Here’s what we’ll cover
Christine Corcoran and I have had a great chat about the one thing that can hold back so any business owners from reaching their potenital. I’ve got to say this isn’t a topic that I know a lot about from a ‘how it’s works’ perspective but I have defintely seen it play out in real life in my 20 years of working with business owners!
So, what do you know about your money mindset? Today I’m talking to money mindset expert Christine Corcoran about just that.
It’s not something I’ve ever spent much time looking into but I can assure you there are plenty of money mindset issues out there in the world of business. We chat about what it might look like out there in the real world of business.
Then we talk about elevating your money mindset so you can earn what you want;
How to identify money blocks and how they show up in your business;
Scarcity vs abundance mindset issues and how they play out in real life;
Why people struggle to charge what they are worth;
It plays out everywhere from taking on clients you know you shouldn’t to burning out and still not having the profit to show for it.
Listen in and have a think about how your money mindset might be holding you back.
Links and Resources
- Checkout the Simply Smarter Numbers website HERE
- Checkout the Podcast HERE
- Checkout the Instagram page HERE
- Checkout Christine’s Facebook HERE
- Checkout Christine’s Instagram HERE
- Checkout Christine’s website HERE
- Checkout Christine’s Rise Up Conference – October 2020, Sunshine Coast
Keep Listening!
Here’s the shownotes
Jen Waterson
I’m going to be totally honest here, I don’t know if I’m excited, intrigued or plain old scared to have today’s guest on the show. I’m going to be the first to put my hand up and say I know nothing about this mindset stuff but I’ve been working with business owners as a business consultant and an accountant for nearly 20 years, and that’s a lot of years of talking about money and numbers.
I’m certain that there’s something going on in the minds of so many business owners out there when it comes to money.
Today’s guest is going to shed some light on that for us, Christine welcome to the show.
Christine Corcoran
Thank you for having me, I’m so excited about this conversation.
Jen Waterson
I’m looking forward to it myself, I know I’m going to learn a thing or two and I know it’s going to help me, the people listening and my clients, I’ve got no doubt.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your business.
Christine Corcoran
I’m a business mindset coach. I work with women entrepreneurs to help them take their business to the next level and how I help them is by unlocking any behavioural or mindset blocks that are keeping them playing small. We work through self-sabotaging behaviours, any mindset blocks, things like what they’re charging and how they can step into charging what they’re worth, and anything else that’s keeping them playing small.
It’s one of my favourite places to play and as a business developer, I find that mindset is one of the biggest things that stops us from taking action in our business and truly showing up as powerfully as we could. I help them be able to take their business to the next level by elevating who they believe they are and their mindset to be able to step into a growth mindset.
Jen Waterson
I find it an intriguing topic, mainly because I really do know nothing about it but when we were discussing this podcast beforehand, we were saying what are we going to talk about and you threw out a few different options, one of the options that you spoke about really stood out to me, and that was elevating your money mindset so you can push through the glass ceiling and earn what you desire.
That to me is something I see in so many business owners and it makes no difference, your age, how long you’ve been in business, if you’re male or female, it doesn’t make any difference, we all seem to have a glass ceiling. Whether or not that glass ceiling for some people is higher than others or more easily shattered than others, I don’t know but I’m keen for you to get stuck into it and talk to us about our money blocks.
Christine Corcoran
Money mindset is one of my favourite things to talk about because once we step into understanding our money mindset and help to shift it and step into the self-worth and the belief around being our earning potential, it helps us push through and smash that glass ceiling so quickly.
Just like you said at the beginning, you were a little bit scared and apprehensive, when we think about money and experience money in our everyday life, it’s very normal to have an emotional response because we all, no matter who you are, your experience and your background, we all have a different money mindset. It could be really well developed in the way that it’s stepping into an abundant mindset or it could be coming from a place of scarcity.
It’s really interesting when we start to recognise how we interact with money on a daily basis and how it makes us feel because our emotional response is what actually drives our action. In the time we interact with money, if we feel like we’re not good enough or worthy of earning the money, or scared about it, all of that impacts the way we take action in our business and the way we utilise money as a tool to elevate our growth. Does that make sense?
