Financial Confidence, From Fog to Focus — Lighthouse Lab #4 Recap
The 4th Lighthouse Lab took place on Tuesday. I opened the session by sharing a story from when I started Think Visual. Managing the finances of a growing business, I felt anxious and paralysed. So I took my uncle’s advice: what makes you anxious — delegate. At the time, this felt like the best advice ever. Looking back, after spending a fortune on accountant fees and making financial mistakes, I wish his response was, “I’ll meet with you for an hour a week to do it together, until you don’t feel anxious anymore.”
I invited the participants to join me on the journey to financial confidence and asked the participants what brought them to the session. It was powerful to hear that they resonated with my intention:
“To alleviate my ignorance and anxiety around managing money”
“I am acutely aware that I lack financial savviness”
“Here, I'm choosing to make friends with money.”
“Navigating overwhelm regarding finances”
“I came today because I dislike anything to do with money, but feel it's holding me back.”
“I’m interested in becoming more financially literate so that I can run my business without anxiety”
We spent the first hour led by Daniel Alberts, who guided us through his Personal Wealth Canvas.
Starting with Values and Direction, we considered what we want money to support in our lives. Daniel pointed out that the questions of values or purpose don’t often come into our financial planning. And yet, isn’t money’s main role to help us fund a life worth living?
Getting into the nitty-gritty, we mapped Money In, our income, and Money Out - our spending. Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to keeping within a budget. Keeping track of spending for a few months gives real data on what we typically spend. It helps us categorise and build a realistic budget or make changes to our spending habits. Want to join in keeping on top of your spending? Here are some of the ways we discussed:
Log every purchase in real time, using a simple Google Form linked to your phone or an app. The apps mentioned were Honeydew, Monarch, LifeStage Money (UK), Airtable, and Notion. You can download the list of spending I’ve been using here.
If recording spending in real time feels like too much, work backwards from your bank statements instead. Many bank apps like Revolut will categorise what you spent automatically, and categories can be easily adjusted. Other banks mentioned were Wise and N26.
Set up separate "pots" or sub-accounts for each spending category. For example, groceries, travel, etc.
We continued on the canvas to map our Saving Capacity, before getting to the scary P word - Portfolio. Daniel got us to say out loud: “I am an investor, I have a portfolio”. Yes, as you can imagine, it felt awkward. But this invitation to look at the life we built and ask - What have I built in my life that is providing me wealth, can be regarded as radical. Because many of us never got to look at our lives and business in those terms. By asking, you might realise that you have a portfolio, a pension, or a house paid for by your younger self, an inheritance from a parent. Or you can ask: “Can I turn the knowledge and expertise gathered through my life into a money-generating asset?”
Lastly, Daniel invited us to map our Goals - the things we are working towards, the places where our future selves are going to go: retirement, kids' education, or working less.
With that, the canvas was full; it was time to see how all the sections of the canvas come together, or not. Does our savings or income support our future goals? Can our portfolio be set up to increase our income over time?
Those are big questions, which we only had time to lightly consider. We made notes and marked question marks in places that needed further exploration.
What followed was a powerful discussion:
Running a creative business? Let’s come together
We talked about the harsh reality of many creatives who chose to open creative businesses as alternatives to the “normal jobs”. Building wealth is a challenge, especially as generative AI is changing our ability to earn. If you too are facing this challenge, we talked about how important it is to connect to others in order to find a path forward and come up with new ways to deal with the uncertainty.
Ready to change your relationship with risk?
One of the participants, reflecting on her own relationship to risk, reminded us how important it is to consider risk when thinking about our wealth. She offered the following question: “What would it look like to get past my fear of risk enough to actually plan for the future (pension, savings) rather than avoiding the topic entirely?” A question that would be worth continuing to explore.
What are the daily practices that can help you build your confidence?
Rita, running a solo business with seasonal income, shared what resonated with many: "It always felt like I was putting out fires and paying everyone else before I paid myself." Like me, when I started my business, she didn't know how much she actually made in a given year. But this changed when she started to sit down every Monday and do the books. She recommends setting a fixed weekly time for doing your books; she found that even 15 minutes on the same day each week can turn "I'll deal with it later" into a habit and take a lot of the anxiety out of it. When she tried the same routine on a monthly basis, the task felt too overwhelming.
Books recommendations
Rita highly recommended reading the book Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz. She shared that by implementing the book’s approach, she was able to spend money with confidence. It helped her see beyond the feast-or-famine swings of a seasonal business and project her income across the full year instead of panicking in the lean months.
Other books you might want to pick were: LOADED: Money, psychology, and how to get ahead without leaving your values behind, by Sarah Newcomb, and Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! Robert T. Kiyosaki
WHAT’S NEXT
If you want to stay part of the conversation, join October Lighthouse Lab.
The next Lighthouse Lab will run as a book club. We’ll be discussing Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz and brainstorming how to become more financially confident. Express your interest by filling out this short form.
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