Abundance - the Authentic Tea podcast with Nikki

Nikki is the founder of the Female Money Doctor and is on a mission to change the relationship with have with money to support mental health and wellbeing.

Nikki is helping others to be confident and independent with money management and wealth creation.

Nikki provides online courses and coaching to delve into money issues and create plans for future health and wealth.

Nikki is also the host of The Money Medicine Clinic Podcast where she shares 10-minute takeaways (just like a GP consultation) on how to feel more in control and happier with money.

Episode 26 features Nikki. Join us to find out more about how Nikki learnt her own money personality and explored her relationship with money.

We chat about finding true passion in business and cultivating intention and abundance to live with energy and avoid burnout.

Rachel (00:00):

I am delighted to be joined today by Nikki. Nikki is the founder of the Female Money Doctor and is on a mission to change the relationship we have with money, to support mental health and wellbeing. Nikki is helping others to be confident and independent with money management and wealth creation. Nikki provides online courses and coaching to delve into money issues and create plans for future health and wealth. Nikki is the host of The Money Medicine Clinic Podcast where she shares 10-minute takeaways just like a GP consultation, on how to feel more in control and happier with money. Welcome, Nikki.

Nikki (00:36):

Thank you so much for having me, Rachel. I'm just so excited to be here. It's great.

Rachel (00:42):

It's great to have you here today. I'm super excited to find out more about everything that you're offering and creating. Maybe let's just head right in and start talking about money. Maybe you could explain a little bit about when you started to realize what the impact of money could have and some of those negative impacts specifically on health and wellbeing.

Nikki (01:03):

Yeah. It started with me actually. I was an obstetrics and gynecology registrar down in London. Very, very stressful job, was not enjoying it at all really. Got very burnt out from that job. I was offered a year off so I took it which was amazing. Best decision I ever made. When I was having that year off, I went traveling for five months. I'd saved a little pot of money up and I thought that would be enough and realized quite rapidly that it wasn't enough at all because I was still paying for bills at home and things like that. When I was away, that's when it hit me how much debt I was in, what was going on with my finances because I had time to think.

Nikki (01:45):

When you're working five days a week plus sometimes weekends as well when you're doing shift work, you don't have time to think about life. You just go with the flow, at least that's how it was for me anyway. So, when I had that time to myself, that's when I realized that there was a problem so I start doing something about it. I started reading books, listening to podcasts, all sorts of things to try and help me. Then when I went back into medicine again, I decided that I was going to become a GP. I did six months just floating around going to any and different medical jobs and that's when I started to see it in the patients and my colleagues.

Nikki (02:25):

You don't necessarily notice it. It's only when you're suddenly becoming attuned to it, that you start to realize all of the problems that people have. Having to work loads of hours, getting stressed out because they haven't got enough time on weekends to do anything. Patients not being able to take time off from their work because they haven't got any provisions for looking after themselves when they're sick. You start to see how stressful people get when it comes to money. Yeah, that was it really. That's when I really started to see that the value in what I was teaching myself from what was learning from other people had such implications for medicine as well.

Nikki (03:04):

A question I always ask people now when I talk to them in GP land, anything to do with stress, depression, anxiety, I always say, "How are you with money?" "What's happening with your finances?" Most people will say, oh yeah, this is happening or, oh yeah, I've got this problem or I can't afford to do this or whatever and it does become part of the consultation.

Rachel (03:27):

That's fascinating. I love how you've now been able to start adding that into your clinical practice and to delve a little bit deeper into people's problems. What you now offer people is added value in terms of coaching, say, money coaching. Can you give us a little bit of a flavor of what that looks like? What do you do with your clients when you are chatting through money issues?

Nikki (03:49):

Most people hear about financial advisors, so they hear financial advisors, financial planners, and that's what they think they need to do with their money. On the other side of that, it might be quite intimidating to go and see a financial advisor especially if you don't know what you're talking about or what's going on with your finances. A money coach bridges the gap. It's taking somebody from perhaps not necessarily knowing what's going on with their money, the terminologies, the plans and things or what they actually want out of their life, coaching them through that.

Nikki (04:20):

A coach will help somebody to look into themselves to see what it is they actually want and how they want to solve their own problem and then bringing up the confidence with mentoring as well to help people understand the different terminologies they need to understand. Then if they want to, they can go and speak to a financial advisor down the line, asking the right questions of the financial advisor to make sure they're getting the right person for them. Some of my FAs now are actually offering money coaching as part of their service but I think there's some merit in having a completely separate cheerleader if you'd like to help you through. You can then mix it with traditional financial planning later on. That's generally how it works for me at the moment.

