Confronting Systemic Barriers to Financial Success with Jacquette Timmons

Becky Mollenkamp: Hi, Jacquette. Thanks for joining me today.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Becky, it’s so wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.

Becky Mollenkamp: We’re going to talk money, which is one of those taboo topics we’re not supposed to talk about, which means I’m real excited to talk about it because I love to talk about the things we’re not supposed to. Before we do, tell me about your relationship with feminism or non relationship with feminism.

Jacquette M. Timmons: I think as a Black woman, you can not have a relationship with feminism. Even though I don’t know if as a broader group, we were always invited into the feminism conversation. But I just think our existence requires that we be feminists. And I guess, you know, how do you define that? Fighting for your rights, fighting for your rights, fighting for the rights of your loved ones, looking to have equal opportunity, equal access.

Becky Mollenkamp: So you would use the term feminist for yourself because I have found that 95%, let’s say, of the Black women I’ve had on the show have either been explicitly not feminist, don’t like the term, or lukewarm at best about feminism, which I completely understand.

Jacquette M. Timmons: I’m probably lukewarm. And I’m lukewarm because, again, I don’t think that it is a label that has been one where we have always been included or where our particular set of realities have been an intentional part of that conversation. I probably vacillate between lukewarm and I don’t think I ever necessarily walk around with a label I’m feminist, but I think my existence is that.

Becky Mollenkamp: I like that, that your existence is that. And I obviously think you know, but just to clarify, my feminism is intersectional. And I think that we need to not only center or uplift, I guess, not only uplift the voices of Black women, but center the voices of Black women. Because again, it’s about that intersectionality. And Black women are at a wonderful spot in that intersection to be able to educate all of us. And I don’t mean that as in give me free labor, but as in have the lived experience to know what liberation really needs to look like. So thank you for that. You have been in the finance industry for 37 years, which let’s be honest, you don’t look like you’re old enough to be even 37 years old, let alone been in the industry for 37 years. And you’ve spent 22 years as a financial coach. You focus on the human side of money, which I think is obviously what appeals to me, but when we think of money, it doesn’t feel very human, although we have now made corporations apparently humans in our country, but you’re right. We don’t think of money as very human, it feels like a tool both for good and obviously for oppression and not good. But I don’t know how much people think of the money part of it or the human side of it. But I’m all about human first businesses. So prioritizing people over profits, which makes people scared because then that feels like, so you’re saying I can’t make money? No, I’m saying we take care of humans first. So what do you mean when you say you focus on the human side of money?

Jacquette M. Timmons: It means acknowledging the fact that yes, there is the math part of money, but it also means recognizing that that’s not the extent of the equation. We have to factor in, or we would benefit from factoring in, why do we make the choices that we make? Why do we have the behavioral practices that we have, the values that we have, the attitudes that we have, the expectations that we have. To me, those are the things that make money personal. And those are the things that no matter how many times you go to add up two plus two, mathematically it will add up to four, but from an experiential standpoint, from a personal standpoint, it doesn’t always add up. You and I can be given the exact same set of circumstances, the same dollar amount, let’s do it that way, the same dollar amount, and how you and I would end up using that will be very different because we are coming into the choice process with different backgrounds, different experiences, different expectations, values, beliefs, attitudes, goals, and that will determine whether or not at the end I have 10 left over and you have 20 or vice versa. Part of my challenge with the industry, and when I say industry, the personal finance industry, is this tendency to promote this idea that if you do all of the right things, right, if you pay yourself first, if you have minimal to no debt, if you invest, if you, I feel like I’m missing one.

Becky Mollenkamp: if you don’t buy that latte. Come on Dave Ramsey, give me all of Dave Ramsey’s stuff that we hate.

Jacquette M. Timmons: God, that drives me crazy. God, between him and one other person, it drives me crazy. But they set it up to make it seem like if you do all of these right things, well then you are guaranteed financial success. And the truth of the matter is you can do all of those right things and still not experience financial success. And you can do none of those things and have financial success. I am really getting more people to focus on the human side because I find that when we do that, we actually put people in more of a position of self agency and power over what they do or what they don’t do. And kind of my hope anyway, in the process, step away from the shame and the guilt because you’re also not taking into consideration when you’re only focused on the traditional financial to -dos, the systemic reasons that things are the way that they are. And if you don’t factor in the cultural, the systemic factors that influence the way we experience money, then you can’t tell me that it’s just a mathematical problem to be solved.

