20. Money Mindset Shifts for Moms Leaving Corporate with Germaine Foley
If you’re transitioning out of corporate and into entrepreneurship, it’s common to worry that you’re leaving behind a money safety net and walking into an era of financial uncertainty. That’s why I have money coach Germaine Foley on the show this week, to help you develop a money mindset that serves you as you prepare for this transition from corporate to entrepreneurship.
Germaine Foley is the mom of 2 teenage boys, a wife, a certified Life Coach, and the queen of helping women take control of their money and build wealth without losing the freedom to spend on things that bring them joy, and she’s here to discuss her zone of genius: money mindset.
Tune in this week to discover the money mindset shifts that will help you become a financially savvy entrepreneur as you leave the corporate world. Germaine and I discuss why leaving corporate doesn’t mean sacrificing your financial future, we share what holds entrepreneurs back from meeting their full potential, and you’ll learn how it’s possible to blow the ceiling off what’s possible in terms of earning potential in your business.
If you're looking for the right environment to start your networking journey, look no further than my group, the Mom Entrepreneurs Circle. Sign up below for mutual support, advice sharing, and the tools you need for both you and your business to thrive. We meet on the 2nd Thursday of each month and participation is totally free!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
The biggest financial beliefs that hold entrepreneurs back as they transition from corporate to their own business.
How your money mindset might be stopping you from going all in on your business.
Why the nature of being in business means becoming comfortable with money coming in inconsistently.
Tips for keeping your personal finances consistent while your business finances are inconsistent.
Why financial success doesn’t just mean replacing your corporate income immediately.
Germaine’s advice for moms encountering difficulty setting prices in their business.
How to fall back in love with your job before you leave on your terms.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires by Jerry Hicks and Esther Hicks
Full Episode Transcript:
Jenna Rykiel: Hello, my favorite moms. In this episode, we're joined by Germaine Foley, a life and money coach who's cracked the code on having it all. I absolutely loved this conversation and immediately started implementing some of her tips into my own life and work. In this episode, Germaine shares her journey from paycheck to paycheck living to financial freedom and reveals how you can do the same.
You'll discover practical tools for setting prices in your business, learn how to mentally prepare for the leap from corporate to entrepreneurship, and explore the game-changing rampage of appreciation technique to reignite your passion for your current job. As a working mom juggling a corporate career and a thriving side business, Germaine offers invaluable insights on time management and maintaining a success-oriented mindset.
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a career professional, or a busy parent, or all three, this episode is packed with actionable advice to transform your relationship with money and success. I'm so excited to introduce you to Germaine, and please, please, please check out the show notes, jenna.coach/20, to take advantage of all the great resources she mentions in the show. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Okay, today I am with Germaine Foley, a money mindset coach who is with us to talk about her area of expertise, her zone of genius, which is the money mindset. Germaine, thank you for being on the podcast.
Germaine Foley: Thank you for inviting me and having me on and I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Jenna: Awesome. I would love to start out just by hearing a little bit about your background as a money coach and maybe even how you got into what you’re doing now and maybe even a little bit about your family.
Germaine: So, I’ll start with family. So, I am a mom. I have two teenage boys. One, actually, I just dropped off for his second year in college and I have a junior who’s in high school and I’m married. So fun stuff around here, busy boys, they love sports. And I’m almost an empty nester and I can’t believe it. It’s crazy.
Jenna: That is wild to think about, especially since we are on opposite ends of the spectrum since I am very much far away from the empty nester life, but that’s so cool.
Germaine: It’s all part of the process. It’s all a journey. I was just telling my sister, who has two little boys, that it’s all hard. She’s like, “Oh, my God, you’re so lucky, you’re past this stage.” I’m like, “No, it’s all hard. It’s just a different kind of hard so enjoy it. And time flies, so just enjoy all of it.”
Jenna: Yeah, absolutely. I think about that with business too, where I’m like, “No, the problems don’t go away when you’re making six figures. The problems don’t go away when you have regular clients. The problems just look different.” But there’s always going to be problems. So, we’ve got to get used to it. So yeah, tell me a little bit about the work that you do and share how you got into it and all that good stuff.
Germaine: Yeah. So, I am a life and money coach. And I came to this work because my money used to be a hot mess. I was one of the people who made money, but just always wondered where it went. And I would live paycheck to paycheck. And one day I just got sick and tired of it, all the stress and worry and all of the things. And I will be honest and say that I didn’t know that it was possible that you just didn’t have to struggle with money. I thought it was just a part of life for me at least, I just thought I was bad with money and that I would always struggle.
I never questioned if I would ever be able to make it, but I did just think that, this is just my lot in life and money’s just not my thing and so I’ll always struggle, until I just got tired of the struggle. And then I figured out, wait a minute, I can change my life. I can figure this out. I started doing a lot of research and I came across all of the personal finance people who told you that the way to build wealth was to become really, really frugal and to give up all the things you love and to eat rice and beans and to slash expenses. And I was just like, “Okay, if this is what I have to do, I guess this is what I have to do.”
But I will be honest, before that I was just like, “No, I’m not doing that. I can’t do that. There’s no way.” But when it just came down to it, I was just like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And then I took it to my husband and I said, “We’ve got to get our money together and this is how we’re going to do it.” And he looked at me like there’s no way we can’t vacation. There’s no way that we can’t keep our kids in extracurricular activities. We’re not couponing and doing all that stuff. And he said, “But we do need to figure something out, but we just can’t do it like that.”
And then there was a light bulb moment that went off for me to say, what if I could figure out how to build wealth and still enjoy life at the same time? And that’s exactly what I did. And once I figured it out, I knew I had to tell the world because I think there’s so many women out there just like me who figures that in order to build wealth, they’ll have to give up things they love and slashed expenses and they just can’t fathom it and so, they’re doing nothing. And they’re just living in the extreme of I’m just going to enjoy my life and I’ll think about my money later.
