Small But Mighty Episode 3: Pamela George on money management matters

It's not unusual for a business owner to have a passion for the work they do, but the root of that passion can be very personal. That's the case with Pamela George, a Financial Literacy and Credit Counsellor based in Ottawa. In this episode, Pam shares some of her personal money story and the motivation behind starting her business.

Connect with Pamela George

You can find Pam at her website, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram for regular insights and advice about your personal finances.

Episode transcript:

Karen Wilson: Today, I'm thrilled to have my friend Pamela George on to talk about her work as a financial counselor. Thank you for joining me today, Pam.

Pamela George: Thank you for having me, Karen. It's such a pleasure.

Karen: Pam, I'd love to have you introduce yourself and tell us about your business.

Pamela: All right. Thank you. My business, it's called Pamela George Financial Literacy. What I do in a nutshell is I help alleviate the stress and anxiety caused from money problems.

Karen: Very nice. As someone who's worked with you both as a client and as a service provider, I've learned a lot about your business and you have some pretty personal motivation that drove you to actually start this business. Do you want to share some of the history there and why this work is so important to you?

Pamela: My motivation for Pamela George Financial Literacy started way back in Trinidad when I was a little child. My mother, she was very, very good with money and she took care of her family. She was self-sufficient, but she lost it all and we ended up homeless. One of the main reasons was that she wasn't smart with her money. As much as she knew money and she was able to have enough to take care of her family, she made some pretty intense mistakes and that caused us to be homeless for almost a year. I saw what that did to her. She died a very old woman at 60, believe it or not. I watched what that did to her and what it did to her children.

Even now, three generations later, I see how that legacy still lives with the family. As an adult, I look at that and I'm like, "No, I don't want to follow the same feet as my mother did." I knew if I didn't want to do that, I had to know how to handle money because like I said, she ended up like that because she didn't handle her money well. The first thing I did was, "Okay, I need to educate myself. I need to learn how to manage my money." I was doing that pretty good in Trinidad. I did pretty well, but then I moved to Canada. I remember saying when I was moving to Canada that, I felt like Canada was the land of milk and honey.

Coming from a small Island, it really felt like the land of milk and honey and such an affluent and rich country that I was shocked to see the amount of people carrying the wrong debt and lots of debt. Not a couple of thousands, but lots of debt, $40,000, $50,000 even $100,000 $150,000 in debt was nothing new. It seemed like the normal thing.

Karen: Yes, for sure.

Pamela: Yes, and because I know and I have lived with what happens when you don't manage your money and have a lot of debt, I felt like, I want to help. I want to help who I cannot end up following in that same feet basically. That's how I started my business.

Karen: You once told me a story about a time when you were working for an educational organization. In the capacity of your job, you weren't actually a financial counselor, but there were students in this higher education institution that were running into all of those barriers that happen so early in life; running up debts because you need school loans, credit cards because you don't make enough at your job. That was also part of the motivation you had for starting the business or the inspiration I should say.

Pamela: When I worked at that higher institution of learning, I was a financial aid officer. I would meet students 17, 18, 19-year-old students, young people with their whole lives ahead of them and they already have debt. That was shocking to me. I couldn't believe a 19-year-old sitting in my office, bright and so ambitious and ready to take on life, but already had this heavy load of debt of an average, I would say, $20,000, $25,000. That was really sad because I know the outcome. I know what happens down the road. I've lived it.

I started to offer free lunch and loans and free financial literacy sessions. It was well-received. Then what happened was I realized, I'm talking to the students, but this started with the parents. I ended up on my lunch hour, I would be talking to parents. They'll come in to see me sometimes. I grew to love it, the financial counseling part of it. Oh, I loved it. I end up loving that more than my actual financial aid job that I was hired at the college for.

Karen: Tell me what exactly is a financial counselor. I've seen you referred to as a financial advisor and a financial planner, but that's not what you do. What is financial counseling and how does it differ from being an advisor or a planner?