Jen Waterson
Yeah it does make sense.
If I personally, I look at myself as a business owner, as a person whose quite good with how I handle my money and how I charge clients, all of that sort of stuff, I feel like I personally don’t have any money mindset issues, but really do I? How do I know if I don’t have money mindset issues? Or how do I know if I do have money mindset issues? What do we look for?
Christine Corcoran
No matter where you are in business, there’s always going to be blocks to go into the next stage of business so it’s like we have different elevations of money mindset. We can come from a place of complete scarcity where we’re fearful of money and believe that there’s not enough and we struggle with welcoming and keeping it in our lives. That’s from a place of overspending, avoiding looking at our finances, not setting goals when it comes to the money we want to earn, really struggling with speaking about money in our everyday life, speaking about it to our clients, charging our worth. That’s really low scarcity mindset when it comes to money.
Then, there’s different elevations of it, so depending on where you are and how you’re interacting with money, your money mindset blocks could be different, in the way that you may be stuck in a lot of scarcity but you could be stuck being fearful of being able to take it to the next level. That’s where the glass ceiling or threshold comes into play, so money mindset blocks are different for everyone but there are so many common blocks that keep us stuck.
As I mentioned, overspending or struggling to keep money in your life, it could be charging your worth, going past that next level of income, so you could be hitting 10k but really struggling to hit 15k per month, where you want to take it to the next level but you don’t know what’s actually stopping you, it feels like an invisible barrier that’s keeping you playing at the same level.
Jen Waterson
We have these people that we come in touch with in our lives who have got definite issues when it comes to money, as in ‘I don’t want to know about it’ ‘I don’t want to look at it’, and people out there are not looking at their financial position. It’s not that they don’t care about it but there is something stopping them from looking into it.
Christine Corcoran
Because there’s so many emotions attached to it. When it comes down to it, we think about our evolutionary fears and core needs, money is very connected to our need for shelter and survival because without money we can’t have good shelter or food and we can’t survive.
It’s not only connected to our evolutionary core needs, but it’s also connected, and this is one of things I help people work through, the self-worth element. We connect our money to our worth which isn’t supportive of our growth because if we’re valuing our selves based on how much money we have in the bank or how much money we’re earning, then we’re completely discounting so much else that comes into play when it comes to self-worth.
That’s why it’s such a struggle for so many people because they’re connecting it to their self-worth and there’s a lot of deep seeded money beliefs that are keeping us playing small or stuck based on our past experiences.
Jen Waterson
I guess that’s how it plays out when I see as an accountant and business consultant, I really do dig quite deep into people’s financial positions, never ever with any level of judgement and at the end of the day, every single business owner is operating their business differently and handling their finances differently, spending their money differently, but there are people that are spending money they don’t necessarily have and I guess that’s where that whole self-worth comes in, in that we need to be seen to be going on fancy holidays, driving the best car, be in the best house in the street, there are people that have those issues that can’t always necessarily back them up financially.
Is that a part of what you’re getting at there when you talk about self-worth?
Christine Corcoran
For sure, it’s because we’re measuring it based on society’s definition of success.
Who do we believe that we are, when we’re in a place in society where our expectations on ourselves of what it means to be successful, that’s where I have that correlation between you’ve got to have that car, we’re told about being happy when we have that 2.5 in the family and the big house and the flashy car and the international holidays. That is what’s deemed to be happy or successful.
We’re measuring it based on that and then we’re leveling up our self-worth compared to that which causes us to fall into such self-doubt and a detriment to our self-worth and belief because that’s not normal for a lot of people and when it comes down to happiness, is that truly what gives you happiness?
Jen Waterson
It’s such a big thing, behind closed doors you want to be happy with your life and if you’re feeling like you need those material things in order to be happy then perhaps it’s a case of maybe it’s time to start working through some of those money blocks and issues.
