Your business finances mirror your personal finances.
Taunya Woods Richardson learned that the hard way. She is not your typical finance personality.
She didn’t get to where she is by belittling startups on national television. She didn’t create a pop-culture money-management app, and never wrote a best-selling book.
What she does have in common with the money gurus of the world is knowledge. The kind that comes with 30 years of training, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs to build better, stronger, healthier, and profitable companies.
She knows what it takes to turn a profit in business and how to build the inner-strength and confidence needed to see you through any situation a business can throw at you.
Taunya is the founding partner of Epifany Financial Group and the architect of several proprietary financial frameworks. She is one of a small and distinguished group of specialists emerging in the field of behavioural finance. Taunya is applauded for her innovative and refreshingly pragmatic approach to inspiring money mastery among Canadian entrepreneurs through eliminating financial obstacles.
During this interview, you'll discover...
What is your motivation
What are you willing to change and why
What are the consequences of not changing
To find out more about Taunya, visit here.
For her LinkedIn page, check out this link.
For her Twitter page, go here.
For her Instagram page, view this link.
Michael Palmer: 01:04 Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper podcast. I'm your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be a great one. Our guest is one of a small and distinguished group of specialists emerging in the field of behavioral finance. She is applauded for innovative and refreshingly pragmatic approach to inspiring money mastery among Canadian entrepreneurs. Hmm. I'm getting excited about this one. Combined with three decades of entrepreneurship experience. She possesses the unique ability to embolden and equip entrepreneurs with insight, understanding, and actionable change strategies to mold their financial futures with purpose and intention. Taunya, welcome to the podcast.
Taunya Woods Richardson: 01:49 Thanks Mike. I'm super excited, super excited to do this and yet so, so thrilled for the invitation to be here.
MP: 01:56 Well, you know, you spoke at a conference recently and one of our listeners came up and said, oh my goodness, I've just watched the most amazing presentation. I think this presentation has changed my life. And I said, well that's really interesting. And I, I asked, well what was her name? And they told me her name and I wrote it down on a piece of paper cause I thought, wow, wouldn't it be great to have you on the podcast? And then sure enough you came and found me and we were having this conversation and all of a sudden I said, wait a second, you're the lady who did this amazing presentation about money and finance and you just blew them away. So I'm so excited and it's our privilege to have you.
TWR: 02:36 Okay. Well yeah, thanks again. And you know, I love that example cause it's, it's really a perfect example of the matrix, which I hope we're going to talk about and explore a little bit today. But it's an example of the matrix that work where things just, you know, things just show up exactly as they're supposed to. So
MP: 02:54 I love the conversation. I love the conversation now before we get into all of the amazing things you've been working on for three decades helping entrepreneurs, which I just love that, I'm so excited about that piece. Uh, and our listeners I'm sure are as well. But before we do that, tell us a little bit about your business journey leading up to this point.
TWR: 03:13 Yeah. Well in a nutshell, I call it the three, the three epiphany's cause there were three Epiphanes that brought me to this space. In short, I'll say that I started my first business when I was 18. Entrepreneurship was a dirty word. I was in the middle of university taking economics. By the way. I never finished university, never got the degree. But in the middle of that process, I decided to start up the catering business and grew it and grew up quite successfully. Ended up selling it when I was 24. And that experience, I succeeded despite myself. I knew nothing about business per say, running a business. We certainly did not teach entrepreneurship in university at that time. And like I was saying, it was, it was frowned upon to actually go out, take the risk risk at all, you know, start the business, whatnot. So 24, I ended up selling it, got into practice development with law firms.
TWR: 04:04 And then, uh, you know, the small little unique opportunity came along to work with a startup called Bell Canada. And it was actually bells starting up in western Canada and I was employee number two. And that was kind of my foray into the startup experience. And despite the budgets, it's, it's a very, very similar process, um, and experience. So it was this clandestine operation. Nobody was supposed to know about it until we could hit 52 million and validate that we could actually, you know, succeed in, in western Canada. So phenomenal experience that was bell and then went onto to work with Shaw cable doing a very similar thing doing their startup division for their broadband area across North America. And then I was laid off and that actually brought me right back to, okay, I need to get back into business again. So at that point I decided to get into the area of practice development for professional service firms.