Becky Mollenkamp: The first thing I thought was we can have two plus two. And that means you have $4 and I have $4. And we can each have a very different understanding of what that $4 means to us. For one person, that $4 might feel like success. And for someone else, the $4 feels like failure. So there’s one piece of that. But the last part you just talked about systemically, and because everything you were saying leading up to that, I was picturing that graphic that I think we’ve all seen by now of the people trying to look over a fence. That helps define the difference between equality and equity. Everyone is looking over the same, the fence is the same height for everyone. So it’s all of us in theory have an equal opportunity. But what they don’t, what you don’t see until you look down is that one person is standing on a box that’s really tall and one that’s got a smaller box, one has got no box. And I’m picturing those boxes of money, right? So there’s that one person who’s already got $100 ,000 stacked below their feet and now you’re giving them that $4. Well, of course, that’s going to be a very different experience if the relationship with that $4 and the person who’s starting with $0 under their feet. And so that’s what I’m picturing when you’re talking about that and those systemic things that are at play. That is something that goes well beyond how do you spend your money and where? And how does that like our positionality at the fence, how does that affect our relationship with money?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Greatly. You know, I mean, I endeavor to help people have a healthy relationship with money. And I also endeavor to help people define what that is in this moment in time, because what’s healthy for you today may or may not be the same as what’s healthy for you five years into the future. And likewise, probably what’s healthy for you today was not the same five years ago because your circumstances have changed, the context of those circumstances have changed. So I don’t look at healthy as being a static position. I look at it as something that is fluid and it changes over time. But in order for you to understand and have the self -awareness as to whether or not you are in a healthy relationship with your money, you got to be engaged with it. And I think part of the problem is so many people are disengaged. It’s like money is over there. I’m over here, it’s paying my bills. These are the tools that I’m using to help me do that, or it’s helping me to invest, but I’m going to keep an arms length kind of relationship with it, as opposed to the fact that I think, first of all, that it’s one of the longest relationships that you will have. And whether you want it to be close to you or not, it’s always there.

Becky Mollenkamp: I think I’ll go a step further and say not only some people just have this sort of, I would say it’s slightly more animosity than neutral, but still sort of a money’s there, I’m here, we coexist kind of relationship. And I would say my relationship for a long time was even far worse. It was animosity towards money. It was like I’m not going to look at you because I kind of hate you. I hate what you’re how you make me feel. I hate what I feel like you do to my life or deny me in life. Like, right. I feel like there’s actually that animosity. And I don’t know where people have to be on that spectrum to generally end up working with someone like you. Can people who are at that animus place be ready for your work? Where do you need to be on the spectrum to be ready to do work like you do with people?

Jacquette M. Timmons: I think you can be anywhere on the spectrum. I think the key is whether or not you’re open, especially if you are at the end of the spectrum where you’re not, like I am just not liking you right now. I don’t really wanna deal with you. If you’re there, but you are open to, at least let me get curious and figure out what’s going on here and how can I make it better, then we can absolutely work together. What I am not interested in doing is trying to convince someone that they have a relationship with money. That doesn’t work. So where you are on that spectrum, I’m good. But if you don’t even accept, even if it’s just a tiny bit of the notion that it is something that you have a relationship with, our work won’t be really helpful because you’ll just be resisting anything that I say or anything that I suggest or anything that I point out to you for the entirety of the time that we’re working together. And that will just be horrible for both of us.

Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, I have a lot more I want to talk about with money and our relationship to it. But I feel like something that will be helpful for getting to that is for people to better understand how you’ve gotten to where you are and your understanding of money and that you’re not why you are not just like, I will call him out Dave Ramsey, but the other folks in the personal finance industry, because for a long time, you were working in that world. And then October 19th, 1987, which is also known as Black Monday in the world of Wall Street. There was a stock market crash. It’s probably long before a lot of people are listening to have been old enough to recognize, but some of us are old enough to remember that time. And you said that when that happened, you were a year out of college, just new and working. What timing for you to be getting a job in the finance world and have all that happen. But you noticed that people had two very different ways of reacting to the crash of the stock market and what it meant to them and their emotions around it. Some were hyper emotional and some were not. And so what did that teach you and how does that relate to the way that your own relationship and understanding of money and how you work with people, how was it affected by that?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Well, it certainly planted the seed that one event can happen and individuals or group of individuals can have a drastically different response to that one event. I mean, it was one event. The stock market crashed that day. It dropped 500 points. Today that happens and it’s a blip of an eye, but back then it was pretty significant. And yet you had, as I expressed before and as you recapped, two starkly different reactions to it. And back then, I’m 20 years old. I have no idea of what’s going on, but I’m a pretty observant person and curious person. And the thing that struck me was, huh, why is that? Why are they reacting respectively the way that they are? And why are they not talking to one another and maybe bringing one side of the spectrum over to the other? I didn’t have the language back then to know that that was behavioral economics and behavioral finance at play, but that was the first seed in reflecting back that the first seed that made me go, huh, there’s something more to this than just the numbers.

Becky Mollenkamp: Did you notice or was there something about the people who reacted very emotionally and those who didn’t and the difference of like their own background and experience and relationship with money?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Yeah, I didn’t notice that part. I just noticed more broadly the people that were freaking out and then the folks that were calm. And that was very evident. But the layers underneath that, no, I didn’t notice that.