Christine Corcoran
Or it could also be that as we’re spending it, our beliefs run our behaviours and lives so if we have deep seeded beliefs around money being dirty or filthy, or more money equals more problems, or money doesn’t grow on trees, if we’ve ever had somebody in our lives, especially as children where we’ve been brought up in a house that judged people who had money, when we receive money in our everyday lives now, it means the more money I have I might be judged, there’s that concept in our brain because our sub-conscious mind is running everything, and then if we think ‘I have this money and my parents judged other people for having money when I was a kid, and I’m seen to have money now, what does that mean about me? If I’m judged will I be not loved?’.
This is the way our sub-conscious mind works, it’s easier for us to spend our money and get rid of it, then to hold onto it because that might mean we might lose love or be judged for having the money.
Jen Waterson
It’s really interesting when you dive into it and see where it comes from.
I know with my own children, who are nearly all adults now, I’ve spent a lot of time being really careful with the words I use around money, careful in so much as I don’t want them to blow their cash, I want them to save it. So far, two out of three, the third hasn’t quite got to that point yet, they’re very good with their money at this stage of their lives which is great because they do save it but they will also spend it when they need to.
The other thing I’m careful with when it comes to speaking to my children, is if somebody else is out there doing really well I will never knock them down. I feel as though that goes on a lot in households where people speak without thinking around their children and knock people down for having a fancy car or having a great house or spending money on the things they want.
I guess as parents we need to be very careful about the words we’re using.
Christine Corcoran
Absolutely because you’re literally shaping their money mindset and self-worth as they grow. They’re taking it on board because when we’re so young, especially between the ages of 0-7, we have an imprint phase where our brains are such sponges and taking on board everything our caregivers are talking to us about and sometimes it’s not even said aloud, it’s implied.
When I was young, there was a lot of talk about money but there was a stress to it. Anytime money was spoken about there was an energy around it being stressful. Then when we saw anybody else with a flashy new car or when you could see them spending money, there was an underlying judgement and it wasn’t necessarily outright judgement on the people but there was this tension and comparison that happened which then caused me to have that belief system around, well if you’re flashy with money you’re judged for it. That then caused a hesitation around me welcoming more money into my life because I was like if I have it and flash it around or use it to buy new things, I will be judged especially from the people I absolutely love. You don’t want to be judged by your family because that then feeds into your evolutionary belied systems and survival fears around them being extradited from your tribe.
It’s so deeply engrained in us and we don’t necessarily recognise it but I love you’re so conscious about it with your kids because the way that you then celebrate other people with money is so important and one of the biggest things my clients struggle with is comparison. When you can come from a place of pure abundance when you can see somebody else’s success in your life, if you’re able to see that for what it is, a representation of what’s available to you, then you’re welcoming more of it into your life, but if we judge it we’re basically saying it’s not something I can have and is coming from a place of scarcity where if they have it I can’t have it, which is actually not true.
Jen Waterson
When we talk then about translating that into business and what’s going to stop us from earning more money, is it really that abundance mindset, is that the answer there?
Christine Corcoran
Absolutely. When we’re in a place of scarcity we actually retract, you probably see this in some of your clients. When they’re in a place of scarcity, they’re worrying, they’re stressing about money, they’re really worried about where the next clients going to come from, when the next bills going to be paid, all of that type of scarcity.
You’ll see clients retracting and they’ll stop spending, remove certain expenses from their business and hold onto their money really tightly and that’s coming from a belief around there not being enough. When we shift it to a place of abundance and know that money is just a tool that we use, an energy for something we exchange with value, it’s available to us at all times and I know that seems kind of woo-woo but if you google how much money is circulated in the world every day, there’s like 17-19 trillion dollars that circulates the world every day.
There’s plenty of it out there. The part about being able to step into an abundant mindset is about shifting the focus off what’s available to you and expanding into a place of expansion rather than retracting because when we’re in a place of retracting, you end up stopping investing in your business and you hold onto the money, when it comes to growth you’ve got to invest in your business to grow. If you have that belief that there’s plenty of money and you’re able to spend the money where you know it’s going to be best placed and you’re doing from a place of neutral emotion, because back when you were talking about how we end up spending it on things we don’t necessarily need, if you’re making those calculated decisions on where you’re spending your money and it’s coming from a place of emotion where you’re trying to avoid emotion or buffe that emotion to make yourself feel good for some other reason then that’s still a place of scarcity.
