Today on the Hair of the Dog podcast, we are talking all about personal finance. You know, I love a good money mindset conversation. Today we're switching gears from business talk to personal finance talk because those two things are always interconnected. Stay tuned. Welcome to The Hair of the Dog podcast. If you're the pet photographer ready to make more money and start living a life by your design,

you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addict, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley. Hey everybody. Nicole here from Hair of the Dog. Welcome back to The Hair of the Dog podcast. Today I have a special treat for you and it is someone that I've known for a long time. Back from my Pittsburgh day.

She used to be a photographer. Now she helps women master their money. We have Colleen Patel from Colleen Patel Financial Coaching. Colleen, welcome to the podcast Nicole. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Oh my gosh, of course, of course. So yeah, so I am excited to dive into this whole money talk cuz it's one of my favorite things to talk about and it's so very taboo and so many places and so many people don't wanna talk about money.

And I think it's just absolutely critical that, that we do talk about it if people want to be able to utilize it in a helpful manner in their life. Before we get to that, you do have a background in photography. Go ahead and just tell people kind of what your photography life used to look like and, and maybe what kind of caused you to,

to start to get into this money world and helping women manage their money. Sure. So I, I kind of stumbled into entrepreneurship. I, of course I'm a pharmacist by trade and with every child I had, I backed a little more out of the pharmacy world. So I always kept my foot in the door. But I went from full-time to mostly part-time to very little time.

And I stumbled into photography. At that time I just loved taking pictures of my kids. I started doing all the classes. I think I wanted those really cool newborn photos. And I thought, oh, if I just take a couple classes I could do that. And if you'd see the pictures of my last baby, then I try to, there's a reason you hire a specialist to do that.

Right. So, but that's really what got me into photography. And of course like many people, the more you get into it then the more it becomes, oh you should be doing this for a business. And I did, you know, try that at one point in time. And to be honest, the hardest part for me was meshing the Pittsburgh weather with the kind of photography I was trying to do.

So I, I found that, you know, I had a lot of people that were interested in family photography. I have a park that's close to my house. I really enjoyed doing it except when the weather would cancel us and cancel us and back us up until I had way too many for what I could fit with my family life. So I just found that I wasn't able to mesh the kind of outdoor natural light photography I really wanted to do with my family life at that time.

So I do have three kids and as this was going on, they were really getting into their activities and they're very heavy in the sports world where that has become a lot of travel and that sort of thing. So, but I did get the entrepreneurship bug from that bit of photography and I also knew if I was going to run it as a business,

it needed to be a business that brought in revenue and profit. I didn't want to be having a hobby that I was, you know, charging people for, but still not making any money. So I, it really started to get me into that business side of, you know, just the entrepreneurship journey of the benefits of having, you know, some,

for me it was freedom of, you know, time freedom and location freedom for a job that I didn't have to be in a, you know, fluorescent lit pharmacy for 12 hours a day. And I didn't have to work on the days in Pittsburgh when it was actually sunny. Like I didn't have to go into a pharmacy on the days it was sunny,

cuz that's very much been a concern for me. But from that aspect, I really started to see, you know, how many women were doing a far a photography business but not treating it like a business per se. Mm. And yeah, and so I could see that and it didn't quite work out for me. But then as I went along I had this entrepreneurship bug,

I started doing more of the personal development books and the courses and I landed on a Tony Robbins course, you know, late at night some night and really decided that's what I wanted to, like, I knew there was something I could do that would be more fulfilling but still try to fit my family schedule that I was maintaining. And that's where I came across kind of where you do the like squares of what the world needs,

what you're good at, that type of thing. And when I, that's where I stumbled on to the financials. I had been thinking about maybe trying to start to teach some courses on, you know, personal household finances, managing money, my household, my husband and I graduate. When we got married we had over six figures worth of student loan debt and no idea how to manage money because we grew up in a time where no one talked about money.

