Cultivating Financial Intimacy with Mandyy Thomas

I am honored to introduce today’s guest on Under The Surface. Mandyy Thomas is my finance coach and the person who helped me get my shit together with money. My experience has been so valuable, so I had to get her on here to share her wisdom with you too.

Mandyy is a financial coach for 6-figure earning service-based women entrepreneurs. She takes a holistic approach to helping business owners implement a system so they can more easily save for taxes, pay themselves, and feel responsible and organized with the finances in their business.

Her zone of genius is taking the complicated, back-end money stuff and simplifying it so that we can feel confident and like the true CEO of our businesses.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

About a year and a half ago, I realized that I was bringing in more dollars to my business. I was gaining momentum, but I wasn’t feeling like I was making any more money than I was.

I was hitting milestones that a lot of business coaches get super excited about on Instagram, and I wasn’t feeling any differently. Hitting those marks came and went, and I was still in the exact same relationship with money. I felt like I didn’t have any and I knew I had to get my money shit together.

Something in me spoke up and said: You’re not going to go where you want to go by being how you’ve always been with money. You need to work on this.

I had previously hired someone to do all the financial things for me, which didn’t work out very well because I couldn’t do anything myself. 

However, Mandyy and I have done so much valuable work together. I love her story because it’s a bit of a different origin story to how she got to what she’s doing today.

Mandyy, please tell us how you got started in working with women and entrepreneurs with their money.

“[It] definitely was not the plan.

Growing up as a kid, I grew up with a lot of scarcity. We didn't have a lot of money, and I knew that my parents were doing the best that they could. But I knew from a very young age, I have to be in charge of making my own money and managing it.

So when I was 11, I started my first business.

I've always been very, very focused on money and that I became a power engineer. After that, I was doing really, really well. I was making six figures, had no debt. Managed it super well, but I did not do any of that growing up and I just had a constant fear of losing it all.

Cause that's all I ever known. There was never enough.

I ended up getting extremely sick in my mid-twenties. I went down a health journey. I was losing my memory. I thought I had early onset Alzheimer's. I had every digestive problem under the sun. I could not sleep. I was going to work in a very high functioning job, just trying to keep it together all day.

Then I'd get home so exhausted, and it just felt like my whole world was completely falling apart.

Through that journey of realizing it's not this external thing happening to me…you enjoy money, but you just feel like every second of the day that it's just gonna completely disappear. But, I felt like I couldn't talk to anyone and Instagram wasn't a thing. There was no money coaches. Money was still a very taboo thing.

When I was younger, if I felt anxious about money, it made sense cause we literally actually didn't have any. Well, now I do. I felt so much shame and I felt like I couldn't talk to anyone because I was so afraid that someone would say, ‘Well it must be nice. It's just in your head. It's completely made up.’ So I kept it in.

It was literally killing me.

I hired my first coach…she was a binge eating and anxiety coach. Cause that's what I thought that I needed help with, [I] was like, let's help me stop the binge eating. Help me figure out the anxiety.

One of the things that she helped me to do was, she said, ‘I want you to figure out what are your thoughts right before the anxiety kicks in and right before you go on that binge.’

So, I started to become more aware [of] what was happening. It was the same exact theme every single time. I'd think about money and I would go down the spiral of like: I lose my job, we lose our house. I have to get food from the food bank again.

It was very, very real thoughts to me, even though the chances [of] that happening were extremely unlikely. But it was [like] my whole body just immediately, every single day, was in fight or flight.

So I worked with that. Started opening up about money, started working on that relationship and realizing like it's everything from childhood.

I needed to work through, I needed to address, I needed to actually process. I also found money mindset books at that time, which they felt great initially, but actually for me, they caused me more anxiety because now I was just hyper-aware [that] this was my problem. But, I didn't have a solution until things like…tapping.

[I would] say all the things I'm worried about, all the fears, be honest, get it out. Then I would actually feel good to tap on the positive because I felt like I got out all of the hard stuff and I felt heard and understood…

I realized, oh my god, this was a perceived financial struggle. I wasn't actually struggling financially at this point. And it made me realize this is actually what I need to help people with: their money. How do they manage it day to day? And the emotional side.

There's accountants and financial advisors and then there's this huge gap. That's where I went.

I love numbers, but also, we need to be able to talk to people about the shame and everything they're feeling and work through it in safe spaces. 

That was where, in 2017, I'm like, I'm gonna be a financial coach. No one knows what this means. I'm just gonna start talking about it on Instagram. And then that led me, the further I got down, my own business journey.

I realized business finances, they're completely a whole new set of things to dive into and process even separate from personal. And the more that I did it in my own business, I realized I really wanna help a lot of female entrepreneurs.

