Money Made Human Podcast

A few weeks ago, an email came across my desk from a financial coach who said she'd never struggled this much to make something work. She'd been posting consistently, running webinars, building a community, and getting engagement on every post.

And she had zero coaching clients and six months of runway left. Her friends and family were telling her there wasn't a market for financial coaching and she should go back to her corporate job.

We got on a call. The session went deeper than tactics like "post more on LinkedIn" or "change your niche." She wasn't solving the wrong problem with her business. She was solving the wrong problem in her business.

In this episode, I walk through the five principles that came out of the session. These are lenses, not tactics, for thinking about your business when you feel stuck. I cover why "I've tried everything" usually means you're solving the wrong problem, the difference between being seen and being known for something specific, what it takes to commit to one platform long enough for it to work, why your past clients are the most underused roadmap you have, and the difference between creating content and creating demand.

I close with the three questions to sit with this week if you're in that stuck place yourself. If you've ever felt like you've tried everything and nothing is working, this is the episode for you.

Resources & Links

• Episode 154: The Three-Lens Framework
• Episode 153: The Four-Stage Client Journey
• The Builder

Every business decision you make has three stakeholders, and most coaches only think about one or two of them. That's usually why the decisions feel so hard.

Pricing, marketing, who to hire, what to say yes to, what to say no to. If you've been going back and forth on a decision for weeks (or months), the problem is rarely the decision itself. It's that you don't have a clear way to think about it.

In this episode, I teach you the Three Lens Framework, the thinking tool I use for every business decision I make. I walk through why business decisions feel overwhelming when you're missing one of the lenses, break down what each lens is asking you to consider, and then show you how the whole thing works using a real question I get all the time from coaches: "Should I list my prices on my website?"

There's no universal right answer to that question. But there is a right answer for you, and the framework will help you find it.

The Three-Lens Framework is also the backbone of The Builder, a free course that walks you through eight foundational business decisions every coach has to make.

Links & Resources

• The Builder (free course)
• Episode 84: Interview with Haley and Justin Price of Avocado Toast
• Financial Coaching Essentials

If you've been thinking about starting a financial coaching practice, there’s probably a list running in the back of your mind. The certification you should probably get. The website you need to build. The LLC you think you're supposed to file. The handful of topics you still need to master before you'd feel ready to call yourself an expert.

I had that same list almost two decades ago, when I was still working in corporate America and trying to figure out how to make the leap. I spent so much of that first year bootstrapping and second-guessing, and looking back, a lot of what I thought I needed was actually getting in my way.

In this episode, I'm walking through what's really on that list once you strip out the things you can stop worrying about. Some of it might surprise you. Some of it might be the permission you've been waiting for. And some of it might shift what you focus on this week, this month, or for the rest of the year.

If you've been circling the question of what it takes to get started, this is the conversation I'd want you to hear first.

Links & Resources

• The Builder (launching Memorial Day weekend)
• Financial Coaching Essentials
• Nolo.com

Every client you work with moves through a journey. The situations are always different, but the stages are remarkably consistent. I’ve watched them unfold across hundreds of clients over nearly two decades, and at some point I started giving them language.

In this episode, I walk through the four stages I see every client move through when they start working on their money: See Clearly, Stand Firm, Own It, and Build Forward. I talk about what the client is experiencing at each stage, what they actually need from you (which is often different from what you want to give them), and the coaching mistakes that happen when you’re doing the right work at the wrong time.

This episode connects to the SpendFirst™ methodology, but the pattern applies regardless of what system you use. Once you see it, you’ll coach differently.

Resources mentioned: 

• Episode 27: The four Stages Framework

Your client just made a choice you wouldn't have made.

You walked them through the options. You built the understanding. They applied it, reflected on it, and came back with their decision. And it's not the one you would have picked.

What you do in the next thirty seconds is the real test of whether you're coaching or telling.

