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When you’re wearing every hat—from sales and marketing to operations and HR—you aren't just the founder; you're the bottleneck. If you are struggling to scale your business without losing your sanity, this podcast is for you.
Hosted by Catherine Brown, Chief of Everything is designed to help founders trade the "all-the-hats" hustle for high-impact growth.
In each episode, we interview subject matter experts who have been exactly where you are. We skip the fluff and distill years of expensive mistakes into essential principles you can use to make your business more efficient and your leadership more effective.
Ep02
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[00:00:00]
Catherine Brown: Katherine Pomerantz is on a mission to help personal brands, speakers, thought leaders, and consultants have peace with money and prosper as a fractional CFO in a tax strategist Katherine. Has worked with many, many people and what she's learned in that time [00:01:00] is that it's not about financial planning and analysis tools.
That's where founders struggle, although they need to learn those processes as well. Where people really tend to struggle is about the mindset, their feelings about money. I'm so excited for you to hear about her framework of thinking and how she serves these clients. Thanks for joining Chief of Everything.
Can't wait for you to meet Catherine.
Introduction: Understanding Founders' Mindset About Money
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Catherine Brown: Catherine, I love that when you're working with founders, you help them think about. Both financial planning and analysis and tax preparation and all these things, but that some point in the past you also realized they have beliefs and mindset about money that's in the way, right? So I'm curious. If that will be how you'll wanna open this first question that we're asking all of our advisors, [00:02:00] what is a counterintuitive that you think most founders don't understand about money?
Katherine Pomerantz: Hmm, that's such a great question.
The True Nature of Money: It's Always Moving
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Katherine Pomerantz: So I think the thing I find the most surprising the longer I do this work is that no matter how much money. Somebody has made or they're used to working with in their business, the way people think about what money actually is, like its true nature, it still always feels a little off to me.
I'll give you an example. You don't ever get to keep money. So all of our focus on revenue, all of our focus on profits, I don't think these are the most important metrics in a business because money does not stand still. It can't. It is an energetic source. It's in its name currency. It's a current, so just like other currents like water and electricity, it is always moving.
That sounds very woo woo, but I will assure everybody listening, [00:03:00] I am an accountant. I do mean this. Literally, I, I'm talking about cash flow. I can literally measure the healthy flow in your business of the way your money moves. And my favorite thing about cashflow, my best fun fact, if you will, is that it cannot be zero.
If I pull your statement of cashflow reports, it will either be positive or it will be negative. It can never be zero. Money cannot stand still.
Catherine Brown: Huh.
Katherine Pomerantz: And so when we're thinking about money and we're thinking about how to use it or how to get it, or what our target is. People think too statically.
Money as a Teammate: Assigning Jobs to Money
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Katherine Pomerantz: I much prefer to think about money as and acknowledge that it's a flowing, moving force and that I need to assign it a job.
Go do something for me. Money. I need you to go create change because you are a creative energy. The way that I am, a creative energy, the way that anybody on my team is a creative energy. So when I describe money, I think of it much more like a teammate. Make money, your teammate is kind of one of our catch [00:04:00] phrases.
I wanna assign it a job. And then to your point about the mindset work, I do also want to acknowledge that money is gonna thrive within certain environments. It's going to have a language that it speaks, right, financial reports. There's a lot of jargon in finance that I need to understand in order to communicate with it better.
So if I can communicate with it well, if I can put it in an environment where it's gonna thrive. It'll make more of itself. And all of that comes with that relationship aspect of like, this is just the way we treat people. I'm now describing actually a lot more how to treat a human than just money, but they work exactly the same way.
And so if we do not also acknowledge our emotional and relational like. Background about finances, about business, about the different, maybe not so fun things that have happened in our life that had financial consequences and how that colors our decision making. We're just, we're gonna be less effective as leaders.
So it's a multifaceted answer
Catherine Brown: No, I love
Katherine Pomerantz: if you're following me, [00:05:00] but I think that, yeah. Yeah. I think that we just misunderstand how to use this well.
Catherine Brown: So how, just no names of course, but like for our listeners who are thinking, I resonate with some of what she's saying, some who might be wondering, oh, I wonder what I think money is. Like I'm tracking with her, but I don't know what mine would be like. How would you fill in the blank when you think of a few personas or specific people that you've worked with?
If, if, if you had to fill in the blank, like I think money is blank. is a common person before they work with you? How would they answer? I think money is blank.
Katherine Pomerantz: That's an interesting question too, so I don't tend to think in. Personas as much. I don't think that we are fixed as individuals.
I also think that as business owners, we are constantly opting into new and difficult things. So my business looks very different than it did last year, which looks very different than it did five years ago, which looks very different when I was thinking of my business [00:06:00] almost 10 years ago.
