Ep. 354: Creating Financial Freedom with Katie Scott of More With Money

Shannon Mattern: Welcome to episode 354 of Pep Talks for Side Hustlers. And I am so excited to introduce you guys to today's guest, Katie Scott. Katie is a former accountant turned entrepreneur who gets overexcited about money management systems and business strategy.

Shannon Mattern: She teaches women entrepreneurs how to achieve personal and business financial wellness, so that they're truly free to pursue their passions and not their next paycheck. And I recently had Katie in our Web Designer Academy community as a guest speaker to do a money management training for our students. They absolutely loved it. So I was so excited to invite her on the podcast to talk to her, learn more about her story and all the things. So Katie, thank you so much for being here. Can you share a little bit more with our listeners about you and what you do?

Katie Scott: Sure. I am super excited to be here. I never know how to do these little intros.

Shannon Mattern: That's quite all right.

Katie Scott: My name is Katie and I run More With Money and I am just really passionate, not about the money, but about helping people to see what money can do and what it can look like to feel like you're actually in control of your finances. And I'm especially passionate about what that looks like for entrepreneurs, because it almost adds a new layer of importance and complexity to it when you introduce a business. And I just love seeing people who have never been able to understand money or wrap their head around it finally have that piece click into place. Because I've been there. So that is just what I'm passionate about. And that's me.

Shannon Mattern: I love it! Tell me a little bit more. You were an accountant. Where did the passion for online business come from, and the entrepreneurial space come from?

Katie Scott: Desperation? I actually started with trying to figure out some savings goals with my husband. I was newly married. I just started as a full-time accountant right out of college. And we had all these grand plans, right? As one does when they get married and all these things that we wanted to be able to afford. And we're like, wait a minute. This math doesn't add up. And I was salaried and I was kind of going to be stuck in that for a while because I had just started, which was fair. But I had to try to figure something out. So I downloaded Pinterest for the first time in my life. Never used it. And this was 2017 and I had never used it. And I just started scrolling around ways to make money. And then you see like survey websites and you know, all those different things.

Katie Scott: And then you see, I think it was Michelle of Making Sense of Cents, who does affiliate marketing, paid a hundred thousand dollars a month with affiliate marketing. And I saw that and I was like, if I could do 1% of what she did, I'd be pretty happy. So that's what got me on the path. And I had no idea where I was going to end up when I did that. But that's really just the direction that it went. And then very quickly after that, and I don't know - they might've been related, but very quickly after that is where I also started to realize that accounting was not the field for me and I didn't belong there. And I was probably never really going to find my place in the accounting world. Because I started to realize what I didn't like about it.

Katie Scott: And one of the biggest things that has led into the mission that I have it More With Money now is about being proactive with your money. One of the things I was so frustrated with as an accountant was that it was always reactive. It was always just tracking after the fact, Tracking for a month after, for a good client, or a year after for the clients who can never get their act together. And then we would just be reporting the loss, reporting the mismanagement of money, let them know, Hey, maybe you should do better. And then nothing would change. And I didn't have any voice in the matter either. So when I wanted people to make better decisions up front so we don't have to do all this damage control at the time, I just didn't have that ability to do that for people.

Katie Scott: And that's when I started to become passionate about just learning how to do better the first time around. And there are accountants, not to bash the accounting world, there are accountants who are really good about doing that for their clients. But where I worked, I did not have that space to do it. And so between the desperation of trying to find a way to just make some money on the side and then starting to learn more about how I wanted to serve people, that's how I stumbled my way into where I am today, which is still a really high level view of what that journey has been.

Shannon Mattern: I love that. And it just kind of takes me back to when I worked at my day job and I was on the executive team and we would sit down for these meetings and we'd go over financial reports of how much money we spent two months ago. And I'm like, this is such a waste of time, the fact that we spent this money two months ago. We would have a one budget meeting a year where we would actually plan for the future, how we were going to spend all of our money. And it was almost like it was a formality because we planned it, but then you put that under a piece of paper on your desk. Nobody ever looks at it again. And it just drove me crazy too, being in that role and wondering why we are in this meeting again talking about how much money we spent two months ago.

