If you are a creative entrepreneur, this episode is for you. Yes, that’s the only prerequisite! In today’s episode I am speaking with business coach Val Duvick all about finances and money mindset. We are discussing why so many creatives struggle with money stuff like pricing, profits, and their own worth when it comes to money, plus how to begin taking control over your financial situation today.
The Shoot It Straight Podcast is brought to you by Sabrina Gebhardt, photographer and educator. Join us each week as we discuss what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, Shoot It Straight Podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.
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This episode is brought to you by The Round Table, a community built for female photographers who want to continue growing their business while forging industry friendships along the way! Every month, you get access to three new pieces of content covering a vast variety of topics from myself and guest speakers. Come join us and get access to the content and private Facebook community!
Review the Show Notes:
Get to know Val Duvick (2:07)
The most common money struggles for female creatives (4:17)
The most common mindset struggles for female creatives (11:02)
How to positively shift your money mindset (19:31)
Using the data to improve your money struggles (27:12)
How to take control and see financial gains today (29:00)
Rapid-fire questions (32:34)
Connect with Val Duvick:
Episode Links:
Root to Rise Mastermind & Retreat
Mike Michalowicz: Profit First
Review the Transcript:
Sabrina Gebhardt
In today’s episode of the shoot straight podcast, I’m chatting with my friend Val Duvick, and we’re talking all about money. So if you are a creative entrepreneur, and you have a business, you’re gonna want to listen to this episode. Yep, those are the only two markers to indicate that this episode is for you, because we chat about all the things. We’re talking about actual numbers and how you need to know your numbers and how it’s important to understand why your prices need to be set in a certain way and how profitability works. But we’re also talking about all of the underlying mindset issues that sit beneath the surface, right? As creative entrepreneurs, we struggle so much with pricing and profit and money. And most of that comes from a mindset problem, right? And there’s a whole lot to go into. And I’m not going to give away the episode but just trust me, this is a great one and you’re going to want to listen all the way through. Let’s get started. Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gephardt here I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur. while balancing business motherhood and life myself along with my guests will get vulnerable, their honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there. If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in yet willing to talk about the hard stuff to to shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight. Welcome back to the shoot it straight podcast today I have my friend Val do Vic and we’re going to talk all about money, which is a really exciting topic that we all love and hate at the same time. Right? I it’s it’s such a necessary evil. It’s not an evil, I don’t want to say that. But it’s something that, you know, as business owners, like we want to make money. But then also it’s hard. We’re gonna get into all of that. But Val and I met on the Instagram, I love the Instagram and all the relationships that have come from it. And we’ve actually done a whole bunch of stuff together in the past few months, which has been really, really fun. She is one of the guest teachers in my High Level Mastermind roots rise, and kind of blew us away with all of the money things. And so we’re going to take it a step further and have a chat on the podcast today. So if you are not familiar with Val, my friend, go ahead and
Val Duvick
introduce yourself. Yeah, so I’m Val, obviously. And I actually started as a wedding photographer back in college. So I learned a lot of things the hard way really did most everything money related wrong the first time. And through photography actually ended up realizing that I really loved the business side, but not necessarily loved doing it, but loved teaching it and loved helping my friends find freedom on the other side. And I’ve just always been passionate about really leading and loving people well into, honestly, often through hard things, which is, you know, maybe a glutton for punishment, but that’s just who I am. I love to have deep conversations about real life and really help people through the things that are just really holding them back. So about seven years into photography, I started to shift into education, and got a random Facebook ad that told me being a business coach was even a thing. Thanks, thanks to the Facebook pixel or whatever. So from there, I realized that that was just the sweet spot for me. I, I say it sounds kind of overly dramatic. But literally from the moment of my first coaching session, I knew that this was this was my calling. So that was about six years ago now. And so now I mostly do group coaching with a little bit of one on one. And a lot of it is finance focused, because that’s the thing that holds us back right?
Sabrina Gebhardt
It sure is man money, money. So we’re gonna dive straight in straight in today. Money is a really big topic, obviously, like we need to make it that’s the whole point that we are in business. But generally speaking creative entrepreneurs, especially women, we really struggle with money. So I just would love to know from you since you coach this a lot and you have this conversation a lot. What are some of the most common money struggles that you see with female creatives?