We want to shift it to abundance to celebrate that there’s plenty of money in the world and it’s available to you and allow yourself to know and have faith that money will always come and it’s a tool you can use to grow your business, it’s not something coming from a place of lack.
Jen Waterson
If I was a person who suffered from this scarcity mindset and I wanted to shift to more of an abundant mindset, what steps do you take to switch that around? Is it just forcing a change in the way you think or what is it people do to actually change that?
Christine Corcoran
Yeah it definitely starts with that, so our thoughts drive our emotions. The first thing I would suggest you do is sit down and write down when you think about money what is everything that comes to the surface? All the negatives and positives because we want to unlock what are some of the belief systems keeping you stuck in that place of scarcity.
Some of the common ones are things like when you do what you love then you should it for free, and money doesn’t grow on trees, money is dirty, you have to work hard to earn money. All of those belief systems are very common from our past generations that have been handed down to us. Then, start recognising okay how would I like to think about money, we want to shift our focus to a place of abundance rather than scarcity and the reason we do that is because our brain has this filter called the reticular activating system and it will point out in your world what is important to you so you need to activate that in your brain.
The way I describe it is, if you think about the last time you bought a new car or were thinking about buying a new car, and you had this red Mazda in mind for instance, and as soon as you started thinking about that you’ve told your brain it’s really important, what happens from there is when you go out you start seeing this car everywhere all over the road, the cars were always there but because I hadn’t told my brain to recognise it, it kind of deleted it out of my visions but because I’ve now told it it’s important, it points it out all the time.
It kind of works the same with scarcity, if I’m in a headspace of there’s not enough, I don’t know where I’m going to get my next paying client from, you’re activating that reticular activating system and it’s looking for more scarcity in the world.
Jen Waterson
You’re not seeing the opportunities presenting themselves to you.
Christine Corcoran
Yeah those are being deleted from your vision, so you’re not noticing it so what you want to do is look for what can you be grateful for that’s already available to you and abundant. It doesn’t necessarily have to be money because it can difficult if you’re in a real scarcity space to look at the abundance and it might be just taking a moment each day to recognise what money already gives you. It gives you electricity, wifi, so starting to look at what money already gives you and finding gratitude for this. Start treating it more like a friend rather than this thing that causes you stress in your life.
Jen Waterson
I have a business coach that I used several years ago now, and he is an extremely successful business man and does not hold back in what it is that he spends his money on, I’m going to use the words flaunting it to the world, he doesn’t flaunt it, I can’t think of a better word to use right now, but he puts it out there and it plays on his branding, it’s part of his business to show I’m successful and I’m going to help you become successful as a business coach. I know for a fact that there’s so many people that can’t deal with the fact he puts himself out there, and is so freely spending money and ‘flaunting’ it. Some people can’t deal with it, I love to see what his doing with his money and see the fact he’s been able to grow his business so big and create an amazing lifestyle for him and his family, and some people just can’t deal with it.
Christine Corcoran
It triggers their own insecurity around money, money blocks and highlights to them that they don’t have what he has. Again, it comes from a place of scarcity, if we’re able to shift it the way you have and celebrate it. I love it as well, it’s something I’ve had to work on, it hasn’t come to me easily because I’ve worked through a lot of money mindset blocks to shift being from a place of scarcity and now being able to see someone else flaunt their money and get excited, that is a representation of what is available in the world to me.
It’s not what I can’t have, it’s like look what’s possible.
Jen Waterson
The things that this particular person has aren’t necessarily things that I want but I’ve got to tell you I just love seeing it, I love seeing somebody else’s success. To be able to in the background celebrate that with them is really exciting and is a nice thing to do as friends or business colleagues. I guess what it then does is, he then isn’t struggling to charge what he believes he is worth and that comes from that relationship he has with money, is the ability to be able to charge what he believes his worth.