Shannon Mattern: And for me personally, I started my business because I wanted freedom, flexibility and financial independence. I was making really good money at my day job. And my husband and I Dave Ramsey-style got out of debt. I can't even remember when we paid off our last debt, but I was still side hustling. Part of the reason I wanted to start the business as a side hustle was because I wanted to make this extra money so that I can quit my day job. But also I wanted to be debt free when I quit my day job so that the bar is a little bit lower for what I need to make in this business so there's less pressure on me. And so I was always very aware of how much money I had. And personally we would plan.

Shannon Mattern: But, as I was telling you in my own business, I would make the money and it would just literally sit in my bank account as this big pile, not big pile of money, but I was so obsessed with being profitable that I made sure I was profitable, but I had no plan for that money. I just let it sit there and then I'd worry about if it was going to go away or if I'd make the same amount next month, and just all of this stuff. And then, so I started my business 2015, it's now 20 21, you come into the Web Designer Academy and you're like, Hey, here's how we do it. Here's how I teach people to do it. Set up this simple system using this tool and you get to project ahead everything. And I'm like, what?? And then we got done with that. And that weekend I set it up and I've never felt more confident in my whole entire business about the future of what we're doing here than I have right now. So I just wanted to thank you for that and share that with you, because I love hearing why your vision is the way that it is because it so resonates with me and you helped me so much just in that small conversation.

Katie Scott: You're going to make me emotional. But yeah, that's why I do it. I mean, honestly, there's so much further that we could take all these financial conversations at the end of the day, but the core thing that I keep seeing and that I want to continue to see, and that lights me up whenever it happens is when people just send me that little message of "Hey, when you were talking, I understood it for the first time in my life. I could see how that money worked". And that right there, it's something you can't un-see. Once that piece clicks into place and you can actually see how money can kind of work the right way, your life is different from that point forward. And again, you could go so much further with it. There's so many more layers, there's complications, there's hard stuff. But once you can see it differently, once you can think about it a little bit differently, it'll just have this ripple effect that you'll never really be able to measure, that I'll never be able to measure. But whenever I see people say that, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Shannon Mattern: It's so, so important. And the other reason that I really resonated with you so much is your mission is truly not about the money. It's not about how much money we're making or how much you have. It's how you're using it, how you're able to create the life that you want. And the life that you want might be different than the life that I want, might be different from the life that our listeners want. Everybody's going to have that unique picture of what their life is going to look like. And your mission is to help them use money as the tool to create that. And that resonates with me so, so much because I want to give people the tools on this podcast and through my courses and trainings to monetize their skill sets and create profitable businesses. But at the end of the day, if they don't have the understanding, like the way that you'd teach it, it doesn't feel like freedom.

Katie Scott: Absolutely. And that's the thing with budgeting and money management and all of that. It's not about what I tell you to spend your money on. People always ask "what percentage of my income should go towards this versus this?" And anyone who's familiar with the Profit First system, which is something that I do like to teach, there is a percentage element to it, but at the end of the day, budgeting and money management is about making sure that you have the money for what your priorities are and that's going to be different for everyone. I spend a gross amount of money on things that other people would never even dream of, and it goes the other way around, right? I always have a large dining out budget because I don't like to cook.

Katie Scott: Whereas people who like to cook are going to have a large grocery budget. And it's just different and that's okay. You have permission to spend money on what you want to spend your money on. But if you did that intentionally, now it's more powerful than if you're just reacting and just splurging wherever. And what I want people to see about money management is that you can have your priorities. You don't have to change your whole life. It's just a matter of making sure that you're doing that smart and being intentional about it going into it.

Shannon Mattern: I love it. It's like you get to design the life that you want. Nobody is telling you no, you can't have a coffee budget. Like all the traditional financial advice is stop buying lattes and make coffee at home. No, I don't want to. So can I just plan to spend this much money on almond lattes at the local coffee shop, please? We get to design the life that we want and then make decisions ahead of time about how we're going to spend our money, like you said, very intentionally and then you sleep better at night. You just sleep better at night.

Katie Scott: We could all use that.