Val Duvick
Yeah, so I would say the number one struggle that women will identify and say is their main struggle is pricing. That’s the one that like that’s the hot button topic. Everyone wants to know how to price and my pricing right. And my pricing my worth, you know, so many questions about pricing, but then I would say, more of the the deeper struggle that maybe we don’t even know how to put into words is just how to actually understand and manage or organize our money. I feel like those are the two heavy hitters. But yeah, pricing always comes out on top. And like what people say,
Sabrina Gebhardt
Oh my gosh, I know. And I almost feel like they’re, they think there’s some like magic answer that, like, if I can figure out the magic golden price, then all of my business woes will be gone, and I will be this wildly successful thing. Why do you think that is? Why do you think people are so hung up on the pricing without realizing that there’s so much underneath it? Right? It’s like the iceberg like the pricing is what they see. But there’s all this stuff under the water?
Val Duvick
Well, I really think that a lot of it just comes down to not knowing how to understand their numbers, and not really being exposed to that. It’s not a common conversation, there’s a little bit of like balancing your checkbook in high school classes, you know, it’s just not, at least to my knowledge, maybe maybe college is getting better, and they’re requiring you to have a better life skills class. But last I knew, and especially in business, like even, you know, managing your own money versus a small business is completely different. And, and I think that, honestly, that’s scarier, but pricing. It’s kind of a sexy topic, you know, yeah. And we all want to raise our prices. And I think there’s also a lot of identity wrapped up in that. And I think too much identity. And so to some extent, I think we’re obsessed with pricing, because we’re obsessed with affirmation. And we want, we want to know that we’re doing a good job, we want to be just affirmed in even our craft itself. And so we’re looking for that affirmation in the wrong place. You know, we want the numbers to tell us that. But actually, it’s, I mean, I would say more of like, your testimonials and life changing, you know, what you’re actually seeing happen, is where that should
Sabrina Gebhardt
come? Yeah, that’s such a great point about looking for the dollar amount and an affirmation because you’re right, like, as an entrepreneur, we are the ones that have to choose our pricing. And so like, we have to put the stamp on it, we have to say my work is worth X. And then, you know, let’s say we did just do a price increase, and somebody pays it. It is like a like an affirmation. It’s a validation of Oh, my gosh, they agree with me, they see that my work is worth X. And that is a total mind game. I mean, that is a total mind game. Because when people push back and say your rates are too high, I’d love to work with you. But I can’t it’s not my budget, which is totally valid. We see it as I, well, I suck, I’m not worth that. i It’s time to drop my prices. Nevermind, you know, right?
Val Duvick
Yeah, we just go into this like emotional spiral. When really, it’s like, if you actually went beyond what they say like we can’t afford it. Honestly, just the term, I can’t afford it. If we were to actually understand why they can’t afford it. I don’t think we would wrap it up in ourselves and have it, it doesn’t mean anything about us. But like, truly, people can’t afford every right or their values are different. And that’s not wrong, either. You know, what they value spending their money on may not be what you do, but that doesn’t devalue you, or even your craft, they’re just probably not the right person.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Right? It is. It’s such a mind game. And I do feel like there’s a little bit of it gets slightly easier with time and experience just because you are you, you start to work with enough people that you can kind of see the separation, right. But when you are in those first couple years in business, it is. It’s it’s huge. And it’s such a common struggle that I don’t think I’ve ever met a female entrepreneur that has not had this exact struggle.
