Sarah Poynton (00:01.196)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Money Mechanics podcast. Very excited today to be joined by Leslie Thomas from the Money Confidence Academy. And Leslie and I, we have very similar opinions on a lot of things when it comes to money. And actually I was on Leslie's podcast about two years ago, we think. We had a really great conversation then. So I'm excited to find out what Leslie's been up to, to talk a little bit about what's shifting in the world where money is concerned, and to kind of put the money world to rights a little bit. So Leslie, thank you so much for being here.

Lesley Thomas (00:30.962)
Thank you for having me, I'm really excited as well.

Sarah Poynton (00:33.89)
It's my pleasure, it's my pleasure. So just introduce yourself, tell everybody who you are, what you do. Let's start there.

Lesley Thomas (00:40.09)
Okay, so I'm the founder of the Money Confidence Academy. I spend a lot of my time, of course, talking about money, but I do it in two different ways. I work with organizations to help them better understand the effect that the pressure around financial decisions has on company results, company culture, company communication, because lots of people in corporate think that financial decisions are made with the head, when largely it's made with

emotions and that can then spill out into how they talk to their teams, how they go about creating a culture where people feel they can stand up and be counted, not stand up and then be worried about losing their job. So I spend a lot of time in workshops with corporates but I have a real passion for financial literacy, particularly for teenagers because schools don't teach our children.

Sarah Poynton (01:25.432)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (01:38.202)
enough about money and that means that parents don't have the confidence to talk to their children about money. So for me this is about starting those conversations so that our, the next generation have what they need in order to live a successful life as possible and to absolutely believe in the art of the possible for themselves.

Sarah Poynton (02:03.116)
Amazing. mean, there's two very different worlds that you're in, kids, teens, and then also the corporate space. And I'm excited to kind of get into this with you today. So let's start where we kind of start all of our guests with what is your earliest memory of money?

Lesley Thomas (02:21.342)
Probably my grandparents giving me, and I'm showing my age when I say this, giving me five pence pieces when they came to stay with us. And I'd be really excited about getting these five pence pieces because they were like little pieces of silver and you could do a lot more with 5p back in those days than you can today with 5p. And I would just very proudly collect

Sarah Poynton (02:44.706)
Yeah

Lesley Thomas (02:50.204)
those five peas and see them and they were probably twice the size if not more of five pea pieces today and I would kind of see them as my treasure and I'd be really excited about seeing how many I could collect. I don't actually ever remember spending them. I'm sure I probably did but for me, exactly for me, it was more about seeing the little stacks get more and more and more and get higher and higher and higher.

Sarah Poynton (03:05.624)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (03:10.87)
some point.

Lesley Thomas (03:19.048)
So I think that is my very first memory about money.

Sarah Poynton (03:19.415)
I love her.

Sarah Poynton (03:24.386)
Which is a really positive memory about money, right? And tell us how you ended up kind of doing what you do now. So like, what's been your background up to the point that you chose to do this for a living? Where and how did it happen?

Lesley Thomas (03:26.396)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (03:39.282)
Yeah, and it's really interesting because most people assume, you know, I came to be a money coach. I came to set up a business called the Money Confidence Academy because I must have a negative relationship with money. I must have a horror story, you know, earlier in my life. And that is really interesting because that kind of says a lot about people's own mindset around money, that the assumption you have to be doing something because of a negative experience.

Sarah Poynton (03:52.654)
Mmm.

Sarah Poynton (04:02.167)
Doesn't it? Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (04:07.885)
Mmm.

Lesley Thomas (04:08.034)
I came to it pretty much by accident. think it's probably the best way to describe it because I'd spent 20 years in corporate life. I'd been in telecommunications for those entire 20 years. I left when my children were small to join my husband in his business where he sells ski property in France and Switzerland. I worked there very happily for round about five years or so, but

Skiing has never been my thing. He has a passion for it. I didn't. I was supporting the sales process around the sales. Didn't particularly love it. So I decided to retrain as a business coach. I'd always coached and mentored, but I wanted to have a coaching qualification with a view to then becoming a confidence coach for women who were doing as I did, leaving corporate to set up their own business or

Sarah Poynton (05:02.071)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (05:04.796)
had a small business they wanted to scale to something more significant. But the more I studied confidence, the more subjects, self-worth, self-value, enoughness, money started to come up. And that was my eureka moment because I could kind of see how much people's relationship with money really played out.

Sarah Poynton (05:21.346)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (05:32.74)
not only in terms of the money but also their behaviour around money, their visibility, their ability to put boundaries in place, their ability to understand their value and how they showed up in terms of how they priced etc etc. So mine was a story that developed as a result of understanding the symptoms of our relationship with money.

rather than me ever have a particularly negative relationship with money.

Sarah Poynton (06:00.93)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (06:07.639)
That's really interesting. So I think the, know, if you're working on people's confidence, especially women, and you know, on this podcast, I know we have men and women that listen to the podcast, but I've said it once, I'll say a million times, women as a group of human beings, we've not had as much time to play with money as men have had historically, like we know that to be fact, right? So when you're working with women who, on their confidence, what you're saying is that,

Lesley Thomas (06:27.486)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (06:35.295)
you were starting to see a pattern that people were feeling not confident and a lot of it was linked back to their experience of money, what they were worth and how that linked back to. So just tell us a little bit more about that, like in terms of how that appears in women in your experience.

Lesley Thomas (06:42.482)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (06:51.036)
Yeah, it's the valuing part, I think, because I think for a lot of women, we have a problem of valuing ourselves and pricing ourselves accordingly and making ourselves available and unavailable accordingly. Because as women, we are...nutrious.

Sarah Poynton (06:56.727)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (07:08.525)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (07:16.014)
As women, tend to be, a lot of us, people pleases. The people pleasing very often goes back to something that happened in our childhood. Also, something goes back to our childhood around the visibility. So something that can happen. And an example, you know, I always give to clients, et cetera, is around, you you might have been in your school nativity play.

and there you were standing on stage, were the Angel Gabriel, you were in your beautiful costume, your arms were outstretched as wings, et cetera, and all of a sudden you fell off the stage and the audience laughed. And your perception was they were laughing at you rather than them thinking that was actually part of the show, they were laughing with you. But you carried that through the whole of your childhood and into adulthood and beyond thinking,

Sarah Poynton (08:02.433)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (08:11.994)
If I'm visible, I'm exposing myself, I am going to be laughed at. I'm not going to be seen in the way that I want to seen. And if you're running a business, if you are not visible, then it's very, very difficult, particularly in the early days when it is just you, to actually make people aware of what you do, why you do it, how you do it, et cetera. So all of that links.