Shannon Mattern: Can we talk about Profit First? I read the book. I think it's by Mike Michalowicz. I read that book right when I had put my notice in it my day job and I was going from side hustle to self-employed and I was probably in a pretty bad place anxiety-wise about "oh my gosh, I'm walking away from this steady paycheck". And so I was reading it out of desperation, wanting to set myself up the right way or something. And I loved it. It made sense. Pay yourself first. And that was really the message that I got from it. I know there's way more to it, way more to it than that. And I'll let you tell that, but it pay yourself first and this makes so much sense because up until that point in my business as an entrepreneur I'm like, "I've got a paycheck coming from my job and

Shannon Mattern: all this money that I'm making in my business". I had no plan for it. I was buying course after course after course. I was spending money on virtual assistants that I shouldn't have been spending. It was just a mess. And I wasn't even paying myself. I was just putting "everything back in my business". I put air quotes around that as if there was a plan to it. There was not. It was very haphazard. And so when it was time to leave my day job, because I had made enough revenue to prove that my business was stable, but I wasn't keeping any of it. I read that book and I was like, "okay, just pay yourself first and then everything will fall into place". I'm the worst example of how to do that. I'm like, "Hey, at least I was making money". But can you share a little bit about the Profit First philosophy and how to properly implement that in your business?

Katie Scott: Yeah. We could talk about Profit First for hours. So I do recommend reading the book. It's pretty good. As far as finance books goes, it's one of the less drier ones that you'll find out there because Mike Michalowicz is a pretty entertaining guy. But it is written towards brick and mortar businesses. So if you're an online business, there's some adaptations. And that just means you get to skip paragraphs. But overall it is, at its core, the simplest idea. It's just about setting aside the money that you need before you spend it all. It's like people who tithe off the top with their paycheck. They get their paycheck and they set aside 10% and that's going to go to wherever they're going to send that money. It's the same idea with Profit First. You earn your business's revenue. And a lot of us are then attempted to then take 99% of that and put it into whatever it is that we feel like buying that day, a course or whatever it is that's going to validate our insecurities with being a business owner. Right? That's where a lot of my so-called investments came from was insecurity, but that's a different story.

Shannon Mattern: Yeah. We can talk about that too.

Katie Scott: So instead of just immediately spending it all and then hoping that you have some type of profit left over, Profit First just teaches you to just set aside what you're going to need to be able to keep your business going before you spend it all. And then whatever's left over, that's what you then make your spending decisions off of. And so the items that you're setting aside is an actual profit fund. So just like savings, just untouched money. And then you're going to set aside what you're going to pay yourself. And then you're going to set aside what you're going to pay in taxes. So you set that aside first. And Profit First teaches a percentage based system for it because it makes it really easy. And no matter how much you earn, you're still setting aside a part of all of it.

Katie Scott: And then whatever's left over, that's your spending budget for whatever investment decisions you want to make. And that system is very, very intentional and it allows you to sort of divide up your money and make that intentional spending plan for your revenue when you earn it and before you spend it. So again, you're proactive instead of reactive. And you're informed because now you can see the money that's in your bank account and where some of it needs to go. And so you're not looking at a thousand dollars in the bank and thinking, "oh, I could spend $600 of this". You look at that and you realize that $700 of it's already called for, so you only have $300 to spend. And you're just going to make a lot better decisions because you set that intention first.

Katie Scott: And as far as the practical implementation of that, that's where it varies. Profit First, traditionally in the book, will teach you a multi bank account system. It's five bank accounts, technically seven. But, it's five different bank accounts that they tell you. And a lot of people do that and love that system because it's physical separation of the money. I did that when I first started and it was very helpful. Or you use a budgeting tool like You Need A Budget, or YNAB, which is the budgeting tool you're talking about earlier. It's my favorite tool. And it's perfectly designed for implementing Profit First and you can have just one bank account for it. So there's a couple of different ways, but as long as you're holding to that principle of setting aside and preserving the funds that are non-negotiable - that's the other part because a lot of people think "well, I have to spend this money

Katie Scott: because I don't have the luxury of setting aside a percentage. But paying yourself, paying the government and then having some type of small, like 1% of all your revenue, savings fund, that stuff is necessary for your business to be able to survive. So it's a non-negotiable. And if you can't set aside any amount of money for those purposes, then you're just going to run yourself into ground. That's a huge red flag. So setting that aside first and being really intentional about it, whatever that looks like for you, is going to be a game changer for any business owner.