Like right. You weren't, you weren't supposed to talk about it. Like you knew dad was working hard to make the money. And my mom was, you know, very stereotypical taking care of the home and taking care of us kids and stretching a dollar as far as she possibly could. But we weren't supposed to talk about money, didn't talk about the people that have money cuz that seemed like we were jealous.

Don't talk about the people that don't have money cuz that seems rude. But then suddenly you're adult and you're supposed to know how to manage money. And so, right. I thought, what's happening? Like how are we supposed to figure this out? Yeah, especially I, I always said too, like when I look back at my, you know,

high school education, I'm like the most effective class that I took, like the one that actually has helped me the most in my life was a typing class. Cuz like, man, I can just nail it out on the keyboard. And looking back you're like, how are there not personal finance classes? You know, especially, you know, like my kids,

I, I love to talk about this kind of thing. So it's something that we talk about in our household. Like I want them when they go out into the world to know like how to balance checkbooks, what credit cards mean, you know, how to utilize credit cards effectively and what to avoid, what different retirement accounts are out there. Like,

just all of these things, there are so many different aspects of this that are not taught. And then you have this divide of like, all right, well if your family had a, you know, at least middle class, you know, that, that maybe, maybe they talked about it, maybe they didn't. But for these kids that maybe are growing up in these households that don't have,

you know enough, then they're just worried about the day-to-day. Like there's probably no conversations about money there. They're just seeing this and it's just like, oh my gosh. I think the quickest way to elevate really everyone is to have some sort of education in school around just a personal finance class. But alas that doesn't happen. But that's why we are here today.

Yeah. And I think, and ironically I think I did take a class in high school. I took it so I could get outta school early. Do you know what I, it was a, oh it was a work study kind of, I forget what it was called, but I worked half the day so my senior year I could leave early and I went to work and the one part of that class was doing some kind of budget.

So I don't think the class necessarily was what taught me it was the actual working I think and wanting to right, earn money to pay for my own. But then how I really stumbled into financial coaching was realizing that I did make that shift once I graduated college. Once I graduated college and I was getting a real job and I saw this mountain of student loan debt and my husband and I got married and combined our debt and I,

I, I have to really dive into this and I really, you know, was listening to talk radio at the time, definitely buying the books. I have some of my first books I bought on these topics, you know, from Susie Orman and back then, yeah, Dave Ramsey had the big talk show and then David Bach is the first person I remember reading about who really emphasized women and money and his take was on a how many women where we're losing money by diving into caregiving.

Which really speaks to me. I, you know, mostly stayed home to take care of my kids. But then also when my parents got sick I was doing a fair share of care giving for them. And he talks about how that, that being out of the workforce and just the women in general, but his primary like teacher of investing and all of that was his grandmother.

So he was very pro-women for money. And I think his book is it Smart Women Get Rich maybe was one of the first ones that I was like, yes, women need to take more interest in this. Because I think historically there's still a bit of a gap there. We know we can do it and we are, you know, I think I feel like our demographic has changed where we believe we can do all the things,

we can work, we can have a career, we can raise our families. We're doing amazing at this stuff, but a lot of times we still leave the money piece out of it sometimes cuz it's one more thing, right? It's one more hat maybe we're like, we don't wanna wear another hat. But I am really believe that taking, you know,

control of that, mastering your money, your personal finances, being in the know, even if you're not the one, you know, you might not manage the exact day to day paying of bills and that kind of thing if you're in a partnership. But knowing how to do it if you needed to do so. I think it gives women a lot more opportunities,

it gives them a lot more choices if they know these things and especially if they're trying to be an entrepreneur, starting a business, a photography business, things like that. Oh yeah, I a hundred percent c agree Colleen for sure. We need to be knowledgeable of what is happening. I see so many photographers while having a, you know, they have their business,

they have their personal and maybe their business is totally locked down. They know exactly where things are going, but their personal life is a wreck as far as like tracking where their income is. They don't know where they're spending, maybe they don't wanna know where they're spending because I think this is just human nature. If for some reason like you're income is really very close or maybe a little bit under what your expenses are,

like, it's not reinforcing to look at that. So then you just don't wanna look at that. Or sometimes if you're like in debt, you don't wanna open those envelopes cuz you just don't wanna see it. But I think that measuring it is 100% like non-negotiable, the most important thing to do to kind of start to track where you are, where you're going,

where you wanna be, and kind of see what if there is a gap, what that might be. And then kind of think of ways to, to, to do that. So if the photographers out here listening to this and like, oh yeah, no, I, I got that my, my business books are pretty good, but like I,