I guess that would be a good conversation for us to jump into next, how is it that we can do that? How do we know what we’re worth for one, and then how do we go and have the guts to say now I’m going to charge what I’m worth?
Christine Corcoran
It’s a big challenge for a lot of people, especially if we’re in our own business and we are the person charging for our own services. We’re connecting it back to our self-worth and if we don’t value what we do, nobody else is going to value it, we have to value it first.
That’s where it comes down to valuing your worth and the value you add to your clients. Recognising that, if it’s a real struggle for you I would recommend working on your self-worth. What I mean by that is working out what you bring to the world, how you value your own service or products, and recognise the impact that has on the people you work with. I
I’m not talking about things like the daily impact, I’m talking about the long term impact and how that saves money, time, energy, effort, and starting to recognise that only you bring that to the world. There’s nobody else that can do it the way you do it and when you value it and believe in it, that’s when other people will believe in it too.
It’s a mix of that plus stepping into believing you’re worthy of earning money. One of the biggest blocks a lot of people struggle with is the belief that you have to work hard to earn money. I see this a lot with generation millennials, gen X, baby boomers because our older generations did actually have to work really hard to earn their money. We have to work through shifting that block because the flip side to that, what our brain does is if we have that belief system, it then deduces the opposite of it, if I’m not working hard, I don’t deserve money.
Jen Waterson
I think that is such a big thing, particularly going back to the previous generation, I know that my family comes from the place of you need to work hard to make the money and I never thought about it in the way that you don’t deserve it if you don’t work hard, but I guess that comes naturally with it, it’s an implication that’s there isn’t it?
Christine Corcoran
Absolutely and we don’t realise it, and this is something I’ve worked at myself too and I have a lot of clients that struggle with this because of that factor that they end up pushing going after the next thing trying to prove their worthiness.
Jen Waterson
Yeah and be heading to burn out.
Christine Corcoran
Then they’re over servicing and overdelivering and undercharging.
Jen Waterson
Yeah so that kind of makes me circle back to something else you just said before around focusing on the impact you’re having on people’s lives when it comes to setting pricing. I talk a lot about value pricing, I guess that’s where you’re coming from, looking at the value you’re providing to people in the long run. It’s not about the thing you’re going to deliver, or the project on its own, it’s about something bigger you’re providing to your clients and working out a way to value that.
I read a lot about value pricing and I know people struggle to come to terms with what value pricing is. I don’t know if you have any real advice as to how to value price, how to find that magic number to put on a project that you’re pricing?
Christine Corcoran
It’s interesting because I come from a place of understanding the mindset that you’ve got to believe in what you’re charging for you to have the certainty to come from a place that 100% believes it so your client knows the value is there.
We can work out the value of it, say we looked at someone’s business and said you should be charging x amount of money but they didn’t believe in it, it doesn’t matter because then they would go out and speak about it and people would hear the insecurity in their voice, they wouldn’t believe in it and they wouldn’t feel certain about making that investment.
So there’s that element but I believe in the long term impact of it. When I think about my perspective and my business mindset coaching, I’m working on someone’s mindset to help them be able to take action in their business in a way that they’ve never taken action before. When you try to quantify that into a figure, it’s pretty difficult because everyone’s business is different.
It’s more about what they believe the impact is going to have. Think about the things you’re not taking action on in your business now, if you were taking action then what result would that create in your business, how much money would you be earning, so they start to see the value from that place. I think people really struggle with it because there’s so many other factors that come into play because you’ve got to look at the market, what other people are charging but I always come back to the fact that the more you lean into your value and believe in what you’re offering, it also comes from action, going out there charging a certain amount, see the result it’s creating for your clients, see the long term impact, then it builds that confidence and the competency you have in the service or product to see the value.
Jen Waterson
That’s absolutely so important, to have confidence in your service or product, in yourself to deliver it and then it will come naturally to you to just keep slowly bumping those prices up and up until you get to the place where you feel it’s where you need to be.
Christine Corcoran
Yeah and then it’ll just keep happening from there.
I absolutely believe in that. I always like to suggest clients setting their prices on working out what’s in between like one you 100% believe in charging this amount, then go a little bit further that kind of makes you have the fear response to I better deliver to make you step up and be better at what you do.
