Firstly I want to start this with a caveat. I’ve decided to tackle this issue this week because it’s come up a few times lately with clients, with students I’m mentoring, on podcasts I’m listening to and in my own life  - so I thought it’s time we talked about money!

Make money your friend.

There, that’s it!!

Until you have a good relationship with money, you’re not going to have very much of it, and what you get will quickly disappear.

Have you ever said, ‘damn, I wish I could win the lottery’?

Now, google ‘how many people quickly lose their lottery win’.

70% of lottery winners in the US go bankrupt – phew!

Even if you come into lots of money, if you haven’t made your peace with it, it’s going to disappear right out the door again.

Here are a few of the conversations with business owners I’ve had this week:

‘I don’t want to be a capitalist’ – the conversation went onto how essentially money is bad = people with money are bad = I don’t want to be bad.

‘I want to earn £100k a year, but I don’t want to earn it for myself. I want to earn if for this charity I’m really excited about.’ = it’s greedy to say I want to earn £100k so I’ll mask it behind benevolence and that will make me feel better.

‘I want to earn £140k a year. Oh gosh, that sounds really bad doesn’t it?’ = I’m not allowed to want more money – only money grabbing bitches want a lot of money, and that’s not me.

‘I don’t actually need that much money to live off’ – but a little digging showed that living on the breadline isn’t actually all that fun.

Here’s the actual deal.

Money is just paper. It’s not evil, or bad. It doesn’t cause wars and depressions. People do.

Money doesn’t kill people. People do.

Money is just paper that gives you more choices. If you have more money you have more choices. And freedom.

And I’m sure if you had a little more money in your wallet you wouldn’t buy a Ferrari and drive around town running over homeless people.

I bet you’d treat your friends, and maybe buy those nice trousers you’ve had your eye on, and that holiday you’ve been dreaming of – it’s yours.

You could buy piano lessons for your daughter, wear nice perfume, buy hot food and a coffee for homeless person you see, give a pound to every street performer you passed (because who doesn’t like music on the streets), you could give away some of your time for free to help people who maybe couldn’t afford your services, you could buy that dream home finally and you’d sell your 26-year-old car and buy a new convertible.

Maybe that’s not exactly what you would do with your money. But that’s exactly what I’ve done. Except for the holiday – I’m working up to that!

You can choose what you do with your money.

You can choose to be however you want to be. Just because you aren’t struggling doesn’t make you a rich bitch.

But all the while your brain is telling you that money = bad. Or I don’t deserve to have any money. Or I’m not enough. Or I’m not special enough to be rich. Or that’s for other people, not me. Or ‘fill in the blank’. You’re probably not going to be getting much.

Why do I know this?

Because I’ve gone through it myself.

It’s taken me 5 years to work through my money issues. To say I deserve to be comfortable, I don’t have to struggle and if I’m successful people won’t spit on me in the street.

I have my own story. I left home at 17 in dire conditions and have pretty much lived on the breadline until recently. I was on income support for 5 years with Robin and then struggled to get my business off the ground.

And truthfully and honestly it wasn’t until I worked through my issues with money that my business started to be successful.

My own money truths went like this:

Rich people are rude. Rich people only look out for themselves. I’ve always been poor, so I will always be poor. I don’t deserve to be successful. Who do I think I am to charge for my services? And on and on.

How have I made money my friend?

I slowly started buying nicer things for myself and the world didn’t cave in.

It doesn’t have to be crazy. I went to John Lewis once I bought 2 £1.50 face cloths. Oh, the joy of throwing away the dried out old ones from Asda and rubbing this soft loveliness on my face every day – made me feel like a million dollars!

I started writing down every single evening positive affirmations. Reminding myself I was awesome and most importantly getting really specific about how much money I wanted to earn each month. I wrote it down every day and it’s happening. My words are becoming reality!

I started charging a little bit more and no-one told me I was crazy and people actually wanted to pay me more!

I started getting really specific about the work I didn’t want to do (it’s scary saying no to things), but it created space for the things I wanted to come in and they did.

I listened to youtube money meditations before I went to sleep.

I listed all the things I wanted and then all the things I had – and realised I had most of the things I wanted and felt gratitude.

I started reminding myself what I was grateful for and thanking the universe when good things happened.

The best part? You can do it too!

Why not start doing some or all of these things?

Living on the breadline actually isn’t that fine (although we have to tell ourselves it’s ok at the time, or we’d go crazy).

Money isn’t evil and you deserve to be successful because you are awesome at what you do and I love you for it. Go out there are create your own amazing independent successful business – that’s what the world wants you to do!

Loved reading this? Why not check out the rest of my Work Smarter series?