TWR: 04:59 I was working in Calgary, she say I have lived on with the everywhere across Canada and explored entrepreneurship in almost every province with the exception of five Manitoba in the east coast. But it was that experience doing the professional development piece on my own that really brought me into the pain points of entrepreneurship and thinking, God, they make it look so easy. And they paint this amazing story about how great it is to be an entrepreneur and have your own schedule and you know, run your own budget and all that sort of stuff. But unfortunately, that was not my experience. I was having a really challenging time motivating myself, understanding the financial piece of it and all of that spearheaded me into another business called powerhouse international, which was a support system for business owners. It was a concept that built advisory boards for small can be medium-sized business owners.
TWR: 05:51 Understanding that if we had support around us, an expertise around us that were somewhat people somewhat in the overall outcome of the business, that our chances of success are going to be far greater. So that was an interesting experience for me because it was getting a lot of attention. I was getting a lot of attention because I was a young female entrepreneur at the time where it was, you know, entrepreneurship was slowly starting to get on people's radar. This was probably early 2000 it was 2002 actually it was a year after nine 11 and I was getting a lot of media requests and people were like, wow, this is amazing what you're doing. You're such an inspiration. You are inspiring. Not only you know, young women to start up businesses but other men and you know the support group. And the reality of it was that I was, I was dying a slow death behind the curtain.
TWR: 06:40 I hadn't paid myself for a couple of years. I was putting payroll on credit cards and I felt this, this need to, to, to live up to these expectations that others had put on me. And so I felt even more compelled to keep my secret a secret. And all of this led me to my first epiphany in 2008 so I managed to keep that business afloat without paying myself. You can imagine. I actually even sold my house and put the equity of the house in the business because I thought if I'm making this much money, surely the answer, the solution has to be right around the next corner. It's just gotta be there. I was robbing to be robbing Peter to pay Paul borrowing money, raising capital, just to pay back existing debt. It was awful. It was awful, awful experience. Meanwhile, trying to put the smile on in front of everybody.
TWR: 07:28 2008 hits, economic downturn. I had met now my ex-partner, but met my husband at the time. He was also an entrepreneur. He had just come through a stage for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, 2% chance of living. His business was going under. He had a motorcycle at dealership that was a Ducati dealership and you know, millions of dollars in debt. We just found out that we were pregnant expecting our first child, Sophie and my business went insolvent and the epiphany for me in that moment, because my husband to physics engineer, so no Slouch, brilliant man, but we just were not taught about money. We did not know how to manage this money properly. And in all honesty, people's, the entrepreneurs, your business finances for those that are listening, your business finances or mirroring your personal finances, guaranteed how you manage your money at home is going to be a direct reflection of how your money is managed in business.
TWR: 08:31 So we weren't taught how to manage our money at home. It was a mess. And so our businesses were a mess. Mine, in particular, the revenue model never worked from the very beginning. It just never worked. And so the epiphany there for me was that you are going to pay the price, the ultimate price of the decisions that you make. You can't abdicate your finances. You can't give it to the bookkeepers. Hello bookkeepers. You can't give it to the accountant. The bookkeepers are there to enter the data. The accountants are there in most cases to mitigate your, your tax expenses and to file your annual returns. It's up to you to make the decision. So that was my first epiphany and that really back in 2008 got me started on, well not started, but it really focused my attention on financially empowering entrepreneurs because of the, and it depends what stat you're listening to, but if, if your, if you're picking up on the stat of sole proprietorship and Canadian companies that have no registered employees, 98% of us are not going to make it past the first year.
TWR: 09:38 And a study commissioned by the government showed, proved to us that 71% of those failures are because of poor financial management. So the whole idea of financial empowerment was to wake entrepreneurs up to the fact that you need to start understanding your money and you need to start managing it and you making the decisions, taking ownership of it because no one's gonna, no one pays the price except for you. So that was epiphany number one. A lot of pain involved with that one. So that one was a big one and that started my journey onto, it's a money management and financial empowerment. And then in 2013 I was sitting at my kitchen island and I had actually just started up Neal the numbers, which is the speakers bureau for financial topics for Canadian entrepreneurs sitting at my island. And if I didn't slap myself in the forehead, I thought, oh my God, I'm doing it again.
