it paid now.
It’s never too late. You’re still alive. You’re above ground Your website is still working. It’s it’s not too late like going elemental or make the changes But don’t convince yourself that you don’t want the money. It’s it’s just it’s out. It’s a lie Frankly, it’s just something we’ve pushed on people and I’m not saying they’re lying to me.
Like they’re living out a money story that doesn’t belong to them. And that money story encompasses this lie that there’s way more important things to life than money. And it is perfectly sensible. To quit a good paying job with subsidized healthcare, tuition reimbursement, free internet, free coffee, camaraderie, snacks, electricity, a nice desk, a comfortable chair for a 24 7 freelance gig that pays them 20 bucks an hour.
Someone has fed them that and they believe it and I’m just here to dismantle it. It’s BS. And if you made six figures in corporate, you damn sure ought to make six figures working for yourself. And that’s six figures in your pocket, not six figures, top line revenue.
Colie: let’s talk about that misalignment. Cause you, you, you were talking about alignment within ourselves, but what about people who have offers that are not, profitable because they’re not aligned with the audience that they’re going after? Can you say a little bit about that?
Natalie: It’s so weird. You know, I don’t know, I don’t know how this happens, but women and non binary people pressured into helping newbies. So you’ll meet people who have been multi millionaire fundraisers in corporate. They worked at Salvation Army. You’ll meet people who were six figure earners with five figure bonuses, company car, company credit card.
But then they’ll start a business and help people who are brand new. No expertise, no business acumen, no money, no business plan, nothing. You’ve gone from managing multi million dollar budgets… to trying to get somebody a software that’s less than 99 a month. And the mismatch is what creates this problem because you’re selling to people who are at a rudimentary place in their business.
And you’re not used to that kind of support in corporate. You’re not used to having to sell that kind of thing and go back to the basics. And the people you serve don’t have any money. So of course you feel guilty when people go, I feel guilty raising my prices. Yeah. Cause you know, the people you sell to don’t have money.
That’s where the guilt comes from. You don’t, we don’t have any guilt taxing the rich. The United States has proven that they have no guilt. Okay. When I tell people, I want to be really rich, they gloat on the inside. They’re like, nah, nah, you’re going to pay more taxes. Ha ha. And I’m like, yeah, wealthy people don’t pay a lot of taxes, but.
I don’t say that. I just go, uh huh. Uh huh. You’re right. I just, that’s the misalignment. The misalignment is, you know, your call for more. If you were a top level strategist, why are you working with people who don’t even need strategy, who really just need confidence or giving strategy to people who can’t implement it because they’ve run out of money?
I don’t know about you y’all, but I’ve definitely bought into strategy that I later didn’t have the funds to implement. That happens. So to me, that’s where the misalignment comes in. Somebody is out here telling people who start businesses, you’re new in business. So you’re new in life. You’re an infant now.
All of your learned skills in corporate have been erased from your mind. It’s like men in black with the little black shiny thing. You press the button and now you have no memory. So people start businesses from ground zero instead of as a continuation of what they learn from their corporate positions.
And then they charge really low prices even though they’re accustomed to handling. And then they wonder why they have this misalignment. That’s where the misalignment is. Your call for bigger and better. I don’t know if you know this about me. My mom was a school teacher. Her previous profession was a school teacher.
My grandfather, John Henry was a school teacher. He passed away six years ago and his mother, Mary was a school teacher and Mary’s father was a school teacher and Mary’s father’s father was a slave.
So my family. Is school teachers. That’s what we did. And I, when I was young, I thought about becoming a school teacher because that’s what the Campbells do. And I remember my grandfather telling me something along the lines of that’s not your highest use, but you could do better than us. You’ve got so much more opportunity.
You could do something else. And I think that’s what I want to key in for these entrepreneurs. What is your highest and best use? What are the biggest, most complex problems you can solve? Those expensive, expansive problems that are getting worse for your client every day that you don’t solve. What is the most advanced thing you can do?
Sell that. Most people who get bored or broke or burnout in their business are selling something they don’t even like. They don’t even enjoy the delivery of it. And if you hate delivering it, You’re, of course you’re not going to sell it. Why would you sell something you hate doing? It just doesn’t make sense.
Colie: I feel like you just went just, okay. So let’s, let’s take a step back. So first of all, that’s fascinating about all of your people being school teachers. My mother
Natalie: And then I’ve basically ended up teaching people anyway.
Colie: I mean, you’re teaching about their money though. It’s a good goal, but my mom is a college professor.