Val Duvick
Yeah, totally well, and I think that it also comes and goes in waves because you might have a season where you’re doing really well you’re really confident in your pricing and in your services or products and, but then something happens. And a lot of times I think it happens when you have a circumstance where you need a specific amount of money, that it’s easy to just like fall back into that mindset. And it’s really, you know, a scarcity mindset, but it can just like keep grabbing hold and you have to keep letting go.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yes, yes. Yeah, this money mindset stuff definitely falls under the category of like, well, you will be working on this forever. There are always new levels of things that come up there is you will never have graduated from the money mindset camp. Right? It is. It is a school you’re in forever and ever. So like we’ve said there’s when you think about money in a business, a lot of it. Most of it is about Formula So right, it is hard facts, it is knowing your expenses and your profit and all of these things. But there’s also that mindset piece of why that’s so hard for us, or why maybe somebody runs their numbers and figures out what they need to charge. And then they’re like, Absolutely not. I’m not worth that, right. That’s a mindset thing. And the mindset piece is, is hard to pinpoint, right? Because maybe it’s generally the same thing for everybody. But like, the underlying issues, really can be all over the board, depending on your upbringing, and your current situation in life and all of that. And I think there’s a lot of shame around money mindset, you know, it’s the I’m not, I’m not good with numbers, or I’m not worth that amount, or I can’t make that much money or whatever. Like, there’s all kinds of shame stuff. So I love this conversation, because I want to normalize money and money struggles, right? Because we all have them no matter what they look like. So a minute ago, I asked you what some of the common just money struggles are. Now I want to know, like, what are some of the common mindset struggles that you see are that are causing, like the anxiety and the shame with female creatives?
Val Duvick
So I really do think, and I kind of already mentioned this, but just the identity that like, our worth is wrapped up in either how we have managed our money, or how much money we make, or even just what our past is, in general with money. And even though you know, if you were to ask someone, does money define you? Does your what you make define you? They would say no, like, they know the answer, they know the right answer. But it’s more of what my counselor calls a functional belief. So when we are actually living our life, we’re kind of living out of this lie that, that that does define us. And or that is a big piece of defining us. And so I think, I think that mindset struggle is really finding our worth outside of that money. And I think a big piece of that, at least in business, is really focusing more on impact, which is, you know, kind of what I already said, but I just think there’s a lot of shame around even that I should have known better. Like, I should have known how to do this, right? Like we think we assume that everyone else knows what they’re doing. Number one, right? They don’t, right, exactly as flash. Most people don’t know what they’re doing, especially at the beginning. And but for some reason, we think everyone else knows what they’re doing. So then we feel really dumb. And when you feel dumb, I mean, you just you don’t operate out of wisdom, like you’re just kind of grasping at straws, you know. And so I think there’s a lot of shame that comes from that, I think, also just kind of a completely different mindset issue is associating budgeting with being poor or not having enough money. Like we think of it as something that you only do if you don’t have enough. And what’s funny is actually, there was a millionaire study done recently, where over 90% of millionaires budget and stick to it, like have a monthly budget that they stick to, right. And so we have this like elusive dream of making enough money that we don’t have to think about it anymore. And so I think that’s a big mindset shift that we need to make that it’s actually it’s a habit we need to develop now. If you can budget $100 You’re much more likely to be able to budget $100,000. Right. But if you can’t manage that 100 I mean, what makes you think you’re gonna be able to manage 100,000? You know, right. So I think that’s a big shift, like just not trying to get to the point where you don’t have to think about it anymore. That’s not the goal. The goal actually should be what it what is the the lifestyle? Or the the experiences, what are the things that you actually value that that money gives you access to? So it’s not just money for money’s sake? Or I mean, to some extent, flexibility, but just for the sake of it. Now, what are the things you want to do? Do you want to be able to go to Disney every year? Do you want to be able to take an all inclusive vacation? Do you want to be able to only work a couple days a week, like what are the actual life things that you care about? And that should be the driver? Not just not having to think about it, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Sabrina Gebhardt
I want to go back to something you said a minute ago about how budgeting is a habit that is learned. I love that language because that takes away the I’m just not good with money. Right? Because like nobody is born good with money, right? It is something that you learn and sure like math might come easier to some people than others. But I want everybody to hear this. Like, you don’t need to understand math to be able to budget. Thank you. formulas and spreadsheets and all of the math being done for you. Okay, yeah. To separate things, you can have been horrible at math and still be great with your finances. It’s not one in the same. And I think that when you really step back and take a breath and say, okay, maybe I haven’t been good with money, but I’m going to learn how to be great with money. And realize that it truly is something that you can learn just like you can, you know, learn to lift weights and learn to eat healthy and learn to, you know, get off social media in the night. Like, it’s like any other habit. It just takes effort and intention, right.