TWR: 10:34 I'm doing it again. I'm going into my savings account to get money out to start up this business. Everyone's getting paid except for me. The pros are getting paid, the hosts are getting paid, the entrepreneurs are getting the, you know, the, the value and content out of the bootcamps. And I'm putting everything on the line uncompromising everything. Yet again, after I've lived through an insolvency and here I am doing this again, like what the heck is wrong with me? So that then was my pivot point number two in epiphany number two, which got me into this whole world of behavioral finance and neuroeconomics and really just understanding our mind on money because you can give tools both the Wazoo, but at the end of the day it's our beliefs and our opinions and our attitudes and really our habits that are really driving our results. So you know, whatever showing up for you today, whatever's in your bank account, whatever cra is giving you a call with all of that stuff, your credit card debt, whatever it is right now, that current situation that you're experiencing is simply a reflection of all your past decisions.
TWR: 11:43 And all the decisions come from the come from the head there. They all come from the mind. So that was my, that was my second turning point. And so for the last, you know, four, I've been working with people to get them to understand their mindset because a lot of what we do is subconscious and we're just not even aware of it. So once we become aware of it, then we can heal it. And then my third epiphany was, you know, understanding the motive. And that's still a work in progress for me, but it is understanding that you really master our money. We need one piece management, one piece mindset and the other pieces, motives. And when I first started understanding motive, I originally thought it was, oh we need to understand what we want to acquire. You know, when our financial world kind of aligned.
TWR: 12:28 So when you start making the money that we're looking to make, what's that going to mean for us? Right? What can we buy? Where can we travel? You know, what car we drive? And really kind of getting excited about that. That was my first understanding. My second understanding then was it is a little bit about the what. The next question is the why. You know, why is that important to you? And, and it's that, you know, it's the Simon Sinek. It's stay, you know, figure out your why and everything starts to align. So when I'm working with people in the Y, it's, it's about understanding, you know, w why is that important for you? Why is the house important for you? What does that fuel for you? Why is having, you know, $20,000 in a savings account important for you? Tell me the why. And then the third piece of that is the where and it's, you've got to find it now.
TWR: 13:13 So the big epiphany for me in all of this, when I was going through my own counseling, was that I realized that, oh, I thought success was always just around the corner. I literally, I remember the words to my counselor, or I can feel it. It's so close. It's just, it's like, it's just, it's right there. I can see it, I can feel it, I can taste it. And then the counselor said to me, how long have you been feeling like that? I went, it's been decades of feeling that it's right around the next corner. So that was the holy crap. We have to, we have to feel it in the now. And it's that whole thing about appreciation and gratitude, but you have to find it now. Um, and you know, I'll give you some examples later on on this batch. It's those three pieces which actually lead you to the motivation piece. So I'm, you know, again, it's, for me it's this money management piece is one part motive, one part mindset, sorry, one part management, one part mindset and one part motive. And they all have to come together. You've got to work
TWR: 14:19 the mall, which, which takes consciousness. So
TWR: 14:31 that's a, that's a lot, sorry, that's a whole podcast right there, isn't it? It's just the beginning I think. But you know, what I'm hearing and all of that is, is, is such a, such a huge opportunity for our listeners because they're there. They're the ones that are seeing this play out again and again and again in their clients. I mean obviously going to have great clients that have already, you know, maybe they'd been born into having all this stuff sorted out in their lives. But then the majority don't you? You gave the numbers, right. There is a lot of people out there that are waking up at three o'clock in the morning worrying about how they're going to make it through the tomorrow and bookkeeper see that they're the ones, right. They're seeing it happen. A hate seeing it unfold. And so I think that the opportunity for them is to listen to how they can support their clients in, in getting away from that, moving towards a life where, and we'll get to start to discover that with you.
TWR: 15:28 What, what is that right? You say like this whole concept of success is just around the corner. I'm an entrepreneur myself. I've been living this, my, my story. I find lots of commonalities in there. And I said, you know, some entrepreneurs fail after the first year. I'm like, those are the lucky ones. You know? Because if you're struggling and going through the struggle, it's not easy to, to do, especially in small business, to grow a small business, to take care of customers, to make sure the finances are handled, to invent what's gonna make. The next thing come around and, and work better for all, all aspects of the business. And then at the same time keep up with the pace of change in the world. And so there's no easy task. I mean, I go to the, I go to the amusement park, we have a, a big amusement park close by called Canada's wonderland. And I look at the, I'm not a big fan of roller coasters and I look at the roller crystals. I think I live on that every day. It's like that's the journey of the entrepreneur. It's like highs and lows and uh, you know, it's hard on the body. It's hard on the body.