Sarah Poynton (08:22.347)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (08:36.109)
I'd say more than difficult, I'd say almost impossible. Like if you're not willing to be visible and whether it's online or offline, we have to as entrepreneurs be able to be in a room and hold our own and be able to say what we do, when we do it, how we do it, who we do it for. Otherwise, nobody knows what it is that we do. And if we can't get confident enough to do that, that's a really, it's a really hard life to live because actually business then becomes really, really difficult.

Lesley Thomas (08:42.321)
Absolutely.

Lesley Thomas (08:55.644)
Exactly.

Lesley Thomas (09:03.048)
We're hamstringing ourselves. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (09:04.831)
Yeah, yeah, exactly that. Do you think that that happens the same or the same sort of impact with people that are in employment as opposed to like self-employed people or entrepreneurial people? Do think the same thing happens?

Lesley Thomas (09:19.238)
No, I don't think it does. I can speak from, you know, my own experience, basically, having spent 20 years in corporate and be I worked 10 years for BT and 10 years for who were then Orange, who became everything everywhere became EE. And, you know, I was the corporate brand. I was representing the corporate brand and I was representing the corporate brand in the

Sarah Poynton (09:23.405)
Mm.

Sarah Poynton (09:34.24)
Okay.

Lesley Thomas (09:45.98)
the stovepipe, you know, that I was in, which started off being sales. It then became marketing and then it became running partnerships basically. But I was always representing the company. I wasn't representing me. And I can remember when I left my when I left my husband's business to set up my own business, I fully expected

Sarah Poynton (09:49.42)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (09:57.101)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (10:01.088)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (10:13.709)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (10:15.792)
change my LinkedIn headline, change my LinkedIn profile and that's all I need to do. They'll come. They'll come to me because the thought of first of all having my photograph on social media didn't want to do that. Didn't see why I should have to do that and going live on anything that was a huge no-no because I wouldn't need to do it. Did the customers come? Did the clients come? Of course they didn't because I was

Sarah Poynton (10:21.153)
That's it, yeah.

Sarah Poynton (10:29.442)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (10:39.553)
Yeah, interesting. No.

Lesley Thomas (10:45.598)
Hiding away as much as I possibly could because all of a sudden it was me and it was at my big beautiful brand that I could stand behind and that was a real shock I learned very quickly and now Nobody ever believes that I had a struggle being visible but I did because I had become so much part of the company culture that I worked within so

Sarah Poynton (10:56.685)
Mmm.

Sarah Poynton (11:12.588)
Hmm.

And I think...

Lesley Thomas (11:15.075)
I believe it's hard.

Sarah Poynton (11:17.613)
In that environment, the brand does a lot of the speaking, right? So like orange, you're just a representative orange, but orange is the one that needs to be visible. It's not, it's not very personal. I think in the, especially the entrepreneurial space where you, know, people are cast, I am the face of the business. I'm the face of the book. I'm the face of the podcast. Like if you take my face out of it, actually what, it's a really difficult thing. Whereas if you take Leslie out of orange, there's a lot more of orange to go around and that's.

Lesley Thomas (11:22.12)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (11:45.182)
Exactly.

Sarah Poynton (11:46.027)
two very different places, know, very different places to be. So when it comes to working with predominantly women, dealing with these challenges around their confidence and visibility and things like that, how do you think that money and relationship with money really impacts that in a positive way? And then we'll talk about the negative way in a second.

Lesley Thomas (12:07.006)
I think in a positive way, because we are nurturers, we like to look after other people. We like to make sure family and friends, et cetera, have what they need. So we are about creating that success, not just for ourselves, we're about creating it for other people as well. And there is a well-known phrase that, give women money and they do good with it.

because we are much much more nurturing. So it was the Dalai Lama that said back in 2011, the world is going to be saved by the Western woman. And I don't really think he necessarily meant just Western women per se, he meant women because we do have that sense of looking after, nurturing.

Sarah Poynton (12:40.908)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (13:02.262)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (13:03.672)
making sure our community is safe and well looked after. So I think from that perspective, that is, when women have a good relationship with money, then that helps the wider community as well. But being a nurturer and the nurturer archetype, money archetype, whilst it's great, we'll look after other people.

Sarah Poynton (13:09.164)
Mm.

Sarah Poynton (13:20.128)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (13:31.912)
Part of the problem is we can think we're enabling people by them being able to come to us, I'm a bit short this month or I can't pay you this month, can I pay you next month? We kind of think we're helping them when actually we're disabling them because, and I have this with my teenage children, as a mum, I want to make sure they always have enough money.

Sarah Poynton (13:38.092)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (13:55.424)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (13:59.938)
They're not going short, but my 19 year old is not brilliant with money. Therefore, it's incumbent on me to ensure he knows his salary, he has to save some, he has to invest some, and then the rest is his to do with as he wants to. But I find myself towards the end of his month going, are you okay? Have you got enough money? And I have to stop myself doing that because actually that's not encouraging him.

Sarah Poynton (14:12.448)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (14:16.811)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (14:29.148)
to be sensible with money. And that is the downside. Exactly. That's the downside. Now, my 17 year old is amazing with money. Absolutely. In fact, he doesn't particularly like to spend money. So it's nothing to do. It's very little to do with the parenting. It's everything to do with their environment, a little bit of the but actually what they have inherited from previous

Sarah Poynton (14:31.028)
Yeah, to make good choices.

Sarah Poynton (14:51.788)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (14:59.798)
relatives down the line as well. That has a massive impact. So for all the good that one archetype can have, there is a downside you have to be aware of. Otherwise, you can become unstuck and those around you can become unstuck as a result.

Sarah Poynton (15:03.692)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (15:13.964)
Mm.

Sarah Poynton (15:17.59)
So if somebody was listening to this thinking, I don't really know what my money story is. don't really know. So like in my book, I've obviously written about different types of money personalities, similar to what you're saying about archetypes. You you've got generosity, you've got all these different kinds of styles of behaving with money. If somebody's not sure, like they feel like they're not great with money. They feel like money doesn't really come to them or flow to them or when it comes, it disappears.

How would you recommend somebody start to research and find out what their style archetype is so that they can get in control of their money? Like, what would you tell them to do?

Lesley Thomas (15:56.092)
Well, I have a quiz on my website which does exactly that. It allows you to find out what your top three money archetypes are. And it takes you through a series of 60 questions that actually clearly identifies what those archetypes are. But those archetypes, they're not there to label you in any way because I find it frustrating when somebody says, I'm not very good with money.

what do you mean you're not very good with money? And that is usually a money story. It's a story that somebody has said to them when they're eight years of age because they've gone off to the shop and they were given a pound, you know, and they've spent it all. you're not very good with money. And it could have been said as a joke, but actually as a child, as you know, you take on that tone of voice, et cetera, and you carry that through that. I'm not very good with money.

