Podcast Audio Money Story Project with Jaskarin Manget
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Harriet Formby: [00:00:00]
Jaskiran Mangat: I think twice or three times now before I ask for help with something that normally I would never have thought twice about it, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: Like a lift to the airport or staying at somebody's house, and you kind of start feeling like these are impositions because of the way we think about things as a society
Jaskiran Mangat: You can't be like, "Yeah, I'm at all of these kind of dinners with the investors, but I eat Pot Noodle at home to get by."
Speaker: A lot of money content will tell you to budget better, be more disciplined, manifest harder, and just hurry up and fix yourself because apparently you're always the problem to overcome. The Money Story project is where we go deeper and wider into who we are, where we came from, what we've experienced and discovered along the way.
Speaker: helping us make sense of why money feels so complicated. I'm your host, Harriet Formby, fractional CFO, [00:01:00] trauma-informed finance coach, and insatiably curious about the human side of money
Harriet Formby: today I am joined by Jaskarin Mangat, and Jaskarin is a behavioral finance expert, speaker, writer, consultant, and founder of Finance Therapy. She helps entrepreneurs, leaders, and organizations make better financial and business decisions by understanding the psychology behind them. Her work explores how our emotions, beliefs, culture, and behaviors influence the decisions we make under pressure every day, and how to create lasting behavioral change.
Harriet Formby: So a real big welcome.
Jaskiran Mangat: No, thank you so much for having me
Harriet Formby: we actually met because we both, took part in a program called The Trauma of Money, which I've spoken of about before. And [00:02:00] I would love to know, Jas, what got you interested in money trauma? 'Cause it is quite an out there topic for some people that haven't heard of money trauma as a thing.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. well, it feels like ages ago that we did that program together now. I think it's been a, been
Harriet Formby: It has been a while
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah.
Jaskiran Mangat: so yeah,I, I spent most of my career in financial services, so, you know, from starting out in banking to running a community of venture capital funds, looking at ESG to, working in a poverty charity as part of a social innovation fellowship, and then even founding my own fintech, which was aiming to help marginalized communities, manage and build their wealth and kind of, you know, up their financial, knowledge, to enable them to do that by themselves.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so I've kind of always just in my career been around money, but I guess the conversations were always very, let's say, rational and solutions-focused. So there was always kind of this drive to fix something, be that, financial education and knowledge gaps or processes that would make products more [00:03:00] accessible or, on the back end more profitable.
Jaskiran Mangat: Um, but there was never really this kind of deeper conversation around money in those spaces. So I spent a lot of the time really looking at the practical side of money, um, and how we access it and use it and relate to it. But then my own actual experience in the startup and venture capital world was, um, kind of enabled me to notice how emotional every money decision was, no matter what side of the, the table you're actually on.
Jaskiran Mangat: But the disparity between, you know, the reality and the images being portrayed either online, on social media, or even inside those communities made me really pay attention, um, to like what is that step before knowledge and process and action? and I spent, you know, with my, with my fintech, with my startup, it was, it was really about helping people take actionable steps with their finances and, learn while doing.
Jaskiran Mangat: And what I found with the more people I spoke to was that there's a step before that which is [00:04:00] enabling people to do the things they know they need to do. And so I really felt like, what is it that we can do about that problem where, you can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make them drink?
Jaskiran Mangat: And that is really kind of that underlying piece around, the emotions behind money. And I really realized that we don't actually have a knowledge problem when it comes to money. It's more of an emotional one. and even, my own actual experience as a founder of, someone who's now living off of savings and not a salary and trying to build something and working so many hours for something that isn't financially rewarding me right now.
Jaskiran Mangat: It's a very strange kind of space to be in, and it brought up a lot of emotions in myself and a lot of kind of awareness of like, where does, where does this really come from? So yeah, it's kind of how I ended up in the space of really looking at, you know, I did the program, The Trauma of Money, but also looking at what is it that builds that relationship to money and what does drive our actions beyond, just being given a lot of shiny tools and apps and, [00:05:00] products and services that are supposedly gonna solve, all of our problems.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so, yeah, I guess finance therapy really just grew from wanting to create those conversations and explore those conversations, both for myself but for other people, that hadn't really been happening anywhere else.
Harriet Formby: Mm. Yeah. Yeah, really, really resonate with a lot of that. I think there's so much, like you said, in the sort of startup space particularly about education and knowledge and like do these steps and have the advisors and, you know, from being myself in that sort of space, in, in the advisory side is like you do all of that and you do the practical steps, but there's-- similarly I found there was just this thing missing where nobody is talking about how anyone feels or why things might be hard or like the unsaid stuff that you bring to the table that, you try and pretend doesn't exist because you just wanna be all professional.
Harriet Formby: and it changes your relationship with money, doesn't it? Essentially when you have, um, different decisions when you're in a job, you get a salary, it's quite clear that relationship.
Harriet Formby: Whereas when you're [00:06:00] running a, a venture yourself, there's all these other different things that come up around money
Jaskiran Mangat: And I think even just to add to that, it's not even just in the moment, it's the, the future. You know, even planning and everything else that we have around money is completely different when you're moving into a space where you're no longer getting a salary or it's not guaranteed that you'll have this income.
Jaskiran Mangat: So it becomes very difficult to do things like plan your own personal life for the future and what that's gonna look like, because you can't just do a calculation anymore, right? You can't just pick up this amount that you're gonna definitely have every month post-tax and allocate it to all of these different things that you need to spend on and save and invest in.
Jaskiran Mangat: So that's, that's also a very interesting dynamic of it's not just about how you're living in the, the present, it's about how you're planning for the future and how disruptive that also becomes and all of the emotion that comes with that too.
Harriet Formby: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point. it's that sense of safety ultimately, isn't it? And your ability to build for the future or to have certainty around the future [00:07:00] when things are quite uncertain. And that will depend on what you've got access to as well and what your, own position is.
Harriet Formby: And also then, like we know that money is personal. It's our own stories and experiences as
Harriet Formby: well. it'd be great to hear your reflections on your relationship with money, growing up,
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah, I think because of the work I do, I think a lot of what I do is it's from a reflective lens of everything I know about money now and our relationship to it. And so I guess answering with that in mind, I grew up as a, a second-generation immigrant, so my parents were born here, but my grandparents immigrated here.
Jaskiran Mangat: and that kind of, even at that level, really meant living between two kind of completely different money cultures. But in general, just cultures, even if you take money out of it, it was a very different life at home and inside the home, and even inside the community versus outside of that space. and inside the home, I think I heard about money all of the [00:08:00] time, whether it was a conversation directed To me or at me or something I'm overhearing.
Jaskiran Mangat: And, you know, there's messages in there were really around, you know, security and sacrifice and making the most of opportunities, but also around creating stability for yourself. And, ultimately saving was a huge priority there. And so I'd say that a big s- driver and a big thing I remember is this feeling of, scarcity being the theme.
Jaskiran Mangat: Obviously, as a child, I w- didn't know what that was. Probably even well into my 20s, I didn't really think about scarcity and what that is. but I would say, you know, outside of the house, I was surrounded by people with very different realities, but money was never spoken about, you know. We're not talking about money at school.
