Stop Taking This Business Advice (Ep#62)
Business isn’t linear. Neither is money. Real businesses don’t grow in straight lines, and money decisions rarely come from pure logic. Humans are emotional, messy, and influenced by past experiences, responsibilities, and mental load, especially women.
In this episode of Money Secrets, Fi challenges one of the most persistent myths in business: that success follows a neat, logical, step-by-step path.
Listen to Episode 62
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
The “linear success story” is a myth. Popular business narratives often show tidy upward growth, but real businesses move through messy cycles, setbacks, and pivots.
How emotions drive financial decisions. Even experienced founders make money decisions based on instinct, fear, past experiences, and current stress — not just data.
The invisible scaffolding behind many (male) success stories. Fi highlights the often-unspoken support systems that enable some founders to focus fully on business, particularly the unpaid labour carried by women.
Perfect plans don’t guarantee results. A flawless strategy won’t work if human behaviour, motivation, and circumstances aren’t aligned with it.
Money beliefs from childhood still influence your business. The messages you absorbed about money can quietly shape pricing, spending, risk tolerance, and decision-making.
Common money behaviours founders fall into. Avoiding finances, overspending, hoarding cash, underpricing, or struggling to receive money, all patterns Fi sees regularly.
Expecting consistency sets you up for disappointment. Business owners don’t show up perfectly every day, and neither does the market. Success comes from navigating the fluctuations.
The difference between strategy and implementation. Plans provide direction, but habits, mindset, and behaviour determine whether those plans actually work.
How profitable businesses reduce life stress. Financial stability can ease the mental load many women carry outside of work, from caregiving to household responsibilities.
Why support and community matter for financial success. Safe spaces to talk about money help business owners unpack limiting beliefs and make clearer decisions.
Stop Taking This Business Advice (Ep#62)
Money Secrets Podcast – Episode 62
Introduction
We've made a lot of progress as a society in many areas, but one thing that hasn’t changed enough is our relationship with money. If we want to tip the scales in favour of marginalised people, we need to understand the secrets to making money in small business.
The more we talk about money — especially the secrets that usually stay behind closed doors or on the golf course — the more empowered we become. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good people, specifically business owners like you.
Because I believe small business can change the world. And to do that, we need to be making more money.
Acknowledgement of Country
This episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. I’d like to acknowledge them as the Traditional Owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work and play on.
I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was, and always will be, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Stop Taking This Business Advice
If you listen to a lot of business podcasts, you’ll notice a pattern.
Founders often tell very neat stories about how they built their businesses. They started here, made a few smart decisions, executed a clear strategy, and eventually ended up exactly where they planned.
It’s a satisfying story. Humans love stories that move neatly from problem to solution.
But after working with small businesses and their money for 25 years, I can tell you something with absolute certainty:
That’s not how business works.
Businesses are messy. Money is emotional. And success rarely follows a straight line.
The good news? Once you stop expecting business to be linear, it becomes much easier to build a profitable and sustainable one.
The Myth of the Linear Business Story
If you’ve ever listened to shows like The Diary of a CEO or similar founder podcasts, you’ll often hear very polished success stories.
A founder describes how they built their business step by step. Each decision leads logically to the next. One win leads to another until eventually they arrive at a wildly successful business.
These stories make for great podcasts. Humans make sense of the world by comparing our experiences with other people’s stories.
But they leave out a lot.
One thing they rarely mention is the scaffolding behind the scenes.
In many of these stories, particularly those involving male founders, there is often a partner or family member holding up a huge amount of the personal and domestic workload. That support allows them to pour enormous time and energy into their businesses.
That’s not a criticism — it’s simply the reality that often isn’t acknowledged in these conversations.
But even when we put that aside, there’s still another big problem with the linear success story:
Businesses simply don’t work that way.
Humans Aren’t Linear
One of the biggest misconceptions in business advice is the idea that business decisions are logical and rational.
They aren’t.
Humans make decisions through a mix of:
emotions
instinct
past experiences
intuition
and sometimes data
The rational and emotional parts of the brain don’t even live in the same place.