Shannon Mattern: I love that. And I so wish I could get my time machine and go back to 2014 Shannon, who was just starting her side hustle as, a freelance web designer and hand her that book and be like, "please read this." Because you're going to save yourself thousands, tens of thousands of dollars in chasing shiny objects. We were talking earlier about, not prey on your insecurities, but kind of prey on your... maybe prey is not the right word. But all of us in the online space, like you went down the Pinterest rabbit hole when you first started, or you go in the Facebook group rabbit hole, or however it is that you find your foot in this online entrepreneur space. And then you start seeing all these offers for courses that are going to help you grow your business and explode your traffic and all of these things.

Shannon Mattern: And it pushes on your impatience and your insecurities, and all the things. And you start to think, well, maybe not yo., I'm just telling my story. Maybe the listeners out there can relate too. But I started to think I need this in order to get where I want. But also I was susceptible because I didn't have a plan for my money. I was susceptible to chasing shiny objects and buying courses and things that I did learn from. The people that I purchased from, the courses that I took, they were valuable. I learned things. But maybe they were things that I didn't need then. And three years later, I'm ready for that now. But I could have quit my day job so much faster than three years had I had Profit First, a plan for my money, understood what was coming in, what I needed, and put these guardrails and everything in place.

Shannon Mattern: And then when it came down to being on this webinar trying to figure out how to market myself, and I'm being marketed to, I know that I literally don't have the money because I know how much money I have and it's spoken for. Then I can make good financial decisions about my business. If I could show you, and I've quantified this before, I'm going to have to find this spreadsheet and show you guys. I've quantified all of the things that I bought back then that I didn't need. And it's like tens of thousands of dollars. It's ridiculous.

Katie Scott: I think I did the same thing. And I can't remember what the number was, but it was thousands of dollars for courses that I bought. I mean, those $100 bundles get me. They got me so much in the very beginning. And I didn't have time to take all those courses. And a lot of them weren't even that good.

Shannon Mattern: Yeah. And it makes you think "I could do that if that's how much they're charging for that". If the lesson that I learned from spending that much money on a course is that I could do it way better, I guess that's a valuable lesson.

Katie Scott: Yeah. But I realized somewhere along the way, and this was a huge light bulb moment for me that helped me to stop just throwing money around at people, that I was trying to outsource my business's success. I wrote it down. I had a friend who was trying to get me to journal and I refused to journal. And she said 'just try it'. And so I was struggling. I was thinking about investing in a program, a coaching program. And I was like, okay, let me write about it. Because I was trying to basically come up with reasons to tell my husband that I needed to use our personal savings to invest in those programs. And so I was writing it all out and then I literally wrote those words and I was like, Ooh, okay, wait a minute.

Katie Scott: And so I realized that that's what I was trying to do. I didn't believe that I could do it on my own anymore. And that's when I stopped and I had to just sit down with myself and acknowledge, okay, what do I know? What do I not know? What do I need and what do I want to achieve and how do I get there? And how can I get there with what I have? And just learning how to believe in myself a little bit more, that I was equipped. I'd spent so much time absorbing, shiny object syndrome, but at least trying and failing and learning some lessons from that. How can I take all of this and put it together and make this work myself. Because I'm the only one who can make this work the way that I want it to work. Right? It's not a reason to invest in somebody just because you're afraid you can't do it alone. So yeah, that was a huge moment for me when I was able to realize that. Saved me a lot of money too.

Shannon Mattern: What was the shift? What were you doing before when you were like, "I'm going to put all of this together and go forward in this direction. Like what did that look like?

Katie Scott: A lot of shiny object syndrome.

Shannon Mattern: Were you just consuming a lot of content and creating a lot of things and not really like putting stuff out there?

Katie Scott: Around that time, I think, yes. I was actually not really putting anything out there. And I wasn't really actually selling what I did have, which was really out of fear. You put together an offer, but you hope that no one buys it because you don't want to have to deliver. So it was a lot of that. It was a lot of restarting strategies. And how many times did my email lists get a new newsletter from me about, we're going to try something new? And trying to reinvent myself over and over and over again. And not even really knowing what I wanted to teach. I think at this time I was still kind of helping people with bookkeeping, which I never wanted to do, but I couldn't say no to people who asked, can you do my bookkeeping? And I was like, I can kind of do that. I was an accountant for 14 months. Like, no, I have no business being a bookkeeper.

Shannon Mattern: Accountant and bookkeeper aren't the same thing either, right?

