Get More Coaching Skills, Tools, And Exercises With The
Financial Coaching Toolkit
There are plenty of resources for coaches to run a better business, whether it’s finding an ideal client, improving their marketing, or streamlining their processes. Those are great improvements to make in your business. In fact, that is the kind of stuff we teach in the Financial Coach Academy®.
But what about the person who’s running a great business already and wants to help their clients achieve better and faster results?
Long past you’ve helped your clients master budgeting, getting out of debt, building up their emergency savings and goal setting, they will want more from you, their financial coach. They will want more guidance and deeper insights.
The Financial Coaching Toolkit was created for financial coaches who are consistently coaching clients (and loving it!), but are running out of new ways to coach them. They need even more tools in their toolkit.
Get More Tools and Build Your Financial Coaching Skills
While mentoring coaches in the Financial Coach Academy Course who were launching their coaching businesses, Kelsa Dickey, Financial Coach and one of the Toolkit Instructors, would mention how she was going into a coaching session someone who had been a client for 6, 7, or 8 years. And the response was always the same, “What do you talk about with the same client for that long?”
The Toolkit answers that question.
It gives you all the client-facing exercises, handouts, and mindset work needed to deepen your conversations with clients, while helping them get faster results. As coaches, we want to help our clients in every way we can, but it’s easy to rely on the things we’ve always done.
The Toolkit walks you through how to coach on 65 different financial concepts to use with your clients.
Its comprehensive collection of resources help you coach your clients and keep them as clients for years to come. The Toolkit’s collection of easy-to-follow, on-demand videos and materials give you the ability to up-level your coaching business and provide better (and long-lasting) service to your clients.
Financial Coaching Toolkit Review
“The Toolkit was an investment in my coaching practice that I will never regret. The layout and content far exceeded my expectations. It was easy to understand, carefully crafted, and overwhelmingly encouraging. The Toolkit’s focus is to help you be a more effective coach, I feel it succeeded.”
RENATA SMITH
THRIVE FINANCIAL COACHING
What’s Included
When you invest in the Toolkit, you’re not only investing in yourself but in your clients.
You are making the decision to expand your skills beyond what most financial coaches cover. By taking your conversations and coaching sessions more in-depth, you will be able to serve your clients while they continue their lifelong journey of financial growth.
You’re investing in your financial coaching skills as well as your ability to help more clients and help them long-term when you purchase the Financial Coaching Toolkit.
Each Theme, Each Lesson, What It Does, Who It’s For, And When To Use It
Theme 1 – You The Coach
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to lay a solid foundation before diving in to specific exercises. There are 4 main hats you’ll wear as a coach – knowing when to wear each one or knowing how to switch hats seamlessly comes with practice and experience.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This is a foundational exercise relevant to all financial coaches and is not client-specific. You’ll likely call upon these 4 key roles with every client and with every exercise that follows.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Right away!
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to lay a solid foundation before diving in to specific exercises. In the exercises that follow, we will provide you with specific questions you can ask to deepen the client’s understanding of a particular concept. In addition to those exercise-specific questions, we wanted to provide with a list of thought-provoking, open-ended and deep-dive questions.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This is a foundational exercise relevant to all financial coaches and is not client-specific. You’ll likely call upon these effective questions with every client and with every exercise that follows.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Right away!
Theme 2 – Foundational Exercises
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help your client(s) identify the things that are most important to them in life. Once a client has identified their top values, they can then evaluate if their values are truly being supported – financially, energetically, etc. As the client becomes more aware of their values and how their spending is or is not supporting their values, they are able to more consciously make spending decisions that support their values and allow them to live a more fulfilling life.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is good for EVERYONE. It can especially be good for couples who don’t always see eye to eye on their spending. It is important for them to see what their partners top 3 values are. Once they have identified their values as a couple, they are better able to commit to supporting each other, even if one value is not necessarily their own.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This exercise is great to do with a newer client, after you have gotten their spending plan in place. We usually use this in month two or three of coaching, as it helps the client to gain more clarity around what is truly important to them. It allows them to see how they can refine their budget to ensure their money is going towards the things that matter most. Even if you have been working with a client for a longer period of time though, it is never “too late” to introduce this exercise!
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help show your client that there are multiple methods to getting out of debt! If they are paying off debt, they are doing it right! Our job as their coach is to give them the different options available. Educate them on what those options would look like for them and help them to identify which debt pay off strategy makes the most sense for them.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for any clients who are working on paying off debt. Especially those who feel confused of overwhelmed by the many different options they have heard about and are have a tough time knowing what is “the right” way is for them.
