Attend to Your Money Clutter by Meggin McIntosh, PhD

I am quite sure you know that having clutter around your home and office depletes your attention and energy. Note: If you don’t know that, then please get in touch with me and I’ll send you some helpful references about this.

In today’s Top Ten Productivity Tips for Coaches, I want you to consider cleaning up your money clutter.

1. Know the definition of money clutter, i.e., mess, distress, interference, and disturbance related to financial issues.
2. Acknowledge the cost of money clutter. I know from my own experience when I had money clutter as well as from coaching clients around money, the drain from  money clutter is extraordinary. It costs time, relationships, health, energy, and peace of mind. The cost is too high to ignore.
3. Make sure you have a separate business checking account. If you are commingling your personal and business funds, you have serious clutter. Take care of this today. I’m serious.
4. Open a separate business savings account. If you think, ‘Well, Meggin, if I had a lot of extra money in my business checking account, then maybe I’d need a separate savings account.’ I would say to you that you need to prepare a place for the extra money you will earn AND you need to make sure that you have an adequate cushion of money saved for business expenses. It’s essential to manage your cash flow as a successful business owner.
5. Take a good look at whether all of your clients are current on their payment to you. Clients who don’t pay on time, who bounce checks, or who are overdrawn on their credit cards may need your coaching, but they can’t get coaching from you unless they have paid what you have asked them to. Clean up this area of mess, distress, and disturbance to the energy of your coaching business.
6. We may have an entire top ten just on making sure you are charging for your expertise, but for now, take a good look at whether you are undercharging for your expertise. This is one type of money clutter.
7. Always deposit your clients’ payments promptly. Whether they are paying by check, credit card, or cash, get that money into your business checking account. Pay attention to the money coming in and get it into its appropriate “holder” in a timely manner.
8. Be sure you are using accounting software (and preferably a bookkeeper) to keep up with your cash flow and other money related to your business. You are a coach and you need to be coaching and or doing work that leads to more coaching. Worrying with your accounting (or just having a stack of bills, receipts, etc.) detracts from your focus on coaching.
9. Stop giving away free sessions. I am not saying that you can’t ever set up a session with someone that is an introductory or exploratory session, but I am saying to make sure that you are ready (and they know that you are going to be ready) to invite them into your coaching programs by the end of the call. If you want to do pro bono coaching, then do that. But do that separately from giving away free sessions with the hope that people will hire you. There is a distinct difference.
10. Stop bartering your services. If you want a massage, pay a great massage therapist. If your massage therapist wants coaching, she can hire you. If you need a speech coach because you want to do more speaking, hire one. If your speech coach needs a coach, let him hire you. Bartering is big-time money clutter.

Did some of these feel a little uncomfortable? I’m not surprised. Get your money clutter cleaned up by addressing the one, two, or ten of these that are currently not in place for you and your business. And watch what happens.

If you have money clutter you may have clutter in other areas of your life. To help you may be interested in the Get a Plan! Guide® to De-clutter & De-stress: A Dozen Ways to Decrease Your Clutter and Decrease Your Stress. This Get a Plan! Guide® will help you learn a dozen specific ways to start dealing deliberately with your clutter – and then experiencing a reduction in your stress.