This episode is part of our Success Stories Series. Catch up on more success stories here.
Walli Miller is the Bronx-raised, financially fierce First Gentleman millionaire behind Financially Thriving money coaching. She retired early, leaving her nine-to-five, and now helps ambitious women make work optional too. She went from public service to portfolio building and now runs a program designed to help high-achieving, latte-loving professionals stop second-guessing their money moves and start building real wealth.
But before all of that, she was putting out blog posts, writing article after article, sharing helpful info, but not getting clients. She had to learn how to shift from educator to coach to business owner. In this interview, she walks us through that journey so that you can do it too.
- If you’re not inviting people to work with you, you’re an educator, not a business owner. Even the most beautiful, helpful content won’t translate to clients without clear calls to action.
- Coaching starts before the coaching relationship begins. Help people believe change is possible and visualize what working with you looks like—don’t assume they know how to take the next step.
- Sales isn’t pushy. It’s helping people make a down payment on their breakthrough. When you shift from seeing sales as manipulation to seeing it as service, everything changes.
- Your clients aren’t struggling with information—they’re struggling with belief. Stop throwing more tips into the world and start showing people what’s actually possible for them.
- “What price are you willing to pay for someone else’s breakthrough?” Sometimes that price is sitting in the discomfort of being visible, making offers, and putting yourself out there.
- People need to see themselves in your story to believe your results are possible for them. Sharing your background and journey isn’t bragging—it’s giving others permission to dream bigger.
Walli: We believe that if we just teach enough, if we just share what an expert we are, that people will want to throw their money at us and pay us to help them. This was a big misconception that I had. I said, if I just show them, if I just prove to them that I know what I’m talking about, that will be enough. And I had a lot to learn. I realized that wasn’t exactly what was going to happen.
Walli: One of the big things is that we confuse educating for selling. My journey to personal finances started with my specific journey. I was learning so much information. I was so upset, maybe frustrated, that I didn’t learn this sooner. So I went to college, I was several years into my career, and when I started learning a few things about finances, I realized no one I knew was talking about this.
In my mind, I thought I was doing well with money, because a lot of the personal finance information and media heads out there were talking about staying out of debt. Don’t get in debt, then you’ll be a great person. So I said, okay, check. I guess I’m doing fine, and that served me well for a bit. I knew, have a job, pay your bills, stay out of debt, and you’re going to be good. So that was sort of my story. I just kept making more money, and made sure that I paid my bills. And no one really told me what I should do with the money that was left over.
As someone in her 20s, just learning how to navigate adulthood and how to navigate a professional career, I was like, okay, I’m paying my bills on time. I’m doing well. And as I encountered the next level, once you know how to pay your bills and are not getting into debt, I realized that there was something that was missing. I really encountered it through a clickbait article. It was about how a couple in their 30s retired to travel the world, and that was where my personal finance journey began. I realized that there was this whole other piece that I didn’t know about, which was building wealth, that had never really occurred to me.
As I learned more about that, I realized that the voices that were talking, giving fantastic information, didn’t quite have the same perspective and didn’t have the same background as me. Most of them were men, and there were even fewer people of color talking about this. I thought it was really important to show what happens if you are a first-generation college graduate, what were some of the stumbling blocks or roadblocks that are unique when you’re coming from that perspective, or if you’re the eldest child coming from an immigrant family.
As I was learning on my personal finance journey, I realized that there were more voices that were needed. So it didn’t even come from a place of wanting to start a business. I was just like, more people need to talk about this. Then I went to FinCon and I began realizing that there was a way to serve people and also to turn this into a business. There was a wide gap that I needed to learn, but it was my introduction to how to use education to also attract money, to attract a business, to start a business.
Walli: Yes, that’s exactly right. I just wanted to get the information out there, and then this little seed got planted in me. I know there are some people who’ve always had the entrepreneurial spirit. That was not my journey at all. My journey was I’m a nine-to-fiver, and I’m happy being a nine-to-fiver, so I just had to really explore what it even meant to make money differently outside of a nine-to-five.
Walli: I made so many mistakes. One of the things that started happening was as I was creating content, people asked me whether or not I did one-on-one consultation. This was before I even knew that financial coaching was a thing, and I would just send them resources. I might say go listen to this YouTube channel, or listen to this podcast, or go read this book. I would just want to give people all the information, because for me, my journey was I was a consumer of the information, and I was fine with it. I took action.
