169: From Six-Figure Debt to Financial Freedom with Dr. Upchurch

Debt can feel overwhelming, especially when it reaches six figures. But what if you could turn that debt into financial confidence and security? In this episode of Better Brave, I sit down with Dr. Upchurch, a money coach and physician who helps professional women eliminate massive debt and build long-term wealth.

Dr. Upchurch’s own financial transformation began in medical school when she recognized she was repeating unhealthy money habits she had witnessed growing up. Determined to change her future, she immersed herself in financial education, attended conferences, and developed a strategy that allowed her to pay off $100,000 in just seven months. Now, she coaches women through their own financial breakthroughs, helping them shift their mindset, take control of their money, and increase their net worth.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Breaking generational money patterns and creating new financial habits
• The importance of financial confidence and how to build it
• Why one-on-one coaching can accelerate your wealth journey

Connect with Dr. Upchurch:
📌 Instagram: @camillemoneycoach
🌐 Website: Coach Personal Finance

Tune in now to learn how to shift your financial future! 🚀

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome back to the show. Today I have a special guest, Dr. Camille Upchurch. She's a money coach and physician. Her specialty is in helping people get out of debt fast and also managing their money so that they can build their own wealth. We just had a great conversation about finances and how you can improve yours, work on your mindset, and really build that wealth that we all want in our business and life. All right. Welcome back, everybody. I'm super excited to have Dr. Camille on today. Why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself, give us a snapshot about what you do and who you help?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

I'm a life coach and a money coach, and I work with professional women, a lot of times professional women in healthcare, but I work with women who are trying to build wealth. A lot of the women in my community have debt. They're trying to conquer debt. And so I help them with that. I'm a physician. I still work as a physician, but my personal money journey was so empowering that it really left me with like this calling to just help any other woman who's ready for that transformation into having confidence with her money and knowing what to do and you know being well with it to help those women along.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yes, I love that. Being that you're a money coach, tell me what are some of the most common mistakes you see people making in their entrepreneurial careers and life when it comes to money?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I think people get scared and so they don't look at it. And so some of the people that I'm working with, that is where they are. They're like avoidant because they are intimidated about the money conversation, because of some unnecessary messages that we get from society. I have been there too where I had a lot of debt, didn't know what I was doing, doing everything wrong, and carried a lot of shame and embarrassment. When women don't feel confident, they're not exactly sure what they're doing with their money, depending on where they are with their journey. For some, it can be an isolating experience because generally we're not running around going, oh, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I don't know what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

You think that things will be better if you just don't look at it, but that is not the case. So when we do take that first step and we look at our money, what's your first advice or tips that someone can start? What are they looking for and where can they kind of start?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

So I truly believe that wherever you are in your money journey, and this is going to come across, depending on who's receiving the message, come across as maybe like a cliche, I don't know. But wherever you are in your money journey is exactly the place that you are supposed to be. I personally had a you know an experience where I was done with medical school. I had hundreds of thousands in debt. I was kind of practicing money the way my mom taught me. She was very educated, but no financial literacy really. So I'm like in medical school, literally hiding from creditors, not wanting to answer the phone, not knowing how to save. I started my first job as a doctor, calling my babysitter, asking her to save my money. My now husband, I was dating him at the time, he overheard the conversation when I got off the phone. He's like, that is the weirdest thing. Like, why would you ask your sister to save for you? And I think for me, that was one of the first glimpses into my like total lack of confidence and completely just giving away my power when it came to my money. So going from there, after a long time, lots of books, lots of gurus, lots of podcasts, trying all the things, I got to a place where I'm like, oh, you know, I hit the rhythm, I found the thing, the strategy. And, you know, that journey for me, although I was in a place of embarrassment and shame, not knowing, that was exactly the journey that I needed to teach me the things I needed to learn to get into where I am. Where one can start is just taking a look. And that might look different ways for different folks. It may mean glancing at your bank statement, just looking at it, looking at each line without without judgment. That can be very hard to do. But just looking at it, look at where you spent your money, and then, you know, is that where you intended to spend it? Is that how you want to spend your money? If it is, great place to start. If it is not, great place to start. For another person, it might be a budget. Those are different ways to take a look at your money.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Okay. Now, how important is mindset? We've touched on it a little bit already, but mindset when it comes to our money, and how can someone start improving specifically their money mindset?