Sarah Poynton (16:40.524)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (16:50.814)
Well, you might not have been brilliant at eight years of age, but how can you expect to be brilliant at eight years of age? How you were at eight years of age when you went to the sweet shop is very different as you are now at 28, 38, 48, whatever it might be. So we do have a tendency to say, I am not very good at X. And X can be running, cooking, staying fit with money, whatever it might be.

Sarah Poynton (17:10.636)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (17:17.534)
And we wear that almost as a reason to not get better at it because nobody is born being brilliant with money. It's not, you know, it's not something that is just comes naturally to anybody. It's something that is learned behavior, learned habits, and then understanding exactly as you talk about the emotions and behaviors that then show up.

Sarah Poynton (17:33.398)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (17:38.305)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (17:46.82)
as result. So it's about identifying what emotion do I have attached around the behaviours around money and then what behaviours and habits show up as a result and are they serving me? Is my relationship and behaviours, are they serving me?

Sarah Poynton (17:47.308)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (18:00.556)
Mm-hmm.

I think that...

Sarah Poynton (18:07.99)
that's a really interesting thing for people. Anyone listening to this, asking these sorts of questions and then just sitting with yourself and a pad and a pen or you know just sitting with your inner thoughts for a minute and asking yourself you know what is my relationship with money but like your real relationship not the relationship people have told you not the relationship you hear from friends or your husband or your wife or your kids or whoever but like what is it I want from money what what does money do for me what

How do I feel about it? Like these sorts of questions, if you really sit and ask these questions of yourself, sometimes the answer can be,

uncomfortable. Sometimes it can be really exciting. And sometimes it's a bit of both, you know, like when I was in a lot of debt, actually, I, I wasn't really aware of how I got into that debt. Like, obviously, I just overspent. I was now I could look at it be like, well, you spent more than you were making, you made not great choices, you probably went to too many festivals and drank too much Jack Daniels. But, you know, there was there's some some consequence of those behaviors was this. But actually, when I really sort of sat and thought about it,

Lesley Thomas (19:06.974)
you

Sarah Poynton (19:16.256)
I had a very like, fuck it attitude because I thought that's just what everybody did. I thought everybody was in debt. I thought it was really normal. I'd never sort of sat and thought, well, do I want to be in debt for myself? I just kind of plugged into the world where everyone just put everything on plastic. I think when you sit and you take 10, 15 minutes with a journal, with a pad, with a pen, know, your notes app on your phone, like however you do it for you and ask that question, like, what do I want for money?

Lesley Thomas (19:21.702)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (19:44.8)
How do I want it to show up in my world? Because we all want different things, right? You know, some people want to drive a Ferrari and some people just want to able to pick their children up from school every day without worrying about having half a day where they're not at work. Very different things, but money is the thing that greases the wheels for both of those scenarios, right?

Lesley Thomas (19:54.416)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (20:01.744)
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. You know, that was part of the reason I wrote my book, you know, Parents Let's Talk Money, because as a parent, you very often feel guilt because you're not having the conversations with your children that you want to be having about money, but that's because you think you don't know enough about money in order to have that conversation.

Sarah Poynton (20:07.551)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (20:27.87)
That comes back to self-worth and self-value So the book is essentially written on kind of two levels almost where you can take your teenage child through a series of conversations Because that's what they are their conversations whilst at the same time taking yourself through those same levels of conversations because once you realize Having conversations with your children about money, you know is not about

You know what's best an ICER or a LASER which investment classes should I be investing in? That's not what talking to your children about money is talking to your children about money is recognizing where they are at and Recognizing what they want to know where they are at and I think once you let go of the guilt that I should know it all and I should be able to impart that knowledge on to my child

But I can't do it, so therefore I won't even have the conversation that says what do you want to know about money? Because that's all you need to do. That's all you need to ask.

Sarah Poynton (21:33.461)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (21:36.908)
Yeah. that confidence in the lack of knowledge actually is something that's quite powerful. know, obviously I'm not a parent. So I come from this, at this conversation from a slightly different place, but I remember, you know, my experience of money when I was growing up, my friends, parents, like even now, like friends of mine and their parents and their conversations, you know, I've been in friends' houses and sat around the table at 40 years old.

Lesley Thomas (21:44.294)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (21:50.781)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (22:06.219)
and heard their parents say, know, talking to somebody who's successful, got businesses, investments, all the things that I've got in my world, for them to say to me, yeah, but money's the root of all evil. Like people that have got money, you know, people that have got money, they've took it from somebody else. Well, I'm sat at their dinner table thinking, but you know that I'm successful and you know that I've got money and you know that I've got wealth. And yet still that's so ingrained in you. You know, these are people like in their sixties and seventies.

Lesley Thomas (22:32.508)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (22:34.495)
That's so ingrained in you, you just don't even think that you're saying it. It's just like an off the tongue thing. And the more that we can have conversations, even when we don't know the ins and the outs, the more we can break that pattern of the world thinking that money is the root of all evil. And actually, you know, I'm sure you'll probably agree with this. I am a firm believer that money just amplifies what's already there. So if you are a good person, more money will make you a still a good person, but you can have better and bigger impact.

Lesley Thomas (22:48.487)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (22:57.47)
Totally.

Sarah Poynton (23:04.563)
If you're an arsehole, money will make you a bigger arsehole. That's just how money works.

Lesley Thomas (23:07.656)
Exactly that. Yeah, absolutely that. And also, as you know, you know, that that phrase has been

You saw so I can swear bastardized basically. Yeah, because it's for the love of money is the root of all evil. In other words, if you only cover money and you don't think about the impact you are having because you are coveting money. Yeah, you can end up, you know, not being a particularly nice person. We can see from the Epstein files, you know, the two biggest things there, sex and money, and they are the two biggest.

Sarah Poynton (23:18.219)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (23:27.625)
Yes.

Sarah Poynton (23:39.88)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (23:44.491)
Power.

Lesley Thomas (23:46.084)
exactly the two biggest reasons why people get into trouble basically but that isn't down to sex or money being evil it is down to the individual and their behavior with those two things and I think when somebody says you know money is the root of all evil again that is just giving yourself an excuse basically I don't want to have loads of money because I don't want it to change me what what

Sarah Poynton (24:00.999)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Lesley Thomas (24:15.118)
would it change you?

Sarah Poynton (24:15.189)
I was gonna ask this actually, so when you're working on people's confidence, whether it be, know, women, men, young people, older people, do you find that when you start to talk to people about creating wealth and having more financially, that they push back with, yeah, but I don't want it because actually, if I have it, I'm not sure who I'll become. Do you get a lot of that?

Lesley Thomas (24:36.956)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely, because it's the stories we tell ourselves to justify us staying where we are or not moving very much further from where we are because we think it's going to change our friendship dynamic. We think it's going to change our family dynamic. Exactly. Rather than actually saying, you know, I'm on the way up and guess what? You're coming with me. Rather than.

