Peter [00:00:04] It feels lighter. I have more choices. I have more freedom. I think that’s really the thing about wealth is that it gives me freedom and flexibility. Like, I don’t care about buying things. I just want the flexibility to like work or not work or go somewhere or outsource something. 

Linzy [00:00:28] 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. So today’s podcast is a coaching episode with Peter H. Addy. Peter is a grad of Money Skills For Therapists. He finished up the program about 18 months ago. We were talking about on the interview and Peter is an educator and a trainer who helps compassionate healthcare professionals who want to become psychedelic-informed or psychedelic affirming. He’s also a therapist who helps psychedelic curious adults with chronic health issues who want to find purpose and courage through transformation. And he’s also a faculty at an Oregon-approved psilocybin facilitator training program. And he used to be a research scientist at Yale. So today, Peter and I get into the complexities of having two separate businesses. He’s got that educator business and also his therapy business, two separate businesses that are both growing and trying to do profit first, kind of with both of them. And you’ll hear in our conversation, we kind of start with the numbers, trying to figure out the numbers and the profit first system. But our conversation switches gear fairly quickly towards bigger picture. You’ll hear that kind of shift in the conversation. If you find yourself kind of struggling with numbers that are not the numbers you want to see, or the complexity of kind of having like two businesses and how do you make things work, this episode will be great for you to help you take perspective on what are the things that really matter and where should we be putting our energy and our focus as we’re growing businesses? And what are the things that can be kind of set aside to dig into later once our businesses are where we want them to be? Here is my coaching session with Peter H. Addy. So Peter, welcome to the podcast. 

Peter [00:02:49] Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:02:51] So getting into what we want to talk about today, Peter, you were a student in Money Skills For Therapists a couple years ago, is that correct? Am I timing that correctly? 

Peter [00:03:00] Yeah, I started two years ago. 

Linzy [00:03:03] Yes. 

Peter [00:03:03] So what was that? It’s a six-month thing. 

Linzy [00:03:06] Yeah. So it’s been like about 18 months since we would have worked together. So coming into our podcast recording today, our coaching session, what would be most helpful for us to focus on today? 

Peter [00:03:17] Yeah, well, I recently started a second business, so I have my therapy business and then I do some training. The next level therapist course, Maegan Megginson, and she really laid out kind of the in a detailed, easy-to-understand way, when it’s appropriate to have two businesses or not and like how to do that in an ethical way. And I started realizing I’ve been running two businesses for years, but they were just all under one umbrella. I do therapy, I do supervision, and I also do like professional education for continuing education and training for health care professionals. So I’ve spun that out into a second business. It’s its own legal entity and bank accounts and website and email address. So they’re like totally separate things now. And that’s great. In a lot of ways, it helps me just be clear about my audience. I realized, you know, I’ve been collecting email addresses for a mailing list for years, but I’ve sent out like two emails ever because like, who am I writing this to? Am I writing this to potential clients or am I writing this to professional colleagues? 

Linzy [00:04:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Peter [00:04:27] Same with blogs or social media or anything. Like I don’t know who I’m writing for, but now, now I have two different audiences. And so there’s just it’s really great to be clear about that and to know, like depending on what email address the message has coming to me, it still goes to the same box on the same device. But like it’s it automatically filters like, what does this person want to talk to me about? 

Linzy [00:04:49] Yes, you you’ve segmented your audience now for those two different businesses. 

Peter [00:04:54] Exactly. So it’s really great for that. But now I have twice as many bank accounts too. I use profit first. So that’s a lot of bank accounts. 

Linzy [00:05:03] Yes. That’s a lot of bank accounts. Yes. Okay. 

Peter [00:05:05] Yeah. And trying to figure out what are my like, what are my caps or taps or like, we don’t have to go into like that level of detail maybe. I mean, we could we could not. But like just sort of in general, like, how much money do I need in a month? Like, I have a general idea, Like overall, here’s how much money I would like to see, but it’s coming from two different sources now. And for education, business is very sporadic. I did a training just last week which went very well, kind of a two-hour intro to psychedelics for health care providers. My next one’s in September. So, you know, like every like maybe 3 to- 3 months or something if I get money, like, that’s really weird. That’s hard. 

Linzy [00:05:47] Yeah. And that, that is- Yeah, my first kind of wondering is with the second business. So let’s say the first business is therapy, supervision, clinical work. The second business is your education training business. What is the income looking like in that second business right now? 

Peter [00:06:03] So I have some trainings for another company and I get a percentage of sales for that recording and that could be- lately that’s been averaging like $100 a month. No, it’s not a huge deal. And then if I have a training, like a live thing that they sell tickets to, maybe this one I got a percentage of sales, which was really nice. The next one, it’s a flat fee and they’re usually a flat fee and that’s pretty sporadic. Like, So I had June and then I got September, probably October. That one’s not finalized yet, but so. And that’s it for the year. 

Linzy [00:06:37] Yeah. It sounds almost like quarterly for those it’s kind of like every three months there’s like a training. 

Peter [00:06:42] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:06:42] If we average it out for the year so like four trainings a year. But wondering that I have is how, how much do you want that business to grow. 

Peter [00:06:50] Ideally, I would like that to be most of my business like maybe- and that could be 51%. You know, like I enjoy being a therapist. Like I get something out of that that helps fill my cup in a way, but I don’t want that to be everything. And it’s really important to me to move away from one on one services for two reasons. First of all, because then I can reach more people on a good week. Like there’s a pretty low ceiling for how many, how many like hours. I can be seeing people. 

Linzy [00:07:22] Of course. 

Peter [00:07:23] So like I’m- if I want to affect more people, I have to do one too many offerings. And two, I really like doing education stuff like I could just do groups, but I like the education because it’s a lot of it is asynchronous and that’s really important to me. I have chronic health issues that I’m constantly working on and that’s unpredictable. Maybe this week I could see 20 clients if I wanted to, but next week, maybe not. 

Linzy [00:07:45] Yeah. 

Peter [00:07:45] No, I can’t- I need flexibility and being able to just create educational content whenever I feel like it.  That works really well for me. 

Linzy [00:07:58] Yeah. I’m speaking as someone who’s kind of on that other side where I have flipped, in my case, fully into education. It is much more flexible and demands less of us on a weekly basis. It’s kind of like you can show up and create something amazing when you’re feeling great and when you’re not. There’s much less demand on your energy, period. So I certainly see a lot of wisdom in that path for you. So then thinking about where you’re at now, what I’m hearing is lots of bank accounts between the two and also how to think about these pots of money or what to maybe expect from these pots of money. Tell me more about what’s not clear right now of how to manage these two different pools of money. 

Peter [00:08:37] Two things come to my mind. One is, for both businesses, my income is unpredictable. That is the single most difficult and uncomfortable thing about being a therapist. I talk to family and friends who work for a company and I don’t want to go back to working for a company. I don’t think I could do that. But like man, to just like, know what’s going to be in your bank every two weeks. That sounds nice. 

Linzy [00:09:04] Yes, absolutely. Okay. 

Peter [00:09:05] So that’s hard in general. And now if you have like two kinds of inconsistent income. So one item is like how much? You know, I’m trying to to come to a certain number. And some of that is coming from clients and some of that is coming from training. So it’s harder for me to like, know what to reach for, you know, what are my targets, and then, too, thinking about business expenses. This training business that I just made, there really aren’t any. Like I bought a year of Canva. Like, what am I going to do? Like, maybe like, I’ll buy a nice microphone or write something, but like, that’s a very low cost business. And so, yes, maybe that’s fine. Like, maybe just I mean, they’re both LLC, so it all just goes into the same pot for taxes anyway. So anyway, doesn’t really matter. But just like for the government, it doesn’t really matter where the expense goes. But for me personally, like, yeah, like just maybe it’s okay to just have a business with like $100 of expenses a year. Like, is that okay? I guess that’s okay. 

Linzy [00:10:10] Yes. Yes. Yeah. And with this, like, what I’m hearing is that right now, too, the way things look, gradually you’d like to kind of shift gears, right? And this is a podcast and nobody can see me, but I’ve got like kind of two levers and they’re switching position so that eventually it’s that more of your income is coming from this like this teaching work and less of it relatively is coming from therapy right now it’s very much the other way where it sounds like right now the vast majority of your income, the way that things are set up now, will be coming from therapy or is coming from therapy. And the teaching stuff is just kind of starting, right? Like you’re really establishing that business. And so with that, like there’s a couple of things that come to mind with me. Partly what I’m thinking about is what you’re looking for in terms of that stability. That is something that you can create, right? Part of your puzzle is deciding how you want to create it. So right now, the language that one of my business colleagues uses for her therapy is her bread and butter, right? So she’s got a teaching business and has gotten some traction with it, but it’s nothing compared to what she can build or earn because of her clinical work, because she’s built a reputation for years. It’s the work that she usually does. Right now, therapy is your bread and butter. So one curiosity that I have is like, how quickly do you want to start to make this transition where you can rely less on therapy and start to rely more on that teaching work? 

Peter [00:11:32] Yeah, it’s a good question. A year maybe, you know, 9 months, 12 months, that would be pretty good. I guess. There’s definitely some things that will be going on in my life about nine months in the future. It’d be nice to be kind of like settled by then. If that’s realistic, I don’t know. 

Linzy [00:11:51] Sure. Yeah, because something that I am thinking about here is making a stepped plan for yourself in these numbers, because part of the puzzle is figuring out how you want the money to flow so that you have that regular paycheck, which, you know, I’m very passionate about stability and that is something that is can add a lot of value to your life, especially when health can go up and down knowing that there’s enough stability built into your numbers, that you’re still going to get paid the same amount. Whether it’s been a good week or a bad week is very valuable, right? So there’s that piece. But then also it’s thinking about the second variable of like shifting gears. So more money’s starting to come in from teaching and less money is coming in from therapy and that teaching business can start to take care of you more. There’s less reliance on the therapy work, more on the teaching. So that’s almost like it’s two different pieces, but it’s here and I’m saying like kind of like a there’s a path there that can be laid out that solves both of those problems together. 

Peter [00:12:42] Okay. 

Linzy [00:12:43] My first question with where you are right now is, do you know how much you need to earn to bring home the paycheck that you need to take care of your household? 

Peter [00:12:52] Yeah, I. I ran those numbers and I don’t remember. I do remember that ten clients a week would meet the minimum. You know, I’m not going to be, like, saving for fancy trips to Europe or anything, but ten clients a week consistently will like, be just enough. 

Linzy [00:13:10] So covers your needs. That’s not your wants. 

Peter [00:13:13] And that was also, I remember, ten clients a week assuming my full rate. I’m on a few insurance panels. I’m selective. You know, just the ones that like pay well and don’t want lots of things from me. 

Linzy [00:13:25] Yes. Don’t make life too difficult. 

Peter [00:13:27] Yeah, but so if we assume a full rate, which is 180 an hour. Yeah. What did I say, ten clients a week. Yeah. So it’s just under 8000 a month of revenue. 

Linzy [00:13:37] And you know what your assumed business expenses would have been without your operating expenses that come out of it? 

Peter [00:13:42] Let’s see. My target right now is I think like 25%. It’s higher now, but that’s what I want to like move towards. 

Linzy [00:13:49] So if it’s 25%, so $2,000 month is towards operating expenses. And so that would leave $6,000 as kind of what’s left for you. Some of that is taxes. So some of that is paycheck. So $6,000 a month thinking about that now. So if we did $6,000 a month, if we take out your tax rate, do you have clarity on what your effective tax rate is, how much we should be assuming you need to put aside?  

Peter [00:14:15] My old accountant- I just switched so my old tax preparer was saying 25% of net. 

Linzy [00:14:19] Of net. 

Peter [00:14:19] My new tax preparer saying 30% of net. 

Linzy [00:14:23] Little higher. 

Peter [00:14:24] So I’ve been doing split the difference. 27.5. 

Linzy [00:14:28] I had a feeling you were going to say that. 

Peter [00:14:29] 10% of whatever’s left after. 

Linzy [00:14:33] Okay. Yeah. So in this case it would be like $6,000 times 0.275. So you’re putting aside $1650 for taxes. And then are there any other things with your profit first that you try to save for in the business? So are there any of the profit first buckets you have right now? 

Peter [00:14:51] Right now I’m just at the minimum so I have- I’m doing 1% per for profit and I’ve also created a have a retirement and that’s also just the minimum 1%. 

Linzy [00:15:00] And we’re holding space for those, which is great. So profit 1%, retirement is 1%, taxes- to clarify, Peter, that’s 27.5% of your revenue coming in like that’s your profit first number or is that that’s your take home. 

Peter [00:15:14] Revenue minus OpEx. 

Linzy [00:15:16] Okay, so it’s off your net. Okay. So do you know how that fits into your profit calculator right now. 

Peter [00:15:20] Yeah, it’s about the number that you came up with. I think it was like 16 or 17% of gross. 

Linzy [00:15:25] Okay. Okay. So with this now, like thinking about these numbers, how close are you now to seeing these numbers of like the 8000 off the top and then being able to distribute all the money to these percentages? 

Peter [00:15:38] I’m like halfway there- this week is a holiday week. So it’s weird. But last week, last few weeks, I’ve been averaging about five clients a week. 

Linzy [00:15:46] Okay. 

Peter [00:15:46] Like half of what I would like. 

Linzy [00:15:49] Yeah. Okay. So you’re halfway there. Looking at your business growth because you just reopened your doors two months ago. Right. To put this in context, looking at your growth, how long do you think it’s going to take you to get up to that 8000? That’s the base that you like to see? 

