Most product-based business owners think they need something new to grow, a new strategy, a shiny tool, a game-changing idea. But the truth, you don't need more exciting. You need what actually works. Because the businesses that win on profit and cash flow, yeah, they've mastered the fundamentals. And this is exactly what we do inside the Inventory Genius program. We clean up your financials so that you have a clear, accurate picture of your inventory and your real margins. We fix your product mix, making sure every single SKU is actually making you money, not just creating revenue. And we build a profit plan so that you can pay off debt, generate cash, and run your business with confidence. No fluff, no guesswork, no chasing trends, just a proven system that helps product-based businesses win again when it comes to profit and it comes to cash. Because long-term success isn't flashy, it's consistent. Join us in the Inventory Genius program. Let's make your business work for you. Hey friend, welcome to the Inventory Genius podcast, where we work together here to make you an inventory genius. We talk about profit, we talk about cash flow, and we definitely talk about your paycheck. Because at the end of the day, it's all related to your inventory. Let's go. Hey there, listener. Okay, today I have a really interesting episode for you. This was first recorded live with our resident money mindset coach. Now you might ask, what is that, a resident money mindset coach? Well, inside the IGOS Plus coaching program, our coaching clients that are going through the IGOS program have access every single month live to a money mindset coach. We talk about things money related, how we think about numbers, how we relate to debt, and all things mindset. I asked her to record a live class for our clients. And the class was so good that I wanted to share it with all of you here today. So you're gonna have privilege to two things. Number one, you're gonna hear the genius of Jennifer, our money mindset coach, as she talks about how mindset and money are related and how we can get stuck. And number two, you're gonna get a little sneak peek behind the scenes of what all of our coaching clients have privilege to do every single month live. Sit back and enjoy this episode. Let's talk about money and how we think about it. Hello everyone. Welcome to this special session here in the Inventory Genius program. I'm here with mindset coach Jennifer Bowman. She is a residence coach here in the program. And we really bring her in multiple times a month or for sure multiple times a quarter to visit with the group about mindset as it relates specifically to money, but we also work on how our mind shapes conversations and decision making. We just had a great conversation recently about having tough conversations and how we can use our mind in a positive way to move through tough situations. But today we're going to focus on money and numbers and financials and how our mind can really dictate the way we think about money and our relationship to money and can really kind of move us down different paths when we're decision making. So I know that everyone here is working really diligently on creating profit and financial strategy, probably cleaning up some financial strategy, and we want to make sure that your mind is a tool that you can use to help you in this process. So, Jennifer, thank you for joining me today for this quick class and conversation on money mindset. Yep, happy to be here. One of my favorite topics. This will be good. I mean, it really does shape the way that we can take action because there's so many things that we need to check the boxes on essentially in the Inventory Genius operating system program. But if our mind is not in the right space, we either can't move through those projects as quickly as we would like, or we seem to get stalled and almost take a few steps back. So I'm gonna have you share your screen. You've put together a really good workbook for the group to work through. So you'll find this in the program. You can download the workbook, listen to this today, and then if you want to go back and listen again with the workbook and fill in the blanks, that would be a great way to take this kind of mini course. Um but I'm gonna let you share your workbook and let's just work through mindset and how it relates to how we think about money.

Yes, great. Okay, so the question is who are you with uh money? So a money identity is basically a sum of our thoughts that we have about money, and many of our thoughts come from places we've had our entire life. So it's not like you all of a sudden have a money identity when you start a business. You've had one your whole life as a kid and it's developed over time. So it could be, you know, if you're bad with money, you're careful with money, maybe you never have enough money, whatever it you can't budget is one that I hear a lot. These are just um ideas that we have about ourselves. And I'll hear people say, no, no, no, I'm just a person who can't budget well. Like, no, you're not. That's not an actual thing. That's just a thought you've had over and over again about yourself, and now you believe it to be true, but it doesn't actually make it true. But what happens is we have these ideas about ourselves with money and they run on autopilot in our brain. So we have just patterns of thoughts over and over again, and they dictate actually what we do and how we take action and how we run our business in the end. So it is really, if you want to think of it as the sum of all the stories you've ever heard about money coupled together. Um, a lot of it comes from our parents. So if you've had parents who never talked about money, that's actually a story about money. If you have parents who always told you that they were broke or there was never enough, that becomes a story about money. Um, how you spin, how you save. If you are a woman, many times women are identified as being good with money if they budget and they conserve and they don't spend, or men are told it's okay to invest. And both of those are very different ways in which you view money. And again, these are just stories we have. What happens is if we don't examine them and make sure we still want to have them, they then become the way we operate. We might not actually want that. Like, I have a lot of thoughts about money that I hear it with my parents that I actually don't think is true. But sometimes they'll come up and I'm like, wait, I don't, I don't actually believe that. Why am I acting this way? It's not even a story I wish to have. But you have to be aware of it. Otherwise, it'll just dictate how you see things. And Sara, I remember you and uh in our group, you shared the story about a money identity that you had that I thought was really powerful.