Sarah Poynton (24:45.387)
Mmm.

Sarah Poynton (24:54.133)
Hi little bubble.

Sarah Poynton (25:02.216)
Absolutely.

Lesley Thomas (25:03.26)
You're on way down. I'm going to come down there with you. And I think that once we actually realize the stories we tell ourselves are the excuses that we give ourselves. And the biggest excuse we ever give begins with the word because. Because usually is followed by some limiting

Sarah Poynton (25:15.381)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (25:24.604)
behaviour that justifies us not doing the scary things that we need to do in order to get to where we want to get to. Because going from where we are to really where we want to get to by being really, really honest with ourselves about how much money we want to have, the kind of lifestyle we want to have, how much work, what that work is, how much we want to give to others, etc. etc.

Sarah Poynton (25:26.144)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (25:52.73)
is a scary thing to do because there becomes a gap. There becomes a gap between where you are and where you want to get to. And for some people, that gap creates a sense of excitement. I want to fill that gap with activity to help me to get to there. But for other people, they just see a big lack. I don't have what I need in order to get there. Therefore, I have to justify.

Sarah Poynton (25:55.189)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (26:21.358)
why I want to stay here. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (26:22.795)
Stay in here. Interesting. think I totally agree with you. And again, like with the clients that I work with, we have very similar conversations. And yeah, I think the gap, there is always a gap in between where we want to be and where we are today. And actually that's filled by knowledge, information, asking questions, all of, and doing, implementing, learning, maybe making some mistakes along the way, which we've all done. I think the thing with money, when we're trying to fill that gap,

Lesley Thomas (26:47.528)
Absolutely.

Sarah Poynton (26:51.081)
In my experience with clients and the conversations we have, even in my own experiences, in learning how we have to risk, we have to take risks when money is concerned, especially in the investing world, in the business world, even moving from one job to another job for a bigger pay rise, right? There's a gap in all of those things. And I think that taking a risk is often people's challenge. Like, is it going to be worth it? And because there's no evidence that it will be worth it.

They can think it'll be worth it, but there's no evidence of it, like proof of it. Actually, it's easier to just stay where they are, right?

Lesley Thomas (27:26.142)
Absolutely, absolutely and something you said this reminded me, you know one of the reasons why people fail to progress in the way that they want to is Their lack of confidence to ask questions and their lack of question confidence to ask questions because they don't want to be seen to not have that knowledge and I put that directly at the door

primary schools where you are you start off you know when you're four or five and you first go to school and the teacher will say who knows what day comes after Tuesday me miss me miss I do I know and then actually after a little while okay okay Leslie be quiet okay let somebody else answer Leslie you've been being too loud Leslie calm down and all of a sudden you get the message I talk too much I'm too loud

Sarah Poynton (28:15.53)
was my message.

Lesley Thomas (28:16.442)
Exactly. I better not ask, I won't ask any more questions. So even when you don't understand something a little bit later on in school, you're thinking, actually, I'm too loud. I shouldn't ask that question. I need to give somebody else. And that is the problem. We have it knocked out of us that asking questions, being curious is absolutely what we should be at all ages of life, because there's going to be at all stages of life.

Sarah Poynton (28:42.238)
I totally agree.

Lesley Thomas (28:44.434)
things that younger people are more comfortable and confident with than we are when we're older. Doesn't mean we can't ask younger people. So tell me about AI and how you use it or tell me about Bitcoin. What do you know about it rather than, well, I can't ask that question because I should know the answer. And that goes directly back to us kind of being told it's not okay to ask questions. It's not okay to be curious. But the more curious we are, the more questions we ask.

the more information that we have that we can take action on.

Sarah Poynton (29:18.698)
I % agree with that actually. as you're talking, I'm remembering school and I was told I was too loud. asked him, I mean, I was a little bit naughty at school, like hands up, anyone listening to this that I was at school at, you know, I definitely wasn't the most well-behaved kid at school, but honestly, I think I was probably a little bit bored and I'm obviously very entrepreneurial. I'm very high energy. I'm like all of this all the time. I just don't think it was fast enough for me school. Like I just wanted to get to the end. Whereas,

Lesley Thomas (29:29.192)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (29:35.626)
Lesley Thomas (29:45.405)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (29:47.251)
I was told often like you're too loud. You can't have opinions like your voice. No one wants to hear your voice. that was taught, like drilled into me forever. I mean, now I'm a public speaker for a living and my voice is literally what makes me my money. It's how I've made my money for nearly 11 years, right? So, you know, it, it's so easy to pick up on things when we're growing up and even into adulthood that stops us from, like you say, being curious, asking questions. And one of the things that, you know,

One of the girls that works for me, Shemaila, she's incredible. She's a lot of the glue that holds a lot of this stuff together behind the scenes. She's 25, I believe, at this point. think she might be 24, 25, 25-ish, let's just say-ish. And I quite often, in her twenties, yeah, and I quite often say to her, I don't know what this means, explain that to me. Or there's this word I've heard that the kids are using. I'm like, I don't get it, explain that to me. Or I'll say,

Lesley Thomas (30:30.814)
Mid-twenties!

Sarah Poynton (30:44.338)
If I put this online, am I going to sound like an old lady? if I, and she like helps me to understand whether or not I'm being very millennial, cause I'm a millennial, or whether actually I'm going to link up with the, the, the younger audience, which is actually a lot of who we want to connect with from the Money Mechanics brand. But that curiosity, it goes both ways, right? You know, it's okay for parents, for adults, for grownups, grandparents, even, you know, older people to be saying, I don't understand this and I want to understand this.

and not just accept that, well, I'm old, so I just don't, I'm just not gonna bother, because I've run out of time. I don't think there's ever a, it's ever too late to understand money better, do you think?

Lesley Thomas (31:22.908)
I totally agree with you. Totally agree. You know, and that is why I like...

although he speaks way too fast for me, I like what Martin Lewis does in terms of breaking everything down because there's not very many programs that really deal with the minutiae of money, know, understanding the different things with student loans and the different things with energy tariffs and all of that. And...

Sarah Poynton (31:33.545)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (31:37.183)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (31:46.228)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (31:52.65)
Mmm.

Lesley Thomas (31:53.414)
You know, he's given people permission to ask those questions, but you shouldn't need permission. You should just say, I don't know the answer. Who can I go to? Who will give me the answer? Now there has to be obviously in that a sense of asking.

Sarah Poynton (31:58.291)
Agree.