Jen Waterson
That’s a good way to think about it.
I work with a lot of service based business, those types of people who at the end of the day are selling their time, one of the ways I work, mostly from a numbers perspective then pure mindset, this is where it’s a good mix, is I’ll take the facts around what it is they’re selling and providing, the facts around the number of hours it’s taking to deliver and we work out a calculation, a return on time. Sometimes if it turns out the return on time is $70 an hour, it’s an eye opener for some people that they cannot continue to work at that rate.
It’s about finding out where you’re standing at the moment in your business, what numbers are going to pop out the other end then it gives you a place to start from and you know what it is you’re getting for a return. But then, you couple that with the money mindset around increasing that pricing, that’s when you’re going to see the best results isn’t it?
Christine Corcoran
Yeah because it’s got to be sustainable, that’s why the numbers are so important right? Often people don’t consider the impact of looking at the numbers right from the get go and once you consider tax, you’ve got to start thinking from the place of if I continue to charge this at what point am I going to become resentful.
Jen Waterson
Absolutely, one of the things I often talk about is one, building yourself a sustainable business, so a sustainable business means it’s profitable, over a period of time you’re going to make enough money to build the lifestyle you want. It’s sustainable in that it’s making you the money you think you need. However, what is it doing to you from a personal perspective? Is it running you into the ground?
That’s where I then try to transition people from having a sustainable business into what I term an elegant business. Is your business giving you a level of elegance around the way you live your life? Are you working the hours you want to work or are you working until midnight every night? How elegant is your lifestyle because if it’s not something you’re happy with then it’s probably got something to do with the numbers in your business that are underlying your business model, the fact you’re not charging enough, or the fact you’re not doing things as well as you should be. Whatever it is, when you know what’s going on in the background, at least you can go and change it.
Christine Corcoran
I love that and I loved that episode about creating an elegant business model because it’s a perfect way to look at it because you’re no good to anybody if you’re so burnt out and become resentful to the fact you don’t feel valued because you’re not charging enough.
Jen Waterson
Absolutely. It’s no fun for anybody and you don’t want to be that person.
I understand that’s the way we tend to get in to business and that first couple of years can be the years that will give us that sustainable business, the business making money and got a future, I feel like we’re getting somewhere, but at some point you have to take a step back and say hang on is this going to give me the life I want.
Christine Corcoran
As you were saying that I was thinking about a client I was speaking to a couple of weeks ago and it was looking at what happened to you to be able to offer the service you offer?
When you come from a place of valuing what you bring to the table, it’s not just about the time versus money it’s about if people are paying you for your brain and your ability to look at their business and create some type of impact, change or result, they’re not just paying for time, they’re paying for the education you had to pay for and the time and energy you put into that situation, the experience you’ve been through, the lessons you’ve learnt along the way, the challenges you’ve been through to get where you are. All of the factors that come into play to get where you are today is what people are paying for, not just that time versus money.
Jen Waterson
Yeah, just because I can answer a question what you might see to be a difficult question and I can answer it in 30 minutes, does not mean I’m going to charge you 30 minutes’ worth of time. Same with you Christine, you’ve spent a lot of time, money, energy and have a lot of experience. Just because you can solve somebody’s problem in a one hour session, you shouldn’t necessarily be charging a one hour rate on that.
Christine Corcoran
It’s about the result and the impact that result has on you long term. I know that if I helped you overcome the fear of showing up on social media, and then you would be able to start showing up online and build confidence in your ability to do that, what impact is that going to have on your business? Huge. It’s about the impact and result you’re creating and it’s not just about that time.
Jen Waterson
Absolutely. It really has been an interesting conversation. I’ve got one more question here which I think is something that comes across us, I see it a lot in the businesses I work with, people as they increase their income, their profits increase, tell us about the money threshold that happens as people’s income increases.
Christine Corcoran
We all have a threshold of what we believe is a available to us that we believe we can earn. That may have been from past experiences where you’ve been paid from time and energy or effort, so let’s think back to what’s the most you’ve earnt in a job role before you started your business.