Catherine Brown: Right.
Katherine Pomerantz: As a business owner, we're constantly throwing ourselves into new challenges. And so I don't like to put, I mean, there's plenty of people who are money mindset coaches who have these beautiful personas within their methodologies. The way that we think about it is, I wanna let money be my teammate. I call it the let money mindset.
And I've created a framework for thinking of this that's follows actually the storyteller method. Like if money is my teammate, that's the role that I'm casting in, in my story. So I. If it's not acting as my teammate, there are two other roles in a common storytelling trope where I might have put money instead that are less effective.
The Hero's Journey: Storytelling and Money
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Katherine Pomerantz: So let's back up for a second and let's like talk about storytelling.
I know there's a lot of StoryBrand people in your network, so this will feel very familiar with them. I'm gonna talk about the Hero's journey. If you are not familiar with the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell was a brilliant researcher.
He's a researcher of literature, and he discovered that. Almost all myths across all cultures and all times followed a certain arc because humans at our core [00:07:00] are storytellers. That's how we make sense of our chaos. Well, humans also invented money and money. What is money, if not an abstract way of telling stories?
It's very similar to my background as a dancer and choreography. They feel exactly the same To me, it is an abstract way to make sense of our chaos and to sheer meaning about what we value. So if that's true, let's use storytelling tools to see if we can make sense of how we're treating our money. So there are two other roles where money is commonly cast that are just not as effective.
So instead of saying, oh, I'm this persona and I'm always gonna do the X, Y, and Z with my money, I just wanna think about is it effective or not effective in this situation? Because part of what is different about how I coach people is I just, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can always do all this self-development, but like you've got a business right now, so like, let's like go out and get it done anyway.
Right? So let's just focus on being more effective. Okay. So if we want money to be our teammate, we want money to be one of our allies, right? You're gonna find your mentor, you're gonna get your allies. That's where it thrives because we're gonna assign it jobs. We're gonna [00:08:00] have it complete.
Common Money Archetypes: Treasure and Villain
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Katherine Pomerantz: The story with us, one of the most common places where people are often treating their money is they're treating money as the treasure.
Now, if you're familiar with the hero's journey, treasure comes at the end of the story. It's the thing you win. But I don't know about you, Catherine. I don't wanna live a life. I don't wanna run a business where I only have money at the end of the story. That sounds really hard. That sounds like a
Catherine Brown: and if I can jump in, I mean, I have, I'm thinking about family members that just saved and saved, and saved, and saved for, for later, and then. They didn't live as long as they expected or they weren't able to do
the things that they thought they would do And so I have had some real life examples of don't do this because they're just some things about how our days are numbered that are not known to us.
And so you wanna have joy along the way.
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah, a hundred percent. That's such a great example. Other examples of making money? Your treasure, when you're thinking money is treasure thoughts. It all has to do with earning and deserving and pushing your future, [00:09:00] your success in the future. So I'm not ready. I'm not smart enough. I haven't planned enough.
I need to do more research. I can't do it until all of those types of things that involve success coming only after certain qualifications are met, only after we fit some sort of archetype or after we've done a certain thing or after we deserve it better. That's all making money a treasure. We're just, we're not seeing the opportunity that's right here in front of us.
Now, I'm not talking, don't be strategic. Of course, there are certain things we wanna do, like in a correct order to make it more effective, but, you know, you know, if you're feeling stuck and it's not all flowing and being great, we know deep down, if we really sit with ourselves, if we are just. Pushing things away from us and like delaying our success.
When we start to think about our mindset, there's a difference between strategic thinking and, ah, I can't do that I get the certification, until I sign this big client, until I've done enough to earn going to pitch this big podcast. Right? I can think of a lot of examples. Money.
Catherine Brown: [00:10:00] or or another that comes to me is that if you expect your journey, right? So I'm the chief of everything. I'm the founder. I hardly have anyone working for me. I'm in the early days, first two to years. I actually expect that to be hard.
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah.
Catherine Brown: in my story, because I expect that to be hard, then we get bias, Because of
Katherine Pomerantz: Yes.
Catherine Brown: it's hard
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah.
Catherine Brown: And then that's part of the narrative that we are importing on the experiences that we're having because we, it's just the story of our life. It's the way we think things are supposed to go.
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah. That's a brilliant example. I am delaying hiring or making my life easier right now. Well, because this is just how you're supposed to do it. This is how it should be done, I should suffer before I deserve my success. That's a really common. Money as treasure archetype that we fall into.
Catherine Brown: What's the second? Is it villain What
is the second? Okay.