Peter [00:16:03] I don’t know. That’s a really hard thing. In my own business. I’ve never been full, like I’ve never had enough. I had my own business. And then for a while I worked at a group practice and then I went back to just having my own business. In the group practice, I was full, but then I was not making much because I was in a group practice. But in my own business, I’ve never really, like gotten enough people. So I know, like in your training, you know, you had this great idea of put money into an owner’s comp account and then if it’s more than I actually need. 

Linzy [00:16:35] Yes. 

Peter [00:16:36] Leave the extra there. 

Linzy [00:16:37] Yes. 

Peter [00:16:38] With a low month. But I’ve never really consistently I don’t want to say never, but I’ve never consistently. 

Linzy [00:16:43] Yes. 

Peter [00:16:43] made what I need. 

Linzy [00:16:45] Had that experience. Yes. 

Peter [00:16:46] Yeah. Which is another reason to try a different business because this first business has not been consistently getting me what I need. 

Linzy [00:16:53] Yes. And we also know that it comes with risks for you because it’s so reliant on having to show up in a certain way that takes a lot of energy. So this is where I’m thinking about that shift towards the other business, too, right? Because we can think about these two businesses as almost two pieces of the puzzle that together will support you. Yeah, right. And I’m hearing that so far and that’s the past. So it doesn’t mean it’s the future, but so far you have not had the experience of being able to get the clients that you want to have the amount from your private practice that you want to see with this. Like my curiosity then goes to what is possible in that second business to get those numbers working so that you are being taken care of without having to push to see probably more clients than you might be wanting to see anyways in terms of your health. Because right now I know part of your question when you had submitted it before we chatted today was like working with numbers when you’re building and it’s not really there. Right. And so right now, as you said, like your upgrade expenses are relatively higher because those expenses don’t go down just because you’re not seeing the clients you want to see. Yeah, but, you know, I could see from the outside knowing you, I’m like, I think you can get up to that eight that you want to see, and then that’s going to change your optics. But it’s also like, what is your long term plan, right? And how can you start thinking about that long term well-being and long term business sustainability, which sounds like it’s leaning more towards teaching, right, getting that teaching work. And so I’m curious, Peter, from an energetic perspective, how much energy each week do you give to each of these businesses? 

Peter [00:18:28] I’d say like my target energy percentages. I rent an office and I see clients two days a week. So I try to just think about my therapy business two days a week, and then I try to think about my training business two days a week, and then Fridays, maybe I do a little extra work if there’s a deadline or something. Or I could just not. So Friday is kind of an optional day. I’m trying to do like an even split. Doesn’t always happen that way. But that’s the goal. 

Linzy [00:18:55] Yes. And with the work that you’re putting in on those two days a week for the teaching business, what have you been working on to bring up the revenue in that business? 

Peter [00:19:05] Yeah, well, lately it’s just been preparing for this training that was just, you know a week ago. Wow. What a long week. That was just a week ago. There’s, you know, creating material for training for other people. I also really want to try my hand at hosting my own training, you know, doing my own webinar or a masterclass or something that’s entirely, you know, self-hosted. Creating material. That’s number one, just like making content and reading papers and stuff, staying up to date on content and other people’s content, making my own content. That’s definitely the bulk of it. But also doing kind of some relationship marketing and just seeing who else is there. I got a list of some podcasts to reach out to, I haven’t reached out to anyone else yet, but get the word out there. And it’s mostly been local relationship marketing that I’ve been doing, not as much in online spheres, but I’m sure I’ll get to that eventually.  

Linzy [00:20:02] Yeah. Because thinking about that and like, I like your framing, your target percentages for your energetic distribution, that one-to-many business model has so much more potential to bring revenue. Right? And it’s like you you can build it when you’re feeling good, right? You create material you feel really good about and literally thousands of people can consume that material individually on their own pace, as you mentioned, asynchronously, and get great value from it, right? Even if you recorded it five years ago, that can be the case. And so as you’re thinking about your business energy, I am curious about what would happen if you made a specific plan to actually get revenue really going in the teaching business. I’d like actually thought about, okay, I’m going to do my own workshop for the first time in October. This is an example. Obviously you do whatever you want. And on those days, really work towards like building that list, right? Like getting those partnerships in place, booking a venue and really working towards like a large revenue-generating event that then can be replicated, right? Like making a signature training that you gave or a signature kind of experience. What do you notice thinking about bringing that kind of energy in like kind of really revenue informed and revenue focused business building activities? 

Peter [00:21:19] Yeah, I noticed two things. One is kind of excitement. I had begun doing some of that work in Next Level Therapist, and so I have kind of a skeleton of, of an idea that I’m working towards. And so I had been kind of putting that on the backburner because I had this deadline for this, you know, a training for this other company, and that’s over. So now I can reallocate that time to my own thing. Yes. So I’m excited to like, make that happen and like, build that thing. And also there’s some fear, there’s some unease because I’m you know, I’m really putting myself out there and it’s nice to make content for another company because they do all of the marketing, like should take a big chunk of the ticket sales, but they do all the marketing, they have their social media accounts, they handle payment processing and refunds and the like. They do everything. They do all the tech support, like it’s all on them. And I do my own thing that’s on me and I’ve never done this before. And like, what if, you know, what if I put myself out there and no one comes or people come, but then there’s a bunch of technical glitches or they don’t- What if they don’t like me? You know, that’s always that’s always part of the story. What if they don’t like me? Years of experience suggesting that that people will like me. 

Linzy [00:22:34] Yes. 

Peter [00:22:34] That’s that’s a story. That’s a voice in there. 

Linzy [00:22:37] Sure, Of course. Of course. Yeah. And I think if you think about the function of that voice, like, what is that voice trying to do for you? 

Peter [00:22:44] Keep me safe. 

Linzy [00:22:45] Yeah, Keep you safe. Keep you small. 

Peter [00:22:47] Yeah. Small is safe, quiet and invisible is safe. 

Linzy [00:22:51] I’m curious, Peter, when you have done trainings and you have put yourself out there and like I might be projecting, but I know for me when I have these moments where I’m like teaching and I’m in the group and you’re just like, I’m in it. Like, this is good. I’m in my space. I’m curious like, what is it like when you really are in that teaching space? 

Peter [00:23:07] Yeah, it’s exciting. This one I did last week, like I finished it and I was like, I was feeling high, you know? And I wasn’t. I wasn’t high, but I was, you know, we were talking about drugs for 2 hours. 

Linzy [00:23:17] To clarify. Yeah. Yeah. 

Peter [00:23:18] But I was. Yeah, just really I was up, you know, I was just energized. I think it’s probably the best training I’ve ever done. Yeah. No, it’s my first time trying making it in Canva instead of Google slides. Just like it just looks prettier. The way that I kind of paced myself went really well. I had the Q&A was like, there were too many questions. Like, there wasn’t enough time. 

Linzy [00:23:43] Yes. 

Peter [00:23:43] I’ve done this training before and it’s like crickets. And that’s that’s the worst. Yeah. I mean, I can ramble on if no one has any questions for me, but I can fill space. But it’s it’s just it felt good that they were like people wanted to talk to me more than I had room for. 

Linzy [00:23:58] So, yes, it felt good. Yeah. And talking about this now what do you notice? 

Peter [00:24:02] Yeah, I’m just. I’m feeling more kind of up. More like lighter. 

Linzy [00:24:05] Mm hmm. When I think about where you’re at and you’ve got these two streams of income, neither one is where you want them to be. And there’s lots of complexity we can add to that, right? Like, we could totally spend an hour digging into your exact profit first percentages and exactly how to manage the, like, not enough money yet. I think that’s in the weeds. Does that phrase make sense to you when I say that? Being in the weeds? 

Peter [00:24:29] Yeah, I think so. 

Linzy [00:24:30] Yeah. And being in the weeds can feel safe in a way. It’s like when you have this little math problem to work on, you get to get nice and small and mathy and try to figure it out and make it perfect. And what I’m noticing is when you actually talk about this teaching work and the actual experience of being in it, there’s this expanding, right? There’s this up that happens this lift in your energy, right? And that is what’s actually going to bring in the money, then you can divide up. That is what I would suggest you follow, right? If that’s where the inspiration is, because people can feel that from you. Right. And when you’ve really, like, owned your own excitement and passion and you’ve done all this work that you’re doing to be very informed and bring in all the research and you’re able to educate people about something that you are genuinely excited about and knowledgeable about. They feel that from you and they’re going to tell their colleagues like, Oh, Peter does this great training, the next time you’re doing an event, or you know, for other folks who are wondering about psychedelics. And so I’m wondering like if you shifted your gears to really focus on like doing something bigger than you’ve ever done before and inviting in the idea that you might actually not be able to just get by but make like good money doing this work that you love, what is that like? 

Peter [00:25:48] Oh, it’s there’s a whole complicated thing there. That’s a lot. I feel excited and I have in the past been in a good place financially. I used to be a research scientist and I made more money than I knew what to do with. And yeah, when I- even working at the group practice, like they were taking a percent. So, you know, it wasn’t- I wasn’t making great money, but it was more than I needed. It was more than the minimum. Yeah. And I felt good. Like it feels, it feels lighter. I have more choices. I have more freedom. I think that’s really the thing about wealth is that it gives me freedom and flexibility. Like, I don’t care about buying things. I just want the flexibility to like work or not work or go somewhere or outsource something. 

Linzy [00:26:35] Yeah, And with that, then I’m curious about what would be the good numbers that you want to see between these two businesses, right? Like when I ask you your numbers, you know, your like getting by number, right? If it was more than the getting by number and let’s think about your salary right now. Let’s just think about your life, your take home paycheck, just cash in hand each month. What is the number for you that does give you that freedom and flexibility and like more than the minimum that brings, like, good things into your life? 

Peter [00:27:07] Mm hmm. Yeah. I’m not sure. I haven’t really done, like, dummies analysis on my personal expenses. Just have been focusing on the business. But to be able to see, like, whatever the minimum is and then, I don’t know, just a little bit more or a lot more. Yeah, I don’t have a specific number right now. 

Linzy [00:27:25] Yeah, And it could be a lot more. Right. Because my experience of your energy during this conversation and from working with you before is like, I know that you know how to get by and be, like, restrained or judicious or like, you know, like you don’t, you don’t ask for a lot. You don’t ask for a lot of space, you know. But I also see this like other part of you today that is sparky and- sparky is too strong a word. But that up I can feel that up energy and go right. And I’ll be curious what an up version of your life would look like. Not just your work, but actually your life. If you had a more inspired, energized version of your world, like what would be part of it? What would make life rich or meaningful? Like what do you want more of in your world? And that’s actually a question I’m asking you. What would you want more of in your world? 

Peter [00:28:14] Yeah, in my personal life, as well as my business life, I’d really love to be able to outsource things. Doing physically strenuous tasks for me is difficult. So like hiring someone to, like, clean my house and that’s not a considerable expense, like I’ve priced it, like that’s not like- I don’t have to be a millionaire to hire a housekeeper. So like outsourcing, that would be great. Outsourcing meals, you know, like it’s cheap. I make all my own meals because it’s cheap. And I know what the ingredients are. It’s healthy. I can fit all my, you know, sensitivities and allergens and stuff. But to be able to have someone do that for me, that would be great. So, yeah, it’s kind of like just outsourcing tasks and energy expenditure that I would rather expend that energy on something else. 

Linzy [00:28:58] Yes. Yes. Yeah. And the other piece, you know, that maybe somewhere else to get support is in that teaching business, right? So you mentioned like maybe have $100 a year expenses and that is a version of business, right? That’s like the bootstrapped like super simple because you do it all yourself. But I would be curious about what would become possible for you if you brought on a VA who is like really good at tech or like loves marketing or who can help you stay organized, like fill in any gaps that you have where you know, you tend to fall down because we all have them and have a team member to like be excited with you about some big training or event or like finally recording your signature course, but then you can just have for sale, right? Like what would it be like to bring more support into that business? 

Peter [00:29:43] Yeah, that would be wonderful. Just someone to, you know, to kind of the- definitely the marketing stuff and some of the organizational things like some parts of organization I’m good at and kind of come naturally. I used to be a research scientist, so like I’m, I’m all about spreadsheets and like procedures, but there’s other parts of like organizing content and workflows that I just, I don’t know, and maybe I could learn or I could just pay someone who’s already learned. 

Linzy [00:30:12] Yeah. And there are certain things I think, too, that we, we will enjoy learning and would be a satisfaction there. And there are certain things like, like I hate doing websites, I just hate it. It’s irrational, you know, like how much I dislike it, but I don’t do my own websites and I don’t do my own tech. There’s just certain things that I’ve outsourced from the very beginning, and it means that I haven’t had to give bandwidth over to learning something difficult, that it’s just never going to be enjoyable for me. Yeah. And then can channel that energy towards the things I am good at or the things that I would enjoy learning. The challenges that I want. Right? So coming towards the end of our conversation today, Peter, I’m curious, what are you taking away? What sticks out for you in our conversation today? 

Peter [00:30:50] Let’s see. Yes, focusing on- or not focusing, but allowing more space for the big picture and kind of the feelings and like, here’s what I want things to look like. It’s also important to think about like the details and percentages, but it doesn’t have to be the focus. So just kind of having a balance of the the big picture in the small picture space isn’t quite the right word, but some sort of like belief or, you know, I I’m following the hypothesis that I can do this, so I’ll figure it out maybe in nine months or I don’t know when, but probably this’ll work. I mean, it might work, right? 

