A quick note before we begin
This episode was recorded in 2025, when I worked more explicitly as a money coach and Cashflow Confident was the offer attached to this teaching. That programme and its dated promotion have been removed.
I’ve also refined some of the neuroscience language from the original recording. You will often hear that our core beliefs are fixed before seven, followed by a confident explanation involving neural pathways and childhood brain development. Human learning is rather more complicated than a tidy Instagram carousel allows. The useful mechanism here is behavioural: repeated experiences influence what we expect, those expectations affect what we do, and what we do creates more evidence for the expectation.
That is the loop we’re working with.
Listen to the episode
In this episode
You do the affirmations, rewrite the belief, tell yourself money is safe to hold, then open your business account and immediately transfer whatever is available because three bills are due and you have no idea what belongs to tax.
The mindset work says one thing. Your lived financial experience keeps saying another.
In this episode, we’re exploring:
- what money mindset actually means;
- where your beliefs about money may have come from;
- how financial behaviour keeps reinforcing those beliefs;
- why earning more does not automatically create a feeling of enough;
- the difference between a fact and the story attached to it;
- how practical money management can create new evidence;
- and why mindset work is useful, but cannot do the job of a missing financial system.
First, please ignore how red I look
I began this recording concerned that my webcam was making my hair look bright red, which also made my whole face look flushed, as though I had developed high blood pressure midway through a client call.
Very professional. Anyway.
The previous episodes had focused on financial systems: paying yourself consistently, building savings, managing debt and calculating business overflow. But underneath the spreadsheets sits the reason many people avoid using them in the first place.
Fear.
Fear of what the numbers will say. Fear of discovering the business cannot afford what you have been taking. Fear that you will do the calculation wrong. Fear that looking closely will confirm the thing you already suspect about yourself, that you are bad with money, incapable of holding it or somehow not built for this part of business.
That is where money mindset enters the conversation, but perhaps not in the way it is usually sold.
What is money mindset?
Your money mindset is the collection of beliefs and stories you carry about money.
Some are about money generally:
- Money is difficult to earn.
- Money disappears quickly.
- Wealthy people are greedy.
- There is never enough.
Some are about you:
- I am bad with money.
- I cannot be trusted to save.
- I always overspend.
- Numbers are not my thing.
And some are about your business:
- My audience will not pay more.
- Sales always slow down after a good month.
- I can make money, but I cannot keep it.
- My business is too unpredictable to pay me consistently.
Honestly, money mindset is mostly life and existence mindset wearing a financial hat, because money touches your work, relationships, home, choices, safety, status and future.
The belief itself does not have to be objectively true to affect your behaviour. If you expect money to disappear, you may spend it quickly, avoid making a plan for it or feel uncomfortable when it accumulates. Each action then produces another experience of money disappearing.
The story creates the behaviour. The behaviour creates more evidence for the story.
Where do money beliefs come from?
We absorb messages about money from parents, carers, school, religion, culture, advertising, social media and the circumstances we live through. Childhood experiences matter, but they are not the only experiences that count.
Maybe your family openly worried about bills. Maybe nobody discussed money at all, and secrecy taught you it was dangerous or shameful. Perhaps your parents earned well but worked constantly, so money became connected to exhaustion. Maybe they spent most of their income on private school, and you experienced the opportunity without seeing the pressure behind it.
You can also grow up feeling financially secure and develop scarcity later. A redundancy, failed business, divorce, period of illness or sudden loss of income can change what you expect very quickly because your recent experience now says safety can disappear.
In other words, do not become so busy investigating what your mum said in 1998 that you ignore the last two years of invoices.
Your current business is teaching you about money too.
My income changed before my belief did
I grew up in a council house. We did not own a car, and some meals were beans on toast or slices of cheese. My mum worked incredibly hard and still found ways to give me things I wanted, but money was tight and there was rarely anything left over.
Then I moved out, went to university, got a job and climbed the career ladder. I earned good money. On paper, the original scarcity had changed.