And I like to bring those two worlds together, enjoy life and think about your money now. You can do both. And actually, there was a money mindset study done by Fidelity Investments a couple years ago. And it found that over 70% of the participants thought that in order to build wealth, they would have to cut back on things that they love. And I think the number one thing that’s keeping people from doing it, because they feel like they are going to have to live this boring frugal life with no fun and they just cringe thinking about it, so here I am.
Jenna: Well, I’m so glad that you exist and are helping women build wealth and have fun while doing it. I think that’s so cool. I come from the opposite mindset where I was the frugal person. Oh, my gosh, it was every single dollar, every single cent went into my savings and it drove me mad. It challenged a lot. It was challenging for my marriage. It was challenging for my day-to-day.
And it’s so interesting, just the other day I went out to lunch with friends and I parked and I paid for parking, it was $4 and I was like, “I am so glad that I don’t stress about paying $4 for parking anymore.” I was the guy who would drive around for 20 minutes trying to find free parking in the city. And it’s just so nice to not have that weight anymore of living frugal. And it’s so beautiful that you’re living proof and that your clients are living proof that you can have both, because I think about that too with the work that I do of, I need to shout it from the world that moms can do both too.
They can own businesses, work on their own terms, make money and live a life that they absolutely love. So, I love the connection there. Let’s just dive right into it because my moms, my audience, the listeners are transitioning out of corporate and they see starting their own business as a financial risk and corporate as a safety net. So, I’m wondering, how can moms prepare mentally for the financial transition from corporate to entrepreneurship?
Germaine: Absolutely. That’s such a good question. And sometimes I’m all about, when I work with my clients and they’re concerned about something, they’re worried about something. Sometimes I want them to go there, tell me what you’re worried about. Let’s go to the worst case scenario. Let’s say you leave your corporate job and you start your business and what happens, what’s the worst case scenario?
And whatever they come up with, I then say, “Okay, if that happens, what’s next? What are you going to do? How are you going to get out of that situation or how are you going to change the circumstances of that situation? What are you going to do?” And every single time we go there, no matter if it’s with money or anything, relationships, transitioning out of corporate to your own business. They always prove to themselves that they will figure it out. So, it’s going to that worst case scenario helps them to tap into their own genius, their own ability to do hard things, their own ability to have their own backs no matter what.
And so, if you’re going to transition, I highly recommend you sit down and think about, what’s the worst that could happen? And we can talk about that in a minute as well. And they might say, “Oh, it’ll fail and I have to go back to corporate.” Okay, let’s talk through that. So that means you’ll just be right back where you are now and what’s so bad about that? So, you can put your brain at ease because your brain has all these questions. It’s worried, it’s concerned because this is new for you, this is different for you.
And so, it’s okay and normal that your brain is worried. And so, if you can just say, “Okay, brain, this is how I’m going to show up. This is what I’m going to do. This is how we’re going to be okay.” And then all those nerves kind of calm down and they can get about the business of actually planning and doing all the things, setting yourself up to be able to make that leap as well.
Jenna: Yeah, I love that. I often talk to clients about everything being figure out-able because it really is.
Germaine: Yes, it really is.
Jenna: And we prove that so often as moms too, all the stuff we are figuring out day-to-day, it blows my mind, but we do that in our business too and life in general.
Germaine: I also like to challenge people when they go, “Oh, it’ll fail and I’ll be right back where I am.” Typically, that’s not the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario typically is that you didn’t even go for it and you miss out on all the things that could have been. That’s the worst case scenario. So, helping people to redefine what that is, so I love doing that exercise 100%. And then kind of coming in and saying, “But actually the worst case scenario is you just don’t go all in, don’t go for your dream and then miss out on what could happen.” And so that’s another way to look at it as well.
Jenna: I am so glad you added that piece. I am going to steal that, of course, with my clients because it’s such a good point that the worst case scenario is not knowing what could have been. And not giving yourself a chance to really see what you’re capable of by playing safe because of the fears. I love that. What are some common money mindset shifts that need to happen when transitioning from employee to business owner? Because most of my moms have been very successful in the employee role, in leadership roles. And the business ownership role is, frankly, different. So, what are some of the money mindset shifts that they need?
Germaine: Yes. So, they have to really be comfortable with having money come in inconsistently because that’s just business. It doesn’t matter what your business model is, you can have a model where you have a membership and there’s money coming in every single month. But no matter what, you are more than likely going to have inconsistent income as an entrepreneur. And what I like to help my clients see is, yes, let’s just call it what it is. It’s going to be inconsistent in your business, but that doesn’t mean it has to be inconsistent in your personal finances.
And so, I try to help my clients set up a system in their business so that their personal finances are predictable. They don’t have to think about, “Oh my gosh, this launch didn’t go well.” Well I do. I help set up business systems for finances so that no matter what happens on a monthly basis, they can still count on a certain amount of money for their personal finances. And so that is the shift I would give them, is to just make peace with the fact that your business income will be inconsistent, but that doesn’t mean that your personal finances have to be inconsistent.
And you can always set up systems and processes for you to smooth that out so that home never ever has to suffer.
Jenna: Yeah, I love that. And that also makes me think of one thing that I’m always talking about is almost alleviating the pressure of replacing your corporate income immediately. Because I know so many moms when they come to me, that’s what success looks like for them, they want to replace their corporate income. And I tell them that it does take time. But so much of business ownership and the freedom and flexibility makes up for the six figure income initially maybe that you might be giving up. But that also makes me wonder, I mean, in your experience, can you debunk the myth that leaving corporate means making less money?