My stepfather is a college professor. So what I did before I owned my own business was I was a college professor. So, I mean, I just did what they did. It was easy. I was good at math. I like that. They got those, you know, extended summer vacations every year. I mean, you know, I had a goal. That was what I did, but coming back to like this alignment and selling something that number one, you may not believe in.
And number 2, you’re selling it to like those beginners. Initially. I feel like the thing that people don’t understand. And it’s the same thing about beta offers. Cause I know that you’ve got an opinion about that too, but beta offers and selling to beginners. You don’t necessarily take those people with you.
Like it would be one thing if you were selling something to a beginner and those same people would like take your next offer, which was more money. And then your next offer, which was more money. But most people are not following you like that. So you’re teaching to the beginners and you’ve got like this really, it doesn’t necessarily have to be what we define as low ticket, but it’s cheap.
It’s lower cost, whatever it is. We’re selling this to them. And when those people have outgrown their offer, you have to go find a brand new crop of beginners to buy your
Natalie: And you have no money to run ads. So how do you continue to pack out this monthly masterclass with new beginner leads? Because a good coach coaches people out of their programs. When I meet coaches who tell me they’ve had all the same roster for 10 years, it’s a little, it’s a little in my mind, just like they don’t ever progress.
Now some of those people, like you said, have an ascension ladder where these clients have been in multiple programs. I also think the biggest Misconception in our corner of online business is that you are supposed to put high ticket buyers in low ticket offers and then move them up the ascension ladder, which is weird.
If you have low ticket offers, therefore a certain kind of buyer, a person who doesn’t know you, doesn’t trust you yet, is of the socioeconomic status where they cannot afford to invest high ticket. Maybe a person who’s dipping a toe in the thing you’re telling them, like PR. Maybe you buy 5 Minutes to Famous, that course on PR, because you don’t know if you want to invest in a PR expert.
You’re not even clear exactly what PR entails, right? You don’t want to be on TV. You don’t even know what you’re doing. So you just want to be more visible. You Google, How do you get more visible in business? The answer was PR. You buy a course on PR. That makes sense, but people who want to invest to solve their problems spend money.
They’re just like your mom. Your mom made an assessment. I have a young child. It’s a girl that’s attractive. She’s pretty. I’m not going to have my child out in what I perceive to be a dangerous activity, knocking on doors. I could go door to door with her. I don’t want to, I don’t have time to, I don’t have interest to. I could let her sell in the school. Everybody’s selling in the school. It’s sellers and no buyers. That’s not going to work. I could ask my friends, but now my friends dread when I come because they know that I’m selling something for Colie and now I’ve lost my friends. Now I’m like a defacto MLM er, right?
So she assessed all of those threats. She assessed her bank account and she decided I’d rather spend money to eradicate this problem.
We think that money is finite. And the biggest shift that you can make, the shift that’s going to change your life is going from investing your time to save money to investing your money to save time.
That is the shift. And most entrepreneurs I know that are struggling, are struggling because they keep trying to exchange their time to save money. Either because they don’t have the money, because they don’t ask for the sale enough. Or because they’re selling something completely misaligned. I met a woman once who had been a comptroller for a fortune 500 company.
She had like 20 years of accounting experience, payroll, mergers and acquisitions. I’m talking real value, business valuations, venture capital. Really, really impressive stuff. She was selling a 99 membership for new entrepreneurs who basically couldn’t even afford a bookkeeper. It was like a learning portal for accounting and bookkeeping. And so I’m like, explain to me the trajectory of a person who was managing a billion dollar budget and who has helped oversee IPOs and business sales and in the tens of millions.
It gets to the point where they’re selling a 99 video portal for brand new entrepreneurs who don’t even have their books done. So like what? They don’t even have any data to make this. Look, it’s, it’s, it’s silly. And she couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t making money. I’m like, there’s no merit to this.
Why not just be an accountant to big seven and eight figure firms and charge them 10, 000 a month and run their payroll. And why not just do the thing? Why not? But people are convinced that it’s easier to sell low ticket, that it’s easier to get money from people when it’s a small amount. But you have to ask yourself, how much money does the person have that you’re trying to get?
Somebody like me, it is very difficult to get me to buy a low ticket DIY thing because I know I’m not going to invest the time to actually use it. So, I’m not going to come to your master class or your workshop. Whatever the upsell is, you should probably just go on and tell me in the DMs because I’m not going to be there because an hour of my time is worth at least 500.
Right now I sell a 30 minute strategy session. It’s 250 bucks, at least $500 an hour. So why would I spend an hour in a $47 masterclass to hear you pitch the thing you actually want to sell me? Just sell it to me. I’m not saying there’s never a place for conversion events, but I feel like what most people do is a roundabout way to make money.
