1727 – How To Have A Better Relationship With Money with Ellen Rogin

Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now, it's abundance activist Ellen Rogin. Ellen, you were found on the web at Ellen Rogin. Com rogue I an Ellen it's great to have you here.

Ellen (00:01:11) - I'm so excited to be here with you. Thank you.

Josh (00:01:13) - You bet. I should also point out you're a podcaster. Please share with us kind of like what you're known for, what you do in the world.

Josh (00:01:20) - And don't forget to talk about the podcast because someone listening to this conversation is just a couple of clicks away from from joining you there.

Ellen (00:01:27) - Yeah, great. So for most of my professional career, I was a traditional financial advisor, and what I realized that really lit me up was how people think about money, how they think about success, how you can use your mind as a tool for getting more of what you want. And so I sold that business about five years ago, and now I'm out there speaking, writing, teaching and concepts about how to make have a better relationship with your money, especially in your business.

Josh (00:01:59) - Yeah. Oh, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful you're here. By the way, my. I come from the money nerd world myself. That was my last company, Savings Angel. So I was more on the consumer side of things, you know, helping people save money and that sort of thing. But I love this. Okay. So I've got a lot of questions.

Josh (00:02:18) - All right. So the very first thing I want to talk about is what are your observations when it comes to working with founders or leaders and things like cash flow and like just kind of like how that impacts them emotionally?

Ellen (00:02:34) - Well, I'm glad you mentioned the word emotionally, Josh, because I want to really start there. And that's the fascinating thing to me is about how what we think about makes such a big difference in our results. And it is on the personal side. That's where I spent 28 years, and I'm also a business owner, work with a lot of financial advisors and other kind of conscious businesses, knowing that what we think and say to ourselves about our business, our success, our team makes all the difference in the world. And what I've seen is that people can lean more on the scarcity side of thinking of things or more on the abundance side. And I'd like to define that a little bit because some of you may have heard of that before. But in general, scarcity is when we're worried about things.

Ellen (00:03:22) - It's very fear based. It's aggressive competition. Like for me to win, you have to lose. There's only so much business to go around versus the Abundance side, which is about collaboration. It's about generosity and optimism. One of the metaphors I found super helpful with this Josh is going with the current or against the current. So my husband Steven has done an Ironman competition and I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. You look.

Josh (00:03:53) - Oh, yeah.

Ellen (00:03:54) - Yeah.

Josh (00:03:54) - So I saw the one. I saw the one in Maui or the big Island, in fact. Yeah. It was, was there for that. That, that is a Oh.

Ellen (00:04:02) - You saw it in person. Yeah. Right. So if you're not familiar, it's like a triathlon on steroids. It's like a two point something mile swim and 100 and I think it's 12 mile bike ride and then you run a marathon. So Steven did this and he is a good swimmer, but he ended up doing phenomenally well for his age group in the swim.

Ellen (00:04:25) - And part of the reason was that they were swimming in the Ohio River with the current. And so what can happen with us in business and how we think about money is if we go with the current, which is abundance thinking, things are just easier, they flow and we can go against the current, which is more abundant scarcity thinking. And it's just harder now. I'm sure you know, people that have made a lot of money maybe had businesses that seem successful, but they're jerks or people don't want to work with them. And so it doesn't mean you can't make money going against the current. It just sucks. Like, why would you want to? And so I'm all about like, let's figure out ways that you can feel like you're flowing, making a difference, having people want to be on your team and work with you and have people referring to you. And that's the energy of going with the current.

Josh (00:05:21) - You know, and so talk about and you know, it's interesting that you're from the Midwest as well.

Josh (00:05:28) - So that's my background. And I think that there are some maybe unique things that that I think might be more pronounced. You know, I grew up kind of poor working class, and there was just this idea, you know, a lot of conflicting messages about money. And I and I would be naive if I said that that still doesn't affect me today. Right. And a lot of it, I think, comes down to, you know, my worth. And if I just work harder than I will be able to work my way out of any problem or challenge. Right. And, you know, this idea of like, you know, there's always this equitable. You put in eight hours, you get eight, you know, the permits, you know the value that's equal with that, those those are some of the things that I know that that I heard growing up. And I still, you know, think kind of rest with me. What observations do you see and maybe not just necessarily about Midwest, but maybe things that you see quite often amongst type A, highly self-motivated, highly driven leaders?

Ellen (00:06:32) - Yeah.