Katherine Pomerantz: It's villain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:11:00] Instead of pushing our success into the future, we accidentally make money. The bad guy. This could be very overt. This could be, you know, something as simple as like, money is the root of all evil. Like eat the rich, like, all bad. Like all rich people are just greedy and undeserving.
Those can be very, very, like, explicit money is bad, right? But I find that if I real, I mean obviously I'm biased, everything comes back to money story stuff for me. So I will preface this, but I find that if I really work with somebody anytime I'm noticing somebody is giving away their power, I could like pick out a little bit and find a money as villain story.
So, you know, this is, I'm frustrated. I could never charge that much. My competition will just undercut me. My, or like even suffering some of this is just like, ah, it's just always this way. I might as well just quit. Or, you know, all my clients are always, are always gonna be so demanding of me. Like a lot of these things where we are giving up our own ownership of the situation.
Now, I always wanna preface. Or clarify, I should say, when I'm talking about money as villain, I [00:12:00] am not talking about the true and legitimate reasons that there have been different groups of people who have less opportunity or access to financial systems. That's not what I'm talking about. Those things are true and external circumstances are are not your fault, right?
So we want to be paying attention when we're thinking about am I treating money as a villain? How we're reacting to our situations.
Catherine Brown: Okay.
Katherine Pomerantz: yeah, in my experience also like to go back to like, oh, well rich people are evil. That's a very common money is villains very explicit. I used that as an example earlier in my experience, I know some incredibly generous.
Very wealthy people and they get to be very generous because they have a lot of money. And I know on the work side, some of the stingiest, less forgiving, less generous, just no fun to be around, are really, really hard done by financially I think that money just amplifies experiences and I think it amplifies certain aspects of our personality.
So money can turn the volume up or down on the [00:13:00] situations we're in. It's not money's fault.
Financial Trauma and Its Impact on Money Mindset
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Katherine Pomerantz: I think also to go back to that mindset stuff, is that we really need to acknowledge our financial trauma. We need to really acknowledge and own, just like in any relationship, because of my own past experiences, I think of money in this way because there is no life event, positive or negative, that doesn't have a significant financial consequence.
You get married, that's fantastic. Do you have $27,000? That's the average cost of a wedding these days. That's a financial consequence. Are you gonna go to college? Fantastic. Where are you gonna come up with a hundred grand? Did you have a baby? Can you pay for those medical bills? And then on the flip side, of course, you know, deaths, accidents health.
Health scares, losing a house, having your house, you know, hurricanes. We live in Houston. We get hurricanes. Everything that happens in your life. Has a financial consequence. And so very often we misattribute the emotion and the turmoil of those situations to the financial needs. Somebody's fault, money can [00:14:00] turn up or turn down our experience, but you'll probably have the same experience regardless of how much money you have.
In fact, I know you will. As I've worked with entrepreneurs on all income levels, I've worked with multimillionaires, people have access to eight figures or more, and then I've worked with people who are trying to make their first a hundred grand. And they will still feel sad when people die. They will still feel worried when their kids get sick, you know?
So, yeah,
Catherine Brown: they'll be the same person showing up the same person wherever they are until they do the work to change as a person.
Katherine Pomerantz: The amount of money doesn't, doesn't change you.
Integrating Professional Services with Storytelling
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Catherine Brown: So one thing I really love about the fact that you integrate the professional services that you offer, which I'll have you talk about in a second with this storyteller framework, so that people can become friends with money, evaluate their story. One of the reasons I love talking to you about this is because in my experience working with early stage businesses, hire a bookkeeper. They hire [00:15:00] an accountant to help them with their taxes and they hire a virtual assistant. All of those are first in varying orders, depending upon how comfortable the account, how comfortable they feel about doing their own taxes in their own books.
I mean, I hired that first because I always had enough complexity in my services businesses that getting someone that was experiencing QuickBooks in my very first business back in 2002, it was my very first contract hire.
Katherine Pomerantz: Good for you.
Catherine Brown: People probably do it in different orders, but I would think it's quite early to get some kind of finance help.
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah.
Catherine Brown: question is, number one, do you find that's true? And number two, if it's true. do you want our founders to hear about how to choose well in getting financial help early?
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah, that's a great question. So. The reason that my system is so integrated, right? The Money Storyteller Method integrates so much of this personal work [00:16:00] because you as the leader, have to make financial decisions every day, and you need to be able to show up as a well regulated, creative, strategic person in and amongst those financial decisions.
But that's only one part. You need data. So the first pillar is money story. And we talk about your personal story and we talk about the business story, right? Our story brand people are like, yeah, the business story, right? But then,
Catherine Brown: framework.
Katherine Pomerantz: yeah, favor. Yeah, absolutely. What's our true bill and true treasure?
