Award-winning money coach and best-selling author Catherine Morgan will be guest speaker at this month’s Its’ About Time We Talked About Money event being co-organised by NatWest.

We caught up with her to find out why it’s good for women entrepreneurs to talk about money.

Can you explain a bit about what you do?

I help women to talk about money. Money can be a very isolating subject; and what people frame as a ‘bad experience’ leaves them feeling fearful about money, so they bury their head and don’t deal with it. I help them to removing financial shame before getting into the practical aspects of learning how to make, grow, invest and protect their money.  I help women to increase their confidence around money in order for them to be financially resilient. To be able to feel safe with money, feel confident with making decisions and learn how manage the emotions and practical aspects of money. I offer coaching in group programmes, one to one and am often seen talking about money in my PJs on Facebook!

Why money coaching for women?

I believe that money coaching is important for men and women (I do also coach men!) but there is something very special about women supporting other women. Many women feel they can open up more to their relationship with money with other women and I have seen evidence of this first hand with the Money Circle membership that is where I spend much of my time online talking to other female entrepreneurs. We are also prone to certain behavioural biases such as the ‘herd' bias, as we are far more likely than men to be influenced by the thoughts and behaviour of those around us.

Women also have different life stages. We are often the main care givers for children and later in life when we have ageing parents. This can hinder our ability to save and invest. We are faced with challenges such as the ‘pensions gap’ but also the ‘investing gap’ because we are inherently more risk averse and therefore need to understand risks before we invest. Nearly three-quarters of financial assets controlled by women are just sitting in cash, likely not even keeping up with inflation. According to Boring Money’s 2019 Online Investing Report, 13% of women have stocks and shares ISAs compared to 21% of men. Women have 29% of the total stocks and shares ISA wealth. If the same number of women invested the same amount as men, there would be £115bn more invested in the UK. When we do understand risk, we are more likely to invest and stick to our decisions which makes for a smart successful investor!

What does it mean to have ‘confidence with money’?

When we make important financial decisions, we are significantly impacted by judgemental filters otherwise known as behavioural biases. These cloud and influence our judgments, so decisions are subjective.

The way you view and portray yourself can have a direct impact on how much money you carry in your pockets. When you believe in yourself you begin to act in a way that allows you to go after what you want and increase your financial success. So being confident with money to me is about two things. Having positive behaviours and thoughts with money, combined with understanding the practical steps, results in thinking, being and acting confidently.

Is it very different managing business finances to managing your personal finances?

The general principles of managing money are to firstly create awareness of how you think, feel and act with money. Then it is about having the awareness, insight and understanding of what that money will give you. Money is not a goal in itself. It is just a means to achieving other goals. Many entrepreneurs get this wrong because they focus on making or saving money without any plan around how much they need to earn or have to be financially independent. Or they miss protecting one of their biggest assets, themselves! So many of the principles for managing, growing and protecting money is the same for business and personal finance. If one doesn’t manage business finance they don’t know how much they need to pay themselves to manage the personal finances. One golden rule for both is to pay yourself first!

Can you give us a flavour of what we’ll hear from you?

I will be sharing with you some valuable insights into six common money blocks to help you identify how your thoughts and emotions around money may be holding you back from being successful in your business and how you can start to manage these. I will also be sharing with you my powerful personal story of how after almost losing my son to meningitis at just five weeks old, and suffering with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)I realised how much my behaviours around money were holding me back from being the person I wanted to be and limiting my financial success. You’ll leave with some practical tips on how to make talking about money easier and how to remove your money blocks.