76. Power in Guidance: The Case for a Coach

In this episode of the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast, financial coach Laura Sexton discusses the importance of having a financial coach to navigate and master money management. Drawing parallels from her parenting experiences, she emphasizes that while individuals can handle their finances independently, having a coach helps in overcoming emotional ties to money, breaking free from detrimental habits, and achieving financial abundance. The episode also addresses common concerns about affording a coach, the difference between simple and easy financial tasks, and the value of external accountability. Listeners are encouraged to share the episode and seek coaching to advance their financial literacy and legacy.

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Transcript

Laura: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. I'm Laura Sexton, your trusted financial coach and money mindset specialist. Join me as we explore the world of money and money mindset while also paving the way for a lasting legacy that extends far beyond money. Together we'll eliminate stress, amplify freedom, and ensure you stop paying for your past so you can start saving for your future. If you're seeking peace in your finances, more margin in your budget, and a legacy that inspires generations to come, you're in the right place. Hey Accelerators, I'm at that point in parenting where I am hearing all the time, hold on mommy, I'll do it. I'll do it." And it's just that frustrating time in parenting where your children are trying to find their own independence. They're trying to do things that sometimes they can do it, but it's going to take a very long time, or sometimes they don't actually know how to do the things they want to do this morning. My wonderful, beautiful, amazing. seven year old decided she was going to make breakfast for all of us. And, um, I said, sure, honey, go ahead and try. Now this is totally different than my toddler who thinks she can put her own pants on, which is really funny because it's a shirt and she's trying to put them on her legs, but it's a shirt. And so she's trying to figure that out. And it takes a while or my three year old who refuses help putting on shoes. He has to do it himself, but they're on the wrong feet and he doesn't know how to tie them. And it's a whole thing. I'll do it myself, Mommy. I'll do it myself. Completely different, of course, than my five year old who wants my help with everything, which I guess is a good thing. I'm glad she still wants me sometimes when her friends aren't around. If her friends are around, she doesn't need me, but sometimes, sometimes she does. So this morning, my seven year old decided she was going to make waffles for our family, which is fine. The waffle maker generally can't get too hot for her to hurt herself. If you leave a waffle in it for too long, it will just burn the waffle. It will not bring the house down. The waffle does not catch on fire. Trust me. We've tried, not on purpose. So she decided she was going to do this and she's seen me do it many times. She's helped me do it many times. And I thought, sure, kid, you can do it. I trust you to try. I trust you to not bring the house down and whatever mess you make That's fine. Go ahead. Please. Thank you. Well, it did not go according to her plan. It did go How I feared it was going to go, she got the batter way too watery. Which I don't know if that was milk or water, but okay, she put in too many eggs. She burned her finger on the waffle maker, which I don't even know how, like I said, I don't know how she did that. And she ended up crying in my bed because it didn't go the way she wanted it to go. So I got up and I fixed it. I added more flour to the batter. We got that firmed up enough that we could actually make the waffles. I adjusted the settings. I made sure to spray. The cooking spray onto the waffle maker, so they didn't get stuck. And I cleaned up the mess. It was a learning experience for her. It was a learning opportunity for me as well, where I just said, okay, I'm going to let you, even though I didn't want to, I knew she was going to make a mess, but sometimes we have to allow our children the freedom to make their own mistakes. Now, I know you're not my children. You are my friends, accelerators. And so I'm going to talk to you today about doing things On your own. You see, I came across a, a post in a Facebook group that I'm a part of, and they were talking about wanting to hire a financial coach, but they didn't know what it would look like, or what would happen or why anybody would hire a financial coach. And so I was like, I should probably tell my accelerators why they might want to hire me or another financial coach to help them along their journey. One of the questions that was posed was, well, why do you need a financial coach? Can't you do it on your own? My 7 year old sure thought she could make pancakes on her own. My 3 year old thinks he can put his shoes on on his own. And one day, yes, they will be able to do those things on their own, but they have to be taught. You have to be taught at some point how to do the thing that you want to do. And you need practice. Because I promise you 1 time sitting down and making a budget does not make you an expert budgeter. It just doesn't. But you do it over and over a month after month for an entire lifetime. And