I don't even know what my personal income is doing. What advice do you have for them to kind of start to get a handle on figuring out really what's going on in the personal finances? Yeah, for sure. And that is my role, my primary mission is really to empower more women to take, to have financial confidence to work on these things.

And because I'm a pharmacist, I talk about financial health. So financial health to me is having systems that keep it simple or organized. You have a plan, you know, if you have debt, you have a plan to save for your future and you can spend money on things you love when you have that taken care of. And I do think it's really important to have your personal finances when you have those under control,

it benefits your business because you know what you're, you know, you know, you can know it, I can have a business for a hobby because I don't need it to bring an income or we have this income gap of a thousand dollars a month that I really need to cover so that we can attack our debt. And it can almost give you more guideposts for your business as well.

So I think they can the knowledge, but I always say for financial health, I kind of give a talk that's about stepping into financial health and step one is just truly taking responsibility for your finances. Like radical responsibility. I'm going to take control of this, I'm gonna know the numbers, I'm gonna know where all the accounts are, I'm gonna stop the avoidance behavior behavior because I think that is the biggest thing I see,

especially in the United States. It's very easy to spend money these days. It's very easy to have automatic subscriptions coming out that you don't even remember. And a lot of people, yes there's inflation, yes there's been, you know, higher gas and higher groceries. But if we take radical responsibility and really look at every expense that's coming out of our account,

we can usually find some places that money's leaking or that it's not matching up with the thought. So I really believe taking that radical responsibility and shining a light on your money, looking at it, finding the hard numbers actually reduces a lot of the stress and anxiety because sometimes avoiding it, it, it's growing bigger, right behind the scenes it's kind of,

and then it's a stress you're carrying on your back, even if it's kind of unweighted and you know, there's different, it's very different if you're managing money on your own, you get to make all those decisions yourself, right? You get to decide where your money goes, where you spend your money, but maybe you don't have anyone to bounce those ideas off of.

Maybe you have a gap that you don't see, you know, a credit card debt or another debt that's too high of an interest rate that you could be doing something better with, but you don't have anyone to bounce that off of. And then conversely, if you're managing in partnership now you've gotta come to a lot more compromises. You've gotta agree more on where you're spending your money.

You gotta have a lot more conversations and those can influence your business as well, right? So I believe if you take this responsibility for your personal finances, it can also help you with your goals and your dreams for your business. You know, and if you, you know, if you're starting out, you often need, especially as a a photographer,

entrepreneur, I see a lot of them are starting out with personal funds to get started and that's ok. But really keeping track of those numbers. So you know, if you're running a business or if you're running a hobby, but knowing how much income you want to bring in with your business. I know you talk a lot about money and that money's a tricky thing,

especially for women that are starting businesses and wanting to charge money. I know the first couple sessions I did like people would go to gimme the check and I was like, I don't know if I could take the che. You know, I mean really hard things with money from our money stories and ways we've grown up or you know, just all of those different things we could work on.

There's a lot to it. But I think step one is really just deciding to take responsibility and realizing, you know, if we have this responsibility, if we have it all under control with our personal finances, it's a bonus to my business because it makes it very clear. Yeah. Yes. What is the best way to, to start to take that responsibility?

Is it to like literally just sit down and make a list of all the accounts that you have, what their balances are, all the debts that you have, what those balances are, what that income is like track your income for a month, track your expenses for a month. Do you have any kind of shortcuts or tips for ways to buy, make that process a little bit easier?