There's a lot more to dive into cause you're managing two different sets of finances, that nobody's taught us about the first set, let alone the second set and the emotional component.”

I just love hearing your story and how you got into your business, especially because you can tell how passionate you are about what you do. 

You said you started your in 2017, and now, we’re almost in 2023. What does your business look like now versus when you first started and it was just you?

“When it was just me, I was doing absolutely everything. I had only one way for people to work with me. They would just work with me for one-on-one coaching for a four month period.

That was basically, honestly, the extent to my business

What it looks like now is–thank God–I'm not the only one in it, or I would be crazy. I just onboarded another VA this morning as we were talking. I have more people that support me on my team and they can take care of more of the backend stuff.

For me, I really do the coaching and I work with clients either in a group setting or one-on-one depending on what that looks like specifically. I have some other ways, like my tax and profit planner, for people who are newer in business [and] want to get a bookkeeping system in place.

Really, it looks completely different. I'm a very systemized person. You have to really think about your business over the long run and start doing those things to set it up for your business' success, for you to work with more clients, but also so you're not burning out on this journey. 

You know, as someone who struggled with chronic illness for over a decade, I also really had to make sure I wasn't just building a fast business, but that I was building something sustainable where I'm not killing myself behind the scenes.

Cause as you know, as a business owner, and everyone listening to this now, in the beginning you put in a lot more hours than everybody else.

And [now], I have my podcast as well.”

I feel like you’re building this empire slowly but surely with your business and it has been great to watch! I know it’s because you’re doing it with the intention of sustainability and steady growth that can be maintained over time.

That brings me to our first topic: A lot of my audience contains spiritual entrepreneurs, a lot of intuitive women, who are in business because they’re extremely passionate about helping people. They have unique skills with which they do that, and they want to build a business on that. It’s honestly beautiful to witness.

I think that a challenge arising for them sometimes, is that they realize there are actually many facets to owning and starting a business. In the beginning we can get so distracted by the money mindset, especially now that money isn’t as taboo. 

We can get so focused on money mindset, and how to attract more money and more clients. We focus on more, more, more. From my experience, you can get really good at getting more clients and dollars, but until you actually work on your relationship with money, you’re always going to feel the same.

Let’s just air this out a bit and talk about how we can start to shift. What are the things that we can do to balance out? How can we work on our emotional side to money? 

“One of the biggest things is really seeing it from the standpoint of going deeper, but internally. What I mean by that is really cultivating financial intimacy…

The first thing when I work with clients…we really need to dive into the numbers and start looking at them, and that's what I mean by that intimacy.

A huge thing I see is a lot of financial avoidance.

That's one of the biggest things that keeps people from even diving in, to have the first step of any foundation, which is financial. So first, we need to be able to get there. But to get there you have to look at the numbers. You have to put the numbers together. You have to be able to see them.

It can be extremely uncomfortable. And that's something that I wish was highlighted a lot more, is we need to be able to look at the numbers, especially when they feel uncomfortable. Don't make them mean anything about you. This is just your starting point…

If you wanted to drive somewhere, in order for you to punch that into your GPS, it needs to know where you are starting at and where you are going. Most people aren't able to come up with a starting point because they avoid and they don't have that intimacy.

So think of it, you know, same with the relationships. How long is that gonna last if there isn't that feeling of you allowing yourself to be vulnerable? So it's the same thing when you enter a new relationship. It is scary, but at some point, if you want it to go further, you do have to let that guard down.

It's the same thing with your money to be able to actually look at it…the first thing is really diving in and knowing like, what are those expenses? How much is actually coming in your business?

As a business owner, it is a lot more overwhelming than someone who has a 9-5 because income is way more often and expenses are kind of [on] two sides of things. So know that in the beginning it's gonna feel overwhelming and it's gonna feel messy, and that is normal and that's where you're gonna start.

So big thing is like, I do love clients using tapping to work through [this]. Like, ‘I don't even wanna dive into this right now. It feels uncomfortable. I don't wanna see this.’

Just knowing the first step really is actually looking at the numbers, figure out some other ritual that you can do that kind of almost feels a little bit external.

I really want you internally focused on what are my numbers, and coming from it from a curiosity standpoint. You know, thinking I maybe don't know much about money and numbers and that's okay.

The other thing is, I hear from a lot of women that they're not good with numbers.

Math was by far my lowest mark. I was like an 80-90 student. For math, I was a 60 student, and that was with tutoring. And that was spending 10x more on that. So I sucked at math. I hate math. But I use spreadsheets and calculators. I don't do anything in my head. People will be sitting somewhere and ask something and I'm like, well, I don't know what that is because I don't need to. That's what a calculator's for…

I do want you diving into the numbers and understanding how much are you spending. How much are you bringing in? That is so overlooked. And until we do that, you're not gonna have a bookkeeping system.