Pamela: Unlike a planner or financial planner or a financial advisor, I am not licensed to sell any financial products and that's by choice. I do that because I want when I work with my clients, as an example, if I see that while working with them they need to get some retirement savings and they need to invest in some RRSPs, I don't want to be the one selling it to them because then for me, I think it's a conflict of interest personally. The reason I don't sell it is because I want to be able to offer unbiased and impartial advice.

An example and is a real example, someone comes to me and they have $100, 000 and they're like, "What do I do with this? Do I buy property? Do I invest in retirement? Do I buy stocks?" If as a financial advisor or planner, I might be inclined to say, "No, no, you need to invest that", when really, and truly that client based on their goals and what they want and their lifestyle, the best thing might be to invested in real estate. That's why I just believe that when it comes to your money, you should really try to have unbiased and impartial advice

Karen: As a financial counselor, even though you're not an advisor or a planner, but you do refer people to financial advisors and financial planners so that they have advice on every area of their financial situation so that their longterm outlook is the best it can be.

Pamela: Yes. Working with me, we get to a point where we need to look at investments, we need to look at insurance coverage. I have a list of professionals who I would refer my clients to. That way it's hands-off for me at that point, because I don't want to influence my clients in any way. I don't get any commissions or kickbacks or anything like that, but I want to make sure that when I advise my clients, as an example, if they need insurance coverage, one, I don't want to be selling it to them because I think it's a conflict of interest, but I would usually give them the names of three insurance agents or advisors who I know who I trust.

Then they go and they meet with them and they make their decision, which one they want to work with. What I do, and there's a bit of confusion I think with what I do, so how I like to explain it, I do the foundation. Think of a house and I'm the foundation. I do the budgeting and organizing your money. If you're in debt, helping you to get out of debt, helping you to set the stage, set the foundation, and when that is firm and in place, then you can start building your house and the walls and the doors and the windows and the roofs. I'm the foundation and the financial advisors and the planners and the investment folks, they're higher up in the house.

Karen: That's interesting. In addition to making sure that all of these logistics of finances are in place, whether it's investments, insurance or documentation in powers of attorney, you're actually looking at your individual client's relationship to money.

Pamela: Yes.

Karen: That's where the counseling comes in. What are some of the things that you do with clients to counsel them in their financial situation?

Pamela: Money management is not just about the numbers. It's very important. Similar to when you trying to lose weight, it's not just about eating less and moving more. It's not. If it was, nobody will be struggling with weight. Similarly, with money, it's not just about money coming in and money going out. It's not just about the numbers. It's our relationship with money, and that's the counseling part that comes in.

Yes, I do counsel and we talk about the numbers but there's this other aspect of it, which is why I always say I'm not an advisor, I'm not a planner, but I'm also not a coach. I am a counselor, so we talk about how money shows up in your life. We talk about, "Okay, what is your money story?" I talk a lot about that, and I have a saying, I say we need to be the hero of our money story. I really stand by that and I believe it. How many of us if we stop to think about it, "Are we the hero? Are we the victim of our money story?" When clients start working with me, that's what I do. I set the tone by saying, "Let's be the hero of our money stories."

I examine. We talk about things like your past and, and if you've had things happen to you that would have affected how you relate to money, and we talk about how that shows up in your life now, and we try to dig deep and figure out, "Okay, let's get to the source of this because I always say, "While debt is a problem, it's not really the problem. To find the problem, we need to dig deep and figure out where this all started."

A lot of times, I could tell it starts from the abuse of marriage or being abused as a child, or being told certain things while we were growing up. So many times my clients, particularly women, would say that their money story and the problems with money story started when they were married and they were in a bad marriage.

Karen: Yet, money management isn't that hard. My personal experience working with you, I had a lot of lightbulb moments in the process, and it was at the end of the time that we worked with you, I realized this is something I could have been doing all these years if someone had just taught me how. I'm in a good financial situation. My family is not struggling, so it's interesting to me that with money management not being hard, but the majority of Canadians are in debt. Why aren't we teaching this in schools? [laughs]

Pamela: I don't know. I don't have the answer to that, but I'll tell you this. I did write a book because I believe that one of the ways to help that situation with the situation of a lot of Canadians in debt, it starts when we're four-five, six years old. That's where we need to start teaching kids about money because, by the time they're teenagers, they already have some messaging and some programming about money that we have to unlearn and unteach and then go into proper money management.