Yes. Um, so I had a thought recently it dawned on me that I said it out loud, which is what it then dawned on me, that I can make money, but I can't keep money. And um I'm in business with my husband now. He always had a W-2 job before he retired. And so he's working in the same area that I'm working. And I literally told him, I'll make the money, you keep the money, and figure out how to keep it. And I thought that was so interesting when that came out of my mouth. I thought, do I really think that way? And then I started to look back at, I do believe that. Where did that actually come from? And I think for me, it was rooted way back in my dad was an entrepreneur and he could make money, but he never kept it. Like we lived the entrepreneurial roller coaster. And so I just assume that identity as an entrepreneur that I'll can make it, but I'm never gonna be able to keep it. So I have to keep making it, which is a very frantic place to live.

Yes, yep, exactly. And so that's a great example. And so what we want to do with this is understand where it came from. It doesn't, you don't have to be like, oh, it's from like my Uncle Jim. We don't have to go that detailed, but it's important to know like what my parents said to me or didn't say about money, if they thought about it, if they hit it, this has an impact on how we view money. Cultural, generational, immigrant mindset, right, is very different. My grandparents came from the Great Depression and like still like every food had to be eaten on the table, um, you know, up until they died, just because what if like the depression happens again? That's just how they live life. Um, if the idea is that money is evil and how people use a lot of money are not good because you don't want to be a bad person. Uh, gender makes a really big difference, and then religion and society. So, you know, if you have money, you change. Good people, you know, don't use money well, or who deserves wealth. These are all things that we just pick up just because we're alive today. Um, and so that's where a lot of us can be create our money identity. Um, so some ideas and some identities you might have is I'm bad with money, money is hard to make and easy to lose. People like us don't have money. Um, money changes people. I'll always be in debt. I know Sierra, you and I have talked about this a lot, that this idea of like, I'll always have this debt and how hard that is to get out of debt if that's your money identity. Um, and so you just want to notice if any of these come up and you react, and by react I mean like you have an emotion attached to it, you probably have that identity somewhere inside of you that would be helpful to explore. And so the phrase you heard of growing the most, I think is a good place to start. So if you're like, what did I hear the most about money? And like, what was that? Like, money doesn't grow in trees, that's a good one. We can't afford that. But like, whatever that is, that is one to explore. Like, wow, I have this. Do I still operate with this money identity today? And that's definitely where you want to start to question your money identity. Because here's what happens is that your money identity sets the ceiling for what you can do. So if you think I am bad with money, and that's like your identity, and you have thoughts that might be associated to it, like oh, I always make bad financial decisions, why bother tracking? It's already a mess. Everybody else gets this and I don't, right? They're all kind of attached to this bad with money. When you have thoughts in this way, you then take action from here. So, for example, if you have an identity and bad with money, you have a thought, I'll mess this up. Your then actions are driven by the thoughts. So every thought you have creates an action. So your behavior probably is going to be avoiding, overspending, not looking at numbers. And then what happens when you do that? You have debt, you have chaos, and annoyingly so, you have proof that you're bad with money. So it's this constant like cycle that we get into like I'm bad with money. We do these things that make us bad with money, and our brain's like, see, I told you we're bad with money, and then we just keep doing it and doing it and doing it.

So we essentially create that proof for ourselves because we lean into the thought, we see the action, and then say, Yep, exactly. I can make it, I can't keep it. And then that cycle just continues.

