[00:00:01] Linzy: What costs you the most emotionally? Because as a therapist, your emotional energy is your main resource that you’re using. If there’s a task in the business that you find really draining and you just hate it, getting services and support to streamline that task is going to give you back your emotional energy. It’s going to give you back your time, and then that time and energy can be used either in your practice seeing another client, or it’s time and energy that can go back into your life.

[00:00:29] Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapist podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. Today we’re going to be doing something a little bit different. Rather than doing our Friday Feelings and Finances episodes this season, we’re going to do a couple of Tuesday episodes, this being the first.  So I’m going to answer a few listener questions today, and the first questions come from Edgar.

[00:01:12] Edgar: Hi, Linzy. My name is Edgar and I am a therapist based in Los Angeles. This is my second time asking you a question. I am a graduate of Money Skills for Therapists. It’s been about maybe six months since I’ve graduated and, before I ask my questions, I just want to share that my therapy practice is doing the best it ever has. This last month I made the most I’ve ever made in my practice and when I started Money Skills for Therapists, I had just transitioned from getting off insurance panels and starting to accept only cash payments. I raised my fee by a hundred dollars and was really nervous about my practice. I was like, am I going to make it?

[00:02:05] And I’m just so proud and happy to say that I’m on the other side of that. I have a full practice. I have a wait list, and I am the most comfortable I’ve ever been in my life, and so I just wanted to share that and share my gratitude and to say that I also have, you know, translated a lot of the skills that I learned in Money Skills for Therapists into my art business, and it’s really helped me get a handle of my finances in that business, and also help me have a lot more clarity in what I’m doing. And I think this is connected to one of the questions I wanted to ask you, which is, as I’ve opened up the Pandora’s box of business and marketing and you know, learning about finance, like I’ve really seen how deep that rabbit hole goes and how much there is to learn, and I’m always tempted to buy a new course or to learn a new technique, you know, or learn about a new strategy or to, you know, re-edit my website. There’s always something you could be doing and, you know, I’m curious for you, how do you find the balance between working in your business and working on your business?

[00:03:20] I know that you have a support team with you. I’m, I guess, speaking as a solopreneur, how do you find that balance or at what point do you know when you need to bring other people on? And then I guess the other question I have around this is when do you know you’re done learning? When do you know that you’ve learned enough to have a sustainable business, and/or is it a process of always learning? Is there always more to know or is there like a book or a resource that can give you a map of everything you should know to really be set up? Just curious about that. 

And then also I do have one more question that is more about maybe mindset or emotion, which is as I’ve grown my practices, my businesses, I’ve also grown my ability to be an advocate for myself and to really share the boundaries and standards that I have for my business and practice, and I definitely have a lot that comes up for me when I ask for more, when I advocate for myself or when I say no because, you know, people aren’t able to meet what I need, and I’m a queer person. I’m a person of color. I also come from a really low income family that never had their own businesses.

And so I just wanted to ask you from your own perspective or from what you know, what is helpful when you notice those voices come up that are really afraid or outraged or confused as to how you can be such an advocate for yourself? And yeah, it’s definitely something I’m pushing up against, but I wanted to see your thoughts, and again, I want to say thank you so much for everything you do in this world, for your work and for how much you help change people’s lives. As I’ve shared, your work has really, really been deeply impactful on my own, so thank you.

[00:05:18] Linzy: Well, first of all, thank you so much, Edgar, for that lovely, lovely message as well as your questions. We had had a contest to ask folks to submit questions for Feeling & Finances, and Edgar had won that contest by submitting their question. We also got to have a conversation, so some of these things we’ve actually got to talk about face-to-face, which was such a treat. And I’m excited to also talk about these questions here on the podcast, but thank you so much, Edgar, for also sharing your progress and your wins. It’s really just so exciting for me to see all that is happening for you because of the work that you’ve done in your finances. So let’s start with that first question about always having something to learn.

[00:05:59] How do we balance working in the business versus working on the business? So it is absolutely true that there’s always more to learn in business, especially when you’re a solopreneur and you’re wearing every single hat. Every area of the business has endless things that you could learn, and when you are the marketing department, when you are the actual service delivery, when you are the CEO and the CFO and the administrator,

[00:06:25] there are never ending things to learn in all of those roles because when you’re a solopreneur, you really are playing the operations manager role in every aspect of the business. So a really helpful thing to think about, Edgar, is what actually needs to be fixed at this time because truly, there’s probably a dozen courses we could take at any given moment that would be interesting and fun and might also speak to parts of us that have fear and feel not good enough and are maybe comparing and despairing to a colleague of ours who has an incredible Instagram feed or somebody else who has really great systems. There’s always things to be improving, so it’s helpful to stop and ground into what is actually a problem right now. Is there something that’s actually causing issues in the business?