Germaine: Oh my God, I think the opposite. I think leaving corporate can just blow the roof off of your income because think about it. Your corporate job, usually there are salary ranges and bands that you fall within and you can’t make more than this. You may not know it, but there are ceilings to your income that HR has in place for you where they have a range. And you’re probably somewhere in the middle, you might be on the low end or you might be at the high end, but there is a limit.
But when it comes to your business, there’s no limit to how much money you can make. There’s no limit to your autonomy. There’s no limit to your creativity, what you can offer, the value you can give. And I’m a strong believer in you reap what you sow. So, the more help you give to people, the more value you put out in the world, it’ll come to you back 10/20 fold. So, if you’re willing to serve and to help people, there’s no limit to how much you can make, it’s literally unlimited.
Jenna: I love that. I want to talk about another topic that I think is within your zone of genius that my folks struggle with, which is setting prices and knowing your worth. So, what advice do you have for moms who are struggling to set prices and maybe even struggling to then charge people those prices?
Germaine: Okay, so I can talk to this from my personal experience. That was the hardest thing and I didn’t see it coming. So, when it came to corporate, I could negotiate a raise, I knew I deserved more. I had no problem standing up for myself and advocating for myself. But when it came to charging for my coaching services, I struggled. So, my very first offer, Jenna, you’re going to laugh at me, was a $19 a month membership that I had and I gave them so much for that, I was $19. And I was afraid of it. I was like, “Shall I charge $24 or 19 or 15?” That was my very first offer and I was still working. So, I struggled with this a lot.
And then I had to realize that it wasn’t me that they were paying for. I had to twist it. It wasn’t me that they were paying for. It was the value that I was going to give them. It was the transformation I was going to help them to accomplish. And so, I had to just inch my way out of that. I had to take baby steps, of course, $19 wasn’t going to cut it. Couldn’t go from $19 to 5,000. And I actually had a coach try to make me do that, and it just didn’t work. I was literally sick to my stomach.
So, I think that you have to come up with a system that works for you. So, this is how I do it. I ask myself, what is an amount that’s definitely too low that I will feel like I was being taken advantage of if I offered this product, this service, this offer for this amount of money? So, I come up with that number. And then I go to the opposite. So how much do I think is too much and that I would literally throw up saying it? And then I’d get that number. And so, I know it needs to be somewhere in between those two.
And then from there, I usually pick a number and then I go a little higher than that number. And then from there I just allow myself to increase as I go, as demand increases, as my expertise increases, as my competencies increase then and as people get better and better results, then I can increase from there.
Jenna: I love that practical tool to come up with that number because it’s so individual, what the sick to our stomach high number is. And what the, we feel like we’re taking advantage of low number is, is going to be different for everyone. Which makes sense because we’re all in different businesses and we’re all different levels of skill set in our business. So, I absolutely love the idea of having these very structured processes that you follow, that’s awesome.
I would love for you to share a little bit about your current work and what you do, because I think it’s really powerful for moms to hear and see different flavors of entrepreneurship at their best.
Germaine: Absolutely. So, I have my own coaching business and I still work full-time in corporate America. I have a very flexible job where I am in sales. So, I’m in a building, so I have a lot of autonomy, a lot of flexibility as well. So, the reason why I decided to do both is because at one point I wanted to leave my corporate job so badly. I just need it to be gone. And then I started to really focus on, okay, you heard my story at the very beginning. My number one goal is to send my kids to school debt free. That was one of the things I think held my husband and I back financially is because we had so many student loans.
And so, once we broke free from all of that, we paid off over $200,000 in debt, 100,000 of that was student loan debt. And I knew right then and there that I wanted to send both of my kids to college debt free. I wanted to give them that gift that I did not have. And so, once I really sat down and thought about it. I thought, why can’t I stay in my corporate job? Which I am fine with. I’m really good at it. I like it. I had to fall back in love with it. I did some work to fall back in love with it. And it gives me the ability to do what I’m saying.
My oldest son is at the university right now and I’m paying cash. We saved some, but it’s way more than we saved. And then I have a son who really could benefit from private schools so we’re sending him to private school. So, the life I’m choosing to live, it just makes it more comfortable for us to do all the things we want to do, for me to have my job, for me to have my business and for my husband to work as well. And so, once I fell back in love with my job, I decided that, okay, I can keep this as long as I want and then when I’m ready, I can transition. So that’s my story.
Jenna: Yeah. And that’s incredibly empowering. And I know in episode four, I think it is, I talk about how to make work suck less and it really is because we are, whenever I’m working with moms to transition out of corporate, they’re still going to be in the corporate environment for a stretch of time. And it’s so important to be able to, like you said, fall back in love with that job somehow. Are there any tidbits that you can share about that process and how you got to a place where you could fall back in love?
Germaine: Absolutely. So, are you familiar with Abraham Hicks?
Jenna: Mmm-hmm.
Germaine: Okay. So, in the back of one of her books, I think it’s called Ask and You Shall Receive. I think is that book, there is an exercise called the rampage of appreciation. And so, I do this often. You can do it with people. You can do it with yourself, things in your life. I did it for my job. I’ve also done it for my husband. I fell back madly in love with my husband. I never fell out of love with him, but I just wanted to feel a little bit more zest so I did it on him too. So, all you do is so easy.
You get a sheet of paper and you write the subject at the top. So, for me it was my job. You could put husband, you could put your kids, you can put friends, anything. And then do not stop writing until you have filled up a full page of all the reasons why you’re appreciative of that individual or that object. And so why do you appreciate your job currently? And it just goes on, it affords me this, it lets me do this. And then I got to the fact that you have so much flexibility. Your manager is amazing. All the positive things that came along with it. And then I was just like, “Why do I want to leave this?”
