Pennywise Coaching Client Check-in after 8 years! Updated testimonial for 2023.

Hey everybody, Penny with Pennywise Coaching here. I just wanted to visit a little bit with Gretchen and Ryan and share a little bit of their story, or have them share. They were one of my very, very first clients, and we just reconnected again recently, and I heard some really great stuff about what's turned around in, in 9 or 10 years in their lives, and I would love to hear from you guys a little bit of what your memory says about our work together. One of the cool things that people might not know is that you guys designed my logo, and I didn't have two nickels, two pennies to rub together, if you will. So we did some kind of like, oh, well, I have this skill, you have that skill, and you made my very awesome logo, which is one of my favorite things about my brand. So, um, yeah, it's been, it's near and dear to my heart. So, um, but beyond that, we kind of became friends and we worked a pretty short amount of time because back then I didn't, I didn't know how long it would take people to kind of make some changes. But, um, tell me what you remember about— because you probably have more memory than I do about what you said or what you thought coming into it and then what you experienced from it.

Okay, well, I'll get started. I, um, You know, I think my memories will be unique in the sense that, Penny, you're doing this with so many different people all the time that I imagine some of the work blends together. But for us, it's pretty profound in terms of what we have done with what you have given us in terms of our toolbox and also how the evolution really kind of happened and progressed to bring us where we are today. And I imagine Ryan is going to talk a little bit about kind of how how it ended up really kind of setting us up for this amazing life that we live now. But we at the back, at the time, Penny, we worked together on a different project in your former life. And when I do mention that, because if not everybody knows that you worked in social work, and I think that that really brings an interesting lens to the work that you do with money because money is so steeped in fear and shame and emotions. And we really, I don't know, were thinking we needed your help necessarily because we were typical business owners. We were working a ton and we had a very successful business, but we were making a lot of money and didn't know where it was going. And I think it was always kind of that there's just enough to get by. We were never scraping, but it never seemed like there was a surplus or a savings. And like most Americans, we spent the first few years of our marriage and our business and building our business living going beyond our means and using access to debt and credit. And so it was fortuitous really when you came in and said, hey, I'm thinking of starting this business and I'm really interested in what do I do? And I said, wow, you know, I'm interested in what you're doing and maybe you could help us too. So it was really kind of a good marriage of our skill sets, I think, to be able to kind of trade a little bit. And I think that, you know, Ryan especially is just excellent with managing money. But I would think you would say, Ryan, that unless you have the toolbox, it's not really like you really know what you're managing. So I'll stop there for a second and let you chime in.

Yeah, I mean, I was with our business that we ran together. I was always more involved on the finance side of the business. And I know that I'm like, we are like a lot of business owners in that we manage the finances of our business quite closely, documented budgets, PNLs, balance sheets, all of that. But then when it came to our personal, there was nothing there, right? There was nothing like that. And I think that what Penny's— what your system really helped us to do was to create a fantastic budgeting system that's much more appropriate for the personal finances as opposed to the business finances. And we're happy to report that it's been 8 years. We quickly paid off all of our credit card debt using your system. And quickly started building surpluses. We've been debt-free ever since, and we now have a very healthy savings account. We have money set aside for every expense that arises. In addition to that, we have an emergency fund that gives us, you know, incredible sense of peace that we know that any major unexpected expense also is covered if anything like that comes our way. So, um, I still continue to use the budgeting system that you gave us, the spreadsheets that you gave us. I have all of the years of history, continue to adjust it and make it work for us in new and different ways. And still, I love the fact that I know exactly not only what I'm spending, you know, because budgeting or, you know, it's a, it's a lagging indicator and it basically looks back on what you spent. This system helps us to be much more prepared for leading indicators because we have money set aside for everything, right? For car repairs, for home improvement, for vacations, Christmas, Christmas, for miscellaneous gifts, for clothing, for tickets and recreation, you know, everything. We have a pool of money there and we, we know, you know, if something, if something special comes up, that, that, that money's there. And then we can kind of go back and look at how well we've actually done in terms of what we thought we would spend versus what we did spend. But the great news is that it's It's not, oh, we spent more than we thought we did and now we're in debt. It's, oh, we spent more than we thought. Maybe we thought we did. So now our surplus is smaller.

So, right, or we have to adjust.

Yeah, we always have the money already there, especially after letting this system play out over an extended period of time.

And I imagine if people are watching this video and trying to make a decision as to what to do, maybe work with you or not, there is some fear, there's some trepidation, there's some skeletons in the closet. There's some things that you just don't even see. Or you don't really realize. And I will be the first to say that that intimidation is a real thing that probably is creating so much stress and so much anxiety. Money is scary, but it absolutely does not have to be. And when you have it on your side, it's a whole nother ballgame where you just feel so confident. And I say that because we really, we have, and not to brag, but we have set up our lives in a way that was a major goal for us even when we were meeting with you originally 8 years ago to sell our company and to move abroad and to be able to work from anywhere. And there was a little COVID that kind of accelerated that process a little bit in terms of how much we wanted to kind of make that change. But having all of that ability to manage our money and to look forward and actually plan for that and see what was possible made it possible. And I am happy to report that we are doing that. And so we are right now in Mexico City having this conversation with you, and we're moving to Spain in a couple of weeks. But we wouldn't be able to do that without the system you created that Ryan continues to refine. He literally has an expatriate budget, a budget for travel, a budget for planning that travel, budget for living and work in another place. So all of those budgets work together, and it may seem like a lot of work, but it really— I think you may— you mentioned, Penny, we were probably working with you for maybe 3 months to really get everything done and paid off. And I mean, we obviously didn't have a ton of debt, but we took it very seriously.

