The Money Story Project

By Harriet FormbySociety & Culture Business Entrepreneurship Education

The Money Story Project episodes

November 02S2 E8: Neurodivergence, Money & Value: A Gilded Cage Is Still a Cage - with Matthew Bellringer
Neurodivergence, Money & Value: A Gilded Cage Is Still a Cage - with Matthew Bellringer
"I'm aware that I had this really interesting relationship with money, as a way of solving problems. And particularly the problems that come up around neurodivergence."
That's my guest this week, Matthew Bellringer, a neurodiversity and innovation specialist who works with neurodivergent professionals, execs and business owners, helping them build a working life fully aligned with their talents, passions and values.
In this episode, we talk about:
Growing up seeing money as a way to solve the problems that come with neurodivergence
The first business that ran out of money, and a lesson that "cost less than university"
Being raised to think about value rather than price, and how that put Matthew at odds with colleagues chasing the cheapest option
Why neurodivergent people often spot patterns in data that others miss, and why that can make it hard to be heard at work
Why so much startup support is built around the exit, and how that can clash with a business driven by mission and purpose
Pricing your work when it feels like a judgement on your worth
Why success in a business you don't like is "a gilded cage"
Small steps instead of big bets when you want to do things differently
Matthew works one-to-one with neurodivergent professionals, execs and business owners, including founders weighing up growth, burnout and impact. If that sounds like you, you can book a free half-hour chat with Matthew to see whether they can help. Find them via the links below.
Connect with our guest, Matthew Bellringer
Website: matthewbellringer.com
LinkedIn: Matthew Bellringer
Bluesky: @matthewbellringer.com
Read the accompanying blog article with Matthew Bellringer
Connect with host Harriet Formby
LinkedIn: Harriet Formby
Instagram: @belowthelinefinance
Website: belowthelinefinance.co.uk
Connect with The Money Story Project
Website: moneystoryproject.com
Instagram: @moneystoryproject
LinkedIn: The Money Story Project
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
1 hr 21 min
September 09S2 E7: War, Risk & Rebuilding: Nothing Lasts Forever - with Viktor Popovic
"Money is not just numbers. Money can represent safety, pressure, responsibility, freedom, fear. Control. And my relationship with money changed through really every chapter"
Viktor Popovic is the Co-Founder and President of Avendo, a fintech SaaS company rethinking payment pricing for online merchants. Before Avendo, Viktor spent 21 years building Ultimate Washer from a small startup into a nationally recognized eCommerce and Amazon business, which he successfully exited.
His story begins much earlier, after leaving the former Yugoslavia during the civil war and rebuilding his life as an immigrant and refugee with very limited resources. Viktor's money story has been shaped by survival, responsibility, entrepreneurship, risk, resilience, and starting over more than once.
After selling his first business, he began reflecting on what money can and cannot solve, including identity, purpose, freedom, and the emotional side of life after an exit. Today, he is building Avendo from the lessons he learned as both a merchant and founder, with a focus on transparency, net margin, and helping business owners gain more control over one of their most important recurring costs.
In this episode, we talk about:
Growing up under Tito's one-party dictatorship, being drafted into a war for having a mixed Serbian-Hungarian background, and leaving for Budapest at seventeen with half a suitcase
Years of scarcity as refugees — splitting one McDonald's hamburger, saving five Deutschmarks a month, and still, by his own account, being happy
Landing in the US, years of visa uncertainty, and building a $3,000 business on sweat equity after a chance reconnection at a wedding
Losing almost all their traffic overnight to a Google algorithm update, buying out a partner at the worst possible moment, and betting several hundred thousand dollars on Amazon with no guarantee it would work
What happens to your sense of self when the business that defined you for 20 years is suddenly someone else's
Why "money is not just numbers" — what it represents underneath: safety, pressure, responsibility, control, fear
Building Avendo, and the frustration with credit card processing that started it all
Conntect with out Guest, Viktor Popovic
Website: avendo.tech Partner/resources page: avendo.tech/deals LinkedIn: Viktor Popovic
Avendo is currently focused on e-commerce businesses in the US, with a rollout to Europe planned soon. Get in touch with Viktor if you'd like to look at how you might be able to save on processing fees. Separately, he's looking for referral partners among fractional CFOs, accounting firms, and business coaches.
Read the accompanying blog article with Viktor Popovic
Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
1 hr
August 29S2 E6: Hustle, Guilt & Belonging - Raised Between Two Money Cultures - with Jaskiran Mangat
“My achievement probably also became tied to my self-worth.”
That’s Jaskiran Mangat — behavioural finance expert, speaker, writer, consultant, and founder of Finance Therapy — reflecting on the drive that’s shaped her whole career.