What are we, what's an emission and impact of this business? Right? Well, and for you personally, I don't know. Sorry, I'm gonna switching the pillar two then. Money. This is where your bookkeepers, this is where your accountants live. This is all about organizing your money and then organizing yourself.
Being able to show up, well regulated and understanding the frameworks and the decision you're making. You need the data. The data has to be clean. The data has to be organized.
Catherine Brown: Hmm.
Katherine Pomerantz: [00:17:00] The thing to understand about hiring bookkeepers and accountants is that their primary job is to help you report to the government.
Which is very important. Taxes are the biggest expense you will pay personally and professionally your entire life. You need a smart system for it. I don't want you to work for the government. I want you to work for yourself.
So I need you to understand the story in your numbers.
I need you to understand how to talk to your bookkeeping. I need you to understand how to use this data to build the third pillar, which is your money map, which is pointing you in the direction you want to go, the true story of your business. I can break down into numbers, like if you tell me this is what you want, fabulous.
Let's assign money to those jobs. This is how much money you'll need to do those jobs. This is where you're at in real life. This is point A, and we now have point B outlined. I now can just map different stepping stones here, to here, to here, to here, to here, and that's the thing that early founders just skip.
They don't know [00:18:00] how to do it. And they don't know how to think about how to set up their systems to deliver reports in a way that give them that. A lot of times people like have good bookkeepers, even have really smart accountants and like, I don't know if I'm profitable, like I think I am, or I keep being told I'm profitable, but I don't have any cash, or I keep owing this giant tax bill and I'm really frustrated.
What can I do that's better? Or they feel like their revenue's really inconsistent. They're really terrified. They're one decision away from bringing this whole thing crashing down, or they're terrified of stepping away because if they're not pushing it on the gas all the time, they don't know how to keep it running.
Nothing's feeling sustainable. Those are all really good signs that you don't have enough of the full foundation you need. You don't either have enough clear data or you don't have enough of the decision making. Data like being, arranging it in a way that helps you make strategic decisions so you can map out how to get the lifestyle and the experience you want and the whole reason you started this business.
That was my one to two minute answer, so I did that make sense? Did we take away enough out of that?
Catherine Brown: Yeah. And so [00:19:00] when people let's think about how people can engage with you.
Practical Steps for Founders: Financial Help and Assessments
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Catherine Brown: And so I'll ask you in a second to share where they should follow you. And, but I know because we're friends, I know that you have an assessment that people can take.
Katherine Pomerantz: I do.
Catherine Brown: so how can they begin? Tell us about that so that they know how to begin figuring out where they need help.
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah, so we have an assessment under the Money Storyteller Method. It's your Money Storyteller score. You'll get a score for each of the pillars, and so you'll be able to see right away what's my lowest score? Which of these should I go and focus on first? Is it money story? Is it all the mindset stuff we were talking about today?
Is it systems? Is my data just badly organized or is it money mapping? The part that I think a lot of people don't, especially early founders, they haven't hired that CFO yet. They don't know how to do, they're not trained in how to do this to act like their own cfo. Is it? Is it the mapping work? The financial dashboard, you'll get a score for those.
if you go to the site linked into the show notes you can take the assessments, it takes about 10 minutes and then you'll be able to see right away what is the category [00:20:00] that needs. Most attention and let's plug something you're doing. Catherine Brown. Let's plug Grow. If you come to Grow, I am offering sessions in my consulting corner.
We'll do a full financial readiness review. So we'll actually take your Monzy to Storyteller score. You gotta do a full live diagnostic with me. That is a service I offer. You can sign up and do one paid, but hey, why not? Why not get to do it with me in person in a few months?
Catherine Brown: It's so great. Yeah, it's so great. I do love the integration of our story and the services that every chief of everything needs.
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah.
Catherine Brown: I think about all the businesses I ran where I made money, the villain, or made money, the treasure. I certainly can resonate with what you're saying.
Conclusion: Becoming a Smarter Chief of Everything
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Catherine Brown: One things we've really enjoyed, Catherine, when we're doing these interviews for the chief of everything with these specialty advisors is that you don't stop being the chief of everything.
You just get to be a smarter chief of everything,
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah.
Catherine Brown: Still your responsibility, but part of taking responsibility [00:21:00] and running a business effectively is to learn which things need work. I really appreciate how you've integrated. Psychology and the ancient art of storytelling into how people should think about money because we're in this to create wealth and to create opportunity and to create freedom.
And if we
Katherine Pomerantz: Yeah.
Catherine Brown: our money story right, we can't do that. So thank you so much for today and I can't wait to hear the stories about people connecting with you.
Katherine Pomerantz: Thank you.