And then I figured that it’s not that I have to leave. I can leave on my terms when I’m ready. I think sometimes when we discover our purpose in coaching or any other business, we just automatically think that this is all I want to do. But sometimes that adds more strain to the purpose that you have. And I think you talk about that as well, how can you take away some of that strain so that you can do it to the fullest? And then when you do that, it kind of frees you up to be able to leave even sooner.
When you’re not having so much pressure to leave, it actually frees you up to be able to leave sooner if you want to. So that is my tip. And I have people do this on so many different areas of their lives whenever there’s this disdain or sadness, or if you don’t like something, just do a rampage of appreciation. It will literally shift your spirits. You may have to do it several times, but it’s such a great exercise.
Jenna: Yes, I love that. I will definitely have to steal that as well, of course, because so many of my clients come to me from a place of wanting to run from their corporate job. And I really like to get them to a place where they’re not running away from a job, but running towards this new thing, but from a place of appreciation for everything that corporate has been able to provide. I know I’m super appreciative of everything, all the experiences, everything that it was able to give me in the decade that I worked in corporate. And I’m really glad that I’m no longer in corporate.
Germaine: Yes, you can be glad for both.
Jenna: Yes, exactly. Since you are navigating both, I just want to ask maybe one more question on that piece of, how do you navigate both? How do you from a time perspective, from a mental health perspective, because you do seem to very much have it all together where you’re navigating both in a really positive way? And I think our listeners would really like to hear more about that piece because I know not everyone is ready to completely transition out of corporate.
Germaine: Absolutely. So, I compartmentalize a lot. So, when I’m working, I’m working, I’m not thinking about my business. I’m not thinking about recording my podcasts. I’m not thinking about any of that. But when I’m not working, I’m not working. And then I am able to really go all in with my clients. I’m really able to think about them a lot and create content for them and to coach them in my programs and in one-to-one. So, I think that is huge, is to separate the two. When I’m working, I’m working and when I’m coaching, when I’m in my business, I’m in my business.
I have business hours for me. So, my kids are older, so it’s easy for me to have three days a week from five to eight where I just work on my business. I also am good at time management as far as calendaring things. So, I do podcasts on a certain day. I see clients on certain days. I have a group program, it’s called the Wealthy Woman’s Academy, that usually meets a certain day. So, I try to keep it all just clean. I have certain days, coach one-to-one. So, I just try to organize it in a way that allows me to have stress, kind of deplete, go away because at first it was a lot.
But once I was able to compartmentalize and say this day is this, this day is that. And then when I’m not in that day, I don’t think about those things. I guess I’ll say, I do money producing activities, period. A lot of the busy work I had to let go. And if I think of doing podcasts and social media posts, those kinds of things that are going to add value to my clients, I think of those things as money producing. They may not produce money right now, right today, but eventually I think the value will come back. As I said earlier, you reap what you sow. So that’s kind of how I think of it. Does that help?
Jenna: Yeah, absolutely. You’ve mentioned your podcast a couple of times and I definitely want listeners to know about that as a resource. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your podcast?
Germaine: Yeah. So, the name of my podcast is called the Wealthy Woman’s Podcast. You can find it anywhere that you listen to podcasts. It’s about a year old, it’s actually a little over a year old. We have over 80 episodes. And it’s all about helping high achieving women who make good money, learn how to build wealth without having to sacrifice all the things they love. So, I talk a lot about spending intentionally. A lot of my clients overspend on things that really don’t matter to them, really don’t bring value to their lives. So, we talk a lot about that.
We also talk about money mindset, saving, paying off debt, investing, all things money we talk about. And then we do veer off to some life coaching concepts as well, because I think they’re all intertwined.
Jenna: I love that.
Germaine: We also talk about making money, can’t forget that part. We also talk about making money.
Jenna: Absolutely. My favorite thing. One last question. How can women shift their mindset from seeing personal and business development as an expense to seeing it as an investment?
Germaine: Yes, that’s such a good question. Here’s the thing. Both of them are expenditures, so expenses and investments are both expenditures. It’s money leaving your life at this certain time. But with expenses, those are things that usually depreciate in value and they kind of reduce your wealth long term. So, for some of my clients, buying a lot of clothing or things that just depreciate, that aren’t really getting a lot of value from, that’s an expense.
But an investment is something that appreciates. So, let’s say they invest in your program and yes, that’s money leaving them in the moment. But think about all of the money that they can gain, the return on the investment is the thing you really want to be looking for. Even with women that I work with, I don’t necessarily teach them how to build a business, although some of them do definitely come and learn some concepts around that.
But I am teaching them how to keep more of the money that they make, how to pay less in credit card interest, how to earn more interest in their investments. How to not overspend and actually apply that money to other areas of their lives where they get more value, even if it’s not money value but just enjoyment in general, that for sure. And when you compound that year after year and you’re making different choices with your money, that’s definitely an ROI.
So just being able to decipher between what an expense is and what an investment is. If there’s anything that can make you grow individually, that could bring you more money in the future. Think of those things as investments versus expenses, even though in the moment it may seem like it’s an expenditure because it is, but in the long term, it’ll come back to you.
Jenna: Yeah. And probably when you’re doing your taxes, you definitely want to put it in as an expense if it’s for the business. But certainly, I love that shift and seeing things as investments because yeah, the return is there in so many different ways that we can help ourselves grow personally and professionally. How can listeners connect with you, learn about what you do, maybe tap into the podcast, how can they find you?
