Masculine & feminine money energies - with Rose Radford

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: Masculine & feminine money energies - with Rose Radford, published on 20th July 2026.

Welcome back to the Refreshing Leadership Podcast. Today we're diving into a conversation that I think a lot of people are going to find fascinating, because we're talking about money, wealth, ambition, business growth, and the very different energies that people can bring to all of those things.

More than a couple of years ago - probably about three years ago - I joined a business coaching programme with Rose Radford, and I'm still seeing the ripple effects of that decision years later. The team that I now have, the coaching community I'm part of, the way that I think about business and spaciousness, support, and even some of the language that I use around leadership and life design - so much of it was shaped by this business coaching. The curriculum that all of my clients now go through, which is now the Refreshing Leadership Framework, was also born through this business coaching. So it has been very powerful for me.

Rose has had a big influence on me. And one thing she introduced me to was this idea that we're going to talk about today - masculine and feminine money energies.

Now, if you come from a more corporate, analytical, or financial background like I do and like many of my clients, this language can initially feel a little bit unfamiliar, a bit woo-woo. I studied economics, worked in finance, did the CFA, and nobody talked about energy, receivership, abundance, nervous system responses to money, scarcity, or intuition. And yet I have now seen how these subconscious patterns really do play out and shape our wealth and our wealth journeys.

In this conversation, Rose and I talk about masculine versus feminine money energies, why people stay stuck at certain income levels, the idea of energetic set points around money, receiving versus constricting, and intuition versus control.

I personally am more of a believer in all of this, because I do feel that by starting that business coaching journey with Rose, I invited more abundance into my life very quickly. Whichever stage of business, work, or career you're in, I think this is going to be a really interesting lens for thinking about ambition, money, and growth.

Rose has influenced me in so many ways. She helped turn this podcast into a solid and profitable part of my business. The masterclass she gently encouraged me to create has become one of my paid signature corporate talks, and the last two words of the year I've talked about on this podcast - spacious and supported - both come straight from Rose. The team I now have, and the circle of other women I get to connect with, also came from that time. I have so much gratitude towards Rose.

When I wanted to have a conversation around money and wealth, it needed to be just the right person - credible, somebody who is role-modelling that stuff. What Rose is brilliant at is combining a brilliant strategic mind with an abundance mindset on another level. That's why I wanted to have her on.

Rose, thank you so much for being here. I'm going to hand over to you to introduce yourself in your own words.

Rose: Thank you so much for that gorgeous intro, and thank you for having me. As way of background, I started out as a strategy consultant at McKinsey. I lasted the typical two years that most of us do, and then started my own business at the age of 25. I made my first million in cash received before 30 - it took a little while, but got there in the end. Some other things I could mention: I was the youngest female entrepreneur to be invited to mastermind with Sir Richard Branson on Necker Island in 2022, and we've helped hundreds, if not thousands, of entrepreneurs over the last few years. Business coaching is probably the best way to describe what I do, though online marketing, sales, and business growth is really my jam. So yes, thank you so much for the opportunity to be a guest.

Maya: You've recently started a new podcast - your second, right? The Millionaire Girl Next Door?

Rose: It's actually my third podcast. I've written one book and started three podcasts, which suggests I like to talk more than I write. But yes, it is indeed another podcast I've created.

Maya: What was the one before Grow to CEO?

Rose: That was Building Businesses with Rose Radford. That was a child of COVID - during a very bored Christmas period where we weren't allowed to go anywhere, I thought, screw it, I'll start a podcast on my own. It was a much smaller project at the time, but you learn a lot from those first projects.

Maya: I think it speaks to your energy, which is quite experimental and playful - you're very happy to give something a go, test it, let it serve its part in your business or your journey, and then say, "Actually, it's time for something different." I've enjoyed watching that with you, whereas I just stick doggedly to mine and carry on no matter what.

So, we're here to talk about money and finance. One of the things I've heard you talk about on your podcast is masculine versus feminine money energies. That got my attention. Can you break that down for listeners?

What are masculine and feminine money energies?

Rose: It's such a juicy question. Let's start with the big picture of masculine and feminine first, and then apply that to money.

Masculine energies are generally more structured and goal-orientated. If you were being sold to by someone in a masculine energy, they would be talking about the outcomes you're going to get, the amazing process, the ROI - very logic-based. Whereas feminine energy is much more intuitive, creative, and flowing. If you were being sold to by someone in a more feminine energy, they would be selling you based on the emotion and the feeling of purchasing. So the simplest way to put it: ROI versus emotional feeling.