Val Duvick
Yep. Oh, yeah, totally. And, I mean, that’s a big part of my story. I am not a numbers person. I’m not a math person. My first see in I think, like, eighth grade was in math, like, they have a lot of examples of ways that I’m really not good at math. And so it’s just comical to me, I would be like, what if you told me in high school that this was, I would be on a podcast talking about finances, I just, I love that about my story. Because I want people to hear that and see that. You don’t have to be a numbers person. And all you have to do is commit to it, and learn it and give yourself grace, like and take the time it will take to learn the skill. Learn it’s learned, not just run with it, and then be you know, committed, you just have to follow through. And that’s something anyone can do.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yeah, totally. And, like you said, being committed, committing to the process, which when you’re committing to learning anything new, there’s going to be ups and downs, right? It’s going to be exciting, and something new and you’ve committed and then it’s going to be hard, and you’re gonna want to not give up. And it’s building the habits of like learning it, and then sticking to it and doing it over and over and over again until it’s ingrained in you, which I imagine is the millionaires in the budget, right? It’s ingrained in them. And now they, they do it and they work that way through that rhythm. Because that’s what they’ve always done, right? Yeah.
Val Duvick
And it’s really weird how, even as a non numbers person, it actually does sort of become fun. Yeah, like, it’s almost like a game like, okay, how can I like make the most of this money or, you know, even people are always shocked when I tell them I get super pumped for tax season. I don’t, you know, love sitting down going through all these numbers, but I love that I saved enough money, and I saved more than enough. And the result of that and even even in our personal budget, you know, like finding ways to make the most of it. There’s so much good and freedom that comes on the other side of budgeting or just, you know, wise, money management that I have people consistently say, Wow, I never thought I’d get excited about anything money related. Right? But you can.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yeah, totally. Today’s episode is brought to you by the Roundtable, a community built for female photographers who want to continue growing their business while forging industry friendships along the way. learn practical ways to move your business forward while finding community and accountability with like minded photographers. Every month, you get access to three new pieces of content over a broad variety of topics. In the past, we have covered topics like pricing, editing, goal setting, website reviews, social media, and videos from me behind the scenes at real sessions. Members have also had the opportunity to learn from incredible guest speakers and industry leaders on a huge variety of topics. I pride myself in giving you just enough education every month to keep you growing and moving forward while not overwhelming you with content. Oh, and the private Facebook community is absolutely incredible. Consider it your space to ask all the things, get all the support and make real life business besties. If you’re ready to join us, you can head over to Sabrina gebhardt.com backslash membership and enroll today. And now back to the episode. Okay, so I want to circle back around to mindset struggles for a minute. For somebody that’s listening that is really struggling with, you know, the worse part or the I’m just not good at it part or just that was the core mindset stuff that underlies all of the other problems. How can someone start to make shifts in those areas really shifting their money mindset into the positive space where they can then take that and start to to move forward,
Val Duvick
so I think the number one shift, and it may be one of those situations where you just have to say this to yourself over and over and over again, or, you know, just follow me somewhere, and I’m probably going to say it a lot. But truly is just that you are capable, you have to believe that you have to believe that you are capable of learning and understanding your numbers. And, and getting on the other side. And it’s, I think it’s truly like just believing that we can, because if you don’t believe that, then you probably won’t do it. Right. You know, just like anything, a lot of motivational speakers will say, you know, if you believe you can’t, you won’t, right. And that is so big with this. And so number one, you have to choose to believe that. And then I think the other piece is really to kind of dig into your own personal mindset experiences with money, and try to identify where some of your negative or positive associations with money are coming from. So I think it’s really important for us to view money as neutral, it’s not inherently good or bad. And because of that, we need to like look at where the good or bad is coming from in our life. And a lot of times that does tie back to childhood. And sometimes it’s like really hard stuff that you have to think about. But even identifying it and just putting it into words or saying it out loud. So whether you write it down, or you speak it to somebody that immediately in itself releases some of that hold on you, it’s not going to completely change your life, just to identify it, you know that one time. But once you identify it, then you can, you’re gonna start noticing the times in your life that you are acting out of that experience. And that helps you to fight it. So I think that’s kind of the big, the big first step is you are capable and identify where your money mindset blocks are coming from.