Germaine: Absolutely. So, the podcast again is called The Wealthy Woman’s Podcast, and you can find it on Apple, Spotify, anywhere you listen to your podcasts. I would also invite your listeners to take my free training. It’s all about building wealth without sacrificing and giving up your lifestyle. You can find it at germainefoley.com/wealthclass. And that’s Germaine with a G.
And I think you’ll love the class. I’ll go deeper into a lot of the concepts that I talked about today of how you can do both, how you can build wealth and enjoy life at the same time. And if you’re on social media, you can follow me on Instagram @germainefoleycoaching. Again, that’s Germaine with a G.
Jenna: Awesome. And we will definitely have all of those links in the show notes so people can eat it up. Alright, thank you so much. This is amazing. I love talking to people who are out there doing the thing and really bringing value into the world and their zone of genius. It’s just so awesome what you do to change women’s lives and I love it.
Germaine: Well, thank you again for having me.
Jenna: Thanks, Germaine.
Germaine: Bye bye.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
You'll discover practical tools for setting prices in your business, learn how to mentally prepare for the leap from corporate to entrepreneurship, and explore the game-changing rampage of appreciation technique to reignite your passion for your current job. As a working mom juggling a corporate career and a thriving side business, Germaine offers invaluable insights on time management and maintaining a success-oriented mindset.
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a career professional, or a busy parent, or all three, this episode is packed with actionable advice to transform your relationship with money and success. I'm so excited to introduce you to Germaine, and please, please, please check out the show notes, jenna.coach/20, to take advantage of all the great resources she mentions in the show. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. It’s a podcast that helps working moms just like you, optimize your time, manage your mind, and start a business that helps you create more freedom, flexibility, and, yes, fun. I’m business and mindset coach Jenna Rykiel. And I offer practical tips to help you ditch the nine-to-five. I have been exactly where you are and I know what it takes to make the transition without trading one form of burnout for another. So, let’s get started.
Okay, today I am with Germaine Foley, a money mindset coach who is with us to talk about her area of expertise, her zone of genius, which is the money mindset. Germaine, thank you for being on the podcast.
Germaine Foley: Thank you for inviting me and having me on and I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Jenna: Awesome. I would love to start out just by hearing a little bit about your background as a money coach and maybe even how you got into what you’re doing now and maybe even a little bit about your family.
Germaine: So, I’ll start with family. So, I am a mom. I have two teenage boys. One, actually, I just dropped off for his second year in college and I have a junior who’s in high school and I’m married. So fun stuff around here, busy boys, they love sports. And I’m almost an empty nester and I can’t believe it. It’s crazy.
Jenna: That is wild to think about, especially since we are on opposite ends of the spectrum since I am very much far away from the empty nester life, but that’s so cool.
Germaine: It’s all part of the process. It’s all a journey. I was just telling my sister, who has two little boys, that it’s all hard. She’s like, “Oh, my God, you’re so lucky, you’re past this stage.” I’m like, “No, it’s all hard. It’s just a different kind of hard so enjoy it. And time flies, so just enjoy all of it.”
Jenna: Yeah, absolutely. I think about that with business too, where I’m like, “No, the problems don’t go away when you’re making six figures. The problems don’t go away when you have regular clients. The problems just look different.” But there’s always going to be problems. So, we’ve got to get used to it. So yeah, tell me a little bit about the work that you do and share how you got into it and all that good stuff.
Germaine: Yeah. So, I am a life and money coach. And I came to this work because my money used to be a hot mess. I was one of the people who made money, but just always wondered where it went. And I would live paycheck to paycheck. And one day I just got sick and tired of it, all the stress and worry and all of the things. And I will be honest and say that I didn’t know that it was possible that you just didn’t have to struggle with money. I thought it was just a part of life for me at least, I just thought I was bad with money and that I would always struggle.
I never questioned if I would ever be able to make it, but I did just think that, this is just my lot in life and money’s just not my thing and so I’ll always struggle, until I just got tired of the struggle. And then I figured out, wait a minute, I can change my life. I can figure this out. I started doing a lot of research and I came across all of the personal finance people who told you that the way to build wealth was to become really, really frugal and to give up all the things you love and to eat rice and beans and to slash expenses. And I was just like, “Okay, if this is what I have to do, I guess this is what I have to do.”
But I will be honest, before that I was just like, “No, I’m not doing that. I can’t do that. There’s no way.” But when it just came down to it, I was just like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And then I took it to my husband and I said, “We’ve got to get our money together and this is how we’re going to do it.” And he looked at me like there’s no way we can’t vacation. There’s no way that we can’t keep our kids in extracurricular activities. We’re not couponing and doing all that stuff. And he said, “But we do need to figure something out, but we just can’t do it like that.”
And then there was a light bulb moment that went off for me to say, what if I could figure out how to build wealth and still enjoy life at the same time? And that’s exactly what I did. And once I figured it out, I knew I had to tell the world because I think there’s so many women out there just like me who figures that in order to build wealth, they’ll have to give up things they love and slashed expenses and they just can’t fathom it and so, they’re doing nothing. And they’re just living in the extreme of I’m just going to enjoy my life and I’ll think about my money later.
And I like to bring those two worlds together, enjoy life and think about your money now. You can do both. And actually, there was a money mindset study done by Fidelity Investments a couple years ago. And it found that over 70% of the participants thought that in order to build wealth, they would have to cut back on things that they love. And I think the number one thing that’s keeping people from doing it, because they feel like they are going to have to live this boring frugal life with no fun and they just cringe thinking about it, so here I am.
Jenna: Well, I’m so glad that you exist and are helping women build wealth and have fun while doing it. I think that’s so cool. I come from the opposite mindset where I was the frugal person. Oh, my gosh, it was every single dollar, every single cent went into my savings and it drove me mad. It challenged a lot. It was challenging for my marriage. It was challenging for my day-to-day.