Jaskiran started out in banking before running a community of venture capital funds, working in a poverty charity as part of a social innovation fellowship, and eventually founding her own fintech to help marginalised communities build wealth.
The conversations in those spaces were always rational, always solutions-focused — trying to fix something. What was missing was the layer underneath: how emotional every single money decision actually is.
That gap is what led her to build Finance Therapy, where she helps entrepreneurs, leaders and organisations make better financial and business decisions by understanding the psychology behind them.
In this episode, we talk about:
Why Jaskiran believes most founders don’t have a knowledge problem with money, they have an emotional one
Growing up as a second-generation immigrant, raised between two money cultures
How achievement became tied to self-worth, and the guilt of earning more than her parents
What raising investment actually costs founders emotionally, including the reality behind the “fake it till you make it” pitch deck culture
The unspoken rules of wealth and what it’s like realising the rules of the founder/VC world were written by people who came from money, when you didn’t
Why the 2% funding stat itself does more harm than good, and what it reveals about confidence and belonging
Why co-founder money conversations are so often relationship conversations in disguise
The difference between financial literacy and financial self-awareness
Connect with our guest Jaskiran Mangat
Website: financetherapy.co.uk Substack: financetherapy.substack.com LinkedIn: Jaskiran Mangat Instagram: @Moneywithjas
Read the accompanying article - each podcast is also available as a blog
Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
1 hr 6 min
June 08S2 E5: Trauma, Compassion & Change: What Happens When the Plane Actually Crashes - with Briony Gunson
"My body was remembering: we are talking about the thing that is fundamentally unsafe."
That's my guest this week, Briony Gunson - mindset coach, breathwork facilitator, and corporate wellbeing trainer based in the UK. Briony helps people move through stress, burnout, and big life transitions by working with both the mind and the body. Her work is trauma-informed and blends practical tools with embodied practices including breathwork, meditation, and cold water therapy.
In this episode, Briony shares her money story:
Growing up in Hong Kong hearing her parents argue about money — and what those early lessons left in her body.
The family losing everything, and moving to the UK at 14 with no school place, no internet, and 50p showers.
Finding solace in the library. The council officer who came to visit — and what it felt like to be seen.
Why her mother never told anyone what was happening, and the generational war history that explains it.
Reconnecting with her father in her 30s — the fear, and what happened when she showed up as her "full-ass adult self."
What money fear actually feels like in the body — and how breathwork and nervous system science gave her a language for it.
The elastic band — and why pushing past money blocks without doing the deeper work means you just snap back.
Shame, worthiness, and the women who feel disloyal for doing well — and why she wants us to rock our privilege instead.
Her take on manifestation content — what's useful, what's ungrounded, and where it can actively mislead people.
Why financial hygiene is sexy — and what consistent, unglamorous money habits actually look like in practice.
Read the accompanying blog article
Connect with Briony
Website: brionygunson.com
Instagram: @brionygunson
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brionygunson
Facebook: facebook.com/BrionyGunsonMindsetCoach
Briony's Abundance Mindset meditation on InsightTimer - a 20-minute guided meditation on what it really means to be abundant. Particularly cathartic as a response to some of the more damaging manifestation narratives out there.
Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
1 hr 23 min
June 01S2 E4: Money as a Hidden Creative Collaborator — with Paul Macauley & Laura Mugridge
"As soon as I think about the wider issue of money, I just sort of go... uuuuurggghhhhhhhhhee."
That's Laura Mugridge's immediate, visceral response when asked about money. For her creative partner Paul Macauley, there's a tightening — an involuntary tensing the moment the subject comes up.
Paul and Laura are a Brighton-based creative partnership — award-winning theatre makers and the duo behind Inside the Lines, a warm audio comedy about two friends who run a colouring-in shop. Together they make independent work largely outside institutional funding structures, and money has always been present in what they do. Just rarely spoken about. Until now!
In this episode:
"I just sort of don't want it. I need it, but I don't want it." Laura on her relationship with money — and why she hears something completely different when her partner asks about money
"I wasn't really a professional and I wasn't really an artist. I didn't belong in either place." Paul on the years of living a 'split life' — and the Christmas pantomime that changed everything
"I want to feel like I've got more control over it." Paul on spreadsheets, agency, and why earning money through your own creative work hits differently when it's always felt like something that happens to you
"Are you just waiting for your big break?" A stranger at a B&B in Stratford. The tired old trope — and why Laura, who proudly makes all her income from theatre and theatre-adjacent work, finds it so jarring
What 'Brunch Gate' taught them about communication and money — and how they landed on "commercially minded, but not commercially driven"
"Don't let the money cart lead the creative horse." On making Inside the Lines without waiting for permission — in a landscape where Arts Council funding is harder than ever and economic conditions mean theatres are playing it safe
"Come and sit over here. Have a glass of milk and a party ring." Why making warm, silly, joyful things is — right now — its own kind of rebellion
This is a conversation about money, yes. But it's also about creative independence, partnership, the stories we carry from childhood, and what it means to keep making the work you believe in when the conditions are anything but easy.