This training video also goes over the Vertex42 Debt snowball Calculator and how you can use it to give the client a visual way to see how long it will take to pay off debt and how much interest will be paid. This can help to motivate and engage your client in the debt payoff strategy.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You would want to use this exercise early in the client journey, so they can commit early on to the debt payoff method they want to use. This is likely a topic you will cover within the first month of coaching, as you are helping your client get their budget in place and begin to talk about the first goals you will be tackling.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to teach your client about their credit report and score. Your goal as their coach is to dispel any myths they have heard about their credit score and allow them to begin to track and anticipate changes to their score as they are implementing positive financial habits.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for any client who does not already feel confident about their credit score and what factors impact it.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This topic is best when introduced within the first 1-2 months of coaching. It can be very validating for the client to look at their credit score at the beginning of their coaching journey and be able to track how much it improves in the coming months.
Purpose of Exercise
In this exercise, we discuss the purpose of having an emergency budget and what a client wants to evaluate in order to come up with “their number”. Many people become overwhelmed when they think about saving 6 months of expenses, so as their coach you want to help them set some goals or milestones to help them achieve this.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for EVERYONE. Not only do we help them figure out “how much” they want to save, but the creation of an emergency budget gives them a plan they can put into action immediately, should a financial emergency come their way.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Creating an emergency budget can happen any time during the coaching process, but in most cases, we find that we do this exercise between months 3-6. If a client is worried about a job loss or change in income, you may want to move this exercise up, so you can give the client a plan and more peace of mind.
Purpose of Exercise
Financial principles are like a person’s convictions – they are followed even when it’s inconvenient to do so. They are a person’s way of saying, “This is how I will always manage my money.” Financial principles boost a client’s confidence and pride in their money philosophy.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
Financial principles are good for the client who has “turned the corner.” By that I mean, they’re not in crisis mode anymore, they are planning ahead with their money, and they’ve gone from overly stressed or anxious to mostly feeling optimistic with their money.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We introduce Financial Principles a few months into the client journey – after most of the basic awareness with money has been gained and they’re beginning to look to the future.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to teach the client about net worth. What does “net worth” mean to them and why should they care? Not only do we want to teach our clients about the meaning of net worth, but we want to challenge them to set a goal for the coming year that stretches them to achieve financial greatness.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for every client, but likely most appropriate for those you have worked with in a long-term coaching program (at least 3 months).
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We recommend introducing this exercise after the client has a clear picture of their finances and is successfully implementing their day-to-day cash flow management program (aka – they are on a budget and know how to use it!). In most cases we introduce this exercise between months 3-6 of a coaching program.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to breakdown the concept of a savings rate so a client can understand it. Then once they’ve calculated their savings rate, this exercise takes it a step further and challenges the client to focus on growing it by 1% increments.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is good for the client who doesn’t feel as if they’re “doing enough” financially- perhaps they have confidence in their short-term choices, but they still have stress or anxiety toward their long-term financial picture. The Savings Rate can give them a measurable item to track and grow.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We typically introduce it around the same time as their Net Worth – after they’ve gained awareness and control of their daily and weekly decisions
Theme 3 – Planning Ahead
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help teach your client the thought process and actions needed to successfully plan ahead financially. In this exercise, you will help your client think through the areas of life they need to plan for and give them the step by step thought pattern and actions they need to adopt to become skilled at planning ahead.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is best for new clients who are inexperienced with budgeting.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Introduce this exercise early on in your coaching program with clients, ideally in the first 1-4 weeks.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise helps the client view their life and expenses from a 30,000-foot view. It allows them to visually see the big events and potential expenses happening by season and month.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for all clients but can be especially helpful for those who tend to feel that life is “too busy” or things just “keep happening”. This exercise can help them to gain perspective into why they are feeling that way and allows them to be better prepared going forward.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise with a client who needs help planning ahead, managing their schedule, or gaining clarity on the timing of random expenses. It can be introduced at any time during coaching, but generally is best within the first 1-2 months.
Purpose of Exercise
Over the years, we’ve created a few worksheets to help clients get ahead of expenses that will arise in the coming year. When we would ask clients, “What car repairs will you need this year?” they often couldn’t think of any. The purpose of the worksheets is to help jog a clients’ memory and give them examples of what may or may not be coming up in the year so they can financially prepare.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
These exercises and worksheets are great for clients who need a checklist or list of examples in front of them when they are thinking through things. When you are trying to plan ahead with a client, these worksheets can be completed in a detailed fashion, or simply be used as reference guides so nothing is forgotten.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We will typically use these worksheets pretty quickly with our clients. We want them thinking and planning ahead right away and these worksheets help.