This is the kind of moment the Clarity–Application–Commitment framework is built for. It's the three-phase framework I've used in every coaching conversation for years, and the one I teach other practitioners to use too. In this episode, I walk through what each phase looks like in practice, where coaches skip steps without realizing it, and how to hold the line when a client surprises you.

If you're newer to coaching, this might become one of the most foundational episodes you listen to. If you've been at this for years, it'll give you language for something you're probably already doing instinctively.

Links & Resources:

• Episode 150: When Everything Feels Urgent: A Real Coaching Session on Prioritizing Financial Goals

Last week you listened to a real coaching session with Lauren, a financial coach working through competing goals, limited margin, and a jumbled mind full of priorities she couldn't rank.

This week I want to give you something to do with what you heard.

I'm pulling three takeaways from Lauren's session: one for newer coaches, one for coaches who've been at this a while, and one for experienced practitioners who want to sharpen how they see their own work. They look like three different skills. They're actually the same skill at three different stages: paying attention to what the client actually needs versus what you're tempted to give them.

If you haven't listened to Part 1 and Part 2 of Lauren's session yet, I'd recommend starting there. You'll get a lot out of this episode either way, but you'll get more if you've heard the session first.

Haven't heard Lauren's session yet? Start here:

• Part 1
• Part 2

Learn more about the Money Made Human Peer Advisory Group.

Lauren is a financial coach. She knows exactly what she'd tell a client who was juggling competing financial goals with limited margin. She'd say: pick one. Prioritize. Stop trying to do everything at once.

And yet, when it came to her own money (her IVF goal, her emergency fund, her coaching business, her serving job she was ready to leave) everything felt jumbled.

In this Client Seat episode, I coach Lauren through what happens when you stop trying to figure out all the things and start choosing. You'll hear the exact moment her energy shifts from heavy and overwhelmed to clear and motivated. And I share something about my own coaching in this session that I would have done differently — because knowing a client well can be a gift, and it can also lead you to steer when you should be listening.

This is Part 1 of a two-part session. Part 1 covers the goals and priorities conversation. Part 2 goes into Lauren's income picture and what it would actually take for her to leave her serving job behind.

Get access to Part 2 here. 

Want to be a guest on a future Client Seat episode? Apply here.

In this episode:

• Why seeing income as separate buckets keeps clients stuck in scarcity
• What happens when you stop trying to fund everything at once
• How Lauren's gut gave her the answer before her logic caught up
• The chicken-or-egg loop that keeps big goals permanently on hold
• What I'd do differently in my own coaching — and why naming it matters

Resources Mentioned

• Money Made Human Peer Advisory Group
• YNAB

Coaches are really good at helping clients build plans, organize their money, set goals, and adjust their behavior. These are excellent things.

But something that comes up in almost every coaching relationship, usually several months in, is this: “I think things are okay. I mean, we're getting by. But I don't really know if we're ahead or behind.”

The client is still doing the work. Still showing up. Still trying. But the enthusiasm isn't what it was, and they can't quite tell whether any of it is actually paying off.

This week, we’re sharing the Progress Number, a single percentage that tells clients exactly how much of their income is actively going toward their financial future. Not their budget. Not their bank balance. A clear, revisable number that answers the question most clients are afraid to ask out loud.

We walk through the formula, how to calculate it, how to handle the gray areas, how to introduce it in a session, and what happens when a client who's been working hard finally gets to see the proof that it's paying off.

The progress number isn't just a coaching tool. It's what gives clients something to stand on when motivation gets harder and a rough month makes the whole year feel like a loss.

Links & Resources:

• Financial Coaching Essentials
• Episode 143: How Confidence is Actually Built

Key Takeaways:

• Without a concrete way to measure progress, clients go by feelings. A rough month makes the whole year feel bad. A good paycheck makes everything feel fine. Neither is the full picture.
• Net worth is a snapshot. It shows where someone stands, but not how fast they're moving or how intentionally they're directing resources toward their future.
• Two clients with the same net worth can be in completely different places in terms of momentum. Snapshots don't show trajectory. The progress number does.
• The formula is simple: total financial progress divided by total income, multiplied by 100. What counts as progress is something the client gets to define.
• The number itself matters less than the direction. A client who started at 3% and is now at 8% is winning, even if 8% sounds small.
• When a client can point to a number and say, “I was at 4%, now I'm at 6%,” something shifts in how they carry themselves. That's not a pep talk. That's identity.
• Your progress number is also your coaching tool. It gives you a concrete way to revisit progress across sessions, something to celebrate when things are going well, and something to investigate when they're not.