MP: 16:34 Yeah. And I think so I think that's a piece of this matrix though, is that it doesn't need to be like that.
TWR: 16:41 That's right. Right.
TWR: 16:41 That that is not the intention of life. The intentional life is not to be riding this stressful roller coaster. We're supposed to be having adventure and fun along the way. But I think when you finally get into the, you know, I described the matrix is like the sweet spot, the sweet fun. If you can imagine, you know somebody's itching your back and them getting just that perfect spot where whatever that feeling is, however you describe it, and that's a big challenge with our English language is sometimes we just don't have the words to describe what that feels like, but that's what the matrix is all about. It isn't. It doesn't need to be hard. It doesn't need to be stressful. It's actually supposed to be quite joyous and adventurous and fun, right? That's what this is all supposed to be about, but that's what I loved about the conference with the bookkeepers because when I'm speaking to entrepreneurs about numbers, it's like pulling teeth to get people out to a financial bootcamp to start off with.
TWR: 17:41 There's so much resistance to numbers and to math and really believe it or not to money. There's fear and anxiety dread for most people right there. They're, they're not looking at the numbers. They're afraid to look at the bank account balance. They just don't want to see the reality. That's why I loved about speaking to the two bookkeepers because the resistance is gone. Right. Bookkeepers for all of you listening, you get numbers, you understand the power of numbers, you understand how they move, how they flow, the energy behind them. But the other thing that I noticed, and this was the great thing about working with this group last month, is that they, to understand that they have a brain, they've got a mind and 100% of us have programming that, and this is just part of the human species. Our programming is typically designed to remember trauma.
TWR: 18:35 So it keeps us in survival mode. It keeps US protected, right? So we're remembering all the crap in the garbage to keep us safe. That's just how our minds work. So you know, this whole 80% yet some of us have financial fears. But you know, when I was speaking to the bookkeepers, they too started to recognize, oh my goodness, I've got some more to do. And it's this whole, you know, adage of, to teach it, you need to learn it and then to preach it you actually need to live it. And so it's always easier to spot what's happening in others because we don't have the emotional attachment to it. But that's where I felt such. Um, I was just so honored to be in that group because the lights were going off for them. There was one lady that literally said, Holy Crap, I think you've just described and, and been able to defend the last 30 years of my life and my relationship with my dad.
TWR: 19:29 It all makes sense now. Right? And so all of these things are tied together and it's interesting cause a lot of people get motivated for money. And those are the clients that I have and they're like, you know what? I want to figure this out. I want to build a business that's actually an investment for me. I want there to be profit to what I want to build a business that can actually pay me a monthly salary. How do I do it? And the crazy thing with all of this is that our mind doesn't have certain components that, oh, this portion of our brain is just for money. And Oh, this portion of our brain is just for our physical health and this portion is for our relationships. All of our decisions, all of our decisions come from our brain. They're all coming from the same place, whether it's going to be the prefrontal cortex or the emotional piece of our brain, or primitive grace placed portion of our brain, but they're all coming from the same place. And so when you start to understand what your patterns are and what you've been doing, not only do you heal your relationship with money, but you heal your relationship with yourself most importantly, and you heal your relationship with others, so your whole world starts to change. It's not just money. You can't just impact money and not have the rest of, of your world start to start to just show up in crazy, crazy, magical ways.
MP: 20:46 I love that. It it and it makes a lot of sense. I think often people think that there's these compartments, but the reality is that we're human beings driving around in one ship and that's it. We have a one brain, we have a one, one body. And so would you know, to think that they wouldn't be intermingled would be kind of crazy to even think that, but yet we do. Right. You know, trying to keep work and, and, and family separate and all sorts of different things. But I, I, I think this is the conversation really is about healing yourself and all aspects of your life. And I mean, being an entrepreneur, whether you're a bookkeeper, a plumber, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. It's about living a great life. And so whilst profits and income and all these good things are important, I would think for myself personally, a lot of those things are, it's really what, what do I want?