My behaviour had not.
There still was not enough. I needed to earn more, reach the next salary, increase the income, because some part of me expected that more money would finally create the safety I was looking for.
Guess what? More money came in, and more money went straight back out.
I had never learned how to manage it. I knew how to earn, spend and reach the end of the month. So each salary increase simply gave the existing pattern a larger amount to run through.
That did not mean I was bad with money. It meant the behaviour I had practised most was the behaviour I kept repeating, and every month ending with nothing left became fresh evidence for “there is never enough.”
The income was not disproving the belief because the financial system kept recreating it.
More money does not automatically create enough
This is why somebody can grow up in an outwardly comfortable household, earn a strong income as an adult and still think, “Why the fuck do I have no money?”
Income and financial security are related, obviously. A genuine income shortfall cannot be mindset-coached into disappearing. If essential costs are higher than the money available, the maths needs to change.
But income alone does not decide what you experience. Timing, debt, spending, tax, commitments, buffers and visibility all affect whether money accumulates or passes straight through.
A business can make £8,000 in a month and leave its owner unable to pay herself because the sale arrived on a long payment plan, delivery is expensive and tax was never separated. Another can make less revenue, retain a high margin and pay the owner consistently because the offer and cashflow were designed together.
“I need to earn more” may be true. It may also be the only lever you know how to pull.
Do a money-beliefs audit
Choose one money belief that currently affects a decision in your life or business. Not the most spiritually impressive belief you can find, the one you can actually observe.
Perhaps it is:
I cannot hold onto money.
Then audit it through four questions.
1. Where might this belief have come from?
Look for repeated messages and experiences. Did money leave quickly in your childhood home? Have you repeatedly emptied the business account after strong months? Did a previous period of financial stress teach you to use money while it was available?
You are looking for context, not somebody to blame.
2. What behaviour does the belief create now?
This is the part people skip. Do you transfer cash out of the business as soon as it lands? Avoid checking tax? Spend after a good sales week? Undercharge because you expect rejection? Keep so much money untouched that you cannot invest in something the business genuinely needs?
A belief matters commercially because of what it makes more likely.
3. What is fact, and what is story?
“I spent the £2,000 that was in my savings account” is a fact.
“I am incapable of saving” is a story built from that fact.
The story feels convincing because it compresses a complicated event into an identity. But it removes every detail you could use to change the outcome. What was the money spent on? Was the savings goal defined? Were essential costs underfunded? Did an emergency happen? Was the account being used as overflow for a life that the monthly income could not cover?
Facts give you something to work with. Identity verdicts tend to stop the investigation.
4. What new evidence would make another belief credible?
Do not leap from “I cannot hold money” to “money flows to me effortlessly and I retain millions.” Your brain has absolutely no paperwork for that claim.
Choose a believable next experience:
- I can leave £100 in my Breathing Fund for a full month.
- I can transfer tax money on the day revenue lands.
- I can check the business account every Friday.
- I can pay myself the agreed amount on the agreed date.
- I can make one spending decision from the forecast rather than the visible balance.
Then repeat the behaviour long enough to collect evidence.
Ba-bing, ba-boom. The new belief is no longer borrowed from somebody else’s Instagram post. It is supported by something you did.
Money management is money-mindset work
This is a hill I will die on.
For many people, learning to manage money is the most effective money-mindset work they can do, because it changes the experiences reinforcing the belief.
You build a savings buffer and discover you can hold money. You pay off debt and learn that the balance can reduce. You create a revenue forecast and see that one quiet week does not automatically mean the month has failed. You calculate owner’s pay and transfer it consistently, proving the business can support your life in a way you previously assumed was impossible.
The spreadsheet is not separate from the psychological work. It creates evidence for it.
This is why the system across the previous episodes matters:
- Episode 2 gives the business money distinct jobs.
- Episode 3 turns personal spending into an owner’s-pay target.
- Episode 4 creates a buffer between an unexpected cost and more debt.