You can then apply that to how we interact with money. You'll be able to identify where you are being more in your masculine and where you are being more in your feminine. Some people are much more extreme on one end, and others sit more in the middle.

I'll give you an example of a very extreme feminine energy with money. I have a beautiful friend who is very much in her feminine, and she had a dream about 18 months ago that she needed to buy Bitcoin.

She put all of her cash at the time - a chunk of money from a house she'd sold - into Bitcoin. At that point, the price was about $30K. As we're recording this, Bitcoin is approaching $100K. So in 18 months, she has more than tripled her money. She didn't take any financial advice. She just had a dream and had a feeling that was what she needed to do. That's off the end of the spectrum when it comes to feminine energy - very trust and intuition based.

Whereas a masculine approach to that would be more research-bound, looking at the numbers, looking at the charts, and then making a decision from there.

Maya: I'm so pleased you used the Bitcoin example. As you've described that, I definitely resonate more with the masculine energy as a starting point. Those of us who are more logical, intellectual thinkers tend to need evidence first before we can take action. My argument is that I can become intuitive once I have a little evidence - I just need that starting point. I think that would resonate with a lot of listeners who have a corporate or financial services background.

Even when I talk about things like vision boards or manifestation, I still get challenged. That's why this is such an important topic - because we can get stuck in one energy.

You've made it clear that any individual, whether they identify as male or female, can embody different energies, and it can vary across different areas of their life.

Receiving versus constricting

Maya: I've heard you mention that feminine energy can be more about surrender and receivership. Can you go down that route a little bit?

Rose: Absolutely. Receiving is actually a feminine thing to do. So if you're not being in your feminine with money, you're not fully accessing your capacity to receive. That's why it's so important to be able to dance between the two. If you want to expand your ability to receive, you've got to expand your ability to feel comfortable being in the feminine.

I notice this with my husband - he is terrible at receiving a massage, for instance, because he's very much in his masculine a lot of the time. Looking at it in a non-money context helps you see where you are more in your feminine or masculine in different areas of life.

I love to play in both. I probably plan and vision a little bit in the masculine, because I can have an idea of what's possible and what I'm going to create. But on a day-to-day basis, I'm much more in my feminine - I'll go based on how I'm feeling, follow a thread of inspiration, but always refer back to the rough plan, and be okay to change it a little too.

I don't think I'm confident enough to put all my money on Bitcoin based on a dream. But the reason my friend could do that is because she must have had so many times in which her intuition was right. She must have had so much evidence built up that her intuition was always leading her in the right direction, that she was confident enough to make that bet. She already had evidence - it was just evidence of her intuition working for her, which is another form of evidence.

Your ability to dance between the two gives you an advantage over people who end up at the extremes. There's no good or bad between these two things, but what does create problems is being too extreme on one end or the other.

Maya: When we talk about being able to receive, what does that look like in practice? You coach many people every week - what might be an example of somebody who's not in their receiving energy?

Rose: I see this pattern quite often. The people who are more in their masculine, who haven't really got into the receivership part of femininity yet, are the ones who will just do, do, do and keep doing and expect the result to come. They are so focused on the action and the doing that it creates a sense of constriction. I can almost feel it in them - they're waiting for the result because they've done everything and they deserve it, and it's this feeling of almost scarcity-driven constriction.

All they need to do is let go a little bit, recognise that they've done everything they can do, and release - then allow space for the money, the clients, or whatever they've been trying to create to flow in.

If you end up too much in your masculine, you constrict the situation. Even if you achieve the outcome you want, you also constrict the possibility of the outcome. So you might be working towards creating 100K in revenue for your business that year, but if you were to dance more between the feminine and masculine at the same time, you could probably create 200K or 250K by allowing space for other possibilities and opportunities to come in.

Maya: That resonates with me. The year I worked with you was quite intensive - there was a really cool amount of stuff we did that I don't think I would have done on my own at that pace. The following year, for me, was my feminine energy - letting it all breathe and letting it all transpire. I think for people doing any of this type of work, sometimes it's a year later that they can really experience the benefits of what they embarked on, because of that space. Whereas others in the programme were straight onto their next programme and the next, because that's their way. For me, I couldn't have imagined that - I needed the marination, and that was my receiving time.

Energetic set points around money

Maya: I had a question from somebody who heard I was talking to you. She feels she is very much in her feminine energy when it comes to money - if she loses a client, she's not in a place of fear, and somehow a new client falls into her lap. She feels she's in a very positive space, but that it keeps her in a holding pattern. She's almost in that energy too much. What would you say to her?