Linzy [00:31:30] Yeah. And I’m curious, like if it was even stronger than that, if it was like, I am figuring this out. 

Peter [00:31:36] Hmm. 

Linzy [00:31:37] Or even the belief of I’m going to figure this out and make this really cool thing happen at this time, what would it be like to have even a little bit more? 

Peter [00:31:46] I am in the process of making this work. Yeah, I don’t. I’m not there yet, but I’m on that path. I have, like, things in place that I’m doing. 

Linzy [00:31:53] Yes. And I would be really excited and I really do encourage you to think about doing something that scares you, right? Because I’m familiar with the small, the staying small and staying safe. But I’m also hearing you already have lots of evidence that people like and not just appreciate what you do, but as you said, like have so many questions and want so much of you that there literally wasn’t time for you to answer all the questions that I’m sure you would have loved to answer and had great things to say to them. That shows you that there’s appetite and demand and there is this kind of marketing saying that like, if you’re not making yourself accessible, if people can’t find you, you are denying them the gift that you would be giving them by having the chance to learn from you. And right now there’s probably lots of folks who want more from you even coming out of that training that they can’t find you. There’s nothing else that they can do with you. Right. How does that idea sit with you? But. It’s a little bit of like, I don’t know, a stick idea rather than a carrot, but that like you’re kind of denying people this great experience with you by not really showing up and being like, Here I am. Come over here for more with me. 

Peter [00:32:57] Yeah, that’s the mindset I’ve been working on. It is definitely the opposite of what I learned from, you know, childhood and earlier on, but all the more reason to challenge that. But it’s something I have to consciously try on, but it’s becoming easier to get to wear that. 

Linzy [00:33:13] I can perceive this different version of you emerging from this work, which is very exciting. And I will be very interested and curious to hear what a more expanded version of your work and your life looks like as you step into this space. Thank you so much, Peter, for joining me today. 

Peter [00:33:28] Yeah, thank you. 

Linzy [00:33:43] In my conversation with Peter today, you heard that kind of shift midway where I could really feel that it was really the big picture that we needed to get into when we are working on something and it’s not where we want it to be yet. You know, Peter’s like two months into being back in practice. The numbers aren’t where he wants them to be yet. Eventually he wants that training business, that education business, to be most of his income. That’s not where he is right now. When we’re in that place, it can be easy to focus in on the numbers and try to like, make them work and like work them and rework them or rework them. But the reality is, is that counting money does not generate more money. Right. So if you’re in that place where there actually isn’t enough money, you know, you know that you need revenue growth in your business, trying to make your profit percentages perfect or looking at your numbers from 15 different angles is not going to make more money. What is going to make a difference to your business is channeling your energy towards those strategic, expansive, generative activities to like find your people and call them in, whether it’s clients or, in Peter’s case, building out that teaching business and making more resources, making himself easier to find, to serve those folks who want to learn about psychedelics, that is going to be far more impactful on your business than kind of reorganizing your pennies when there just isn’t enough of them. So it can be very tempting to get into that like small space and that can feel safe. But ultimately, what many of us have to do is that expansive work of being seen and putting ourselves out there and risking finding people who aren’t our people or risking crickets. But by doing that, that’s how we actually let the clients or audience that are for us, we let them find us and we start to be able to create the space where we can actually serve them or make the things to serve them. It’s that big picture work that actually makes the biggest difference in your business at the end of the day. And then you have money that you can purposely direct and set up those beautiful profit first percentages and all of that. But making money ultimately is going to get you much closer to where you want to be, than kind of tweaking percentages on numbers that you know are not working for you yet. If you’re enjoying the podcast, you can also check me out on Instagram at @moneynutsandbolts. And also if you’re enjoying the podcast, if you leave a review for the podcast on Apple Podcasts, it’s a help to have other folks who would be interested in hearing these conversations about therapy and money. It helps them find us if you leave an Apple podcast review. So if you have 5 minutes right now or you’re not doing anything, I would sincerely appreciate if you would go and leave us a podcast review. Thank you so much for listening today. 

Jenn [00:00:03] And that is the gift that therapists have, that marketers in general and copywriters in general really have to work to hone, is we know what it’s like to see another person. And what scares us, I think, is often in seeing the other we are also seen. 

Linzy [00:00:28] Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists 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. 

Linzy [00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So today’s guest is a return guest, Jenn Fredette. But before I get into introducing her and telling you about what we’re going to dive into today, I wanted to share a review of this love for the podcast on Apple Podcasts. The review says “Crucial for Money Blocks. I love this podcast and look forward to listening every week! I’m learning how to work smarter, not harder, and addressing my money blocks. Linzy Bonham does a great job helping listeners really look at deeper layers of innate worthiness and all the parts that come up around this stuff”. Thank you so much, dh145 for leaving this review. I so appreciate these reviews. It’s nice to get the feedback and it’s also so helpful, as I always say at the end of the podcast, for other therapists to find us, other therapists and practitioners. Apple Podcast reviews is a great way for people to know if a podcast is for them or not. So today’s guest, as I mentioned, is Jenn Fredette, she’s a returning guest. Jenn is, she’s actually a Money Skills for Therapist Grad going back to my very first beta cohort that I did in 2018. So I’ve known Jenn a long time and she helps therapists with their marketing. She helps therapists market with depth and authenticity. And today in our conversation we get into talking about why marketing can be so hard for therapists. This idea of being under-resourced and what that means for us as people and therapists and how that shows up in our marketing. We talk a little bit about how we end up kind of telling on ourselves in our marketing and showing sometimes more than we intend to about the things that we’re struggling with through the way that we’re marketing. And also how to tell if you are under-resourced in your marketing and what to do if you discover that you are not having the resources that you need to do the marketing that you want to do to really attune and call in your people. As always, the conversation with Jenn today is depthful and takes lots of fun twists and turns and is always about so much more than marketing, which as the Apple Podcast review that I read just said, you know, there’s always the deeper layers that I love exploring around money and Jenn loves exploring marketing, and you’re going to get a lot of that today. Here’s my conversation with Jenn Fredette. 

Linzy [00:03:23] So Jenn, welcome back to the podcast. 

Jenn [00:03:25] Thanks for having me, Linzy. I really appreciate it. 

Linzy [00:03:28] It’s nice to have you here again. And I have told you this before, but your last episode that we did about like doing your inner work in order to work on your money stuff is our top listened episode ever. 

Jenn [00:03:42] Well, hello, repeat listeners who come back for a second round. It’s so fun. I joked with you before we started recording was like, I didn’t even remember what I talked about. So thank you for reminding me.

Linzy [00:03:54] That’s what it was. That’s what it was. Yes. And it makes sense to me because I think that I fancy myself a bit of a depth seeker and like, you know, the meaning stuff. And so I think folks who listen, you know, also probably at the very least have a tolerance for that. But I would say based on the listing statistics, they have an appetite for that because we know that there’s always stuff, stuff under the stuff. That also makes life like, and our work, rich and meaningful but can be ignored in the business world related to therapy. 

Jenn [00:04:24] Yeah. Makes me so sad. So I might be jumping ahead a little bit, Linzy, but I feel like that’s what actually makes therapists better than like the average person. So I like depth. I’m glad you like depth. And everybody who’s listening, it sounds like you also like depth. So you’re my kind of people. 

Linzy [00:04:45] In the right place. So, Jenn, you teach marketing for therapists, which is an area of my own kind of like business and work that’s never been my favorite. So I love that you love it. I’m always grateful that there’s people who love marketing. 

Jenn [00:05:00] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:05:01] Thank you for existing. First of all, that’s my first piece. So I’m curious, like just to get us, you know, kind of started wading into the topic. Why do you think marketing can be so challenging for therapists? 

Jenn [00:05:16] That’s a really good question, Linzy. And I just realized, like, oh, maybe we should start a whole separate podcast where we just talk about that every single week, oh, my gosh, please, please, let’s stop. 

Linzy [00:05:29] As long as we get to talk about money, too, I will be there. 

Jenn [00:05:31] I think actually marketing and money go hand in hand. I had a call with somebody who’s joining a team at distilled earlier today and she’s like, Can you explain to me, like, what is actually a sales funnel? I was like, Yeah, it’s the process of somebody going from not knowing you to being willing to invest resources in you, right? Whether it’s time, money or I think we don’t always talk about this, but like the vulnerability of somebody coming on as client or somebody coming on as a student, whether it’s in Money Nuts and Bolts or in your fabulous new program. Or for me, in my marketing programs, it’s a vulnerable thing and you’ve got to make sure you can trust somebody. So to come back to why is it so hard for therapists? I think there’s like a lot of different threads to it, but it really comes down to people aren’t well-resourced, and I think that shows up in our marketing if we’re not getting our needs met. And really, I would say also getting some of our wants met too. Like this isn’t just about trying to survive in the world, but to enjoy living. To enjoy being alive.  

Linzy [00:06:42] Yeah. Like, I’m curious if you could. You could unpack that a little bit, Jenn, to use a very therapist term. When you say under-resourced, tell me more about what you mean by that. 

Jenn [00:06:50] Here’s a great example. In my own life, I am currently therapy-less because my therapist went to Thailand with her daughter, which I kind of love. That’s nice, but they’re gone for like three weeks, right? What am I going to do? I normally have 3 hours of therapy every week. 

Linzy [00:07:07] Do you? 

Jenn [00:07:10] I do. 

Linzy [00:07:10] So it’s a psychoanalysis of you? 

Jenn [00:07:12] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, only one hour of individual and 2 hours of group. Yeah. So I guess technically, it’s 2 hours and 50 minutes, but same difference. 

Linzy [00:07:23] Thank you for clarifying, because three sounded like a lot, but 2 hours and 50 minutes is very typical. 

Jenn [00:07:29] Yes, obviously so. So, yeah, I’m like a little rudderless without my therapist. And I was thinking as I was talking to again, another student earlier this week about how my therapist, who does like almost no marketing, just called me the fuck out when I first started to experience some success in my private practice. You and I had worked together. You taught me how to, like, keep my bookkeeping in order until I could make enough money that I could outsource that to somebody else, which is still one of my favorite business expenses. And I was doing really well. I had brought in a lot of people. I’m pretty good at marketing, and I was bringing in a lot of people who traumatized me, like not on purpose, but they weren’t. They weren’t bad clients, but they hit all of my stuff, but it was making a lot of money and I was like, Surely I’m great. Like, I have a full caseload now, right? Everything is amazing. And she looked at me. She said, You’re not well-resourced. You’re not doing great. I was like, I don’t know what the fuck that means. It’s like therapy speak. What are you talking about? Like, I have money in my savings account. And she said, Jenn, you so often reduce being well-resourced to money. And money is a symbol of being able to be resource. But it’s not the whole of it. 

Linzy [00:08:50] Mm hmm. 

Jenn [00:08:51] Can we talk more about what’s actually getting played out and where you’re actually burning yourself out? You’re stretching yourself in unhealthy ways because you’re not well-resourced in these other areas. And so I know that’s how she talked me into starting process group. I was like, Fine, okay, you think the focus group would be really helpful? And I do want to be well-resourced. I don’t know what it means. I’ll go to this group even though I think it’s going to be really hard. 

Linzy [00:09:15] Yes. 

Jenn [00:09:15] And it was really hard and also has been really transformative for me. So to stretch it out a little bit more, although I had a full caseload, right, like I had money in the bank, I have pretty good policies that things were working really well. I was not getting my relational needs met in my practice and frankly in the rest of my life. But practice was a place where it got amplified. And I also, in a lot of ways wasn’t getting my attachment needs met. Right. And so not only was I being triggered by clients. And again, truly, truly, like not the clients fault. It was, in some ways, my own marketing got in my way that I just brought in a lot of people. I was like this great. Like they’re willing to pay my fee, therefore they’re a good fit for me and they really weren’t. And so it’s being triggered there. And then it was harder to be like, okay, but I got a- I got to move things around because this isn’t a full life, right? Like that I am stretching myself logistically in terms of scheduling time. I feel kind of guilty that I’m charging so much and so let me do extra for them. Like let me keep over-delivering. Which is often marketing advice people get in general, like over-deliver, surprise them.

Linzy [00:10:38] Surprise and delight. Yes. Yes. 

Jenn [00:10:42] Which is like some patriarchal bullshit of just trying to get people to do more than what is actually on offer. 

Linzy [00:10:50] Right. Right. More than they even sold to that person. 

Jenn [00:10:53] Yes. Yes. Which this is a side show. But in another conversation with a client recently – not a therapy client, a student – and they were like, Yeah, when I first heard about you, I thought you were a scam. I was like, Seriously? Like, I- nobody in my personal life would say I’m a scam. Like, that’s not really how I come across is like, Yeah, you were offering so much. It just did not seem like be realistic. Like nobody could offer that much. And he was like, And Jenn you actually offer more now and like, I don’t- but at least I know you now and I know it’s not fake, which was comforting, but yes, coming back to well-resourced. So I was in a place where I actually had the resources that most people starting their private practice journey want. They had the fancy full caseload. I had a really nice website. I had all of these things, but it was empty because I wasn’t able to actually fill what I needed, which also meant I couldn’t show up for my clients in the ways I think that they deserve. Wasn’t doing that work. I wasn’t doing harmful work, but I wasn’t able to attend with the depth that I want to be able to. For any client who sits across from me, I see consistently this part show up in marketing, where people are so focused on getting their logistical needs met that they don’t pay attention to the attachment or the relational piece. 

