6 Truths About Long Term, Stable Money In Business
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Episode Summary:
In today’s episode, I’m diving into the most damaging beliefs the online space has given us as women when it comes to money—and how we can rewrite them for good. I’m sharing honest truths about making money, saving money, and, most importantly, letting that money bring you peace, stability, and happiness.
I’ll also walk you through some of my biggest money wins from 2024 (like maxing out my retirement fund!) and six powerful money truths to shift your mindset as we step into the new year.
If you’ve ever felt pressure to hit certain income milestones, guilt about spending on what makes you happy, or stuck in the hustle to create “passive income,” this episode will be a refreshing perspective on redefining wealth.
Topics:
Why it’s time to stop obsessing over perfect profit margins and start prioritizing your actual take-home pay.
Letting go of the pressure to hit high-income months and focus on creating high recurring revenue that comes from serving your current and returning clients. That’s real wealth—not just for you, but for the lasting impact you’ll have on your clients.
Spending on your hobbies, and investing in your happiness. Whether it’s travel, dance, or language classes, embrace the joy of unproductive things that make life richer—and watch how easily more abundance flows.
Why you should stop skimping on yourself and invest in personal support systems like high-quality babysitters, a reliable house cleaner, or a business coach who elevates your game.
How to stop chasing “passive income” through courses alone, and a reminder the stock market / long term boring investing is a powerful nearly guaranteed ACTUALLY hands-off way to grow your wealth.
Shifting your focus from fixating on month-to-month fluctuations and focusing on quarterly and annual financial growth. The bigger picture always tells a better story.
Episode Resources:
Check out my favorite sales training on sales calls, sales mindset. This is one of the BEST ways to improve your money mindset is to also work on your sales mindset and the way you let money flow in.
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Anna (00:06):
Welcome to the Heart-Centered Entrepreneur podcast. I want you to be rich. Yes, I want abundant financial success for your business, but I don't just care about your business making money. I care about you too. I want you to be rich and happiness in the impact you make in your relationships and in how you give back. I'm Anna. I built my six figure business as a side hustle while I was pregnant with my daughter in 2016. Now I've helped dozens of women do the same. I'm here to help you build a profitable, heart-centered fully book business with the latest tips on sales and visibility with proven mindset hacks and sneak peeks behind the scenes with what's working right now in the online space and in my business, ready to make more money with heart. Let's go.
Anna (00:50):
Hi friends. Happy almost New year. I'm recording this from my bed under my fuzzy blanket that I got from Costco last month that I'm obsessed with <laugh> because I wanted to share a note with you and some thoughts. I just did a little reflection exercise. You guys know I'm a big fan of like 10 wins of the year, right? Just like looking at your photos and picking like the 10 things you're most proud of. Because as ambitious women we're always like, yeah, but we didn't do enough, right? And stopping to see what you did do. Stopping for gratitude, stopping for radical celebration and the discipline of that, right? It's a discipline to be grateful and to celebrate and to say that I have enough. I am enough. I'm proud of myself. In my mastermind, I told you guys that we do a affirmation ceremony at the end of every round, even though a lot of girls continue round, round.
Anna (01:42):
I love that it's a marking of the six months and celebrating what you've done and what's to come. And each of the ladies go around and say something affirming about the other women. And of course there's tears, there's happy smiles. And I always tease that like we spend so much time with our negative self-talk that it can be kinda shocking and almost like unsettling and nerve wracking to have other women say kind things about us. And these are women that know you, right? These are women that literally have been with you for six months and maybe you've been your worst with in the sense that like you've said, what's sucking? You've said that what hasn't gone well, like you've been bringing the challenges and complaints. And so I always say to my mastermind ladies like, can you suspend your disbelief just for a second? Like our brain wants to say like these kind of words can't be true.
Anna (02:32):
These women must be lying to me. But what if what they are saying is true? Because it is right. So interesting too because yes, I believe in self-trust and in autonomy, but I also think in our culture we're starting to really undervalue community and the power of other women coming alongside us and sometimes knowing a truth or truth than even we know inside of us. If we're in a season of challenge and our negative self talk is strong, right? And so I think the beauty of having a coach, of having mastermind sisters, of having good friends is letting women speak truth into us even when we can't see or speak that truth for ourself. Maybe you're in a season of challenge, right? Our inner self-talk, our inner voice, our intuition is not gonna be as strong. So it's okay to lean on those voices of love and kindness and there's that.