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yeah. And I will say that, that identifying where they’re coming from is a really hard process and so hard, it could be something that you can do on your own through meditating over struggles or whatever, through prayer, it’s also could really come from a therapist, or a specific money coach that can walk you through those exercises, I will share a personal example just because I have been through this. And so I feel like this is valid here. But I am. Hi, my name is Sabrina, I’m an Enneagram three, I don’t think anybody is surprised by that. I really love to work, I love to coach, I’d love to be busy. I love to be going. And in my mind, I have for years and years and years, really equated success with working hard. And when you look at that in a financial spin, it’s working hard to make money, right? And so I have always really pushed back on the idea of like, making money with ease and like abundance being easy. And I love that sentiment. I love that sentiment, but it’s always seemed like this magical. Yeah. Okay. You know what I mean? Like, it didn’t jive with my body. Like there was really a physical push back that that my mind was like, yeah, no, that’s not possible. And so I did some work with with a coach and a therapist on this. And it totally goes back to when I was like 1011 ish. And my dad was a single parents, and he had been unemployed. And he was kind of grasping at straws. Like maybe I’ll start my own business maybe I’ll try over here maybe I’ll do all these things. And so he was working really hard to support our family and like the life that we really living right. And I don’t ever think back to those times with like negativity or anything like that. But through the work like I said, with a coach and a therapist, my my visual of making money has to be hard stems from that and seeing that struggle he had when I was a child. And when that when I became aware of that it was like mind blown, absolute mind blown and like you said it didn’t all of a sudden remove all of the struggles I have around that picture. But the awareness of it now when I find myself falling into like oh well I have to work super hard for these benchmarks or whatever. I’m able to say no you don’t that is a story that is not true and doesn’t serve you any way you know anymore. And it has been really a huge game changer for Me and something that personally I’m really focusing on in 2023 in this current year, that is like my one underlying theme of like detaching those two things. And it’s just, it’s crazy. Like when you do that work, and you’re like, how did that come from this? You know?
Val Duvick
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. That’s amazing. And I feel like there’s, you know, I think it was really interesting that you said you didn’t look back at that time negatively. And so I think sometimes we assume we have to have some really hard, crazy trauma in our past. That is what would like cause us to think wrongly about something. But that’s not the case. I mean, for me, my story is more on the abundance side of being the youngest kid, my dad owned his own business, he was already through the hardest stage. And so I just saw it as easy. Yeah, I was like, there’s just money. Yeah, there’s plenty of money. And yes, you work hard. And you can do things. But so I had to, like, combat that on the other side of it doesn’t just grow on trees. Right. You know, right. And so that wasn’t a childhood trauma, but it was just a part of my life experience that did affect the way I saw money. And so I think we all have our different stories and our different experiences. That I mean, when’s the last time you just sat down and thought about that anyway? You know, right, like, right. I think a lot of counseling and coaching is just asking the questions that you just didn’t think to ask.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yeah, yeah, totally. And it’s, I will also say, at least for me, personally, when I started working through specific, like, money issues, a lot of other things came up, too, right? Like, that’s not the only story, right? There’s all kinds of different money struggles you can have from different situations. But that was just such a big one. And it was so eye opening, because it was not traumatic, it was not negative. It was just a marker in time that my child had self like attached to and has carried around ever since then, you know, which is just absolutely wild, absolutely wild. So like we’ve said, there’s definitely a balance in business to really understanding your numbers and being profitable intentionally, but then also having a positive relationship with money. So when you are coaching women, which one do you address first?
