Making Money Is Not the Same as Building Wealth And Nobody Told You the Difference

You've been working hard. Signing clients, launching offers, and hitting revenue goals. So why does it still feel like enough is always just out of reach?

Because income and wealth are not the same thing. And most entrepreneurs were only ever taught one of them.

In this solo episode, Lisa Marie breaks down the Make, Master, Multiply framework and lets you know about why skipping the middle stage keeps you stuck on the financial merry-go-round, no matter how much you earn. She also walks through her signature savings bucket system and what it actually looks like to start building wealth from where you are right now.

This is the episode that reframes everything.

What You'll Learn

• Why income and wealth are completely different, and why treating them the same is costing you
• The Make, Master, Multiply framework broken down stage by stage
• Why you cannot multiply what you haven't mastered (and why most people skip straight to multiply)
• The savings bucket system Lisa uses with her clients, and lives by herself
• How to start building toward wealth even if you're still in the early stages of your business
• What "having your money work for you" actually looks like in practical terms

Resources

• The Seven Money Pitfalls email series
• Money Movz™ Voxer Coaching 
• Transcendent Wealth Co services

Follow Lisa Marie on your favorite social platform:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Transcendent Wealth Co. LLC
https://www.transcendentwealthco.com   

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Cash and Sass, the podcast where we ditch the shame, talk real numbers, and build bold, bankable wealth without sacrificing who we are. I'm your host, Lisa Marie, fractional CFO, wealth mentor, and the sassy wealth queen behind Transcendent Wealth Co. If you're ready to scale with strategy, own your power, and finally feel wealthy in every sense of the word, then you're in the right place. Today we are getting into one of my absolute favorite conversations. And I say favorite because this is the one that tends to completely shift how women see their business and their futures. We are talking about the difference between income and wealth. And I promise you, by the time this episode is over, you will never look at your revenue the same again. This episode is called Making Money is not the same as building wealth, and nobody told you the difference. And if you've been grinding, growing your revenue, hitting your goals, and still wondering why it doesn't feel like enough, then this is exactly where we need to start. Okay, let's get into it. I want to start with something that sounds simple, but is going to reframe everything we talk about today. Income is what you make. Wealth is what you keep, grow, and eventually live from. Those are not the same thing. And most entrepreneurs, smart, successful, hardworking entrepreneurs, are treating them like they are. Here's what income looks like: you sign a client, money comes in, you pay your expenses, you pay yourself, maybe you reinvest some back into the business, and then the cycle starts over. You need another client, another launch, another month of activity. You keep in order to keep the money flowing. That is income. And income is necessary. Income is important, but income alone is not wealth. Trust me, I have learned the difference. It was a wildly rude awakening over the last two years for me. Okay. Wealth is different. Wealth is what happens when your money starts doing work that you are not doing. Wealth is what sustains you when you step away, whether that's a vacation, an illness, a season of life that requires you to slow down, or eventually even retirement. Wealth is the thing that gives you options. And here's the hard truth that I need to say out loud for everyone. You can make six figures, multiple six figures, and still have zero wealth. Because if everything stops the moment you stop working, what you have built is a job. So I'm gonna say that again. This is because if everything stops the moment you stop working, what you have built is a job, a well-paying one, but a job. That's not the goal, or at least it shouldn't be. I know for me it's not. So I want to talk about a framework I work with. Okay. I work with a framework that I call Make Master Multiply. And when I walk women through this, most of them realize very quickly which stage they've been stuck in and why. So I'm gonna break it down. Make is the first stage. This is where most entrepreneurs live. You're focused on generating revenue, signing clients, launching offers, getting paid. And that focus makes complete sense when you're building. Complete sense. Okay. I've done the same thing, I did the same thing. Okay. You need income to sustain the business and yourself. Here's the problem, though. Most of us were only ever taught the make stage. Nobody sat us down and said, okay, now here's what you do once you've made this money. There was no lesson about what comes next. So we just kept doing more of the same: more clients, more launches, more revenue. Always back at the beginning of the cycle, that merigram, that