Meet Natalie Spautz

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Sed ut perspiciatis unde.

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Natalie Spautz. Natalie was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Emma Tuthill.

Natalie, can you walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Hi, I’m Natalie Spautz. I’m a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with specialization in financial therapy and couples therapy. I’m also an anti-oppressive financial coach for private practice professionals. I run two businesses in part because they are very different services, but also I wanted to create a community space for small business owners to work on their relationship to money as well as create sustainable, supportive financial systems in their practices. I use an anti-oppressive approach to financial coaching which means we look at systemic influences like capitalism, patriarchy and racism in how they shape our experiences as a small business owner and our overall financial socialization.

My journey in arriving to my financial coaching practice has been a windy, sporadic and eventually cohesive process as I have woven together all kinds of experiences, professional and personal, to create both a specific niche as well as find a much larger purpose beyond myself and connected to the collective well-being of our greater society and economy.

Understanding that I myself have both had highly privileged experiences like only accepting paid positions outside my graduate program during my psychotherapist intern years, as well as highly challenging barriers like struggling with an internalized devaluation of my own labor and time and blocks to marketing, charging a livable wage and believing in myself.

I came to learn through speaking to hundreds of colleagues and acquaintances, in addition to reflecting on my own experience, that so many people who run their own business struggle with internal and external blocks to financial wellness. There are so may pitfalls, so many challenges, and so many skills required to run a sustainable business and do something as simple as break even when it comes to profit.

Making a living off of a service or product you created yourself can be the culmination of so much inner work for many of us who were raised to believe that our industry/career/type of work isn’t very valuable or that who we are and aspects of our identity aren’t valued in our society. It takes a lot of determination, support, strength, focus, faith and energy to push back against these ideas both internally and externally.

I aim to keep offering resources to my communities, to create many connections and to offer mutual support to those who need it. I’m inspired particularly because it really invigorates me to know that so many people out there are doing something amazing, something they believe in and something that really does make our world that much better.

As I continue to grow my coaching practice, I aim to offer more and more value as well as promote connectivity in the world. We underestimate the power of connecting in our relationships, and I hope to help create that as central to how we do business with one another so that we don’t lose track of our impact, and our responsibility to each other collectively and to the Earth upon which we rely heavily to sustain.

Please tell us more about your brand, Private Practice Money™
Private Practice Money™ is a financial coaching business that offers anti-oppressive support to small business owners. It’s an offering inspired by previous workshops I used to run for fellow psychotherapists and informed by my training as a financial therapist as well as a business owner of nearly a decade. I offer workshops, groups, as well as one-on-one coaching all with an anti-oppressive emphasis. What sets me apart from others is my tenacity to keep learning about money, systems that impact our finances and how to help people get clear in their relationship to money first so that they can better run their businesses with self awareness and confidence. I am reading books, taking courses, having deep conversations, writing and engaging with people around systemic issues as well as ethical business practices. I’m most proud of being an inclusive brand that really welcomes people of all backgrounds. I do not promote business practices that harm others or harm the business owner or employees. There are so many financial professionals out there who really see no problem with overworking themselves or pricing people out of accessibility or diverting financial support from local communities. There’s also a long history in our country of financial information being kept by wealthy people and that vital information made inaccessible to working class or minoritized people. I’m proud of offering free quarterly workshops, free online groups and a range of services that are not limited to a high ticket/larger investment option but instead customizable, approachable and wide reaching. What strikes me most about my journey in becoming a financial coach is that while many of us have associated money with high levels of stress, fear, guilt, shame and other intense negative emotions, money in itself as a tool and helpful financial skillsets are actually quite easy. If you can do some basic math, work a spreadsheet and have a compound interest calculator you can go far! I believe everyone has a right to become financially well and deserves access to the information that will help them not just survive in our system but become more well and stable. I make sure to relay that to people I connect with and who I support.

So, as we mentioned to our audience earlier, you were introduced to us by The Brand Anthropologist LLC and we really admire them and what they’ve built. For folks who might not be as familiar, can you tell them a bit about your experience with The Brand Anthropologist LLC.
Emma has been a joy to work with. I have worked with a couple other web designers in the past and in my experience, she’s the most communicative and supportive person I have met to date.

Every step of the way, I felt connected and understood in my vision for my business and my brand.

A colleague gave me her name as a first introduction and when I saw her portfolio, how she spoke about her business and her work, I could see not just how talented she was but also how much she genuinely enjoyed what she does.

Being able to connect and speak to people directly is such an important part of my job, if not the whole point of what I do as a coach and therapist. And so I can easily recognize this skill as well when I see it!

While I understand she re-branded not so long ago, her connection to anthropology and looking at people and the businesses they run through a lens of inquiry, empathy and getting to the heart of the matter really spoke to me. The way she doesn’t seem to be afraid of breaking the status quo, and the genuine enthusiasm she has for creating the art she does really resonated with me too. I don’t know many designers out there who offer such artistic skill and vision in their website development.

I had bits and pieces of my brand and even my business structure in mind when we first started, and somehow through the incredible collaboration we shared, I left our process feeling more clear, invigorated, focused and very ready to call new customers in. In essence, I feel that I became more myself and even more authentic through our branding and website creation. It isn’t just a website either, it became about creating an online space for people to genuinely learn about me, who I am and also my offerings.