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Mindset is everything, everything. And I say it that way because we don't accomplish anything intentional without a thought about it. You know, we might believe that the stuff we do, brushing our teeth, whatever, like, yeah, I don't even think about that stuff anymore. I have a habit, true. But it started off with very intentional things, then it got wired, then it became a habit. You know, our brains are really efficient, it became subconscious. So, how you think about money, the place that you're coming from in your brain, is very powerful. And sometimes the results you have tell you the most about what you're thinking if you're not even aware of what you're thinking. Practicing things that give you some awareness around your money mindset is very useful. And some of the basic things that anybody can do is just asking yourself, what am I thinking about my money today and writing it down? How do I feel about my wealth today? Writing it down.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Getting more intentional and almost taking a quick pause. I know I preached this with my people just like to avoid burnout and things, but I didn't really think about using it to be applied to finances, but that makes total sense. I also liked what you said earlier about is that where you intended to spend your money? Do you want to elaborate on that more and those intentions and what it's like to be more intentional with money?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Money coaching is cool for me because the money part is very, very easy. It is math and it's on changing and it's simple. That's money. Money is math. But there is this people part, the interesting, juicy part that we bring as humans with our brains. And, you know, I call it money drama, but it's just what our brains do, the stories we attach to the money. You know, when you look at your bank statement, if you're not in a habit of making an intentional plan for your money before you get your money, if that's not a habit that you practice, you'll find that you're spending the money anyway. After the fact, you can do an autopsy, look at the bank statement, and see where the money went. And you can then ask yourself, you know, is this in alignment with what I want? If I'm a person who I like taking a lot of exciting trips and I like to do adventurous outdoorsy things, and I look at my bank statement and it's a lot of eating out and a lot of going to the movies, that might not be jiving with in alignment with what I want to use my money for. And so just being you know clear on that, and it can be very simple, it's not like a real elaborate thing, but when you look at your spending, is that what you would like to spend it on? And then from there you can move to a place of intentionality. What do you want to spend it on? And then maybe next month you can make a plan. Some people call it a budget of how you want to spend that money. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yes, that makes sense. You mentioned money stories. Can you share a few common ones just to help people maybe start to identify theirs if they're not so aware yet?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

I think of money stories as very personal and unique. And you can start to learn what your own money story is by just figuring out where you learn about money from. Whatever you think about money, money is good, money is bad, money is neutral. Money is a tool. There is never enough money. There's always more coming. Money flows through my life like a river. Whatever it is that you think about money, where did that come from? In my case, um, as I mentioned earlier, my mom taught me like all things. You know, she came at money with scarcity. Grew up in Jamaica, so did I, till I was 12. But for her, there was always never, never enough. It was never enough. And so my money story at the beginning was rooted in being at my mom's heels. She's going to relatives and friends, as she called it, begging, you know, asking for more because she was out of money before the month was done. Watching how that impacted her and her dignity really informs the passion at which I go at helping women with their money.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

I know you've talked on, I've seen on your social media and other places about how even people, women with high income, they still hang on to a lot of debt. Why is that? And if that's someone listening, what can they do to start improving that?

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Sure. So I think this is one of the things that made me pick this niche as a physician because when I was done training, you know, with doctors, this weird thing happens to us where we finish medical school and then we start working actually as a doctor with a degree, but we are still training in something called a residency that can be anywhere from three years to five years, and we're making money. But then when we're done with that residency, and we start working as a full-fledged doctor, not under any supervision, our money it just goes up crazy. You go from, you know, making a few tens of thousands to a couple hundred thousand or more. And whatever you know about money is gonna go with you. And it might seem to some um that if I make a lot, money shouldn't be a problem. And it's under that veil that a lot of people, I'll use the word suffer, but like they're having money problems. But but who are you gonna tell? Like, I make $300,000, but I, you know, have $500,000 worth of debt. Uh like who who's gonna be crying with you, right? But um the money thing is, you know, we all hear these stories in the media and that are highly publicized and NBA stars who are bankrupt, people who have really high income who go bankrupt multiple times because it's about what is coming in, yes, but it's also about what is going out. If you have a layer of intention on your money and what you're doing with your money, nobody, mostly nobody, intends to spend more than they have access to. But lots of people do that all the time, and so I think that's where you know, being intentional, making a plan, and going at it too with a lot of kindness and compassion to yourself, it can be a very an awesome journey where you end up, you know, giving, spending, enjoying life and having money as a tool to do that.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