There was a little bit of a disconnect about how you could provide people with financial literacy, but sometimes they need that additional support and guidance and the trouble is the lack of implementation. So I made some mistakes, because I could have started monetizing in some ways even there. But I was like, no, go read these books.
It was a friend of mine who I just kept telling, oh my goodness, if you only knew what is possible out there, if you just can learn how to manage your finances and if you just did things a little bit differently. I kept following up with her, asking, did you read this book? Did you watch the YouTube channel? Did you listen to the podcast? And she kept saying, no.
I said, you know what? On Saturday, we’re going to have a date, and I’m going to help you through this. Now I look back on it, that was my introduction to coaching. It was in that phone call with a really good friend of mine. We spent about three hours on the phone, and I realized the mind drama that she was having on opening her accounts. She was a doctor, so it wasn’t even the math. She could do the math better than I did, but it was the coaching piece that helped her.
After I had that conversation, and again, I didn’t even know that word yet, I said, okay, I need to figure out what these paid consultations will look like, because there are people out there who need that help. You can provide the resources and the education, but people need that help.
That was when I started focusing on things that I shouldn’t be focusing on. One of the things that I didn’t mention, which is really important to share, is that I was providing this content anonymously. I had an anonymous blog, and I realized that if people were going to want to work with me, I needed to put a face to what that relationship was going to look like. My only introduction to coaching, which I didn’t even know at the time, was a face-to-face, or actually, was a phone call that I had with a friend of mine, but we had been friends for decades. So I knew there was a little level of trust there. I thought, I don’t know if people are going to trust an anonymous person.
That was when I started focusing on the name of my business. I sent a group text message to a group of friends of mine with three names of a financial coaching business, and one of my friends from that message said, when you have this open I would like to hire you. I was like, okay, I didn’t know what to charge. I didn’t know what that would look like. Because, again, I had not had a financial coaching session, but now I had been introduced to this term “financial coaching,” and that was where the business started.
Again, coming from, oh, if I just provide education and blog posts, this is what’s gonna get people to work with me. So I accidentally got my first client-paid client, because this friend actually paid me. I threw a random number out there, and the first thing she said was, oh, that’s it? And I was like, wait, this is a friend. I thought she would say something like, girl, why am I paying you? So that was my first lesson in business, which was, okay, you could charge a little bit more than that.
It’s important to understand I came from the blogging space, just wanting to provide information, but then that was my basis of building the financial coaching business, which was okay, just do that, but put your face on it. And I was missing a few steps.
Walli: So I got the first client, and then another week passed and another month passed and three months passed and four months passed, and I was still creating content, and I didn’t have any other clients. That was when I realized that the content production isn’t necessarily working here.
In addition to blog posts, at FinCon I was introduced to the world of Instagram and realized that it could be a really great platform for me to begin using. So I started creating the quote posts and the motivational posts that you could do on Instagram, and also including some tips, like five tips to cut out on groceries, or three things you could do right now to save on your cell phone bill and plan.
To me, I was providing these amazing tips and amazing value. But after I had that first client that came from a conversation and came from someone who I knew, and I kept putting out that content, I realized this may not be enough. One of the things that was missing was that I was providing the value, I was providing the tips, but I never made an invitation for someone to hire me. I didn’t make an invitation for someone to come and work with me. It took me several months of realizing that that was what was missing. So the value was out there, but people didn’t know what to do with the value.
Walli: Someone asked me to collaborate on an Instagram story or an Instagram Live at that point, and that was where I got my second client. And I now had information from these two people, I realized they were very smart people. They knew some of the basics, but what they didn’t have was the belief.
One of the mistakes that people who come into this space make is all we want to do is serve, all we want to do is share what we know, and we think it’s just education. But remember how I mentioned one of the very first lessons that I learned, but I didn’t take into my financial coaching practice, was that it wasn’t a lack of information out there. Now what I was doing is just throwing more information out into the ether and not showing people what was possible.
In the content, it was really important to also show what was possible, because to me, the content creation meant to add more value, more tips, things like that. What I needed to do was to help people see what was possible. So it was a different type of content creation.
But most importantly, it was just making the invitation for people to work with me, because it might seem so simple, but if you’re adding value, whether it’s on YouTube or in a podcast, on Instagram or in blog posts, if you don’t tell people what is the next step for them or what is the next step for them to work with you, you’re putting too much pressure on them to go seek it out, go to your website, understand what a call does, what is going to happen on that first call, what is going to happen in coaching.