Jaskiran Mangat: I'm not talking to the other kids or my friends about their home financial situation, because there is also a big culture, especially in our community, that what happens in the home stays in the home. And so money falls into that, so does everything else, relationships, arguments, all of the rest of [00:09:00] it, what happens in the home stayed in the home.
Jaskiran Mangat: So there was kind of this other culture alongside it that you don't talk about these things, and no one else is talking about them, right? No one's teaching you about these things at school. Your-- You know, my school was 80% South Asian, and so everyone else had a very similar culture, which means those conversations are also not happening.
Jaskiran Mangat: so I wasn't really exposed to any kind of real benchmark around wealth. there wasn't this thing of, I'm in a private school, and I can see that people are much, more well off than me based on their extracurricular activities. Like, no, I went to a state school, and we were all pretty much, as far as I was concerned, about as wealthy as each other, and maybe their postcode or what their house looked like gave me a little bit of an inkling of, how much better off their families might be.
Jaskiran Mangat: But there wasn't really anything for me to grow up and think about it in that way, which I think was a great way to grow up, to be honest. I'm glad I wasn't thinking about that as a child. but then I also, you know, I started working as soon as I turned 16. I'm talking about, within the week, and I always had access to my [00:10:00] own money and developed that kind of sense of independence with it.
Jaskiran Mangat: Um, I'm also the oldest child, so I'm sure that has a lot of, you know, things that factor into it. But those values around saving were really, like, drilled into me, so I also had a guilt around spending. So yes, I was earning when I was 16, but I wasn't out every-- Well, you know, I was working weekends, so I definitely wasn't out at the weekends.
Jaskiran Mangat: But I wasn't spending everything I earned. I was really saving it. and I did take on those things from my family of, how s- how the importance of saving and there can also be this pressure to succeed because you see how much your parents and your grandparents sacrificed for you to have the life that you do have, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: And for me to have those opportunities that I had, No, I didn't get sent to private school, but I did go to school, and education was extremely important within my family, and It was a, a huge priority. And so, my achievement probably also became tied to my self-worth, I think, if I look back at it.
Jaskiran Mangat: I think I probably carried a lot of responsibility very early, not in that my parents were asking me to pay for [00:11:00] things, but in that I, I felt like I should. You know? It's not, I wasn't backwardsly giving my parents money. I didn't get pocket money as a kid. That's just not something that was in my house.
Jaskiran Mangat: But it was like you just, when you start earning, you feel like, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't ask my parents for money because I have my own money now." So you kind of take on that responsibility. and then, I developed a fear of, not wanting to waste opportunities because I felt, very lucky to have them.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I think all of that, even though it's not explicitly about money, these do end up kind of shaping your relationship to wealth and finances and, you know, having this feeling of needing to prove yourself because, you know, you have opportunities that the, the people in the generation before you didn't have.
Jaskiran Mangat: so I think a lot of those things really did shape how I, how I still relate to money really. I mean, if you look at my career, it's probably outlined there, right? Like always trying to achieve more, always trying to, I guess, prove yourself really. So
Harriet Formby: Hmm. [00:12:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? The observation that it's not explicitly said, people aren't talking about it, but you pick up the idea that like it's important, I suppose, to be able to earn and to find ways to educate yourself, improve your situation.
Harriet Formby: And there's like value in that don't wanna waste an opportunity, but like maximize your exposure to things so that you can achieve and it's in the backdrop of like, perhaps there was, you know, a few generations back a level of story or trauma
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that that's probably for every generation, most families take a step back if-- unless even,
Harriet Formby: Yeah, yeah, it was
Jaskiran Mangat: uh, you know, unless they're, you know, extremely-- like they have a lot of generational wealth passed down from, having upper class ancestors, I suppose. but yeah, I think that that immigrant story for, for everyone is very true, right? Like this is not a very easy place to move to or emigrate to.
Jaskiran Mangat: And, you know, my grandparents coming here in the '50s or '60s from, [00:13:00] you know, villages in India, it's a very different, experience here. And they, they had, uh-- You know, my granddad was a teacher in India, and here he did like, a, a labor non kind of professional job. And so, you know, there is that feeling of you're in a different part of society when you come here, but in, in the pursuit of a better life for your family, whether they had that better life or not.
Jaskiran Mangat: And, you know, my grandparents worked extremely hard, and obviously the economy was very different back then, and they were able to buy their home, and own it, uh, by the time, you know, that they were retired, and then create a level of wealth and security for my parents. So then, you know, be born here, but my parents didn't go to university.
Jaskiran Mangat: I went to university and was the first. And so, you know, that does carry some level of trauma, and it does carry down through the generations. 'Cause if you think about how my parents were raised, well, they were raised in much less security than I was raised in. And, you know, they were able [00:14:00] to have those opportunities, but was it secure at home?
Jaskiran Mangat: I don't know. We're Indians, we don't talk about it. But like what I can imagine is that it was a lot more volatile than it would be for me growing up and me being able to have the time and space to really take the opportunity of education and go to school and come home and study and have a job and do all of those things, whereas my parents probably had a bit more responsibility much younger than I would've had.
Jaskiran Mangat: So I think, yeah, g- do you call that trauma? I don't know. I think it's-- Yeah, I don't know if the word
Harriet Formby: Yeah, it's probably not the right word. It's, it's just like the way-- it's being responsive to like the conditions and the time you're in, isn't it? And the systems you're in, I suppose. It's kind of like, it's noticing that and what that is in relation to the sense of security perhaps.
Harriet Formby: Yeah.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. But I think it's definitely like a thread that ties-- like that comes through every generation and, and you still will feel the impact of it, even if, you know, you live a very [00:15:00] different reality. And, you know, my grandparents had a very different reality when they came here to the one that I experience.
Jaskiran Mangat: But those feelings of scarcity still very much exist, and I probably take on and use a lot more of that than I would, consciously be realizing day to day.
Harriet Formby: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. it's also like survival, isn't it? I guess it's kind of like in our nature as well to be like, "Well, how can I make sure that I have got what I need?" And that's where it's kicking in there. we know that with scarcity there's a lot of, it's like a survival mechanism, isn't it?
Harriet Formby: And sometimes it's like overreacts a little bit much, sometimes it's valid and it's always a balance then with like knowing, what to do with that. But it's understandable that, the education side and like the opportunities thing is, is very attractive then.
Harriet Formby: It's kind of like, okay, I can get control of my environment and if I do this thing, which obviously, is very questionable in society 'cause it's not necessarily like in the, economic conditions now it's not the same in the sense of like, [00:16:00] if you do this and this, you get X and Y and it's all lovely and whatever and rosy 'cause it's very, yeah, much more volatile now.
Harriet Formby: Um, but
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah, I think we could have a whole-- I actually put a note somewhere there 'cause I was like, we could actually have a whole different conversation on that because, you know, that conversation is happening. We were told that if we, did well at school and we worked hard and we went to university and we got a degree or two degrees or whatever it is, and got a graduate scheme, and that you would always have, you know, job security and you would be able to buy a house and have a family and do all of the other things that we as a society deem, the normal path of life.