Linzy [00:12:17] Right. Yeah. And by logistical needs, do you mean like, full caseload, like that kind of stuff? Like the things that are success on paper. Yes. Let’s say like full bank account. Good paycheck. Full caseload. You are successful. Congratulations. You have arrived. 

Jenn [00:12:34] Yes. And especially since COVID. I think the other thing that has happened with some of these metrics is somehow branding like so you have the clients filling up your rosters maybe or you have money in the bank account maybe, but also you have like a fancy Internet presence where people look at you and like Linzy really has it together. Have you seen her website? Oh my gosh. I just love how she did her website. Like, I’ve got to have a really good website too. I’m always seeing in these Facebook groups like, Don’t be too critical of my website, I know it’s not good enough. Like I go on their website and it’s fine. Like the copy could be stronger from a marketing perspective, but branding wise it’s fine. But there is sort of a sense of you got to keep up with the Joneses in your branding, like your logistical business stuff has to be on point. Does it make sense? 

Linzy [00:13:32] You were speaking to me. I was just thinking how I have a couple colleagues who I love, you know, like some of my biz besties who’ve done major website overhauls, like $20,000 projects. And like, it’s been really interesting for me to see them do that and be like, That’s really pretty and that’s really nice and I don’t want that. Like it’s just not worth it. But yeah, but it is this real appearance of success, right? And like, polish. 

Jenn [00:13:57] Yes. And it’s interesting because I felt this conversation a couple times with a mutual friend of ours, Tiffany, and I’m like, but I want my sales pages to be beautiful. Like, I might not be making enough money on the sales page yet, but I know it will be beautiful. I will not do it myself. And what I have learned over the past few years, is part of it isn’t about keeping up with the Joneses, although there’s a piece of that and some even wanting to trick the viewer. But because I want copy and design to be friends and I want to understand because I’m never going to be a designer, but I’m like, I want to understand how to write more for a designer. So it looks the way I want it to. Like, I want people to have a full body experience. And I don’t know that that’s often how people think about websites. It’s sort of like, Let’s make sure it looks good. And I’m like, I want to feel like a Dave Matthews concert. After you’ve had like a really long week of clients that were really hard, I want it to feel-. 

Linzy [00:14:59] That’s very specific. 

Jenn [00:15:00] Yeah, I mean, that’s my in Distilled that was the direction I gave my designers like Dave Matthews concert, but they’ve been stuck inside for a really long time. I was like, Cool, Got it. Go. I’ll send you after, like, your headshot on it, too, looks like a poster, like a like a touring musician poster. 

Linzy [00:15:17] My headshot. 

Jenn [00:15:18] Your headshot. 

Linzy [00:15:19] I have not seen this. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Send it to me after. It sounds glorious and artistic. Knowing you, though, Jenn, like to come back to this piece about being resourced, like I- you and I had a WhatsApp exchange before and we have been talking on WhatsApp recently and you had described kind of like some things that you’re thinking up and some cool stuff that we’re going to be doing together. And I just reply to you like my observation is like you are a creative being like to your core. So to me that actually, when we talk about being resourced and like needs, that to me actually speaks very much to like you and a need that you have to like have this artistic harmony happening in what you create. So that makes a lot of sense that that is a need that the for you or for you that is a need, where for other folks that might not be a need. 

Jenn [00:16:03] Yes I am with you and even bringing it back to like everybody who’s still listening, sometimes when we’re talking about what it means to be well-resourced, therapists have a way that we can see when somebody is not well-resourced and they’re like acting stuff out, then like this feels like a really telling on myself that I’ve been very obsessed with all of this Taylor Swift drama that is going on. Like there’s something in the psychic material that I’m like, There’s something about this that hooks me. You’re looking at me like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. 

Linzy [00:16:35] I don’t know. No, I feel like I’m very much in, like, the middle-aged mom camp of life now. 

Jenn [00:16:41] That is okay. 

Linzy [00:16:42] Isn’t she young? Taylor Swift. That’s the old person part of me responding. But I do know that you’re a Taylor Swift fan. 

Jenn [00:16:48] And like new Taylor Swift fan. So long story short, Taylor Swift broke up with her longtime boyfriend. My fanfiction is he broke up with her and she’s been, like, spiraling out of control ever since she broke up. And she acted as if, like, I’m fine. Like I broke up with him. Like, that was all of the PR statements. Right? And I from day one told my husband was like, I’m pretty sure Joe broke up with her. He’s like, I have no idea who you’re talking about. He was like, Jenn, I do not care. I’m like, She is posturing. She’s over it. Like she’s really trying to show the town the breakup. He’s like, I don’t know. It’s like, I wouldn’t be surprised if she cheated. She has so many songs about her cheating. Like, I think that might have been what happened in, like, the way it’s just played out. I’m like, I was right. I read it correctly and I feel like that feels like a therapist thing. And it doesn’t matter if it’s I don’t know, like your sister-in-law or your best friend’s cousin’s brother or whatever. Like, there’s still this sense of like, Ooh, I think I see. That’s what’s going on. And what I have loved about marketing is it feels to me I can look at somebody’s marketing and be like, I think I know something about you that you did not intend to tell me. What I often see in therapist marketing is how scared they are to be seen. And how scared they are that they’re not actually – not just them as people, but like us as a profession – is worth the time, energy, money invested in it. But there’s a kind of reduction of like, let’s play small because therapy’s you know, it’s not really that big of a deal. And since COVID, when therapy has become more like a trending topic, I see a lot more inflation of like, look at me like I’m an amazing therapist or therapy influencer or whoever it might be. I’m a big deal. And then they’re the people who get stuck in the middle of that, don’t want to play small, but they’re wary of feeling inflated, of being inflated, actually. Right. Like to be dangerous. Yeah. What are you thinking? 

Linzy [00:19:01] I was thinking about, like, the under-resourced piece and. Yeah. So can you tell me, like, bring. Bring me back around. Tell me how this connects with being under-resourced. 

Jenn [00:19:11] So part of what we’ve already talked about is, like, logistically, people are under-resourced. They might be desperate, need to pay their bills. We’ve also talked to them about the relational piece of just like, how do people see me that I might feel ashamed, I might feel all these other pieces, but this other part feels like the attachment is right of what happens when you haven’t had attunement, not just in family of origin, but in your marketing, in your business building, where somebody is able to support you and like attention to like where you are and say, okay, like here’s part of the way you can navigate it this way. Here’s some pitfalls to watch out for. And to do actually what you just did a few minutes ago with me is like, This is something I know about you, Jenn, you’re a deeply creative person. Of course. That makes sense. That design copy is going to be a place where you want to spend more of your energy. And let’s make- not that you’re my coach, but like, a good coach, a good consultant will be like, okay, let’s make sure that we make time, space, energy for you to invest in that, because there’s plenty of things that I don’t invest in. So I can have a beautiful sales pitch because that really matters to me, right? That’s the piece that’s often missing in marketing is people go to a place of like, I have to do all of the things in order to succeed or I’m going to do nothing because it’s all very scary to me. And there’s not guidance of, okay, let me attend to who you are. And I think this mixture of things would work for you. Have you thought about this? Here are some of the pitfalls with this. But like, here’s the ways that you can continue to navigate so it makes sense. 

Linzy [00:20:54] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I mean, I guess my question would be what happens or what do you see happen in therapist marketing when we haven’t had that? Like, what could that actually look like? How could somebody identify when maybe they’re under-resourced in these deeper ways we’re talking about and how that’s going to be showing up in their marketing? 

Jenn [00:21:11] So think of how to say this succinctly because there’s so many different ways that people can be under-resourced. Often what I see when people are under-resourced and they are under-resourced in a logistical area, right? They don’t have enough time or they don’t have enough money, which often translates to they don’t have enough clients or enough clients paying them enough that they can have a livable wage. And people tend to either pack up and quit, which happens occasionally, or it’s like one last ditch effort. I will do all of the things I have to make this work. I’m going to survive. I will have 3 Psych Today profiles. I will be on Instagram. Should I be doing a SEO, I’m doing Google My Business, how many websites should I have? I think I should have like probably 18 different blogs ready to go before I even turn my website on. And sometimes you see this like in Facebook communities, like somebody will say something that was like, look at the numbers. And like, I felt like 20% of people are like, yes, I know that feeling. Like I am also feeling that urgency. And so whenever there’s urgency in people’s marketing. A lot of like, I’ve started this, but I didn’t go through with it. I started this. I didn’t go through with that. And it doesn’t feel playful in the same way because like some people are like, Let me go try this. It didn’t really work for me. I’ll go try this other thing. But if it’s all there at once, I’m often thinking like, Ooh, I really need to get you just like two or three clients. It would be really helpful for you. I think the other thing I see a lot is this sense that people are not allowed to be themselves. I used to think of it when I was still like in residence, still in training, that I’m like, Oh, I’m so glad I don’t have to do tapes anymore because who knows what the fuck I’m doing in session? I’m not following the rules. I never give people worksheets like I’m not like evidence based in stuff because I’m not doing it. Like my perfectionist would come out.  And so it could sort of like gloss over and be sort of vague in supervision like, Oh, we did this, we did that. And then I took the diary card and then I didn’t tell my supervisor, but really we spent like 45 minutes talking about what an asshole this person’s been dating. Like, I wasn’t saying that because I didn’t think I was allowed to. And so I learned to mimic my voice, to sound like the supervisors and the nurses and clinicians around me. 

Linzy [00:23:44] Right. 

Jenn [00:23:44] Like even did this beautiful, like, Let’s unpack that. But like, that’s such therapy that just gets embedded in you. I see that so often in marketing that I’m like, I don’t know who you are. You’re a therapist. And there’s a kind of almost hiding behind the chair in their marketing. 

Linzy [00:24:04] Yeah, of course. 

Jenn [00:24:06] Which actually often says to me that you haven’t integrated what it means to be human and therapist and how those are not the same thing. And therapist is a role, not a persona. And I have found over time I feel much more comfortable with therapists who can recognize like, Hey, I’m stepping into therapist persona and here’s who I am as human. And it doesn’t mean they’re wildly different pieces, that this is a role I play, but it’s not who I am, right? That makes sense. 

Linzy [00:24:36] Yeah, that makes sense. So I’m thinking then, you know, in terms of marketing, how do we balance that? Like you’re playing a role as a therapist. You’re not like, Hey, come hang out with me and play video games, like I do every Friday night. But you also want to be yourself, right? So you’re like, you’re marketing the role that you play for them, but you also are you unique? What does that look like? Bringing those two things together when we’re trying to attract our people? 

Jenn [00:25:01] So it’s twofold, probably more. I’m having many thoughts. The first is this is actually the ultimate secret. If you want to know somebody, pay attention to the content that they focus on and the content that they focus on, the person that they – especially if they’ve niched down – is who they are or who there’s some part of them that’s still trying to heal from their relationship. You’re like, our psyche just drives us either to parcels or just people that we’re trying to work something out with. So there’s that piece. But I think sometimes when people hear, okay, I gotta market, it either becomes I have to make it all about me or I have to be very, very generic so nobody feels excluded and that’s just not effective marketing. I was telling you before we got on, I was like, Oh, I like read your new sales page, which is very long. I did not read all of it, but I read a lot of it and I was like, I think this might be me. Linzy, it’s not me. I just hired an associate sort of casually this morning. I don’t have a group practice. 

Linzy [00:26:07] And well, that’s not true. Just to be clear, you are a brand new group practice owner as of 5 hours ago. 

Jenn [00:26:12] Yes, that’s true. 5 hours. I’ve been a group practice owner and I’m not like if I read the sales page yesterday, I would not be the ICA. I would not be the niche. Right. And as I read it, I could feel seen by you because you were seeing somebody with a lot of depth. You weren’t purposely self-disclosing. There wasn’t a lot of focus on you. I think there’s like a small About You section yeah that like maybe 200 words I don’t know like not a lot. 

Linzy [00:26:45] Yeah I was going to say maybe it’s like 7% of the page. 5%. 

Jenn [00:26:49] Very small. But I could still feel you. And part of this is also I know you, but I could feel you as I read down the page as you focused on the other. Mm. And that is the gift that therapists have that marketers in general like and copywriters in general really have to work to home. Is we know what it’s like to see another person. And what scares us I think is often in seeing the other we are also seen. And it’s not necessarily about let me show you who I am. But it is showing up in being able to say, I see that in you because I have experience. That’s it. And when we’re talking about advertising therapy, often we’re talking about I have experience of what it means to be deeply anxious or very depressed or marked by trauma, marked by grief. All of these pieces, I know what it’s like to be human and in some ways and focusing your attention on the other. In your copywriting, in your marketing reveals something of you. I felt a little esoteric. Did it make sense to you know. 

Linzy [00:28:01] It did make sense, you know, because I’m thinking too, I’m thinking a little bit too of like the distinction between that and a- thank you, by the way, for speaking kindly of my copy. You know, of that distinction of like, yes. Through really being able to speak to the person that you’re attracting, you’re showing- I think you’re also showing basically your approach and your language and how you hold these things. Right. Like we’re showing, though, our ways of holding and thinking about and being with the issues, working out by how we talk about them. Right. Because, you know, we could call in someone who has anxiety and we could talk about it literally a thousand different ways. Yes. And that’s going to show our relationship to it, our vibe. But I’m thinking about that, and I’m distinguishing that in my mind from therapists. I’m thinking of one therapist I worked with myself years ago as a client whose About Me page felt like this was about him. I don’t know how to explain the difference, but it’s like that this was about him and his journey and his healing, and I got to be part of that as a client rather than feeling like it was going to be about me as a client. And that was ultimately, ultimately, my client experience of him was that he was very into doing what he was doing and being himself. There’s, you know, we could have a four hour conversation about that, I’m sure. But the distinction between that and someone who is like well-resourced and able to like, hold and show who they are while still being appropriately in their role, it feels like to me there is- those are different things. 

