Make your money problems disappear with Brie Sodano
On today’s episode of Just the Tips, Dean and I pull your head out of the sand and make you think about the one thing no entrepreneur likes to consider: Money. And to do that, we have Brie Sodano on the show. Brie is a financial adviser and founder of From Sheep to Shark. Her goal is to help a million women manage their money and offer real-life advice that doesn’t come from a handbook. Brie has a great story and great advice. If you’re still struggling with money even if your income is rising, you need to listen to this week’s episode.
Learning money management “on the job”
Brie and her husband had a kid young, and by 23 she found herself a mom and a homeowner, with a husband who was an EMT. So managing the household budget became a matter of necessity. She then got into work at a nonprofit and realized that while she loved the work, she wasn’t making any money. So she taught herself how to trade stock options as a side hustle. And when it came time for the next thing, she realized that financial planning was the way to go. Her story will resonate with a lot of listeners, and if you listen to this episode, you can hear Brie’s advice for how life is really lived.
How to get out of your financial comfort zone
As Brie says on this week’s episode of Just the Tips, sometimes more income doesn’t actually change how we handle our money. Whether it’s habits you learned growing up or when you were struggling, it’s sometimes difficult to break out of our mindset around money. For instance, if you’re able to balance your income with your expenses, sometimes if your income goes up, your expenses do, too, because you’re not used to having the “extra” money. Brie works with clients all the time to get them out of those old habits, and walks listeners through one of the exercises she conducts to break you out of that mindset.
Why budgets don’t work
Brie works with clients for six months to tackle their financial problems, and the first thing she does is help them wrangle their cash flow. The first thing she does is get people out of thinking about “budgets.” It’s very difficult to think about your budget written on a piece of paper at home when you’re at Target buying toilet paper. So Brie came up with something called the “invisible method” to help people manage their cash flow without having to think about it at every step. And the first step is to create five bank accounts. Five. Why? Listen to this week’s Just the Tips to find out.
Entrepreneurs: Keep it clean
Brie works with a wide variety of clients, but she specifically works with entrepreneurs, too, on straightening out their finances. And as she says on this episode of Just the Tips: You have to keep it clean. You have to keep your personal finances separate from your business finances. That can be a very difficult thing to do, but Brie has been doing this a long time, and has great ideas for how entrepreneurs can achieve financial “cleanliness.” Sound like something you could use help with? Listen to this week’s Just the Tips.
Outline of This Episode
- [3:45] How Brie got into helping people with money
- [5:44] What Brie learned as a financial planner
- [6:55] Why people get into financial troubles
- [8:46] How to break out of old habits
- [12:12] Why budgets don’t work
- [19:14] What about credit cards
- [24:05] Entrepreneurs who need help with money
- [26:08] Brie’s Sheep to Shark system
Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