Jaskiran Mangat: and it's just not true today, is it really? I think, you know, having a job is not the security it used to be and, and you know, that's true regardless of what your, your immigration background is or your, your kind of, you know, how your family has lived in this country or come to be here. I think that that's true for most people, and most people are struggling right now.
Jaskiran Mangat: which I think makes this, this quite [00:17:00] interesting and more widely relatable because it is, you know, at the end of the day, it is about scarcity and survival rather than, you know, any specific story, as to where that survival or scarcity came from.
Harriet Formby: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a y- a, a good point. It's, like what worked for the last generation it's not like, oh, you just follow those things and it's gonna work again. like that sense of security and safety and, predictability is not there.
Harriet Formby: it is-- definitely has consequences, in terms of, like, fairness and equity and, that sense of you're in control of your destiny.
Harriet Formby: in terms of the, second generation experiences, how do you see that this has shaped kind of on the unhelpful side of the narrative around money and what that means for people?
Jaskiran Mangat: So I think, you know, immigrant families often inherit survival strategies instead of wealth strategies, and the great side of those survival [00:18:00] strategies are things like getting through uncertainty. You know, things like frugality are great tools to have in your belt, especially if you're moving from a place of having a salary to, things like entrepreneurship where, it's pretty much the most uncertain thing you can do with your career.
Jaskiran Mangat: also things like, you know, having the ability to value saving and really valuing it over other things. That's really saved me in a lot of situations where I think, that's also enabled me to take a lot of risks with my career that my parents probably just couldn't have done because I saved and had that mentality around saving so early, which meant I could create a safety net for myself.
Jaskiran Mangat: But Yeah, and then there's other values that are, not explicitly about money, but they have a huge, impact on our kind of financial value system. So things like living at home. I think in society in general, there's this expectation that you finish school, you finish university, you should move out.
Jaskiran Mangat: I moved home at 30 to enable me to continue pursuing the entrepreneurial path a bit longer and give me a bit more kind of runway, and that's [00:19:00] not really seen as shameful in my community. But when I'm in founder circles, there's this rhetoric around you should move out, to be successful.
Jaskiran Mangat: You need your own space. People won't take you seriously if you live at home. and then there's also the thing around community, right? immigrant, like families and communities, they've got community down to a T, and I think the society that we live in is moving further towards individualism.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so when you think about actually we're back in those two worlds, you know, individualism can really harm your financial position, but also we end up manufacturing this shame around community and needing community. I think I've personally felt like, in more recent times, I think twice or three times now before I ask for help with something that normally I would never have thought twice about it, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: Like a lift to the airport or staying at somebody's house, and you start feeling like these are impositions because of the way we think about things as a society whereas that has been how I've grown up. That's how I've shaped my understanding of money. So, like, [00:20:00] these are the kind of great things, but then when you flip that over and you think, well, actually it doesn't fully marry up with how you interact with people outside of your immediate family or community, which can be a huge challenge, especially in the, in the kind of founder space and entrepreneurial world, which makes it really difficult to do that thing that we talked around, you know, founders being able to find their tribe or those people that they can vent to.
Jaskiran Mangat: It makes it really difficult to build those relationships because we don't kind of- feel like you have the same value system, people don't have the same expectations around what it is to be there for each other, or, you know, even disclosing certain things that, you know, is that person gonna go off and use it against me to make me look worse than them because they wanna clamber over each other to be seen as better?
Jaskiran Mangat: And so there is this kind of, you know, it kind of creates this gap between the trust you can build and the ability to build, community in the spaces. But also sometimes, you know, coming from a place of scarcity isn't very helpful when you're trying to build wealth, when you need to take risks, [00:21:00] when you wanna start a business, when you're thinking about that risk-reward profile.
Jaskiran Mangat: You know, I had to teach myself to invest. and I think I spent the best part of the last 15 years trying to convince my parents to invest, or my friends, or people in my community that that's something that they need to do. It's not something I grew up with. And so that's, you know, the, the downside of kind of coming from this survival mode and trying to exist in this world where actually wealth is built on a different set of rules to the ones that you've known or to be played by.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so, you know, things like leaving a secure job isn't well understood in my community. But I think that, you know, we spoke about that as well. That's kind of true for anyone in this generation if, the generation before them doesn't really understand 'cause they had jobs for life, and we have redundancies.
Jaskiran Mangat: So there's this huge shift between is having a job even secure anymore? and I think also there's this other side of, you know, many second generation or first generation immigrants, they kind of feel that they have to translate between these two worlds. So you think, like, there can be this guilt [00:22:00] attached because you might find yourself in your mid-20s earning more than your parents.
Jaskiran Mangat: And, I definitely felt that. I thought it was really weird. I was like, "What do you mean I, like, earn more than what they earn?" But it's-- it almost didn't make sense to me. And so that success, it can kind of create like a, a distance as well as a, a pride, and that's quite isolating 'cause, you know, your, you know your family is proud of you, and you know that, you know, in a way you're just achieving what was expected of you.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so it's kind of like, well, okay cool, that's what I was supposed to do. But your reality has never been f-further than that of the people around you, and so you kind of start to disassociate a little bit, or you can disassociate from, you know, the communities that raised you or the spaces that you came from.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I see this in other people as well, you know, they carry shame for having more than the people around them, or there can be a guilt for feeling like you're leaving your community behind, or even for that distance existing. And often, like, you know, these higher salaries, they come with- a different sacrifice that didn't exist [00:23:00] before.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so there can be this pull between, should I not be at every family occasion, and should I not be giving time to my family, and shouldn't I be home and cooking dinner by 6:00 PM? Where it's like that's not the reality of a six-figure salary in the city, right? Like, you need to be working crazy hours and networking and trying to climb that ladder.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so it becomes-- That can be a negative side of that. And also, you know, there's an expectation to help out. I think, you know, many children of immigrants feel that there's a responsibility to take care of their parents upwards, maybe even like younger siblings. There's a kind of pressure to give back, and that can really kind of have a big impact on pursuing your own goals.
Jaskiran Mangat: So, you know, looking at your own dreams, and you can end up feeling like stuck in limbo because there's this unsaid or unspoken pressure, or for some people, a very spoken pressure, and they don't feel like their success is theirs to enjoy. So there's the great parts of it, but there's also the very complicated, difficult parts that come with growing up inside of a value system and a society that is [00:24:00] slightly different to the one that you're actually living in outside of the house.
Jaskiran Mangat: and yeah, like a lot of these questions, like it's not really about money. They actually just become about identity and one is part of the growth as a person, but also it's quite hard to shift your identity and be a chameleon and try and fit into all of these places and still feel very, fulfilled, I
Harriet Formby: Yeah, that's such a good point and It, it's, it's maybe a bit strange then 'cause it's kind of like you don't expect that to happen, so you're like, "Well, I did the thing. I was good at school. I got m- the job. I worked really hard, and now I'm really successful in the measures that success, you know, appeared to be, and actually now this feels hard because now I'm having to navigate the different, you know, expectation of me at work and, you know, working really hard and, like, sacrificing my family and, community, whatever."