boy, you are going to be an expert. Only takes 10, 000 hours. If you want to sit down and think about it, I have more than 10, 000 hours of budgeting experience. I guess that makes me an expert budgeter. Cool. Yay for me. But you see the real question behind what does it look like to hire a financial coach or why would you want to hire a financial coach? What I found when people were answering the questions, I found a whole lot of people going, well, how could I even afford a coach? I don't even have my money in order. I don't even know how I would, how I would handle this. Why? Why would I pay a coach to help me? And the answer to that is that money Is more than math. It's really funny. I think money is the only tool that has an emotion tied to it. I don't have emotions about my hammer or my screwdriver. I have a little bit of an emotion towards my car, but in all reality, it's a tool, but money to the thing about money is money doesn't just help you. When you're building something, money doesn't just help you when you're driving from place to place. Money doesn't just help you when you need to get food. Money is tied to all of those things. It's tied to your children. It's tied to your time. Money touches everything. And your money, my friend, it's your problem with money. It's more than a math problem. There's actually a book out right now called money is more than a math problem by Jade Warshaw. It's pretty good. One of my coaches came to me and said, I'm really struggling. This one lady that I'm working with after she pays me, we did her budget. And after she pays me, she only has 80 extra dollars to pay towards paying off her debt and towards her next financial goal. I don't know if I can charge her because she'd only have 80 to move towards her next, her next goal. My job as a coach is not to determine whether or not you have the money. To afford coaching. That's not up to me. That's up to you. And it wasn't up to this coach to decide whether or not this lady could afford coaching. She said, Hey, I need help. That's what she said. I don't care what it costs. I need help. I can't keep doing it this way. I need help. If that's where you are, please reach out to me. I am here to help you. But this coach was trying to make the decision for her. And I said, Hey, we're not going to do that. Let's talk to her about this. What how do we help her? What would you do? Okay. You only have 80 left. Let me help you. If you're listening to me right now, let me help you. If you only had 80 left at the end of the month, it's a very small margin. You only have 80 left to help you get to where you want to go. There are 2 things that we can do to help you. The 1st of which is, we can cut spending, you can spend less money on things every month. More of your income can go towards your goals as opposed to the list things that we spend money on every month. Maybe your fund money can go down for a couple of months. Maybe your. Dining out budget can be cut for a couple of months. There are ways to cut your spending so that you have more margin at the end of the month. The other thing is you can make more money. I had another client come to me. She was on disability and she wanted to work with me. And she said, I don't have the money yet, but I will go get it. She's on disability. She found a way to go find money to pay me because she wanted my help. She was very proud of herself for doing that. You see, I did not take away her dignity by saying, Oh, let me do it for you for free. No, I allowed her to go out, work hard, prove to herself that she could make the extra money to pay me and prove to herself. That she could add margin that she was still worth something because she was on disability. She was told she wasn't worth anything and she should just stay disabled. She knew she was better than that. She went out, she found the money and we are working together to make sure that she keeps making more money. It wasn't a fluke. It wasn't a one time thing. I'm going to push you as a financial coach. I'm going to help you get past your scarcity mindset. We talked about that last week. I'm going to help you get past scarcity into abundance. That's what you're paying for. You're not paying for my time. You can't have my time. It's my time. I cannot give it away. There's no clock that I can cut something out of my life and give you an hour of my life. It doesn't work that way. You're not buying my time. What you are doing is buying the experience of my expertise so that I can help you grow in abundance. And stop being so scared. Stop being so stressed out. Stop being so anxious. Be more grateful. Grow in abundance. Make more money. Have more margin. Have more peace. Have more freedom. Have more independence. That's what we're after. A coach helped you get past mental blocks. You see, we often flounder because we feel stuck in the same rut. I cannot tell you how many people have come to me recently that I talked to a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, in some cases, and they're like, I have been trying to do this on my own, and I have to do something different. Can you help me? Absolutely, I can, because I am outside of your every day. I have a fresh set of eyes to look at your situation, to look at it without emotion. I'm not attached to your day to day. I'm not attached to your situation. I am going to love you enough to tell you the truth of what I see from an outside