I wrote a book. You know it it's called Three Little Piggy Banks, and it's for ages four to about seven. It's the very, very basic of money management where in the book, it's about saving, sharing and spending. It's dividing up your money. One of the things I see when you start working with me, and you know this, we need to separate our money. That's what Ella and Andy do and Three Little Piggy Banks. It's the basic foundation. It's separating your money. It's learning about delayed gratification and savings. It's learning how to give and learning how to spend. A lot of times, as adults, we'll need to relearn how to spend and learn how to spend properly, so that's the foundation of it.

Karen: Yes. It's interesting because part of the reason that so many people are in debt these days is that, it's so easy to get credit for most people and it's so easy to purchase things now with everything available online, and it's fast. Why not? It makes a lot of sense to start kids early learning how to save for what they want and get rid of that whole mentality of instant gratification. I actually talked to my son about quite a bit just yesterday.

Pamela: We don't save anymore. Saving up to buy something, we don't do that anymore. We want something, we just put it on the credit card. Which is why I said a few minutes ago, we need to learn how to spend properly. I am big on enjoying your money. You know this. I always say money needs to bring us joy and it should be bringing us joy, but when you're bogged down with debt, there's no joy in that. Just as how I say we need to learn how to save, I feel we need to learn how to spend properly.

Karen: It causes so much stress if you are in financial trouble because you can't focus at work when you're thinking about the bills that you don't know how you're going to pay. You can't be present and fully yourself with your family if you don't know how you're going to pay the mortgage. All of those things affect every area of your life. It's amazing, and of course, then there's the impact on relationships because so many relationships end over money.

Pamela: I see that all the time, and it's sad. What I do with my clients who are a couple, I usually encourage them to have a money date and start talking about money. A lot of times, we don't talk to our spouses about money because we're afraid that it's going to end up in a fight. What I say is, take 15 minutes a month, start off small, 15 minutes a month, open a bottle of wine, make light, have light conversation.

I guide my clients on how to do that gently without blaming anybody, just having a conversation. I do think that a couple could have a lot of debt. I see it with some of my clients. You can have a lot of debt and still be able to have a very good conversation, a very loving conversation around money. It's possible.

Karen: Yes, definitely. One of the things that you say is you talk about having your money practices align with your values. Tell me a little bit about what that means.

Pamela: Yes, I love that. [chuckles] I say the way we earn our money, and the way we spend our money should be aligned with your values. I'll give you an example of a client of mine. She said to me that she really values education, she feels that education is what really changed her life and turned it around for the better, and she wants that for her son. Big time. It's the main thing, she wants that, she values education. However, when we did her budget, there was no space in her budget for any kind of education savings plan for her son. He was about seven or eight at the time.

I was counseling her and trying to figure out, "Okay, what's going on?" She didn't have a whole lot of debt, but she did and so some of the money was going towards debt, but a lot of the money that we felt and she eventually saw this, that she could have been putting towards education savings, it was going towards other things, eating out and dinners and that type of thing. Here we had a client whose spending wasn't aligned with the value of education for her child. We sat down and we talked a little bit about it, and we switched that around. She still goes out to dinner and still has a good time, but her money is no more aligned with what she values and that is education for her son.

Karen: Yes. I did a little bit of research a while back, because part of having that alignment is how you earn your money as well—not just the spending. I think that a lot of people feel stuck where they are in whatever job they have, and that can be kind of demoralizing. When you feel like you can't leave something because you don't have the money to, and then having a good money management plan actually enables you to build what some like to call an FU fund.

Pamela: I've heard a client say that.

Karen: Or a freedom fund.

Pamela: FU sounds so much better, I love it.

Karen: That whole idea really resonated with me because I think that being able to make choices that feel good about your employment—or however you earn your income—that align with your values, it makes it so much easier to also align your spending with your values.