ever ending merigram. Second stage is master. Okay. This is where the real shift happens. Mastering your money means understanding what is actually coming in, what is going out, and what is staying. It means knowing your numbers, not just your revenue, but your profit margin, your cash flow, your actual take home, your actual take home, your expenses. Okay. It when I say cash flow, I mean those cash flow patterns. It means building systems around your money so you're making intentional decisions instead of reactive ones. Because there's a difference. Most entrepreneurs skip this stage entirely, not because they don't care, but because nobody taught them it existed. Multiply is the third stage. This is where income becomes wealth. This is where your money starts working for you instead of you always working for it. Investing, building assets, creating income streams that don't require direct daily effort. This is where there will be more than one income stream, right? Which I have learned again the hard way. Okay. So I want, don't want you to have to do that. This is where the for real freedom lives, okay? Because we don't want just to have income where we have to show up every single day. We want multiple, okay. Now here's what I want you to notice. You cannot multiply what you haven't mastered. Most people skip that master step and try and go to the multiply, but you cannot multiply what you haven't mastered. And you cannot master what you haven't intentionally made. That's why there's those three stages. Make, master, multiply. The stages build on each other. And if you skip the middle one, which most people do, you will stay stuck in the cycle of making and spending, making and spending, forever wondering why the number in your account never seems to match the effort you're putting in. Okay, so I'm going to get practical with you, okay? Because this is where I see some of the biggest gaps with women I work with. Most people have one savings account, maybe two, and everything just sits together. The emergency fund next to the tax money, next to the I want to go to Bali someday money. All in one pile. No separation, no intention behind it, whether it's business or personal. And what happens is when it's all in one place, you spend it because it doesn't feel earmarked for anything specific. It just feels like money that's available. Or you don't ever touch it to do anything because you're not sure how much of it you actually need for taxes. I've seen both extremes. This is where having multiple checking accounts or saving account buckets change everything. Okay. The idea is straightforward. You create separate, clearly labeled accounts or buckets, each with a specific purpose. And each one gets funded intentionally, consistently, as a non-negotiable part of how you manage your money. I have these buckets. I live by these buckets. Are they always able to be consistently the same way every single time? No. And that's where we tweak, that's where we we pivot as we need to. Okay. But here are the buckets I recommend every entrepreneur starting to start with. You're going to have your um your income bucket. That's where money is coming in. That's where you're going to be able to see the income and cash flow. Okay. You're going to have your operating bucket. This is your business checking where the money flows out of for your day-to-day expenses. Now, to start, you could have your operating bucket be your income coming in and your expenses going out. That's totally possible. I have it separate. Okay. This is not your personal account and it's not your savings. Okay. This is the operating account for the expenses for your business. Okay. Your tax bucket. Y'all, I cannot stress this enough. This is a non-negotiable. It should be a complete non-negotiable. Every time revenue comes in, a percentage should go directly into this account. And it doesn't get touched for anything else, period. No exceptions. It should only be to make estimated tax payments or pay the taxes at the end of the year. Because the tax bill is coming whether you're ready for it or not. Okay. And at the end of the year, if you want to say, oh, I netted six figures or I netted multiple six figures, you're going to need to pay some taxes. Sure, we want to make sure you're only paying what you need to pay, and there's ways to decrease that. And you still want to have money put up. Okay. The third bucket is your owner's pay bucket. This is how you pay yourself consistently, intentionally, on a schedule, not whatever is left over after everything else. Your pay is a line item. It comes first. And what I mean by that is we've what I do with my clients is I we determine what their owner pay is going to be, how often they're going to get paid, whether it's once a month, twice a month. We make sure that a percentage is going into this owner pay so that even when their cash flow is low, they're still able to consistently pay themselves that amount that they determined to pay themselves. This doesn't mean if you have a huge month and you move, let's say, for example, 10 grand into that bucket, that you immediately pay yourself 10 grand. Okay. Yes, you can give yourself an