That was the different type of content that I needed to produce. So I was still creating content, but it was a little bit less on the know-hows, the tips and the steps, and more about helping them first believe that their finances could look differently, and also extending that invitation, making an offer, literally saying, I can help you if you want to work with me one-on-one. Here’s my email, or here’s the way to book a call or whatever method you decide to use.
Walli: What sales meant to me at that point was that I needed to build belief in what the transformation could be for them. Before I could have anybody else believe the result that they would get out of financial coaching, I needed to believe that it was possible for them, because so many times they don’t believe that for themselves. So I needed to sell myself.
When we’re talking about being salesy, I needed to sell myself on what was possible for them and how I would be able to help them in their journey. I also thought that salesy was like a used car salesperson, and that just doesn’t feel right. Or being in a situation where you’re pressuring someone to do something that they really don’t want to do or feel regret about.
I really had to change that. Somebody reaches out or is looking for information on trying to learn how to manage their finances, or trying to find a different way of doing things, because the way they’re doing things just isn’t working. All we are doing is helping them on that journey, on helping them with their finances, on being able to pay for vacations out of pocket. I also have clients where their homework is to spend more money, because sometimes it’s not even the trouble of saving or getting out of debt. It’s that they’re hoarding money. They have trouble spending money.
For me at the time, it felt like, why would someone pay for coaching? Again, I had this belief that all they need is the information, and I needed to believe that I could help them transform their finances faster. When I thought about being salesy, I thought about those really uncomfortable situations of forcing someone to part ways with their money, with something that they didn’t want to do.
My belief had to come from a place where they are searching for this because they want change, and you have to show them that change is possible. That’s what the sales process is. The sales process is helping someone make a down payment on their breakthrough, on their financial breakthrough. I know it sounds so basic, but really, that’s what it was for me. I needed to believe that they were wanting to have that breakthrough, and they were wanting to invest that money in order to have that breakthrough. So I needed to sell myself first that selling was service.
When you ask now, what does sales mean to you? I love sales. Sales, to me, is being able to paint the picture of what is possible. It’s me providing a service before they pay me a dime, of building that belief that their finances could look different, that they can be debt free, that they can have a savings fund fully funded, that they can be work optional, that they can build wealth over time. I love sales, because sales is just providing that service.
Walli: I worked with Jill one-on-one, which was fantastic. I will say that I still have to remind myself. Right before I get on a sales call, right before I have that conversation, I literally have “your clients are waiting to pay for their breakthrough” and “profit is the applause of service” posted on my computer screen. It’s important to know that it’s not a one and done. Even when you talked about perfectionism, I do believe that selling someone into the journey of financial coaching is that transformation that they want, that they so desire. Maybe there will be one day that I don’t have to coach myself before a sales call, but I just have a different perspective now. It doesn’t require as much, because I just remind myself that profit is the applause of service, and as long as I am providing a service, as long as I’m willing to serve my clients well, they will get the transformation that they want.
When I worked with Jill, there were a couple of things going on. I was needing to shift the idea from being a content creator and also a coach. I had a high belief in my coaching abilities, but I didn’t have a full belief in my business skills or in my entrepreneurship, and I needed to shift that identity. I needed to build that identity. That was something that Jill really helped me with, because I actually left my nine-to-five while I was working with her.
One of the shifts that I had was while working with Jill in the elite program, I had my most profitable month ever for the time. Within two months, I decided that I was going to go all in on financial coaching. Also a little part of my backstory, I’m also part of what some people might know of the early retirement FIRE movement. So I was financially capable of being able to do that.
One of the very first things that happened in that month that I left was that I stopped marketing and selling as much because I had this goal for what I wanted my financial coaching practice to look like. One of the most beautiful things that Jill shared with me was now that I’m willing to shift my perspective into being an entrepreneur and coach that one of the things that happens is that self-sabotage. I had this idea of, well, I don’t really need to do this, but what I was really fearing was that if I went all in on my business and then it didn’t work out, then I was going to feel that sense of failure.