MP: 21:41 I want to be, I want to be happy. I want to be able to be leveraging my gifts as a human being, experiencing life the best that I can, my family. Uh, and so the, the exciting part of that is how, uh, it's, it's, and I'm not going to assert that there's probably, it's not like, oh, hit hit, hit this button over here. And it's all fixed. It's a journey that you go on, but the journey in that direction sure. Brings Fruit, bears fruit as you travel along and heal yourself in all areas of your life. It leads to all sorts of transformations that can then enable us to, to love our life.
TWR: 22:18 Yeah, that's exactly it. That's the, that's the beauty in all of this is just that it, it is a journey and I can, I can share with you three specific, you know, kind of steps that you can take to actually get there. But the piece that I remind entrepreneurs of all the time, including bookkeepers, is that you're never going to arrive. You're never going to get it all figured out. It's not like you wake up one morning and all the business is exactly what it needs to be. It never works like that. Remember blockbusters, they never pivoted, right? Like it just will always work. There's always going to be things that we are constantly learning about our environment and most importantly about ourselves, right? Because our environment is definitely is certainly a reflection of ourselves. But, but that's the piece. And then once you understand that you never arrive, you never get it all figured out.
TWR: 23:14 Because the whole point of our journey here is to really be conscious and look at how do we become the best versions of ourselves every day. Right? And so that's what I love about this matrix pieces because once you figure out the process and you know, I'm looking forward to sharing that with you. Once you figure out the process, the next time you experience a glitch, and that's what I call it, when you've been booted out of the matrix and you're kind of like, oh, you know, what was that? That call from cra or I went over my credit card limit, whatever it may be. No glitches are just there to show you. You've included out of the Matrix. You need to, you need to realign by going through the steps again. Right? And the, the other glitches, which I love speaking to people about, are emotional triggers.
TWR: 24:00 So you know, in relationships when we get impacted by conversations or my conflict with other people, those are splints. Simply little glitch buttons to show you. This is never about the other person, never about what they've done or what they've done to you or you know, have they shown up, it's simply there to show you, oh, I've got some work to do in that area. And once I do that work and uncover where it's come from, then I can let that go and move on my merry way and get to the next level of the Matrix. Right. So it's, it does, it just, it always just kind of magically shows up in the more you work the system, the faster it is to get right back in. Right to take out, to get back into the matrix.
TWR: 24:44 So Michael, would you be, is it okay? Is it cool if I share kind of the, the, the three different areas, the three different steps to get into the matrix and find that sweet spot? Let's get into the matrix. Okay. All right. So I love it. Jeez, is, is the management piece, right? So managing money, bookkeepers are going to have this down, so we can definitely simplify this for people. But in managing money, there's five different pillar. There's earning, saving, sharing, spending, investing. That's it. It's that simple. It's a topic that's been, it's been made confusing because there's a lot of people that can financially benefit from making it more confusing and making people feel like they need to go to the experts for advice. So sharing to be taxes. It could be, it could be, you know, corporate social responsibility, it could be charities, whatever that is.
TWR: 25:35 But the whole intention of sharing, it's just really about social impact or environmental impact. Making the world a better place, making better than, and when you left it. Investing is long-term security, right? The number we need for our retirement. A lot of entrepreneurs, I am going to throw this in here because a lot of entrepreneurs do not even know what their investment strategy is with their business. So I'm going to repeat that because it's important and there's only been two people in me doing this in the last 30 years that have been able to answer this 10 years of financial empowerment. What is the return on investment of your time and money into your business? Because every year you could be taking that same money and time that you're investing into your business and you could go down to a financial institution and get five to 8% return on investment guarantee in a mutual fund or an index fund.
TWR: 26:27 So you then have to decide why are you choosing to either throw your money away if you're not making a net profit at the end of the year with your business or why you choosing not to make a net profit in your business? Right? So just again, different way to look at it. And then savings emergency only. We don't save to spend. That's what we teach our kids though. You want to buy the book, but you have to save your money doing a huge disservice. The savings is really just making sure we've got short term security and then spending. We're definitely overspending, right? We've got needs and wants. We spend $1 and 71 cents for every dollar that we earn in Canada. We're second in Greece. And then the earning piece is so important because here's what most people are doing. And if you remember this one simple thing from the management piece, this will just walk your world completely.