Lesley Thomas (32:11.258)
the right person the answer not just any person and you know taking them you know at face value so you do need to make sure and this is something you know I always encourage my children and my clients it is about finding trusted advisors and those trusted advisors I'm not talking necessarily about you know financial advisors per se etc but who is the trusted advisor in your circle

Sarah Poynton (32:20.426)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (32:39.39)
you know, my boys are 17 and 19 now. And, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say go and ask your 17 year old, your best friend, you know, where you should be investing your money right now, because they may not know the right answers. Now they may also actually know the right answer, but you need to have some credibility and you need to have, you know, some evidence of that. And I can give you a really good example of this. I went,

Sarah Poynton (32:39.786)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (32:52.361)
No.

They might, but yeah.

Sarah Poynton (33:01.162)
Mm.

Lesley Thomas (33:08.518)
to a launch at a school two weeks ago where three 16 year olds were launching their own not for profit business which was about teaching 13 to 16 year olds about money. Now they have trusted advisors who've created the content for them, so the content is spot on, but they're delivering that content to the 13 to 16 year olds because

Sarah Poynton (33:18.282)
amazing.

Lesley Thomas (33:38.174)
I recognise as a middle-aged woman, a teenager is probably less likely to listen to what I have to say than they do to somebody who is their age, understands what they're going through, etc. So they've gone through their due diligence to find the right trusted advisors in order to create a bank of content that is relevant and correct for the audience that they are.

Sarah Poynton (33:44.234)
100%. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (33:51.016)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (34:06.846)
working with basically and I think that's hugely important and you know they are studying for a level. So the school is Wimbledon Park School and the company is called Aspire. Aspire

Sarah Poynton (34:09.533)
I love that idea.

Sarah Poynton (34:13.577)
Do you remember the name of them? Do you remember the name of the?

Sarah Poynton (34:25.769)
It'd be really interesting to include their details in the show notes because I would love to get them on the podcast and talk to them about their, that'd be amazing. Yeah, that'd be really cool.

Lesley Thomas (34:30.692)
Let me come back to the... they would love it. Yeah, Ariane, is the chief founder, he's the chief exec of the company. He has, I've introduced him to Louise Hill, the founder of GoHenry. He has met some really high flyers. He's taking this so seriously. He will come on your podcast and a drop of a hat.

Sarah Poynton (34:50.195)
Yeah, I've met Louise.

Sarah Poynton (34:56.946)
I love it.

Lesley Thomas (34:59.838)
No problem at all. So I shall let you know. And I'll introduce you. I'll introduce you.

Sarah Poynton (35:00.487)
We'll get him on that, sounds amazing. So, Lesley, let's talk a little bit about how... So, when I was doing the research for my book, when I wrote it, I did a load of digging into UK workforce and how money impacts the way that we work, right? And I know this is a big topic of yours. So, my numbers that I've read, and again, the data might be different depending on what papers you read, et cetera.

is that over 50 % of the UK workforce lose sleep over worrying about money on a multiple times a week basis. So more than 50 % of the UK workforce are losing sleep every week on more than one occasion, worrying about how much money they've got, debt, whether they can afford Christmas, kids' birthdays, that sort of stuff. How do you think that that is directly impacting UK companies' performance?

Lesley Thomas (35:58.75)
very, very significantly because up until recently, corporates have kind of had this view that, you know, if an employee has, you know, any financial concerns, they leave it at home. They cross over the office threshold and they get on with their office job. And that simply, you know, is not true. Something like 75 % of corporate employees

Sarah Poynton (36:01.491)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (36:27.838)
are worrying about money at any single point in time. And that can come down to not being able to rely on the same pay rises as they were previously, being concerned, is AI gonna take my job? Corporates seeing financial wellbeing as have you got a company pension and have you signed up to the healthcare scheme? That's not financial wellbeing, that's financial products.

very different from well-being. And if you are concerned about credit card bills, if you are concerned about moving from your fixed mortgage rate to all of a sudden, you know, a much higher rate because mortgage rates have gone up, then significantly you're going to be impacted. That means that productivity, absenteeism, presenteeism,

Sarah Poynton (37:11.059)
Higher, yeah.

Lesley Thomas (37:24.742)
they're all being affected because you're no longer able to be fully focused on the job in hand. You lose the creativity. You lose that ability to be future thinking, future forward, because you're too concerned about your here and now. Corporates are starting to wake up to that, but the level of impact it is having

Sarah Poynton (37:26.835)
Mmm.

Sarah Poynton (37:45.747)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (37:53.906)
on our productivity as a nation is it's being misunderstood. You know, we know productivity rates are down, but when you look at the number of young people that are, you know, that are not in employment, they're not in training, they're unemployed and they're claiming benefits. What is that first of all doing to their psyche? What is that doing to them in terms of their own self-belief and self-value?

Sarah Poynton (37:58.185)
Hmm.

Sarah Poynton (38:18.665)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (38:23.416)
ambition, what's possible for me, but they're taking out of the pot before they even put into the pot. So who is going to put into that pot going forward? None of that is being addressed at all. And in a corporate environment, an employed environment where the conversations are not being had because people don't like talking about money very often.

Sarah Poynton (38:31.465)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (38:36.03)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (38:51.817)
Because it's bad manners. Even my nan says to me now, and I do what I do for a living, I have a podcast and a book and all these things, even now she says to me, Sarah, I really wish you could be as successful as you are, but I really wish you would stop talking about money and how much money you've got and how much you earn. And I'm like, Nana, I literally couldn't do what I do unless I talked about how much money I've got, because that's the whole point of what I do is to try and break this pattern that is definitely generational, I think.

Lesley Thomas (38:53.424)
It's bad manners, but also if you talk about...

Lesley Thomas (39:11.964)
If I didn't do that. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah, but also though part of the reasons why corporates don't want people to talk about it is because of the disparity between what people are earning. So if you know if if you and I are sitting side by side and you know and I say to you god you know I've got a 10 grand bonus coming in this month you've got what I've only got yeah I've only got so they actually stop people there are clauses in contracts we are not allowed to talk about your package why is that?

Sarah Poynton (39:25.865)
Harrison. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (39:42.387)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (39:45.812)
Yeah. When I was in recruitment, I asked someone in my office how much they earn, like what their salary was. Again, I was young. I didn't really know what the rules were. And I said to them, so what wages, what's your basic salary? Cause we would, like when we'd won a contract and there was all this commission, but I wanted to know whether we were earning the same. And my boss basically jumped in on the conversation and said, don't answer that.

Lesley Thomas (39:53.0)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (40:10.601)
called me into the office, sat me down and said, you can't ask that question in an office. You're not allowed to ask your colleagues what their wages are. It's against company policy. And I was like, okay, cool. I won't then, that's fine. But I never at the time, as a young 20 something girl, I never really thought to challenge it, because I didn't really know that I could. I didn't have a voice then that was confident enough to challenge that, well, why? But also, I just took it as gospel that that's what you did. You just didn't do it.