Anna (03:25):
Um, anyway, with that, I really love this idea of 10 months of the year. I'm gonna share mine with you. I don't think I've shared mine with you yet. Um, and also maybe some themes around it that I think might be some takeaways for you. And then also just some random ramblings I've been thinking about lately at the end of the year around how I really feel like the online space has it wrong in what they glamorize as far as money. And just some new thoughts on money that may serve you as we come into 2025. Is anyone else excited for 2025? I'm so excited. I don't know. It just, even though our numbers like 2025, I just feel like it's gonna be such a beautiful new year. I think I told you girls my word of the year is open and just excited for us as a heart-centered community to see what the world has in store for us.
Anna (04:11):
Being open to that energy. Okay, let me share my 10 wins really quick and then I wanna share some thoughts and conclusions. So number one, celebrated five years in San Diego moving back home and one year in our new house, oh my goodness, time has flown. Like I feel like I've been back in San Diego forever, but it's really only been five years, which is just so wild to me. Celebrating two new dream hires this year on my amazing OVM Lauren, my amazing nanny. Fiore, honestly, they are just the biggest blessing. The biggest blessing. And I told my coach Lacey this year, I can't tell them how much I love them and how much I'm grateful for them. 'cause I don't quite want them to know like how much I was teasing, right? Like, but truly like having the right support in your corner, whether it's in your business or home, makes the biggest difference.
Anna (05:00):
Especially as women and entrepreneurs where we are serving, we're showing up for our clients, we're doing emotional labor, we're carrying, right? Having women that have our back is everything. And just this reminder that even though it can be hard to hire and fire and have all those conversations, it's so worth it to have the right support in your corner in every chapter. Okay, let me just read them out and just stop explaining them. Had our biggest financial year yet at Heart Center entrepreneur, which also means I serve the most clients ever, which is kind of wild because I don't feel like it, like it does. Like I feel like I made way more money, but it didn't feel like that much more work, which is just a testament to growing your business is that it truly can feel easier over time as you, I've had the same programs forever.
Anna (05:44):
So as you repeat programs, as you get more support, right? A lot of people talk, we talk about like scaling and growing your business and some of that is in leveraging your time and blah blah blah. But some of it is just as you do it more, it gets easier, it gets more streamlined, right? My amazing OPB Lauren updated a lot of our procedures behind the scenes and the way we do things. So things have just gotten smoother and in that you just have capacity for more. We produce a podcast every week and I'm so proud of that because Heart Center Entrepreneur podcast is one of my favorite things that we do. I enjoy it so much and it's such a blessing. 'cause as you grow and scale your business, you start spending as much time almost serving clients as you do marketing, right? In the beginning of your business, you're just really serving clients.
Anna (06:28):
But as you grow and scale and as you have programs that have capacity to serve more clients like courses, you're spending a lot of time marketing. And I love coaching. So I was a little bit nervous to do courses where I had higher enrollments. But the good thing is I found ways to do marketing that I like, like podcasting. So grateful for that. And also had a real go viral. I need to see like how many times it was shared, but I did, you know, that little reel of how I have my kids like pick out dinners for each other at Trader Joe's and it was shared like thousands of times, which is so wild. I really embrace the three day work week that I preach. Like I really continue to lean into that. Meaning I took daytime dance lessons, daytime workouts. For me, the only way I can work a three day work week is if I fill my time with other things.
Anna (07:15):
Like when I had small kids, I did a three day work week because I had to, right? But now that my kid's in elementary school, I would be working more if I didn't fill it with being intentional about taking mornings off for me time and cooking healthy breakfast and all of that. I added $29,000 to my retirement. So proud of that. And that's the conversation I wanna have in a minute. After I finish here, my wins, I got a new Tesla. I did a lot of mindset work to do that, but truly it's the car of my dreams. The softest seats don't have to go to the gas station. What a blessing. Next one is, I made it through our family, made it through two broken toes, braces, skin cancer. I put rip stuffed animals. Just my kids have so many stuffed animals, I just, it's wild.
Anna (07:58):
Made it through a house painting project. And it thankfully ended the two to three hour a day car commute because both my kids finally got into the same charter school that I'd been working towards. So I'm really, really grateful for that. We took improv family classes as a family drama classes and we got to cheer my son in basketball, cheer my daughter in dance. My kids supported me as I teach bar class on the weekends. And finally we did a lot of adventuring. This this year. I feel like as we settled into the house, I feel like mentally it really freed me up for more adventuring. So I wanna say that to you too. If you're being hard of yourself because you're like, oh, we don't travel a lot. Or like for me feeling really stable and having a house like felt, felt like it gave me financial, but also mental liberty to adventure more.