[00:07:09] And part of being able to identify what is actually a problem in the business, is having the data to see what’s not working. So for instance if people are not contacting you. If you’re noticing, okay, I have no referrals, doesn’t sound like that’s where you are right now, Edgar. You know, you’re full and you have a wait list, but, as an example, you know, if you’re noticing that there’s no referrals coming into your business, then you can start to look into, well, what’s happening? Are people seeing your Psychology Today profile, if you have one up, or another directory? Are people landing there?

[00:07:40] If you make some tweaks there, do people start to contact you? Like, where are you losing people or where is the connection not happening? Starting to look at that as data. What is the information you have and what is that information telling you about what’s actually not working? So in this example, if you are getting people contacting you, but they’re not converting, right. They’re not sticking around. Then is the question of, well, what’s not working there? Are you attracting the wrong people? Is there something about the way that you’re having those conversations in your systems that needs to be improved? Those would be examples of focusing in on your marketing funnel and your lead funnel to see where the actual problem is.

[00:08:18] And once you identify an actual problem, so many of our problems, Edgar can actually be fixed without taking another course and maybe even without reading another book. Although I do love reading books, I will say that reading business books is a great way to get so many great ideas and have, just an endless flow of people’s wisdom and knowledge without having to pay a bunch for courses and commit a bunch of a time to courses. So it’s identifying what actually is a problem, or you can identify what stage of business you’re in and what actually needs to happen now. So for instance, the stage of business that I’m in right now, we’ve gotten to the point that our sales are going well, you know, our revenue continues to grow year over year.

[00:08:58] So we know that we’ve mostly worked out our sales process. There’s always tweaks to do, but generally speaking, we have figured out how to attract the right people. We figured out how to sell to those people. So what kind of comes next is having systems so that as our team grows, and our team changes over, there’s clarity and clear SOPs and clear manuals, so it gets out of our heads and onto paper. That’s what in my own business I’ve identified is important for us right now. We figured out how to attract people. We figured out how to get the right people into our courses. We figured out how to make money basically. So now how do we build up order instability? And there Mike Michalowicz’s book, which I’m going to say I have not read, but is on my own list, is Fix This Next, and that could be a great place to look for a framework of what a healthy business looks like in terms of stages of development? Identifying what stage you’re in, and by identifying what stage you’re in, you can think about, yeah, what are the actual problems that I have to fix at this stage?

[00:09:55] Or what are the things that I need to build out at this stage to take care of my business where it is right now. But that doesn’t mean doing everything. It doesn’t mean doing things that you’re going to need to do in three years, but that doesn’t actually make sense right now. It’s identifying how much energy you have to actually work on the business, and then using that energy that you have in a thoughtful, kind of budgeted way to basically learn about one thing at a time, work on one project in the business at a time. I give myself, maybe one business development project per quarter and just do that one thing. Whether that’s SOPs or whether that’s learning marketing, you can really only take on one thing at a time. So those are my thoughts in terms of that first piece of working in the business versus on the business. Most of your time as a solepreneur, you’re still going to be working in the business because you are the therapist, you are the creator of the great things that come into that business and then using. Let’s just say five hours a week on business development, focusing in on one thing that actually needs your attention and letting the rest of them be as they are.

[00:10:59] The next question you had is: when you know you’re done learning, you gave the answer that I’m about to give in your question, which is that we’re never really done learning. What I have found with business growth is: new level, new devil. As we get into a new stage in our business, there’s always new things to learn and making friends with that is nice and enjoying that is nice. Balancing the need to learn and grow with what the business actually needs is really important. So much of our learning I found as therapists can come from that, not good enough, and that constantly trying to fill this hole of being better and being better. So staying out of that impulse and making sure that the learning that we’re doing actually makes sense for the business, is solving an actual problem, or is feeling like nurturing and generative. There are never ending things to learn in business, and we don’t need to learn them all right now. You can just be in the stage that you’re in. Learn the things that you need to learn now to solve the problems you actually have, and enjoy that and know that you’ll continue learning about business until the day you shut your business down.