You're not gonna do anything else, but that is like the most fundamental thing that you first have to dive into. It sounds simple, but yet most people are skipping it.”

Speaking from experience, when I first started this process, I would send Mandyy a Voxer telling her, ‘I cannot do this. I cannot stay consistent with this.’

One thing that helped was setting up a weekly money date, where I set an intention of making it fun. I was trying to cultivate that intimacy.

Just like in a relationship, that intimacy is letting your shadows be seen. We all have those shadows with money. Maybe you’ve made mistakes or have shame around money. When I was younger, I had my car repossessed, not because I didn’t have the money, but because I just didn’t pay the bill.

I have been a complete mess with money.

So, if you’re carrying a lot of shame around that, you’re not going to want to look at money or yourself in that way. The tapping definitely helps with that too because it can help you through the uncomfortable steps at the beginning of this process.

It’s definitely worth it to cultivate financial intimacy. It’s worth going through the grief tunnel to get to the other side. Otherwise, your growth isn’t going to stick. Right?

“Absolutely. Also reminding yourself like, this isn't just a week that it's gonna be uncomfortable, it's probably going to be an extended period of time, depending where you're at in your business.

I'll say this, when I started my business, I feel like I had a very traumatic kind of business starting and I would never tell anyone to do it the way I did it. I had actually left my job as a power engineer, went back to school for a year, then I started my business.

So, I had [gone] 13 months without income. Paid to go to school, started my business from scratch, did not get a job, a side hustle, anything.

I went 13 months without income. Invested heavily into my business. What I've seen for like a solid two years was living on savings and not going down. That is a really traumatizing experience cuz I didn't know when my business was gonna take off.

For two years, it felt extremely uncomfortable, but I knew it was gonna change and I knew that the more I looked at it, the more that seeing those uncomfortable numbers were gonna make me do things I was scared of. Take bigger actions in my business, increase my prices, do the things that were harder for me to do and it really paid off.

This is coming from someone who, for a very extended timeframe, it did not feel good and it was also exactly what I needed to do.

That led me to having a multiple six figure business now, that is very profitable.”

I work with many coaches and really successful women entrepreneurs, and I have to ask, how common is this?

How common is it for entrepreneurs to have these issues with money, to not have it together? How often are you having these conversations versus how often you see it talked about publicly?

“Basically every single entrepreneur, because none of our parents really taught us about this. My parents didn't. Everything was self taught for me.

That's just on the personal side. Then business is–it is even tougher because everyone's business, you don't know what's gonna work for marketing, putting your money towards, like in the big business beginning you really are just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks…

It is very common. And I really like sharing this cause I think it helps to take the shame piece away.

I actually work with a lot of accountants, bookkeepers, financial advisors, accountants, people who have actual letters behind their names. They've [gone] to school for much longer than me and I am helping them with their finances. 

That is something where these people are trained in money, but it's very emotional...They didn't go to school for personal finances, even the business things.

We only [have] such a limited amount of knowledge, and we're very, very emotional. You would be shocked [by] the things that I know about, you know, business owners, and it's just because we're not taught these things.

We need someone to help us through them, and we're very emotional and that affects our decisions as well. No matter how, ‘smart’ or ‘skilled’ you are.”

I’m so happy to hear you say this, because honestly, I do feel like if you’re considered to ‘not have your money shit together,’ that you’re ‘not normal.’ That money stuff makes you ‘normal.’

What do you think are the most common mistakes that are made with money? Especially in those first years of business.

“The first one is going too long with your personal and business co-mingling.

The vast majority of people, and even myself as a finance person, they were co-mingling in the beginning 100%.

But, the longer that you do that, the more the negative effects are. Because what happens when you actually separate them? You putting out into the world like, ‘Oh my gosh. I think that I can actually keep business money in this business account long enough that I don't need to transfer it.’

The second I get it, you're putting trust into the universe. You're putting trust into yourself. So that is a huge thing that I say: The sooner you can separate those two, the sooner that you're like, ‘this is a real business. This is not a side hustle.’ 

You know, that that is some serious energy there. You also start to get into the habit of treating yourself and your business separate.

I know this is something that you talk about, is like, your business is a separate entity than you are because it can be so easy for us to think we are our business. The more that you see those as two separate things, the faster you will be profitable because you will start to see things as to how much money do you actually need to be making in your business to be profitable.

Now, you have two accounts you don't wanna overdraft, right? So when you have them just as one account, it keeps you playing small. You don't raise your prices as much, you don't have as good business boundaries. I can literally see [the difference between night and day] when I actually separated those things.