Over and over and over again. Yeah. And what's interesting is like if I coach somebody on this, what I'll do is I'll be like, well, show me proof that you're not bad with money. And there's always evidence there for that too. But the brain is what's a lot harder for it to go there naturally. Um, but there's no way somebody is bad every single moment in life, they've been bad with money. That's just not possible, right? Um, but that's what we want to see. And then, but the more evidence we have and the more proof we have, the deeper that like groove is in your brain that that identity is true about yourself. So the first step I think is to create, I call an inheritance audit, but you want to see like what beliefs and patterns did you inherit from you know your culture, your family, and which ones do you want to give back? So sometimes you get identities that are actually very helpful and you want to keep those, but many times we have them, and you're like, I this is actually not mine. This is my dad's, or this is I've heard this from my teacher or wherever this, I'm gonna send this back. One I think cue I have is if somebody's voice is in my head, and I'm like, oh, okay, like if my dad's voice is in my head, that probably is an identity from him and not from me, and I want to really question if that's one that I want to keep or not. And here's the thing is once you do that, you now get to pick your own money identity. So um, this is a framework that I use, and we'll use it today for money identity. You can use this for a bunch of different um um thoughts that you have and beliefs that you have, but it's a way in which you can explore what thoughts you have in this um circumstance about money, and then decide if you want to change them and how you can actually change them. So the first one is you want to be aware of your identity in the background. So when it comes to money, I am somebody who. Just finish that sentence. What's your first belief you have about yourself about money? And then ask yourself, is this yours? Did you borrow it? Is it inherited? And then from there, you want to see what actually happens when you think this, just like we went through that money tree. When you think that you're bad with money, what happens? What do you feel? What do you do? And then what happens from that? So, do you avoid looking at money? Do you undercharge, overdiscount? Um, do you hide debt from your partner? Like, what are the some of the things you do when you have this money identity happening? It's important to know and see that difference because we want to make sure that we're always aware that, like, this is a thought I have and that causes these things, but it doesn't mean you are your thoughts, right? You're like the being that gets to think the thoughts. So you want to give yourself a little bit of space between you and the pattern that's happening with the thoughts. And then from there, you get to create something different for yourself. So you can go to a different belief about money, even if you just believe it by 20%. That's enough. So the mistake we make, I think, is people thinking that they have to have like the best belief ever about money, but if they don't believe it, it doesn't work. Like it's not, and it's I always think about the S and L skit, like the affirmations. Like it's not an aff, it's not it's not pat with affirmations. Like you have to really believe it. And a good way of going to this is just a really factual place. Like, I believe I can make money might be very helpful because you can prove to yourself that you have. Because if you've had a job before, you then have made money. And so just being as factual as possible is is better than I'm bad with money. Like anything is better than that. So, like, what's a little better step and then what's a little bit better step, and what's a little bit better stuff that you can do? Because remember, all of our thoughts then drive actions. So if you think you can make money, you're gonna have way better actions in your business than if you think you're bad with money.

Yeah, so this is really interesting. I like the 20% piece. We don't have to be 100% there. So maybe if your money belief was I can't keep money or I always overspend or I can't save, you could think about literally one time when you saved for something that you wanted, even if it was small. Like, oh, I didn't spend this on groceries, you know, at the grocery store because I was gonna go out to dinner that night, or just something little to create that. So I can save. I I do know how to save. Right. And so just that little bit of belief. Okay.