Becky Mollenkamp: I’m wondering, because one of the things on your website is a question that I think is wonderful, is how has your cultural background influenced your approach to money? Because I think so much of what we’re talking about is that. And since then, what have you learned about that? Not just your own relationship, although I want to hear more about that, but just broadly, how have you come to understand maybe some of those reactions that day and what you’ve noticed since, how much cultural background was at play in those responses to dynamic changes around money?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Yeah, you know, there is just no way that we can escape our cultural influences, whether it’s from our immediate family or from our community circle. That’s pervasive. It’s just present. And one of the reasons why I think I’m having a hard time answering your question in that way is because I didn’t even have the awareness back then that there were cultural differences with regard to money. That is something that came into my awareness much later on, probably when I started working in the private bank and managing money for high net worth individuals is maybe when I really began to see, culturally and financially for sure, there are a lot of differences between my family and the families and the individuals of those whose portfolios I am managing. But recognizing that at the end of the day, for a high number of them, they have the same questions that my mother did, the same challenges, the same frustrations, the same desires. They just simply had more zeros and more commas behind those zeros to help them get from point A to point B or to protect them, you know, financially protect them from something bad happening, if you will. And I don’t think that that was something that I knew at 20, but it was certainly something that I had a greater understanding of at maybe 26 or 27, that, okay, you know, like we weren’t poor, but my mother worked for social security. She ain’t a millionaire. But one of the things that was really taught for me at home was the importance of savings and the importance of not having consumer debt. And you hear those same conversations in the families of the folks whose money I’m managing. So same conversation, but again, just different pool of resources to tap into. And the messaging is the same. And I think part of also embedded in my work is getting people to understand that there are just some things that we think are different that aren’t meaning this idea that rich people don’t have problems, not true. Money problems, not true. This idea that people who are not rich don’t know how to manage their money, not true at all. And so I think that’s a cultural dynamic as well that only came into my awareness as I got older and started also seeing and asking different questions.

Becky Mollenkamp: Is the real issue then that how those messages affect how you think and feel about money and act with money so if the messaging you’re getting if you come up with affluence, the message you’re getting is there’s no worries about money. Then when you start to have worries about money, there’s some sort of cognitive dissonance. And the same if you’re coming up and you have less money and you’re being told that you’re not supposed to be good at managing money and then you actually understand it. I’m wondering, is that the issue, the cognitive dissonance?

Jacquette M. Timmons: I definitely think that, yeah, that’s a great point to highlight. The cognitive dissonance is one part of it. I think the other part of it, though, is the way in which we judge other people based upon what we’ve been told about who is and who isn’t worthy or who is and who isn’t good with money. And I think that projection, so the cultural piece is not only how you assess and evaluate your own situation, but it is also how you assess and pass judgment on what other people are doing or are not doing with their money.

Becky Mollenkamp: And that has so much more implication beyond just me sitting in my house and casting judgment outside and sort of like, it just means I’m having bad thoughts or something. But I know that there are actions behind those thoughts. If I become an employer, what does that mean in the way I’m treating and paying and thinking about my employees? And if I am an employee, what does it mean about how I’m thinking about my boss and showing up at work? And yeah, so those implications are much bigger than just sometimes I have these sort of biases in my head.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Yeah, I mean, this didn’t happen to me, but I know of certain circumstances where a woman was told that she didn’t need to get a raise because she didn’t have a family. Really? I’m doing the same work as my colleague over here, but because he’s married and he has children, he’s entitled to a raise, but I’m not. That’s not just, you know, a trope that’s out there as a conversation point. I know of people that have actually had that experience.