I do not care if you have to pay, you know, a business checking account fee in the States. There's a lot of great business bank accounts where you don't have to. In Canada, there are more that you do have to.

But let's say if you even had to pay a $4 fee a month:

A. It's a business expense.

B. Pay that $4 because you're gonna be more profitable by having that separation.

That is one of the most fundamental things that people hear, but then they keep procrastinating it. Please don't.

A huge thing that I see, I hear it from entrepreneurs that come to me and I also see it under the scenes, is when they don't feel responsible cause they don't have these specific places for it to go. There's only one place. Your personal checking account. Then, they don't feel like they know what they're doing with it, and they feel like, ‘well, I don't know what I'm doing with $3,000. I'd love 12, but I have no idea what I do with it.’

You're putting that out and you're basically cock-blocking the universe from sending you more.

Because even when I'm working with my clients…they will just start making more money in their business when they've got [it separated]. They understand about taxes. They've got their business checking account. They're paying themselves personally.

When we have things that are separated and they know where things are going, they're feeling confident with it, their income just starts to go up because they just feel better about it. They'll market themselves more, they'll get on their Instagram stories, like everything just starts coming together.

So really understanding like when you get stuff put in place, that's tangible. Taking the time to open the business bank account, connecting that to your Stripe and your PayPal account. Transferring yourself weekly personally, even if it's just small amounts. That is huge and it is so overlooked.

I love people doing all the other manifesting things, but these are the real things that will seriously take your manifestation to the next level.”

1000000%. I am behind this ALL THE WAY! Everybody reading this, everything she just said is true. It is a huge energetic and emotional shift when you separate your business accounts from your personal accounts. Otherwise, how could your business be separate from you? 

When I went through this process, it was scary. It was scary because all these things were coming out of the account, different accounts, and it was so much more to keep track of. When you separate it, it makes you boss the fuck up. I can attest to that for sure.

All the manifesting things can be fun. Like, let’s manifest more money! But when it comes down to it, what actions are you taking? Are you set up for that? If you had all the money you wanted tomorrow, do you even know what number you need to be earning to have you business be profitable? How can you manifest something if you’re not clear on what it is you need to manifest?

I’m not judging anyone.

If you’re feeling called out right now, just know, I’m calling myself out too. I was so focused on the manifestation and mindset of money for such a long time, and I totally neglected the uncomfortable actions that it took to really change my relationship with money.

So, we’ve talked about some of the mistakes, but what are some of these manifestation practices that you actually recommend?

“My favorite is tapping. I love tapping. That has just been my go-to for what I've noticed has shifted me the absolute most.

For example, when I made the shift to my business from like, I have so many one-on-one clients back in 2020, that I'm like, if I get another one, I am going to die. There's no more energy left. I have to do a group program.

I was really scared of doing that, because I'm like, well, how is this gonna translate into a group setting? Are people gonna be okay with it? I'm really successful with my clients here. How is this gonna be?

I was so afraid and my coach told me: you are literally gonna sabotage your own launch.

That's one of the things I did was, I did a lot of tapping on that. So when there's a goal that I'm working towards, I like tapping the most because I get to work through all the shadow sides first, which I think is the most important thing.

So I get to say my fears and my worries. Then I just noticed literally they do become smaller and smaller. Then I really start to believe that those bigger things can happen. I'm a very left-sided brain person and it makes it easier for me to not need to know the roadmap and just trust it's gonna happen.

My second thing is I love hypnosis. Those are kind of my biggest two go-tos. And then dancing is another just massive one, for feeling that embodiment as well.”

I love that you mentioned some of these somatic tools here because it really is energetic. It really is about that emotional experience that you’re having with your money. You can actually have a really blissful, joyful experience with money, and not have any. It’s possible.

I think that’s what really matters. It isn’t about the number, but it’s how you feel about it.

Mandyy, it has been such a pleasure. I have learned so much from just listening to you. And for everyone listening, I’ve hired Mandyy for months now and have had such a positive experience.

Where can everyone access you and your work, just to get into your world?

“So I'm most active on Instagram. I'm @IntentionallyWealthyCo. I share a ton there. 

I have a podcast, Intentionally Wealthy, as well. Those are my my two main places, and if you ever need someone who you can just, you know, talk to something about, or if you have a money win that you wanna share and you just can't open up. I am always here for that, because that is a huge thing.

For my audience, even for people who've never worked with me, I would love [it if[ you share in any money wins that you have, just so you know you have someone being your cheerleader for you in your corner.”

I love that! I’m so grateful to have you in my corner, being my cheerleader, and helping me out with my money.

Thank you for being a guest on Under The Surface. Definitely go follow Mandyy Thomas and get your money shit together so you can have a badass, profitable 2023.