Jenn [00:29:25] Yeah. And I also just want to highlight you just did this thing that I said we’re able to do. That you read in his marketing who he was. And he, when he wrote that, probably was not thinking, oh, my gosh, my clients are going to be able to pick up some shadow piece of me. And you did. I was talking to my clinical consultant a couple weeks ago, I- we talk about it not infrequently because, like, I really think becoming a parent has just made me better before having a kid. Being a therapist, like doing all this work on myself will make me a better parent. I don’t know is true or not true, and I can very clearly feel a correlation to being with somebody very, very small and watching them like they can figure out the world. That sort of like take it in and marinate on it and figure it out has made me more attuned to how that shows up with all people that I sit with. And one of the things that’s really magical about parenting, at least in my experience so far, is I get to be present with her and I’m there and there are parts of me that I hold back. There’s parts that it would not be helpful for her if I explained to her the fine nuance between frustration and volcanic rage when she’s having a meltdown. It’s just not helpful for her. Maybe someday she might have language for that. And in our marketing, it’s not that we are dumbing anything down, but there are parts of us that we hold back because that’s not what clients need, right? And if we’ve had a healing journey like this person who actually now I’m thinking about is also like really working hard to prove to everybody that he had a healing journey where maybe he hadn’t had a healing journey as much to say. 

Linzy [00:31:17] I’m gonna say he was midway. 

Jenn [00:31:18] Okay, I like the answer to that posturing thing that we all deal in different ways. If I’m not concerned with having to prove to you that I’m really good or I’m this or that, and I can just be like, Yeah, I’m good, and let me show you how I’m good, Yeah, I’m going to see you so much that you’re going to end up reading the sales page. Like, this is the person I have to work with. Right. And ideally, that’s all good marketing. It’s not therapy that it is about being seen. And in being seen, you do. People do see you. 

Linzy [00:31:55] Yes. Which is so true. And like, just being in the middle of a launch right now myself, this is all very, very at the surface for me, very much like what’s occupying my time and something we chatted about a little bit before we start recording is Money Skills for Good Practice Owners, which at the time that I’m recording this is the doors open for it right now. First time offer, so I’ve got the sales page and the funnel is from sales page to a call with me, right? So it’s like a big jump, right, for someone to make. But what also tells me that I did a good job with the copy is everybody that I talk to I fucking love. They’re amazing. They’re amazing. Including one person who literally found me through an Instagram or Facebook ad, registered for a call with me at 9 p.m. at night her time for 6 a.m. the next morning her time, we got on a call immediately. We’re like, Oh my God, you grew up there. I went to school there. Oh my God. She was like, Oh, I’ve got this cottage on this lake, I was like, I grew up on a resort on that lake at this cottage. She was like, you know, it was just like, brought together by the Facebook algorithm and the universe, because I was able to, like, call in my people through that copy. And like, she already was like exactly who I meant to support, even though we- that was literally her first exposure and she ended up joining the course. And so it’s like, yeah, that you do- you can really call in those folks I think when you strike that balance. So for folks listening then this is not actually a podcast about how great my sales pitch is. But I do appreciate your feedback because I worked on it for a long time in terms of like getting resourced. If people are listening and they’re like, Yeah, I’m probably under-resourced, I’m doing all the things and I feel like I’m getting none. The results are I’m calling in people or have a caseload full of people who are triggering me. So I’m making a lot of money, but every night I die a small death and start again. What can they do? Like, how do you become resourced or like, how do you bring this into your marketing? 

Jenn [00:33:38] So two things. My first piece and I, it’s almost like I want to answer two questions at once. One thing which. 

Linzy [00:33:45] Probably cuz I asked you two questions at once. Was there another one there too? 

Jenn [00:33:49] Oh, yeah, I’m making up questions. The first is I want to highlight because you’re using beautiful marketing jargon, but marketing jargon that non-trained clinicians came up with Call in your people. You’re doing that at some of your top-of-funnel content, like whether it’s ads or reels or whatever it might be doing your ad tuning to people. That’s why I read your sales page and I was like, Oh, I want to work with Linzy for six months. I don’t have a group practice idea of a group practice. I work on that with my individual coach. Like, I got to like reframe how I see myself that you were tuning to where people are at. It is like a fine distinction, but I think it’s important because often people settle for something less than attunement because they don’t know that there are other options. And when it really comes down to, okay, you’re under-resourced, what do you need? You need to be attuned to. And that’s not something you typically can just do on your own. It’d be very cool if we could do it yourself attunement just for yourself and all the inner child parenting, self-parenting work like work in isolation. But until you have an experience of somebody else who can attune to you that way, you’re pretty likely going to repeat old patterns, right? And so when we’re talking specifically about full caseloads, whether you have one or you have one that isn’t actually full, it just looks full, most of what has been modeled for people is burning themselves out and not having good boundaries. And not like in a everybody’s listening has bad boundaries. But like it wasn’t modeled, there weren’t guardrails for how do you do this in a way that feels really good. And so that is kind of the secret for everything I do and why I like marketing so much is can we move from, I don’t know, just like surface level sympathy to deep empathetic attunement that the person who is selling is going to show up as the grounded resource and say, Here’s where I see you are at and here’s the potential of what could be, here’s a different thing, right? Because your sales pitch could have said and probably still done pretty well metrics-wise, but it could have said, I’m just going to teach you how to manage your finances. It’s really hard to be a good practice owner. I’m really good at it. I teach you about it. You just come work with me. But that’s not what your sales pitch is. And in fact, is probably so long, because it’s really complicated to be a group practice owner. And there’s a lot of people that you’re holding and like, there’s a lot of people which simple and relational and attachment things that come up and you needed space to be able to lay that out for them, that you were matching them where they are. 

Linzy [00:36:45] Yes. 

Jenn [00:36:46] And so that’s not a super strategic like go Google kind of get attunement. I should probably write an article on SEO-optimizing websites like how to get a team in. But that’s the answer to this. And there’s a variety of ways that people can get it. I think everybody should be in therapy. My clients don’t go to me like, I know you think everybody should be in therapy and like, Yeah, I think everybody should be in therapy. But if you don’t have a therapist, I think that is the best place to start. And not just any old therapist, but somebody who can really hold you as you go through the transformation of being an entrepreneur. After that, I think it’s about investing in people that you can feel seen by in their marketing. And then it’s about having a community that feels good. Who gets it? Who- I said this to somebody recently as trying to explain to my therapist how my email list works, because I got some email responses for people who are really triggered by some of the material. Their stuff I think more than mine, but I was like, Yeah, this is how it works. And she was like, I don’t see your and your emailing them all individually is like, No, that’s not exactly how it works. Which I love her and she’s attuned to me in so many ways, but she does not understand sometimes. Whereas I could go to my business coach and be like, Oh my gosh, this is what’s going on. The email list is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she gets it because she’s had some lived experience with that. And I think particularly for people who are building up caseloads, you need people who are doing it the way you want to do it or close approximation. Right. Because you don’t want to be like, I’m really struggling to build up a private pay. And everybody’s like, well, just take insurance. Have you heard about Alma? Like, you should take Alma, but that’s not actually a solution. That’s them wanting you to do it more the way they do it. 

Linzy [00:38:43] Right. Yeah. So having our own. Yeah. Being attuned to, allows us to tune to others. 

Jenn [00:38:52] Yes. You’re also a parent. I’m pretty sure that’s how parenting ultimately works. If we were attuned to our kids and our kids would be able to attend to others at some point.  

Linzy [00:39:02] True story. That’s the hope, at least, right, once those brains get a little bigger. 

Jenn [00:39:07] Gentle parenting. Tik tok is like, okay, just hang in there, everybody. 

Linzy [00:39:12] I used to be on gentle parenting tik tok when I was on Tik tok for sure. Awesome. Thank you, Jenn. And for folks who want more from you, tell us about what you’ve got. 

Jenn [00:39:23] I have so much. I’m actually. I made myself notes, so I remember to say all of the things that I have. Okay. So, I mean, I’m also where I talk fairly fast, so try to slow myself down. Now, if you’re listening, I want to say like I’m recognizing I did not give you, I don’t know, like the Post-it note of like three concrete steps, like, go do these things and your life will magically be transformed. And I do actually have three magical Post-it do these three things and you’ll have your life transformed. But I’m not going to give it to you for free. You have to trade your email address to me. So I have this great workshop. If you are a therapist who knows that you want to have more, whether it’s people on your schedule, money in the bank, or just joy in life, I really want to invite you to come watch Full Caseload Unlocked. I was talking to somebody the other day and they’re like this workshop is bananas. Like, there’s so much information in it, so it’s really hard to summarize what exactly happens. It’s like, well, it is that you give them the three secrets of full caseload. Therapists know how to have a life that feels good, to market with ease and efficiency I was like yeah, but it has a little business in this. You can’t put that all in a call to action. Just one thing. So I do guide you through the three secrets that literally my students, my marketing students know, colleagues of mine know, I know, that help you move from a business that has some emptiness or some overfilled notes to a life that feels really good. While you’re still funding your retirement, you’re still doing all the things that Linzy teaches you how to do in Money Nuts and Bolts, and you’re not having to jam-pack yourself to get there. The other thing I sweet talk to Linzy over WhatsApp into doing this fun new thing that I’m going to start. I don’t know totally decided on the name I’m playing with behind the marketer is kind of fun because we talked about your marketing today. 

Linzy [00:41:31] We did. We did. Yeah. 

Jenn [00:41:33] And so it’s a private podcast for only generally for my students, but because I like you so much, Linzy, and it sounds like your listeners also like me. 

Linzy [00:41:44] Mm hmm. Evidence shows. 

Jenn [00:41:46] So if you follow the link thinkersguide.com/Linzy. And that’s Linzy with a Z. You will get a chance to not only watch Full Caseload Unlocked, but I’m also going to put you in the private podcast, not the listener. Linzy’s in the private podcast, but everybody else will get a chance to listen to the private podcast with you and some of my other favorite marketing friends in the private practice space. And actually, I know a lot of people. So even if you don’t watch the workshop, like you should come because I’m going to ask Linzy all the personal questions you wish you could ask. But you guys are too polite to do so. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:42:24] Well, I look forward to that, Jenn. Thank you. 

Jenn [00:42:26] Thank you. 

Linzy [00:42:28] Thank you so much for joining us today. Jenn. It was lovely to have you back. 

Jenn [00:42:31] Thanks. 

Linzy [00:42:46] In my conversation with Jenn. You know, something that sticks out for me is just that importance of really recognizing our own depth as people as people who are also therapists. As she mentioned, there’s the role of therapist, but then there’s also who we are as individuals and all the things we’re bringing to the table and the importance of letting ourselves be those humans and making sure we’re taking care of all parts of ourselves through therapy and having great supports and really, I think giving ourselves the resourcing and support and attention and nurturing that we need while we’re doing that work for other people. As therapists, it’s so easy to hide in that therapist role and like, this is who we are and put so much of our energy there throughout the week that it’s easy to be neglecting ourselves and all of these complex and multilayered parts and facets of us that not only are important and need attention, but also by attending to them, we become happier people. Like Jenn said, you know, we can bring joy into our life, but it also makes us better therapists. So if that’s a motivator, if it’s hard to think about doing work for yourself and the richness of your own life, this work also helps us be better therapists when we do get the resources that we need. So I’m just so, so appreciative of Jenn for coming onto the podcast today. And yes, I do go to the show notes for that link to the conversation, that private conversation that you can get to through the links that Jen and I will be having around marketing, where, as she said, she’s going to ask me a whole bunch of questions. Who knows what they’ll be? I’m excited. So check out that link to see that conversation with Jenn and I about marketing as therapists. You can follow me on Instagram at @moneynutsandbolts and, like 145 users on Apple Podcasts, you are welcome to leave a review. It’s really helpful. Allows other therapists and health practitioners to find us and benefit from these conversations. Thanks for listening today. 

Maegan [00:00:03] It’s an act of revolution in many ways to be a woman, to be a therapist, to be a healer who says, “You know what? I’m going to push against what, honestly, the patriarchy has taught me – it means to be, quote, professional. And instead, I’m going to show up as who I am, who I genuinely, honestly am.”

Linzy [00:00:28] 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. 

Linzy [00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So today’s episode is with Maegan Megginson. If you have listened to this podcast in the past, or if you are a Money Skills for Therapists student, you’re probably going to know that Maegan Megginson is one of my business besties. We have been friends in business for six years now and I’m really excited to have her back on the podcast today. Maegan is a licensed therapist. She’s a seven-figure entrepreneur, and she’s also a business coach who helps therapists take their careers to the next level. She’s the founder of the Rest & Success Code, which is a charity fundraising event that inspires therapists to become deeply rested and wildly successful. And today, Maegan and I get into the value, both the emotional value and financial value, of creating a personal brand. This is really deeply what Maegan teaches, which is how to create a brand that really reflects you and who you are, how to step out of that blank slate conditioning that we get, you know, that we learn as therapists to be like tucked away and make sure that we don’t personally disclose and all of these things that can make it very difficult if we decide we want to expand and do things differently. So Maegan and I dig into that. We talk about what it can look like, with some examples of a personal brand, an expanded offer can look like. And then we talk to you about the financial value of creating a personal brand or the financial potential, I should say, but also other ways that a personal brand can pay you besides money. It’s always so lovely to be able to talk with Maegan, period, and especially to have her on the podcast. Here is my conversation with Maegan, Maegan said. 