Theme 4 – Goals, Rewards, and Milestones
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to break down the key components of goal setting for clients. It’s not as simple as setting a target that’s far away and hoping for the best.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
Goal setting gives clients a bigger purpose and vision with their money. It gives them something to shoot for. Some clients need this more than others, but every single client of ours will learn how to set goals for themselves.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We begin goal-setting with clients usually at the start of their second month of coaching. You may find it’s appropriate to introduce goal setting sooner or later.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help the client have tangible targets for their financial goals and an exciting reason to reach them. Having clearly defined goals can help the client stay focused and makes them less likely to become distracted or fall off track.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise should be used for any client who wants to do awesome things with their money! Aka – EVERYONE!
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You can begin setting milestones early in the client journey. This can be part of their debt payoff plan or even part of their savings strategy.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of the Financial Milestones exercise is to give clients various steppingstones along their financial journey that they can shoot for. We’ve added various milestones throughout the years beyond the typical “Debt free” and “Emergency Savings” in place. Those are wonderful and needed, but beyond that, the client needs more to shoot for. That’s where these Financial Milestones come into play!
Who This Exercise Is Best For
While this exercise is good for those clients still in debt, we find it works best for those beyond that milestone. Most clients in debt have a difficult time seeing beyond that stage of their journey until they are closing to reaching it. Once they are out of debt, the world opens up and they yearn to know “What’s next?” That’s the client who is ready for these milestones.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
When the client begins to think about, “What’s next?” or “What more can I do?” That’s different for everyone.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help individuals who may need help celebrating their financial accomplishments.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This can be especially helpful for couples – where one spouse crunches all the numbers and wants to spend as little as possible to accomplish the goal.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise to encourage “buy-in” toward a goal or behavioral change that may seem really challenging for the client. Sometimes celebration is needed really early in the process.
Theme 5 – Behaviors
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to coach clients on the responsible use of credit cards. If you want to know how to coach clients around using a credit card beyond telling them they shouldn’t use them, this video will walk you through how we tackle this topic with clients.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is for clients who:
1) Put everything on a CC, but pay it off every month.
2) Repeatedly say they cannot be trusted with a credit card
3) Clients who do everything else right with their budget and are curious about reward points on CC’s.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Right away.
Purpose of Exercise
This conversation is to help your clients to have a keener awareness around where their money is going and where they want it going moving forward. It will help you, as their coach, begin to see what things are most important to your client(s), how flexible or rigid they are when it comes to spending and will give you some insights into how they view their money.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is great for clients who you see are frequently overspending on non-essential items, and that overspending is preventing them from making progress. Conversely, it can also be a great conversation to have with a client who feels a lot of guilt, worry or shame any time they spend on something they don’t see as absolutely critical.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This exercise is usually best when used within the first three months of coaching. You want to have this conversation with a client when you are seeing them self-sabotage with non-essential spending, and you have identified that overspending is significantly slowing them down from reaching their financial goals.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help the client recognize impulsive behaviors with their spending. We go over some different suggestions or exercises the client can do to begin to strengthen their delayed gratification muscle.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is meant for the impulsive spender. This is for your client who has dozens of charges every week that were not planned for, or the client who is feeling the need to justify the many purchases they made between sessions.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We recommend having this conversation with a client when you see them making impulsive purchases. Your client may even tell you that they struggle with impulsiveness and have a hard time waiting or delaying when considering making a purchase.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help clients come up with creative ideas for passing the time that don’t involve money, or a lot of money.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is best for those clients who appear to be a rut or routine that’s not serving them well. They’re spending a lot of money on the same things repeatedly and they need to “shake it up.” It’s also helpful for those who have a tight budget or need to find some extra cash each month to gain momentum on their goals.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
When you’ll need to introduce this depends entirely on the client. We introduce this exercise for those folks usually in month 2 or 3 when we start to challenge what we see is happening with their money.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help the client become more aware of spending patterns and to begin to question “why” they have certain spending habits or beliefs.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is for everyone! We ALL have default spending patterns (yes – even you!) and having this conversation can help your client to become aware of some of their own patterns and begin to question how those default patterns are serving them.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise with a client after you have solidified their budget and gotten the initial systems in place. In most cases, this conversation would happen between months 2-4 in your coaching program.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to provide clients with a checklist when they’re faced with a financial decision. The goal is to build self-sufficiency.