You may have that threshold where maybe you earnt 80-100k per year for a certain job and then you start your business and you push against that threshold, if you’ve only every earnt that amount of money sometimes we can have a threshold that stops us earning past that because there’s a certain level of fear stopping us because it’s coming from a place of the unknown.
Our brain is designed to keep us safe and the way it works is it filters our experiences we’re stepping into day to day based on the past. We’re always basically living from the past. As we step into a new experience, our brain goes have I experienced this before, and if the answer is no then our brain goes into a state of fear, then we can cause ourselves to sabotage our success from that place because it’s fearful not knowing what’s going to happen and if we’re going to be safe.
Jen Waterson
If you’re saying to me that our brain is designed to keep us safe then that comes back to our issues with value pricing as well. If I put a price on there that I think I’m worth, that I should I think I should be charging for a particular job and the client says no.
Christine Corcoran
Then you have to deal with the rejection and rejection is one of the biggest fears we have as a human being.
That comes into play with it as well. It’s always coming back to what we believe we’re worth for sure.
The other element that comes into play as well, which is kind of similar to the fear of the unknown, is a fear of success. A lot of women struggle with, more than men, what I mean by that is a lot of people think they have a fear of failure when truly they have a fear of success. When things start to work out, we sabotage it because of this fear of who we have to become or what that’s going to mean if we have more money. If we have limiting money beliefs about what money’s going to mean for me or who I have to be in the process of that, if people have been judged in the past for that, is it more money more problems and can I handle that?
We go into those fear states and the brain trying to keep us safe. We think about so let’s say the next level of income for you is earning 500 grand and you’ve never earnt that before, we then look at what are the fears keeping us playing at that level? What would it mean to earn 500k? What would it mean for your business or personal life and what worries you about that?
It could be you fear the implications, the tax or legal implications. There’s so much that goes into play there that we have never consciously thought about and are always keeping our brain in a state of fear. Sometimes just thinking about that threshold, and going okay what’s my threshold that I feel like I’m hitting the plateau at and what would it mean to go above that? And just write down everything that comes to mind. Get it all out of your head and write it all down.
Jen Waterson
I guess there are so many thoughts that could come along with that, like self-sabotage and that sort of thing. That’s what we’re doing when we’re making excuses. Are we making excuses for why we can’t take on the next job? I’m not really sure but is it that kind of thing?
Christine Corcoran
Yeah so we will sabotage it from happening because that helps us stay safe. It’s all a protection mechanism.
Sometimes we haven’t consciously thought about all those fears and so we’re going about our everyday life and sometimes we sabotage ourselves to keep ourselves safe because that creates certainty, so as we’re pushing against that unknown, what is the safest thing to do there? It’s to stay comfortable, safe and in our comfort zone. If we stay at this level I know exactly what happens with this amount of money I earn, I know how I go about my day, I know the impact.
Jen Waterson
You’ve got control over your life, your business and everything at a certain level, but then there’s this level of unknown. I’ve never really thought about it that way.
Christine Corcoran
The best way to shift it is to actually start writing the fears down and then writing what your action plan would be if that actually happened because the more certainty we create around it, and the more clarity we create around it, the less fear there is there.
Jen Waterson
That’s great advice, I love it.
When you work with your clients, tell us a little bit what it’s like to work with Christine. What do you do with these people?
Christine Corcoran
I work with clients majority one on one over zoom or in person depending on where you live, I’m in Brisbane. I have clients all over the country so we do most of our sessions on zoom. We’re really looking at having great conversations to be able to unlock whatever is holding you back and then I use different mindset processes to be able to shift those belief systems at a sub-conscious level.
We’re doing the deep inner work and if you’ve never experienced it before, it’s literally like magic I can’t explain it in any other way. We’re unpacking and unlocking and rewiring the brain to believe a different perception.
It’s shifting these blocks and say we have a belief system around we have to work hard to earn money, and we realise it’s causing you to burn out and causing you to try and prove your worthiness every time you charge whatever it is you charge in your business. We actually do some mind set processes where we shift that belief system so your brain doesn’t have the ability to have that thought into a mindset of when I work hard I deserve a lot and when I actually create a beautiful result and add value to someone’s life, money comes my way.