Linzy [00:02:43] So, Maegan, welcome back to the podcast. 

Maegan [00:02:46] Linzy, thanks for having me. 

Linzy [00:02:48] It is always a pleasure. It’s always a pleasure. 

Maegan [00:02:50] Always a pleasure. 

Linzy [00:02:51] And I’m excited to have you today because I think that since you were on the podcast last – well I know this because we speak all the time, because we are biz besties – I think you evolved a lot, I think in turn and like finessed like in the work that you’re doing and the way that you’re messaging and I think really honing in on like your specific offer that you have for us therapists. And I’m really excited to get into those things today. Would you agree with that? Is that accurate, do you feel like? I think you were last here, like maybe two years ago or. 

Maegan [00:03:20] Yeah, it’s it’s been a hot minute. I mean, things change fast. I mean, and we are growing and evolving. Yeah, I would say that, like, my evolution continues in who I am and, and the work that I want to do in the world. And yeah, I’m really excited to talk with you about that today. 

Linzy [00:03:38] Yes, yes. Yeah. I think you really have a, I mean we’re going to talk about some personal brand stuff today, to me, you really have like an ever a real, like living, breathing brand because the work that you do is so, like, tied to like what you’re able to offer with your own growth as you grow. I feel like you’re very quickly able to turn and like help other people up that level right behind you. 

Maegan [00:03:58] And I mean, it is we’re going to talk about this, but it is one of my favourite things about having a personal brand is that it does pivot and grow with you. And I think if you’re the kind of person who is really invested in personal growth and is always looking for like, looking in how to move closer to what you’re passionate about or what you want to do with your work on this planet. Having a personal brand is a beautiful vehicle that helps you do that pretty seamlessly. 

Linzy [00:04:23] Right! So something that you and I have talked about a lot in our time together as friends going through evolutions is how as therapist, you have to kind of have to like tuck yourself back, right? This like blank slate persona that we need to have, you know, in clinical work or that we’ve been taught to have in clinical work. We don’t really share a lot of ourselves. We try to be inoffensive, neutral. And I think for so many of us that become so second nature and like so part of how we experience ourselves professionally. So as therapists are like starting to think about doing the kind of work that that you’ve done and step more into like being themselves and putting themselves out there, how do they shed that kind of blank slate costume that we’ve all been taught to wear for so many years? 

Maegan [00:05:09] Yeah, you know, and I think it’s important to name that we receive this message both explicitly and implicitly as therapists, that many people are trained in graduate school programs that literally say “You need to be a blank slate”, you’re not allowed to share who you are. It is unethical to self-disclose. It is unethical to, quote, “Make the work about you”. It’s selfish to want to share your personality and weave yourself into the work that you’re doing. These messages are, they’re oppressive. They are deeply internalized. And for many of us, they actually started way before graduate school. Many, many therapists received very similar messages from their own families. You know, “Don’t be too smart, don’t be too successful, don’t be too loud, don’t be too shiny”. You know, just be a little less of everything that you are so that you fit in better to, you know, this family system of which you are a member by default. 

Linzy [00:06:04] Right. 

Maegan [00:06:05] So we come about this blank slate conditioning naturally, and we have years and years of conditioning that tell us it’s not okay to be who we are. And many therapists get to the point in their practices and in their lives where they just can’t live that way anymore. And this was certainly something that I experienced of, I just like I can feel myself is begging to come out, and I want to be more self-expressed. I want to be more authentic and honest. And I have to do that in my life. You know, I have to do it in my life personally. And as I do it more in my life, I then have to do it more in my practice and in my business. So it’s a big question how do I start to become more self-expressed, more authentically, who I am in my private practice? And I think the first way that we start to do that is to weave elements of our personality into our business, into our branding and into our work with clients. 

Linzy [00:06:59] Mmm right. And can you give some examples of what that could look like? 

Maegan [00:07:03] Yeah, I can give some examples and I’m going to give your listeners a whole guide about it at the end of this conversation. So listeners are going to be well supported in this process. The first place I like to start is like, let’s just think about adjectives that describe who you are. This is, this is where I begin with folks in my coaching program Next Level Therapist is, you know, what are some adjectives you would use to describe yourself? And people will say things like, you know, funny, I’m funny or I’m sensitive or I’m chill or I, you know, fill in the blank. I’m charismatic, you know, I’m adventurous, I’m eccentric. Whatever the adjectives that you might use to describe who you are. And then we say, okay, let’s take a look at your business as it is right now. Let’s take a look at your website. Let’s take a look at your copyrighting. Let’s take a look at your intake paperwork. Let’s take a look at, you know, how you engage with clients. And I want to know, are those adjectives present in your business? Are they present in the way that you’re working with clients? And let’s just examine that and let’s look at how can we weave more of the way you want to show up in the world into what you’re actually doing. And just starting with some exploration around your adjectives can be a really evocative and telling process. 

Linzy [00:08:19] Hmm. Yeah, that is really interesting because something that I think about is even if I think about like, forms, usually it’s like we have a form that we got from somebody else and we feel like, okay, this is how the form has to be because this is right. And often it has very kind of like dry language or like aspirationally legal language that isn’t really but like this very kind of like stuffy nature of some of those kinds of things. And yeah, I am thinking about like what your client’s experiences would be like if the forms actually reflected your vibe rather than feeling like, Oh, this is like a generic form that could be at a hospital or could be at a vet clinic. But instead I’m at, you know, a therapist’s office, right? 

Maegan [00:08:57] It’s such a small place to make a tweak, but it does have a powerful impact on how the client is experiencing you as the provider. And it’s also going to call in more of the right clients, right? Because if you are, if let’s say you’re sassy, you know, like if sassy is one of your adjectives and your website, home page is super sassy, very conversational, it sounds like the way you would talk to your friends and family, you know, but in a professional setting. And then a client looks at your paperwork and your paperwork while being clear and covering, you know, all of the bases that it needs to cover also has that element of sassiness about it. The client’s either going to know in that moment, you are not the person for me. No, thank you. Or holy shit, I want to hang out with you like, okay. You know, like, I like I’m so excited to talk to you. I like you are going to be the person for me. So in addition to making you feel better as the practitioner that you actually get to be who you are and you get to show up as yourself. You have the secondary gain of pulling in the people who want to hang out with the real you and repelling the people who are not going to like who you are. And those aren’t our dream clients. So those are not people that you need to be working with anyways. So I think it’s just a win-win in every direction. 

Linzy [00:10:14] I, yeah, I agree. And it’s interesting, like it’s reminding me of something. Yesterday I was having a conversation with someone who wants to join the course and that had run out of time to join the course and came back in and said like, “Oh, I didn’t realize there was a deadline. Like, Can I join today?” And so I replied to her and said, “Yeah, absolutely, I’d love to help you in”. And I shared a, you know, a sales pitch that has a deadline on it. And I shared with her, “We use deadlines in our business because we’ve learned that the therapist that we serve will avoid money if they can until approximately the end of time”. And that’s what I wrote in the email and I thought it was very funny and clever. I was obviously having a bit of a sassy day, but I did notice afterwards there was like this policing voice that came into me like and was like “You don’t know this person yet, like, that can be very off-putting to her, that could be offensive to her”. Like, you could have struck the wrong tone. But then I had a counter thought of like, “Well, yeah, but if she doesn’t like my little jokes, she’s probably not going to like working with me”. 

Maegan [00:11:06] Exactly. 

Linzy [00:11:07] Because I use humour and the work that I do, right? But like I did notice this, like back and forth that happened in me almost immediately of like doubting that infusion of like more of my kind of like lighter personality right away. And then also reminding myself, like, yeah, she doesn’t like that little joke. She’s probably not going to like the hundred other little jokes that I like to tell when I’m doing coaching calls to keep things light. 

Maegan [00:11:28] Such a good example. And it’s so true. It’s an act of revolution in many ways. To be a woman, to be a therapist, to be a healer who says, “You know what, I’m going to push against what, honestly, the patriarchy has taught me it means to be, quote, ‘professional’. And instead, I’m going to show up as who I am, who I genuinely, honestly am”. And it is really hard. And what you’re describing is just a great example of that internalized conditioning. It just bubbles. It automatically bubbles right up to the surface. 

Linzy [00:12:00] Yeah. 

Maegan [00:12:00] I’m like, “Oh, was that appropriate? Are you going to upset her?” Like we all walk around with these little critics that are really concerned about upsetting people and really concerned about stepping out of line? And when my clients are really struggling with that, I will often say like, “The only thing that you shouldn’t do is be an asshole”. Really. Like, don’t be an asshole, you know? And if you are not being an asshole, then there’s not many things you can do wrong. You know it’s, be yourself if you’re being kind, if you’re leading with love always and you’re being yourself and someone doesn’t like the way that you presented, great! What a beautiful opportunity for the two of you to decide that you were not the right fit to work together. 

Linzy [00:12:41] Right. 

Maegan [00:12:41] But it is like, every day, every moment that you are taking off the blank slate costume. It is a reconditioning process and we as therapists know how hard that is. So you have to be really gentle with yourself to be kind, and you need to be in a community of therapists who are doing that work as well. Because if you’re trying to do this in isolation and you have nobody to talk to you when you have one of those challenging days or you’re doubting yourself, you’re going to go right back into the tiny little box that you’ve been stuffed into for so long. Like being connected to community as you are coming out as your true self is a really important part of this process. 

Linzy [00:13:19] Mm hmm. Yeah. And that makes all the sense in the world to me. And I think that, you know, if I think about our business relationship, I feel like that’s part of the work that we’ve helped each other do over the last six years or whatever that we’ve been friends,  it’s like when you are forging this new path and you’re sticking your neck out and you’re, yeah, being yourself and experimenting with how to do that, it is hard. And it’s very tempting to be like, nevermind, I was joking. I’m going to go back and like, be small and little and good again where like, nobody can criticize me or yeah, it’s, I mean small feels safe. And so it makes total sense that having that community around us to help us take risks and also I think like absorb wins when it goes well, right? Process when it doesn’t go well would be essential. 

[00:14:04] Yeah. Totally agree. 

Linzy [00:14:05] So therapists then, who are listening, what makes it beneficial for them or like why do therapists especially, are they in the position to be able to step out and build these personal brands? Because I know this is kind of the center of the work that you do, right? Is that that you know, that therapists like we are uniquely positioned. So tell me more about that. 

Maegan [00:14:26] Okay. I’m so excited because this is like I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this sometimes and I’m just like, filled with joy and excitement, you know, like, I’m so glad that I have moved past the era of my life where I wake up in the middle of the night like stressed with and wracked with fear and anxiety. 

[00:14:42] So much worse,. 

[00:14:42] Yeah, it’s so much worse. This is way better. Ten out of ten recommend waking up feeling just like so excited to talk about a thing. So first, maybe let’s define what a personal brand is because it is kind of ambiguous a little, it’s a little difficult to understand. In its simplest form, a personal brand is a business that’s based on you, your personality, your values, and most importantly, your subject matter expertise or your specialty area. So when I say you should have a personal brand, I’m not saying you should be an influencer on Instagram, right? Influencers, they do have personal brands that, that is true, but they don’t have subject matter expertise, right? They really are just known for their personality and their values and that’s it. What makes this different, what you and I are talking about is that we get to lead with who we are and we get to back that up with our subject matter expertise. And there are few people on the planet who are as specialized, as intelligent and as human, as psychotherapists, like we have spent years getting specialized training and whatever it is that we do, we have spent hours and tens of thousands of dollars getting supervised by people who have been doing this work for longer than we have. We are experts and yet therapists, we are some of the people who are the quickest to dismiss our expertise, to discount ourselves. You know, we are the, we stay in little tiny private practice offices with the doors closed, you know, where we maybe talk to 20 people a week and that’s it. No one else gets into our mind. No one else gets to know what we know or hear what we have to say. And I just feel like it’s such a travesty because, like if more therapists were out there in the spotlight sharing what they know and what they believe and how they help people heal and transform their lives, I genuinely think the whole world would be a much better place than it is right now. So anyways, yes. 

Linzy [00:16:38] Yeah. It makes me think about the more you know, the more you know, you don’t know rightly kind of that like Dunning-Kruger effect.  I think about all the coaches out there who know this much and have confidence just like through the roof and take up so much space like teaching this like, you know, tiny area that they figured out with full confidence, not understanding all of the adjacent areas that they know nothing about that, you know, can be really important. And then I think about therapists who have hundreds of hours of training and know so deeply what they know and what they don’t know and what they specialize in and what they don’t, and like the complexities of what they do. And yet they doubt themselves and think that they should only be like making a small impact when these folks who know way less than you think that they deserve to be making a huge impact. 

Maegan [00:17:24] And again, we have to ask ourselves, why is that the case? Well, it’s the case because the way we’re trained as therapists, you know that we are trained in a paradigm in graduate school programs, in a culture of psychotherapy that has deep roots in white supremacy and patriarchy and these systems that have profited overtime on keeping people like us small and quiet. And so that’s why I come back to like this is an act of revolution to say no more. I’m not going to be small. I’m not going to be quiet. I’m actually I’m going to step out. I’m going to open the door of my private practice office. I’m going to, like, step into the street. I’m going to look both ways first, of course, and I’m going to say, “Folks, I have something to say”. You know, I know something that will make your lives better. I believe something so deeply that I want more people to have access to this work that I, and therapists say this all the time right there, like I want to expand my impact, you know? I don’t want only to be limited to the work that I’m doing in the therapy room, which is great. It’s great to say, but now we need to take that to the next level. So if that’s how you feel, if you feel called to expand your impact beyond the therapy room, then do it. You know, it’s then do it. And I think the easiest way to do that in the most joyful and creative way to do that is by creating a personal brand. And eventually, when the time is right, creating a business separate from your private practice where you can start showing up in a different way and selling things to your people, to your community in a different way as well. 