Rachel (05:04):

Was that something that you were able to identify from someone else when you were going through your moment of realizing how much money was affecting you and the challenges you were having with it? Were you able to find a coach or did you work with some advisors to help you through those moments?

Nikki (05:19):

I chose courses actually. I have used business coaches since, so in building my business I've seen the value in having one-on-one sessions with people. Its been incredible. When I was first learning, I decided to learn through podcasts, books and courses. That's a slightly different way of doing it because you have to be quite self-motivated to go through a course, but you can ask questions whenever you need to. Generally in a good course, you'll have somebody there that you can talk to even if it's not the person. They might have a team that you can discuss things with.

Nikki (05:54):

That's how I did it for myself because I prefer to sort of sit there and listen to a video, put the actions in place and go back to another video, put the actions in place. I tend to be quite self-motivated when it comes to those things. This doesn't work for everybody but that was how I managed to do that.

Rachel (06:10):

There's so much information out there in different formats. I guess part of that is understanding how you learn and what you need as a person and who's going to give you that interaction. Finding something that works with your lifestyle, finding something that's flexible, and have that ability to dip into what you can do whilst you're also working.

Nikki (06:28):

Yes, absolutely.

Rachel (06:29):

For you, once you decided you were going to start your business as a money coach, what sort of steps did you take to developed your skills even further to be able to coach? Then maybe about setting up the business, any reflections on how that was transitioning into that role?

Nikki (06:46):

When I started GP training, I knew I wanted to do some kind of business. I denied it for a long time but I've wanted to do something so I had a couple of other business ideas before I started The Female Money Doctor. I realized quite quickly that those ideas were not things that I could sustain. After my traveling, I'd went to Vietnam and I found this lovely Vietnamese family who did personal tailoring. They made jackets and skirts and trousers and all sorts of stuff and I thought, "Wow, that would be amazing." Like someone could buy an entire suit made just for them and all I had to do is send the details to the family and they'd create the suit and then send it across to us.

Nikki (07:33):

Very rapidly realized I don't really care about fashion. I didn't want to write about it. I didn't want to do anything about it. It was just an amazing experience that I had for myself that was never going to become a business. I did try it but it didn't work out to me. I actually talked about my transition from obstetrics and gynecology into GP, because a lot of people were asking me, "What did you do?" "How did you come to that decision?" After about five or six blog posts, I realized that that's all I wanted to write about. I actually didn't want to write anything else. I was done. It was like it purged my system of everything I wanted to talk about.

Nikki (08:09):

When it came to the finances, it was a long-winded way of realizing that actually what I was learning about was actually valuable, that I could then talk to other people about. I actually started it like as a blog. I wasn't in it for the, "I'm going to become a money coach." Because I didn't know that that was a thing at that point. I just wanted to write about my experiences, help people to understand the interplay between your mental health and your physical health and your money. Show people how I got out of my debt problem and what I'm starting to do with investing and saving and things like that.

Nikki (08:44):

Then eventually I loved it so much and I thought, "I need to do more of this because I don't want to let this go." That's when I realized that money coaching was a thing. Initially I didn't do any training formally. I just looked to see what was out there and started to help other people, through my GP skills. That was listening, breaking down problems and then setting action plans. Maybe not the traditional coaching methods, but that was how I started. Then eventually found an online company called Wise Monkey and there's a lady called Simmone Gnessen and she teaches people how to become money coaches. That then put more formality into my coaching if you'd like.

Nikki (09:28):

Now, I could understand, "All right now, this is where I am." This is the line of being a coach This is the line of being a mentor and seeing whether the two interact. My next step now is to become a one of many coach. One of many is like leadership skills coaching but it also helps people with their general day-to-day life and how you can live your life not in burnout but by using lots of different skills and different energies.

Nikki (09:55):

It's difficult to explain it without anyone actually going to have a look at it but essentially, we've all got different energies within us. So, the lover, the queen, the warrioress and these different archetypes are really good for different situations. The idea is that we all need to rely on these different archetypes rather than just be superwoman all the time. Which is what a lot of medics do because we just go on this one track and we just keep going and we keep going until we get burnt out. I'm learning to become a coach with this particular way of working because I think that's what we need more of.

Nikki (10:27):

We need more women that are understanding that being burned out and stressed is not the way forward and actually there are different ways of doing it. These are all to enhance what I'm doing. It's not to replace what I'm doing. It's to become a better female money doctor if you'd like.