I mean, it took us longer than 3 months to pay off the debt.

No, I meant to get to the system to make it happen.

Yeah.

And interestingly, I was talking about— I started talking about business finance versus personal and this system working great for personal. And in fact, in a lot of ways, at least philosophically, we did turn this system back onto our business. And while dealing business finances is a different kind of system. Based on this and the success that we had with this, we turned that system around and we philosophically implemented a very similar budgeting system for our business. We paid off all of our business debt as well. So we had zero business debt when we sold our business, which is a huge reason why we're able to be doing what we're doing now, that we didn't have to use the proceeds of selling our business to pay off the business debt. It was already paid off. And in fact, we had plenty of surpluses on the business side that we were able to take with us as well. So it gave us a lot of freedom when we were selling our business even to be able to really look at timelines versus returns and all those sorts of things and know that we were in a good position even without the amount of money we sold our business for. We already were in a great financial position because we applied your philosophy on the business side as well.

Tell me a little bit about what it did for your relationship and your conversations because I do remember it's kind of like, okay, Ryan's the finance guy, he handles that. And I, you know, whatever. But how did that change for you guys?

Well, I think that, you know, we probably have different viewpoints on that. I really took that as he's really good at this and he's doing a great job and I trust him to do this. So while I am completely involved in the decisions, where things are, how it works, what the system looks like, I'm not the one maintaining and managing it. And he's doing— he's done such a great job with it that it really gives me confidence to know that he's more adept at that than I am. And I think it was good for us to separate those roles. Now, we still— we've never been the type of people that have separate bank accounts. Everything has always been fused for us. And we've been married for 20, almost 25 years. So, you know, so for us, it works. I know that different people have different issues in terms of how they feel about money and sharing their money or sharing that information. But we really feel like transparency is key. And the transparency that comes with saying, like, look, let's look at this for real and see where we're making some mistakes, where our blind spots are, and let's really take that seriously and work together to fix it.

Yeah, I think the system also helped us kind of remove a lot of the emotion that comes along with money and money decisions by knowing that we're on the same page and knowing that we're, um, using the same philosophy, the same systems. And so, you know, every month when I do all of the reconciliations and everything, and I kind of see where we are with everything and rebalance everything, I always report back out basically to Gretchen to say, here's what's stood out to me this month. Here's some things that happened. Here's some things that were a little bit outside the ordinary. Here's some on both the good and the bad side where we may have spent more or less in certain categories. But I always report that back out to Gretchen. And I mean, I think of anything that it helped us because you kind of take those skeletons out of the closet and you just shine a light on it and you address it and you get— and obviously it's easier to do this when you get to the point where you've paid off your debt and you're building surpluses. There's really no like challenging financial conversations that have to happen between the two of us anymore. I think that's a huge benefit of this.

I will say one thing that just to help people kind of get a sense of the feeling that is positive, you know, I'm mentioning that we happen to be living abroad and we've done a lot of traveling, but I think the first time that we took a vacation without having any concern about what we were spending, because we knew exactly where the money was and what we had and what that budget looked like, That's a common problem for people, right? They go to the store, they go buy clothes or whatever. They're just not sure. Vacations are a big one. Those types of feelings of relief and not even a concern. Just take— I mean, it's just like taking a ton of bricks off of your back that you don't even really know that you're carrying. So there's such an emotional— there's a lot of emotional upheaval that comes with money, but there's such a sense of relief that comes when you have a handle on it. And I can't stress it enough. I have friends that are so afraid to have these conversations and people that I've even said that I have to talk to you, and they're just, for some reason, they just are really— there's so much trepidation. But I will say your approach is nonjudgmental. I never felt like you were saying, oh, why did you do this? Or you shouldn't have done that. It was just very, very collaborative, and I never felt like we couldn't make it work and that we couldn't get it done. And I'm really glad that we did.

That's awesome. I think people sometimes when they hear I'm a financial coach, they think I'm going to come tell them how to spend their money. Right. Yeah, it's your money, it's your plan. I'm just trying to be that outside light to kind of shine on it and go, well, what about this? Or did you think about that? And you guys just— you already had good foundational stuff, having, you know, a good solid marriage and a business. And, you know, it's interesting, Ryan, that you talk about taking these concepts and now applying them to your business. And, and over the last year or two, I've started working with more and more business owners. Mostly they're solopreneurs like me that they don't have— you had a team of people, but even people who are just themselves who have the business and the personal, it gets muddy. And too often people say, when I say, well, how much do you get paid? And they go, I don't know, I just take money out of the business. I'm like, yeah, you're going to kill the business, right? We need to protect that golden egg. So they are two sides of the same coin and they are treated a little differently. Obviously expenses you can justify all day long. Oh, I'm going to write that off. But you still have to spend the money for it.