Katie Scott: No, not really. And the bookkeeping experience I had was not the best. It wasn't the most well-rounded, I wouldn't trust myself as a bookkeeper. No, I wasn't that bad. I did a good job. But as soon as it was out of my wheelhouse though, and it was very quickly as their businesses grew. It was then I had to just let them know. I'm like, you need to find someone who can serve you the right way. But yeah, so I was just doing a lot of things that were not what I wanted to do. I didn't even really know what I wanted to do. It was just a mess of me just trying to kind of get out there. I knew vaguely that I wanted to help people with money, but I didn't know what that looked like. And I was trying to be people that I wasn't. I was trying to offer programs that

Katie Scott: I didn't want to offer, charge at price points that weren't right for what I wanted to do or who I wanted to help. And it was just a mess in every direction. And I wish I could say that it's all completely cleaned up and polished now, but it's not necessarily. It takes a while to dismantle that stuff when you build it up. But I finally learned how to start focusing in and thinking a little bit more strategically and I've come so far in that being able to start to identify what needs to get done. Making it happen. That's the second step. But being able to see what needs to get done and think that through, that's I think what started to shift for me,

Shannon Mattern: I feel like that's a ...I don't know if it's a phase that we all have to go through, but I think it's a phase that a lot of us go through. I know it's a phase that I went through, for sure. I had these constant things that I did in my business. I did teaching for people on how to DIY their website, the DIY web design training, affiliate marketing. I had that going and I had that working and that was growing. But for some reason it just wasn't good enough. It wasn't happening fast enough. Offering courses and teaching people the next step now that they have their website, how to get traffic, all of the marketing tech. I was like, that's where everything's at.

Shannon Mattern: And I kind of abandoned this idea. It was still there. It was still working. But for whatever reason, I took my eye off of that and I went all these other places. I'm going to do this course. I'm going to launch it. Oh, wait, that didn't work. Or more truthfully it did work, I just didn't think it was good enough. And I started over, rebrand, all of this stuff that we do when really there's this path of figuring out that you have an idea. You put it out there, you test it, you gather feedback, you make decisions, you iterate, you do it again, instead of making it mean that this whole business idea is horrible. I should've launched and made $50,000 on this launch because so-and-so's course said that I would, or all of this stuff that I just got wrapped up in.

Shannon Mattern: And thankfully, the Five Day Website Challenge was almost like it took on a momentum of its own. Thank goodness, because I was spending all the money as soon as it was coming in on the next shiny thing. And I just think that there is this period of experimentation that we do because we have this passion, we have this vision, we have this way we want to help people. What does it look like? We're going to try a bunch of different things. But I think it depends on where we're coming from emotionally trying those things. Are we coming at it out of desperation, fear, insecurity, not good enough, or experimentation, trying things, seeing what works, exploring our passions, being curious, following things where they lead. And for me it was not the latter. It was very much like desperate.

Katie Scott: Yeah. I agree. I was similar. I was just desperate to prove something to myself or to whoever or desperate to make it work or whatever the situation was. It was usually out of some type of desperation or some insecurity or some fear. And I agree that there's a lot of lessons that come from it. And so there is an experimentation that's necessary when you go to do something like this. But I think what would have helped me to maybe not dwell there for quite so long is if I had leaned more into building relationships with the right people and having a community to kind of help keep me structured and hold me accountable. One of the very first times that I ever got focused, and how I started to finally get my first clients, was because someone told me, Hey, you're distracted, stop that, just do this one thing

Katie Scott: and just get yourself some clients. And I was like, okay, wow. I had never heard that before. And it was just some random person that I kind of met indirectly, but she told me that and it made such a difference. And so I think that's probably where we really mess up, and this is me speaking for myself, but stop trying to do it all alone. You don't have to immediately build out a team, hire a whole bunch of people, but just don't do it alone. Being a solopreneur or DIY, that there's a place for that, but you need people and you need relationships. Businesses are built on relationships and you need to have that. And that's going to help you learn in a smarter way.

Shannon Mattern: I am so glad that you said that because it's funny. All the things that I can sit here and say I wasted tens of thousands of dollars on were tactics that never worked for me. What worked was building relationships. And that's truly how I build my entire business now. Every single piece of marketing that I do is all relationship marketing. It's all collaboration. It's all building relationships. It's everything, and that's what I teach my students too. It's what I teach my web designers. It's algorithm proof. It doesn't matter what Facebook and Apple decide to do when they get in a fight. Your business is going to be okay because you know how to build relationships and serve other people and other people's audiences and add value. Just like what we're doing here.