Rachel (10:40):

That's the joy of it of having your own business. We were talking a little bit about this before we started recording, of having that creation that's yours and that business that's yours. Being able to see how it progresses and where it takes you. Sometimes that can be quite different from the very beginning to a couple of years on. So, you said you've now been running your business for nearly four years so you've had a good time to sort of see how it's evolving. Can you give us a flavor of how that sits with your GP work and how you feel you can find the balance if there's some interplay with those or how you find the two sit together?

Nikki (11:13):

Yeah. When I first started locuming I basically just had to work around it so I had to do as many hours as needed to make sure I was paying my bills. I've now since taken on another job which is like a year's long contract, if you'd like to cover some of these maternity leave. What I do is I do three days a week as a GP so that's six sessions. Which is pretty intense, I have to say. I mean, that's enough. I don't do any more than that. Then the other two days of the week I'm working on the business.

Nikki (11:41):

Mondays and Tuesdays are my business days. Sometimes Thursday mornings as well to fit clients in or do things that haven't been done during the week. It's not easy and certainly on a GP day I find it very difficult to do anything business related. It just doesn't happen. My brain can't do the two things. What it's done is it's helped to enhance my GP work because I know I've got my creative outlet that I can go back to. Equally my business has been enhanced through the GP stuff because it's reminding me about why I got into this in the first place and keeping my skills going in terms of asking the right questions when you speak to a client or something like that or breaking down a problem.

Nikki (12:22):

However, what's happening now is because the business is starting to become a bigger entity, I'm now struggling with the GP work. They're both very full on things. When you start a business for the first time if you've ever done that before, you know how hard it is to get all the things together and you're the only person doing everything. All the marketing, all the finance, all of the PR, all of the customer service, everything. So, it's now getting to a stage where actually I probably need to drop down on my GP hours even more, which will happen once this next job finishes.

Rachel (12:58):

So much of that is about finding the balance, isn't it? About your own balance and where you want to draw those lines. Also, as you were talking, it just made me think about boundaries and how setting those boundaries between different aspects is so important. Are there things that you've found that have been really helpful for you to create those boundaries?

Nikki (13:17):

Generally, if it's something quickly, I can do in the business. So, if someone's got a quick question, I can get that sorted out. I can do that in my lunch break or I can do it before work or I could do after work? That's fine. The big stuff won't get done. I'll just have to wait till the next free day that I have. I do a lot of batching so I tend to sit and I'll do all of my podcasts for a month or ll of my blog posts for a month. I've got somebody helping me now to do this so I do the podcast and I'll make the 10 minute take away and then I'll give it to my assistant and then she'll turn them into blog posts for me.

Nikki (13:52):

That's been a huge help because it means then that I know that I've always got something going out every single week and I don't have to be the one to create the blog post every single week. I've done it and I know I can do it but it saves me time. Those are the sorts of things that I'm now doing to create the boundaries because it means that I don't have to be sitting worrying about it during my GP day I can just focus on the GP stuff which is important and then I can go back to the business later.

Rachel (14:18):

There are some really great tips there. I'm taking notes. I can totally understand there's challenges with all these things of creating a business and being that person, your selling yourself and your skills. You want to be involved in all the different aspects of offers that you create but at the same time you've got a limited number of hours. What's interesting is that there's a lot that it's around your mindset and how you approach it. Do you think that you've seen a big change in your mindset of having a business instead of solely working for someone else?

Nikki (14:48):

Yeah. It took me a long time to get my head around the idea of even starting a business because I was a doctor and more so is when we become doctors, it becomes a very big part of our identity. The idea of starting a business and asking people for money to pay me to do the things to help them has been one of the biggest barriers I've had to overcome and it still is an ongoing process. I'm still not a hundred percent okay with charging people for what I do. That's my problem and that's something I'm working on. I've definitely come a long way in the last, nearly four years. I suppose the first barrier that I had to get over was I'm a doctor, I'm not a business owner.

Nikki (15:29):

One of my friends who's a life coach, she gave me a session and we actually sat and we looked at my early childhood experiences and she said, "What did you love doing as a child?" And I said, "Well, I loved being a teacher." I used to have like little groups where I'd teach them stuff. I created a radio show, it didn't go very far but I was about seven at the time. I'd also made a little magazine. My dad, bless him, photocopied my first magazine for me because he had a massive photocopier at work and I think I had about 20 or 30 additions or something and gave them out to people. When she reminded me of that, it was a memory that I'd forgotten about and it suddenly made me realize that came before medicine.

Nikki (16:08):

A desire to help people through radio and having a magazine and creating things. I was always making stuff to sell on. The entrepreneur part of me was there first. Medicine came later when the rational part of my brain kicked in and people were like, "Oh, you could be a doctor." "You've done well at school." And the ego part takes over. So, when I was reminded of that, that's when it took me back to, "Huh, I know what I'm doing now." "I know where I'm going." That was another mindset shift that had to happen. Yeah. Once you prove yourself that you can do it, then that gradually dissolves over time.