Lesley Thomas (40:31.795)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (40:39.346)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (40:40.029)
just wasn't allowed to happen. And I think you're right, that disparity, that comparison, that exposure of what is in fact a massive problem in corporate, in not all corporates, but in a lot of them, is definitely a big part of the reason for sure.

Lesley Thomas (40:55.088)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And we kind of then, you know, we go through, you know, our younger adulthood and then going into older adulthood thinking, can't talk about it. And when we've got problems, we can't talk about them. you know, Covid exposed this for a lot of people because obviously people are put on furlough or people lost their jobs. Those on furlough were paid, you know, a minimum. They didn't have the ability to do overtime like they readily used to, et cetera.

spending more time at home, food bills going up etc etc but being expected to manage and that managing just got bigger and bigger and bigger and turned into not managing at all and that has led to you know a big stigma around people not feeling that they can say I've got a problem I am struggling

And part of that comes down to company culture around not talking about these things, not sharing when you have a problem. And because AI is thrown into the mix and people making assumptions, AI must mean I'm going to lose my job. No, AI does not mean necessarily you're going to lose your job. The way you do your job might change, but actually if companies were more open for people.

Sarah Poynton (42:06.525)
Yep.

Sarah Poynton (42:16.133)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (42:23.294)
And this is why, you know, companies, some companies invite me in, some invite me in to talk about the financial wellbeing side, others invite me in to talk about more, how does judgment change when financial pressure is applied basically. But when...

Sarah Poynton (42:31.176)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (42:39.176)
So you mean judgment as in decision making and choices in their roles, right? Got it.

Lesley Thomas (42:42.622)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely that because...

Sarah Poynton (42:46.888)
Well, tell us a bit about that. Like, how does judgment change when financial pressures are on in the real world?

Lesley Thomas (42:52.474)
Okay, so a lot of what is showing up for people, know, they're worried about what if I make the wrong decision? How is that going to look on me? How is that going to affect other people? What is the knock on effect of that decision going to have on the next thing that we have to do? If you have a tendency to micromanage because you're worried now about this decision that has to come down the line, you're micromanaging people.

your team are then feeling that pressure. Well, why all of a sudden is he or she acting in that way? Do they know something that we don't know? my God, is there going to be redundancies announced? What happens if I've spotted something that's being done and it's not being done correctly? Am I going to get into trouble for saying, well, actually this is happening and it shouldn't be happening. So all of a sudden the communication, the culture becomes fearful and people start to misstep.

Sarah Poynton (43:33.48)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (43:51.382)
overthink, kick a big decision down the road so they can spend more time thinking about a smaller decision, looking for more data, wanting to have more meetings. So all of a sudden the time delays, the knock-on effect that that has ends up costing a bottom line as well. So people feel challenged, they act in a challenged way.

Sarah Poynton (43:55.762)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (44:11.27)
More money. Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (44:18.758)
and it starts becoming a little bit like a domino effect, purely because you didn't have a conversation. You didn't understand how other people were feeling. You didn't do a temperature test that said, we're doing this because of this. People jumped to their own conclusions and the conclusion they came to was the wrong conclusion. But in their mind, redundancies are coming. I better start looking for another job.

Sarah Poynton (44:23.122)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (44:47.656)
Hmm.

Lesley Thomas (44:48.358)
I'd better start defocusing on this job because it's... Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (44:50.78)
which it perpetuates that cycle of negative thinking, negative relationship, all of the things that perpetuates and perpetuates, which just gets worse and worse. This is really interesting. So if someone's listening to this and is an employer, whether corporate managing a team, self-employed managing a business, whatever, but is an employer of people, how can they start to make their staff feel more comfortable having these conversations? Like, is there advice on this that you've got?

Lesley Thomas (44:55.198)
It does.

Lesley Thomas (44:59.75)
Exactly.

Lesley Thomas (45:21.22)
Absolutely. So the first thing is to understand how do you make a decision? Are you making a decision, so a financial decision, how do you make a financial decision? So the last financial decision you made, did you make it with your head or your heart? And the more you recognize, the more you recognize it's made largely with your heart, you can start to work out your emotional assets and your emotional liabilities.

Sarah Poynton (45:30.312)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (45:37.874)
Great question.

Lesley Thomas (45:49.062)
and how your own emotional assets, your own emotional liabilities show up in the conversations you have, show up in your behaviors and the effect that they have on other people. So an example, you have somebody who has been part of your team, part of your company, you know, forever and a day. They were brilliant at their job.

They brought in some really good accounts, for example, but they're now a lot older and they're a lot more set in their ways and they're not as responsive and they don't take feedback particularly well. And they're starting to wind up other members of the team and the culture is starting to be affected. But you do remember that back in the day they were really helpful. Well, what do you do as a boss?

Do you feel out of loyalty? You let them stay when you know it's affecting the morale of the rest of the team. Do you have a conversation with that person and you suggest that maybe there's some training they need to go on to allow them to interact better with other people in a pressured environment? Or do you, you you're honest and say, well, actually, maybe the time has come where we look for a different role for you.

or you look for a different role or consider retirement. And once you actually sort of work through, where am I, where's my head ruling these decisions? What effect is it having on the wider team? And how is that effect gonna show up ultimately in our budget, in our bottom line? How can we do things differently before that problem is so big, it actually has a knock on effect?

Sarah Poynton (47:21.842)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (47:32.466)
Hmm.

Lesley Thomas (47:41.662)
that we're not even considering right now. And whenever I run these workshops, the leaders within the workshop actually go, do you know, I can actually think of an example just last week when this happened, or I can remember when this happened. Because when you start to make those logical connections, you realize that our judgment becomes affected when we're feeling pressurized. And right now,

Sarah Poynton (47:44.104)
That's really interesting.

Sarah Poynton (47:59.145)
Mm.

Lesley Thomas (48:11.292)
You know, we know that companies have never been under bigger tax and national insurance pressure than they're on. We know with the employee rights bills that are coming in, companies are not looking to take on so many people. If you're not taking on people, what does that usually mean? More work for the people that are there. If they're not getting the pay rises, they're going, hang on a minute, I'm taking on more work.

Sarah Poynton (48:16.552)
Mmm.

Sarah Poynton (48:29.768)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (48:41.148)
I'm not being paid more. Do I really want this shit in my life? So it's that's why having those lines of communication and being really honest about what's expected to never be more important than it is right now.

Sarah Poynton (48:50.18)
is really important.

Sarah Poynton (48:57.874)
So I was talking to a employer recently and they've got quite a large company. I'd say they're probably about, I mean, they're not corporate large. They're probably about a 10 million turnover business. So big enough, right? They've got staff, they've got teams of people. And we were having a conversation where I was saying, it would be really beneficial for you to educate your staff around investment, around financial stability and security. Because in my opinion,

If I can retain my staff because they're not leaving to go to a thousand pound a year pay rise because they've not got enough money or they're struggling with debt or whatever's happening over here, and it means I can retain them. It saves my company money in the long run because I can have a better team, more consistent service, et cetera. And this employer said to me, I will never educate my staff about investment and good money management because I want them to be desperate to come to work like they can't afford to be there.