Becky Mollenkamp: I have a feeling many of us can think of similar kinds of examples working in Corporate America. And so those things matter because they show up well beyond your own thoughts. So thank you for sharing that. So I also read that 15 years after that Black Monday that we talked about, and you had been running your own business for eight years at that point, your CPA was doing your taxes and said, when are you going to stop mortgaging your life? Is that the time? was, it sounds to me like a big moment. I read elsewhere that you also, your aha moment was when you had a profitable year, but realized you were actually broke. And this is something I think a lot of business owners start to understand. It’s like, wait, I made a lot of money. Why am I not able to pay myself? Or what’s happening here? I thought, I thought eight, seven figures was going to be the magic number. And suddenly I’m like still feeling completely broke or living paycheck to paycheck. So you talked about your own kind of trajectory and your own understanding around some of this. Is that when it started to change for you?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Big time. Big time. my God. So yes, it’s 2003. It’s tax season. And yeah, my CPA asked the question, when are you going to stop mortgaging your life? And I am looking at him. You can choose either the deer in the headlight or the dog that goes Scooby Doo. Like, what are you talking about? And I am so grateful, may he rest in peace. I am so grateful for that question now that I just really resented in the moment because it made me take the step back that I needed to take. And just to provide a little bit of context that those joining us don’t have because they weren’t a part of our initial discussion. When I first started my business, it was literally to do exactly what I had been doing in the private bank at Bankers Trust, which is now no longer. It was acquired by Deutsche and that was to manage money for high net worth individuals. And in my case, it was emerging high net worth individuals. And so, you know, I was registered with the SEC, the whole shebang. Now, when I was at Bankers Trust, I got paid the same amount every month, regardless of how the portfolio performed. Working on my own, I had an assets under management fee model, which meant that I got paid the month after the quarter end. And I never knew exactly how much I was going to get paid because it depended upon how well the portfolio did or did not perform. And there would be months or some quarters where I needed more than I brought in. And so I would take from my savings or I would sell some of my own investment portfolio to cover the shortfall. And what the reason he was asking the question was because I thought my business was doing really well. And not realizing that the reason it was doing really well is because I was subsidizing it. It wasn’t doing really well on its own. And the irony of all ironies is by the time he and I are having this conversation, I’m not only managing money, but I’m also speaking. So I started my business in 95. I had my first for hire speaking engagement in 96. 2001 is when I started coaching. And my very first coaching client was an investment banker who was like, you know, I can sit in a boardroom and negotiate all these M&A deals. But I can’t manage my own money. So that’s a whole nother thing. We can talk about that if you want. But as it pertains to my story, at this point in the, at the timeline, I have three ways of generating revenue. And at the end of the day, none of them individually or collectively are bringing in what I need. And he’s like, you cannot keep doing this. Or if you do, there are going to be some really unpleasant consequences of that. And so it made me do the things that I probably would not have done had we not had that conversation. And not only did it make me do the things that I probably would not have done, like reevaluate my business model, make a hard decision about, you know what, I’m not going to do the money management piece anymore. I’m going to focus on coaching and speaking. But then that also meant I needed to figure out my pricing because that was all over the place and I was completely under charging. But I also had to do some things I didn’t want to do because while I am taking money from savings, selling investments, I’m also increasing my debt. I did not have debt when I started my business. The only debt I had was my student loan debt. I guess I should clarify. The only debt I had was my student loan debt. I didn’t have any consumer related debt, but I’m using credit cards, business credit cards, racking up all this debt. And that goes completely contrary to what I had been taught growing up because it was like you save and you don’t carry consumer debt. So here I am just drowning in debt and not having enough money come in. And he’s telling me, you got to stop pulling from here and pulling from there. And I did two things that were really uncomfortable. I went and got myself a part -time job so that I could at least temper some of the bleeding, if you will and in such a way that it wouldn’t interfere with my business because I was still traveling for speaking engagements. And I asked my mother for a loan. And thank God she said yes. Thank God she had it. And I actually had to also ask a friend for a loan as well. And thank God for that too. And so, yeah, that was a real wake up call because here I am, someone with an MBA in finance, someone who’s managed money for you would know some of the family names. I’m not at liberty to say, but you would know some of the family names that I worked with. And I’m like, how is it that I’m not doing well? But I could do that. So it was a real reckoning in that regard.

Becky Mollenkamp: What was that teaching you and how does that apply now with what the work you’re doing and how you’re coaching your clients?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Well it taught me a couple of things. It taught me that you can know all of the how to’s, but find all of the justifications for why you’re not doing the how to’s. Right? I’m a business owner. I’m doing this because it’s for my business. I’m gonna, I’m gonna get a new client. You know, like you can have all of the excuses if you will. And those excuses are tied often to things that you don’t have direct control over. You don’t know when a client, you know what you’re doing in terms of prospecting, but you don’t always know when that prospect is going to say yes. And I happen to also work in a space where there can be some long lead times for the work that I do. So when I am pricing and managing cashflow, I’ve got to have the mindset of what if I don’t get a new client this quarter or the next six months? So that’s one of the things. What it also taught me is I thought I was non-judgmental before. It taught me though, how much I really wasn’t and how I really needed to have not only a little bit more grace for myself, but also a little bit more grace for other people who were maybe doing all of the right things, but not getting the results that they wanted, or maybe they were effing up and they weren’t getting the results that they wanted, but that doesn’t mean that they deserved to have something bad happen to them from a financial standpoint, if you will. So I think it really helped me to really sit in my proclamation of being non -judgmental and not shaming people. And it started with first learning how to be a little bit more gracious with myself in that regard.

Becky Mollenkamp: We put so much morality into money, don’t we? How much you have, how quote unquote good or bad you are with it. So much of that is not just a reflection of the money or your business acumen, but of like who you are as a person. Are you a good or a bad person? And it sounds like you started to discover that even if you maybe had felt like you’re not that person, because I think so many of us think, well, I don’t think that way. It’s still in there and it’s not your fault, right? Because we’re all so conditioned into it in the society we live in. So of course you’re conditioned to believe that. How do you see that showing up? And we don’t have to name names. I’m going to name Dave Ramsey just because I will. But we don’t have to name a bunch of names. But in the personal finance space in general, how do you see that morality and money getting mixed up? And what is it doing to people?

Jacquette M. Timmons: My God, it is damaging people so much because it is shaming them, it is judging them, it is not extending any grace for forgiveness. And it is also not allowing for there to be any room for things that are completely out of someone’s control. Right, so, you know, in my instance, I took full responsibility for my situation because it was my responsibility. But there are people who find themselves in financially precarious situations because of a divorce or financial fraud on a personal level. It can be because of medical debt. It could be because they lost a job and it is taking six months, nine months a year to get a new job and what are they going to do? So I find that the Dave Ramsey’s of the world and other folks make no room for circumstances that are sometimes beyond people’s direct control. It’s like, nope, you, you, you dug this hole and you got to deal with it. And I just think that that does a lot of damage, emotionally, psychically, and also from a confidence standpoint.

Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, I had someone on last season, Bianca Jordan, who was an MBA and a Juris Doctorate. She had two degrees coming out of college, applied for 500 jobs, didn’t get a job. The one job she had got, she had a job actually coming out of college, moved for the job. It fell through at the last minute after she’d moved. Applied for 500 jobs, couldn’t find one and found herself couch surfing, basically unhoused, right? I mean, she had luckily friends who could take her in, but we think, if you have an MBA, if you have a Juris Doctorate, certainly if you have both, if you have an MD, if you have these degrees, well, then you’re going to be fine. And we think there are this formula. If you do these things, like you were saying, you do this and this and this, everything should be OK. And it’s not always OK. And we can’t seem to wrap our brains around that. So it does seem like in those cases and other cases, then it’s just like, well, there must be something wrong with you, because we just can’t believe it. And then that does so much damage to those people and then ongoing for how you continue to show up with money, I would assume, right? So it was a lot of the work that you’re doing then helping people unpack the damage or the relationship, the messages that they’ve taken in early on and helping them unpack that because it’s still showing up with the way they’re showing up their money, even if their financial circumstances have changed?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Yeah, and in subtle ways. So one of my biggest lessons is learning that we shouldn’t have to sacrifice our financial futures to grow our businesses. And so that’s a huge mission that I am on to help folks as they are making decisions about their business model, their sales process, their pricing, that they’re also centering the health of their personal finances in that equation, which then means you have to have an understanding of what’s the vision of what it is that you want money to do for you personally. So my work starts with first discovering and trying to do so as much as we possibly can without any self judgment or shame there, discovering, well, what is the current state of your relationship with money? What are the factors that contribute to it? And if it’s not the way that you want it to be, what are some of the things that you can start doing to make it what it is that you want it to be getting, you know, also clearer about the goals that you have and the financial component of those goals and the habits that you’re going to need to practice to make those goals come to fruition. And for people that have a business also discovering what is your relationship with your business? Because I also got to a point where I didn’t like my business. I hated it because I was just like, you are taking everything from me. And so I had to rebuild that as well. And then also, you know, what is the relationship that you want to have with the people that you serve? So it starts with a discovery process. And then in that discovery process, then we can begin to design, we can design to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be financially, between where you are and where you want to be with regard to your goals, between where you are and where you want to be in terms of perhaps the people that you are working with and serving, etc. And then, I would say the final part of final is the doing in terms of what are some of the systems and the habits that you need to put into place so that as your circumstances and the context of those circumstances and your roles and your responsibilities change, you’ve got something that is adaptable that allows you to adapt as those things change.

Becky Mollenkamp: I saw that you practice or you provide behavioral -based financial coaching is what I saw, how you describe what you do. And I’m focusing on that word behavior because so much of what we talked about feels like it’s mindset. How do the mindset and behaviors play with each other in your work and with your clients?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Well, you know, there’s a Quaker proverb that says when you pray, move your feet. And so I don’t think that you can take action on something, which is the behavioral part, without understanding, well, what are the habits that I need to make sure I’m practicing to make this happen? What are the attitudes that I need to embrace to make sure that this is happening? And what are the values that I’m bringing to this? And I think all of that is what shows up in your behavior and what’s the motivation for your behavior.

Becky Mollenkamp: And a lot of people have real trauma around money, right? For many of us, there’s a lot of pain and hurt and shame, the internal stuff with it. I mean, obviously, if the trauma is too deep, that’s therapy. But the kind of work you’re doing with people, how are you helping them confront, heal, deal with, and not allow those wounds to continue to affect the way they’re showing up with money today? Because that’s what I see so often is so much of the damage that people are causing with their financial decisions is because of things that their understanding or what they were told about money or shown about money when they were young and it still shows up decades later in the ways that they’re using or not using their money.

Jacquette M. Timmons: So there are two ways that I want to answer that. One is financial and one is non -financial. On the financial side, I think paying attention to what did you see growing up or what was or was not talked about growing up and really reflecting on the extent to which you are continuing those practices, the extent to which you have rejected them, or perhaps, the extent to which you think you rejected them, but you are actually doing the exact same thing, it just shows up differently. So that would be the direct financial correlation. But I also think that there is a non -financial correlation. And I’ll share a couple of examples of what I mean by that. I’ll start with myself first. So I knew my father, we just did not have a relationship. My parents separated when I was two. They didn’t get divorced until I was 13. And, you know, sidebar, but related, I think one of the reasons that they waited so long to get a divorce was because back then a woman couldn’t have a credit card in her own name. So there, you know, people don’t understand when we talk about cultural, again, I don’t just mean within your family or your community, but big C, culture as well, and systemic things. That was only what, 40 years ago?