Yeah, so I think most pe you know, everyone kind of goes to the internet and there's a million budgeting spreadsheets out there. There's budgeting apps, budgeting spreadsheets, all of these things. And I, I feel once you decide to take responsibility, it can't always be tomorrow that everything changes, right? But starting to build your awareness and it depends how you feel about it.

I mean some people are like, all right, I'm gonna sit down this weekend, I'm gonna spend six hours and nail out all of this. You know, they could do everything you just listed. And some people don't have that bandwidth to do that. And so I asked them to do you know, can it be 10 minutes a week? Can it be 10 minutes a day?

The cadence of how often you do it will change how fast your results come. But if you're say in partnership and money is leading to a lot of arguments or a lot of disagreements, you know, maybe your partner doesn't think you're making money with your business or you know, any kind of conversation like that, that's difficult. I sometimes recommend just set a timer,

say, can we talk about money for 15 minutes? If that's the max you can do, and then put it down and be done with it. Like it depends where your starting point is really. Cuz if your starting point's a hard one then it may take a little longer to get to that point where you can sit down and make a list of all the debts.

There's a lot of emotion with money and I think that's, I talk more about, you know there's spreadsheets and there's budgeting, but really when it comes down to it, money's emotional, money's behavioral. So starting to build that awareness, are we spending money because we're tired? Are we spending money because we're running around like you know, like chickens with our heads cut off and we can't get dinner on the table.

So then we're just ordering out and ordering Uber Eats and like what are the reasons we're spending money? Who are the players like that are involved? There's people that you know, usually in a household there's some income coming in but there's also a lot of spending happening and who are the players involved in the spending? I find when the kids are little, right,

it's like there's a lot of spending if you have kids going to daycare and diapers and that kind of thing. But then as they get older and proceed into like our children's age where they're middle school, high school, they're kind of starting to become a spending situation in the household. Whether it's their activities or the things they choose to do. And I know we've talked about,

I believe in building financial health for women because women that take this active role then teach their kids to be financially healthy who also can go on and you know, generally generationally keep that going. And you had mentioned I have the son that's going off to college, so really at some point in time it's like, oh my gosh, like we're 18, we're going off to college.

Like I hope you don't buy all those free t-shirts, take all the free t-shirts that sign you up for credit cards like I did in college cause I didn't know any better. Like back then it was like right, you know that table with free t-shirts all the time. I know so many of us signed up for credit cards and had no idea what they were or what they were for.

And so I think that education piece, like educating ourselves but then being able to educate our family. But all of that, to go back to say, considering all of these pieces, how many spenders are there in your household that are affecting the spending? How many are earning income? What emotions are involved in the spending? What are really necessities and what are wants?

So to me that's a big like sit down and truly like I can look at our house, like our cable bill. I mean I need the internet to do my business, right? But then the other hundreds of dollars that are going to whatever we need to watch Pittsburgh sports and everything, like that's not really a need, you know? So, and playing with like clothing,

like you need food and shelter and clothing, but at some point when our food becomes more Uber eats more dining out and we're paying, you know, up to 50% more for our food for convenience, is that a need or is that a want that you could shore up? Yeah, you know, even clothing, like as with the fast fashion kind of stuff,

clothing we all need clothing, do we all need the amount of clothing in the United States that we're, you know, consuming at this point? Yeah. So really just taking a look but building the awareness I think before you get into a budget. Like really just kind of taking some time to think about those things and absorb them before going into nailing down exactly the spending plan.

I think building awareness and it can take some time depending on how much, you know, if you've been avoidance and haven't been looking at your bills or haven't been looking at your spending is a different place to start than if you're pretty dialed in. But just need to dial in a little further say, because you're starting a new business or because you want to see how your business can profit your family more.