Who is this exercise best for?
We deliver this exercise to our more long-term, veteran clients..
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Just before they move to a periodic coaching schedule – where they don’t meet monthly with us – we provide them with this tool as a way of tackling decisions in between appointments.
Theme 6 – Overcoming Obstacles
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help a client recognize signs that they are falling off track. The goal is to help them create some very concrete and measurable ways to identify when a “bad month” is about to happen.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is good for everyone but can be especially helpful for clients who are a bit less self-aware, or who are not skilled with creative problem solving.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This is a conversation you will want to have with a client within the first 1-2 months of coaching. It is important for them to be able to recognize the signs of falling off track early, so they can act quickly to prevent it.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help clients identify the spending temptations they routinely fall victim to. Once the pattern is identified, it is possible to put boundaries or a system in place to counteract those situations.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for clients who routinely find themselves spending because of temptation or spending not according to the plan. It’s also great for clients who feel buyers’ remorse often.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You will likely need to use this exercise randomly – when a client says they feel buyers’ remorse or they come into a meeting and describe a decision they made that, in your eyes, seems random or impulsive.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of the Overcoming Temptations exercise is to help “silent the noise” people hear throughout their day encouraging them to spend, spend, spend!
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is beneficial for almost every client you’ll meet.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Initially we begin coaching by identifying where all of the clients’ money is going and helping them learn how to be more intentional. Then after 4 weeks or so, we begin to challenge all the routines, behaviors and habits that have been in place for so long. That is when we will typically introduce this exercise!
Theme 7 – Couples & Communication
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help you handle the sessions where you are witnessing an uneven power dynamic in a relationship.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This video is meant to help you navigate the sometimes-awkward position we’re in with couples, where one spouse talks over the other spouse.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise when you need guidance on helping couples communicate more effectively.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to give you some tips and tools to use navigating money conversations when coaching couples. There are many times when couples will not see eye to eye on all aspects of their financial lives, and your role is to help them navigate those tough conversations. This exercise also will give you some ideas for how to help the clients more clearly define their roles within their financial house.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is for your married clients! Especially those who you observe displaying tension or stress when talking about money.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Your job as their coach is to help facilitate better communication with your clients from the onset. You want to address this from the beginning and this exercise will give you some good things to look for or listen for when working with couples.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help clients compartmentalize areas of their life and finances so they can easily pinpoint where pride and dissatisfaction are coming from.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is used for clients facing a couple of different situations.
1) Couples – For couples who don’t have a foundation for a budget meeting or don’t have structure for communicating, this tool serves as a guide.
2) Goals – For individuals and couples who are feeling anxious, but can’t figure out why, or for those who don’t feel passionate about their goals or where they need to focus their attention.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We recommend using this exercise somewhat early when coaching a couple. It acts as their foundation for productively communicating on these key life areas, weekly or monthly.
You can also use this exercise with individuals when they don’t seem happy or fulfilled in life in general. Maybe they come to the meetings and say everything is “fine.” T
Finally, you can use this tool with clients you’ve been working with for a long time and have already made a lot of progress. This exercise can be useful when trying to figure out what your focus needs to be going forward.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help you know what questions to ask when a married couple comes to you who is keeping their finances separate. Having this discussion early on can help you and your clients devise a money strategy that will best support them going forward.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is for married couples who keep their finances separate.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You will likely use this exercise really early in the coaching relationship – maybe with the very first session.
Purpose of Exercise
In this exercise, we discuss strategies for implementing an allowance structure for clients with kids. This video will help you to lead the discussion with your clients around their beliefs and purpose of giving an allowance to their children and also provides different ideas or examples on how to make an allowance structure work well for both the parents and their children.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is for clients with children who are still financial dependent upon their parents.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise with your clients who have children and are already doing allowance, but feel like it isn’t working well, or for those parents who are not already doing an allowance and need help determining how to successfully do so.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is for clients who are parents of a teenager who is about to get their first car (or a new car, if they have already been driving). The purpose of a car contract is to help the parents clearly communicate the expectations of owning a car and address up front how different circumstances will be handled.
Who This Exercise Is Best for
This exercise is for any parent with a child who is about to get a car.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise with your client when they begin talking about their child getting a car. Whether they are purchasing the car for their child in full, in part, or if the child is purchasing their own vehicle, there are likely some expectations that come with vehicle ownership that need to be clearly spelled out.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of the Cell Phone contract is to allow the parents to clearly communicate the expectations they have of their child when they get a cell phone. It outlines the terms of use, helps them to have a conversation about the potential dangers having a cell phone, addresses proper cell phone etiquette and more.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
The cell phone contract is great for any parent who has a child getting their first cell phone. It can even be used with children who have had a cell phone already but are not using it responsibly and need more clear expectations.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise with clients who have children who are going to be getting a cell phone, or who have expressed frustration that their children are not using their cell phone responsibly.