Becky Mollenkamp: I mean, yeah, it was the mid to late 70s, right, when women could finally get a credit card.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Exactly, exactly. So I say all of that from the standpoint of what I noticed was that my absence of my relationship with my father was showing up in my sales process. And it was showing up in my sales process because yes, I know you have to follow up. That’s a part of the experience. But I would get to the point where I was like, my God, choose me. Just like I wanted my father to choose me. And I didn’t realize the extent to which I was actually getting in my own way because I was expecting this to resolve this. And I think we don’t always recognize the ways in which dynamics growing up or family dynamics, whether it was growing up or even that exists still, how they show up in your business. So for me, my first aha was, this is really interesting. I need to design a follow -up sales process that respects the fact that you have to follow up, but that doesn’t teeter me over into that space of, choose me. And it took some refinement, but I finally got there.

Becky Mollenkamp: Before you go to the second example, I only want to say I’m sitting here in deep recognition. My father left when I was two. Didn’t stick around as long with all the other stuff, but lots of things inside of that to allow my mom’s second husband to adopt me. So gave up parental rights and everything. Like there’s a lot of rejection inside of all of that and abandonment like you’re talking about. And as you were talking about how it’s showing up in your process, I’m like, my gosh, I can so relate. I feel that of like, not even just the choose me, but then if you don’t, the like, what was wrong with me? Those feelings, right? That same thing again. So I’m just sitting here in recognition and in like, okay, maybe there’s something there for me to work on. So thank you. Okay. The second thing.

Jacquette M. Timmons: They say you recognize patterns when things happen in threes. So I first recognized it in myself and just kind of put it to the side, but then realized, wow, my clients are experiencing this too. So for one client, the way that it showed up was every single time she would go home for a holiday or family gathering, she was so excited to tell her father and that doesn’t go over my head either, it was a father thing, about how well her business was doing, he would always say to her, that’s really great, sweetie, but when are you going to get a real job? And at first you hear that and you’re like, damn. But then you recognize that he comes from an era where success meant working for a large corporation or having a good government job. This entrepreneurship thing, he’s like, what the heck is that, right? So we had to like work on her getting to the point where she didn’t react as much as she did to his reactions, to her sharing. And then with another client, it showed up more in her pricing because she’s first generation. And the message that she got was go to school, get an education. So she did all of the right things, went to an Ivy undergrad, Ivy Business School, got out, worked for a major consulting firm, then joined a partnership, and then went out on her own. And couldn’t understand though how and why some of the very same clients that she worked with, and either of those other institutions, why they would push back on her price, when in a lot of instances it was the same as what they were paying when she was at those other firms, unpack it a little bit. And we recognize that one of the messages that she got was, yes, get an education, but don’t be like those rich people. And now here she is from a financial standpoint, just like those rich people. And yes, it’s affording her to be able to take care of her family and they are benefiting from that financially. But where it was showing up was that she was negotiating against her best interests. She was hiring people who weren’t doing their job and therefore she was doing their work for them. And it was just like, we’ve got to, we got to, we got to recognize it. You don’t need to blame anybody for it, but recognize it. And then what are you going to do to protect yourself and protect your business? So I think there are very clear financial lines that we can draw. And then there are others, not so obvious lines, but that have an impact on money and as a result on our business.

Becky Mollenkamp: We’re talking about sort of the action focused advice and then the mindset kind of work. And we talked about the traditional personal finance space, I think is occupied by a lot of white men who are in the ‘take these actions and everything will be OK’ place. And then I’ve noticed the mindset work tends to be occupied more by women, often by white women who are talking more about like, manifest it and it’ll appear and think happy thoughts basically and everything will be okay, right? And the two are very different. They’re sort of showing up in two different ways. And it sounds like you’re trying to bridge that. On the mindset side, what do you see in that space that is maybe harmful or just not working the way you would like to see people be confronting their money?

Jacquette M. Timmons: You hit it on the nail when you use the word of, you know, just manifest it, just, you know, mantra your way to it. It just doesn’t work like that.

Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, in the words of Rachel, I don’t know if you know Rachel Cargle, but she says, did you manifest it or was it white privilege? Because so much of that is white women that are doing that work without acknowledging any amount of privilege. And it seems like in both spaces, what’s really missing is the piece of the larger context of the society and systems in which we live. And is that where you’re trying to bridge the gap? Is that, I mean, where you see yourself fitting into these spaces?

Jacquette M. Timmons: Totally, because you know, look, some of it is, I guess you could say woo, and that you’ve got to put your intentions out there. But I mean, I think some people would call it woo, but I think it’s just being really clear that you want a particular outcome and you’re not in control. Because one of the things, there’s an exercise that I will ask people to do. And the resistance that I get to it is just so profound. And part of the reason for the resistance, the conclusion that I’ve come to for part of the reason for the resistance is people want to be certain. And I always have to remind them that this exercise is not about certainty. It is about clarity. We don’t always have control over that end result, that outcome. But if you’re not clear about where it is that you want to go, then how can you make as more as the best informed choice in this moment that will help you to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. You can’t. And so if people want to call voicing your intention and being clear about that woo woo, then I guess, okay, that’s woo woo. But I do think that that part is important, but I don’t like the, I don’t know if I’m answering your question, but I don’t like the just mantra your way through it. And, you know, here’s a, I think a concrete example for that. there’s this podcast called reveal and they do investigative, stories. And this particular one was looking at a woman who was an adjunct professor at Rutgers and they were comparing her story of getting a mortgage, pre -approved for a mortgage, with one of the producers of the podcast. The woman that was the adjunct professor, black woman, had maybe like 20, $30 ,000 saved and was looking to buy a home in the 250 to $300 ,000 range in Philly. So a nice down payment set aside. You know, it follows them over several years. The long story, the long story short is that the black woman was never able to get pre -approved, even though she had the amount that she had saved, even though when they told her, yeah, it might be that you work at Rutgers, but being an adjunct professor, no, that’s not good enough. We want you to have like a solid job. So she went and got a school at Penn, University of Pennsylvania. Not as a professor, but still she got a job there. No, still not good enough. The producer white woman had $6 ,000 saved as a down payment got proved instantly for a $250 ,000 house. The houses that they ultimately both ended up in were I think like a block and around the corner from one another, a multi -year process. And she still could not get pre -approved. She had to get a cosigner eventually.