[00:12:01] The last thing that you asked is about growing in your own advocacy, but that internal discord that comes up, those parts of you that have fear or outrage or confusion when you are advocating for yourself. And I certainly have had this as well and in my own experience coming from a different identity, but certainly having been raised with a nervous system that learned that being small is safe. When I come up against this in myself where I am selling something, asking for something, and there’s parts of me that are afraid, or like, who do you think you are? You had mentioned outrage. I think that’s not an experience that I’ve had a lot if I think about it, but, when I come up with those parts of myself, it’s noticing that part is there and reminding myself and being curious about what is that part trying to do, and generally speaking, I find that parts that come up that interfere or that make noise, I guess, when we are stepping up and advocating for ourself, they’re all about trying to keep us safe, right? There’s parts of us that have learned that being small is safe. Don’t ask for too much. Make sure that people like you and as women and queer folks and people of color, I think this is especially something that we get like, don’t rock the boat. Don’t make too much noise. You’ll be accused of being X, Y, Z.

[00:13:18] So noticing and naming that that is what’s happening, or whatever it is that is happening for you, Edgar, being curious about how this part is trying to keep me safe? How is this a strategy that may have been helpful in keeping me safe in the past, and then being with that part and updating it, that things have changed, you know, whatever conditions that part needs to know about, that it doesn’t, that you’re an adult now, that you are a skilled professional, that you’ve accomplished all these things. Conditions have changed is the therapist phrase that I would’ve used sometimes with my own therapy clients. Those parts of you are in trauma time, and they are using strategies that they needed to use at a certain point to help you stay safe. And those parts of you, if you want to think about it from an IFS lens or the parts of your brain that are trapped in a survival response, if you want to think about it from a trauma therapy lens, insert your therapeutic lens here.

[00:14:08] There needs to be an update and a releasing there so that you can just be in the present and really be connected with what you have built, which is extraordinary and more than you ever could have imagined when you were growing up, and more than your parents could have imagined, and there is going to be a discord there ’cause you’re doing something totally new. So it’s helping those parts of you to realize that is actually a safe thing to do at this point of your life and career. So I’m so excited for you Edgar. I’m so grateful for your questions and I’m also grateful for your words of appreciation and just so glad that I’ve been able to support you in this work and you are doing such incredible work in the world. So thank you so much, Edgar, for your questions.

[00:14:49] Our next question is from Rachel Richards, and here is Rachel’s question.

[00:14:55] Rachel: Hi Linzy. My name is Rachel Richards. I started a private practice in North Carolina. Actually just about six months ago I moved to North Carolina and my plan was to work for an agency for a couple of years, get settled here and then, do the big transition and, long story short, I fled. kind of resonated what you talked about, I just can’t stay here. Mine was for some ethical reasons, so I’m trying to figure out, I’ve opened my practice. I have a full caseload, probably two full, I don’t do numbers well in my head. I have a lot of stress around finances and I just don’t retain numbers.

[00:15:36] A little bit of dyscalculia and things like that. The question I have for you right now is. There’s so many services being offered, right? Like services to your billing or services to manage your money. Then you have Alma and Headway, and then you have to pay for HIPAA compliant business G Suite, and I feel like there are all these different things with that. On one hand offer a level of peace and security, but on the other hand, just slowly chips away at my revenue. And then, I get in this anxiety spiral of how can I be sure I’m making enough money? What do I need to be an ethical and successful therapist?

[00:16:29] I don’t want to be pennywise and pound foolish down the road, but also don’t want to get caught up in paying for unnecessary expenses. I don’t know if you have any advice or rules of thumb that can be applied to that as well. I recently heard about recognizing people with ADHD, just this ADHD tax and how to support it. Recognizing that, you know, there just may be some extra costs due to supporting the way your brain works. So are some of these services freeing up some mental load, maybe that’s worth it. Anyways, you can see where my mind goes. I don’t know if you have any helpful tips or tricks in making those types of calls. Thank you very much.

[00:17:18] Linzy: Thanks so much for this question, Rachel, and I appreciate your mentioning this idea of the ADHD tax because this is an important part of the equation that you are talking about. So I’m hearing overwhelm here, right? Like there’s so many things. It’s kind of like what we were just talking about in Edgar’s question in terms of, you know, professional development, and in this case, we’re talking about tools and services, like there’s just so much out there. They’re each going to market themselves as essential because in their perspective they are, you know, they’re passionate about the problem that they’re serving. They want you to use their services. So I’m hearing from your experiences, there’s just so much out there.

[00:17:54] There’s so much to choose from and if you took on all of it, it would add up a lot and it would cost a lot of money. So the first thing that I would encourage you to do with this is slow down and be with what you need. You need to be with what you need in two ways. First, what problems do you actually need to solve in the business? You know, thinking about the ADHD tax that you pay, what are some services that really would be valuable to you in terms of buying back your time and buying back your emotional energy? It’s kind of like, one way to think about it is what do you hate the most? How can you get that off your plate first, right?