Pamela: Yes, I have an example actually. I have a client who came to me and she worked for a collections agency. She said that when she actually heard me say this in a talk that I gave her when I spoke about aligning the way you earn and spend your money to your values, and she reached out to me. She was saying that she felt sick every day going to work because her job was to call people and threaten them and say, "If you don't make a payment, we're going to take you to court." That type of thing. That is an example of somebody's way she was earning her income wasn't aligned to her values.

What we talked about was, "Okay, let's start putting some money aside. Maybe you need to get a second job just temporarily to save some money, and let's get you set up on a plan." Anyway, long story short, after a year she was able to leave and she's now doing a job that's in alignment with her values. She's now very happy and she's very well set up. Things like that we need to think about. A lot of times we just have this job and we're not stopping to think further than the paycheque.

Living paycheque to paycheque, it happens, but if you can just pause for a minute and just ask yourself, "Okay, why am I doing this? Is this in alignment with my values?" The answers will start coming. It may not be comfortable answers, but the answers will start coming for sure.

Karen: Absolutely. I love that whole idea of making sure that the money coming in feels good and the money going out feels good. It makes a lot of sense.

Pamela: We need to fall in love with our money again, Karen. Money sometimes I feel like it's a bad word. It's the equivalent of the F word, but for me, I think it should be, we really need to fall in love with money again, and that's not a bad thing. Falling in love and loving your money is not a bad thing. It's showing it love and respect and understanding what it can do for us. It doesn't mean you value it more than life. No way does it mean that, but I do believe we need to pay it more respect and show it some love. Some TLC, not just neglect it. A lot of us neglect money.

Karen: It's a tool and we work hard to earn it. It should be respected. I agree with you on that.

Pamela: Yes.

Karen: You've been in business for about three years now.

Pamela: Correct.

Karen: You've recently been doing a lot of work to formalize your marketing and as part of that you've been doing work to solidify your brand. All of this is going towards a push to grow your business in what you're doing already and also in some new ways. Talk about that evolution that you've gone through from starting your business three years ago to now.

Pamela: This is my third year in business. The first year-and-a-half or so I really struggled. Not so much with getting clients but with knowing what to do. While I know about money and I know my shit when it comes to money, the business aspect of it, I struggled. I didn't know what I was doing. I knew I had to get somebody to help me with marketing, to help me with my website, and to just help me build my business.

However, I was adamant that I will not go into debt to start a business to counsel people on how to get out of debt. The irony was just too much for me. I wasn't going to do that. I had some money in my emergency fund, I took some out of it, and I did a little bit of stuff but really my business for the first year-and-a-half was the money would come in and I would reinvest.

The downside to that was, I was doing my own little bit of marketing, although I was not in any way qualified to do so. What ended up happening was very ad-hoc stuff. No clear messaging, no clear branding, which is, "Oh, it's this week, maybe I'll do this." It helped a little bit because it gave me some presence but I felt at the end of a year-and-a-half, two years, the business had grown enough that it was time for me to really seek help, to really get my brand in and really push my business to the other level. That's where you came in Karen.

Pamela: You really showed me how to do this. While we're all in lockdown and business was like-- It's just taunted for me for a while, I just use that time to work on my marketing with you and building my website with Sherry Crummy and just getting my message out there and I am really excited.

Karen: Probably the biggest project that you've done in this time-- I know you've been working with a number of different service providers, the biggest project has been building a new website for yourself. You're going from your DIY website that you built to one that's been built by a web developer and designer for you.

Pamela: Yes, I'm very excited. My website, Pamela George Financial Literacy. I am so excited. I worked with Sherry Crummy and she helped me to build the website. I am so proud of it and of course, Karen, I worked with you to help me with the content because I still remember at the beginning working with Sherry, and she's like, "Okay, so we need to get content." I'm like a deer in the headlights like, "What? What do I do?"

I was a little bit lost. "Okay, where do I go, and how do I figure out what do I want on the website?" I knew what I wanted, but how I wanted it there I didn't know. You were like my saving grace. Meeting you and you able to help me get that clear message out there helped me to-- I can't thank you enough Karen. You're amazing helping me to get what I wanted to say. You have this unique way of pulling out what I want to say and making that message very clear and I really appreciate that.