Theme 8 – Business Strategies
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is to help address some of the common challenges business owners face when handling their business finances. We provide some practical steps that all business owners can use to begin to get their receipts, files and finances organized.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for any solopreneur business clients or small business owners who are still the primary manager of their business finances and need help getting organized.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You may use different aspects of this exercise at different times with your business clients. One aspect is separating their business and personal finances, which is something you will likely address from the very first session. Helping them tackle getting things organized may be a topic you address a few months down the road.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help you and your business client set goals and then establish key measurements to track progress.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is best for your business clients, usually those who are newer and not accustomed to tracking key performance indicators.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We pair this exercise with goal-setting in the business.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to create a “Success Tracking” tool that goes along with the Key Performance Indicators established previously. It provides your clients with a quick snapshot of the key measures they want to track within their business.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This is best for those same businesses you’re doing goal setting and key performance measurements exercises with.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This exercise goes along with the Key Performance Indicators exercise in this section.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to guide a client with the very basic tax strategies – separating personal and business accounts, taking a paycheck, saving for taxes, and knowing the questions to ask an accountant.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is good for all businesses, but especially those which are newer or don’t have any good, financial systems in place. It’s also good for more established businesses that do things (like take a paycheck or pay payroll taxes), but don’t understand why.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We cover this concept immediately when a client starts their coaching program with us.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to paint a clear picture for the client on their bare minimum business overhead at different phases of their growth and success.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is best for the business clients you coach who are looking for clarity on their business, what it costs to run, and what it will cost to run at their next growth phase.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We typically cover this concept with business clients in their second or third month of coaching. Once you’ve created a budget and gained awareness of the business expenses, this exercise is one way to deepen the client’s understanding of what that means.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help a business client who is in the negative each month. The initial goal is to help them clearly see how much revenue they need to find to close the gap. In this exercise, we go over the various ways to help your business client evaluate their options.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is for your business clients who do not have enough revenue to cover all their expenses.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise early in the coaching journey. The more quickly your client identifies how short they are each month, the more quickly they will be able to take steps to close the gap.
Theme 9 – Income
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to provide you with the tools and tips to coaching someone whose income doesn’t cover their basic expenses.
Who is this exercise best for?
This topic is for clients who want coaching help and feel they have a spending problem, but it’s really an income problem.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This is our approach during the consultation or Discovery session phase of coaching, before a client even signs on for a longer coaching program. Your goal is to try to identify this problem during the qualification phase.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise provides some solutions for clients who have a variable income. Variable income can come in different forms and there are various strategies you can use to help your clients best handle a variable income. In this exercise we will go over some of the things to coach the client on, as well as some strategies you can use to help them to best handle their variable income.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is to help you coach any clients who have a variable income.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You will want to use these strategies very early on in your coaching program. The way your clients will handle their variable income will determine how you help them build their budget. This is likely something you will be discussing in your very first session, or for sure in the sessions you have with your client over the course of the first month.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help a client understand the benefits of having a side hustle. It also helps them to brainstorm and narrow down their ideas to the one that is the best.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for someone who wants more freedom, has the time to dedicate to a side hustle, or wants more fulfillment from their life. This is a great exercise to discuss briefly with almost every client, but some who fit this description will continue the discussion even further and may even pursue a side hustle as a result.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You can use this exercise with a client after you have reviewed and analyzed all of their spending. Once spending is locked in, you can switch to looking at their income and seeing what you can do to help them increase it.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to talk through three specific and tangible ways your client can drive their business revenue.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is for your business clients who appear to have hit the ceiling in their business and want creative ways to generate more revenue each month.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We typically cover this exercise after we’ve reviewed and analyzed the business’s expenses. We switch gears and instead of looking at the expense side of the equation, we dive into their revenues.
Theme 10 – Mindset
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this section is to help you navigate your clients who are Caretakers. In this video, we provide the questions to ask, the mindset and perspective that has helped us coach these clients. We also provide some of the exercises you can give these clients.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is for those clients who are Caretakers. This is someone who uses their money, time & energy to assist their immediate family members and often extend that help to friends or colleagues. Oftentimes, this can be at a sacrifice to themselves financially.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You will want to use this tool as soon as you observe that your client may have Caretaker tendencies.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help the client reflect and acknowledge the growth they have experienced. Oftentimes, you as the coach, are witnessing and observing changes and growth in your client that they, themselves are not aware of. Acknowledging their growth and reflecting back to how things were only a short time ago can help encourage the client and allows them to see that the efforts they are putting in are paying off.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for every client! Show them you are paying attention and see their progress and growth!