Harriet Formby: And then that feeling guilt and, you know, it's kind of like, "I'm proud that I'm here, but I'm also guilty that I'm not, here," and then it makes you-- Yeah, it's hard, it's [00:25:00] hard to know where to be then, isn't it? It's hard to know what to do with yourself. Yeah.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah, and also if you've kind of like climbed through that system, I think, you know, for me especially, like working in and around venture capitalists, let's say, or even bankers and people in, in those spaces who have maybe grown up in that environment, you realize very quickly that we do not value the same things as human beings outside of this job.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so you are now surrounded by, you know, more hours of your life are spent at work than they are at home, and obviously the older you get, the less time you're spending with your parents, your grandparents, your family. And you kind of also have to think about, you know, a lot of people say, "Oh, you need a mindset shift," or you need to-- "This is how this world works and you have to adapt to it."
Jaskiran Mangat: But, you know, there's also this piece of, well, how do I live between these two worlds? Because they're still both a part of you, and if you're gonna be successful in this space then you need to then also try and align your values with this new space, when often they're not, they're not at all aligned.
Jaskiran Mangat: They're not coming from the same place. [00:26:00] And so you need to kind of try and figure out, again, back to the identity piece, like how do I play by these new rules that are made by wealthy people when I didn't come from wealth? And so then, you know, this is talking about, you know, the intersectionality of both, race and gender and class, but trying to figure out like how can I live and be happy that I'm living in line with who I actually am and what I believe, but still managing to find success in a world full of people who maybe don't believe the things that you believe.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so that, that needs to be a really tough thing for people as they kind of do experience social mobility or they experience, you know, being around a very different environment, a different value system than the one that they grew up in.
Harriet Formby: Yeah. Yeah, that's such a good point. And there's like this sort of slightly sinister edge to it as well, which is sort of like the idea of, you know, more money means that you buy solutions rather than [00:27:00] community, and that's because there's a product. You know, j- like you said, getting to the airport is now a product that you buy, which is, booking an Uber or something, and someone gets to make profit out of that, and a huge corporation makes a slice of money.
Harriet Formby: Whereas before it used to be an exchange or, you're working late so you buy food and get it delivered to the office and otherwise you'd have had a nice family meal and, you know, it would've been nice and, community focused.
Harriet Formby: And that's the other side to the money thing, isn't it, is sometimes that's at odds because your tiredness and busyness is also a product for somebody else to kind of cash in on as well,
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. And I think a lot of people walk into entrepreneurship thinking that they're going to have more freedom of their time and they're gonna be able to live, um, a, a life that's more balanced or more aligned with their values. And I think, you know, this goes for everyone from whether you're a tech founder or, a freelancer or a consultant or whatever it is that you do with your time.
Jaskiran Mangat: But there is this period of a lot of hard work before you get to a place where you can maybe achieve true time [00:28:00] freedom. And I think that there isn't really enough awareness of what that really means, and that's just part of life, right? Like, you have to experience that and you have to go through it and figure out if that's a sacrifice you're willing to make.
Jaskiran Mangat: But it's, it's definitely worthwhile being part of the conversation with more realism rather than this kind of gold star space where you only work four hours a week the time on the beach
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. And knowing that it takes time and that it's normal that it takes time. It's normal that it takes like years to go through various iterations and not get traction and start get, you know, all of this stuff is- most people are not, having immediate success, you know, from within a year, say, to being like, "Oh, we got the money," and then everything was amazing Yeah.
Harriet Formby: it takes a long time. I see that with people is that it's quite a lot of shame about explaining why, "Oh, we started this five years ago actually, but this has happened and that's happened and we're only quite here now." But that's actually very normal. Like, that is very normal that it takes a long time and lots of iterations and stop and start and [00:29:00] changing.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. And a lot of the time we see the success story of somebody who did do it within a year and, like, they've, they've either left it as a cliff note or they've conveniently left out the fact that they're like a fourth time founder
Harriet Formby: Yeah, yeah. All the other time
Jaskiran Mangat: the last three bus- and the last three businesses over the last, like, 20 years failed.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so, you know, there's a lot to learn from that failure, and I think we keep con- if we continue to try and compare ourselves to somebody else's highlight reel, and that combined with, you know, really entangling our identity with being a founder, and then that goes back to that piece of identity and who we actually see ourselves as.
Jaskiran Mangat: It, it's like one of the biggest roots of, of our wellbeing while we're pursuing these things, is being able to separate the business from ourselves.
Harriet Formby: So if we talk a bit more about being in that investment banking kind of world, and it's really interesting 'cause you've got this experience of being a founder, but also being on the side of the, institutions that the founders are coming to you for [00:30:00] money, and It's it's a world that seems quite mysterious and scary sometimes, especially if you're going for funding and stuff. so it's really interesting that you've been like behind the scenes almost on that side and you've seen how it works and what goes on.
Harriet Formby: the one thing that I thought was kind of interesting is like we know, for like the last 18 months, a lot of people have been talking about women not getting access to funding. Like we know the stat 2% of women are receiving funding. Lots of reasons for that and lots of well-meaning advice really to try and help people.
Harriet Formby: Like, well, make sure you pitch and you practice and you get mentored and, you know, all of that, which is great. when, when you come to the table and you're like, you've got your numbers and you've got your pitch, there's more to it than that, would you say? There's more to it going on with money in terms of, when you're actually asking and you're in a room with people and you're feeling judged almost in terms of like who you are and what you bring and what you know and whether you're [00:31:00] worthy and, you know, there's just so much there I think that we're not, we're not tapping into.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, like I've, I've been a founder. I've run, you know, communities of, of VCs looking at, you know, impact as well. I've also, you know, developed awards for, underrepresented founders, so very much in and across the startup ecosystem in wearing many different hats and roles.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I think, having been on incubators myself and also delivering programs and workshops for other incubators and alumni communities, I think the spaces that support founders, the conversation is usually about things like, you know, the pitch deck, your financial projections, your storytelling, how to give investor updates, how to structure your data room, the very practical side.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I think, you know, what we spoke about earlier in terms of what's actually my experience been around money before I kind of started exploring the trauma of money and the emotional side of money. it's like that very solutions-focused, very pract- practical, action-led piece. and that's [00:32:00] obviously very important.
Jaskiran Mangat: It's very relevant. These are the things that you need to do in order to kind of go through that process. But what's almost never really talked about is, you know, the shame, the rejection, the power and the power imbalances, the pieces around identity, the thing or the, the things we all feel around belonging in these spaces.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I think when these conversations are being had, they're not really being had in the rooms that matter to making the change. And so, you know, we can talk about that 2% stat and all of the, the things that have led to us getting there, but I would say in the last five to six years of me being in this space, I've seen very little move on that stat I've seen a lot of reports about the stat, and year on year it's the same conversation that's being had.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I think when you don't have those conversations in the rooms where the decisions are being made, when you don't give founders a space to really explore that side of what's happening, a lot of the time they're keeping that inside, right? Like, maybe they [00:33:00] have a small circle of founder friends where they can feel like they can be honest and they can have a vent and they can offload and then, you know, continue, which we all just generally need as humans about everything in our lives.