increase over time, absolutely. But the whole purpose of that is if next month is a really slow month and you didn't have as much coming in, because you put that 10 grand in there, then that means that let's say your uh, I don't know, your monthly, your uh twice a month pay is 4,000. That means you're gonna actually have extra money already in there to where you can still pay yourself what you've been paying yourself. Okay. It's so that you can consistently pay yourself, okay, that money, whether the cash flow is up or down. Now, does that happen immediately when you're first starting? No. And that's what it's there for to start with. Then there's your profit bucket. This is where you start building. A percentage of every dollar that comes in goes in here. It grows quietly in the background. And over time, it becomes the actual foundation of your wealth. Literally, I've got clients every quarter. I go in and I let them know how much they pull for their profit bonus. Okay, they get 50% of whatever's in there. And the reason why is because you still want money in there to keep growing. It's cool as crap, y'all. Then there's your growth bucket. This bucket is for intentional reinvestment into your business, coaching, tools, team, education, not impulse purchases, strategic investments in your growth. This can also be a wealth-building account where you're putting money in it and then you want to go invest in stocks, those kind of things. Now, does this have to happen all at once? Absolutely not. I do not recommend opening all of these at one time. You have to start where you are. I encourage you to start where you are, even if that means that you only open up the operating and the tax. Okay. Even if that means that you open up three of them, but you see that you can only put 1% into your profit. Okay, start with 1%. The habit matters more than the amount. At the beginning, in the middle, the whole thing is sticking to that. The key is the separation is what creates the intentionality. And the intentionality is what creates the momentum. Okay. So I want to close this section with something that I think gets talked about in vague terms a lot. Have your money work for you, create passive income, build assets. But what does that actually mean in practical terms for a woman who's still in the building stage of her business? It means starting to think beyond your next launch. It means asking yourself, what am I building here that has value beyond my time? It could be a digital product that sells while you sleep. It could be a group program that serves 20 people with the same energy you used to give to one. It could be an investment account that you contribute to consistently and let compound over time. It could be real estate. Okay. It could be a business model that is not 100% dependent on you being present and active every single day. It could be a membership, which is some of the things, one of the things I'm looking at creating myself because I don't want to have to, I don't want one stream of income just being me showing up every day. I love my one-on-one clients. I love doing the things I do. And I want my money to start working for me. So I'm looking at the investments. I'm looking at memberships and stuff like that. Okay. It doesn't have to be all of those things right now, but you want it to be something. Because y'all, the goal is not just more revenue. The goal is a business and a financial life that sustains you, whether you are actively working or not. That is the definition of wealth. And that is what we're building toward. Now, if everything we talked about today, the make, master, multiply framework, the savings buckets, understanding the difference between income and wealth, this is the kind of work that sounds clear when you hear it. And then it gets complicated the moment you sit down to apply it to your actual numbers. Trust me, I've had many women come to me and say, okay, I understood it. But then when I sat down, I got overwhelmed and I just stopped. This is because your business is specific. Your income is specific. Your expenses, your goals, your gaps are specific to you. And that is exactly why I created the two-week money moves Voxer Coaching. For two full weeks, you get direct access to me through Voxer. We look at where you actually are in the Make Master Multiply framework. We identify what stage you've been stuck in and why. We look at your money systems or the lack of them, no judgment, either way. And we start building something that actually works for your business and your life. And y'all, we make sure it's aligned with your values and your goals. This is not a theory. This is your numbers, your plan, your next move. So if today's episode made you realize there's a gap between where your money is and where it needs to be and where you want it to be, then this is how we close it. Okay. So click the link in the show notes and let's get you started. Because making money is just the beginning. Let's make sure you're actually building something with it. And remember, until next time, confidence and cash are the ultimate power duo. Go check in with your money, and as always, have a fantastic and wealthy day.