By Lesley Thomas
Every founder knows the first spreadsheet; the one filled with revenue forecasts, costs, funding goals, and profit margins. It’s precise, analytical, and measurable. But there’s another spreadsheet that rarely gets discussed; the one in your mind. It tallies pride, guilt, fear, and self-worth. It measures how safe you feel taking risks, spending, or even talking about money. One is financial. The other is emotional. And no business truly grows without both. Every financial decision in a startup passes through both spreadsheets. Yet, while most entrepreneurs obsess over financial data, few take time to understand the emotional data influencing those numbers. That silent imbalance is often what drives burnout, poor pricing, or chronic self-doubt in business.
The Hidden Data in Your Emotions
A spreadsheet is only as accurate as the data you enter. The same applies to your financial choices. When they’re powered by old emotional data, beliefs shaped by scarcity, fear of failure, or comparison, they distort outcomes. Many founders can build profitable businesses for others but struggle to feel comfortable paying themselves or charging their worth. They master cash flow, yet battle guilt around profit. That’s because the emotional spreadsheet carries hidden formulas about what’s “acceptable” for you to earn or deserve. Statements like “I’ll pay myself later” or “I just need to prove my value first” sound logical but are often emotional equations. When your emotional and financial spreadsheets don’t align, you experience tension, between what you know and what you feel.
Why Logic Alone Doesn’t Build Confidence
It’s tempting to think more data brings more control, more strategy, more spreadsheets, more forecasts. But financial knowledge alone doesn’t create confidence. If it did, every founder with a business plan would feel secure.
Confidence comes from congruence, when your internal beliefs and external strategies match. When your numbers reflect not just your ambition, but your alignment. Our emotional spreadsheets rarely start with us. They’re inherited, shaped by our families, culture, and past experiences. Maybe you grew up believing money was unstable, or that success required sacrifice. Perhaps you witnessed others work endlessly and subconsciously tied worth to exhaustion. But here’s the good news: once you notice those old formulas, you can rewrite them.
Balancing the Two for Sustainable Growth
When founders compare their two spreadsheets, they start seeing powerful patterns. Not just financial ones, but emotional ones. Times when overgiving masked fear, or when risk-aversion disguised self-doubt.
New questions start to surface:
“What emotion is driving this business decision?”
“Am I investing from confidence or from comparison?”
“Is this expense rooted in progress or in proof?”
This level of awareness shifts the entire startup journey. It transforms your relationship with money from reactive to reflective. It helps you spend with clarity and invest with calm. Today, many founders are quietly building this new kind of confidence, one grounded not in hustle, but in harmony. They’re rewriting their emotional spreadsheets, removing outdated formulas like “I must struggle to succeed.” And when they do, everything changes. Revenue stabilizes. Decision-making sharpens. Pricing feels fair, not fearful.
A Thought to Reflect On
If you opened your two spreadsheets today, the financial and the emotional, would they tell the same story? Maybe your bank balance says one thing, but your body feels another. That gap isn’t failure. It’s feedback. It shows you where your next upgrade lies; not in software, but in self-awareness. Imagine if every founder checked their emotional spreadsheet as often as their financial one. Instead of asking, “Can I afford this?” they might ask, “Do I feel aligned with this?” Because startups don’t just grow from strategy; they grow from the mindset behind it. When you balance both spreadsheets, money stops being a stressor and becomes a signal — one that reflects how congruent your business is with your values. The founders who learn this balance build not only profit, but peace.
Lesley Thomas is the founder of The Money Confidence Academy, author of Parents, Let’s Talk Money – if you’re not talking to your teen about it, who is? and host of the Let’s Talk Money and More podcast. With a Masters in Executive Coaching and Mentoring, Lesley is an accredited Money and Mindset Coach who helps ambitious women and parents transform their relationship with money, build financial self-trust and model confident money behaviour for the next generation. She is on a mission to make money confidence a life skill for every family.