Jaskiran Mangat: But there's no- not so many mechanisms to help them really practically move past those really difficult periods in the journey. and so, what we need to recognize is that none of this process is normal. Like, we as humans aren't really supposed to exist in such prolonged periods of high stress.
Jaskiran Mangat: And if you think about, how we've learnt and how we've grown up and how we went to school, it was kind of you study all year and then you have to take an exam. Cool. Pinch of high stress here, and then you take the exam, great, back to normal, and then you just continue. Go to university, same thing, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: Like, you spend your year learning, you have your exams, you have your dissertation, back to a normal level of stress. And I think when we're founding businesses, we're entrepreneurs, we're freelancers, we are responsible for the amount of money, if there's any money at [00:34:00] all coming in every month, to do all the things we need to do to live, pay rent, pay our bills, pay for transport, go outside, see our friends, pay for all these communities that we're a part of that are supposed to excel-- like, help us excel our journey as a founder.
Jaskiran Mangat: Well, th- those two things don't really marry up, and so they can put you into this really long period of high stress where that stress is never dipping down, right? Like, every single day that you're fundraising. What if your fundraise takes a year, 18 months, two years? I've known founders to be fundraising for, a full period of two years before either giving up or actually finding, you know, another way through.
Jaskiran Mangat: That's a really long time to be at this top level of stress.
Speaker 4: Mm.
Jaskiran Mangat: Um, and I think having a job doesn't really put you under the same amount of pressure because when you're in a job, you have a team, you have somebody usually above you where the buck stops with, stops with them. and being a founder not only does the buck stop with you, but you're responsible for everything [00:35:00] else on that journey.
Jaskiran Mangat: And then we can, you know, we can talk about what that, that practically ends up looking like. But having a job you don't normally entangle your entire identity in it and being a founder that, that basically happens to most people, right? Like their identity is founder first and everything else after because it really does become your life.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so when we're not talking about and even recognizing these things as something that can be solved, we're not going to take the time to understand why we're feeling the way we're feeling, let alone s-solve that underlying thing. And so you end up with these stats from Sifted when they did a study saying, you know, 49% of European founders, uh, wanna quit their business because of, you know, mental health or running out of financial runway.
Jaskiran Mangat: But these things can be solved if you start looking at them earlier because the reality for a founder is, let's look at raising investment. That means repeatedly asking strangers to judge your idea and your credibility, which you've most likely conflated with yourself as a person. That's exhausting.
Jaskiran Mangat: It's emotionally exhausting. Imagine [00:36:00] walking into a room if you're physically doing it, not just sending emails every day asking people to judge you. Like it's not a nice head space to be in. And then, you're often having to portray a version of yourself and your business that is wildly different from the reality because to win you can't let investors know how much you're financially struggling behind the scenes.
Jaskiran Mangat: You can't be like, "Yeah, I'm at all of these kind of dinners with the investors, but I eat Pot Noodle at home to get by." And that can feel like you're, you know, you're living a lie and eventually the market's gonna drop. Like how long can you really live with this mask on? Every time you leave the house you're one person and when you come home you're stressed about paying your bills.
Jaskiran Mangat: How much longer can this go on? How much longer can your partner be supporting you financially? If you don't have a partner, like how many employees can I pay for how much longer? Like these are really, really intense things and our founders are often going through them alone, right? Yeah, sure they have their board of advisors, they might have some friends, but there's nothing really practically there of like who can I sit down with and work through [00:37:00] this- these challenges with to give myself a bit of a, a breather, a bit of space between that business and me as a person.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so there's, yeah, there, there's So many facets of it, right? Then you think about founders, they rarely pay themselves first. So you're working a lot of long hours, you're giving a lot of sacrifice, whilst you're also watching your personal wealth and your personal goals and planning for the future take a massive hit.
Jaskiran Mangat: and you don't realize how tough that is, until you're living it, especially if you don't have somebody like a family or a partner or anybody to kind of lean on to kind of pick up the slack for you. And we often really glamorize the hustle, you know. Like if you're not working hard, if you're not working weekends, you don't really want it.
Jaskiran Mangat: and we're basically manufacturing this sense of shame for anybody who wants to admit out loud that it's hard. And so if we've created this feeling of shame that actually if you say, "Hold on, I actually don't wanna work 365 days a year and be pulling my hair out and having all of these other things happening to me," 'cause, you know, it does impact our physical [00:38:00] health.
Jaskiran Mangat: It impacts not only our mental wellbeing, but that ends up impacting our physical health. But we've created this weird environment where we're saying, "Actually, if you admit that it's hard, you obviously just don't want it enough." Which again, then just creates this like further spiral of, of shame, of self-doubt, of self-loathing.
Jaskiran Mangat: Like it doesn't put people in a great space. and then, yeah, so that's all kind of one side of it. And then think about how many founders are financial experts. None, right? Like if you care about making tea bags and you wanna make a tea company, you probably don't have a-- You're not, probably not an accountant, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: Like you don't have a, a grounding in the, the P&L and putting together all of the financial side of that business. So you're learning a lot of the financial stuff on the job. You're learning to become somebody else's boss. You're taking on a responsibility for their livelihood, and that comes out with an- another pressure that no one prepared you for, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: Nobody prepared you for being in charge of whether your employee gets to feed their family or not. And so there's just so much that is [00:39:00] not explored. You're not prepared for it. You're not-- No one's speaking about those things. And then we have this statistic on top of it that is like 2% of funding goes to women, and that's something that you carry into a room before you even speak, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: Because women will internalize that rejection differently, but also when they walk into the room, they already know they're like, they're on the floor and against any man walking in who's standing on a podium to start. So we're, we're walking in and carrying that stat with us, and the more that people talk about it, I actually think it's less helpful for the founders themselves.
Jaskiran Mangat: I definitely found it very challenging as a founder to be constantly hearing that in the VC space because it makes you doubt yourself. It makes you think, "Well, why would I be that 2%?" And it's very hard with all of the things I've just spoken about before to then be able to hype yourself up and be like, "I'm gonna be that 2%," every single day, get out of bed with that same energy for a long time until you hit that success, which is, you know, maybe five, 10 years down the line.[00:40:00]
Jaskiran Mangat: So, so much of that
Harriet Formby: mm, it's kind of also encouraging like this sort of grotesque battle to sort of climb over people to be the 2% like that you, you know, that visuali- and obviously we're po- poking it a bit, that sort of image. But it's like that means that you've got to screw over like 98% of people to, to knock them out of the running, which isn't a nice way of thinking about it because the, you know, the more women-led way of business and life is to, is to be more community focused like, and, and give a shit about other people and, and not be like barging them out of the way to take money off them, which can feel like what we're, you know, what that kind of traditional race to funding is.
Harriet Formby: Yeah.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah, and I think it's the same race even, you know, within the business. People-- I've seen so many people climbing over other people to, to seem, more important or more successful or better than somebody else that they would consider a friend. And, you know, the way I hear some people speaking about other people in the industry just to [00:41:00] seem better themselves, it's, it's, it's just really, like, a toxic culture to be inside.