And it’s so interesting, just the other day I went out to lunch with friends and I parked and I paid for parking, it was $4 and I was like, “I am so glad that I don’t stress about paying $4 for parking anymore.” I was the guy who would drive around for 20 minutes trying to find free parking in the city. And it’s just so nice to not have that weight anymore of living frugal. And it’s so beautiful that you’re living proof and that your clients are living proof that you can have both, because I think about that too with the work that I do of, I need to shout it from the world that moms can do both too.
They can own businesses, work on their own terms, make money and live a life that they absolutely love. So, I love the connection there. Let’s just dive right into it because my moms, my audience, the listeners are transitioning out of corporate and they see starting their own business as a financial risk and corporate as a safety net. So, I’m wondering, how can moms prepare mentally for the financial transition from corporate to entrepreneurship?
Germaine: Absolutely. That’s such a good question. And sometimes I’m all about, when I work with my clients and they’re concerned about something, they’re worried about something. Sometimes I want them to go there, tell me what you’re worried about. Let’s go to the worst case scenario. Let’s say you leave your corporate job and you start your business and what happens, what’s the worst case scenario?
And whatever they come up with, I then say, “Okay, if that happens, what’s next? What are you going to do? How are you going to get out of that situation or how are you going to change the circumstances of that situation? What are you going to do?” And every single time we go there, no matter if it’s with money or anything, relationships, transitioning out of corporate to your own business. They always prove to themselves that they will figure it out. So, it’s going to that worst case scenario helps them to tap into their own genius, their own ability to do hard things, their own ability to have their own backs no matter what.
And so, if you’re going to transition, I highly recommend you sit down and think about, what’s the worst that could happen? And we can talk about that in a minute as well. And they might say, “Oh, it’ll fail and I have to go back to corporate.” Okay, let’s talk through that. So that means you’ll just be right back where you are now and what’s so bad about that? So, you can put your brain at ease because your brain has all these questions. It’s worried, it’s concerned because this is new for you, this is different for you.
And so, it’s okay and normal that your brain is worried. And so, if you can just say, “Okay, brain, this is how I’m going to show up. This is what I’m going to do. This is how we’re going to be okay.” And then all those nerves kind of calm down and they can get about the business of actually planning and doing all the things, setting yourself up to be able to make that leap as well.
Jenna: Yeah, I love that. I often talk to clients about everything being figure out-able because it really is.
Germaine: Yes, it really is.
Jenna: And we prove that so often as moms too, all the stuff we are figuring out day-to-day, it blows my mind, but we do that in our business too and life in general.
Germaine: I also like to challenge people when they go, “Oh, it’ll fail and I’ll be right back where I am.” Typically, that’s not the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario typically is that you didn’t even go for it and you miss out on all the things that could have been. That’s the worst case scenario. So, helping people to redefine what that is, so I love doing that exercise 100%. And then kind of coming in and saying, “But actually the worst case scenario is you just don’t go all in, don’t go for your dream and then miss out on what could happen.” And so that’s another way to look at it as well.
Jenna: I am so glad you added that piece. I am going to steal that, of course, with my clients because it’s such a good point that the worst case scenario is not knowing what could have been. And not giving yourself a chance to really see what you’re capable of by playing safe because of the fears. I love that. What are some common money mindset shifts that need to happen when transitioning from employee to business owner? Because most of my moms have been very successful in the employee role, in leadership roles. And the business ownership role is, frankly, different. So, what are some of the money mindset shifts that they need?
Germaine: Yes. So, they have to really be comfortable with having money come in inconsistently because that’s just business. It doesn’t matter what your business model is, you can have a model where you have a membership and there’s money coming in every single month. But no matter what, you are more than likely going to have inconsistent income as an entrepreneur. And what I like to help my clients see is, yes, let’s just call it what it is. It’s going to be inconsistent in your business, but that doesn’t mean it has to be inconsistent in your personal finances.
And so, I try to help my clients set up a system in their business so that their personal finances are predictable. They don’t have to think about, “Oh my gosh, this launch didn’t go well.” Well I do. I help set up business systems for finances so that no matter what happens on a monthly basis, they can still count on a certain amount of money for their personal finances. And so that is the shift I would give them, is to just make peace with the fact that your business income will be inconsistent, but that doesn’t mean that your personal finances have to be inconsistent.
And you can always set up systems and processes for you to smooth that out so that home never ever has to suffer.
Jenna: Yeah, I love that. And that also makes me think of one thing that I’m always talking about is almost alleviating the pressure of replacing your corporate income immediately. Because I know so many moms when they come to me, that’s what success looks like for them, they want to replace their corporate income. And I tell them that it does take time. But so much of business ownership and the freedom and flexibility makes up for the six figure income initially maybe that you might be giving up. But that also makes me wonder, I mean, in your experience, can you debunk the myth that leaving corporate means making less money?
Germaine: Oh my God, I think the opposite. I think leaving corporate can just blow the roof off of your income because think about it. Your corporate job, usually there are salary ranges and bands that you fall within and you can’t make more than this. You may not know it, but there are ceilings to your income that HR has in place for you where they have a range. And you’re probably somewhere in the middle, you might be on the low end or you might be at the high end, but there is a limit.
But when it comes to your business, there’s no limit to how much money you can make. There’s no limit to your autonomy. There’s no limit to your creativity, what you can offer, the value you can give. And I’m a strong believer in you reap what you sow. So, the more help you give to people, the more value you put out in the world, it’ll come to you back 10/20 fold. So, if you’re willing to serve and to help people, there’s no limit to how much you can make, it’s literally unlimited.