Yeah, those are all great points. I know for me budgeting has always been like a a four letter word of just I didn't wanna feel restricted the B word, call it the B word. It was just like, oh no, I just, I just can't. So I actually manage my money a little bit differently and it, it works really well for me and because I wanna know where everything has gone,

you know, so our month to month spending ends up being fairly consistent. Yeah, some months are a little bit busier so we might eat out a little bit more or you know, maybe this month we had to buy a couch or you know, something. So there's always sometimes a little bit of a change but the, the basis of it ends up being pretty darn even.

So I can kind of estimate on what my monthly spending is. But the one thing that I love to know is really being able to track just like I do in my business, that chart of accounts of where I'm spending money in my business in that personal life of where's all the money going? Do we have a line item actually several line items for the horses from board to horse shows to like vet and farrier and that one's eyeopening.

Yes, yes, for sure. Oh god. And want need, I don't know, whatever. Yeah. But being able to kind of track that and I know, gosh, oh my gosh, this is ages ago. Probably a decade ago. I used to use, oh Intuit had QuickBooks and what was the other one they had for personal finance?

I Used money. Well was it money? Well No That wasn't Quicken. Quicken. Was it Quicken? I think it might have been maybe, I don't know. But they had this software and this was back before like you could like automatically import your bank fees and your charges and all of these things. So I remember like my husband and I like every,

everything, we'd get a receipt, we'd just have this pile and like once a week I'd sit down and put in all of our spending in there and and line item it. But then we had kids and then there was just like so much spending on all of the things. It was like forget it, that's too hard. And like we got away from that for a long time and then I would try like Mint or like a couple other of these programs and none of them ever worked as well as that did.

But I was like I can't do this manually and now I use Y a, you need a budget. Which is awesome because it like pools in everything automatically and I've been able to set up automated payments for literally my entire life from standby. Did you guys hear my dog? This is, this is what we deal with here. This is a pet photographer podcast though,

so lemme close my office door. Okay. I'm back. My office door like always pops open even though I like keep it closed, I need like a doorstop on the inside. Anyway, I've been able to like automate all of this, this stuff that used to take so much time because I have a little credit card habit for travel hacking. Yeah,

yeah. Yes, for sure. Cause I, yep, I love to travel and so, oh my gosh, I think my son's almost 13 and I don't think we've paid for a international flight for him since he was four. Yeah, you have mastered, we've gone mastered this. Yeah, so it's been really fun. But with that I needed a way to like really manage this.

So I think really one of the things people need to do is number one, really just like you said, shine the light on where that money is going and find some way that works for them to, to track that. Because what you don't track doesn't change. You know, whether that's trying to lose weight, whether that's your business income, whether that's your home finances,

when you start to track it then you can see where you are, you can see what changes you need to make, you can start making those decisions. And then of course I love to automate things to make life easier. But anyway, let me back up for a second. I had another thought. Oh well it's gone. Yeah, Come back.

Personal finance, personal finances are so personal. So I find some people, especially my generation, are still like stuck on the colored pens in their notebooks and that's the easiest way for them to, yeah, take control of it because it makes more sense to them. The apps are great and I definitely find the younger generations that are good with apps and know how to,

you know, navigate them quickly because you do still have to teach your program even like wine a every dollar mint, you have to teach it a bit until it gets easier. And some people that's resist a point of resistance for them. So I do just encourage, yeah, for sure whatever way feels best for you. But starting to build that awareness in some way always leads to benefits.

It always leads to benefits for everyone. Yeah, absolutely. What are some ways for people to, maybe actually let's talk about this real quick too, but with photographers being self-employed, you know, we don't have health insurance, we don't have a 401K from our employer cuz that's us. What are some kind of retirement things that people should start considering if they're doing photography full-time,

you know, it's not a part-time add-on to, you know, what if they have a full-time job, they're just doing photography part-time, like if this is their full-time job, you know, we need to think about this retirement option. What are, what are some things they should start to look at and consider? Yeah, I think those are two of the biggest things for entrepreneurship is the healthcare and retirement.