Jaskiran Mangat: Like, who wants to be around that every day? It's not-- Who wants to be that person? You don't wanna be the person who's doing that. But it, it is sad that increasingly women do feel like to, to have the power and to be seen as better in people's eyes, they need to put other people down. But yeah, when you've got this stat driving it, exactly, people feel like they have to climb over people.
Jaskiran Mangat: But also, like, I think especially for women, this, this stat very much targets women. That's what it's about, is we're talking about the gender parity of investment, and so it really does continue to feed this, this mindset issue of, you know, needing permission rather than assuming that you belong somewhere.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so you're, you know, you're competing with every other woman because only 2% of that money is gonna be coming towards all of you. But then also you're, you're turning up embodied differently because men aren't more confident because they know more, they're just more confident because [00:42:00] it's assumed that they belong in the room.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. No one's told them that they don't belong in that room. They've always belonged in that room, and so they're socialized to see the risks differently. They're not walking in thinking, "Oh my gosh, I don't belong here," and they've probably seen another five women today and, you know, it's gonna only be one of us.
Jaskiran Mangat: Um, and they're just naturally more accepted in these spaces. And so then a lot of the time, and you know, this, this can be regardless of whether you're a man or a woman and for any other kind of identity piece, a lot of the barrier becomes, you know, not that the investor said no, it's a lot of the time it's the founders deciding not to ask in the first place because they don't feel like they belong, and so they don't, they can't even get past that barrier of, you know, "I can do this and I can raise this investment and I can be trusted with this amount of money to grow this business."
Jaskiran Mangat: It becomes, "I'll just bootstrap" or "I can't do this, and I don't belong in this space."
Harriet Formby: Yeah, which is a valid response to an insane [00:43:00] environment as well. And you know, it's, yeah, it's, it's understandable. But it's-- And the other thing I think maybe we don't talk about, and you mentioned it, is like you're having to mask who you are because if you show up authentic, you know, like everyone wants to be authentic and have a personal brand and all that, but that's always a curated version of reality.
Harriet Formby: But like, if you, if you are talking about what's hard or, you know, finding it difficult to keep turning up and being rejected or pored over or having, you know, intrusive questions asked all the time, then that can be like, it's very difficult to keep showing up as something that you're, you know, a mask, isn't it?
Harriet Formby: Essentially a mask like of, of who, what's really going on and putting on that sort of brave face of, "It's all good, and we're, you know, motivated and it's all happening and everything's together." And that's, you know, a hugely systemic thing because we've created a sys- situation where people, you know, the thing I always find strange is that it's always about [00:44:00] pretending the metrics, like pretending that you're gonna get hockey stick results when obviously everyone knows you're not.
Harriet Formby: Pretending that your first raise is gonna last you forever and you're gonna build all this stuff when you know that you're not. You'll spend the money. Everyone knows you'll spend the money and need to get more money, but we pretend that you don't. And it's a game of kind of, yeah, it's so much identity stuff there.
Harriet Formby: But there's this whole thing of money. It's like you, you wanna be competent with it when you're not necessarily, but you're also having to pretend a lot of things about how it feels, you know, being really upbeat and putting on this front so that they don't find out what you're really thinking.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. I mean, I think at the early stage you can never really know because the product isn't out there, especially if you're building tech, right? And then if you're building tech in financial services even more so because you're not allowed to put a product out there because there's so much red tape and regulation around it.
Jaskiran Mangat: So you, you are literally told, I've been told in, in workshops and as a founder in incubators, "Oh, you just make it up." And I'm like: Well, what do you mean you just make it up? And I'm-- [00:45:00] you know, I've, I have a maths degree. I've like a, a, you know, I have a master's in that space. I've worked in banking, so I've worked around numbers my whole life.
Jaskiran Mangat: And then when you're a founder and you're building something and someone's telling me, "Oh yeah, you just make it up. Like you, you do a prediction cash flow, and then you put that in your pitch deck." And, it is a weird reality to be part of because you've got these people who are supposedly professionals and know what they're talking about, telling you to build your business based on like make believe.
Jaskiran Mangat: and you know, that is a big part of it, right? Until you go out and test the numbers and get things in front of people, it is make believe, right? I think I remember it being, oh, you just, you just put up a landing page and, and get a wait list and get people to join it, which then becomes around about your
Harriet Formby: That's a metric then, isn't it? Because you've got this many people to sign up, so that's, you
Jaskiran Mangat: But it, a lot of the time, a lot of the time that doesn't, that metric doesn't actually, uh, prove value of the product.
Jaskiran Mangat: It proves your ability to amass attention on social media. And I think most definitely in this last kind of, you know, p- post-COVID years that I've [00:46:00] been in the space is a lot of what I've seen is, you know, it's important to build your personal brand, but it's because people are buying into the, the version of you and what you're selling as a person online.
Jaskiran Mangat: Very rarely does that translate over to a tech product. At the end of the day, a tech product needs to solve a problem, and if it's, it's not solving a problem, people are not gonna buy it. and that all kind of feeds into this weird fake it till you make it reality that we're living on every front and, you know, throwing everything we have at this thing that, you know, 90% of startups fail, and that stat exists.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I would say, you know, because when we're not always really looking problem to solution, and there's so many other things inside of it, right? Like if we don't say, "Build your personal brand," how will all the personal brand coaches make money? You know? Like if we don't add all of these other things into the entrepreneur journey, um, how does the rest of the system that makes
Harriet Formby: whole ecosystem that lives off the startup world. Yeah, yeah.
Jaskiran Mangat: Mm-hmm.
Harriet Formby: yeah, I suppose that [00:47:00] means as well as a founder, like you mentioned, you can be spending money on doing things that are to raise your profile as a founder rather than to actually develop your product towards a solution.
Harriet Formby: And that's where, like, you can get sidetracked as well, can't you? Because you're getting attention and, you know, recognition for your personal brand, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of
Jaskiran Mangat: No, and I, I
Harriet Formby: you'll be good at running a business. Yeah.
Jaskiran Mangat: I've seen businesses fail through exactly that, right? You know, paying two, two and a half grand a month on PR, meanwhile you haven't found product market fit and, you know, the business isn't gonna last very long and you can't raise more money 'cause you haven't been able to prove any revenue, off of, you know, the millions you've already raised in the beginning.
Jaskiran Mangat: I think, yeah, like it's very easy to become sidetracked by the things that, you know, LinkedIn and, and Instagram are telling you you need to have as a founder, versus actually thinking about the problem and how you actually solve this problem and how you really find your product market fit and how do you actually prove traction.
Jaskiran Mangat: And a lot of that then [00:48:00] also, you know, it comes back to what we're comparing ourselves to. And a lot of the time we're comparing ourselves to a fake version of reality. and yeah, maybe it's born in the beginning because at the beginning you have to fake everything to, to make something exist, so-
Harriet Formby: Yeah. Uh, the one you said about, you know, the figures they look really official 'cause there's figures on the spreadsheet and there's metrics and targets and returns, but they are just wishful thinking even if they look really streamlined and organized, and that's what is surprising.