Lesley Thomas (49:43.379)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (49:55.718)
And I think that's the wrong head space for me. Like I want my staff to come to work because they choose to. They could afford to be anywhere, but they want to come and work here. And I want them, you know, actually most of my team are quite young, so they're starting to invest. They're learning about it and things like that. like, I think that I want you to have a income from investments so that you don't really need a job. You choose your job. And I think maybe this is a bit of a utopian view around how I wish that all employers and employees were.

Lesley Thomas (50:03.558)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (50:24.219)
Wouldn't it be amazing? I believe in a world that everybody goes to work with enough money from investments, which actually, if we start early enough in our lives, we could all have, but that's another conversation for later. And we end up choosing a career that is a career that's like our calling and what we love, not what we have to do. And we don't have to work for people who want us to feel desperate to be there because we can't afford to not be there. And this conversation with this person, it was quite a tough conversation for me.

Lesley Thomas (50:53.032)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (50:53.787)
because we had such opposing views around the attitude towards money and good stability with money. How do you find when you're going and reaching out to employers to talk about delivering workshops and things like that, do you find that most employers are engaging with helping employees be better with money? Or do you think a lot of them are still in that head space of, now, fuck them, I want them to be here because they've got to be here and I want it to be like they can't afford to leave. Which head space do you think?

most employees are in in this day and age, like what do you think about that?

Lesley Thomas (51:28.514)
Largely, I haven't come across the attitude that, know, of I want them to be desperate. And I just think that is horrendous that anybody. Because you were going. Yeah, if you were going to find that you're not going to have the level of engagement, you're not going to have your back looked, you know, looked after, et cetera. Yeah, with that attitude.

Sarah Poynton (51:34.471)
Okay, good. Well, that's good. It was a really hard conversation for me to remain professional in.

Sarah Poynton (51:51.015)
This is what I was trying to explain at the time.

Lesley Thomas (51:54.914)
And I know somebody who has just sold their company to a much bigger organization. And the people within his organization, all now retain ownership of that smaller company. He's basically said, are now all co-owners. He retains the larger share, but you are all co-owners basically, because his attitude is you have helped create this organization.

Sarah Poynton (52:15.983)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (52:23.813)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (52:23.826)
that a bigger company has wanted to purchase us and he will continue to work for the larger organisation as will the employees in his company. That kind of attitude, that makes you feel a whole lot better. You go to bed at night knowing that you have done good and that massive, massive, know, oxytocin, you know, and all of that. Whereas if you've got that, you know,

Sarah Poynton (52:34.609)
Mm-hmm

Amazing.

Sarah Poynton (52:44.613)
Yeah, contribution is massive.

Mmm.

Lesley Thomas (52:53.774)
attitude of I want people starving so they appreciate the drops of gruel I give to them. Exactly, we know what happened to the woman that didn't, it wasn't a woman, Mr Bumble I think it was, when Oliver said please sir can I have some more and whatever. No, fortunately most corporates obviously have a lot of pressure to

Sarah Poynton (53:01.691)
Basically the attitude, yeah. Horrible.

Sarah Poynton (53:13.126)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (53:21.86)
maintain and grow their bottom line. So they are looking at what can we do to support our leaders to ensure they don't only understand the finances and they don't only understand the levers that create more sales and more productivity, that they actually understand the behaviour that drives success as well. Because very often

Sarah Poynton (53:24.423)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (53:47.025)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (53:51.634)
the teams that I work with, it's not a lack of experience, it's not a lack of knowledge around what they do, it's having an understanding of how they do what they do, the effect that it has on their team, their culture, their communication. And once you understand creating a win-win situation, then people will go over and above for you. And that's the environment everybody wants to be in.

Sarah Poynton (54:06.993)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (54:17.959)
Mmm.

Lesley Thomas (54:21.596)
where people will go over and above because they recognize they will get a share of the results in some way as well. And I think fortunately, you know, all the companies that I've worked with, they do recognize that people are more than resources. Yes, they're human, but they're more than resources. And I think once you recognize that, then you're halfway

Sarah Poynton (54:30.375)
Hmm.

Sarah Poynton (54:42.171)
Mm.

Lesley Thomas (54:50.13)
to getting to a point where you can ask more, but when you ask more, you have to give more as well.

Sarah Poynton (54:57.319)
And I think this is really interesting and I am pleased to hear that in your experience, most of the people you're talking to don't have the attitude of this person that I was speaking to. But then I suppose that's indicative of what you do for a living because they wouldn't be talking to you if they felt like it was a pointless thing anyway. So the fact that there's a your business and other businesses that deliver these sorts of education programs into corporates around financial stability, wellness, etc. But also that confidence around money that

Lesley Thomas (55:06.952)
Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (55:27.057)
communication that sits when we're not worrying about stuff that's going on at home, it gives me hope that there is hope for the world and actually that not everybody's the same as this person that I was talking to. Leslie, I could sit and talk to you about this all day, but we are absolutely running out of time. So if people wanna understand, my last question to you is, is this similar to what I've asked about employers, but from an employee perspective.

Lesley Thomas (55:33.436)
Yeah.

Lesley Thomas (55:40.062)
I

Sarah Poynton (55:55.056)
If someone's listening to this thinking, do you know what? I go to work every day and I am worried about money and I am losing sleep and I am not sure how to ask for support or get guidance or help. How can people, or what's the advice around maybe approaching a boss to say, do you know what? I actually just need to talk this through, like I need a bit of help. And I'm not necessarily saying, how do you ask for a pay rise? Because a pay rise isn't always feasible or possible.

but support, education, other things, there are lots of things available. What would you say to somebody that's in those shoes about what they could do next to kind of start to move out of that place?

Lesley Thomas (56:33.318)
Yeah, you know, I think it comes down to understanding what you are asking for and where the organization is on their journey around what you are asking for. Because I think assumptions can be made with regards to, this is what I need. If I have to ask for it and therefore the company has a black and white yes or no. Well, actually, no, it's not based on.

Sarah Poynton (56:49.349)
Okay.

Lesley Thomas (57:00.986)
a black and white yes or no, it's based on what that organization's own requirements are at that point in time. So if you are struggling financially, who is a trusted person you can go and have a conversation with in your organization? Because you will not be the only person.

Sarah Poynton (57:13.191)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (57:23.506)
that will be having those thoughts. There will be others who are equally having those thoughts and recognising that there is no shame in asking for help. There's no shame in asking for advice. If it does come down to you need to make more money, then understand where that organisation is in terms of what can it offer you? Can it restructure your job?