Linzy [00:19:00] Right. And, you know, for folks listening, you know, I think that we’ve been taught many roads to that right to expand an impact like some people will say, like you need to make a course based off of what you’re doing in your practice or you need to speak like you need to do this. Tell me, you know, Maegan, your perspective, why is a personal brand the thing to do first rather than jumping into one of those other things? 

Maegan [00:19:26] Yeah. When you jump into another thing before laying the foundation for your business, inevitably you are not going to be very successful, right? And I see this all the time. People invest big money in programs that say… Okay, okay, let’s use the online course as an example. There’s a therapist in private practice and they’re like, I really want to make a course. So they pay 3000, $4,000 to take a course to learn how to make a course. And then they make a course and then nobody buys the course. And then they say, “Oh, I just wasted all of that money. I’m not meant to be successful. This isn’t going to work for me”. But the problem is an analogy I often use is, you hired the contractor before you got the blueprints from the architect. 

Linzy [00:20:12] Hmm. Right. 

Maegan [00:20:14] Like you know, you jumped in and you made a thing. But there’s actually a lot that goes into setting a business up for success before you sell something. And I think that’s where the personal branding piece is really important. You know, slow down. First, let’s get really clear on what parts of you do you want to weave into your business? What is it that you really want to say? How do you want this business to serve you? This is what we do in Next Level Therapist is we first start with the personal exploration, then we turn our attention to who, who are we here to serve? Who are we here to serve? What do we want to say to them? How are we going to serve them? And then let’s put the infrastructure in place to support our ability to sell things. Let’s make sure we have a marketing plan. Let’s make sure we have an email list. Let’s learn what it means to build an audience. Let’s learn how to sell with integrity. And when we do all of these things upfront and then we go to make the course, bam! You’re going to be so much more successful because you have the infrastructure to support you in doing the thing, selling the thing that you want to do that you want to sell. And the personal brand infrastructure also allows you to pivot. That’s what we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation, that if you can do a course and then maybe you’re like, “That was boring”, I want to do a group program. And then you do that and you’re like, “That was too stressful”, I just want to do a retreat and then you can do a retreat. And I think the ability to play and to experiment with different ways of offering things to your people is a really important element in creating a business beyond private practice. 

Linzy [00:21:50] Right? Because with the personal brand, if I understand properly or correctly, people learn to like and trust you, they like you and what you do. So if you’re doing a course and they like and trust you and the content is relevant to them, they’re going to jump in and take the course. But then if you say, I’m going to do this retreat instead, they’re gonna be like, “Oh my God, I would love to have time with … Claire” and they’re going to interest do the retreat because they have a personal connection to you. 

Maegan [00:22:13] Yeah, that’s right. You are always leading with your personality and your values. I say there are three things that you need for a profitable personal brand. You need courageous authenticity, right? You have to be courageously yourself. You have to be honest. That doesn’t mean you have to show people everything about you or your life, but the parts of you that you do show need to be courageously authentic. People are drawn to authenticity. Two, we need genuine relationships, right? Successful personal brands are built on relationships, genuine relationships. My friendship with you, Linzy, is genuine. My relationship with the people in my audience, on my email list, those are genuine relationships. I am really talking and connecting with those people in real ways. And three, we need to be compelling storytellers, right? To have a successful personal brand, you do have to be able to tell stories. And this is one of the most fundamental elements of being human is being able to tell a story. Our brains are hardwired to receive story, to tell story. So when you’re being yourself, when you are open to genuine relationships and when you are telling stories in your business in a way that brings people in and makes them curious about you and what you do, then what you just described, it happens. You know that people start to trust you. People are interested in what you have to say and they’re willing to kind of follow you around as you experiment with different offerings. And just because you know, you’re the, you’re the money person, I will also say that, like, this is the path that leads to a scalable income. 

Linzy [00:23:44] Yes. 

Maegan [00:23:45] For you as a therapist, right? When you get out of the therapy room and you start experimenting with offers that aren’t just an hour of your time with one person at a time, you can begin to see the pathway to increasing your income and your revenue in a way that you’ll never be able to see with a traditional private practice business model. 

Linzy [00:24:05] Yes. Yeah. And, you know, just to help folks understand, like, would there be any kind of an examples or numbers that you could share to help them wrap around what’s possible with a personal brand? 

Maegan [00:24:15] Sure. Well, let’s brainstorm this together. I mean, let’s say maybe we can start with the online course example. 

Linzy [00:24:20] Sure. 

Maegan [00:24:21] Okay. So let’s say. 

Linzy [00:24:22] We’ll my calculator? I’ll get my calculator. 

Maegan [00:24:23] Yeah, maybe get your calculator. Because, you know, Linzy knows me in numbers we’re …. we’re not the closest friends. 

Linzy [00:24:29] You’re acquaintances. 

Maegan [00:24:31] We’re acquaintances. I have mad respect for numbers, but we don’t get each other, you know? 

Linzy [00:24:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Maegan [00:24:36] Okay, so let’s say you create an online course. Now you create an online course after you do all of those other things that I mentioned, you know, building the infrastructure, creating an audience so that there are people who want to buy an online course from you. So I don’t know, Linzy, let’s say that someone specializes in anxiety and they create an online course about managing your anxiety and work meetings. So you’re getting anxiety at work meetings. You’re not able to speak up for yourself and you want to overcome that. So you create a kind of self-study course that guides people through, let’s say, a 4 to 5 step process for managing anxiety and speaking up at work. You package that up and I don’t know, what do you think someone would sell for Linzy? 

Linzy [00:25:16] MM Four or five lessons, anxiety work and on-target audience. We’re talking about like really big corporate people or?

Maegan [00:25:25] Let’s say like middle managers. 

Linzy [00:25:27] Sure. Middle managers. Okay. I would say that’s at least 500 bucks. I would say if I’m a middle manager and like it’s impacting my work performance. Yeah, it easily would be that much.  

Maegan [00:25:39] And let’s say that includes like a little bit of one on one support too, you know? So there’s like a group coaching call or something like that. So great. So we have this course anxiety management for middle managers looks like that needs some copy work. 

Linzy [00:25:51] So inspiring. 

Maegan [00:25:52] Yeah. Okay. So $500. So let’s say, I don’t know, let’s say you sell 20. What’s that? 

Linzy [00:25:57] $10,000. 

Maegan [00:25:58] $10,000. So and let’s say you how many group coaching calls do you show up for? Let’s say five. 

Linzy [00:26:05] Mm hmm. 

Maegan [00:26:06] Okay, so there’s five group coaching calls. And so really, this is an online course that became a group program. And in the course of this brainstorming an online course became a hybrid. 

Linzy [00:26:15] A hybrid, yeah, this how it works.

Maegan [00:26:17] Yep. That’s that works Great. So you just made ten grand. You showed up live for 5 hours and 20 people get a pretty huge transformation, right? And now it’s, it’s not fair. I don’t want to be someone who’s like, “You got paid ten grand for 5 hours of work” because a lot of work when into creating that course, right? A lot of hours went into making it. A lot of hours, you know, you probably had to pay people to help you with the tech. But what you now have is something you can rinse and repeat. So you made $10,000 the first time that you did it. Well, the next time that you do it, maybe you increase the price to $700 and instead of 20 people, you do 40 people and you actually don’t have to redo any of the work you did the first time because it’s all already created. So the only thing you do the next time is show up for those five coaching calls. So I don’t know, Let’s and let’s let’s say 30 people. 30 people, $700 each. What’s that one’s?

Linzy [00:27:10] $21,000. 

Maegan [00:27:11] Okay, great. So the second time you did it, you grossed $21,000 and so on and so forth. As things evolve and change in your business and now you can begin to see the pathway out of, well, how many one on one therapy hours did it take you to generate $21,000? 

Linzy [00:27:28] Mm hmm. Right. Yeah. 

Maegan [00:27:30] And when you were focused on delivering those 21 or however many therapy hours for that $21,000, you also didn’t have the time to create something that you could scale and share with more people in this new way. What do you think? 

Linzy [00:27:46] I think the math is good. And I was going to say, you know, to put it into you know, since this is a financial podcast, $21,000, if we’re using like your kind of standard profit first rate that applies to most businesses are paying yourself about 50%. That’s like $10,000 in pocket that you could take home from doing that work. Yeah, it is. You really are, when you’re doing this kind of work, I think not just increasing your impact, but also in our practice, like when we’re doing one on one sessions, it’s like you might say the same thing 100 times and like one time you might say it really, really well and the next time you’re like, “Ah, that was okay, I think, I think I got it across. But I actually forgot to mention this part”. Like, what I think about too, is when you make a course and like when you package and create something like that you do get to know that it’s like your best take, right? Like you’re going to you’re going to use the version that you really like, yes, nailed it. Also added this piece that I often forget. And so you also know that there’s this certain consistency of quality that those folks who are taking the course are getting because they’ve got, you know, your best version of that spiel. 

Maegan [00:28:43] Mmmm I love that. 

Linzy [00:28:44] I think when we do therapy work, there’s beauty that comes from it, obviously, like being in person and like the relational aspect, whatever. But like if you’re having a bad day because you took too many cold meds and you’re like, woohoo, I’m a little bit loopy in the middle of the session. Speaking from personal experience, that happened to me once and I was like, “Oh dear”, you know, you’re probably doing good work, but you’re not doing your best work. And so that’s also something that I think about is like you when you take that energy to create it once, as you say, you get to that people benefit it from time, time and time again, like over and over. And also you really know that you’ve like nailed you’ve nailed it and you’re happy with the product. 

Maegan [00:29:18] I think that is so spot on. It’s better for everybody, I think and you and I are the first people to say like, this doesn’t happen overnight. No, we don’t want to sell you like flash in the pan. Linzy and I have been working at this for years now, and we’re still growing. We’re still learning. But what’s so exciting is that you do get to experience more freedom in your own life because you’re not committed, you know, every hour of every day to a client, you get to be more creative and more playful and you get to fine tune what you know into these courses or these programs. I do allow you to show up in the best way possible, and the people who are participating in those programs are paying a whole lot less than they would pay if they were doing long term one on one therapy with you or long term one on one coaching with you. It just kind of, it’s so expansive when you get to this place and you start it’s expansive personally, when you become more self expressed, when you start showing up as who you are and saying what you actually feel and you actually believe. Like there is a personal expansiveness that is so beautiful and healing for many of us who have been hiding our entire lives. And then there’s a professional expansiveness, right? That we’re getting to reach more people. We’re sharing what we know with more people. We’re helping more people create this powerful transformation in their lives. And yeah, there are stressors and there are learning curves and there are growing pains. But what makes it worth it for me is that expansiveness, like once you get a taste of the expansiveness, it’s really hard to go back. 

Linzy [00:30:50] Yes. Yes. And I would add to that to financial expansiveness as well. Right. Like I think as you know, before we started recording, you and I were chatting about kind of our own numbers and some, you know, numbers that we’re looking to meet and settle into and what becomes possible. And we were just reflecting on how a few years ago, there’s no way we would have thought we were having these conversations about, you know, like settling into consistent 30K months, 40K months, like 50K months, being the kind of, you know, level that we’re at now. That would have been a total pipe dream years ago when we started doing this work. 

Maegan [00:31:24] And now that we’re at that point, it’s like, oh, okay, it’s not that big a deal. You know, It’s like, okay, like we see like, yeah, you need that much money at the stage that we’re at now. We’re like, “Oh, you need 50K a month to be able to do what you want to do and pay your team well and pay yourself well”. And I think it’s really important to name too on the personal brand path. You can be as big or as small as you want. 

Linzy [00:31:44] Mhm. Right. 

Maegan [00:31:46] Like you can be a powerful company of one where you generate, you know, 150K a year and that’s a sweet spot for you and you’re living your best life. Or you can have a personal brand and say I want to make $1,000,000. Great. Make you can work your way up to making $1,000,000 or you can say, I want to make $300,000. Like there is a pathway for you financially through the personal brand roadmap that will help you meet your personal needs. And I love the flexibility of that model. 

Linzy [00:32:16] Yes. Yeah. Because the other thing that I think about, too, is I think about money as I also think about being able to buy back our time. You know, and as I reflect on, you know, my own decisions around how I use money in my business, it’s very much reflected for me in last few years, having time flexibility. Right? And like I have a son, he brings home every disease under the sun and like being able to just have that be okay and it’s like, I don’t have to, I don’t lose a day of revenue. Nothing is ruined, you know, like, maybe I have to, like, show up and do a coaching call because it happens on that certain day. But then I only need somebody to cover me for an hour and a half. Like, for me, I know that looking at my values in my business over the last couple of years, it’s very clear to me that I have valued my time, right? And so more money goes to pay other people. So I have lots of support. So I have lots of time. And you get to, like, play with those variables too, in your business and decide trading money for time or you work more and you make more money, but you get to play with those levers. 

Maegan [00:33:15] I think that is such an important lesson, but it’s something that I talk about a lot as well. It’s I think I call them creative profits, like, let’s get creative here. Like, profits aren’t always money in the bank. 

Linzy [00:33:28] Yes. 