Ellen (00:06:33) - So the fact that you said like you saw and heard this growing up is really fundamental to this, because what we hear and see when we're little, itty bitty people has such an impact on how we relate to things. Growing up. It could be that it wasn't just like your parents said, Josh, You got to work really hard and that's how you make money. Maybe they did say that or maybe you saw them doing that. And it's often what we see versus what our parents tell us. And it's very common. And I don't know if it's just a midwest thing for many people to think like it has to be hard, it has to be hard to be successful. And yet we all see people who have beautiful lives there. They have a beautiful balance between work and family and relations chips and and it doesn't feel hard for them. So the I think the most important part of this conversation is to know what it is that's operating in the background. And most of the time we are unconscious to that.

Ellen (00:07:39) - These tapes playing in the background, it could be money is really scary. I'm not going to be okay. It could be the belief there's always got to be a way so they're not all negative. Right. And having the belief like one thing I heard you say is, well, if I just do this, if I work really hard, it'll work out. So part of that is probably pretty helpful for you as long as you're putting the energy in the right place and it's working for you. So one of the things I think is a helpful tool for people is to think back about what was money like growing up in your household? I recently spoke with someone who thought they had zero money growing up. They barely had new clothes, but they went to this fancy school. It turned out there was tons of money, but their step mom was afraid to spend it. And then other people who grow up thinking, Oh, there's so much. And they run into all sorts of debt because they never saw any constraints on money.

Ellen (00:08:37) - So this is a bigger deal than I think most financial advisors are. Most business consultants even focus on because if you don't have the beliefs right, it's like the roots of the tree. If the ground is poisoned and the roots aren't strong, it's really hard to grow the fruit that you want out of your business.

Josh (00:08:57) - You know, another thing, you know, just kind of thinking about, you know, maybe emotional things that I've experienced in the past. You know, we, you know, for for our companies to you know, we've we've had business loans and we've, you know, the lines of credit that we've used and and those ended up being very successful moves. But that doesn't mean that I didn't feel a lot of weight from this concept of debt. Right. So there's you know, there's consumptive debt and there's productive debt. And, you know, and sometimes, you know, when we look at this, oh, my gosh, I'm on the hook for XYZ. Well, yeah, but you wouldn't even have a company if you didn't, you know, put some risk out there.

Josh (00:09:36) - Right. Can you talk maybe about the, you know, that that relationship with potentially productive debt and you know, how that factors into, you know, SMB, you know, business growth and ownership?

Ellen (00:09:49) - Well, it is important. There's a there is you just said there's a difference between investing in your company and just spending irresponsibly and and investment investment kind of debt can be really helpful. It's also really helpful to understand what the implications are because coming from a background as a CPA and a certified financial planner, it was shocking to me because money like that, numbers side of things just came easy to me how some people don't actually understand how that works. So if you are making a decision to get like a working capital loan or borrowing money for your business, it is important to have a plan to know like, okay, what are the payments going to need to be? Are the interest rates locked in? Are they going to go up? What does that mean? So that it isn't more that it isn't stressful? You're seeing yourself investing in your business versus something that you don't understand.

Ellen (00:10:42) - And for many people it can be a wonderful if we just think about like taking a mortgage on on your home. For most people, that's how they build up equity in their home. And it's a very similar thing to your business. If the loan is too big and you can't afford to pay it, you're going to get yourself in a hole. It's really hard to get out of.

Josh (00:11:01) - Yeah. And then, you know, another observation that I know that I've had is not every CFP speaks entrepreneur and and I'm grateful that you have, you know, some some connection to that. What what advice might a typical CFP provide that maybe someone who truly understands entrepreneurial and business ownership and some of those some of those nuances or ups and downs or the inconsistency, you know, like, hey, how come you only paid yourself $1,000 this month and $8,000 the next month? What what's going on there? That's not, you know, the kind of the job CFP, like what, you know, might be a little freaked out by that.

Josh (00:11:45) - Just as an example of like one thing that might come up.

Ellen (00:11:49) - Yeah. Well, actually, if you're working with a financial advisor, many times they are in their own business. So I'm hoping they speak some language of entrepreneurship. It might be that you have the type of business that they can't totally relate to. Like I worked with more self employed people than I did. A business owner with hundreds of employees didn't have any clients like that. That wasn't my market. So some of it might be that if you're choosing a financial advisor or an accountant or someone else that's helping you on the financial side, you want to make sure there's a really good fit there, that you aren't necessarily their biggest client or their smallest client, and that there is some alignment so that you can get the kind of advice that you most need from them. And yeah, and finding that person is like finding the right specialist for health care. You want to make sure you feel comfortable with them, that they know it, that you're confident, they know what you're doing and that there is a good fit for you.

