Meet Juilet Odhiambo, a personal finance coach living in Kenya using her professional and academic experience to educate and empower people with skills that make their money work for them through audiovisual content. 

Tell us about yourself

I call myself a teacher of money. I create a lot of content on money and how it affects our lives to teach people skills required to make and manage money. I am a big advocate for financial literacy and personal finance management. 

So why money? 

Many years back, I was employed in a bank and volunteered to talk to people about money as part of our community engagement. My team and I would go to different places like schools, organisations, and the like to train people on personal finance and money management.

When the time came for me to change paths, I felt very strongly that I should stick to money. As a finance professional, I knew the system. I understood the system. I understood the available products where many people didn’t. I decided to become a buffer between money (its institutions, policies and products) and people who use cash. 

Why did you change paths? 

I had reached a point where I wanted something different. I had regular conversations with God about my purpose and He made it clear that the work He wanted me to do had to exist within the structure of a business. It reached a point where I couldn’t stay with my employer any more. It literally felt like I was being spewed out by the system and things aligned well enough for me to say that I left under my own terms with enough funds to sustain me while building my business.

What was transitioning like? 

Changing paths was not easy. No one knew me or my skills and expertise so no one sought my services. This is where social media came in as it helped me reach more people with information they needed and to position myself as a money guide. My content was about the mistakes people were making so that they could see themselves in my content and get the help they needed. I played the long game. The first 18 months of content creation on Instagram didn’t result in a single client but I knew what I had to offer was needed. I’m glad I stuck with the plan.

How did that go? 

The first thing I did was go for training. My main goal was to learn how to run a business and create content that people would be drawn to. Within the first six months, I created a strategy for my business and started posting content on Instagram

As a finance coach, I knew that most people didn’t even understand the words, “financial literacy” so I created digestible content on topics I felt people needed to understand to get them to get their attention and start thinking about their finances differently. This caught the attention of a few people and the rest, they say is history. 

What is it like creating content on personal finance?

The content I make is just to catch people’s attention and it takes about 20% of my day. Once the content is out there, I help individuals who want to take it to the next level through one-on-one coaching sessions or webinars. This is what I spend the bulk of my time doing. 

Through these conversations, I help people create personal finance plans that they can stick to to create a healthy relationship with money. Right now, I have a free guide that helps people see that they might have an unhealthy relationship with money and I’m looking to add more useful resources like that. 

What’s your favourite thing about your work?

My favourite thing is being able to see the change happening in people after our sessions. Most times people come to me confused, unsure of where to start so being able to help them out is a big deal to me. I love that so much about the work that I do.

I also love that people tell me that my content is so relatable it feels like I’m a fly on a wall in their living room. This means I understand the people I’m serving. I’m big on helping people shift the way they think about money, going beyond numbers to depths they never imagined. 

What are some of the challenges that you experienced during your work? 

Trying to be authentic with my content is tedious work but I do it anyway. It’s easy to get into the cycle of simply creating and posting content, but it’s not productive. What I want is to change people’s mindset around money so sometimes it’s hard to create that balance. 

But over time, I have learned to be very strategic about the kind of content I create and how often and how frequently I create so that I’m able to stay sane. 

What’s the one tip you give to people just starting with managing their finances? 

First, you need to understand your relationship with money. Why do you behave the way you do around money? Why do you spend so much or so little?

Sometimes people think their behaviour around money is problematic and then try to fix it. Some introduce budgets or investment plans but none of them yield the intended results. This is why I also ask people to think about their lives deeply before proceeding with any quick fixes. Learn to look at money as a tool. This means it has work to do. What job are you assigning it and is there a plan in place to achieve it? It all starts with a little introspection. 

Another tip for understanding your relationship with money is to think of money as your friend. How often do you touch it? How often do you talk to it? How often do you engage with it? You can tell when you have an unhealthy relationship with someone when you start asking these questions. This will bring some clarity and some progress can be made. 

Learn more about managing your finances as a creator in our ebook with PiggyVest.