Anna (08:43):
So we went to Ireland, we went, um, the kids went zip lining, took them to the aquarium, hiking in the snow, beach, camping, botanical gardens, backyard swimming, just so much adventuring. It really felt like a year of adventure. Okay? So those are my wins. I hope you share yours with me and take time. Don't compare your wins to mine, right? Whatever it is that you accomplished, achieved, made it through, survived. Own those wins, whether they're personal or business. Like write 'em down. Don't overthink it. Like I really think we overthink into the year reflecting, but it really is just like, write down 10 things you're proud of. You can't have a wrong answer. Look through your camera roll. Do it. Okay. So what I wanna talk about is just this conversation as I was thinking about one of my wins, which was contributing $29,000 to my retirement fund and I just did the math.
Anna (09:35):
And if I keep contributing at my same level, I think I'm gonna have like 4.5 million by the time I'm like 63 for early retirement, which is wild you guys, because I was actually behind in retirement contributions, right? I you guys, I was so nervous to leave my therapy day job because I was like, oh, I have great retirement. Oh, I have great medical benefits. Oh, my <laugh> is laughable. I most certainly did not. Okay? Because the current American working system, even when you quote have good health insurance, it's, it's not good health insurance, right? And I have far better coverage now health insurance wise. And I pay less my retirement. I contribute way more to my retire. I need to do the math. Like I probably contribute like at least five times more every year to my retirement than I used to. I don't know what I was doing.
Anna (10:23):
I don't know what I thought it was good. It was not good. It was not sufficient. It was not sufficient. But anyway, and also the the thing too, when you're just relying on an employer for healthcare and retirement, at least how I was, I wasn't really learning about it. I'm actually, this month actually one of my little Christmas projects was taking like a little investment course so I can just learn a little bit more about long-term investing and being savvy around financial decisions there because I have an amazing accountant that I like message all my questions to, like should I do this or this or this? And I was like, he's probably getting annoyed with me. I probably need to learn more of this. And this is something I walk a lot of my clients through, is really encouraging them to have an era of learning about money, right?
Anna (11:00):
If you've read my book Freedom Fund, you know I'm a big fan of the high yield savings account to get to your 20 K freedom fund. But what about after that? What about when you have that or more in your emergency account and you have a house and you want to continue investing, right? Like these are the conversations we need to be having as women. So this is why I feel like I am quote, so successful in business, though I may be making less than some of the other online coaches you follow? But honestly, number one, I'm probably taking home more. Number two, I have a really happy life. Like I work three days a week, right? Number four, I have amazing clients. Like I really only let in clients that I love to work with. I do not compromise there, right? I really invest my money heavily and have really a lot of stability in how I spend my money, right?
Anna (11:49):
Buying almost a million dollar house in San Diego, saving money in the stock market for retirement, right? Like really focusing on spending my money in ways that makes me happy. And this is an interesting conversation because I think number one in general as heart-centered entrepreneurs, we need to give ourself permission to have the mindset of it's safe to make abundant money, right? You might like, oh, I have an I have, I have enough, I'm scraping by, I am doing, but are you really? Are you really, I really had a wake up moment with myself when I realized that I was like giving money to my friends, giving money to charities. And yet I wasn't even financially self-caring myself, right? At the time I was in credit card debt at the time, I didn't have savings, emergency fund, freedom fund, right? I certainly was not investing in my retirement.
Anna (12:34):
So I really had to come to Jesus moment where I was like, I need to financially take care of myself, self care myself financially before I start helping everyone and their mom. And you can still be generous in little ways. I've still given some cash, but I really felt the conviction to financially self care for myself. And I feel like because of that mindset, I'm a really good steward of my money, even though, right? Like I'm not, I'm making multi-six figures. I'm not making a million dollars a year. But again, I probably live more lavishly and stably than a lot of women that are making a million dollars a year. And so I just think it's a conversation about, yes, we need to make abundant income, but it actually is probably less than you think to really live a really happy life. And think about it, San Diego is one of literally the most expensive cities in the world.
Anna (13:20):
So if I can make it work as a single mama that is almost a hundred percent financially responsible for my children, you can figure it out my love. You can figure it out. But it is gonna take some work. Okay? So back to this conversation. I really have emphasized with myself, I hear a lot of clients obsessing about profit margin, right? And in some ways I understand what you're saying, right? You wanna make sure you are making more money than you are spending. Yes. But as you grow and scale your business, you're gonna be spending money and there's no way around it. I spend a lot of money in my business, I spend more money on team and my coach and my nanny than I care to think about because if I think about it too much, I'm like, I overthink it, right? But at the end of the day, it's about the money you take home more than your profit margin.