Jenna: I love that. I want to talk about another topic that I think is within your zone of genius that my folks struggle with, which is setting prices and knowing your worth. So, what advice do you have for moms who are struggling to set prices and maybe even struggling to then charge people those prices?
Germaine: Okay, so I can talk to this from my personal experience. That was the hardest thing and I didn’t see it coming. So, when it came to corporate, I could negotiate a raise, I knew I deserved more. I had no problem standing up for myself and advocating for myself. But when it came to charging for my coaching services, I struggled. So, my very first offer, Jenna, you’re going to laugh at me, was a $19 a month membership that I had and I gave them so much for that, I was $19. And I was afraid of it. I was like, “Shall I charge $24 or 19 or 15?” That was my very first offer and I was still working. So, I struggled with this a lot.
And then I had to realize that it wasn’t me that they were paying for. I had to twist it. It wasn’t me that they were paying for. It was the value that I was going to give them. It was the transformation I was going to help them to accomplish. And so, I had to just inch my way out of that. I had to take baby steps, of course, $19 wasn’t going to cut it. Couldn’t go from $19 to 5,000. And I actually had a coach try to make me do that, and it just didn’t work. I was literally sick to my stomach.
So, I think that you have to come up with a system that works for you. So, this is how I do it. I ask myself, what is an amount that’s definitely too low that I will feel like I was being taken advantage of if I offered this product, this service, this offer for this amount of money? So, I come up with that number. And then I go to the opposite. So how much do I think is too much and that I would literally throw up saying it? And then I’d get that number. And so, I know it needs to be somewhere in between those two.
And then from there, I usually pick a number and then I go a little higher than that number. And then from there I just allow myself to increase as I go, as demand increases, as my expertise increases, as my competencies increase then and as people get better and better results, then I can increase from there.
Jenna: I love that practical tool to come up with that number because it’s so individual, what the sick to our stomach high number is. And what the, we feel like we’re taking advantage of low number is, is going to be different for everyone. Which makes sense because we’re all in different businesses and we’re all different levels of skill set in our business. So, I absolutely love the idea of having these very structured processes that you follow, that’s awesome.
I would love for you to share a little bit about your current work and what you do, because I think it’s really powerful for moms to hear and see different flavors of entrepreneurship at their best.
Germaine: Absolutely. So, I have my own coaching business and I still work full-time in corporate America. I have a very flexible job where I am in sales. So, I’m in a building, so I have a lot of autonomy, a lot of flexibility as well. So, the reason why I decided to do both is because at one point I wanted to leave my corporate job so badly. I just need it to be gone. And then I started to really focus on, okay, you heard my story at the very beginning. My number one goal is to send my kids to school debt free. That was one of the things I think held my husband and I back financially is because we had so many student loans.
And so, once we broke free from all of that, we paid off over $200,000 in debt, 100,000 of that was student loan debt. And I knew right then and there that I wanted to send both of my kids to college debt free. I wanted to give them that gift that I did not have. And so, once I really sat down and thought about it. I thought, why can’t I stay in my corporate job? Which I am fine with. I’m really good at it. I like it. I had to fall back in love with it. I did some work to fall back in love with it. And it gives me the ability to do what I’m saying.
My oldest son is at the university right now and I’m paying cash. We saved some, but it’s way more than we saved. And then I have a son who really could benefit from private schools so we’re sending him to private school. So, the life I’m choosing to live, it just makes it more comfortable for us to do all the things we want to do, for me to have my job, for me to have my business and for my husband to work as well. And so, once I fell back in love with my job, I decided that, okay, I can keep this as long as I want and then when I’m ready, I can transition. So that’s my story.
Jenna: Yeah. And that’s incredibly empowering. And I know in episode four, I think it is, I talk about how to make work suck less and it really is because we are, whenever I’m working with moms to transition out of corporate, they’re still going to be in the corporate environment for a stretch of time. And it’s so important to be able to, like you said, fall back in love with that job somehow. Are there any tidbits that you can share about that process and how you got to a place where you could fall back in love?
Germaine: Absolutely. So, are you familiar with Abraham Hicks?
Jenna: Mmm-hmm.
Germaine: Okay. So, in the back of one of her books, I think it’s called Ask and You Shall Receive. I think is that book, there is an exercise called the rampage of appreciation. And so, I do this often. You can do it with people. You can do it with yourself, things in your life. I did it for my job. I’ve also done it for my husband. I fell back madly in love with my husband. I never fell out of love with him, but I just wanted to feel a little bit more zest so I did it on him too. So, all you do is so easy.
You get a sheet of paper and you write the subject at the top. So, for me it was my job. You could put husband, you could put your kids, you can put friends, anything. And then do not stop writing until you have filled up a full page of all the reasons why you’re appreciative of that individual or that object. And so why do you appreciate your job currently? And it just goes on, it affords me this, it lets me do this. And then I got to the fact that you have so much flexibility. Your manager is amazing. All the positive things that came along with it. And then I was just like, “Why do I want to leave this?”
And then I figured that it’s not that I have to leave. I can leave on my terms when I’m ready. I think sometimes when we discover our purpose in coaching or any other business, we just automatically think that this is all I want to do. But sometimes that adds more strain to the purpose that you have. And I think you talk about that as well, how can you take away some of that strain so that you can do it to the fullest? And then when you do that, it kind of frees you up to be able to leave even sooner.
When you’re not having so much pressure to leave, it actually frees you up to be able to leave sooner if you want to. So that is my tip. And I have people do this on so many different areas of their lives whenever there’s this disdain or sadness, or if you don’t like something, just do a rampage of appreciation. It will literally shift your spirits. You may have to do it several times, but it’s such a great exercise.
