The Better Way to Do Money (part 3)
Courtney Martin | 11/17/2025
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If you’ve ever thought, “I make good money, but I have no idea where it goes at the end of the month”, then here’s 2 steps you need to take to spot then stop your profit leaks.
In my last post, I told you about the one mindset shift that makes being a profitable entrepreneur possible. Now here’s the actual steps you need to take to do it.
These are the first two steps I take all my clients through in my Together System, and the reason they work is because they start with context instead of concrete numbers.
Traditional budgeting starts with those numbers but doesn’t care about anything else about them - cut all impulse and convenience spending, track this down to the penny, color code everything to keep your brain focused on this incredibly boring task.
But WE don’t jump straight into fixing something we don’t fully understand yet.
We first have to figure out where you actually are and what’s really going on.
Step 1 - Together we dive deep into your money history.
And no, I don’t mean digging up every mistake you’ve made and judging you for them.
Before we can increase your profits, we need to understand two things: your numbers and your brain.
1 - Your numbers
We look at what’s coming in, what’s going out, where it’s going, and where it’s silently draining your income.
But we take into consideration that numbers alone don’t tell the truth.
Because the context behind the money matters. How you feel about your money and what you’re buying is important.
It’s not just numbers on a screen, it’s what they mean to you.
2 - Your brain
This is where all the other financial pros get it wrong, and the part that neurodivergent brains need the most.
We look at:
→ What are your money strengths (and your kryptonite)?
→ Your executive functioning blindspots
→ What triggers avoidance or shutdown?
→ How your energy cycles affect the way you use money
→ What money systems actually accepts and rejects
This becomes your Brain Map, a clear breakdown of how your neurodivergence shows up with money and how we use those strengths to make you more profitable.
When we combine your financial patterns with your executive functioning patterns, everything clicks.
And we do this through the Plug Your Profits call, a nonjudgmental financial review & interview-style live call designed to find and fix your money leaks.
You walk away with your customized Profit Map that tells you:
→ Where your money is leaking
→ Where your systems are making money harder than it needs to be
→ How your executive functioning traits impact your financial patterns
→ What we can change quickly to increase your profits right off the bat
→ What systems will work for your brain, not against it
This is where you finally see that your brain was never the problem. Your systems are.
Step 2 - Together, we ready your numbers like a storybook.
But neurodivergent brains don’t always connect to numbers that way.
You don’t need spreadsheets. You need a story your brain can follow.
Here, you get a Financial Dashboard Packet every month, where making money becomes a fun choose-your-own adventure style book.
It includes visual, colorful, and understandable breakdowns of your month-by-month revenue and expenses, profit, owners pay, and financial goals.
Not endless spreadsheets with lines of numbers your eyes just glaze over.
No random percentages you don’t know what to do with then feel guilty about ignoring.
And while yes, your monthly dashboard is pretty, it doesn’t mean anything if your brain doesn’t know what the numbers mean.
That’s why it’s written in plain English (no jargon), and no shame when you have questions about what it all means for your money.
It’s how we turn: “Where did all my money go?” into “Ohhh, I see exactly what’s happening now.”
You’ll finally be able to look at your numbers and feel informed instead of overwhelmed.
Most money advice teaches you to look at your numbers like a math problem.
But neurodivergent brains don’t always connect to numbers that way.
You don’t need spreadsheets. You need a story your brain can follow.
Here, you get a Financial Dashboard Packet every month, where making money becomes a fun choose-your-own adventure style book.
My client Delia (name change!) started working with me over a year ago - and her dream is simple.
She wants to do what she loves, and wants to make money to support herself while doing it.
But her simple dream turned into a nightmare when every month she just never managed to make enough money.
She tried for over a year to just make more money for her business, doing everything she could to market to her community and to convince people to try out her services short of giving them away for free.
But her problem wasn’t making money, it was in spending it.
During our first month together, I showed Delia what supplies, subscriptions, and fees she needed to cut out and why. Her average monthly expenses could be cut in HALF and she wasn’t even aware that was an option.
After she did that, she had her first profitable month in half a year. Not because she made more money, but she made more informed purchasing decision with the money she had
So how do you do this for yourself:
Step 1: get real about where your money is currently going in your business. What can you cut out? Slash those things ASAP. Profit is more important than anything else in business, and anyone telling you differently is trying to sell you something out of your price range.
Step 2: know your baseline budget - the bare minimum you need to pay yourself to cover your current bills + business expenses (only what’s absolutely necessary for you to run your business) which helps you see where you are leaking your profits all over the place.
Step 3: make an easy-as-possible plan for you to reach where you want to be. This looks different to every person because what’s easy for someone is someone else’s worst nightmare (yay polarity of executive functioning skills!)
And I know you are reading this saying “If it was that simple, everyone would be a millionaire” and you’d be right.
It takes persistence. It takes dedication. It takes determination.
But it doesn’t take perfection.