Sarah Poynton (57:24.007)
Yeah, for sure.

Sarah Poynton (57:49.841)
Mm-hmm.

Lesley Thomas (57:51.984)
can it offer you overtime? Under what circumstances might it consider giving you a pay rise? So actually understand that going to ask for something is a negotiation, but understanding what you actually need, how you can go about it, and understanding where your line in sand actually is. Because I think we all have this view that

Sarah Poynton (58:00.836)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (58:18.746)
Hmm.

Lesley Thomas (58:21.064)
You know, our employer, when they say no, they're saying it from a place of, how dare you? The answer is no, you don't deserve it. Rather than it's a case of, well, I can't right now because of X, Y and Z, but come back to me in six months time. Let's have that conversation again. And maybe in the meantime, if you could do X, Y and Z, that would put you in a better position.

Sarah Poynton (58:29.242)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (58:38.981)
Hmm.

Sarah Poynton (58:47.684)
Hmm.

Lesley Thomas (58:48.104)
But I think talk to somebody, talking is the key way to understand how to solve a problem and who you can speak to, to help you to solve that problem. Because most of the time, the bigger, the thing that we're afraid of, starting that conversation is actually far, far easier. We make it to be, you know, a bigger deal. I had a conversation with a client last week.

who needed to speak to HMRC and they were really, really scared about speaking to HMRC. And I said, no, just ring them up, explain the situation that you are in and I know you will get a good sounding board because HMRC want you to pay what you owe them. know, declaring your company insolvent or whatever is not gonna help them. So they want.

Sarah Poynton (59:24.838)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah Poynton (59:38.008)
The tags, yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Poynton (59:45.048)
Not gonna get it paid, yeah.

Lesley Thomas (59:46.654)
Exactly so they what what and they called me up afterwards and said not going to believe this but they were really lovely they did everything they possibly could. said exactly how long did you spend worrying about that and I think that is the thing you know 95 % of what we worry about never comes to pass. How much time do we spend worrying? So talk to somebody work out what you really need and find a route to either

Sarah Poynton (01:00:00.135)
Hmm.

Sarah Poynton (01:00:05.498)
Never happens, absolutely.

Lesley Thomas (01:00:16.486)
get what you really need or put a line in the sand that says I'm not going to get it here I'm going to try a different route instead.

Sarah Poynton (01:00:25.422)
Really good advice. Thank you so much for answering that. So at the end of all of our podcasts, we have a question that's been given to us by a previous guest, which we're going to ask you. And then we're going to ask you for a question for our next guest. We don't tell you who it is. You're just going have to ask the question and we'll ask it. So the question for you, I've got it on my phone here, is, is there an amount of money that you think is enough money?

Lesley Thomas (01:00:36.551)
Okay.

Lesley Thomas (01:00:50.246)
No, I don't know because I think it will vary on where you are in life and how you want to help others, you know, along the way. And this is something I very often will say to clients because clients will say, well, I, you know, I don't need to earn any more money. You know, I have, I have all I need. And I said, well, yeah, but what happens if you want to be able to support your children?

or you want to be able to give back to your local community or whatever it might be. So it's a great question, but for me, because the world is changing so much and has changed so much, and what I mean by that is, for example, when I bought my first house at 24, it was 56,000 pounds.

Sarah Poynton (01:01:18.378)
huh.

something else. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (01:01:33.648)
Mm-hmm. Mm.

Lesley Thomas (01:01:43.706)
And that is what's for a three bedroom, you know, end of terrace house.

Sarah Poynton (01:01:47.992)
Everyone listening to this that's any younger than me is going to hate you right now for that.

Lesley Thomas (01:01:52.336)
Exactly, exactly. My children. OK, so information came out last week. OK, the average house is now three hundred thousand. The average salary is thirty eight thousand. Santander brought out a first time mortgage where the multiplier is four point seven five times your salary. That means to buy an average house, you have to have a salary of

67 and a half thousand. So you have to have a way above average salary for an average house. So there isn't a number I would put on that because numbers, financial numbers have changed so much that my parents would never and didn't need to support me to buy my first house. I suspect we will have to support our children.

Sarah Poynton (01:02:49.728)
huh.

Lesley Thomas (01:02:50.77)
to buy their first house. So for me, things are so fluid and also psychologically, I never want to give myself a ceiling that says that's my enough number because my enough number changes.

Sarah Poynton (01:03:02.502)
Hmm, really interesting. I think that's... I love that, really good. So, thank you very much for answering that. What is your question that you want to leave for our next guest?

Lesley Thomas (01:03:17.95)
golly, let me think, let me think, let me think, let me think. Now I don't know who your next guest is, but I'm going to ask a question that I was asked a few weeks ago. Literally being filmed, I went to an event at the House of Commons where we were celebrating financial literacy being included on the school curriculum. And I was being videoed being asked a series of questions. And the question I was asked was,

Sarah Poynton (01:03:31.033)
Okay, cool.

Lesley Thomas (01:03:47.734)
If your child, your teenage child was given a thousand pounds, what would you tell them to do with it?

Sarah Poynton (01:03:55.204)
Yep.

Sarah Poynton (01:03:58.5)
I'm typing this by the way so that I don't forget. What would you tell them to do? So what would you tell them to do? And then we'll ask the next guest as well.

Lesley Thomas (01:04:08.966)
Okay, so my answer surprised the lady asking because everybody had said I'd tell them to invest it and I said no, I would suggest they invested 80 % of it and I would suggest they enjoyed 20 % of it and they could decide what to do with that 20%. They might decide to save it, they might decide

to just blow it on whatever they decided to blow it on. But when we tell children what to do around money, resentment builds up. When we give them a choice, exactly, exactly. When we give them choice, that is when they are most likely to do better with it, basically. So that's what my response was.

Sarah Poynton (01:04:47.758)
And blocks. Yeah.

Sarah Poynton (01:04:59.28)
Great. Amazing. Thank you so much. Let's see, if people wanna get hold of you, contact you, whether it's employers, workshops, or employees, wanna just talk to you through or find you online, how can people get hold of you?

Lesley Thomas (01:05:11.57)
The easiest way is go to my website on the money confidence academy.com because it's got all my social media on there. It's got my email address, which is Leslie at the money confidence academy.com. But just remember the one thing, www.moneyconfidenceacademy.com and then always to get hold of me via that.

Sarah Poynton (01:05:29.038)
Amazing. I'll make sure all of that's in the show notes as well. Lizzie, thank you so much for your time today. It's been amazing talking to you. It's been a really good conversation. I've loved it. And yeah, thanks for your time.

Lesley Thomas (01:05:31.358)
Brilliant. Pleasure. And to you.

Lesley Thomas (01:05:39.122)
Thank you, Sarah. Take care.