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Last Tuesday found me driving through pounding rain with my husband, on the 1.5 hour drive from Brooklyn to Lakewood, NJ. We were heading to an in person meeting with our financial therapist, Simi Mandelbaum.
Agenda of the day? To play a game called Money Habitudes.
For years, my husband and I struggled with getting our finances straight. We hired a few financial advisors, but none of them could figure us out.
No matter what we did, we always seemed to end up in the same place, revisiting the same conversations, the same tension, the same feeling that this is hopeless, something is wrong with us.
One told us to do the envelope system - take out cash, divide it into envelopes per category, and only spend what's in the envelope. And tried to sell us financial products that we didn't really need.
Did it work? You wish.
Another one set us up with multiple accounts, and tried to squeeze our living expenses down to the very bare minimum, and discouraged us when we tried to focus on increasing our income rather than scraping our pennies. The message felt very clear: this is the only “right” way to do things, and if you can't do it, you're the problem.
We gave up and just coasted along for years. Life moved forward, but this stayed unresolved in the background. We felt like failures because the standard advice that seemed to work for everyone did absolutely nothing for us. The advisors everyone "highly recommended" couldn’t offer anything beyond the same cookie-cutter monthly budgeting they gave every other client.
Because our brains just aren’t built for rigid systems. We’re creatives to the core. Pattern-spotters. Idea-weavers.
And the inflexibility and harshness of most budgeting systems just didn't work for us.
For years, we thought that meant we just ‘weren’t money people.’ But what we really needed was a system built for brains like ours — one that translated our creativity into clarity and ROI.
It wasn't a tactics problem.
It wasn’t lack of effort (we pored over Excel sheets for hours!).
It wasn't a failure on our part.
It was a complete disconnect between our internal reality and their system.
Simi was the first one who really, really got it.
She didn't try to fix us or force us into a system. She didn’t talk down to us. She didn’t tell us to be more disciplined or try harder.
She understood this wasn't about numbers and budgets, but about our relationship with money, and how our brains are wired.
Simi didn’t hand us a spreadsheet and say, “Be more disciplined.”
She asked better questions. Questions that uncovered why we were stuck, not just where the numbers were off. She named things we'd never said aloud that stood at the core of our financial impasse. She empowered us to feel like we COULD do this, that our brain wiring could be an asset instead of a liability.
And that’s what finally drove real change.
No, we’re not millionaires yet. But for the first time, we can see the potential to get there. For the first time, we have hope. For the first time, we have customized, practical, baby steps we can take today that actually move the needle instead of draining our energy.
Over the last week, I’ve been having conversations with several brand owners on my list, and I keep hearing this exact same pattern.
Stuckness.
They’re doing what they’re “supposed” to do. The officially tried-and-true tactics.
They hire SEO guys.
They post on Instagram.
They send emails.
They run ads.
But nothing really takes. The advice technically makes sense, but it doesn’t fit how their ideal customers think and act in the real world. Because many marketing tactics follow rigid systems that assume all brands and customers are built in a similar way.
Have you ever felt like the advice you paid for technically made sense, but somehow never worked for you? Like your brand is the outlier, stuck in the sidelines watching others take off while you never get to that "we've made it!" moment?
If any of this hits home, I’d love to hear what’s been most frustrating for you in your marketing lately. What have you tried that was officially ‘right’ but still didn’t change the sales numbers?
This isn’t a disguised pitch - I promise! I really just want to hear what's going on for you.
I want to do for you what Simi did for us.
I want to solve the gaps I keep seeing for brand owners with limited marketing budgets, especially around how marketing advice is often either too hard to execute properly OR doesn’t translate to real ROI.
And the more I understand what’s actually tripping you up, the more I can create solutions that are actually useful and move the needle for you.
And as a small thank-you: I’m running a Chanukah Giveaway. If you reply with even a sentence or two, you’ll be entered to win one of these services:
I’m giving away one of the following:
– Email Infusion (opt-in funnel + welcome sequence)
– Announce It! (ad campaign)
– Name Game (brand or product name + tagline)
– Power Up (home or landing page copy)
(Winner will be chosen on Monday.)
So hit reply!
Air your frustrations,
Chavy