Anna (14:06):
And a lot of my clients that, you know, several of my clients that are really close to the million dollar mark annually, I've had to really work their mindset around this that it's safe to spend money to hire team to spend on marketing, right? Right. Just really focusing on every year, am I taking home more money? But it can include spending money and having a decrease in your profit margin, right? Ideally year over year, we're taking home more money year over year, but our profit margin may go up and down and that's okay. I also really focus for me on recurring revenue versus glamorous high income months, right? I very consistently will hit a 30 K month, a 40 K month, right? I am not the coach that's making a hundred K month, 200 K month, right? Like I have very stable income. I do not have big spikes, but that's because I'm a big fan of like, I don't mind when my clients sign up for payment plans, right?
Anna (15:06):
I also don't mind when they pay in full, but I am taking a consistent amount around out of the business every month. And a lot of my clients, when they come to work with me, they are kind of living paycheck to paycheck in their business. When they have a really big month, they're cashing it out, right? When they have a really lean month, they're not paying themselves. And just this reminder that one way to create stability in your business is to pay yourself the same amount of money. Take home and retirement no matter what, right? Sure, you can give yourself a bonus here and there, but really treating your business like a business and really going after the stability more so than the glamor of, you know, a really high income month. Um, another thing that I think through with this conversation is how are you spending and investing your money?
Anna (15:51):
And it is in ways that really serve you. Like me as a single mama, having a nanny, a consistent babysitter two nights a week is such a blessing. Someone to help me a little bit with my house, someone that has a familiar pulse on the kids' bedtime routine. I spend a lot of money on that, right? I pay my nanny super well, but to me that's worth it because my kids mean more to me than literally anything. So that peace of mind, right? Spending on my coach, spending on my car, right? Like yes, let's talk about the traditional business investments, but also let's talk about the things that make you happy. You guys know I spend a lot of money, hundreds of dollars every month on dancing salsa and bachata on classes and private lessons and dance socials because I enjoy it. It doesn't have to be dance for you, but it's safe for you to spend your money on literally just things that make you happy.
Anna (16:35):
Men get this, men go hunting, men go golfing, men join country gloves. And I just feel like as women, we need to understand that our women, our money is to be used. And I think if we used our money to make us happy, we'd actually do less impulse buying and spending, right? Like I use an app called lunch money to look up my transactions every week, every month, every whatever. And I'm really pretty satisfied on the money I spend. Number one, I'm pretty intimate with it. I talk about that in my book too, but number two, when you are spending money on ways that make you happy, you don't need to, to impulse buy at the grocery store or whatever, right? Like, and not that there's anything wrong with impulse buying, but I just think if we did, if we spent on the things like you didn't worry about spending $200 a session on a therapist, right?
Anna (17:21):
That you really loved, you didn't worry about spending whatever it is for you. Horseback riding lessons or like right? When we're intentionally, when we spend our money with intention on things that we want, then there's less skill and shame around it. Same thing I think with a three day work week, right? Like when we are taking our mornings off, when we are taking me time, then you're so much less likely to doom scroll. Not that it, it's okay if you do sometimes, right? Okay, I I also wanna touch really quickly on growing your money each quarter and focusing on that more so than month to month. I'm really pretty unattached to how much money I make each month, though I do keep an eye on it. I'm very intimate with my money. I have a meeting every week month with my bookkeeper and I'm also really on tab with like how much I'm making each quarter, right?
Anna (18:08):
So I'm looking at it, but I'm not like, oh, I made a little less, that's gonna go up and down in the micro, right? But in the macro, looking at every quarter, is my income expanding every year? Is my income expanding? Okay, I just made a little bullet point of notes, that's why I'm trying to get through these last one. Like I talked about, I was able to contribute 29,000 to my retirement, to the stock market this year. And again, I'm someone that was majorly behind on retirement contributions. Number one, when I started working as an adult, I didn't even really know you were supposed to be contributing towards retirement, right? Then when I got a full-time job and they sit you down and you were like, do you wanna do matching? You're like, sure, right? So I started contributing a little bit, but honestly like I had a sad amount of money created by the time I quit, I started my business.
Anna (18:55):
I wanna say it was like under $30,000 you guys. And I was like, how was old? Was this over 30 years old? Sad. Like that is not enough retirement to have at the age of 30, right? So I just wanna say even if you're behind in retirement contributions and investing, it's not too late to pull up an income calculator and figure out how much you need to be contributing. Something I also did at the beginning of my business is I opened ask your accountant what type of account to open, right? A tax benefited retirement accounts, not financial advice, it's just what I do, right? But I am a big fan of, uh, the first thing I did is I opened my retirement account and I would contribute like $50, not even every month. I would just contribute it here and there to get into the habit and to have a place for the money to go.