Shannon Mattern: I saw that you met a need that my people were asking for. And we've established a relationship that comes with you coming on the podcast, sharing this information, sharing your expertise. And for me, it's just the beginning. Every single person I meet, it's just the beginning of how we can collaborate to help each other grow. Because we serve the same audience in a completely different way. And it only makes sense to grow together. And I was such a lone Wolf too. It was like, oh, I will figure all this out myself. I will reverse engineer what this person's doing over here. I can do that. I can build that. There's nothing I can't do. And I was literally like in a silo by myself, just trying random stuff that did not work.

Shannon Mattern: And I don't even remember how I met this person. I think it was through my VA. I met this girl and I had her on the podcast. And we were talking and she says, "I want to invite you to come to Austin, Texas for a weekend to join a mastermind. You seem really lonely". And I was like, what? She said "it feels like you need some business friends". And I was just like, okay. And I went and I stayed in an Airbnb with her and five other entrepreneurs. And that was my first experience of kind of like going from lone Wolf to actually building real friendships. And it was transformational for me. It truly was.

Katie Scott: That's awesome. Definitely building relationships is not something that's easy. And I'm an introvert. Everyone says they're an introvert. I'm sure far into the spectrum. I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm gonna need a nap after this interview.

Shannon Mattern: Okay. So I might be like in the middle of the spectrum.

Katie Scott: My husband is too. But I just need space from people and wherever I can avoid it. And when I first started, I spent the first year just refusing to get on a zoom call. My least favorite part of my accounting job was that they would ask me to answer the phones, even just to direct the phone call. I just didn't want to do that because I didn't know what the conversation was going to entail. I had a lot of social anxiety. And so the idea of jumping onto a video call with another person, anywhere in the world, it was not happening. And I turned down a lot of stuff and I hid because I had this fantasy in my mind that I was going to sit in the dark corner of my bedroom, on my laptop in my pajamas,

Katie Scott: and I was going to run an online empire without ever having to show up or build a relationship with another human being. And that's just not how it works. And so I'm so glad that I pushed through that. But like I said, it took me like a year before I finally got on a zoom call with another person. And I was terrified. It was a little bit of I didn't want to do it, but also I was scared. I was really afraid of talking to another human being. So the fact that now, these years later, I am here right now doing a podcast interview and I've done workshops and I've done summits and stuff like that. If someone told high school version of me that this is where I would be, I would have never left my room again. I wouldn't have done it. I would have hid and runaway run the other direction. It would freak her out. It still freaks my mom out that this is where I am in life. So, it's possible, but it's really important to overcome that because you need other people to make it work.

Shannon Mattern: Yeah. And I can relate because I wouldn't even call to order pizza. Because I don't know what's going to happen. What are they going to say? What if I sound stupid? I would not even do that. And now I run this podcast. And just like you said, I never would have thought this. And I, like you, thought that I could just write blog posts and SEO optimize and pin and hack the system and algorithms and write emails and do everything except be physically present with other people and build a business that way. And I guess you can, but it is a grind. It is a grind to do that. And it's very lonely. And I think we think, like you mentioned Michelle of Making Sense of Cents,

Shannon Mattern: and some of the other people that we follow, that it looks like that's what they did. But that's probably not what they did. There's other relationships that were built, collaborations, different things that had happened along the way that helped them grow their audience to that point. And it's just like, "oh no, if they can push the buttons and keywords and all this, that can happen for me too and I can just hide out and never put myself out there". And that's really what I see the biggest struggle is for the people in my community. Because I'm like, "I'll teach you how to DIY the website. I'll teach you how to do all the tech". And then it comes time to actually market themselves and then they freeze because they have the same social anxiety that we've talked about, or they're super introverted, or they have tons of imposter syndrome. And I love to tell them, "marketing is not about you". You don't have to talk about yourself. You don't have to do anything. All you have to do is talk about your vision for that person and how you can help them and all of that. And it really doesn't have anything to do with you. So if you can go out there and just be helpful, then it's so much easier than saying, "Hey, I'm an expert in money management" when you're just like, "please don't ask me anything about".

Katie Scott: Yeah, selling yourself as an expert is a totally different ball game than selling a service.