Becky Mollenkamp: And where are we starting from to be able to see over the fence? And I just think for anyone who’s working and honestly, it’s not even if you’re just working in the in money and helping people with money. But I think acutely so if you’re helping people with issues around money, but in anything we do, if the work that you’re doing with people does not acknowledge, bring into the conversation, these differences in where we’re starting at that fence, you’re doing people a disservice, right? Because if you weren’t to do that, it would allow your white clients to continue to believe and perpetuate the ideas that they just worked harder, that they were just smarter, better, whatever, right? And that’s why they have these advantages. And then harm your black clients and other clients of color because they would be believing that it’s because they didn’t work hard, that they weren’t smart enough, they weren’t good enough. And so bringing that into the conversation for everyone, whether it’s someone of privilege or someone who has a more marginalized identity, it just seems so critically important. And I’m guessing you do that then with, I shouldn’t assume, but I’m guessing you do that with both, with all your clients, regardless of their privilege or lack of privilege.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Absolutely. Because I think you bring in preconceived notions and prejudices and biases, regardless of where you are on the spectrum.

Becky Mollenkamp: Against yourself and then others.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Yeah!

Becky Mollenkamp: You say that part of your work is about helping clients define what wealth means to them. Because you talk about the ingredients or the recipe for a financial game plan, which you kind of covered earlier. We didn’t I didn’t specifically call it out. So I quickly will. You talk about having a vision of what you want money to do for you, cultivating or deepening your good habits and creating or modifying your systems of engagement, which I’m assuming is the ways that you’re actually using your money, managing your money, those things. So those are sort of those the three big pieces of the ingredients of the financial game plan. And I’m the piece, the first piece of it, the vision of what money you want to do, what you want money to do for you. I’m guessing that’s a part of what does wealth mean to you? How has that changed for you over the years?

Jacquette M. Timmons: My goodness. I think it’s changed from the standpoint of it’s even more expansive today than I think it ever could have been even when I first started in my career. And part of that is the circle and the people that I know and just being exposed to so much and so much more than what I was exposed to growing up. So I think for me, at the end of the day, wealth is options. Do you have the options to do what it is you want to do, how you want to do it, when you want to do it? And what are the things that are allowing you to have that wealth to do that? And I don’t know that I necessarily have a number. Yeah, I don’t know if I have a number in mind, but I am working on having more options than I have right now. And to me, that’s wealth.

Becky Mollenkamp: It sounds like you have clarity about what wealth would feel like. So that even if you don’t have an exact number, because as we know with inflation and everything else, the number will change anyway. But it sounds like what you know is the feeling you’re trying to get wealth to help you cultivate.

Jacquette M. Timmons: And that’s a question that I ask people. Like, just earlier this week, working with a client, and I have a questionnaire, and it’s a pretty in -depth questionnaire that people fill out as a part of our engagement. And a part of having them do that is so that we can take the time to just go beyond the numbers and to really get beneath the surface of why do you feel the way that you feel? Where are the emotions and the psychic reactions to money coming from? And one of the questions that I ask is, when you think about money, what comes to mind? And to help get their juices flowing, I give them about 13 different words to just kind of ruminate on. And one of them is success. And the client said to me, I’m already successful. I’m just not satisfied. And that stopped me in my tracks because it made me think, wow, we are in a culture where the conversation is typically all about striving for more, more money, more clients, more success. Rarely do we have a conversation around striving for more satisfaction. And I was like, damn, that’s good.