Rose: My understanding is that she's happy where she's at, but she's in the same place all the time and not able to raise her income. There are two ways I'd look at this.

The first would be asking what it is she's scared of losing by growing her business. Let's say she's getting two new clients a month and losing two clients a month - what's her goal? If the goal is five new clients a month, what is she scared of that's going to happen if she achieves that? What would it come at the cost of? Family life? Or is she afraid of being judged for making so much money, or making more than her parents ever did? That's where I'd start.

The second part leads on to what I call an energetic set point with money. If everyone listening right now opened their banking app and looked at where their money typically sits at the beginning and end of the month over the last six to twelve months, they'd probably notice they hit a certain high - let's say 10K in the current account - and then a certain low - say 5K - and just bounce between the two the whole time. Because when you hit the high, you think, "Ooh, that's a lot of money, I think I can go shopping," and when you're down at 5K, you think, "I need to stop spending so much." And you just get used to that energetic set point.

The same thing happens with salaries. It's why so many entrepreneurs go from earning 100K in their corporate life, start a new business, and create 100K in revenue in the first year - because that's the amount of money they're used to seeing and having.

So I'd dig into what the average amount she's making per month or per quarter is, then ask what it would look and feel like to double that - and ask all those questions again about what's the blocker, what's she scared of.

I'll give you a practical example. A friend of mine did this exercise and realised that if she hit her income goal, she'd already agreed with her husband that he would get to go on a ski trip that month. But she didn't want to be left at home with three kids while he went away for the weekend. That's a silly example, but it's those kinds of things we're unconsciously resistant to that stop us from creating the income we want. Bringing awareness to it means you can shift it.

Maya: That's great. What you're highlighting is that sometimes in that feminine energy, we're unintentionally blocking ourselves and haven't yet done the work of understanding what's in the way. Once that blocker is removed, and there's alignment all the way through - because a goal has knock-on effects, and if we haven't thought all of that through, our body already knows and stops us, even if our conscious mind just thinks the thing we want isn't happening. Have you seen examples of when people remove that blocker and it makes all the difference?

Rose: Hugely. I'll give you a really practical example - this happened to me, probably around August 2022. At the time, I had an evergreen funnel built that was producing a very consistent amount of sales, money, and clients every single month. I didn't tweak the funnel at all over those couple of summer months. I went and did all of the work around money - expanding my capacity to receive, some trauma work, some subconscious work. And the funnel increased in its revenue and sales in the following month, as a direct reflection of what I was happy to receive as a human into the business.

That really did blow my mind, given how consistent the funnel had been, and given that August is generally a quieter month - not normally the month people are buying high-ticket business coaching programmes.

Maya: So when our energy gets cleared up - and I've just had a feng shui expert on the podcast talking about energy clearing - when we start to work through that stuff, things shift without us pressing a single button or doing a single thing. Is that what we're saying, Rose?

Rose: Yes, and we can also make this really practical. If an intimidating-looking client were to inquire about working with me, before doing that internal work I would have backed away - "Oh, she's got so many Instagram followers, she's clearly so much better than me." That kind of thing. We always look at people, prejudge them based on their accolades or background, and think, "They're never going to want to work with me," or "I'm not good enough" - even unconsciously. And so what happens? You sabotage the sales process. You screw up the sales call. You don't reply when they've inquired. And even if you have an amazing sales call, if they're feeling a resistance in you - and we're all very intuitive beings, even if we don't always recognise it - they'll feel it. You can walk into any room and sense something is off. If that person is feeling something like that from you because you're feeling weird about potentially working with them, of course they're not going to sign up and pay the invoice.

So it works in very practical ways too. When I get an intimidating person inquiring to work with me now, I feel really excited and lean straight into it.

Maya: What would you say if you had fully leant in and you weren't giving off different energies and it didn't materialise? How would you rationalise that in the language of this conversation?

Rose: We can be in resistance to things just based on what our nervous system is used to. I remember a couple of years ago, three clients signed up within about 24 hours - that would have been at least 40K in revenue within a day - and I was freaking out. Clammy hands, heart racing, fight or flight. Like, how am I in fight or flight when all I've done is made 40K or more? But that was because my nervous system wasn't ready for it. So you may have gone all in on the sales process and done everything well, but still be in unconscious resistance to it, and I would never have known in advance that my body was going to react in that way. So yes, there can be sneaky sabotages.

Maya: I think I actually lose my feminine energy and I would get into a more masculine energy.

Rose: How does that show up?