objective third party view. We flounder. We languish. When we are stuck in the same, same every day, having somebody push us out of that rut or pull us out of that rut. However, you choose to get out. Are you going backwards? You going forward? Somebody has to help you move. It's time to bring somebody in. So can you do it on your own? Yes, you can continue following that right down the street. Have somebody push you in one direction or the other, have somebody help you out of where you were stuck so that you can not just walk but run towards where you want to go. Can you do it on your own? Yes, but you don't have to. I hear people say it all the time. I can do this myself. That's pride. That is pride coming in and trying to tell you that you are the only one that matters. It's those that are humble that really have a chance of winning. If you were prideful and arrogant, you were going to hold to your patterns and your systems and the way that you want to do things. If you're humble, you're welcoming more knowledge. You're welcoming change. You're welcoming growth. I'll tell you straight up. I am not the be all end all. I am the most intelligent financial coach in the entire world. I wish I was. But there's a reason why I'm studying 5, 6, 7 hours a day on how to be better. If I'm not with my family, if I'm not actively coaching, I have my AirPods in and I am learning something or I'm sitting down, I'm reading a book. I want to learn. I want to get better. I want to be the best financial coach that you will talk to. But I'm not that today. There's so much for me to learn and I love learning about it. Why? Because I'm a weirdo. Only weirdos love learning about numbers. You're coming to me today because I enjoy it and I want to share it with you in a way that hopefully you enjoy too. Don't let pride get in the way of your success. Another response to the how do you hire a financial coach? Why would you hire a financial coach thread that was going on was why do you need a coach? This is so easy. You know what's easy? Second grade math. Second grade math is easy. Putting your income at the top of the page and subtracting out your expenses. You see that's a simple process. Yes, it is simple, but simple doesn't mean easy. Doing the numbers, yes, that's easy. Making myself stick to those numbers, that is not easy. Simple and easy are not the same thing. Just because a process is simple does not mean that it is easy to stick with. There is a difference. And what we're learning, and what I hope that I'm getting across here is that what has gotten you to this situation, this point in life is not going to get you to where you ultimately want to go. What got you here won't get you there. If you want it. Abundance and you want to be outrageously generous. You have to let go of what's keeping you in the spot that you're in right now. If you're making slow progress. Great. I'm so proud of you. You're doing such a great job. Please hear me and hear my heart that I am so proud of you. But if you want to get way over there in a short amount of time, you need somebody to help push you. You need somebody that's going to pull you along to where you want to go because they're already there. That's me. I'm here to pull you along to get you over there because I am already a couple steps ahead of you. I'm not the full distance. I'm not a billionaire. I'm not even a millionaire, my friends. But I'm working on it. I'm working hard. I'm striving and I may just be a couple steps ahead of you. Now, maybe I've had this happen to I've had clients come to me. They're already millionaires and they're making good money. But you know what? They'd like an outside perspective to get further. That's a great place to be. Being humble and saying, hey, I know that you can help me learn something new. Let's go. Let's get it. I have 1 more answer to can I do this on my own? But before I share that with you, I want you to share this podcast with a friend. Can you share this with a friend who you would like to see the level up in their finances? You want to see them grow and become abundantly generous. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're somebody that wants to grow in abundance. I'd love to have a conversation with you, or maybe you're like, There's this 1 friend that I have at work that I know that she struggles with money. I know how to help her. I'm going to send her this podcast. Please do. Because my goal is to reach as many people as I can. To be completely honest, my, my personal goal, what's on my heart is to impact a million lives through financial coaching, and I cannot do it without your help. I would love to reach a million people and share with them how free we can be. And think about it. If we have a million people that are on this journey together and we have a million people, just think, just think about this. We have a million people that have their money situation taken care of. They're out of debt and they're able to give generously and abundantly a million people. If we had 1 charity that we want to focus on, we had 1 cause that we want to focus on and we want to make really big change. Having a million people give 100, it's 100, 000, 000 towards 1 charity. Imagine the impact we could make, but we cannot make that impact. If everybody stays small, if everybody stays in the lack and the stress and the fear of money, if everybody plays small and they're waiting for somebody to come