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This exercise is wonderful to do when a client demonstrates they have mastered a new skill, hit a new milestone, or even are experiencing some self-doubt and need some encouragement.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help you feel more comfortable on coaching your clients around money mindset. Your client’s mindset around money can make a big impact in how they behave with their money. In this video, we will help you think thru how you can help a client with their mindset and how to create your own exercises, as well as share one money mindset exercise we have created to help clients as well.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great to use with any client who you see struggling with some limiting beliefs.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
You can introduce mindset coaching at any time in the client journey. This is typically an ongoing conversation that you may work on with a client for a number of months, or even years.
Purpose of Exercise
The Money Mindset Scorecard is an exercise in self-reflection for your client. This is an opportunity for them to truly reflect on their own personal money beliefs. The results of the scored card will allow your client to see if they overall have a more positive or negative money mindset. It will also make them aware of what beliefs they have that may be holding them back.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise can be insightful for every client but can be really useful for those clients who you observe struggling with money mindset.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise within the first 3 months of coaching with any client you are observing some money mindset challenges. The sooner your client becomes aware of the limiting beliefs they have, the sooner they will begin working to overcome them.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to get the client thinking about how they might use different strategies when thinking in the short-term vs the long-term. It is important for them to think of the big picture with their financial goals and be able to differentiate between a short-term strategy and a long term strategy and when they want to use each.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is good for all clients.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This exercise is a conversation that can be had with the client at any point in their coaching journey. It is usually a conversation that happens because it is prompted by a scenario or situation that has arisen in the client’s life
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help clients identify why they may be consuming knowledge when the goal is for them to take action based on that newfound knowledge.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is best for clients who either invest heavily in personal growth or seminars, but with very little results. It’s also good for clients who learn a lot from you and seem to be engaged during the conversations, but you find yourself struggling with getting them to take action.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise when you’ve tried motivating the client in a variety of other ways, but they don’t seem to work or get the results you’re after.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help the client practice gratitude. It allows them to set their intentions for the things they want in the future, while simultaneously recognizing and appreciating all they have in the present.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is good for a client who is constantly talking about all the things they want, or who is feeling frustrated that they are being deprived right now and saying things like “I will never…” have those things they want. Even if your client isn’t feeling frustrated, we find that most of our still clients really enjoy doing this exercise, because it is such a wonderful way for them to appreciate all the blessings they already have in their lives.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This exercise is great to use to help the client stay positive and gain some perspective on why they are making some tough sacrifices today. It is generally an exercise done between months 2-4 of your coaching program, but can be used after that time as well, if you weren’t able to get to it sooner.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help you and the client understand the shortcuts our brain takes and how those can play a role in our views on money.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for clients who want to have a better understanding or appreciation for the way the brain works and how that impacts their thoughts and feelings around money.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Most commonly, we talk with our clients around the Cognitive Biases when they’re a longer-term client, and we can dive more in depth. It’s typically when they’ve shown a sincere interest and genuine curiosity about personal finance.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help you and the client uncover the limiting beliefs they may have around WHO they are when it comes to their financial life.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is useful for clients who appear to have a disconnect between what they do and what they say they want with their financial life. It is great for clients who continue to avoid, disappear or fail to follow through on the things they say are important to them in their financial life.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This exercise is likely something that will be useful with a client you have been working with already for a few months, yet they seem to have a disconnect between their stated desires and the actions they are taking.
Theme 11 – Life Organization
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to help the client better manage their time. Ineffective time management can be very costly to a person’s budget – this exercise helps to overcome that.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is best for clients who spend money due to the convenience of it. It’s also good for someone who has the tendency to miss appointments or show up late, either with you or other service providers, like their doctor’s office, or can’t seem to find the time to make financial changes a priority.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise as soon as you see poor time management holding back the client’s progress.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to provide clients with a recurring, annual scorecard that tracks their financial growth and progress.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is something you will likely do with clients right away, as part of their initial assessment. Once they have the baseline, it is something your clients can do for themselves every year thereafter. It’s great for clients who want to measure their progress and like the validation of seeing their hard work payoff.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
This exercise is something you can use when you first kickoff coaching with a client. Use this as an initial assessment of the client’s starting point. Then you can use it every year thereafter to track their continued progress.