Shannon Mattern: Oh my gosh. I love it. So I have just a couple more questions for you. I know I've totally talked your ear off, but I love this subject because the money gets so tied up in everything we do. We make it mean so much. We make it mean we're a success or we're a failure, or whatever. What are some of the things that you've seen, from all the people that you've talked to in the summits that you've done? What are some of the damaging beliefs people have about money in their business?

Katie Scott: One of the ones that I see a lot are people who just write it off as just something I'll never be good at because they're not a numbers person. They didn't like algebra in high school or whatever. And I just hate to see that because we all have to deal with money. It's a part of life, you know? And it's something that is more behavioral than people realize it is. It's really not about the math. I'm a little famously known for not being good at mental math. I make a fool of myself if I try to do examples just off the cuff. I can't do it. I'm horrible at it. It was something I got made fun of for when I was in college in accounting, and in my day job in accounting. It's humorous, but I'm really bad at mental math. But I can still manage money.

Katie Scott: So just being able to let go of that, I think, would make a really big difference for people. Just stop assuming that you're bad with money. Money is a learned skill. And if you haven't taken the time to learn it yet, then you're not going to be good at it. And it's not something you're born with as much as some people might like to think is the case. So some other things. A lot of people, I think, get really lost in trying to do everything perfectly and having it be perfect right away. That's another one that comes to mind. I think Dave Ramsey has some quote like you stumbled your way into debt, but you can't stumble your way, out or something like that. You know, these things happen.

Katie Scott: They build up over your whole life. Even if we're talking about the beliefs. A lot of this stuff starts at childhood and the things that you experienced. And a lot of it's not your fault. And it's just the way that it is. It's not going to be perfect and it's not going to be a smooth ride, because it reflects life. Your finances reflect all of these different circumstances. Again, some things in your control and some things out of it. So to just acknowledge that it is what it is. And now what are we going to do is the next step. That's part of money management. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have anything to be ashamed of. Even if some of it is rooted in decisions that you made, you know, it's happened.

Katie Scott: It is what it is, and now you just move forward. Right? And that's so much easier said than done, but I think everything comes back to believing whether or not you can do it. And I just want everyone to realize that you can. It's literally just a matter of saying, I have $100 in my hand. So $50 is going here and $50 is going there. If you can do that, you can manage money. And that's really as simple as it gets. And then you can add all the complexity to it. But a lot of us add that onto it ourselves. So I don't know if that answers the question, but those are just some of the things that come to mind that I just wish people would just overcome.

Shannon Mattern: It totally answers the question. And I think it kind of comes back full circle that you get to decide and design the life that you want and then use the money that you make to support that in whatever that looks like for you. And I know all the gurus and the personal finance people say, like you were talking about earlier, percentages, you should spend this much of your money this way, and you should do this and you should do that. And if you don't do these things, you're a bad person and you're on the brink of financial ruin and all of these things. And I love your message of "I want to take that stigma away. I want to empower you. I want you to know that you can do it. And you get to decide what that looks like for you". Instead of listening to what they're saying it should look like for you.

Katie Scott: Absolutely. If it's someone else's dream, it's not going to happen. You're not going to be able to push through and overcome the obstacles, because there will be obstacles. There will be times where you will take 10 steps backwards and feel like you're never going to be able to take another step forward again. And again, that's life. The finances just reflects the circumstances. So something comes up and there's a financial repercussion for it. And you have to be able to continue to push forward. And if it's someone else's dream that is supposedly fueling you, it's not going to be enough. It never is. You have to have a reason to get to the other side of that. And it has to be aligned with what you want your life to look like and what you want for your future and what you want your legacy to be, and whatever that looks like for you. So stop chasing other people's dreams.

Shannon Mattern: Ooh, that is so good. Okay. I have one more question for you before we wrap up. And that is what belief did you have to change about yourself to get where you are today?

Katie Scott: The one that comes to mind is teaching. It was something that I never thought I would ever do. And I did have this perception that teaching is like in a classroom with a whole bunch of little kids. And I always said that I should never be outnumbered by children. I don't do well in that environment. Which is weird because my first job was at a summer camp being in charge of 15 preschoolers by myself with zero training on how to do that, by the way. And it was horrible. So I don't belong in a classroom. And I just never thought that I could teach or that I should be teaching, that I had any business teaching. It was something that I dealt with a lot. It was a form of imposter syndrome. I just didn't have a word for it before. But growing up in school, I was a perfect little Asian kid.