We shift belief systems throughout different processes I use and as a qualified master coach, I use NLP processes which is neural linguistic processing, I use matrix processes, em-braining which creating an internal alignment with our thoughts, emotions and actions so we can start to take action in the places of our business we’ve been avoiding in the past.
Jen Waterson
Yeah great, that’s a lot of big words there and a lot of fancy sounding stuff but I can tell you Christine that I have been working with business owners for a long time and there are a lot of people out there that are in way or another, struggling to increase what they’re worth and struggling to come to terms that their financial position isn’t as good as what they want it to be, struggling to come to terms that they need to make more money but don’t know how, even if you give them the how, they’re still not going that extra step and doing it.
I guess that’s where these conversations start to step into their importance.
Christine Corcoran
That’s exactly where I play, if you already know what you should be doing but you’re not doing it, then you know it’s mindset keeping you back.
Jen Waterson
Well I have really enjoyed our conversation and I really was scared to start. I don’t know anything about this sort of thing, it’s not that I don’t want to know anything about it, it’s just that I personally tend to stick to my lane in my business and I think we all have different strengths and weaknesses and I think we give people the best help and advice when we do stick to our lanes, whereas I think there’s a lot of business coaches and consultants out there that really do try to do everything all at once and it can kind of water it down a little bit.
Christine Corcoran
Yeah I agree I’m so fascinated with why we do what we do and as human beings we’re just doing the best we can with what we’ve got. So you’re giving them this amazing strategy and helping them really look at their numbers and I come in on the other side of things and help them go well you know all this stuff but why aren’t you helping them take action on it and lets unlock and unpack that so we can shift that and start taking action, believing in yourself and have the confidence to show up for yourself, and then it all just happens from there.
I think about as you were saying, one of my clients came to me because she was in that place where she was worried to increase her prices, she was really worried about where the money was going to come from if her business was going to exist after Covid, she was freaking out about all of that.
What I love about what I do is that it’s so gentle in the way that it’s not scary even though you said you were worried about what I was going to bring up, she even said to me a couple of weeks ago, I just don’t have those fears anymore, I just don’t worry about money anymore. Last week her fridge died and she was like previously I would have freaked out and have gone into a spiral of fear and self-doubt and think where am I going to find that money and make it back, but now I was like I’ve got that cool let’s go buy a fridge and get one that I love. She’s coming from a completely different place and she now knows that her business can absolutely be sustainable and I know there are so many options they can have because she’s got the confidence to back herself.
Jen Waterson
That’s a great story and it’s something that people struggle with everywhere one way or another.
Thank you so much for this great conversation, I’ve really enjoyed having a chat with you, you’ve been so helpful. I know you would’ve helped lots of listeners out there. There’s are a lot of us that kind of know a little bit about mindset, may know a lot about it, may read about it, I don’t but I do appreciate the ideas and the fact that there is a problem out there with everybody, we’ve all got our issues one way or another and if we can sort them out sooner rather than later it means we get to grow our businesses and enjoy our lifestyle sooner rather than later.
Christine Corcoran
Absolutely, I totally agree. Thank you so much for the conversation too.
Jen Waterson
Tell us Christine, where can people catch up with you if they wanted to find you or check out what you’re doing in a little bit more depth?
Christine Corcoran
I hang out most on Instagram @christinecoporate_coach if you’ve listened to this podcast, I would love to hear what you’ve taken away from it so make sure you jump into my DMs and send me a message, I would love to hear from you because it’s so hard when we record these and put them out because we never know who listens to them. It’s always nice to hear from people.
I also have my own podcast, called the Next Level Life Podcast and I dive into all mindset blocks on such a deeper level. If you feel like you need support with that you can head there otherwise my website is Christinecorcoran.com.au
Jen Waterson
Perfect, well thank you so much for joining us and wherever you are in the world, wherever you’re listening from, I hope you have a fantastic week and we shall talk again soon.