Those pieces that are missing. And definitely doing some research on that now. That's where financial coaching differs from financial planning because I don't have the licenses to give investment advice and that kind of thing. So I would refer someone to a financial planner for that to help them figure out what is the best retirement options for their situation. But definitely something to consider.

And that's what I always put under the category of pay yourself first is making sure you're paying yourself. And I just always refer to it as your future self. Like your future self will be so grateful for you, for saving for your retirement. The earlier you start doing those things and giving yourself those years of compounding, the more grateful your future self will be.

And I think sometimes people see it as, that's money I can't spend today, but it's all for you. It really is. You know, saving for your future self, even if it's, you know, for retirement is one thing. Like I know we've worked on saving for our kids for future opportunities for our kids to offer them whether they wanna go to college or start their own business,

but it's, it's money for you. It's just a different stage of life. But paying yourself first and making sure you're acknowledging those things, saving for those future goals is one thing I definitely, you know, cover all the time. And automating that, because I think when you mentioned automating, that's the thing to me, automate those things first so you don't see it,

it doesn't make it to your checking account and you can know you're already handling that and now you look at what you have to spend after you've saved. I think that's a, it can be a life-changing piece. The setting that stuff aside and paying yourself first. Yeah, that's huge. We talk about profit first quite a bit in the academy and elevate for business and that,

you know, start to pay yourself basically first out of your business income that you make so you're not just, you know, reinvesting everything in your business forever and ever and not paying yourself. Yeah, same. I've heard that same advice for retirement for the longest time. And really all of this personal finance stuff really comes down to habits. So it's starting to,

to build these habits and get in the habit of doing these habits, which that automated retirement savings. Oh my gosh. Even if you started out with like $10 a week. Right. And I, you know, like yeah, I love those From the beginning. Yeah. And profit speaking of profit first. Cuz you need to be saving for your taxes too,

right? So that when you are profitable and you need, you owe taxes and you can be grateful that you earn money so that you can pay the taxes that you have that money sitting in your tax account to go ahead and do so. Yeah. Yeah. I remember what I was gonna say back when about those spending pieces and one of the, I think,

best effects of being able to really dial in and track where you're spending your money in your life of being able to like line item things out of like, I spent this much on groceries, this much on travel, this much on the horse, this much on rent, this much on household, whatever, is being able to look at that and kind of determine,

okay, what on here is bringing me like a ton of joy and what things on here are maybe not, where maybe somebody's like, Hey, Netflix is non-negotiable for me, but you know, whatever. So for me it's like clothing, whatever, I've got plenty. I don't need to be buy a new piece of clothing ever. But you know that dining out for you know,

nice dinners, you know, maybe you can look at 'em, be like, oh, we are spending like most of our 80% of our dining out on like Jersey mics or like some, some fast food something. Cause Yeah, cause we're running around where it's like, all right, maybe we dial back there and we just use that, that money and instead for like the actual nice night out that I wanna do that you know,

is something that I love. Chocolate martinis included, right? Yes, yes, please. Although it's harder to find now that Godiva's been discontinued. I keep on going to bars and they're like, no we can't anymore. Why? But anyway, yeah, being able to really look at that and just kind of being able to make more empowered decisions about your spending because you have the data and you know where it's going and you can see the decisions of like,

oh well if I kind of take some money from here, which is not really doing much for my enjoyment of life, I can put more money over here. I can make sure that future self is taken care of. And you can just make so many more empowered decisions. Yeah, I agree. And that's one of the pillars I really talk about.

I talk about attack your debts because you know, you don't have, I don't believe you have to eat rice and beans and not do anything until your debt's paid off. You just have to have a plan. So have a plan to attack your debt, have a plan for how long you want it in your life, when you wanna get it outta your life.