Jenna: Yes, I love that. I will definitely have to steal that as well, of course, because so many of my clients come to me from a place of wanting to run from their corporate job. And I really like to get them to a place where they’re not running away from a job, but running towards this new thing, but from a place of appreciation for everything that corporate has been able to provide. I know I’m super appreciative of everything, all the experiences, everything that it was able to give me in the decade that I worked in corporate. And I’m really glad that I’m no longer in corporate.
Germaine: Yes, you can be glad for both.
Jenna: Yes, exactly. Since you are navigating both, I just want to ask maybe one more question on that piece of, how do you navigate both? How do you from a time perspective, from a mental health perspective, because you do seem to very much have it all together where you’re navigating both in a really positive way? And I think our listeners would really like to hear more about that piece because I know not everyone is ready to completely transition out of corporate.
Germaine: Absolutely. So, I compartmentalize a lot. So, when I’m working, I’m working, I’m not thinking about my business. I’m not thinking about recording my podcasts. I’m not thinking about any of that. But when I’m not working, I’m not working. And then I am able to really go all in with my clients. I’m really able to think about them a lot and create content for them and to coach them in my programs and in one-to-one. So, I think that is huge, is to separate the two. When I’m working, I’m working and when I’m coaching, when I’m in my business, I’m in my business.
I have business hours for me. So, my kids are older, so it’s easy for me to have three days a week from five to eight where I just work on my business. I also am good at time management as far as calendaring things. So, I do podcasts on a certain day. I see clients on certain days. I have a group program, it’s called the Wealthy Woman’s Academy, that usually meets a certain day. So, I try to keep it all just clean. I have certain days, coach one-to-one. So, I just try to organize it in a way that allows me to have stress, kind of deplete, go away because at first it was a lot.
But once I was able to compartmentalize and say this day is this, this day is that. And then when I’m not in that day, I don’t think about those things. I guess I’ll say, I do money producing activities, period. A lot of the busy work I had to let go. And if I think of doing podcasts and social media posts, those kinds of things that are going to add value to my clients, I think of those things as money producing. They may not produce money right now, right today, but eventually I think the value will come back. As I said earlier, you reap what you sow. So that’s kind of how I think of it. Does that help?
Jenna: Yeah, absolutely. You’ve mentioned your podcast a couple of times and I definitely want listeners to know about that as a resource. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your podcast?
Germaine: Yeah. So, the name of my podcast is called the Wealthy Woman’s Podcast. You can find it anywhere that you listen to podcasts. It’s about a year old, it’s actually a little over a year old. We have over 80 episodes. And it’s all about helping high achieving women who make good money, learn how to build wealth without having to sacrifice all the things they love. So, I talk a lot about spending intentionally. A lot of my clients overspend on things that really don’t matter to them, really don’t bring value to their lives. So, we talk a lot about that.
We also talk about money mindset, saving, paying off debt, investing, all things money we talk about. And then we do veer off to some life coaching concepts as well, because I think they’re all intertwined.
Jenna: I love that.
Germaine: We also talk about making money, can’t forget that part. We also talk about making money.
Jenna: Absolutely. My favorite thing. One last question. How can women shift their mindset from seeing personal and business development as an expense to seeing it as an investment?
Germaine: Yes, that’s such a good question. Here’s the thing. Both of them are expenditures, so expenses and investments are both expenditures. It’s money leaving your life at this certain time. But with expenses, those are things that usually depreciate in value and they kind of reduce your wealth long term. So, for some of my clients, buying a lot of clothing or things that just depreciate, that aren’t really getting a lot of value from, that’s an expense.
But an investment is something that appreciates. So, let’s say they invest in your program and yes, that’s money leaving them in the moment. But think about all of the money that they can gain, the return on the investment is the thing you really want to be looking for. Even with women that I work with, I don’t necessarily teach them how to build a business, although some of them do definitely come and learn some concepts around that.
But I am teaching them how to keep more of the money that they make, how to pay less in credit card interest, how to earn more interest in their investments. How to not overspend and actually apply that money to other areas of their lives where they get more value, even if it’s not money value but just enjoyment in general, that for sure. And when you compound that year after year and you’re making different choices with your money, that’s definitely an ROI.
So just being able to decipher between what an expense is and what an investment is. If there’s anything that can make you grow individually, that could bring you more money in the future. Think of those things as investments versus expenses, even though in the moment it may seem like it’s an expenditure because it is, but in the long term, it’ll come back to you.
Jenna: Yeah. And probably when you’re doing your taxes, you definitely want to put it in as an expense if it’s for the business. But certainly, I love that shift and seeing things as investments because yeah, the return is there in so many different ways that we can help ourselves grow personally and professionally. How can listeners connect with you, learn about what you do, maybe tap into the podcast, how can they find you?
Germaine: Absolutely. So, the podcast again is called The Wealthy Woman’s Podcast, and you can find it on Apple, Spotify, anywhere you listen to your podcasts. I would also invite your listeners to take my free training. It’s all about building wealth without sacrificing and giving up your lifestyle. You can find it at germainefoley.com/wealthclass. And that’s Germaine with a G.
And I think you’ll love the class. I’ll go deeper into a lot of the concepts that I talked about today of how you can do both, how you can build wealth and enjoy life at the same time. And if you’re on social media, you can follow me on Instagram @germainefoleycoaching. Again, that’s Germaine with a G.
Jenna: Awesome. And we will definitely have all of those links in the show notes so people can eat it up. Alright, thank you so much. This is amazing. I love talking to people who are out there doing the thing and really bringing value into the world and their zone of genius. It’s just so awesome what you do to change women’s lives and I love it.
Germaine: Well, thank you again for having me.
Jenna: Thanks, Germaine.
Germaine: Bye bye.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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