Anna (19:42):
You guys know I'm a big fan of this with the freedom Fund that I talk about saving a 20 K freedom emergency fund and just opening it up and just putting $20 a month in it, right? I'm a big fan of putting in the system in place and going from there, right? So at first I was just contributing like $50 to my retirement, then 50, then a hundred. Okay, now I can do 500, right? Like let it grow. But if you don't have a retirement account set up for your business, start that yesterday. Start that yesterday. I know that it can be intimidating. I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday. Like I feel like I'm a pretty smart money savvy woman and yet I still have to use CHE GBT to learn and Google and I just bought a little course and like yes, to equipping yourself.
Anna (20:23):
And I feel like understanding money on the stock market and long-term investing is a hundred percent worth it and a great skill to have as a woman. Like we need that skill, right? That is the skill and not feeling any shame around it. Maybe you didn't really learn about money and that's okay. I have this conversation with a lot of my clients that have credit card debt or whatever, right? Like it's okay. Like, like I talk about my book, open a zero interest, what's it called? Balance Transfer Credit card, figure out your debt and start moving forward, right? My book Freedom Fund is a great, great place to start on this. If you are baby stepping your way to more wealth and money, I'm a big fan of talking about money. Okay? That was it. I know this was kind of a hodgepodge, but I just wanna capture some of my thoughts and I wanna hear from you.
Anna (21:09):
If any of this was new news to you, what are some action steps you wanna take? If 2025 is gonna be the most abundant financial year of your business, how do you wanna create that stability? And I really feel like there's no one better to learn from than a single mom living in San Diego. That <laugh> is just, I'm very mindful about my money and I'm really mindful about living that happy, boring dream life, right? Like living a life that you don't want a vacation from. I'm so glad that I was able to take my kids to Ireland this year, but honestly, like I love being home. Like I, when you work a three day work week and you love your life, like there's no reason to need to escape. There's no reason. Of course I'm preparing for retirement, but honestly, I'm not even looking that forward to it.
Anna (21:47):
Like I love my life, I'm happy for it, I'm happy with it. And it's safe for you to work towards creating that life that you don't need to or want to escape from. On the way to that, I know that there's a lot of hard things for me personally. There was a divorce on the way for me personally. There was living with my parents for a little bit. There was living in a studio apartment without an oven, right? Like without a washing machine. Like there was, there have been eras of sacrifice and challenge and starting my business and not knowing how I was gonna make it work and waking up at 6:00 AM so I could see clients before my therapy day job. Like there have been eras of sacrifice, but it shouldn't be your whole lifetime. It should be like six months here and there, right?
Anna (22:28):
And so really do those moments with intention, but I get that sometimes it's through those hard moments, through the pushing that gets us to our dreams and our bliss. And so I'm just sending you the biggest hug, sitting at the biggest hug, and as we start 2025, just know that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so thankful for this community. I am so thankful for this podcast. And thank you for listening. I know there's a thousand places you could be tuning into, but the fact that you take me along on your commute, on your walk before you go to sleep just makes my day and I'm so, so grateful for you. Hope you have a beautiful rest of your week and I would love to hear from you. If you want to email me your top 10 wins. If you didn't send those yet, take a minute, take 20 minutes. Your inner critic will not want you to do this. It'll want you to just think of all the ways that you sucked in 2024, but especially in a hard year. I really want you to mine the gold, find the gratitude, see what you're proud of, see what you did that you can brag about. And if anything, just brag about it to me. Send it to my inbox. I'll send you some heart emojis. Love you.
Anna (23:35):
Thanks for hanging out today. Please hit that subscribe button so you can make sure to stay updated anytime a new episode drops. And I would love for you to join me in my free Facebook community. It's called The Heart-Centered Entrepreneur. We discuss the podcast episodes. I regularly go live and do free trainings, and you may even meet your newest biz bestie so you can join at https://heartcenteredcommunity.com/. It's absolutely free and I cannot wait to see you in there.
PS: In the midst of this challenging time I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help? One of the #1 ways I support my clients is by helping them simplify their business so that they can increase the flow of money without creating extra work. In this season simplified visibility and sales is needed more than ever.
So if you’re craving personal support as you reposition your free and paid work, I’d love to help you simplify your sales process so that you can produce income in your business even during a challenging time. If you want support you can check out my services and book a free discovery call here, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.