My
Story
My work is built on one belief: it is not about the money. Our relationship with money is a mirror of the relationship we have with ourselves, shaped by beliefs we borrowed long before we could question them, and by systems that were never designed with all of us in mind.
For years I worked as a financial adviser inside an industry built around products and jargon. What I kept seeing were people who did not need another spreadsheet. They needed to feel safe enough to change the patterns they were carrying.
Women in particular have been historically excluded from building wealth. That is not a personal failing. It is structural. So much of what gets labelled a money problem is really a nervous system doing its best to keep us safe.
I believe it takes a village. My life's work is to equip as many financial professionals and coaches as possible with the tools to do this deeper work with their own clients. That is how the change reaches further than I ever could alone.
Today I support people to notice their Money StoryType®, understand the patterns beneath their behaviour, and rewrite their story through my community, my podcast It's Not About the Money, my writing, and the media.
And the real impact work lives in the Financial Coach Certification Programme I designed and deliver. This is where the change we can make together truly takes shape.
Much love, Catherine x
Manage the emotions then
manage the money
Where
It all began
In 2018 I was working in the professional financial services industry. Like so many of us, I was feeling frustrated and disillusioned.
I felt a huge disconnect from the complicated financial products I was selling people. People I could see needed something other than products.
I often wondered if it was financial education that was missing. Perhaps people just don't understand the jargon and that makes them fearful?
Then...
Something happened in my own life which made me think about fear and jargon. My son, at just a few weeks old, was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. We came so very close to losing him, and as I sat listening to medical jargon of doctors around me I felt this overwhelming fear and anger bubbling inside of me.
The trauma of this event led to uncontrollable emotional overspending, something I had struggled with my whole life. And eventually it led to me realising I had to address the situation before it ruined us.
Looking back, I realised it was not just the jargon, and it was not even just the fear. Financial education certainly wasn't a problem for me either. It was the behaviours I had programmed into my brain as a result of fear. Or, in fact, any emotion.
Fast forward to today, through the varied work that we do, The Money Panel has supported thousands of women to address the behavioural connection to their emotions around money. And not only to address them, but to overcome them and thrive financially with confidence and resilience.
If clients don't feel good enough
they fear they won't have enough
Where
we are now
The Financial Coach Certification Programme is where we train Certified Financial Coaches ready to have the same impact I feel compelled to make, using our unique Money Narratives Clearing® Framework.
The programme is in such high demand that we often fill most of our places months before each cohort begins. It has been recognised with the Innovation award at the Future of the Profession Awards from Plannex, and it leads to the CeFC designation, with CISI CPD accreditation.
We have built a pioneering financial coaching business with several revenue streams, and we teach our students how to do the same. We have navigated regulation and compliance to prove, time and again, that there is a real appetite and a real need for this change work.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I want financial professionals just like you to know it is possible. A large part of what we teach is how to build and market a financial coaching practice, and how to navigate compliance with confidence.
We teach this so our students are fully equipped. We have a responsibility to grow, because growing our own practices is how we create real change and impact for the people we serve.