TWR: 27:12 So most people are doing what they can with what they earn. And this is where people talk about the jars and the envelopes and Oh and I'm on a budget and I, you know, I just can't seem to make ends meet here. It is because they are trying to do what they can with what they earn. Just totally changed that, turn it on on its head and actually understands what you need to do in the sharing realm, in the investing realm, in the saving realm and in the spending realm. And once you understand those numbers, that has been going to clarify what you need to earn. And that's why I love working with entrepreneurs because once they realize, as an example, oh when I actually put the money aside for the RFP for my kids and when I'm putting that $2,000 aside in this investment strategy, or I'm building my business up to this specific point so I can get this money out of it in five years.
TWR: 28:12 And when I'm accounting for the proper taxes and you know the timing for the church or for the charities that I'm involved with and when I'm taking an allowance out every month that allows me to enjoy my life, get the coffee I want, enjoy the meals out, be appreciative of, of what my community has to offer and when I'm taking care of my knees. The true number that I need to be generating every month for my personal household expenses is let's say $7,132 and that includes the tax. And if it doesn't, you know, oh well let's that or 25 to 33% or whatever it is based on the tax bracket. Now they have a number and for some of them it scares them. They're like, I have to generate $12,000 $12,343 every month. For me to actually list the life I'm supposed to be living financially. So that number at first can scare people.
TWR: 29:06 But as an entrepreneur, what I love about that number is we take that number and we move it over to the business cashflow. That business that you built for yourself needs to get itself into a position where it generates enough money that you can get that money out for your personal expenses every month. It makes complete sense for them. And then again, they're going to get a little scared. Well, how do I need to build my business that way? And that's a whole separate podcast cause that the whole planning for profit you, you know, you build from the bottom up and once you understand your expenses and your cost of goods and your pricing strategy, now you're going to understand how much money the business needs to generate, what revenue streams you need to go after. But we take that over. So once you actually have clarity, this for the first time, for every single client that I have worked with, it's the first time that they've truly understood how much they need to be bringing home.
TWR: 29:59 It's crazy. It's just numbers that we don't commute. So that's management. The whole intention of managing those members is to actually seek clarity and intention around what you're looking to create. Because otherwise, it's just this gray space. I don't know, maybe I need 15 maybe I need 24 I really have no idea. And when you have no idea when it's gray, it's just not going to happen for you. So that's management. Then mindset is about understanding the, the, the habits and the patterns and beliefs that you have been engaged in that have gotten you to this point. And so for a lot of entrepreneurs, I find that sometimes there's some self-worth issues or confidence issues around, Oh, I need to generate 12,000 where's that going to come from? And Oh, am I entitled to that and I'm, am I deserving of it? Whatever it may be.
TWR: 30:45 So it's interesting because with mindset there's two things. There's your, your developmental programming. So everything that you observed between two and 12, the words that you heard, what you saw, um, what you were taught. And again, most of us weren't taught formally how to balance a checkbook. It was, you know, it was that idea of, Oh, we always see credit cards being used or uh, we're seeing debit cards being used most importantly too. It's what we're feeling in that environment. So does it feel scarce? Does it feel chaotic? Does it feel like there's conflict? Does it feel tight? Does it feel like everyone's always anxious about money? That there's not enough? Right. But there's a lack of whatever it is that we picked up from two to 12 about money in the household is what we are modeling today, guaranteed. And it was our, it was our perspective of that situation.
TWR: 31:47 So it's how we internalize that information. So that's important to know too for parents out there. Because you know, as parents we're so concerned about saying the right thing and modeling good behavior and teaching strong skills and values to our kids. And we can only take it so far. We're only 50% of the equation because the other piece of the equation is how they are interpreting the messages that we're giving them. And we have no control over that. So it's the same way that our parents were doing what they did. Right? But it, we have to take responsibility for how we internalize that information. So the way the brain is working is that the brain right now is actually subconsciously getting you to make decisions that keep you in the environment that you are familiar with. Does that make sense? So if you are familiar with an environment that was chaotic or full of conflict or an environment where there was always avoidance, nobody talked about anything and they swept it under the carpet.