So attack your debt, save for your future we talked about, and then spend money on things you love. And you know, that's where you and I connect spending money on travel is our love language. A hundred percent. And I live in a home, five of us. We all have different opinions. My husband and I spend the money on travel,

adventure, new experiences, but not so much on our home. My 18 year old is like, why don't we have a giant basement with a movie theater and a place to have all of my gaming, like my home where I spend most of my year will be like that. And it's interesting, we just have a difference of opinion there. So I do think it's very important,

you know, to come up with spending on what you love first because that's what encourages you to make other good financial decisions. Like if you're spending money on your dreams, on your horse, you know, for you on your horses, on your travel, your kids, you know, activities, then you can make other, it's easier to make good financial decisions in other areas because you know you're getting to do all the things that really bring enjoyment to your life.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also, once you start to lay that out and get that data, it makes it a lot easier or more motivating for your business too, to be like, oh, if I make $5,000 a month profit, that is a huge needle move in my personal budget. Like just being able to actually really see that goalpost instead of always having this,

well I just wanna make more in my business, I just wanna make more in my business. So what does that mean? It could be anything. Yes. So that allows you to really plan for exact amounts that you wanna make in your business, which then allows you to determine, all right, how many clients can I serve? What does that average sale need to be?

What do I wanna be selling? How much profit do I need to have? So yeah, they're all interconnected. Yeah. To be able to make the best decisions for both. Yeah, I agree with that. For the business, I think it really helps you make your business decisions, you know, knowing both of those things then can help you make your business decisions on and if you needing,

if you're needing to raise prices, if you're needing to, you know, build your confidence in your, what you're charging, you know, I, I know I've heard you talk about it before on the pilot, maybe you, you do so many at a certain rate until you build your confidence so you can increase your price and when you need to do that and when you deserve to do that and those kind of things.

And then when you need to buy new gear, you know, like I just finally got a mirror list. So I did take a little, I had a little photography hiatus there for a few years and I kept thinking I wanna move to mirrorless. And then my D S L R, the mirror actually broke on it and I was like, well that's a sign.

So I, well Now you're mirrorless. Yeah. I felt like clearly I need a mirrorless so I don't have that problem, so That's awesome. I always let you know, gear and those kind of investments for your business or something that when you have your money's numbers clear, you can see Yeah. Camera, right. Yeah, yeah. The, the every five years computer upgrade.

Cuz all these programs keep on getting harder and harder for older computers to run. Yeah, for sure. Okay, let's kind of wrap this up with maybe just kind of some advice out there for, you know, these photographers that are just out there focusing on their business and you know, maybe they've taken that first step and they kind of know where things are,

but kind of what are just some ways that they can just start to, to get more confidence and really just start to take control of this or some advice that maybe that you wished you had when you were back in your photographer days? Yeah, I just would really encourage, you know, I'm encouraging everyone to, you know, master their money this summer,

decide that they're gonna take control of it. Because I think just making that decision that I am going to take control of this, I'm going to master these things because it will be good for my personal life, it will be good for my family life, it will be good for my business life. So I think making that decision and then from there,

you know, building that awareness, making sure you're not being in avoidance and looking at things and then finding the questions, you know, you know, you'll automatically come up with questions you need to ask and answers you need to find. And then pursuing that, finding where you can find those answers. And so that's where people like I run. So I have my Facebook group,

which I run for women particularly just to, it's called Colleen's Prescription for Financial Health. That's a nod, you know, to my pharmacy career. But for people to come and ask those kind of questions when they discover, here's a question I have, I don't know where to find the answer or here's something I never learned about managing money. A lot of questions about credit cards and should we be using credit cards for personal life and for business.