Series one of Inside the Lines is out now on all podcast platforms and has found a brilliant audience who want more. If you've listened and loved it, this is your chance to vote for what you want to see in the world.
Series two of Inside the Lines is coming, be part of it by supporting the crowdfunder! https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/inside-the-lines-series-2
Links and resources
Read the accompanying article
Listen to Inside the Lines
Crowdfunder for series two: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/inside-the-lines-series-2
Follow Inside the Lines: Instagram
Connect with Paul Macauley: Website | Instagram
Connect with Laura Mugridge: Instagram
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
Connect with Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
1 hr
March 26S2 E3: Feelings, Fairness & Friendship — with Good Eggs Holly Close & Sophie Bellamy
“The fact that friendship underlines our business is what makes it feel so successful when it comes to managing our finances”
This week on The Money Story Project, I’m joined by not one but two guests for the first time: Holly Close and Sophie Bellamy, the co-founders of Good Egg.
Good Egg is a web design and copywriting studio — Holly leads on web design, digital strategy and tech, and Sophie leads on copy, content and SEO. They met nearly six years ago at a women’s meetup in Vietnam — eyes locked across a cocktail bar — and have been building their business together ever since, often working remotely from various corners of the world.
In this episode, we talk about money inside a co-founder relationship:
Sophie spending a decade not knowing what was in her bank account — and how Good Egg accidentally fixed that.
Holly growing up in a freelance household, swearing she’d never go the same route, and then doing exactly that — and why it turned out to be much less scary than expected.
The rule they put in place for hard money conversations — and the fact that they’ve never actually had to use it.
What it’s actually like to share a bank account with your good pal — six years in, and genuinely not one row.
The pricing conversation they scheduled for January: Holly arrived with facts, figures and a full presentation. Sophie realised she’d been pricing like they were running a charity.
Why when you have another egg in your corner, putting your prices up becomes a lot less terrifying.
How their very different life circumstances have created balance rather than friction— one mortgage in Sheffield, one in Vietnam with her boyfriend.
Why fairness doesn’t mean 50/50 — and the spreadsheet system their accountant finds completely baffling.
What the Nicki Coe episode sparked for them — including conversations about long-term planning they hadn’t let themselves have yet.
We also get into The Highly Emotional Business Owner — their fortnightly newsletter — and how being “feelings-led gals” has, perhaps unexpectedly, made them better at the finances too.
It’s a conversation about money, yes. But really it’s about communication — and what becomes possible when you actually commit to having the conversations, even the uncomfortable ones.
Resources & Links
Read the accompanying article
Connect with Holly & Sophie / Good Egg:
Holly and Sophie run Good Egg, a Squarespace web design and copywriting studio for small business owners. Check out their all-in-one Squarespace website packages (your copy, SEO and web design all done for you).
Good Egg Website
The Highly Emotional Business Owner Newsletter
Instagram
LinkedIn
Mentioned in this episode:
A recent episode of The Money Story Project with Nicki Coe on co-founder dynamics
Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
50 min
March 12S2 E2: Control, Survival, Freedom with Emily Armitage
“I remember standing on London Bridge and feeling like my arm was missing. Like it was as if a part of myself was not there.”
⚠️ Content warning: This episode includes discussion of coercive control and financial abuse. Emily shares her personal experience and perspective. Support details are below.
Our guest, Emily Armitage, is the CEO and founder of The Yorkshire Zen Company, Human Design business coach and strategist for six-figure female founders.
Emily knows what it’s like to not have financial control. When she was younger, she was in a relationship defined by coercive control — and money was a central tool of that control. In this episode, she shares how early family dynamics around money set unconscious patterns, how financial abuse can work in subtle and shifting ways, and what it took to rebuild her sense of autonomy.
We talk about:
Growing up with an undercurrent of financial stress — and how the belief that “someone else is in charge of the money” can quietly shape what we accept in relationships
How financial control can shift and adapt within a relationship — and why it’s often far more subtle than people expect
Financial fawning — when handing over money isn’t a choice but a survival strategy, because saying no feels unsafe
What freedom felt like when it finally came — and why it was overwhelming rather than liberating
The link between autism and vulnerability to coercive relationships
How entrepreneurship became a route back to financial autonomy — and why selling and visibility brought their own challenges
Human Design as a tool for understanding your relationship with money and building a business that actually fits who you are
Emily also shares her perspective on what she wishes people understood about coercive control, and what we can all do to look out for the people around us.