I talk a lot about systems on this show, especially for my solopreneurs or people that just need to reclaim their time in their life. Is there a system that you use in your business and maybe it has to do with money, maybe it doesn't, that you can share with us?

SPEAKER_01 11:15

I think I have a couple of systems that I use, but to be honest with you, I know that my systems in my business need to get betterer because that's a word. So I use notions AI. It's actually something that I just became familiar with. When I'm making content for social media, I will put it in notions and kind of move it along. I start off with an idea that comes to me, like this might be something that my audience needs to hear. And then as I flush it out and do scripting for what I'm gonna say on social media, all the way through editing it and publishing it, I move it to different areas on notions.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

That's one system that I use.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Nice. And I like that. I've actually used notions before too uh in a similar way. What do you have coming up in the spring that people could work with you? What would that look like if someone did work with you?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

So the main core of my business is one-on-one coaching. I work individually with women who want to kind of level up their money and move from where they are now to having a seven-figure portfolio, which is what I help women to do. I have a meetup group, and that's really all through the year: Professional Women's Debt Free Group. It's on meetup.com. And I just uh I talk about different money topics. So earlier this week we were talking about saving and investing. A week before that, we were talking about how to pay off credit card debt fast. Actually, in spring and March, it won't be spring, maybe it will be becoming spring. For the first time, I'm starting a quarterly book club in that meetup group. I just read um Darren Hardy's The Compound Effect The Compound Effect. I love that one. Yeah, and it really left an impression on me, and I could see the applicable, you know, how applicable it is to what you do with money. So I'm like, I'm gonna just you know start off chapters one and two and discuss that in my meetup group. So that's something I'm really looking forward to early March.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Excellent, perfect. Where can people connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 13:19

If you're struggling with your money and you don't know where the fun in money is, we need to talk. I am on at Camille MoneyCoach, all one word on Instagram. I'm also on LinkedIn. I have two profiles on LinkedIn, but the one that you're looking for is Camille of ChurchMD, Life Coach. The other one is my doctor profile, not so helpful if you've got money issues.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

Yes. Okay, and is there anything else that you wanted to share with the listeners about anything that's going on with you or tips or anything that we haven't touched on yet?

SPEAKER_01 13:53

You know, I do think that money is it is very neutral, as I kind of hinted at before. It's not a good thing, it's not a bad thing, it's about how we how we use it, how we experience it. And I do think that historically, the expectation and the norm is men got a handle on that. And for a lot of women, you know, for some reason, societally, it's not like the thing to be like, you know, I got the money thing, I'm I'm good with that. We show up at work, you know, in spaces where men show up, we do the same things, we work just as hard, you know, earn the paycheck, but when we get it, sometimes we're like, uh, what next? And I do think that it really helps to enrich whatever pursuits you have in life, whatever that is. If you happen to belong to a family, it helps the family. And I do think that when women are empowered around their money, that speaks into the communities where we live because of how we give and how we show up. And so I just want to create as many millionaires as I can. And I love talking money with women.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Oh, I love that. Yeah, such a good note to end on that you know, women especially were the caretakers of the world, and we're gonna do good things with our money. And also just to take out the, like you mentioned, take out the feelings and the judgment and all of that when we're looking at our finances. Just take it as information. So thanks so much for being on. And everybody listening, you guys can head to the show notes for all of the links to things that we talked about today. And uh, I'm just really grateful for our talk today. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Thank you, Candace. Thanks for having me.