in and save them, we're never going to be able to make that big, big change. But you and I, my friend, we can share this hope with everybody around us. So please share this with a friend, because what I want to do is I want to make radical change in the world by starting with hope in your money. I promise there are ways to get out of scarcity and to live in abundance and generosity. I promise you it's possible. I came from a negative nearly 400, 000 dollars. And now I am living in abundance. Please, my friends, please hear me that it is possible. It just takes diligence, hard work, and having a friend in your corner. You be that friend to somebody. You help pull somebody along that you were further along than them, help pull them along. And if you need help, call me and I will help pull as well. The one thing that you cannot do on your own until you have a lot of tools in your toolbox, call She cannot silence your inner critic. Sometimes you can't even see your inner critic. So when, when I hear people go, why would you need a coach? Can't I do this on my own? I don't know. How do you handle your inner critic? Just 1 of those 1 of those things that I am working on constantly. Just thankfully, I have a coach that I can talk to. Where I can say, hey. I've really been beating myself up lately. I'm on this. I'm on this deep spiral of down because i, for the 1st time. This last week felt very old and very ugly. Now, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm beautiful. I believe that about myself when I'm in a good headspace. My husband tells me I'm beautiful. My kids tell me I'm beautiful. My friends tell me I'm pretty. It's fine. I know that I have a beautiful inside that I have no question about. I know that I can be very ugly on the inside if I'm having a bad day and I'm not monitoring my words. But thankfully, the Holy Spirit has worked on me. It's the 1st time I felt old, really, truly old. I'm not that old and I'm only 36, but my inner critic was doing work, man, I had a hard time. I was spiraling down and down and down. I was beating myself up for spiraling down, down, down. I was like, I'm a coach. I should know better than this. I should, this is what I help people on. Why am I doing this? And Ooh, I was lying to myself so hard. See, a coach will come along and help you get out of that spiral. A coach will come along, help you name that inner critic, so that when they show up, you can go, Hey, Negative Nancy, I see you. I realize that you were trying to protect me from something. Don't necessarily know what it is. Or maybe I do know what it is. Maybe, maybe it's something I've worked on before. Coach is going to help you name it and then help you work with it to grow and to become what you want to become. Not allow it to push you down and stifle you and, and make you feel bad. No. You see, my negative Nancy, She was seeing real things. I have gained some weight. I have stopped working out. Thank you for pointing that out, Nancy. My coach and I are working on how to get me back into a rhythm. I have four kids. I'll wake up at 445 in the morning and my kids will decide 446 sounds like a great time to wake up. There's no time for working out in the morning. There's no time for working out in the evening because I'm tired. So, where do I fit it in? How do I make it a priority? You see, my coach and I work together to make things happen, to make me accountable, to make things happen, and we work with Nancy. Thank you for pointing it out. Thank you for pointing out that I have let that go. I would really love to work on that and make that better. Thank you, Nancy. She doesn't always have to be negative. It's really hard to see these things unless you have the practice of working through them, taking the negative feelings, taking the places where you're stuck in working through them. And I, as a coach, that's what I do. Do we talk about money every single meeting? Sometimes I have clients that will get together. I'm like, Hey, what went right? What went wrong? And then we get to the end of our meeting. And, we never talked about the budget. We never talked about that payoff. Your money touches so many pieces of your life. I want to make sure that you feel good about your money and make sure that it's working for you. Otherwise, why do you work so hard? If you feel like you work too hard to be this broke, if you feel like you make too much money to have too much month at the end, let's work together. Let's change the way you see money. Because can you do this on your own? Yes, you can. I promise you, you can. But you don't have to. You never have to walk alone in this again, my friends. Send this to somebody you know and care about. Send me a message to let me know if this resonated with you today. And as always, my friends, go out and make a difference. Thank you for investing your time with us today on the Accelerate Your Legacy podcast. Remember, your legacy isn't just measured in dollars and cents, but in the tools, habits, mindset, and reputation you leave behind. Don't just listen to the show, but take action on what you've learned. Share this wisdom with a friend who can benefit and help us spread the word by rating and reviewing the podcast. For questions or encouragement, reach out to me on Instagram at Accelerate Your Legacy or explore the resources listed in the show notes. I will be back with you next week. Until then, build your legacy with intention.