Harriet Formby: But the, the other side to it as well, I think, is just, like, what do you do then? So I suppose it's just being aware that there's a lot of the, you know, like, that it's not very normal and that you're putting yourself into a space where, this goes on. But what would you say, like, obviously we're not having these level of conversations en masse in the sort of startup space, but, like, what do you think needs to happen in kind of-- And I know this [00:49:00] is tied into the finance therapy that you've developed.
Harriet Formby: But, like, how do you create, like, a low stakes environment where you can process this or at least come to terms with, this,
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I do hear more and more like, you know, kind of accelerators or, you know, people who run like entrepreneurship hubs or things that are spun out of universities thinking more now about, the wellbeing of founders and whether that's kind mental wellbeing, financial wellbeing, but also just overall, how do you create more resilience in founders so that they can see this idea, product, business through the really tough journey because, you know, the, the journey isn't gonna change, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: That, that is just the way the system works. the way it's engineered. We're not going to be able to change the way that private funding is given. A business, if it's taking funding from a certain space, needs to grow at a certain amount because there is a chain [00:50:00] of people who expect a return in a certain amount of time.
Jaskiran Mangat: obviously there's work being done in kind of impact spaces and, and, you know, having more patient capital and funding going into that. but for founders kind of in the, the short and medium term, until things in the system do change, is I think building that support into those programs alongside the storytelling workshop, alongside the, cash flow workshop and the pitch deck and the, investor readiness sessions that focus very much on the practical side of investor readiness.
Jaskiran Mangat: And that's kind of why finance therapy really exists and where it was born from. I was solving my own problem and the lack of support that-- and the lack of space for these conversations that existed back when I was building tech. But also, I've then gone on and worked in other people's tech companies and seen the same kind of behaviors and patterns that have created really, really toxic work cultures, where, you know, you go in and you think, "Oh, everyone's building this thing together," but the teams are really unhappy.
Jaskiran Mangat: The founder [00:51:00] is, you know, a terrible leader, and we've been talking about this for ages, right? Founders are not leaders, and they need leadership training, and it doesn't exist. It's not in there. The being a human part and the leading a team and getting people bu- like hyped around this one vision and motivated to solve and build together and go together is not innate in most founders.
Jaskiran Mangat: So, you know, with finance therapy, it's really about creating a space where people can finally talk honestly about money, their relationship to it, and how it's impacting their actions or inaction when it comes to, you know, or even relationships and kind of when it comes to every other part of life that money touches.
Jaskiran Mangat: Um, and it's, you know, it's not, it's not financial advice because I'm not trying to sit here and be like, Let's fix the practical solution again." And it's also not therapy because, one, I'm not a therapist, but also there, there needs to be this combination of the practical and the emotional and a space where we say like, these two things exist At once, how do we talk about them at once?
Jaskiran Mangat: And once you have this [00:52:00] understanding about the way that you behave, and the way that you feel about money and what is driving your actions, and you start recognizing these patterns, you can change it. But until you give yourself the time, the space, and the energy really to think about these things, you're not gonna be able to catch, you know, where your triggers are, how you, how do you actually go about changing these things in the moments that they matter.
Jaskiran Mangat: When you walk into that room and you are pitching for investment, when you're negotiating a salary, when you're having a tough conversation with a co-founder, in those moments, you will be able to catch yourself if you understand where the feeling is coming from inside you that would normally give you your go-to reaction.
Jaskiran Mangat: And those emotional skills are transferable, right? They work for people who are founders, they work for people who are leaders in organizations, they work for any of us, right? It's j- it's a human thing. We all interact with money regardless of what the job title is on our kind of CV. And so my goal is really just helping people recognize those patterns for themselves and then take the actions that they need, [00:53:00] whatever they are in whichever moment that is.
Jaskiran Mangat: And what we really need to start thinking about is that most-- Like, it's not that we think, it's more, it's something like we will realize, actually. It's a realization that everybody will have, is that most financial decisions make perfect sense once you understand the story that came behind them. So if you can make a story for your business and develop a pitch deck and get customers on board with the thing that you're selling, you can also be looking at the story as to like why you do and act and behave and build relationships in the way that you do, and how money kind of plays into those.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I think just also that kind of space of, you know, we're always talking about financial literacy, but we rarely teach or experience, like financial self-awareness. And it's not, it's something that we're kind of seeing more talked about online, but it's not something that is practically being solved for.
Harriet Formby: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it, isn't it? It's the self-awareness piece means that you have that power back. A lot of this process is about not having agency, not having power. But when you understand yourself, [00:54:00] that really gives you something that means that you kind of have that, okay, I understand myself, I can give myself some compassion, but I can also see things in a non-judgmental way.
Harriet Formby: I can observe my own behaviors, and I can change my behaviors, and I can improve things, and I can be honest about what, what's going on there, which is quite liberating in itself. It's it's confronting sometimes, but it's also, it's got that edge of like liberation and autonomy and getting the sort of power back to, you know, what, what happens next.
Harriet Formby: So in terms of like, in those spaces and obviously confidentiality, et cetera, but like what sort of stories do you find that people are uncovering themself when they start to do this work?
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. I think, an interesting one that comes up a lot is kind of the, the co-founder or the, you know, the business partner scenario. and this has happened a f- a few different times where, you know, I'll work with a founder who's, avoiding a difficult conversation, let's say with, uh, let's say a co-founder.
Jaskiran Mangat: [00:55:00] Um, somebody that they're like in business with. They're supposed to be making, you know, co-signing decisions with. and you know, it's causing them a lot of stress. It's causing them unhappiness in the business, and they're actually avoiding it, right? They'll avoid that conversation because they think it's about money.
Jaskiran Mangat: We don't like to talk about money in general. It's just, that's just how we are. it's still considered very taboo. And so then when you take it into this space, well, you have to speak about money with a co-founder surely. Like you-- that's part of business. But we still have this innate, um, kind of feeling of wanting to avoid it.
Jaskiran Mangat: But wh- what I end up doing and working with these people and is to unpack, you know, what is it that you're avoiding? Why do you not wanna have this conversation? is it really about the conversation you wanna have about valuation, about equity, or about, you know, this next raise that you're doing, or even about the workload that you're kind of splitting.
Jaskiran Mangat: A lot of people don't want to rock the boat with somebody. They don't wanna bring something difficult up. We don't like having tough conversations. And when [00:56:00] we unpack those things, what you realize is that, is that they are making assumptions, and what they realize is, is that they're making assumptions about what the other person wants or how they're seeing the, the situation.
Jaskiran Mangat: And once you kind of become more curious instead of defensive in this conversation, 'cause we all wanna protect our own interest in even wanting to have that conversation in the first place because it's awkward, you kind of see that the conversation completely changed, right? You can map out like I've-- you know, I help people map out all the possible outcomes of that conversation and talk about how, you know, they would feel in each of those scenarios, but also try to think about how the other person might be feeling, if any of those scenarios is what kind of comes to light in the conversation.
Jaskiran Mangat: And then, you know, that kind of enables people to feel prepared for that conversation, which means that they can stop avoiding it, but also feel that like it's not really about money. It's about other things. It's about understanding motivations. And most of the time that's the conversation when it comes to business partners and co-founders.