So in some ways, I started to self-sabotage, of not marketing as much, not showing up. Because really what would happen is that at the end of the year, if I didn’t reach my goal, I would have the reasons why that didn’t happen. I would say, oh, well, I know why it didn’t happen. I took my foot off the gas and talking to people and making offers and creating value for the people that I wanted to serve. Oh, that’s why I didn’t reach my goal. But when she pointed that out to me, I was just like, oh, my God, that makes so much sense, because it was that fear of failure, which some of our clients have. If they invest in financial coaching, or if they start this path, what about if it doesn’t work out for them? They fear that more than just what’s possible.
Walli: I remember thinking people were saying in my content, oh, that’s so good. Or one of the things that I felt comfortable with was sharing my financial journey and sharing my story. So people were saying things like, I’m inspiring. They’re even sharing my post, but no one was booking a call with me. So it was like, what am I missing?
It hit me, I wasn’t making it easy for people to take the next step or really showing people what that next step is. So here’s some tips that I shared with you. Okay, awesome, but if you want to take this to the next level, book that call with me. What did it mean to book a call? And then in the next post, in our call, this is what’s going to happen. I would just take people on a journey, and I would rinse and repeat it, because sometimes we think, especially if you’re emailing or using social media, that our clients, that our audience is online as much as we are, and they’re not. They’re living their lives. They’re raising their families, they’re working.
So it’s really about, how can I make it easy for someone to take that next step? And that next step could be a simple financial tip, but that next step might also be to work with me one-on-one. How can I make it really easy, make it a no-brainer, make it not scary, and really educate in a different way? Instead of sharing the tips, it’s educating on what’s the next way to work with me?
Walli: The coaching starts almost before the coaching relationship begins. So if you are thinking about, how can I help someone believe that this journey, that this financial journey is going to be worth it? It starts right there, before you ever have a one-on-one conversation with them. It starts with helping them believe that they can make that first step, that they can take that next step, and then again, making it super simple. It feels obvious, but it isn’t obvious. If you are creating content, if you want people to share the content, you have to tell people to share the content. If you want someone to book that call with you, you have to invite people to book that call with you.
Walli: This is such a good question. When I go back to why I started writing those blog posts, particularly for people of color, women of color, women who are breadwinners, we are already a smaller community, and so we want to see that other people who look like us, who have similar backgrounds, have achieved the thing that we want to achieve. It just makes it a little bit more believable.
So when you see someone who is talking about being a first-generation college graduate and being a daughter of an immigrant, and being a first-gen millionaire, it just feels a little bit more possible when you see someone who has a similar background to you. This is why I don’t think it’s necessary to always share your story, but it’s so powerful when you do, because there are going to be some people who are not going to be able to relate to it, then there’s going to be some people who are going to see themselves in what you’ve overcome and what you’ve accomplished, and being able to showcase that is really important.
So even though I talk about being a first-gen millionaire in my content, even when you said it, it doesn’t always feel the most comfortable and that’s okay. You don’t have to share all the nitty-gritty details. But even that discomfort…Someone said to me, what is the price that you are willing to pay in order to have someone else succeed? What is the price that you are willing to pay in order for someone else to have financial independence and build wealth?
Well, when I’m thinking about selling or when I’m thinking about creating content or being visible, it’s very uncomfortable. And I think, are you willing, Walli, to pay the price of sitting in discomfort? Is that the price you’re willing to pay for someone else’s breakthrough?
When I think about that, when I think about, okay, I don’t feel like posting on Instagram, or I don’t want to write this email, or I don’t want to make an invitation, I don’t want to serve in this way, in this capacity. I just want to serve my clients. I just go back to that, asking myself that question of right now, the price that I have to pay is being uncomfortable. The price that I have to pay is sitting in discomfort. Am I willing to pay that price in order for someone else to have their breakthrough? And when I go back to that, yeah, it’s worth it.
Walli: When I first started as a financial coach, or even when I started writing the blog post, I love the math, I love the spreadsheets and I love the tactical strategies. Now I will say I still love that but what I love most is the aha moments that my clients have when they realize what’s possible for them, when they realize they can go on vacation and not have to fear what that credit card bill is going to look like when they come back from the vacation, when they realize that they finally have enough for the down payment on their home, when they realize they have enough for their family planning fund and have enough to secure IVF treatment or adoption fees, when they realize that they don’t have to work until they’re 65 if they don’t want to, that there’s a path that they could create.
So for me, what coaching is is helping people believe that it’s possible. And that is my favorite part of the work, is showing people what’s possible.