[00:18:29] So what costs you the most emotionally? Because as a therapist, your emotional energy is your main resource that you’re using. So if there’s a task in the business that you find really draining and you just hate it, getting services and support to streamline that task is going to give you back your emotional energy. It’s going to give you back your time, and then that time and energy can be used either in your practice seeing another client, which it sounds like maybe is not what you need to do if you have more clients than you can handle right now or it’s time and energy that can go back into your life to take care of yourself and just enjoy your life.

[00:19:03] So there’s this buying back your time aspect to making any of these kinds of investments and services but in your case, you’re also talking about buying back your bandwidth and paying that ADHD tax in order to create more ease in terms of these tasks that are just going to be challenging for you and they’re not going to be fun and your brain is not going to like them. And with your finances, it’s important that you can understand what your numbers need to look like. but you don’t necessarily need to be the one who’s doing every little thing, right? Figuring out what tools help to create ease, buy back your time and energy. ‘Cause then the other piece is financial clarity, right? Like what do you need financially? And that is going to help you determine how much money you have to spend on these services. Like what is your budget, right? So as you’re looking at your financial picture, you’ve got money coming in the door from clients. I’m hearing that you’re seeing lots of clients

[00:19:59] So, stopping and being with what is actually coming in the door from clients. What is already going out the door in terms of maybe fixed expenses that are not so negotiable, like your rent, maybe your EHR. There’s going to be certain things that you have to pay, your annual licensure, your insurance, those are what we’d call your fixed expenses that are foundational expenses that are not negotiable. Maybe rent is negotiable, but we’ll leave that aside for now. Those other pieces added on top of those services that you could have or not have as you start to get clear on this, is how much money comes in the door. This is how much I need to pay myself. This is what my actual paycheck going home needs to be.

[00:20:39] Then you’re going to start to see what’s left to invest in these services, and then you actually have a budget to work with. Like let’s say you have a certain $10,000 coming in the door. And you identify that 5,000 of that needs to go home to you. Let’s say another $2,000 of that needs to go towards taxes. So that leaves $3,000 left. Now you have a budget and some of that $3,000 is already going to be committed to things in your business. Let’s say you have $1,500 of overhead expenses. So now there’s $1,500 left of what we would call variable spending that you can do. That’s the money that you can use to decide: is it really great to have a bookkeeping service on board?

[00:21:14] Is that a great way to buy back your time? Do you bring on a VA to help you with some organizational tasks? Because that’s an incredible use of your time. Money is a tool and when you can decide and create that clarity of this is my budget, this is how much of this tool I have to spend, then you can decide what you want to exchange it for, to bring more ease into your private practice. You know, like where is your ADHD tax going to go, in terms of the money that you’re paying to make your life easier to offset the way that your brain works, right? And to take care of some of those tasks that are not going to be easy or fun for you and are going to create emotional drag. Getting rid of those is so valuable, but we can’t outsource every single thing.

[00:21:59] And there’s limited money. So that’s a great place to start. And I know Rachel, that you have signed up for Money skills for Therapists. So this is work that we will be able to do with you in the community to help you get clear on exactly how much do you need to bring home, get you paid, and then how much money is there to take care of these things in the business and slow down and be with where can this money have the biggest impact for you? So I’m excited for you, Rachel, that you are already stepping into doing this work in Money Skills For Therapists, and I’m excited that Diane and I can support you in figuring out this question, but yeah, it’s really about slowing down, creating clarity, and then from that place you can authentically choose what you actually need help with in your practice. Thank you so much, Rachel and Edgar, for your questions today. Thank you everybody for joining me today to talk through these questions. So many therapist questions around money are similar, ’cause we’re all walking that same path.

[00:22:56] So if you are interested in getting my support like Edgar did, and like Rachel is doing with your finances, the way to do that is through Money Skills For Therapists. If you’re interested in working with me in Money Skills For Therapists, the way to do that is to check out my masterclass. I will put the link in the show notes. That masterclass, you can think about it like my intake process, that walks you through the three biggest mistakes that therapists make in their private practice finances. It walks you through my framework for getting your finances, working for you, and you’re going to learn all about Money Skills For Therapists and how I and my team can support you inside that course to get to the place that Edgar is, get to that other side of actually having your private practice working for you.

[00:23:36] Thank you so much, Edgar and Rachel for your questions today. And thank you to you, the lovely therapists and health practitioners who listen to this podcast. Thank you to you for joining me