Rachel (16:46):

I love that you also work with a lot of your clients around setting intention about manifesting money. Do you think that, also from what you've just shared, that intention, that goal of being yourself of like saying, "Actually these things are in me." "This entrepreneurship is actually part of who I am." It's setting yourself the intention to move forward in that direction?

Rachel (17:09):

It's difficult coming from a scientific background to talk about manifesting because people just assume that it's a bit woo and there's nothing in it. You can call it what you want but yes, manifesting is basically about going for what you want in life. It's about going after your dreams and it's about taking action towards those things. If you then choose to believe that the universe is supporting you and is helping you to achieve that, even better because that really is the heart of manifesting. It's believing that there is something greater than you, be it God or whatever, that is helping you to get there.

Nikki (17:42):

When you have an intention and a lifestyle or something you want, a dream and then you take the steps towards it, you are manifesting every day. It's up to you to take those steps because you're not going to get there unless something changes. So, if you aren't currently working in a job and you've got an idea for a business and you're telling yourself that you can't possibly do that because you're too busy, then guess what? You're always going to be too busy. You have to set an intention that you are going to reach that be it in five years time, 10 years time. What is the future you're going to be doing? How are you going to be behaving and become more like that person? That's manifesting in a nutshell.

Rachel (18:26):

I love that. A future self is something I really work with actually to visualize my future self. Not as a person that's necessarily not me now, but the person I am and working to that person. So, moving and always moving forward and I find that really powerful actually. I agree with you. I think when we talk about manifesting, the first thing that people think is, "Oh, that's a little bit somewhere else." Particularly if you come from a scientific background.

Rachel (18:51):

But like you said, if you break it down into sections of like understanding yourself, understanding your values and your goals and then those beliefs really support us, don't they? However, we believe whatever that belief system is. The other thing I loved from one of your blogs is about creating the abundance also. I suppose it links into my yogi mind just in terms of lots of people will create a space for a ritual. So if you're meditating, it'd be like your space where you go to and often people will create little altars where around them if there's certain things that create something inside them. I'd love to know how the abundance altar works and how you use that maybe in your own life but also with your clients.

Nikki (19:35):

The abundance altar is essentially as you said is a space in your house, be it in the room that you use all the time or in a nice little cubbyhole somewhere and you put things there that are symbolic of what it is that you were trying to achieve or what you want more of in your life. For me, it's just a reminder and something beautiful to look out every day. It makes me remember what it is that I'm trying to achieve and it helps me to focus my intention. I don't necessarily do anything more ritualistic than that. It's just that if I have spare change or I come across something really inspirational like a quote or something like that, that might form part of my abundance alter. I change my flowers a lot so I love orchids.

Nikki (20:21):

For me, plants and flowers really represent abundance because they are constantly changing. If you're looking after them and cultivating them, they are growing and making these beautiful flowers. I've got like a money tree on one of my window cells. It's not technically on my abundance altar but it's nearby and I've had it from when it was a tiny baby. A friend gave it to me and it's now growing into this beautiful plant. For me, that's the epitome of abundance. It's like, "Well, that's my money growing." I'm sowing the seeds and I'm tending to it and it's growing and it's becoming this amazing thing.

Nikki (20:54):

For me an abundance altar is more of a reminder. It's like, "This is what you're trying to achieve and look at these amazing things that you've got around you and enjoy life and be grateful for the things that you do have." The only thing that I suppose that I do that's a little bit ritualistic is I have oracle cards so I love just taking a card at random and it gives you some inner guidance if you like. You read the card and it speaks to something inside you or you ask it a question and you pull a card and it will give you an answer. I take one out for the month and that becomes my card code for the month.

Nikki (21:26):

It might be something like, "Keep on the path." "It's hard, but keep going." Something along those lines. That's how I use mine but everybody is different. Some people are more active with theirs and they'll do something every day. They might light some incense, put a candle on there, however it works. It's got to work for you though.

Rachel (21:45):

Well, thank you for sharing that. It's really nice to see how you've used that in your life. Let's just hop back to money again. I suppose it's so many of us who don't talk about it, which is quite interesting. Was there something that you noticed when you were having your own challenges with money. Was it something that you found difficult to talk to other people about? Share those challenges, and maybe where you were like being in a situation that was maybe more difficult to find a path through. How can people get over that? We sort of attach different emotions to that. How can we move on from that and maybe some of that is having these conversations and discussing it. Yeah. I'd love to know your thoughts on how we move foward.