If you followed the recent series on calibration and the three rhythms that money flows through, this session is where both of those ideas come to life.

Mary Ann Stenquist is a spending coach who helps ambitious women break free from the shop-regret-shame cycle and align their spending with their values. She knows money. She teaches it. She coaches on it.

And she's stuck.

For four years, Mary Ann has been caught in a cycle: fund the emergency savings, drain it when something happens, rebuild it, drain it again. The AC breaks. Then the furnace. Health expenses pile up. Then the car. Each time she taps into that fund, guilt follows. The balance drops, and with it, her sense of security.

What makes this exhausting isn't the expenses themselves. It's the way her emergency fund has become a scorecard for whether she's doing money right. 

When the balance is high, she feels secure. When it dips, she questions everything.

Before you listen, here are three things to pay attention to:

• First, notice how long it takes before any strategy is offered. This session is about 70% emotional coaching and 30% logistics. 
• Second, listen for the distinction between emergencies and what we call Whammies, the irregular expenses that aren't unpredictable, just unplanned. Those fall into the SpendFuture rhythm, and once we name that distinction together, the whole conversation shifts.
• Finally, listen for the moment Mary Ann says she can't control her money, because that's a borrowed belief. When you look at the evidence, it's simply not true. She has an emergency fund. She's living on one income by choice. She's been managing well in so many areas. The story doesn't match her reality.

This is what calibration looks like. A real session with a real person, and the choices happening underneath it.

Links & Resources:

• Money Made Human Advisory
• Financial Coaching Essentials
• Join the Facebook group
• Join our email list
• Apply to be on the Client Seat
• Listen Inside the Session of this episode

Most clients walk into a session already convinced they failed.

The bad month is fresh. They went over budget. The spreadsheet is in the red. And every line item feels like evidence that they just aren't good with money.

But here's something to note when you look at months like that: most of the time, nothing actually went wrong. The rent was paid, the groceries were normal, and the everyday spending didn't spike. The month exploded because of something else entirely. And that something else has a name.

In this week’s episode, we’re introducing a lens that changes how clients experience conversations about their money. It's not a new tool or a new system. It's a way of looking at what's already in front of you and giving that picture to clients so they can see it too.

All money moves in three rhythms. Once a coach can see these rhythms clearly and help clients see them, the emotional temperature of even the most discouraging conversations changes. Not because the numbers got better, but because the story around the numbers finally makes sense.

This episode is practical. We’re walking through exactly how to introduce this framework in a session, what to say, what to notice, and why the rhythm that causes the most financial chaos is also the one most clients have never planned for.

Links & Resources:

• Join the Facebook group
• Episode 147

Key Takeaways:

• A bad month and a planning gap are not the same thing. The ability to tell the difference is what separates a frustrating conversation from a useful one.
• All money moves in three rhythms: SpendFixed, SpendFreely, and SpendFuture. The third one is the one that derails most clients, and the one almost no budget accounts for.
• When a client can see that the month fell apart because of unplanned irregular expenses, not personal failure, the emotional temperature of the session drops fast.
• Irregular expenses aren't surprises. They happen every year, and many happen at roughly the same time every year. The only thing missing is a plan for them.
• Your job as a coach isn't to point out what went wrong. It's to show your client what was always true about their money that they simply couldn't see before.
• SpendFuture is almost always the thread that unravels the whole thing. Find it, name it, and the path forward becomes clearer for everyone in the room.
• Clarity always comes first. Before strategy, before solutions, before next steps, a client needs to be able to see what's actually happening.