Do you watch Scooby-Doo, or have you ever watched Scooby do?
Colie: I have.
Natalie: Okay, Scooby Fred Jones in Scooby Doo is famous for Rube Goldberg traps. Rube Goldberg is a cartoonist. He used to make these very archaic, the ping pong ball falls on the paddle and it bounces once and then it falls in the lake and then the lake swirls and then it moves down up, you know, and there’s like 20 steps to catch the ghost.
That’s what a lot of people’s funnels are. There are these Rube Goldberg contraptions. And I’m like, you know, the straight line path to making money is super easy. And there’s a principle called Occam’s razor, where basically the simplest path is all things considered equal. The simplest option is normally the best one.
And for some reason people like to be convoluted and they think, well, making money is hard. And we believe this. And we believe this because that’s what we’re taught. Do you have McDonald’s money? Money doesn’t grow on trees. Right? We believe these idioms. And so we have a core belief that making money is hard.
Therefore, we make complicated funnels. Hard funnels, difficult funnels, low price to mid price to hyper make these wide business models. We give people all this sales friction to keep them from getting on calls. We basically are creating an obstacle course between us and money because that is in alignment with our belief system. If you truly believe that making money from your gift was easy, you would eliminate all of that frustration and just sell the straight line logical thing to sell. You would just ask for the damn money. If I want, I tell people, if you want 10, 000, ask for 10, 000, not 47. Think if I actually want 10, 000 and I do, I would love to close a 10, 000 sale today.
So I’m very likely after this podcast and after my next coaching call, going to get in the DMs and I’m going to make some offers to people. I’m going to ask them to pay me 10, 000. Because that, that will accomplish my goal a lot faster than the rules of, well, I actually only want 200. Why don’t you download my podcast and listen to my podcast for a few weeks.
Then you can do my VIP day. And then after we’ve done my VIP day, then I can maybe slide in the, why? Why I’m just going to assume that people are busy and direct just like I am and I’m going to ask them if they’re looking for some support, I’m going to ask them some questions about their needs. I’m going to present them a solution.
And if the solution makes sense, they’re going to say yes. And, and that’ll be that, you know, I just, I’m, I’m, I think I’m too simple and that’s good and bad. But in the money mindset arena, it’s great because I just don’t let myself get bogged down with the stuff that most people do that makes them go, Oh, Natalie, how do you do this?
How do you make it so easy? Simple. I have a lot of work to do. And so like the longer I spend trying to sell people stuff, the less time I have to actually serve my clients.
Colie: So I think that there’s also something to be said that people don’t really believe that people like you and me exist because I don’t like webinars.
Natalie: people all the time that are like, no one’s buying in this environment. And I’m like, what are you talking about? I’ve spent a fortune. I just hired a business consultant. For 10, 000, I paid her in full. I just hired a new Ops Consultant. She’s like 9, 000 quarterly. I paid her in full for the quarter because it was cheaper than paying for the month.
I’ve got a deposit on hold with a person who does, um, PR and visibility. I’ve literally spent tens of thousands of dollars in the last few weeks and I’m not a unicorn. There are lots of businesses that are still buying right now because they still have needs. And there are lots of businesses with access to capital.
If all of your prospects are broke, sell to different prospects. This is not indicative of the world at large. The United States is the wealthiest country in the world. So if you sell to people in the United States or Canada or Europe for that matter, they have money. That you’re not, I know very few people are actively selling to people in third world countries.
Where there’s actually abject poverty on a widespread scale and even third world countries have pockets of wealth like the countries that people tell us, you know, they tell black people all of Africa is poor. Africa has lots of resources. There’s lots of people in Africa with money and know everybody in Africa is not a scammer either, right?
Like there’s a lot of misconception around money that happens. I want you to just suspend your beliefs. if you believed that your gift deserves compensation? That there were people in the world with money, that there are people in the world who need what you offer, and that your job is to attract them or find them.
Then how would you move forward in the world? If it’s different than you move now, you need to change.
Colie: Okay. I’m asking you one final question, Nat, cause I can’t help it. I’m the math teacher. How do we figure out what our pricing should be? Like, I want you to talk about the
Natalie: ooh, I love
Colie: You know what I mean? Because yes, I know.
Natalie: know. Okay, there’s three components of pricing. And they are, How do you feel energetically lit up? i. e. How much do you need to charge me to be excited to do the job? 2. What can your market bear? i. e. Who are you selling this to? And what kind of financial resources do they have?