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to provide clients with a checklist for thinking through the proper actions or strategies they can take when they’re getting a tax refund. It can also be used as a freebie on your website during tax season or as a valuable tool accountants can provide to their clients on your behalf.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is best for clients who have a tax refund coming.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
When you use this typically depends on the time of year you start coaching a client. It will most likely be used during tax season and that’s the biggest factor.
Theme 12 – Long Term Vision
Purpose of Exercise
The purpose of this exercise is to show you the types of conversations we have with clients about retirement. As financial coaches, there are a number of topics we can discuss without diving into things like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, rates of return, or IRAs.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is best for clients who have surpassed coaching on their day-to-day finances. You have overcome other challenges such as budgeting, planning ahead, and goal setting.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
For our clients, we usually introduce this conversation later in the coaching relationship. That’s when it best fits our ideal clients’ journey with money, but for you, your clients may want this conversation sooner.
Purpose of Exercise
The Legacy Drawer exercise is meant to help your client get all of their financial documents, accounts, logins, and more gathered together and organized. It is an extremely useful bunch of information to have put together, to enable a family member, friend or executor to step in if something should happen to your client.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is something every client should do to solidify their personal financial plan.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Typically we do this exercise with a client between months 5-7. This is a great exercise to introduce once the client is feeling much more confident with their day-to-day money management system.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to get the client thinking about the future and allows you to get a better picture into what things are most important to your client. Once you can more clearly see what things excite them, you can begin finding ways to help them move toward making their dream life a reality.
Who is this exercise best for?
This exercise is great for all clients, especially those who are motivated by seeing the big picture and the possibilities of what life could look like for them in the future.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
We usually introduce this exercise to a client sometime after the first 3 months of coaching. This is typically the time when clients begin to experience a motivation slump. Working thru the dream life exercise can help to give your client(s) a renewed sense of purpose and commitment to continue on their financial journey.
Theme 13 – Annual Exercises
Theme 13 – Annual Exercises
The Word of the Year is meant to help your client gain some purpose and intentionality for the year ahead. Rather than setting a New Year’s resolution, choosing a Word of the Year can give them a broader purpose and act as a North Star.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is one that we do every year with all our clients as the New Year approaches.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise with your clients in December or January to help them get focused for the year ahead. This is an annual exercise that you can continue to revisit year after year with your clients.
Purpose of Exercise
This exercise is meant to help the client reflect on their progress from the year behind them and get focused on what they want to learn, do and achieve in the year ahead.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This exercise is great for any client you are working with around the New Year.
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use this exercise with clients in December or January to help them get focused on the year ahead. This is an exercise that you can complete with your clients year after year.
Purpose of Exercise
This video goes over the various exercises that are useful for you to revisit with your clients annually.
Who This Exercise Is Best For
This is an overview of exercises you can use year after year with your ongoing coaching clients. This is meant to help you know what exercises to revisit with those clients who are now in a more periodic coaching agreement (you might see them on a maintenance schedule, rather than as intensely as you did in the first several months of coaching).
When to Use This Exercise in the Client Journey
Use each exercise listed above once a year with your ongoing coaching clients.
Theme 14 – Plan Ahead Method™ Budget
A big part of our coaching at Fiscal Fitness Phoenix is getting our clients to budget using the method Kelsa created in college! When we say we do “budgeting,” this is the kind of budgeting we’re talking about – it’s forward-looking and broken down by paycheck or week, not by month like most budgets.
Please know – you do not need to budget this same way! This system is the signature process we use with our clients, but you may have your own signature process that works. Remember – money is not one-size-fits-all so don’t feel like you MUST adopt this process to be a successful financial coach.
Most lessons in this theme are delivered as video tutorials for how to use the Plan Ahead Method™ budget.
14.1 – Introducing the Plan Ahead Method™
14.2 – Plan Ahead Method™ Budget Demo & Template
14.3 – How to Use Your Plan Ahead Method™ budget
14.4 – How to Track Bills on Your Plan Ahead Method™ budget (video)
14.5 – How to Reconcile the Savings Buckets with Purchases
14.6 – Balancing Your Bank and Budget 1
14.7 – Balancing Your Bank and Budget 2
14.8 – How to do a Balance Adjustment to Your Budget
14.9 – How to Wrap up a Month on Your Budget
14.10 – How to Extend Out Your Budget by One Month 1
14.11 – How to Extend Out Your Budget by One Month 2
14.12 – How to Hide and Unhide Columns on Your Budget
14.13 – How to Catch and Fix Common Entry Errors on Your Budget
14.14 – How to Fix Formatting Issues on Your Budget
14.15 – How to Let Google Do the Heavy-Lifting on Your Budget
14.16 – How to Use the Credit Card Box on Your Budget
14.17 – How to “Lock In” Your Budget
For Each Lesson Above We Show You Three Things
1
Exactly how to introduce the concept to your client, the exact terminology to use, and what not to say
2
The questions to ask your clients that encourage a deeper discussion and better understanding around that concept.