Nikki (22:23):

Talking about money is really difficult and when I had a lot of debt, it was very hard for me to admit that to my now husband. Thankfully he was amazing about it and he said, "Okay, fine." "We'll just deal with it." I still refused to let him help me pay it off. It was like, "It was mine and I was going to get through it." Actually just unloading that burden and him hearing it, was a really helpful thing to do that took a lot of me having to pluck up the courage to do that. What I say to the ladies in my community is if they find it really hard to talk to other people about money because it's seen as vulgar or whatever, you come into my Facebook group and we talk about money in there.

Nikki (23:05):

If someone's got a question about getting out of debt or their credit score or something they think is just really simple and they got no one to ask about it, you ask in the Facebook group and people are very supportive in there. I make it a very safe space. It's a closed group as well so people can't just see everything that's being written, you have to be in the group. That really helps. It really helps to have people around you that understand where you're coming from. Yeah. I don't allow any shame or judgment or anything. It's very, very special. It has to stay like that. I think if you struggle with telling people in your day-to-day life or you find that you can't talk about it with your friends, then Facebook group is one thing you can do or finding a group of people around. It doesn't have to be my Facebook group, but a couple people that you can talk to about money or business or whatever.

Nikki (23:52):

The other thing as well is knowing what your money personality is. I'm a sacred money archetypes coach and essentially all that means is I help people understand themselves through money and personalities. We've got eight of them within us and we've all got access to all eight of them but three of them have the biggest impact. If you know what your money personality is, that can also help you to start having conversations with other people because if you both do your money personality type and one of you is a maverick and the other one is are romantic, that opens up a conversation. You go, "Oh, what did you get?" "Well, I got this and this means this, this, this, and this." And, "Oh yeah, I understand that as well." Perhaps we can help support each other in the more shadow sides that we do.

Nikki (24:32):

So, mavericks, they jumped from thing to thing. They're more likely to gamble with their money and get themselves into financial difficulty that way but equally, they're really good at taking on business risk and deciding they want to do something more with their life. Romantics like to treat themselves. They like to look after themselves. They like to have luxurious things around them which means they can overspend because they don't like being told no, they don't like budgeting. They can teach the other archetypes to have a chill out. Actually, you are allowed to have a break. You are allowed to buy things. You are allowed to spend money on yourself so that you can have an easier lifestyle or whatever it is you want. They're the two major things: find yourself a tribe of people and figure out your money and health personality. And once you've done that, that will really help open the conversation.

Rachel (25:16):

I really love that. I'm going to do that later. I'm going to fiure out my money personality. I think my own journey with money, just listening to you speaking and reflecting back to not long after I had come out of university, out of medical school and then first 10 years of being a doctor, it does make me realize that a lot of people come out of university with a lot of debt. If I look back at myself 10, 15 years ago, it would have been so valuable to me to be able to talk to other people. It's not something that anyone talks to you about.

Nikki (25:47):

Say you go through a path to come out the other side to function in a role and money isn't really part of that discussion, because a lot of people work in health systems that don't also have any transactional exchange so you don't see that money yourself. How do you think we could improve that for next generations of people coming through all the different careers? I guess really it's not just medicine that's unique in that sense.

Nikki (26:14):

We've got a responsibility to educate ourselves so then we can help the next generation. If you've got kids, nephews, nieces, the things that you learned for yourself are so important to pass on. Whether they listen to it or not is another thing because I know some people would struggle with that. If you teach your kids early, get them into the habit of setting aside a portion of their pocket money for saving, setting aside a portion of their money for investing and then they can spend the rest if they want to, that's getting them in a really great habit. Money personalities don't just affect adults, they affect kids as well so there'll be some kids that will just want to spend all of their money, but if you can teach them the value of having some saved back or allowing them to make mistakes with their money.

Nikki (26:59):

If they blow everything in the first five minutes of going to Disneyland and they realize that they've made a mistake, that's a really valuable lesson because if they learn that early it means you're less likely to make those mistakes as you're older. Modeling good behaviors around money for them as well. That means being responsible with your budget, looking at your finances regularly, talking to them about how a mortgage works, talking to them about how credit works, building a credit score as soon as they're able to from the age of 18. There are loads of things you can do for kids really early on like the go Henry card and things like that, that can help you to monitor what your kids are doing with their money but they're learning how to manage their own budget. So, that's something to explore.