Exactly. And so here's some examples, right? Like I'm bad with money. Um, you can say, like, I'm I'm learning to look at money, like could be one. Like you're just gonna look at the numbers, right? I'm always gonna be in debt. I'm somebody who pays this off. And again, that's a great example. If you've ever paid off any kind of debt in your life, which you probably have school loans or a loan from your parents. Your house payment, like you've paid off debt, right? And so you can believe that. Like, yeah, that's true. I have the evidence for that. Wanting more is selfish. Uh, I like this one that my business makes more possible for everyone around me. I think this can be really powerful as a business owner that like the better you do, the better your community, the your staff, like the better everybody does around you. Um, money is hard. Um, like if you're having a difficult time understanding, um, the change this could be like money is data and learning to read. So I think a good way of thinking about this too is numbers. So this the thing is when you see numbers, it is just a number on a computer screen. That's all that it is, or on your phone, whatever it is. We don't even have cash anymore. So it's literally just like digits, right? And so it always go back to the factual part of the money. Like this, you know, like I'm $60,000 in debt. Like it could be a factual part of the number. Instead, you could think, like, no, like this is data, um, and I can decrease this by 5% a year, is way better than like I'll always be in debt. So, like, as factual as you can get is a really good way to go to this because then the brain like can't argue feeling somewhere neutral, and it's a much easier place to act from there. And then what the most important part of this is then to take action. So, I what I find is a lot of people are can really enjoy the like I'm aware now and I know how this is causing my life, and I'm gonna pick a new you know, belief, but then they stop there. You have to take action from that, and that means like, you know, for example, like maybe you you you look at your debt, you open up your bank account, if you send the invoice that you've been sending, you may have been uh meaning to send, you make the phone call that you need to make a phone call with whatever it is from your new belief, you have to take action from there because that's what creates the new evidence. So you have a new belief, you take action, now we have evidence that you did it. So if it's like I can save, and then let's say you you know put some money in a savings account, great, now you have the evidence that that's true. This that's what we want to do is create that new action to and reinforce the belief that we're creating. And then another part of it after this is see what your results are. So an important part of mindset work isn't just all in the mind, but we want to see what's actually created in our life to make sure that we create that pattern of the brain to know what's working and not working. You always call it files, which I think is a really great way of thinking about this, but we want to like create the file in our brain. One way of doing that is that we see, like, okay, I thought this, I did this, what then happened in my life? Then that's like a very strong file that your brain has that it can go back to. And then you get to choose what to do. So if that new belief is working out, like I can save, and then you're finding evidence of yourself saving and it's working, double down on that. Like, do it more, do it everywhere. Um, if you're finding that you're still having some other uh thoughts coming up, see if you can release that and pick a new one. But you always want to know that you're in the position of choice. You know, you're not just at the whim of life, you're not just the whim of your thoughts. You can always choose what you want to do. And this is a really important part um of mindset work is looking at the results and then choosing to do it again and again and again. And so, my suggestion for you, whoever's listening to this, is that you do this all in one week. So, yeah, pick a belief, unravel the ones you've had, pick a new one, and then take action and do it for seven days and see what the results are. I find that if you have this new idea and new identity and you dive into it in seven days, it's extremely powerful. And then it switches so much faster versus like, okay, I'll do it tomorrow or maybe I'll think of it a different time. If you do it for seven days, it's gonna make a really big difference in how you think about yourself.

Yeah, I think um this was so good, very practical, and I want to emphasize the taking action piece. I think that's something that I've observed, you know, with the hundreds and hundreds of people I've worked with now, when they're changing the landscape of their money. So trying to move themselves from financial stress to financial freedom. And I look at everybody has the same plan because I have one framework. I use it with everybody. Doesn't matter their personality, where they are in the world, what type of product they sell, it's the same framework. When I see those that see the results they're looking for, it's because they're the action takers. So I really like that you said we all like to do the thought work. That's more interesting to us, but then moving beyond, like now I know. And so therefore I will do and then repeat and repeat and repeat. Um, I think that's just so important. We have to take action on what we're learning.

Yeah, yeah, we absolutely have to. Otherwise, you just stay in your head. Doesn't help. Yes. And the reason why, and the reason why it's hard is because that's when the uncomfortable feelings come up, right? Like that's when we have to do the thing that we haven't wanted to do. And so, like, yeah, but it's but that's fine. That's just part of it. Um, there's always gonna be a need to shift and to be uncomfortable and do things that don't feel great all the time. Um, but the more you do it, then that becomes easy, and that's not a thing anymore.

I want to share just something in closing. Let's see if I can find it really quickly here. Um, will I be able to? Yes. Okay, I a gal that just um signed up for IDOS and started work, she reached out um unprompted, which I always love those to hear how people are doing. And this is so interesting. She said, I'm filling out the figures for last year's budget almost there, and I'm finding it strangely thrilling. I thought that was amazing, right? So I'm guessing she's never done this work before, but she chose to take action. And in an odd way, it feels it does, it feels empowering, even though it's uncomfortable and you might not like what you're seeing as you do the work. There's something empowering about saying, I'm going to take control and I'm no longer gonna sit in the overwhelm. I'm gonna take one small step to change the way that I think about money.

Yes, control is everything. Whenever we feel disempowered, then we then we're just stuck. We're just a victim, right? Anytime we move from being a victim to in control, now we can actually do something. And that is a very empowering position. No matter, no matter what it is you're facing, the fact that you have power to control it is everything.

Yes. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for the session. This will be great. So download your workbooks, fill them in, and then I think go back to this, right? Like there might be one thought about money that comes to the surface when you start this exercise. But then as you move through the changes you're wanting to make in your business, I'm guessing that other thoughts will start to bubble up. So this is work that we can continue to do, not just with one thought, but with, you know, this continued idea of like, let's dig a little bit deeper and continue to completely shift the way that we think about money.

Yeah, especially like that 20% thought might become 100% thought and that works for you, but then you need to level up after that, right? So there's always the next level of like, what now, what if I believe this instead, or how about this? How would that shift? So it's always important to go back and revisit your money identity, even when things are great, because you can always make them even better. You can. Awesome.

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