Karen: You're very welcome. It's challenging and I tell people all the time that even for my own business, I need to hire somebody else to help me drag all of that out of me because I struggle to put pen to paper and get it all out myself because I'm too close to it. I don't necessarily ask myself the hard questions that I ask my clients.

Pamela: I love the process where we would sit, we'll have a Zoom call and it's a conversation we're having but you have these key questions you ask. It's the way you ask the questions, it draws out things that I would not have even talked about or even thought about. I could see why you would want somebody to pull that out of you assuming they have the right questions.

Karen: I always find it interesting what an outsider can see about your business and that's why I'm a big believer in outsourcing various types of work. Even as a marketer, I would be open to outsourcing marketing in certain areas because what someone else views about my business is not the same thing that I view about it. We're like that as human beings, too.

You constantly have those conversations where someone is sharing insights of how they view you as a person. You're kind of looking at them and going, "What?" Because it's not how you view yourself. It's enlightening to hear that when we do. It's absolutely the same in a business especially for micro-businesses like ours. We tend to be so close to the work and we don't necessarily have the energy or the insight to do that work on our own without some assistance.

Pamela: For me, I felt I can do it all. My husband and I, we can build a website. I can sit and create a workbook if I want to and I can create my marketing content if I really sit down and do it myself. This might end up being shitty but I grew. I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned in my business is the value of outsourcing and getting the professionals to do the thing for you professionally. In the beginning, I used to feel like I can do it all and didn't want to spend the money. One, I didn't want to go into debt, but two, I just didn't want to spend the money. I felt I could do it.

When I made up my mind to really outsource and start paying for these services, I started to see a difference even in my attitude towards my business. My confidence in the business and just the general sense of, "This is a legit business and I'm paying for services, I’m getting stuff done. Everything is so professional. I don't have to second guess anything." That is very, very valuable, I have to say, but I can only say that now, looking back.

Karen: Yes. It's a great point and the other thing that motivates me to actually hire other people to help me out is because there are certain things that are really high-value, high-impact that I need to be the one to do those things. Then, there are things that are easily outsourced to someone else and they may not be low-impact, but it's not something that I have to personally do. If there's something that I need to be spending my time on more that's going to make me money, the return on that investment is worth it to free up my time from having to do some of that work.

Pamela: I look at it as, I shouldn't be spending my time trying to create a workbook as an example or doing a lead magnet, creating a lead magnet, which you did for me. Thank you. I shouldn't have because it will take me maybe three, four hours, it might take you 30 minutes, my bad. That time, that three, four hours I'm spending creating the thing I'm not really good at. One, it wouldn't be as good as if it was done professionally but two, I could have been counseling clients and working on my clients' files and helping them to get out of debt faster and that type of thing.

I see the value in it now but you know how it is. Small businesses solopreneurs, we really hold on to every bit of money. We don't want to spend but looking back, spending money and investing in your business by outsourcing, oh it's having a big impact on me right now on my business.

Karen: Oh, yes, definitely, definitely. I'm a big believer in outsourcing. I love talking about it, especially with business owners who have been in that mindset, like I have too. I think we all—especially early days in business— you tend to hold on to everything for a couple of reasons, there's the money aspect, but there's also the ownership of this is your baby and you want to make sure that it's done the way you want it done. It's hard to pass your baby over to someone else to care for.

Pamela: So true. That's a very good analogy. That's how I feel but the baby's well taken care of when you hire the right professionals.

Karen: That is exactly right. Ms. Pam, how can we find you on the web and see this fabulous new website?

Pamela: Yes. It's pamelageorgefinancialliteracy.com and I have a beautiful lead magnet that was done by the one and only Karen Wilson. You can download it there. It's a guide to budgeting. It gives you some good tips on how to start your budgeting. My email address is admin@pamelageorgefinancialliteracy.com.

Karen: Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me today. I've enjoyed this.

Pamela: I have too. Thank you so much for the invite, Karen.