Nikki (27:38):

Plus you've got all the children's savings accounts and things like that. I think we need to do a lot ourselves to model how to help children with their finances. Schools, yes, to a certain extent as well but I think schools are already so overwhelmed that it's hard to know if they'd be able to consistently give a good education around finances. I think the more we can do the better and there's more and more coming out there now to help parents to teach their kids how to manage money, books and courses and all sorts of things.

Nikki (28:08):

It has to come from us first and foremost and as people then go through university, hopefully, we'll have got that basis of an education so when they come out the other side, they won't just suddenly start doing the lifestyle creep where they're earning money while they spend every single penny of it. Actually, no, let's live a little bit more frugally and save up our money so that later on, we then got the savings account or we've got an investment account that can help us in the future. I'm not sure if that a hundred percent answers the question because it's such a hard thing to teach a lot of people about but certainly the more we can educate ourselves, the better we can then spread that knowledge to other people.

Rachel (28:49):

Just listening to you there I think so much of it sounds like the acknowledgement really. Acknowledging that it's actually part of our live and I think a lot of us try to ignore that. We try to go about doing whatever we want to do in our lives, our career, or our work life balance but without acknowledging that the money does play a part in that. It's interesting when you were saying at the beginning about how much that impacts your patients and how you now ask your patients in a clinical setting how their money is and just exploring that for ourselves and start the conversation with other people. It's very interesting maybe depending on our personalities.

Nikki (29:28):

Also, our parents. It's a lottery about whether our parents will know what they're doing with their finances, but even then, if your parents do give you some good lessons, it's whether or not you choose to listen to that or not. So, I'm a maverick archetype and as I said it jumped from thing to thing. Also mavericks don't like going to the crowd, they like being a little bit different so when my mom said to me, "You need to make sure that you write down somewhere everything you're spending every day." I went, "No, thanks." "That sounds really boring." I did the opposite of that and was into FOMO so I literally would say yes to every experience going because I wanted to experience everything. Yeah, you can do all this education but it does come back to personality sometimes as well.

Nikki (30:10):

It's not an easy fix by any means. Rather than just saying to our kids, "What do you want to be in your life?" So, I want to become a doctor or I want to be a teacher or whatever. What kind of lifestyle do you want? If your lifestyle is going to be focused around traveling all around the world, what can you do to be able to do that freely and easily without having to worry about money? I remember a friend of mine who spoke to his son about what he wanted to do in his life and he said, "I want a fast car." "I want a Ferrari." He's obsessed with Ferrari's. He said, "Okay, all right." "This is how much it costs to buy a Ferrari." "This is how much it costs to maintain a Ferrari." "What kind of job fits that?" And he realized quite rapidly that what he was choosing to go into was never going to afford him the Ferrari that he thought he wanted in the future.

Nikki (31:03):

I'm sure as a kid he'll change his mind later on because we don't always follow through on what we want to do as children, do we? I think if you ask yourself what kind of lifestyle you want and what values you have, that can also direct you on what you do next as well.

Rachel (31:19):

I love the fact of your maverick personality so then now I'm going to be intrigued by this. So, this FOMO for you, how does that impact on your business now?

Nikki (31:29):

Once you understand your money personality, it impacts literally everything. The creator, Kendall SummerHawk of the money personality types was doing it with business in mind but what she says is it actually impacts everything. When I first started my business, yes, I wanted to do all the things all the time and I can be quite guilty of trying to do everything all at once. All of the different social media channels, all of the different modalities of how to run a business. What I've since realized is that actually for a maverick, you need a foundation.

Nikki (32:02):

Once you've got your foundation in place, you can then start having fun with your finances. That led me to creating a membership so that's recurring revenue every single month and as that builds, the baseline of my foundation will increase and that then enables me to have a bit of a feast or famine top note, if you like, so I can launch a new course or I can try something with affiliate marketing or I can do something different. I know that I always got that constant money that's coming in at the baseline and I just have to make sure that I tweak and improve that. It does help to understand yourself because then you realize where your weaknesses are and you can then put things in place. As a maverick I can still have fun. I can still go out there and try new things but I know that by having that recurring revenue, that will help me to support myself financially as well.

Rachel (32:50):

Sounds like you've been able to set up an amazing system to be able to offer different things but also to try different things. I suppose there's an element of not being afraid to try and maybe sometimes not being afraid to fail, how do you find with your mindset, with being supportive to yourself and saying it's okay to do this and not being critical of yourself and listening to any inner critic that you have? How do you find that you can overcome the internal dialogue?