Josh (00:12:49) - Yeah. And are there any resources that you'd recommend? Books, maybe something that you've created that would be helpful for this? I don't know. Just finding peace with money or maybe, you know, questions that we can ask ourselves so we can get a little bit, a little bit more introspective about our relationship with money. Because as you mentioned, listen, this this impacts your operations, this impacts your sales. This impacts pretty much everything. Your relationship to money is impacting way more in your business. This is my belief then you probably are aware of. This is big, important stuff.

Ellen (00:13:28) - Yeah, well, thank you. And I agree. I'm going to go a little self-promotional for a second because around the time this is coming out, my third book is about to be launched. It's called Messages for Money How to Stress Less, Prosper More and Reshape Your Relationship with Money. And it's a lot about the internal work that we do. My last book, Picture Your Prosperity, which I think is really a really good book, is a little bit more on the personal side of things, but it delves into how we think about money.

Ellen (00:14:01) - And as you actually create a visual financial plan. So that's one resource. And another thing in this sounds this is a little bit super micro tactical, but I think it's one of the most important things I ever did as a business owner. Doesn't seem directly related to your money, but I'm a huge believer in mindfulness and meditation because that how we started this conversation, like what you think and say to yourself about money. You can't hear that if there's always like all this constant noise happening. So to settle things down and take even many breaks of three breaths. To. It's like letting the snow globe settle so that you can hear what's actually happening in there is one of the best things that I've ever done.

Josh (00:14:51) - I agree with you. And I think sometimes our brains, at least I could speak for my brain, my brain, when there's something challenging or stressful, my brain immediately wants to go into action mode or fix it mode and not even to take the time to be still and to kind of reflect and some of these things that are probably going to provide, you know, a little less frenetic energy for certainly, you know, which is I agree is pretty helpful.

Ellen (00:15:23) - Yeah. And I'd want to recommend another book. There's a book called Brain on by Deb Smolinski, and it's all about how to have your brain be the most effective it can at work. And she talks about exactly what you just said, that the way our brains are structured when we're stressed out or worried, the amygdala, our flight fight, flight or freeze response is activated. And sometimes that can be helpful for us. And often it keeps us from being able to access the more creative, more thinking parts of our brain. And so to have tools like meditation, like walking in nature, like just taking a break from your day nose down, working all the time is really hard to be creative. And there's lots of great tools in that book as well. And it is is Deb says It's one of our best tools that no one even pays attention to. Are you maximizing and and and appreciating the use of your brain during your workday?

Josh (00:16:25) - Yeah. Thank you so much for that book recommendation. By the way, I want to just point out, Alan, if someone goes and obviously go to your website Alan Rogin.

Josh (00:16:36) - Com click on at the very bottom you'll see a link to your LinkedIn and on your looks like you did a live stream with Deb. That is probably going to be a really great conversation. I see it playing right now in your LinkedIn stream, so if you want to kind of preview the topic in detail before engaging with the book, Deb or Ellen, that's that's a great place to to watch that conversation. Looks like you're you're a fantastic host. All right. From here, someone's been listening to our conversation. They know that they need to have a conversation with you. What are those ways that you engage with people and what might be some great doorways into those engagement paths?

Ellen (00:17:20) - Yeah, I would love the opportunity to do that. Certainly you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I do do the only work I do with individuals right now on the kind of money side of thing is I do what are called messages from money, where I work with people to help them clear money blocks that they may have.

Ellen (00:17:39) - I do a lot of speaking and writing. If you go to Ellen Rogin com, you can find out all sorts of things about my programs and my books. And if you go to Ellen Rogin. Com forward slash goodies there's a special free resources that I have for your listeners Josh And you would get a copy, a free copy of my first book Great With Money, which is a great book, Simple, Easy talks about this process and then also some other resources on mindfulness and ways to just have a better relationship with your money.

Josh (00:18:15) - Yeah, Awesome. All right, Ellen Rogin, your website, Ellen Rogin, the hub to all things Ellen, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for for joining us today.

Ellen (00:18:27) - Thank you. Josh, I'm so grateful for being here.

Josh (00:18:36) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up My Influence slash guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free.

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