Jaskiran Mangat: it's a [00:57:00] case of understanding like what is the common goals of your relationship, what is your relationship built on, and what is the outcome that you're actually looking for, and what is the outcome that they want, and how do these still kind of align, and how can you then approach that conversation rather than going straight into the difficult thing that might make somebody else defensive also.
Jaskiran Mangat: And so like what you kind of-- what I've seen a lot of the time working with people who are having those, those challenges is that- it's seen as a money conversation, but it's actually just a relationship conversation dressed up as a money conversation. And that then enables us to be like, "Ugh, it's really awkward.
Jaskiran Mangat: I don't wanna talk about it." But once you start breaking those things down, like with many things, you kind of see it for what it is. And then in other cases, I think, you know, I see a lot of, you know, people charging less than they're worth, some people charging way more than what their product is worth in the market.
Jaskiran Mangat: So, you know, looking at actually why are you struggling so much with pricing and why do you believe that either you have this very inflated, sense of [00:58:00] what this product and service is worth, or why you're, you're not charging what the market rates for those things should be. And a lot of the time that's because they feel like they need to be a different person to do that, and people often conflate the reality of like how much they're earning with like who they are and what their value is.
Jaskiran Mangat: Um, and I think a lot of people really forget that you can never really be paid your value because your value is infinite as a person. But we don't think about money like that. We think about money as the value attached to us and how we're seen in society. Where does it put us in the class system? Where does it put us against our peers?
Jaskiran Mangat: Um, how much is somebody valuing the work that we're doing or the product that we're putting out into the world? So there's that and then also, you know, the f- the third I think big one is people who delay things like fundraising, people who don't ask for the financial help that they need because it's, usually a fear of hearing no, right?
Jaskiran Mangat: I guess your identity is so entangled with your business and-or the product or service that you do, [00:59:00] and so your worth is tangled up in that. And so if somebody says no to the product or the service, people often hear that as no to, to me, the person, which is a really, a tough thing to get past, especially if you've had a lot of other things in your upbringing or your life that make you kind of have a bit of insecurity around yourself and who you are and, and just this fear of rejection.
Jaskiran Mangat: So a lot of these things do come together a lot of the time.
Harriet Formby: Yeah. So it's kind of like money and finance, but they're disguising other emotions and feelings that are coming up essentially. And they're linked because the medium that we're using is money because that's what, you know, makes it all go around. But it's what's attached to that and it's also like looking out for reactions other people are having, whether it's your co-founder or your- somebody you're going to fund with.
Harriet Formby: It's like, sort of fear of the unknown as well, isn't it? Of, well, if I bring this up, what will that person do? And am I equipped for that sort of conversation where it might not, you know, like you said, there's this option of the outcome, there's this option, there's this, you know, what [01:00:00] could happen.
Harriet Formby: And sometimes we just don't wanna think about those because it's too loaded. And the, the co-founder one's also interesting because I think there's also that sense of, like my experience of it is sometimes if you're not sort of financially minded, you just want to stay completely out of the finances as much as possible, outsource as much as possible and have the thinking done by somebody else.
Harriet Formby: but of course, there's stuff that you both need to, you know, or multiple people need to be able to agree on and talk about because there can be this real resentment, for example, if you feel that you're not getting, enough for what you're contributing and, or if you've just got like different ideas about what the value is and things.
Harriet Formby: And it's again, it comes back to com- being confident to have conversations about money when maybe money isn't something that you feel that you are good at talking about and understanding yourself. Andit's kind of, when we're young, I guess we're told whether we're good at maths or not, and then it sort of tends to stick, doesn't it?
Harriet Formby: Whether we're good with money or not.
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah, maybe making [01:01:00] every, maths exam question related to money wasn't, wasn't a great idea as
Harriet Formby: Yeah, exactly.
Jaskiran Mangat: But I mean that in general is that, you know, it's easy to say, "Oh, we don't talk about money," because it's so societally accepted that we don't talk about money. And so when you dress up all of your other problems behind that kind of barrier that you've put up and said, "Well, actually it's about money, so it's awkward and so I can avoid it."
Jaskiran Mangat: But you also then enable yourself to avoid all of the deeper things underneath it around, you know, not feeling like you're, accepted and things like feeling that, if you're not burning out or if you're not hustling and working really hard, then you don't deserve to achieve anything, but also that you're not trying your best, you're not living up to your potential, to achieve more.
Jaskiran Mangat: but also things like tying your self-worth to your net worth. These things are not just about money, they're really about the deeper stuff and, and then you start thinking about, okay, well, the trauma of money and the systems and how you [01:02:00] really feel about yourself and how you-- how does that show up in what you end up doing in life.
Jaskiran Mangat: And I think we don't talk about those things because they're really uncomfortable and maybe we think, "Okay, well, that's reserved for the room with my therapist once a week or once a month." Or we think about, "Well, if I talk about my money, I just do it with my financial advisor or, or my accountant." And you know, like you said, a lot of people like to outsource what they think is the difficult stuff because then it takes it off of their mind, which, yeah, of course, I would love for somebody else to do my accounts so I don't have to do it because it saves me time and it saves me space to do things I'm actually interested in or good at.
Jaskiran Mangat: But that's a question for you, right? Are you doing it because of that reason, which is a great reason to outsource, or are you doing it because you're avoiding, something deeper?
Harriet Formby: Mm-hmm. Yeah. The conversation that you still need to be a part of and the understanding that you still need to have yourself. Yeah.
Jaskiran Mangat: Mm-hmm.
Harriet Formby: Yeah. Lots to think
Harriet Formby: about. And [01:03:00] so,
Harriet Formby: finance therapy then, if people are interested and they're like, "Yes, I need to, delve into what's going on here."
Harriet Formby: Like, how does it work? Or what kind of things can they do with you?
Jaskiran Mangat: Yeah. I mean, if things that we've talked about today resonated, I'd love for people to reach out, so even just to continue the conversation. So I'm usually best found on LinkedIn. obviously Jaskarin Mangat on LinkedIn, And then I also write a Substack called "Finance Therapy," where I explore our relationship to culture and systems and just all the parts of life that money touches and how we relate to that, both as just, humans, entrepreneurs, founders, or, you know, even if you just have a job or you're just traveling the world, it's kind of, that's a very human, centered piece of, work and project that I do.
Jaskiran Mangat: and then yeah, you can also find me at financetherapy.co.uk if you're interested in, the work I do with founders and leaders and organizations when it comes to, you know, speaking or, workshops and coaching and sessions like that. But, also kind of [01:04:00] more of the consulting work of how do we really bring this thinking into programs and wellbeing, programs, but also kind of accelerators and the work that we do to support people on their, um, founder and financial journeys.
Harriet Formby: Brilliant. Yeah. Sounds really, really good. Thank you very much, Jaskarin, for joining us.
Jaskiran Mangat: so much for having me.
Jaskiran Mangat: You've been listening to The Money Story Project Podcast with me, Harriet Formby. If you've enjoyed the episode, please follow the show, share it with someone and if you can, leave a review. In the show notes, you'll find links to connect with our guest and to learn more about the project itself.
Speaker 5: And if you feel called to share your own money story, you'll find details there on how to be part of a future episode. Until next time, take care and have a great day
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