And there's a lot of financial people out there that'll say, never use a credit card. And I'm not one of them. I'm like you, I believe there are benefits if you can, you know, use them Responsibly. Use Them responsibly and use them at, you know, for your benefit. Credit card companies are billion dollar industries, do you want to give them your money in late fees or interest or do you want to use them responsibly in a,

you know, very methodical way so that you can get benefits like the travel rewards and that kinda thing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I flew my whole family of four home from Hawaii business class for $20. That's amazing. Total. Yes, Absolutely crushed that. Thanks. Credit cards. Yeah, no that absolutely, this is, this has been really,

really good. Yeah, you guys should definitely go check out Colleen's group and you know, just start to, to learn how to do these different pieces and as you do it, just the, the learning starts to build more confidence. So once you start to learn one little piece, then you get the confidence to continue to learn other little pieces. And it's really an education that keeps on going because you start to peel back so many layers of the onion and then you also start to realize how emotionally charged and thoughts are like just mixed in with all of this money stuff,

which for sure, you know, we talk quite a bit about money mindset throughout the podcast on so many episodes, but you know, that that ends up being, it's, it's easy for, you know, maybe me to say, hey, just do this. But then you start to do that and you realize that you have all these mental blocks and like emotional triggers about trying to do something like that.

Is that something Colleen, that you tend to help people with with the, the financial coaching piece is trying to help them kind of get over whatever emotional baggage they have that's preventing them from, from taking action? Yeah, I just, I just released my first course, which I have. So I have a D D I Y course for people who want to improve their personal finances themselves.

But the very first four or five lessons are all about your mind, your money, your emotions, your relationships. I think everyone thinks it's gonna be jump into a budget, jump into numbers. And really that's not the most important thing. And I wanna say, because money is not the most important thing. I think we all know like money's not the most important thing in the world,

but it affects everything. You know, it affects our businesses, it affects our homes, it affects our relationships. So that's why I've tried to become an advocate for speaking out about money and being, you know, having this Facebook group as a safe and brave space for women to come talk about money because I know it's, it is still very taboo.

It's still, and even makes me uncomfortable, you know, I'm, I'm trying to be brave and do that and thinking, okay, this is something I can help people with because I'm willing to do it even though it does feel hard to talk about money still. Yeah, no, I mean we were all raised, I think most people in our generation of,

like you said, we don't talk about this. I mean I honestly don't even know what my parents made like, like that was just not talked about. You didn't ask, you didn't, nobody shared and you know, there was really not a lot of talk And all they said was, what do you think? Money grows on trees. Yeah, exactly.

That's the only thing I heard. Money grows on trees, Dunno happens with it. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Well this has been super helpful Colleen, and I think eye-opening for everyone. I hope you guys enjoyed it out there. Definitely. Go check out Colleen's Facebook group. What's that Facebook group name again? Will they just search for it?

Yeah, you can find me. Colleen Patel. Pretty easy to find on Facebook. I'm on there. And my Facebook group is Colleen's prescription for financial health. So Yep, just encouraging financial health for everyone. I love it. And what's your website if they wanted to check that Out? I just primarily go through Facebook now, or I do have an Instagram for people that are on Instagram and that's Colleen Rx Financial.

Oh, perfect. Okay. But I actually, I, I should say colleen patel.com is my website and it's, it's in the works right now. It's being updated, it's coming the Story. The story of all of our lives. Yes, exactly. Exactly like the website. You're like, oh, I got it updated. And then a week later you're like,

oh man, I need to update it again. It's coming. No, it's coming along. So it should be good here shortly. Awesome. Well thank you Colleen. This has been really helpful and I know a lot of our audience will find it useful as well. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, reach out to Colleen over there on Instagram, let her know and we will see you next week.

Hey everybody, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Colleen. I really enjoyed making it for you. I love talking about finances and money and personal finance especially. You might want to listen to episode 1 36, which is where I talk all about the key to increasing wealth, which is tracking that personal income of personal expenses and how I use, you need a budget to do that.

So definitely check out that episode. It's a really great run. Number 1 36. And you can do that at www.hairofthedogacademy.com/ 1 3 6. Thanks for listening to the Hair of the Dog podcast. This was episode number 203. If you wanna check out the show notes for access to any of the resources that we mentioned, simply go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/ 2 0 3. Thanks for listening to this episode of Hair of the Dog Podcast.

If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review and while you're there, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss our upcoming episodes. One last thing, if you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our [email protected] of the dog academy com. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.