Katie Scott: I could really fake my knowledge on a standardized test. I'll put it that way. And so I was really good in school. And so people always thought that I was a genius. But I'm just like, nah, I just memorize what the textbook said and I regurgitated it. And so I always felt like a fraud, like I didn't actually know anything, like I never learned something in school. And so I'm just like, who am I? I don't know anything. I can't teach people. I'm not patient. I don't want to help. I don't want to talk to other people. This whole entire thing. And it was always a recurring theme where people would always suggest, Hey, you should teach that, Hey, you should teach that. For different things, not even money. And then I even had one of the most impactful moments was with my accounting professor. I was in his office talking to him about something that I was struggling with, an accounting problem or something. And he was just like, "you know, I can see you teaching this stuff one day".

Shannon Mattern: And I was like, "you're crazy".

Katie Scott: And he's like, "no, I can definitely see that". And I'm like, "no one was going to want to learn this stuff from me. I'm not the person to explain it". He's like "just you mark my words. You're going to be teaching people this stuff one day". And I haven't told him what I do yet. I need to reconnect with him and let him know where I've ended up. But he's pretty close. And it's weird and it's crazy, but so much of it was number one, just rejecting the calling of a teacher because I didn't know what that meant. But also that imposter syndrome and just never feeling like I could be good enough. And the thing with imposter syndrome that I had to learn to swallow, and we talk about it a lot and we talk about how that's just your lack of self-confidence. But the part of it that no one wants to talk about is there might be some validity in there. Imposter syndrome is sometimes a flag to warn you that something's not lined up or you're not fully equipped for this.

Katie Scott: And with time you'll learn how to balance the two. But I had to learn how to take an objective look at where I was versus where I wanted to be, and what did I want to do but felt like I wasn't good enough to do and what can I do to bridge that gap? And so being able to then identify the skills or the knowledge that I needed to get in order to provide the value that I wanted to provide, go out and do that. And then the imposter syndrome just becomes this little thing in the back of your mind where you're just a little nervous, but you can overcome it once you can start to see it for what it is. It's kind of all in one. But I think some of the biggest transformation that I've had personally and professionally is being able to see all of that and then just kind of own up to it and just be a teacher the way that supposedly the whole world wants me to be.

Shannon Mattern: Well, I love that you said that because you came into the Web Designer Academy as a guest speaker and you gave this incredible presentation, that to hear that you thought up up until recently that "I'm not a teacher", and then for me to experience that presentation and get much out of it. I'm not even kidding you when I say that it has completely transformed my way of being around money in my business. That's not an exaggeration at all, and to hear that you didn't think that you were a teacher is fascinating to me. It's just fascinating to me because it truly has. And I didn't realize that that was a gap for me until you came into our group and you just shared the skill of how you do things and how you see things and why you do them the way that you do.

Shannon Mattern: And it just filled a gap for me that I didn't know was even there, and the peace of mind that I have because of it. And now I know how we're going to get to the next level. And now I see how I'm going to generously pay my team and accomplish all of these goals and all of these things because of the one hour with you. You're an incredible teacher and I'm honored to have you here on the podcast. And I'm so glad that you followed that thread, even when you had that little voice inside your head saying that that wasn't for you. So anyway, that's my thought on that.

Katie Scott: Thank you for sharing that though. That's awesome.

Shannon Mattern: You are so welcome. Can you let everybody know where we can connect with you, learn from you, learn all of the things that you do to just help everybody live the life that they really want, the reason that they're doing the business in the first place.

Katie Scott: More With Money.com would be the website, but the best place probably to reach out, and just come talk to me, I love to talk to people, is at katie.morewithmoney on Instagram. So I'm in a slow season, but things are in the works. That's why it's a slow season on the front. So I would love people to just come follow me there so that they can be ready for whatever's coming next. And I'm just super excited.

Shannon Mattern: Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much for being here. It's a pleasure to talk to you. I'll link up all the things that we talked about in the show notes. So you guys head on over to shannonmattern.com/354 to get all of those links. And thank you so much for being here.

Katie Scott: Thank you so much for having me and for all your nice words. A little pick me up for me.