Becky Mollenkamp: It’s very good. I talk a lot about enough, which may show my privilege too, because what I have learned over time is often, and not always, certainly nothing is universal, but very often white, my white clients have, are stuck in that I need, I want more, more, more, more, more just for more sake. And they’re thinking really big, right? And then often my clients of color are, the folks who are more often like having all these limitations on what they feel is possible for them. And so for my white clients, it’s generally about how much is enough. But even with clients of color, it’s how much is enough, meaning it can all enough might mean more. Right. So it’s also thinking I need more, but not just enough money. That’s where everyone goes. But I want you to think about how much is enough sleep? How much is enough fun? How much is enough satisfaction? We never question these things for ourselves. But do you I wonder if you find the same thing with your clients based on cultural differences, race or nationality or anything like that, where it’s, there are some folks that are thinking really big, that limitation isn’t about thinking, isn’t about helping them think bigger, but actually about reining it in on what’s possible, what they actually need, sort of downsizing some of these things that are creating pressure because it’s too big, versus some clients that are not dreaming enough and you’re having to help pull the longs, saying you can have more.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Yeah, well, you know, I really try never to squash someone’s want. Like it can be as expansive as they want it to be. What I will do though is I will check them on their timeline. Because sometimes they want this big thing to happen in a timeline that’s really setting them up for failure. And for me, it’s like you could have whatever the heck you want, but it might not happen in a year. It might not happen in five years. So let us figure out of this big vision that you have, what is truly possible this year, three years, five years. So that’s how I typically try to approach it with them. Because when we were starting out, one of the things, starting out in terms of our conversation, one of the things that I always like to remind people of in terms of my work is that I want them to be successful, profitable, and not broke. The not broke came from my own personal experience. And successful, you know, they get to define that, right? They get to define what that means that’s on their own terms. When I talk about profitable though, I’m talking about profitable through the lens of, do you have more time, more space, more energy, more creativity? It’s not just about the financial piece. So I just wanted to add that here as you talk about enough, because I think that they are connected.

Becky Mollenkamp: I’m also not wanting to quash people of having dreams. And I think we’re saying the same thing ultimately, because what I’m trying to help clients do is think about what do they actually want. Free from the conditioning that has made, and what I found is often the conditioning allows those who’ve had more privileged upbringings to believe that they can have anything. And when the world is like that open to you and you think you’re, it’s almost not even that they can, but that they should, right? There’s this like entitlement of like, I should, I’m supposed to be able to have whatever I want. And then often it’s having to check that and say, but actually, what do you want? Do you want more or is it because you’ve been told you should? And then clients who’ve been raised maybe with more marginalized identity often have been told that they can’t, they shouldn’t expect to have anything. And so it’s more of this encouraging of like, no, but more is possible if you can, we have to help you believe that you can set your dreams higher.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Yeah, and you know, as you were talking, the other thing that came to mind is, I think there’s a third pillar there, and that is, what happens when you grew up in a household where you were told you can do anything that you want, anything is possible? And I’m saying that because that’s the household that I grew up in. But then you get out in the real world and you’re like, shoot, what mommy said, it ain’t working out like that. So I think there’s that dynamic as well, because then I think you have to like, my God, that hard slap of reality. And I think you have to develop some tools for rebuilding your confidence, rebuilding your willingness to persevere and get up and do it again.

Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, brings up a lot of thoughts for me because I’m raising a white eventually man and all of the like thoughts that I have around that of wanting to make sure that, you know, he gets out into the world and doesn’t become the next Dave Ramsey of the world, right? Somebody who actually understands about the privilege that he’s had and also the world beyond his own nose. So anyway, it’s very interesting to think about. We’re coming up on an hour and I want to be mindful of our time. We’re going to record a bonus content. And I think now that I know where we’re at in this conversation, exactly what I would like to talk about in that, if you’re up for it, which is what we talked about the last time we talked not here about charging your worth, because that was going to be a great conversation. We just don’t have time to get into it as much as I want here. So let’s do that in our bonus content. So if you’re interested in that, go to Feminist Founders Newsletter and you can sign up for free and get the bonus content about why you hate the term and I agree charging your worth. So we’ll talk about that.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Okay, perfect.

Becky Mollenkamp: To end this conversation though, I’m going to ask you for a resource to share with folks.

Jacquette M. Timmons: I’m going to say just follow this author. Any book from her is going to be, I think, life changing in a good way. So the author is Toni, T -O -N -I, Cade, C -A -D -E, Bambara, B -A -B -A -R -A. And the quote is, ‘revolution begins with the self in the sun.’ And given that we are having the conversation that we’re having, that’s what I would love people to dive into, dive into her work.

Becky Mollenkamp: And even with money, which we’ve talked about all the systemic issues, but in anything where we’re talking about all these systemic issues and dynamics at play, the only thing over which we have direct control is our own relationship with those systems and what we do internally and what we allow that to mean about ourselves. And so that’s sort of what I’m taking away from that with money, too, is like the systems are messed up and it needs to be changed and we need to continue to work collectively to do that. The real revolution comes from doing the stuff inside and your own relationship with money and with the systems. So thank you for sharing that. And is there an organization doing good work in the world that you’d like to highlight?

Jacquette M. Timmons: I don’t have a revolutionary one.

Becky Mollenkamp: It need not be revolutionary. It could just be any organization that you, maybe you support or that just that you know does good work.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Planned Parenthood.

Becky Mollenkamp: I have long been a supporter and I will make a donation to say thank you for your time here and hope that others will too because as we know, they’ve never needed our money and support more. So thank you for that. Thanks for highlighting them. Thank you so much, Jacquette for being here today.

Jacquette M. Timmons: Thank you so much, Becky. I truly enjoyed our conversation.