Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in personal development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Whitney Morrison, Founder of Holistic Money, located in Austin, TX, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Hi, I'm Whitney. I am a Certified Financial Planner™ and Money Mindset Coach. I teach purpose-driven individuals to change their relationship with money, claim their financial power, and experience financial freedom in their lives. At Holistic Money, you will embark on a money journey that is grounded in personal transformation and financial expansion. Holistic Money takes an empowering approach to money and paves a new, highly integrated path to making money and building wealth.

Unlike most money coaching experiences, Holistic Money takes a three-dimensional approach to financial empowerment, focusing on Inner Wealth - how to cultivate an experience of internal abundance, Outer Wealth - how to create an environment of external abundance - and Higher Wealth - how to connect your money with your highest purpose/power. Together, we reconsider and reconstruct each money dimension to activate the highest version of your financial potential. The Holistic Money process empowers you to step into the full value of your unique gifts by changing the way you relate to money. After working together, my clients find themselves standing in a financial future that looks and feels really good.

Tell us about yourself

At 12, I knew I wanted to be a financial advisor. Weird, right? Most kids my age were interested in becoming astronauts or rock stars, but none of that intrigued me. I just wanted to learn more about the one thing everyone seemed so obsessed with: money. Growing up, money was the source of fights, stress, and eventually, divorce. My father was an alcoholic and a gambling addict, and due to our financial instability, I grew up with a lot of fear around money. I learned at a very young age that money was stressful and it determines your worth and happiness. Witnessing my family suffer from financial and emotional hardships gave me a strong desire to learn as much about personal finance as possible.

When I was 23, I joined a financial planning firm, got my series 7, series 66, and became a Certified Financial Planner. I learned the foundations of financial planning and money management, but after several years of work as a financial planner, I still struggled with money and found it extremely triggering. And it wasn't just for me but also for the hundreds of clients I worked with over the years; money was a huge, unending source of anxiety. In 2019, I embarked on a new journey, one less familiar and more vulnerable. This journey was to understand my relationship with money. I began to explore how my history with money contributed to my lack of worthiness, deservingness, and confidence in money. When I peeled back the layers and was able to understand where all my limiting money beliefs came from, my sense of personal power exploded, and my financial world started to shift. Now, I operate more than just a financial planner.

My approach today combines my experience as a financial planner with money mindset coaching. I help people reach their goals by creating a money plan based on the foundations of wealth-building while also attending to the emotional, psychological, behavioral, and relational narratives that are intertwined in the process. If you are looking to take on deep money work combined with a clear, organized plan for the future, then you're in the right place.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

It took me two years to leave 9-5 and take Holistic Money full-time because I thought I'd have to take a pay cut in my first few years of business. My goal for year one in my business was 120K, but I ended up bringing in just over 260K. This was almost 100K more than my corporate salary. I did this by reinventing the financial planning experience and creating a high-value service that not only helped people with financial planning but also helped people change the way they related to money. The results have been incredible, and so many of my clients have created large financial transformations for themselves, thanks to the comprehensive nature of this work. It feels good to make a lot of money and know that I am helping a lot of people in the process.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Managing your mind. One day I feel great; the next day, I question my entire existence as a business owner. In the beginning, this cycle was really distracting and resulted in me spending at least 20-30% of my time in spin out. Now, I've learned to expect my mind drama without allowing it to take over and steer me off course. Learning to get out of my own way has been one of the biggest lessons I have learned. Just keep taking small steps every single day to push your vision forward.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Start your business as a side hustle first! This allows you to build your business without the pressure to make a lot of money before you've laid your foundation and create demand.
  2. Get out of your industry! There are so many business owners who limit themselves because of the "rules" of their industry. If I were to follow traditional financial planner "rules," I would have started an RIA and charged $1,500-$2,000 for fee-only financial planning. Instead, I decided to get out of my industry and create a completely unique service that allows me to charge triple traditional financial planning rates. I had to get creative, think out of the box, and feel confident in the service that I believed people actually need to be successful with money. Don't limit yourself. Rules are just nice suggestions.
  3. Demand starts in your mind first. It is important to sell a product/service that YOU are fully sold on and believe in before you try to sell to anyone else.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.holistic-money.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhitneyMorrisonCFP
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holistic.money/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-morrison-cfp/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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