- Episode 5 connects a lifestyle goal to the revenue needed to fund it.
- Episode 6 shows what the business can keep after the other commitments are covered.
Each behaviour gives you a different lived experience of money.
Why mindset work can come undone without structure
You can listen to somebody else’s story, see that she built a million-pound business and use it as evidence that growth is possible. That can be motivating. It can help you question a belief that nobody like you succeeds.
But it is still borrowed evidence.
If your own business continues producing a frantic cycle of sales, tax panic and inconsistent pay, the daily evidence remains stronger. You might consciously believe that money is available and your business can grow, while behaving as though every good month is temporary because that is what your cashflow keeps showing you.
Positive belief work without financial structure can come undone the moment reality becomes stressful. The client pays late, the card balance rises, the launch misses its target, and the old story has a fresh exhibit for the prosecution.
This does not make mindset work pointless. Many of my clients have worked alongside excellent mindset coaches, and deeper financial trauma may need specialist therapeutic or trauma-informed support. I am not suggesting a spreadsheet processes every experience you have ever had with money.
I am saying you cannot visualise your way around a structural shortfall.
If money keeps leaving because the business is underpriced, the fix includes pricing. If pay is inconsistent because revenue depends on last-minute launches, the fix includes the sales system. If the tax bill is frightening because nothing was set aside, the fix includes a tax process.
The belief and the mechanism need to be worked on together.
Avoidance is a behaviour, not a personality trait
When somebody says, “I’m bad with money,” the observable behaviour is often that she avoids opening the account, delays bookkeeping, does not know what payments are due and makes decisions from whichever balance is currently visible.
The avoidance makes sense if she expects the numbers to confirm something shameful. But every week she avoids them, she loses the chance to intervene earlier. A payment surprises her, money gets moved reactively, and the resulting mess becomes more evidence that she cannot manage it.
So make the next behaviour smaller than the fear.
Open the bank account and look at the balance. Reconcile one week. Identify what belongs to tax. Write down the next three payments due. Use the five-minute check-in from Episode 3 if a full finance routine is currently too much.
You are not trying to feel completely confident before acting. You are creating one experience that gives confidence something to grow from.
Ask whether the business keeps proving the belief right
Money beliefs do not only show up in personal spending. They shape the business you build.
If you believe people will not pay more, you may keep an underpriced offer. The low price means you need too many clients, capacity fills, profit remains tight and the lack of money becomes evidence that your market does not value the work.
If you believe sales are unpredictable, you may only sell when cash becomes urgent. The inconsistent activity creates inconsistent leads, which creates inconsistent sales and apparently proves the belief.
If you believe money always disappears, you may empty the account after every strong month. The next month begins without a buffer, one slower sales week creates panic and, look at that, the money disappeared again.
The business is not revealing an immutable truth about you. It is producing the downstream result of repeated decisions.
Change the decision, track what happens, and let the evidence update the story.
What would prove you wrong?
Take the belief from your audit and finish this sentence:
I would begin to question this belief if…
If you believe you cannot hold money, perhaps the answer is keeping £500 in overflow for three consecutive months. If you believe the business cannot pay you consistently, it might be three owner’s-pay transfers on the same date. If you believe your audience will never buy at a higher price, it could be testing the revised offer with ten qualified leads instead of treating one quiet post as a market verdict.
Make the evidence specific enough to observe.
Then decide which system or behaviour would create it. That is where mindset stops being a conversation you have with yourself and starts changing how the business operates.
Continue listening
There was no specific Episode 8 teaser in the original recording, so we’ll add the next step once its written version is ready.
Want to change what your business keeps proving to you?
Telling yourself consistent revenue is possible will not carry much weight while the offer, sales activity and cashflow keep recreating another start-from-zero month.
Inside Momentum, we work on the behaviour and the business mechanism together. We identify what your current decisions are producing, then rebuild the offer, sales system and cashflow structure so the business can create predictable revenue and pay you consistently.
Apply for Momentum, and we’ll give the new belief some actual evidence.