Val Duvick
So it’s funny, because I think I kind of do both at the same time. So I do always address mindset first, but we don’t like solve all the problems just by talking about mindset. So I’ve actually found that it really helps people to detach themselves from their money when they can look at hard data. And most of the time, people just haven’t been actually looking at the data. And so even though they are kind of opposite things, the data really helps separate people from whatever those mindset struggles are. So we will try to identify them at the beginning. But then we go into actually seeing where their numbers are at. And I think especially when it comes to pricing, when you can actually lay out every dollar of your price and where it’s going and what it’s for. It builds so much confidence in what that price is or what it needs to become. There may still be some fear in you know, making that transition if it doesn’t need to be higher. But you’re empowered to do that, because the data empowers you, you know, yeah. So I think there are a lot of things in business that data helps us to, like, get out of the emotional decision making. Yeah, you know, yeah, a lot of both together.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yeah. No, I love that. I love that. Okay, so let’s say that there’s a woman listening today, and she’s got an incredible product or service, but she’s really struggling in the money side of her business, right? Like she, her pricing is all over the place. She’s completely not confident in saying her pricing or charging people, she struggles with her worth. There’s just a whole it’s a whole mess, right? There’s a whole mess of stuff going on. What are you going to say to her? Like, where should she start today in order to take control and start to see the financial gains of that expertise that she does have?
Val Duvick
I would honestly first tell her to actually break down her numbers. And if we’re talking about pricing specifically, basically on a piece of paper, you can just put okay, this is the top like this is the dollar that people see is this is the price, but within that what are my expenses? What, what am I giving to myself? Am I paying myself? A lot of times the answer is no. So you If most of that money is going to expenses, then that right there already is, oh, well, you should be actually paying yourself for this time. So that should give some encouragement, you know, to start thinking about raising her prices or just managing her money differently. But really actually seeing it laid out in front of you that way, I think is usually, honestly a good kick in the pants, like, sometimes we just need that push. And another part of that is your overhead. And so I think an easy first step is also just to outline your overhead, what are all of the costs in your business, that you have to pay, regardless of how many clients you have, and that with laying out your pricing, like, your pricing has to also cover those overhead costs, right. And so hopefully, that also gives you a push, right for your pricing to be high enough that you can do that and pay yourself. And that’s a lot easier said than done. You know, that’s, that’s a whole process, I have a whole program like going through that. So you know, it’s don’t expect to just put that on a piece of paper today and know exactly what to do. But the first step, I think, is identifying and seeing where there’s room for growth. And I think when you see it in your numbers, when you can see it in your data, it just helps light that fire to keep learning about it and to keep pushing yourself to, to choose to believe that you’re capable. And to then like learn to understand your numbers. Does that make sense?
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you. I think the first step is stop being afraid of all the numbers and to sit down and do it like to get your feet wet, to get your hands dirty to get in there. And even if it’s really clunky at first, like pull together your bank statement and your credit card statements, pull together all your renewals, like, just sit down and do it already, you know,
Val Duvick
yeah. Oh, yeah. I feel like there’s so much in business, that if we would just actually take the action, we would get so much more done. Right. Yeah. You know, I mean, that’s logical, but for some reason, and I really think that often, the mindset piece is what’s keeping us from just taking the action, but just knowing that it’s a first step, we’re not asking for perfection. We just have to start.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Start somewhere. Yep. Just get going. Okay, I love to end every episode was like four rapid fire questions. I’m going to just ask you those really quick. When you go to a coffee shop. What is your go to order? Vanilla latte every time? Yes, me too. High five.
Val Duvick
Although I will say that when they had it, the Starbucks gingerbread latte, I would mix gingerbread and either vanilla or white mocha. That was really good.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Okay. Noted for next holiday season. I will try that for sure. I’m always a little scared to veer off. Now. It’s funny. I know Starbucks. I’m a vanilla latte. But when I go to like a really cute local coffee shop or I’m traveling or whatever, I am more likely to order like their drink of the day or their recommendation. I don’t know why.
Val Duvick
Yeah. I feel like I’m actually that way too. That’s funny. Yeah, I
Sabrina Gebhardt
don’t know. Maybe it’s just like the artisan coffee. I’m more likely to trust their their Yes. Drink? I don’t know. Okay, so if money were no object, and you’re not taking your kids, what is your dream vacation?