3
The action steps for the client to reinforce the new skill and the results you can expect to observe from the client.
The Toolkit also provides the handouts and worksheets we use everyday to coach our clients on those same concepts. There’s no guesswork as to how you should incorporate this int your coaching practice. We provide it all. You can quickly add that topic to your coaching without reinventing the wheel.
You can also be assured that any less we include is one that we’ve used successfully with our clients. That’s why we’re including it as a tool in your Toolkit.
And the best part is…
You Get Lifetime Access To It All With The Toolkit
Financial Coaching Toolkit Review
JESSICA MEDINA, ACCREDITED FINANCIAL COUNSELOR
Lifetime Access Is Included With The Financial Coaching Toolkit
We created the Toolkit to grow with your business and help you get and retain long-term clients.
While the Toolkit includes lessons and scenarios that are more likely to be relevant to experienced coaches, any financial coach who has moved beyond the beginning phase of their business will find value in it.
And even better, by investing in the Toolkit now, you’ll be more prepared when you’re in growth mode. That’s why lifetime access is included. We want you to have the ability to go back and watch whatever lessons you need as new challenges pop up in your business.
Dive in as soon as you purchase the Toolkit.
Each video, lesson, and resource is on-demand. And because the Toolkit isn’t a linear course, you can choose the lessons that are most relevant to you and your clients right now.
Raving Reviews for the Financial Coaching Toolkit
Who Should Purchase the Financial Coaching Toolkit?
Established Financial Coaches – If you are an established financial coach who wants to take your business to the next level by gaining mastery of coaching skills, the Toolkit is for you.
Financial Professionals – If you are a financial advisor, accountant or other financial professional who wants to add services and value for your clients to your current business model and offerings, the Toolkit is for you.
Other Professional Coaches – If you are a business coach, personal organizer, life coach or another professional coach who finds themselves talking with their clients about money, how they manage it, their money mindset, or the flow of their finances, the Toolkit is for you.
Who Should NOT Purchase the Financial Coaching Toolkit?
Brand New Coaches or People Looking to Start a Coaching Business – The Toolkit was created to serve as a resource and guide for experienced coaches. Coaches who are just starting would better be served by taking the Financial Coach Academy®.
Coaches Focused Solely on Offering One Type of Service – If you are a coach who is focused solely on budgeting or some other single process, that is fine. We believe those services are needed. But the Toolkit was created for coaches who want an expansive skillset and the ability to dive deeper with their clients.
Financial Coaching Toolkit Review
“I have a good rate of retention for clients moving from my 4-month program to longer programs, so it made me feel a lot more confident having these other ideas for sessions that I could use with them. That confidence definitely translates over to working with my clients over the long run which makes my clients more successful (and) at the same time it supports my business for recurring income which is really helpful!”
MANDYY THOMAS
FINANCIAL COACH
Meet the Instructors
Kelsa Dickey, Founder of Fiscal Fitness Phoenix
Financial Coaches have the power to change the world. We truly believe that. In fact, it’s why we created the Financial Coaching Toolkit.
We think everyone can benefit from financial coaching. Literally, everyone. But we can’t help everyone, so the next best thing we can do is pass along the lessons and materials that have worked for our clients time-and-time again.
We’ve been financial coaching for more than 10 years, so everything we teach is something that has worked for our clients and our business. By sharing what we’ve learned, we hope to inspire and help more people to become successful, experienced financial coaches and professionals.
Jill Emanuel, Lead Coach at Fiscal Fitness Phoenix
The Financial Coaching Toolkit has been retired.
(2019 – 2022)
The Financial Coach Academy® team is working hard to bring you brand new, updated and completely re-imagined Growth Area Courses, which will be released throughout 2023.
If you want to be on the list to hear about the awesome new Growth Areas we’re working on, make sure to join the Waitlist:
Anyone who has previously purchased the Toolkit will automatically receive access to the updated and re-imagined Growth Area Courses upon their release, prior to public access.