About Emily:
Emily is the CEO and founder of The Yorkshire Zen Company and a human design business coach and strategist for six-figure female founders. She uses human design as a powerful business lens — helping women understand their energetic blueprint and build businesses that are sustainable and aligned.
Work with Emily: THE ROOM — quarterly CEO day retreats for women who are ready to unapologetically claim £100k+ in 2026 and 2027
Connect with Emily: Instagram: @emilyarmitage LinkedIn: Emily Armitage Website: emilyarmitage.co.uk
If you are affected by anything in this episode:
National Domestic Abuse Helpline: 0808 2000 247 (free, 24/7) — nationaldahelpline.org.uk
Surviving Economic Abuse: 0808 196 8845 — survivingeconomicabuse.org
Women’s Aid: womensaid.org.uk
Victim Support: 08 08 16 89 111 — victimsupport.org.uk
Galop (LGBTQ+ support): 0800 999 5428 — galop.org.uk
National Autistic Society: autism.org.uk
Mums in Need: https://www.mumsinneed.com/
Men’s Advice Line: 0808 801 0327 — mensadviceline.org.uk
For further reading on neurodivergence/autism and coercive control: Douglas & Sedgewick, 2023, Autism; the National Federation of Women’s Institutes’ 2024 briefing on neurodiversity and violence; and Somerset Domestic Abuse Service’s guide on neurodiversity and domestic abuse.
Please note: In this episode, Emily shares her personal experience and perspective. No allegations are made against any named individual. This conversation is shared in the public interest to raise awareness of financial abuse and coercive control.
Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
48 min
February 25S2 E1: Safety, Survival, Self-Worth with Gemma Donnelly
"What do you want though? As opposed to what's the smartest move? What are your values? What do you care about? How do you want to live your life?"
That's my guest this week, Gemma Donnelly - the confidence and resilience coach behind Coaching With Gemma.
On The Money Story Project, she brings both her professional expertise and her own money story — growing up working class, experiencing burnout, walking away from a successful consultancy career & building a business from the ground up. We talk about how our relationship with money, security and uncertainty can hold you back.
In this episode, Gemma explores what happens when financial stress or perceived risk and uncertainty meets the nervous system:
Growing up in a working class family and attaching money to security — and how that held her back from taking career risks for years.
Why your net worth is not your self-worth — and how hard it is to positively negotiate a salary or charge your worth in business if you don't see your own value.
The thing nobody talks about when you leave a well-paid job to start a business — the identity shift, the uncertainty, and how the people around you might not understand.
Why some people spend money as fast as they get it — not because they're bad with money, but because having it doesn't feel familiar.
What financial stress actually does to the body — jaw tension, grinding your teeth, lower back pain, chest tightness — and why you get ill on holiday.
Why "just rest" is rubbish advice when your nervous system doesn't feel safe to stop.
How attachment styles — show up in your relationship with money, not just with people.
The difference between making decisions from survival and making decisions from choice.
We also explore why the prefrontal cortex goes offline under financial stress (meaning you literally cannot think straight), why pushing through isn't the badge of honour we've been told it is, and what it means to resource yourself through uncertainty rather than just white-knuckling it.
It's a conversation about money, yes. But also about safety, bodies, and what happens when you finally feel secure enough to ask yourself what you actually want.
Connect with Gemma:
Gemma works with people who look as though they are coping but do not feel like themselves. Her practical approach works with the mind and nervous system to help clients quiet a busy mind, feel lighter, trust themselves and get their spark back. She also provides workplace resilience training, team workshops and 1:1 leadership coaching, helping organisations support good people before pressure becomes burnout. Before coaching, Gemma spent 13 years in law and construction, including senior roles in high-pressure, male-dominated environments. She works in Manchester, Cheshire and online.
Website: coachingwithgemma.co.uk
Instagram: @iamgemmadonnelly
1:1 Coaching - Gemma coaches within businesses and one-to-one on turning stress & anxiety into calm confidence, with spaces opening this month
Breathwork - Gemma provides Breathwork Manchester for individuals to switch off and businesses committed to wellbeing fuelled performance
New Group Programme - Gemma is currently creating a new group programme for anxiety, working with both the mind and the nervous system (coming soon)
Read the accompanying article with Gemma Donnelly
Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
49 min
January 08S1 E10: Anxiety, Awareness, Agency - with Dennis Harhalakis
"Finance is numbers. Money is beliefs."