TWR: 32:52 As much as we dread that environment and we cringed the think of it, our mind is keeping us in that space because it's familiar because the mind does not want to venture out into the unknown because the unknown one signals danger. You just don't know what's out there. So let's just keep you safe and let's just keep you in the familiar. So when till we get into the mindset piece and pull it all out, we're just going to keep doing the same things over and over again. So the one thing I usually recommend to entrepreneurs is to write a money memoir, and that's just earliest, and I've got lots of tools on this, but it's your earliest memories of, of money. You know, what were the things that happened, what showed up for you? And for some people they might experience chronic conditions, right? Where it's just repetitively being told something and there isn't a lot of trauma too about, oh, we don't have enough money for it.
TWR: 33:41 I actually have one client who was constantly put in a position of them weighing the financial consequence to the decision that they were making even as a child. So as a child, they ripped the page out of a book and the parents would say, you've ripped that page out, that's going to cost you 25 cents. And they would actually take it out of the allowance. Your shower went over 10 minutes, that's another $3 out of our budget. So the child would have to then take $3 out of their piggy bank. So guess what they do now? If they just don't spend, there's this fear of making any decision because it's going to have a financial consequence attached to it. Some people have traumatic incidences, so it could be, you know, getting locked in a closet because they spoke up to their father about not getting the right amount of allowance that they had negotiated for a specific task.
TWR: 34:30 Or a young gentleman who purchased a book with their savings and the parents came home and actually both parents physically abused the child because they thought that that was the wrong decision for the child to make, to make that investment in knowledge. And so now they don't, they don't say they don't spend their money, they hoard their money and they just decide not to do anything with it. So it's so important for us to understand our mindsets are the way to really get to that is to write out that money memoir and to kind of look at, oh, these are the things that were being said. These were the things that were being done. These were the things that I remember about me blowing my allowance, right? Or that my, you know, my parents decided to spend the money, or maybe they hoarded the money.
TWR: 35:10 But what's so important then is, and that's a whole separate podcast, but that the epigenetics piece, and this is what really blows people's mind and epigenetics, is the science of understanding cellular development. And a lot of our programming has actually been inherited from three generations back. So unresolved trauma that goes back three generations gets embedded at a cellular level and it just gets inherited and passed down through the chain. So these are, these are feelings that clients have where they're like, I just don't know. I feel like I'm gonna lose everything, or I'm, I just don't know where this feeling comes from, but I seem to like I'm, I'm bad or I'm not deserving of. And when we start to go back into there, we call it the money tree. It's like, oh, well, you know, I feeling like they were, they were going to lose everything again.
TWR: 36:01 It's just generations came over from Europe. They did lose everything. They lost farms, they lost all, all of their belongings, they've lost limbs, they washed the children, they lost family members in the warm, like it was just lost, lost, lost, lost loss. And so that gets embedded and we show up and we're like, well, I just feel like I'm going to lose stuff. So instead of spending or instead of putting cash in a wall and just not going to touch anything, right? So that's what's fascinating about the epigenetics piece and the motive pieces is just again, what do you want? Why do you want it and where is it for you right now in this moment? Because if you can tap into that feeling right now, you get more of that. It just creates more and more and more for you. So those are kind of the, the three realms, the three touchpoints.
TWR: 36:45 So you do management to understand the intention. You get into your mindset. And yet that's the painful piece for a lot of people is to really dig deep and figure out where their programming came from. Because once you recognize your programming, you can actually just reframed it. You've got to, you've got to actually release it and forgive it and then reframe it and then you're good. You just make new decisions, you want different outcomes, you just make new decisions and then we get in the mode of which is what keeps you in in the Matrix.
TWR: 37:17 It was a very cool process then. Sorry. I know it's a lot to cover in a half an hour, but it's, it's, it works every single time. Every single time. It's crazy.
MP: 37:25 Well, I can see, I can see, I can hear, I can hear why you came. So highly recommended. I mean I'm, I'm just sitting here listening as I'm sure our listeners have been too. You take us through this journey, your, your, where you, where you came from, how you discovered these things and now the really the, the mechanics of why we are the way that we are and your, you know, this is, it's fascinating and as well it has me sitting here thinking, well, who, who wouldn't want to have a breakthrough in their financial wellbeing because that leads to the wellbeing of, of themselves in their life. And I know that we're going to have you back to talk about what you've already created, like a couple episodes, we can have you back for it. And I know, and I noticed that on your website you have a page here and the title is transform your financial reality. And I, I'm gonna ask you, is that a, is that a great next step for our listener? If our listener, if this message is resonating for them, is going to this transform your financial reality and actually taking a look at this, this program.