And it's still your money.

It's still your money. It's still, yes, it's still, you're still spending your money.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you. Is there anything else you can think of that maybe somebody might need to know 9 years, 10 years in what, you know, what the impact?

Go ahead.

I, the only thing I would add is, you know, kind of a little bit more on, we were talking about difficult conversations and being nervous to address some of these issues and being nervous to address them between two people, between a couple. This system really has allowed us to— that the conversations we have now about money are almost all fun. They're almost all good because we've been able to use this system to build surpluses in every category that we ever spend money in. Now it's more just how do we spend this? How do we do we agree that we should spend this? And, you know, what kinds of decisions do I get to make? And what kind of decisions does she get to make? What kind of decisions do we both get to make together? Almost, you know, most of them are together, but obviously we both also still have the freedom to do the things we want to do and without the other person saying no, you know, we can't do that. And so it really has just made these conversations a lot more about, a lot more, I mean, they used to not be fun at all. And now it's almost entirely like, what is the best way for us to use these resources that we have? And that's fun.

Well, and it gets to be fun to think about ways to build wealth in places maybe you didn't think about and not necessarily even building wealth. But for example, just as an American that owns a property, that still owns one that we rent through Airbnb, we kept our car. And over the last year, you know, when we looked at each other and said, why are we keeping our car? Just because every couple of months we come back and we drive it for 2 weeks, you know, so we're paying insurance. So then you start to think about all the expenses, the maintenance, depreciation, the car, the insurance. So it's things like that that I don't know that you think about all of those things when you're not categorically thinking about what it can do to impact the other things you want to do. And so that was kind of just a fun conversation instead of it, you know, it was like, okay, that makes sense. So now We don't have a car anymore. We sold it. But I don't know that you naturally start to go there when you're not really looking at it the way that we look at money now.

And Penny, you'll be happy that when we sold the car, we put that money aside into a car fund so that in the future when we need to buy a car, we will be ready to buy a car with cash.

That's funny because I was just having that conversation this last week with a couple who's— she's going back to work. She's been a stay-at-home. He's been working from home. Now they're making him go to the office. Oh, we needed a car, and we had this great long conversation about, do we need a car? Could we think, what are the other options? How long can you delay having 2 cars? But we, because when you really think about it, I've thought, we've thought about going down to 1 car because we're both from home now. It's like they sit in the driveway here, and then you drive to work, and they sit in the parking lot there. And really, you know, are with between the way that Uber and all those kind of shares and renting a car. You can rent a really nice car now and then if you need a car with less than what you're paying for insurance and maintenance and tires and taxes.

Exactly.

So I think just starting to think differently with your money, which is the freedom that you guys now have to be like, well, cool, what else could we do? And the legacy. I think you guys are creating legacy now. Like, what are we going to do with it when we pass on and who do we want to bless? I know nonprofits have always been a near and dear thing to you guys as well. And so how can you not just make more to spend more, but what do you do with wealth, right? And you get choices when you have the freedom that you're not bound now.

And that's probably a great word to end on, is it really is a freedom factor. And you feel— because it's ironic, but it gives you more groundedness. That then gives you more freedom because you really know where you stand, and therefore you really know what you can do with where you stand instead of feeling like, I am just going to hide under the covers and hope that it all goes away.

No, that's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing and for touching base again and letting me know, you know, because I lose track of people sometimes after we've worked together, and then I don't hear from them, so I don't always get the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey or whoever it was used to say that. So So I appreciate you guys coming on and sharing that with, with our—

Of course, anytime. And always send anybody our way that wants to hear from us how, what we—

How about just a real quick closing? What do you do now? Because you were a marketing agency here in Colorado when I met you, but tell me what you're doing now and how people can get a hold of you, and we'll put those links in here too.

Okay. Well, if you have a business and you feel like you're a little stuck with marketing not working or not knowing what to do with it, we are marketing coach advisors, and so much much like you, Penny. We're not doing the marketing like we used to do as an agency. Now we're really helping people advance their efforts by helping give them direction. We've worked with them to either coach them up, coach them into decision-making, major transitions like I'm selling a business, I'm buying a business, I need to be attracted to an investor. Those major decisions that they need to make, we kind of coach them through that.

Yeah, another way to look at it is we're sort of like your chief marketing officer, right? A fractional CMO or a CMO for hire, where we come in and we lead and guide on strategy. We help with team optimization, both your staff, if you have marketing staff, and the vendors that you're working with, make sure that everybody is pulling in the same direction. And that direction is, is a well thought out, well executed strategy.

Yep.

And we can do that from anywhere, for anywhere, anyone. So let us know if you feel like you need that help. And it's Track 2 Consulting is the name of our business.

Consulting. Awesome. Thank you again, you guys, for your time and for coming to me from far across the world, and I look forward to keeping track of all the cool places you're getting to go, because you're— Me too.

So stay in touch.

Thanks.

Have a great day, Penny Kidd.

Bye.

Thank you.