That's how my guest this week, Dennis Harhalakis — Certified Money Coach (CMC)®, founder of Cambridge Money Coaching, and trainer for the Money Coaching Institute of California — frames the distinction that changed everything for him on The Money Story Project podcast.
Dennis spent 30 years in financial services. Trading rooms. Wealth management. He helped set up a private bank. And yet when the regular paycheque stopped, he discovered that knowing about money and understanding your relationship with it are two completely different things.
In this episode, Dennis shares his journey from inherited anxiety to hard-won awareness:
Inheriting his father's money anxiety — traced back through generations to the 1800s — and dragging it around without realising.
The profound difference between feeling financially secure and feeling emotionally safe with money.
Why working in a bank doesn't make you any better with money than anyone else — financial advisors go bankrupt, accountants go bankrupt.
How the financial system is designed to benefit the wealthy and educated — while exploiting the mistakes of everyone else.
The question he asks every client: "How was money talked about when you were growing up?"
Why "connection before solution" changes everything — for advisors, coaches, and anyone helping someone with money.
The simple past/present/future reframe that cuts through shame about spending.
Why more money won't make you feel safer — but feeling safe with what you have will.
What Dennis would say to money now — after years of gripping it so tightly there was no room for anything else.
We also explore the newly released book Fixed by John Y. Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai on how the personal finance system is rigged against ordinary consumers, why people are shamed into thinking they have a spending problem when they actually have an income problem, and what it means to say "thank you, I've got this" to the anxious parts of yourself.
It's a conversation about money, yes. But also about inheritance, compassion, and learning to hold things differently.
Resources & Links
Read the accompanying article
Connect with Dennis:
Website: cambridgemoneycoaching.uk
LinkedIn: Dennis Harhalakis
Mentioned in this episode:
Fixed by John Y. Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai (newly released)
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
Spotify Apple Podcasts
1 hr 13 min
December 17, 2025S1 E9: Co-founders & Money: Patterns, Partnership, Trust - With Nicki Coe
"Nothing shines a light on your personal patterns, beliefs, and triggers like being a co-founder."
That's how Nicki Coe - co-founder coach and co-founder of branding agency LUNA + LION - describes the experience of building a business with someone else.
In this episode, Nicki shares her money story and what she's learned from navigating the co-founder dynamic firsthand. She's on a mission to change the statistic that 65% of startups fail due to co-founder fallout, and she brings both coaching expertise and lived experience to that work.
We explore:
Growing up in a home where money was always there — and what beliefs got absorbed alongside that comfort (money requires sacrifice, hard work, giving a lot of yourself)
How her parents' divorce in her mid-twenties shifted her relationship with money towards fear and a sense that money couldn't fully be trusted
Leaving a stable corporate job at the beginning of a pandemic to start a coaching practice, and then co-founding LUNA + LION
The surprise of how motivating it was to make money for someone else — and the pressure that creates when things don't go well
Navigating the 50/50 split: how they held that model through maternity leave and personal challenges, and why they eventually moved to a more fluid approach
The friction that comes from caring too much — and how emotional charge can make important conversations feel impossible to have
Going looking for a co-founder coach, not finding one, and realising she needed to become that support herself
Why founders often carry a belief that they have something to prove — and how money becomes a black and white way to measure whether you've made it
The question underneath the financial stress: "Am I good enough for this?"
The conversations co-founders should be having about money — both practical (how much, how to split it, how to handle risk) and personal (why do you want the money, what does it mean to you)
Making financial conversations fun and creative — going somewhere inspiring rather than having them by the coffee machine
Why relational contracting matters as much as legal contracting in co-founder agreements
We also discuss Nicki's new Co-Founder Agreement Package, which combines a coaching guide for relational conversations with a customisable legal template.
Resources & Links
Connect with Nicki Coe:
Website: nickicoe.com
LinkedIn: Nicki Coe
Co-Founder Agreement Package
Free Resource: 10 Essential Money Q's for Every Co-Founder Team — A clear set of questions to align on finances before they create friction, helping you uncover assumptions, build understanding, and clarify expectations at any stage of your business
Learn more about The Money Story Project and how to share your own story.
Connect with host Harriet Formby: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
🎧 Listen now — and if this conversation resonates, please follow the podcast and leave a review so more people can find these stories.
54 min

About The Money Story Project

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The Money Story Project® shares real, unfiltered stories from founders, creatives, freelancers, and beyond, exploring how money weaves through identity, belonging, family, culture, education, work, and the systems we live in. Because money is never just about money - it’s about being human.

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