TWR: 38:38 Oh, right. Yeah. So that's why you're so good at what you do, Michael. You're very intuitive and you know, the next step is actually what I would encourage people do is absolutely go to the website at Thisneed.ca but in the website embedded on the homepage, you can take a money type quiz and it's free and you just take the quiz because this is going to get you fired up. There's eight money types, and Carl Young, the architect of, of money types themselves really identified that if we can see our traits in others, in other personality profiles, we're more likely to go, oh, that's me too. I do that too. So with the eight money types, there's the, I've got the magicians, the warrior, the Creator, the fool, the innocence, the martyr or the victim and the tyrant. And oftentimes we can be, um, we can be several of them and several can be active in several can be shadow.
TWR: 39:31 But what's important to know here is that you can be heavily weighted in warrior. So as an example, I'm a strong warrior. I take action, I get it done, I go, go, go. This is what allowed me to start eight businesses. But it's the damn monitor that kept coming up for me where I fell sacrificed all the time. Right? So the martyrs are the ones that self sacrifice. They give and they're very generous, but always with expectation, right? Although we don't tell anybody that we're expecting anything in return, we're the ones that are like, oh yeah, but one day you're going to show up and you're going to help me. And we don't clarify those expectations. And so usually those people don't. Um, and we're the perfectionist. So it was the martyr that was getting in my way. And so what's so important for people when they take the money type quiz is they get to see the archetypes that are active and they also get to see which ones are sabotaging their progress.
TWR: 40:20 Because in this report that you'll get, there's all of these behaviors that start to show up in the eight money types. I would recommend to people that they print off their report and they start to highlight the behaviors or the habits that are resonating with them. Because that right there, if you're even awake to that and you can see what it is that you do, you're halfway through the healing halfway through the human cause most people aren't even awake of it. So the, the money type quiz, absolutely. It's a, it's a brilliant place to start. It's private. It's up to them. There's no coaching involved and they can just sit with it and say, okay, now what do I want to do about it?
MP: 40:57 I love it. I think it's a great next step. Uh, I'm actually, I just clicked on the website. I was taking a look at it. It's very, very, very good. We're going to have that in the show notes, a link right to the money type quiz. Um, this has been absolutely fantastic. I am going to take the quiz because I believe that you mentioned the concept of bringing awareness. I mean self-awareness is one of the most important things you can do in terms of living a great life is be aware and increase your self-awareness all the time. So do this. It'll bring more self-awareness to yourselves around this issue and, and it'll make a difference for you. That's what I'm excited about. You listening right now, getting a breakthrough in your finances, but as well, bring this to the entrepreneurs in our communities that need this. Okay. Our communities need to have transformation in their finances, in their businesses because that leads to a better community. It leads to a thriving community. And don't we all want to live in a thriving community? So Taunya, this has been so great. I know people are going to be wanting to reach out to, to find out more about you. Is there any other space that you'd like to bring attention to in terms of getting in touch with you?
TWR: 42:15 You know, I think everything's on the website. Um, if you can put it in the show notes, my email, I do, I do a free discovery session. Yours t, use the time as you wish. If you want to talk money types, if you want to talk about some of your pain points or next steps that you're right, it all starts with self-awareness. It takes courage to actually do the quiz. It takes courage to make the call. Not only will it transform communities, but I have to say the healing. You start to heal your family, not only the generations that came before you, but you actually start to impact your kids and their legacy. So it's huge. It's huge work and it's so, so important. So I'm so appreciate of Michael, of you inviting me on, um, and really letting me share this message and just giving, you know, little seeds to people to go out there. There might be something better for me out there, right? It's just so important.
MP: 43:07 It's a, it's my pleasure and definitely it's, it's, uh, we're honored that you have generously given us your time.
TWR: 43:16 I'm honored. Thank you. Thank you.
MP: 43:18 Excellent. Well, Taunya, that wraps another episode of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast. To learn more about today's wonderful guests and to get access to all sorts of valuable free business-building resources, you can go to Thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com. Until next time,
MP: 43:34 goodbye.