Nikki (33:19):

The inner critic is something I've written about recently and you can call it what you want. It could be a person. It could be somebody you've interacted with as a kid. It could be your inner child. It could be an anything to do with this little voice inside your head that is saying, "You can't do that." "Who are you to do that?" "Oh my God, this is going to fail." "You should just go back to working again." I have that inner critic every single day. It never goes away. She's there trying to keep me safe and that's essentially what she's doing. She's like this weird warped best friend that's trying to stop you from making a fool of yourself or getting yourself into a difficult situation that you can't get out of.

Nikki (33:57):

Actually, she shouldn't be the one driving your decision-making. She can be there. She can be a guide. She can be somebody to listen to but then ignore. So, "Okay, yes". "Thank You very much for telling me that if I carry on with my business I might fail and then it will be done to me and then I'll have to pick up the pieces and do something else." "Thank you for telling me that and reminding me of that every single day but I'm still going to do it anyway." That's really been a big thing for me, to ignore that inner critic. She doesn't go away. It doesn't matter what you do. I've had it on good authority that even multimillionaires still have the inner critic and they still have imposter syndrome and they still have all these things going on but they do things anyway, and that's what makes them successful because they ignore that little person inside them that says, "You can't do."

Rachel (34:42):

It's reassuring to know that a large proportion of people are wondering around with those same thoughts. Like you said, feeling that imposter syndrome and it's easy to think that you're the only person. Often there are lots of other people having similar experiences. I think part of the reason why I really love doing this podcast is because it's so great to speak to people who are trying different things, exploring different aspects, finding their balance in their own ways but at the same time, there are lots of commonalities amongst those women. Of how they've been able to do that and that whole mindset and that shift around it. One of your recent blogs was around that sort of conscious network and learning and connecting with other people, maybe you could explain a little bit about that concept.

Nikki (35:27):

This was something that I learned through one of many trainings I'm doing in becoming a coach. Essentially what you're looking at is every area of your life, so that might be children, work, business health, whatever. You portion your life up into different sections and then you work out which people you've got in your life are there to support you in each of these areas. So, have you got somebody that can help you practically with your children if you needed to suddenly do something quickly and you needed a babysitter? That would be like an example of a practical help around kids. You can look at mentors or supporters as well.

Nikki (36:06):

At work for example, you might want a mentor to be able to vent frustrations on and plan your next career move. What I loved about GP training is that we all had our own mentor, I suppose. We were assigned a doctor who had already graduated, who was then wanting to educate other doctors and every single week we could get in touch with them if we wanted to. Every couple of months we'd actually have a face-to-face where we could talk about the next thing we had to learn or had develop on. They go through our portfolios with us. They were just there as a support and I absolutely loved mine. He was so supportive and I could talk to him literally about anything.

Nikki (36:47):

My dad unfortunately died at the end of my training. I had a good six months where I was trying to do my final exams and my dad was dying and it was all just incredibly stressful so having that mentor was so helpful. It was just the best thing to help me get through that six months. That's what I mean by have you got a mentor in place for each of these areas? Your mum might be your mentor when it comes to kids because she's done it before and you might want to sort of bounce some ideas off of her or whatever. Not necessarily do everything she tells you to do but she might say, "Okay, well, I did it like this." "Why don't you try that?"

Nikki (37:23):

Then you might have somebody that might help you financially with these things or just friends in each of these areas. You might just want to go to a friend and just vent about your relationship. Just get it off your chest, have a glass of wine and then you're feeling all right afterwards. So, when I talk about conscious networking, it's not just about your partner or a friend or a neighbor. It's like who in each of these different areas could you go to if you needed that help and the more people you've got around you that you could ask questions over and get some advice fromor get some help from, it really does help to enhance your life.

Nikki (37:58):

You can't do everything on your own. That's one of the things I've really learned from the coaching, is that we get burnt out because we try and do everything ourselves especially professionals. We all just want to do everything ourselves because we've had to work really hard to get to where we're at and we're used to being competitive and getting the right grades. All of these things but actually what it comes down to is relying on other people to help you. Then once you do that, that's when you can release some of that burden and perhaps hopefully not get so burnt out.

Rachel (38:28):

It's quite hard for a lot of people to open up and to ask for help actually. I think we often find that it is difficult to ask for help. Like you say, a lot of people fight alone feeling that they should be doing everything themselves. Most people are quite willing to help someone else if they're part of your social community or your broader network. People liked to be asked. We are meant to connect with other people. We aren't solitary animals.

Nikki (38:55):

We are meant to be in communities and engaging and in that transaction of being able to help someone and in return there will be times where you will be able to be that mentor or that friend or that practical person who can offer something for someone else. So many of us are just going so quickly that we're not very conscious of what we're doing ourselves or even thinking about who those people are.