Maya: I would then be talking in the language of logic and outcomes only, and I wouldn't allow some of those other feelings maybe to just be there in the space. Because if it's a level up, you're not familiar with occupying that space as much, so you don't have a default balanced energy. So then you go into the one that feels like easier to bring.

Rose: You just reminded me of something I learned to do on sales calls - sharing all the logic, all the process, everything the brain needs to hear, and then asking, "How does that feel?" Just switching straight into how they're receiving it. And if they share that they're scared of something or nervous, then holding space for that. It's difficult to do when you just want the client and you know they're great, to actually hold their emotions. But we do it as coaches - we know we can. It's just sometimes strange to bring that into the sales process too.

Giving money a purpose

Maya: Rose, where have you learnt some of this stuff around energy? There are a couple of books - things like The Energy Codes - and this idea that money has an energy to it, that money needs a purpose. A bit like the feng shui we've talked about recently on the podcast, it's about giving inanimate things an energy and a life. I'm curious about what you've done to educate yourself around that.

Rose: It's a weird concept, and yet I think sometimes we approach things in an almost too literal way. I also think that when we're struggling with money, we become more open to hearing other opinions on it. If what you've learnt so far isn't working for you, maybe there's another way of looking at it that works better.

This whole idea of money having a purpose really helped me at a point when I just couldn't keep cash in the bank. Cash sitting there without a purpose - if it's your emergency savings, great, it's got a purpose and it can chill. But if it's just sitting there, the temptation to spend it, or the way it just seems to fritter away somehow, or how you manifest a crazy bill or your car breaks down and the money disappears - that happens because the money didn't have a purpose.

So I gave it a purpose while it was still sitting happily in the bank as cash. I gave it the purpose of supporting me. Almost like it's a big hug, or like building blocks and walls holding me up - the foundations of a house. The money is there supporting me. It could be 100K in the bank with no other purpose than to sit there and support me, and that is enough of a purpose. That minor but major tweak has allowed me to hold so much more cash without accidentally frittering it away.

At the end of the day, whether there's science for it or not - if it works for you, it works for you. We don't have to have scientific evidence for it to have an impact on your life. It's like why people subscribe to religions. Is it because it makes them feel better day to day, less anxious, more hopeful? If that's what it does for them, great. That's kind of my approach towards it, despite any missing evidence.

Maya: I think it's really important that I'm having this conversation with you, somebody who has been my business coach and has helped many women with their businesses in tangible financial ways. This is not coming from somebody at one extreme end of the spectrum - it's coming from somebody with a really strong strategic mind. For me it matters that it comes from that perspective, and that it has also delivered results.

The financial education system doesn't do any of this. I studied economics, I did the CFA - nobody talks about the emotional language of money. In the stock market, they might talk about fear, greed, and regret, and that's about as far as it goes. This is definitely a second-round education when it comes to money, wealth, economics, and finance. We are given maybe 5% of what we need to know to really thrive financially. You've got to stay curious, and the moment you no longer want to learn about money is the moment you really limit yourself.

I also think that, a bit like healthcare, which has historically been informed by male bodies and male testing, this is another example of where a more feminine approach has been cut out. When it comes to things like scarcity mindset and abundance mindset, it's not always immediately obvious what a difference in mindset does - but over time it adds up, it affects your actions, it creates space, and it creates other opportunities.

Wrapping up on masculine and feminine money energies

Maya: Is there anything else that's come up for you in this conversation that you'd like to add before we close this part out?

Rose: One thing I want to make sure I share: because the feminine energy around money is more rare - we generally see people being masculine with money, because masculine is around control and planning, and that's what we're taught to do - we're less likely to see feminine energy being role-modelled to us. And the risk of being too feminine with money is that we almost lose control entirely. Being too trusting, too intuitive with money can cause real problems. Just being aware of that, and knowing you're always on a spectrum and that being able to dance across it will always help you more than trying to force your way one way or the other.

Maya: That's why I think coming back to the Bitcoin dream example - there are a lot of people, especially in the coaching world, who are hugely intuitive and sometimes really struggle from a business perspective because they're so focused on the intuition side. And even from that perspective, it's interesting to be able to say: if you naturally lean towards that end and it feels right to you, it can really serve you as long as you don't throw caution to the wind or completely ignore the other side.

Because I think that group of people can also say, "I'm really bad with money, it just doesn't make sense to me," and that becomes self-reinforcing. So the fact that there's such a positive side to that end of the spectrum that we'd all love to tap into is a nice message.

Rose: You're totally right.

Maya: All right. I've really enjoyed talking about the energies with you, Rose, and I look forward to diving into a few more topics in our next conversation. Thank you for joining me for this one.

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About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.