Val Duvick
Well, ideally, I would be able to just train transport. What’s that word? Where are you? You don’t have to go on a plane. The Maldives. If I didn’t have to travel for 24 hours to get there. I would love to be there just really the like, the little huts on the water and being able to see like the ocean below you. I mean, it just sounds magical.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Okay, well, maybe instead of just being transported there. It’s you just want to be in like business class because you have a bed that lays flat and people that take care of you and there’s showers and there’s good food and showers. Business class is Wow, bananas. Okay, I used to get to fly business class for my corporate job. And we we would go to China and Thailand once a year. And so like the 24 hour plane or whatever, the first time I went on that trip we get we’re going out to the plane and we go upstairs to get to our level. So like we enter on the lower level and we go upstairs and I’m thinking, I’m sorry, what is happening here. Like My mind is blown already in anything. And you get up there and it’s like you have your own little cubby and you have your bed and blankets and pillows and sleep masks and there’s snacks everywhere and And there’s a shower and it’s like, okay, it’s like, yeah, it’s it’s very, very nice. All right, there we go. Yeah, there you go. Okay. Um, so next question. If you were not in if you have not landed in coaching, right, where you are today, what do you think you’d be doing?
Val Duvick
This is a really hard question for me. I truly do not know because I think coaching in any like, form of it, whether it’s, you know, working my way into a coaching type position at a corporate job. Like, that’s just such a part of who I am. Just and I would say, coaching over teaching, so I don’t I would never say teacher, but some form of being like a mentor in more like smaller situations, kind of shepherding people through some sort of growth. So maybe, I don’t know, maybe counselor, I don’t know that I ever would have like, gone down that road.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, but
Val Duvick
so I don’t even really have an answer. Like, it’s so me that.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yeah, no, I love that and even know I love that. I love that. Okay, now, last question. What is either the best investment or the biggest game changer you’ve had in your business?
Val Duvick
Super easy profit first. Okay, yeah, book changed literally everything for me.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yes, I love I love profit. First, I I’ll make sure to link it in the show notes. It is. I know, it’s the basis of how Val runs her finances. And the same with me. And it is, it’s definitely a game changer. It’s different than anything you’ve ever learned. And that’s why that’s why it has its own book, and it has its own method. And not all financial professionals will support it. Which is crazy to me, but it is so valuable. And I think especially for entrepreneurs like yes, it’s yes, it is just such a clean cut system that you just follow the steps. And it really does make a big difference. So yeah, I
Val Duvick
literally think I really think for women and creatives, especially it just because like his whole idea is to not try to change your brain to just actually work with the type of brain you have. It it’s less to learn, you don’t have to know like all the financial jargon and all the things like it’s just simple.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Yeah, it is what it is simple. And it’s a really entertaining book to read too, which is is wild to say about a money book.
Val Duvick
I know. Right? It is. He’s
Sabrina Gebhardt
a really funny guy and has really relatable stories. And it’s a very easy read. I’ve heard it’s also really good on Audible. I read the actual books, I don’t know,
Val Duvick
but I do both at the same time, because it keeps me on track. And he reads it can it’s really funny.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Okay, okay, that’s great to know, good to know. Okay, so please let everybody know how they can find you and how they can work with you.
Val Duvick
Yeah, so my website is Val marlene.com. And my Instagram is Val, underscore, Marlene, underscore creative. And I periodically usually two to four times a year, I have group programs, I have a finance group program that is in there, like, like four times a year, hopefully. And there’s a couple different formats of it. But essentially a lot of what we talked through today, you just get to go through that step by step with a lot of hand holding and people around you who are all doing it at the same time. That’s my primary form of coaching at this point. But I also do some one on one. And so there’s some people who actually can go through the finance process a lot faster that way, like if you catch on a little bit quicker, or just anything else in business that you want help with. I do a lot with work life balance, too. So, and all of those things really play into each other. So there’s the group programs, and then the one on one. Those are the main ways to work with me.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Awesome. I’ll make sure to put all those in the show notes so people can connect with you. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. This has been a really great chat.
Val Duvick
Yes, it has been so good. Thanks for having me.
Sabrina Gebhardt
Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at Sabrina gebhardt.com backslash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhart photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review. Until next time, my friends shoot it straight.
[…] you dive into this episode, make sure you check out Episode 35 of the Shoot It Straight Podcast by Sabrina Gebhardt where Val talks about Why Creatives Struggle With […]