Think about the reality of running a business.
You might be making a major financial decision while you’re tired, distracted, stressed, or dealing with life outside your business. Maybe there’s a child crying in the back seat while you’re on a call. Maybe you didn’t sleep well the night before.
These things influence decisions.
And that means that perfect strategies rarely survive contact with real life.
Why Perfect Strategies Don’t Work
In theory, it’s possible to create a perfect business plan.
After 25 years working with small business finances, I could probably design a very solid plan to help many business owners increase their profits.
But even the best strategy will fail if it doesn’t account for human behaviour.
Because when humans collide with strategies, things get messy.
We ignore financial reports.
We change direction based on how we feel that day.
We make emotional decisions even when the data suggests something different.
And that’s completely normal.
Money touches almost every part of our lives. Of course it carries emotional weight.
Strategy Alone Won’t Build a Successful Business
Strategy still matters.
A good plan helps you decide where you want your business to go.
But strategy is only part of the picture.
What really drives results is the combination of:
strategy
mindset
habits
community
A strategy tells you where you want to go.
But your habits and behaviours determine whether you actually get there.
Small weekly habits — like paying yourself regularly, reviewing your numbers, or using systems like Profit First — are what slowly build profitable businesses.
Why Safe Conversations About Money Matter
Another powerful part of building a successful business is having a place where you can talk openly about money.
Most business owners don’t have that space.
When money beliefs and anxieties stay buried, they tend to show up in places where they can actually damage your business — like sales conversations or negotiations.
But when you can unpack those thoughts in a supportive environment, you can deal with them safely.
You can recognise what’s helpful and what isn’t.
And you can start making better decisions as a result.
Good Money Club
If this conversation resonated, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
Good Money Club is open right now.
Inside Good Money Club, women business owners:
Learn to understand and manage their own money
Build financial roadmaps
Develop sustainable pricing strategies
Get accountability and support
Increase revenue and take-home pay
Make bold, ethical money decisions
If you’re ready to:
Earn more
Pay yourself properly
Build a sustainable business
Reduce money stress
Close your own revenue gap
You can learn more about Good Money Club while doors are open.
Final Thoughts
If you take one thing away from this conversation, let it be this:
Business is not linear.
Your decisions won’t always make sense. Your plans won’t always unfold the way you expected.
And that’s okay.
When we stop expecting perfect strategies and linear progress, we give ourselves permission to navigate the real, messy process of building a business.
And when we combine strategy with supportive habits, self-awareness and community, we dramatically increase our chances of building something sustainable.
Because profitable businesses aren’t built by perfect plans.
They’re built by humans — messy, emotional, brilliant humans — learning how to navigate money in ways that work for them.
Outro
Thank you for listening to Money Secrets. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a review. Your support helps us get these conversations into the hands of more good people who deserve to thrive in business.
We’ve come so far as a society in many ways, but money is one of the areas where progress hasn’t been enough. If we want to tip the scales in favour of marginalised people, it starts with understanding the secret: money in small business.
In this podcast, Money Secrets, host Fiona (Fi) Johnston—Chartered Accountant, small business advocate, and impact enthusiast—dives into the conversations we need to have about money. The secrets that once stayed behind closed doors (or on the golf course) are finally out in the open.
Fi’s mission? To get more money into the hands of good people, like you. She believes small businesses have the power to change the world, and the key to making a bigger impact is to make—and manage—more money.
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Thank you to everyone involved for bringing this podcast together. We are excited to hear from you with any questions, feedback or suggestions for future episodes that you might have. Send a Direct Message to @peach.business
If you are excited for what’s to come, please like this episode, follow the podcast and share it with your friends. We are thrilled you're here.
Want to find out more about Good Money Club? It's for female and non-binary business owners ready to make more money and impact. Join us?
Check out my FREE Pricing Training you need to set your prices for profitability.
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This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation and I'd like to acknowledge them as the Traditional Owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work and play on. I'd like to pay respect to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
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