And then 3. How do you make this profitable and make sense? I hate cost plus pricing. I hate when people determine their cost and then say I’m just going to double my cost or I’m just going to triple my cost because a there’s always hidden costs that you did not take into account like your own salary.
or your 401k or your IRA. How many people are actively charging enough to be able to invest into their retirement? A lot of y’all quit your jobs, liquidated your 401k to start this business and now you’re 40 with no retirement and now you’re not charging enough to replenish your retirement because you’re not even thinking about that intangible cost.
So talk to your accountant, talk to your CFO, talk to your CPA. If you don’t have one of those persons, that’s yet another reason why you need to raise your prices because you’re not charging enough money. If you can’t afford financial support in your business, unless you are an accountant by trade, like you are an active practicing accountant right now with clients, you should not be doing your own books.
And you damn sure shouldn’t be doing your own taxes. The most important thing I would tell someone is to look into value based pricing. How can you determine the value that you are impacting in people’s lives? I also don’t like the rhetoric or agree with the rhetoric that only business coaches and money coaches and financial people have an ROI.
I feel like life coaches feel like, well, Natalie, I can’t give a tangible result to people. Can’t you? More happiness, more fun. You’ve got a sign behind you. More hugs, more dancing, more tacos, more vocation, more fun, more love. Those things are real too. And I would pay more for the things on that photo behind you than I would to make more money.
I haven’t had a vacation this year. I haven’t been to a dance class in six months. Like I would pay more for the things on that behind you than I would for, Oh, I’m going to help you make more money. So like, how can you quantify what you do for people so that you make sure that you’re charging them enough?
I also think you need to cover your tangible and intangible costs. Your tangible is your software. Your salary, things that show up on credit card statements. Intangible is your opportunity cost. So every hour that you’re spending working, you’re not spending doing something else. So you’re giving something up.
Your opportunity cost needs to be involved there as well. Your retirement, your health insurance, things that people don’t always think about. I think you should also like look into just general supply and demand. I have a very strong understanding of economics, but even if you don’t, if you’re booked out, you can raise your prices.
That’s a really good indicator if you’re booked out. So I got to the point where my calendar was nuts. I had 13 one on one clients. I had 20 one time bookers who would book. I had seven people I was writing copy for. I was swamped. So I raised my prices. A, Usually you’ll get a better type of client when you do and B, it gave me some space because it created a little sales friction.
People saw the price and went, Hmm, I don’t know if I want to pay that much, which was good for me because it let me get caught up on the work. Bottom line, if you’re not paying yourself enough. You’re not paying yourself anything at all. Your prices are not ethical and they’re not sustainable. I actually have a blog post on my site with how you can price your services.
So we’ll put that in the show notes.
Colie: We sure will. All right, Nat. Uh, that was all amazing. I am so grateful that you came on the podcast. I’m also just so happy that I got to hug you in
Natalie: I know and no one gets to meet me. People will be jealous because I don’t leave
Colie: I know. Cause you said you’re an introvert. I just don’t
Natalie: I go to two events a year. And that was number two. I don’t, I don’t travel. I don’t leave my house. I’m a hermit. So trust me, people will hear this and be like, damn it. How did she meet that in person? I’ve been trying to meet Natalie in person for years.
Like I just, I, I get lost in the shuffle. Um, I, in my top 15 CliftonStrengths, I only have one relationship building strength, which is real pitiful. So I’m really poor in that area. And so I have to lead with my influence. So after I did my speech on stage, then people were like, Ooh, I want to talk to you.
So I kind of have to do that. I have to use my influence to get people to want to build a relationship with me because I don’t really have a skill to build a relationship with, not as easily as some people do for sure.
Colie: mean, I heard you on stage and I was like, well, I mean, the talk was good guys, but she’s going to be on my podcast in like two weeks. So, I mean, I don’t need to run and flock and talk to Nat because she’s going to be on my podcast in two weeks. I was like, so listen, y’all, when it comes out, I will email all of you so that you can just get an extension of this TED talk
Natalie: Love. Yeah, we had a good time.
Colie: All right, Nat, am going to put in the show notes that blog post, but just tell people where they can find you on social media in general, in case they want to pop into your
Natalie: Yes. I love it. Shoot me a DM. So you can follow me on Instagram. My handle is at unapologetic wealth, Facebook is really where all the shenanigans are. That’s where you should show up. I have over 95 Facebook lives. They’re basically masterclasses. I’m the only Natalie Bullen on Facebook that I have found.
I’ve married a man with an incredibly unconventional last name, which I’m forever thankful for because my maiden name was a nightmare. Johnson.
Colie: All right, y’all, that’s it for this episode. See you next
Natalie: bye.