Nikki (39:21):

It really does help you to see the holes when you start to do the work around it. On my blog post I get people to draw out a grid and it really helps you to see where the gaps are in it and actually sometimes you do have to pay for the help as well. There's a lot of culture around just grabbing freebies or, "What can I do for free?" I get it because I was in that space as well but what I've realized is actually when you start putting money into things, that's when you start to value them more. It might be that you need to employ a life coach to help you decide what you're going to do with your life or with your career or your business. It might be that you need to buy a book or you need to join a support group that's like a membership, whatever.

Nikki (40:03):

You might have to do these things in order to get to where you want to get to because doing it in a piecemeal by picking all the freebies out and going, "All right, I'm going to do a bit of that and a bit of that." People have got conflicting advice as well so what works for somebody might not work." It can be a really confusing thing to do and can make you feel quite overwhelmed. So, yes, do the network process when you've got the gaps or when you've realized that you need a cleaner or you need somebody to help you figure out what you're going to do with your life. That's when you need to actually pay the money for it and that's why it's so helpful. There's an exercise to do.

Rachel (40:34):

It sounds brilliant and I think that also feeds into that sense of giving ourselves permission to invest in ourselves and say, "It's okay to invest in my development, my learning." Sometimes that's about time and saying, "I'm going to invest in myself and to give myself time, I have to delegate some tasks to someone else." Is that something that you've also developed over time? That feeling of actually being able to invest in your own development, in your learning and in your business?

Nikki (41:04):

Yeah, and it can become quite addictive, I will warn you. When you start doing it, eventually you have to sit back and go, "Hang on a second, I don't email the course. I can do this. I've got this. I know what I'm doing." Especially for particular money personality types. There's a ruler personality type that is constantly ambitious. Nothing's ever enough. Money is never enough and they always want to go to the next thing. They might go and buy a course for their business but they'll skimp out on everything else. They wont go on holiday, for example. Yes, there is a fine balance to be had. Go and do the things. Take action on the things but don't become one of these people that just constantly learns and never actually implements.

Nikki (41:43):

There are people out there that will just buy courses just to learn them. If you've got a clear idea of what you want and the course will fit that or a coach will fit that, then put in place what they're telling you to do because just in other ways you're just wasting money. Yeah, everything my business coach tells me to do, I go off and do it. The next week he gives me more things to do. It's a learning joke. He gives me so much to do all the time but that's the only way you progress, by taking the action. Yeah, I've had to learn the freebie grabbing stuff is not always the right thing to do and then once you start putting skin in the game, it really focuses your attention but equally it can get addictive and then you can overspend on things that you didn't really need to buy. It's like a development but it's worth it. It's totally worth it. I wouldn't go back to just try and do it all myself on my own anymore.

Rachel (42:36):

Thank you so much for sharing all of your thoughts and ideas. I am totally going to do my money personality in a minute. I think everybody listening to this will be doing that. Where can we find out more about what you're offering in a minute, Nikki?

Nikki (42:49):

My website is probably the best place, thefemalemoneydoctor.com. If you want to do the quiz it's just /sma_quiz or you can still find that on the front page as well. If you literally just scroll down, you'll see I offer 15 minute sessions so if you want a little bit of a strategy plan, put something together, you want to just talk about something, you can book in onto my calendar. Equally, I've got my Facebook group which is women working towards money freedom, so if you just type that into Google or put the female money doctor in or something, you'll probably find me. The quizz is on my website. So, that's a good place to start if you want to learn more about what you do with money.

Rachel (43:24):

Brilliant. Thank you. Final question is really about being our authentic self and that was really a big driver for me in having this podcast, is that we can just be truly who we are. My podcast is called Authentic Tea and the final question is, where and with who would you like to have your most authentic cup of tea?

Nikki (43:43):

See, I was trying to think of this. I stillI've got so many different people that I would love to do this with. For me, I would love to have another cup of tea again with my grandma. She was just the most amazing woman. Unfortunately, she died when I was about six years old but I'd love to just have a cup of tea with her to just update her on everything that's happened. She used to have these beautiful tea sets, you know the old fashioned ones with little flowers on them and cup and saucer and like little gold rims and everything. The sort of things that you seen now and sort of those posh high teas and things. That's what she used to have and so I'd love to sit somewhere with a nice fireplace or looking out on a beautiful view, a cup of tea, sit with her. I know it's not possible but it's a nice thing to think about.

Rachel (44:31):

Well, thank you for sharing that. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful and it's a wonderful way to end this chat with you. I say thank you for your time. It's been so lovely talking to you today. Thanks Nikki.

Nikki (44:42):

Thank you for having me.

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