Maegan [00:33:28] How else are you profiting from your business? You’re profiting in time. Flexibility, right? You’re profiting and rest. You’re profiting in space for personal development. For me, a big one is creativity, right? That in this path I get to be creative and expressive in ways that I couldn’t be as a private practice therapist, right? That I am experimenting with a workshop or a group or an in-person event. And like that kind of playfulness and creativity is worth its weight in gold for me because it brings me joy. So I think, I want everyone who’s listening to this who feels excited about moving beyond the traditional private practice, who wants to be more self-expressed to also ask yourself, what do you need your business to do for you? Something I often say is that your business should serve you first in your clients second. So if you really are putting yourself first as the business owner, what do you need to get paid in? Time flexibility? X amount of money per year? Creative expression? More space for rest? What? I mean, the sky’s the limit. Make it whatever you want, but be really clear about what’s most important for you so you don’t get swept up in the business building space, which will just tell you to do more and more and more all the time until you, you know, grind yourself into the ground. Avoid that trap. Be clear about who you are and what you actually need. 

Linzy [00:34:52] And it will tell you, too, that money is the metric of success. And that’s not true. 

Maegan [00:34:56] Sure isn’t. 

Linzy [00:34:57] Especially not revenue. You make that money that comes in the top. That is not what is going to make you feel fulfilled. Yeah, that doesn’t make it worth it, frankly, especially if the money’s not working. But sometimes even when the money is working, it’s still not worth it. 

Maegan [00:35:11] Yeah. If you if you’re making a shit ton of money, but you have no time. Not worth it. I mean, depending on your values. But for people like me and you, it would not be worth it. Again, this is why you have to name what’s most important for you. Because maybe time flexibility is not important to you in this season of your life and what is important to you is generating as much money in the bank as possible. And if that’s true for you, great, more power to you. But be clear about it so that you don’t get swept up in other people’s expectations. 

Linzy [00:35:39] Hmm. So, Maegan, if folks want to get further into your world and also get that great resource you mentioned at the beginning. Where can they find you? 

Maegan [00:35:49] Thanks for asking Linz, yes! If you’re feeling really drawn to this conversation about self-expression and weaving more of your personality into your private practice, because that’s where it begins, right? We don’t start by creating a course or launching a high-ticket program that comes way later. It starts by first weaving more of who you are into your private practice. I would love for you to download my Personality Powerpack, which is a lesson pulled straight from Next Level Therapist and it’s a five-step guide to help you discover your authentic personality and learn how to weave that personality unapologetically into your private practice. And you can download that at Personality Power Pack dot com. And the second invitation I would love to extend Linzy, you’ve joined me in the space before. I have a weekly writing studio called Express Yourself. It is free. You can come and go as it is convenient for you. We gather with the sole intention of getting our hands dirty and practicing, expressing ourselves on the page. I give a prompt. We write together for 30 minutes and then we spend about 20 minutes at the end sharing and reflecting as a community. Do you want to read more about that and register to join us? You can do so at Express Yourself Studio dot com. 

Linzy [00:37:05] Great. Thank you so much Maegan for joining us today. 

Maegan [00:37:08] Thanks for having me back, Linz. 

Linzy [00:37:22] Something that stuck out from my conversation with Maegan that I think is so important is just how much therapists, and I want to say mental health therapists for sure but I also feel like I could probably say for some other health practitioners as well, how much we doubt ourselves, don’t value what we know, as I mentioned, how much we’re aware of, what we don’t know. You know, when it comes to stepping out and kind of staking our claim and sharing what we know with the world, I think it’s really easy to undervalue your expertise, you know, that you’ve gained through not just training like formal education, but also through often your own life experience. Usually, we specialize in a certain area because it has some personal relevance to us. And then the hundreds and thousands of clinical hours that we’ve spent working with people around, whatever the topic is, you know, that we focus on and that that we love to work with. I just love her point about how uniquely positioned therapists are to build these brands because we just know what we know so deeply. So if you have an area of content that you love and work that you love to do, I’d really encourage you to think about and be curious about if you ever would want to expand beyond one on one work. And, you know, think about how much you know, and how much you have to share and how much information you’re able to share with your clients every week. Both like knowledge that you have, but also ways of dealing with, you know, whatever it is that they’re struggling with. I just love Maegan’s point about how uniquely positioned we are to be able to help people on a broad scale and build these brands because of all the expertise that we amass every single week in the work that we do. I’m grateful to Maegan for coming on the podcast today. 

Linzy [00:39:02] You can follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, please hop over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. I’ve said it before because it’s true. It is the best way for other therapists, new therapists to find the podcast and benefit from these conversations. Thanks for listening today. 

Celeste [00:00:01] Having a conversation about the higher fees or what someone can afford to pay is difficult. When someone’s coming in saying, I’m looking for help here and I’m paying for therapy. And how do you have that money conversation as part of the initial clinical conversation and continue to work with that in the relationship? 

Linzy [00:00:28] 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. 

Linzy [00:00:51] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So today’s guest is a Money Skills graduate, Dr. Celeste Pietrusza, who is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice and a supervisor at the Green Clinic in Brooklyn, New York. Today, Celeste and I talk about class and we talk about her experience of being first generation, being the first one in her family, her working-class family to get a Ph.D. We talked about her experiences with going through that Ph.D. program, having working-class background. We talked about what challenges come up for the supervisees that she has now, where they really struggle around money and about just this pervasive lack of education, even in higher learning around money, the taboo around money and who that serves. If you are first generation or if you’re like me and you’re kind of second generation, like working-class family one or one and a half generations ago, I think you’re going to really appreciate this conversation. Today we get into some of the gaps that can exist when we have working-class backgrounds and then move into more of this kind of emotional labor and academic spaces and how some of the things that our parents teach us that worked for them and their situations don’t work for us anymore. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Celeste Pietrusza. 

Linzy [00:02:21] So, Celeste, welcome to the podcast. 

Celeste [00:02:24] Hi, it’s great to be here with you, Linzy. 

Linzy [00:02:25] Yeah, it’s great to be with you too. So, Celeste, you took Money Skills… what’s our timeline now? Like one year or two years ago? 

Celeste [00:02:35] Yes. I mean, I believe I began in 2020 and then completed in 2021. 

Linzy [00:02:42] Okay, so even longer than that. Okay. And you took Money Skills right at the beginning of kind of stepping into practice. Am I correct about that? 

Celeste [00:02:50] As I was finishing up my postdoc and moving into private practice, I was at doing my post-doc at a group practice where I supervise now. And feeling a lot of anxiety, actually, even with all of the training and preparation they had about making this move from being pre-licensed as a psychologist in New York State to getting everything together, passing the licensing exam and making this transition. And so Money Skills for Therapists laid the groundwork that got all my bank accounts set up. It felt really good to have that in place. Like even when I was like, I’m not sure how this is going to work, if this is going to work, but just trusting the process and the steps. 

Linzy [00:03:32] Mm hmm. Yes. And I feel when you’re talking like, I see you very much as like a student, like you’re somebody who’s really like a learner. And it sounds to me like you kind of just, like, put Money Skills, like, into your educational process as part of, like, stepping into practice. You added it to your curriculum. 

Celeste [00:03:49] Mm hmm. Yes. I mean, I wish I had something like this along the way in graduate school. 

Linzy [00:03:53] In actual graduate school, Yes. 

Celeste [00:03:55] I think about it as yeah, as a class that I, that I needed for licensure. 

Linzy [00:04:01] Right. Right. So going back then, like thinking kind of before your time and Money Skills, like you’ve done a lot of work on this. But I’m curious, Celeste, thinking about your, your background, how did that influence your relationship with money before you took Money Skills and became a supervisor as you are now? 

Celeste [00:04:18] So neither of my parents, neither my mom or nor my dad went to college. And so my dad was a union sheet metal worker and my mother helped run his business of contracting, too. And so they were really detail oriented about money. And yet in terms of me going to college and having very different challenges that they did too, and especially with a graduate education too going to PhD level student debt too, it was a new kind of structure. I mean, whereas in the union, once you get to journeyman start making a wage, you can make a specific wage and begin at 21. The training process with undergraduate is over ten years really to get Ph.D. level. And I was coming out as an adult and yet at the same time feeling what do I do now too, and made it this way and feeling like a very unique set of challenges as a generation college student. 

Linzy [00:05:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That first-generation experience. Because you were experiencing how to navigate something financially that your parents had never done before. And I’m curious, Celeste, like, did they want that for you? Like, was that part of the narrative growing up? Okay, so they wanted you to get that post-secondary education? 

Celeste [00:05:37] Yeah, I feel really fortunate. It was something that they encouraged my brother and sibling and I, and we all did get terminal degrees in our respective fields too as well. And so it was something I mean, the idea was you go to school and get an education so you don’t have to work as hard as we did. And there’s something about that on the one hand, in that investment of their time and labor and energy, that’s very empowering. And also at the same time, and we also have to work hard in a in a different way to lead in expected mental lives. 

Linzy [00:06:14] Yeah, like I’m, your Ph.D I’m guessing was not like super laid back and it was not a life of leisure, I would guess.

Celeste [00:06:20]  I was talking with someone who was not familiar with the process that you did an externship and then you did an internship, a full-year internship before your Ph.D. and then, only then you had to write a dissertation and that’s how the training process went. And so it did feel like there were constant deadlines and things to meet on a small stipend, too as well.

Linzy [00:06:48]  Right. Yeah. Like it’s a different type of labor that you’re having to do. And so I’m curious, and Celeste, like coming from that experience of being first generation, what was your relationship with money like, going back a few years ago before you really started working on this? Or maybe you’d already done some work at that time? I’m not sure. 

Celeste [00:07:06] Oh, I would start, well, I had to dig in. I mean, like I had gotten to the point where it was really time. I mean, I kind of money avoidance is what I would call it, had come to a crisis point. Like my idea was, okay, I will work to make sure I have enough for what I need and for what I want too. And yet at the same time, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I mean, maybe we don’t ever, I wasn’t thinking and planning for this future too in private practice, because everywhere it went along the way in the Ph.D. program, we were told, don’t think about that stuff until you get there. There’s enough to think about now. Or sometimes we’d be told things that were for far later, really early when they didn’t quite stick. One of the first presentations in graduate school was about how to file your dissertation with the library on day one in orientation. 

Linzy [00:08:01] They’re like, This is important. File this away for several years in your brain, but don’t think about how you’re actually going to make money when you’re out of here. That’s too much to think about. 

Celeste [00:08:09] Right? That was yeah, that was not addressed. I mean, I think there was maybe a panel once along the way, a colloquium of people in private practice. But it was also very early, like maybe first or second year of graduate school. And so it was nice to see that it was possible and see some role models and people to identify with. And yet at the same time, the absorption and capacity to say, okay, here’s what you do, here’s the like your course, the money nuts and bolts to what was not there to at least in any kind of formalized structured way.  

Linzy [00:08:44] Right. Yeah. So Celeste, then I’m curious for you emotionally, what was your relationship with money like? Like I’m hearing there was avoidance. What was in the mix there? 

Celeste [00:08:54] Oh, overwhelm. Kind of putting, an ostrich putting my head in the sand is the image that comes to mind. Like it’ll be okay, just and sometimes, and maybe this was part of the working class background in my family, was just work more. Like in when in doubt, add more work to the problem. You know, it’s what I saw my father doing it. It worked out in many ways for our family. And yet I learned that is not always the answer. Work harder. Working smarter was not something I really understood how to do, and I’m still learning along the way too what that means. Particularly in the psychology profession too, where I do feel a pull and a call to this one sometimes do want to do more and yet have had to also have the process of learning my own limits too. 

Linzy [00:09:45] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because when you mentioned like that work harder narrative, it occurs to me like that that is often the solution when you are working class, unless you actually have some sort of, you know, pathway up, you know, unless you can make it into management or whatever. But that’s such a small group compared to the folks who are doing the actual work. That’s the tool you have, right, is you can work more because even if you get a raise, it’s not going to be the kind of raise that we can get as therapists, right? Like, it’s just a totally different, like wage metric that we’re talking about there or scale. And so that occurs to me is like you’re given the advice or you’ve absorbed the strategy. That was the strategy that was available to your dad, and it did work for your dad, but it doesn’t actually apply to the work that you do in the same way. 

Celeste [00:10:32] No, I mean, people often think this an exaggeration, but my father would wake up sometimes 4 a.m. and I mean he’d stop back in to eat quickly. But when I mean, it would be ten, 11, midnight some nights as well. And there wasn’t this concept of the weekend either, because as he said, there’s always more work, right? You know, there’s more work to be done, right? Like and something he told me once and I’ve learned this now is a positive lesson, but at the time as a kid, I felt this pang, he said “Life is maintenance and maintenance is life”. 

Linzy [00:11:11] Yeah, I could see that. 

Celeste [00:11:13] And on the one hand, it is important for the daily actions and things you have to do. And yet it also as a kid as I heard this “Really is that all there is, like can there be a vacation?”.

Linzy [00:11:25] Well and like that’s so interesting. I mean, it makes me think about this summer. My partner and I had a backyard cottage built in our backyard, and sometimes I’ll say, “Oh, yeah, we built a backyard cottage”. Things like, Oh, no, no, we didn’t build it, we didn’t build it. We looked out the window at people working exceptionally hard, working to build it with their hands with skills that I 0% have. And something that I thought about sometimes as I walked, especially when we had to like, hire a heavy road crew of like guys with like literal jackhammers, you know, like experiencing like what is really a terrible workplace from a health perspective, like absorbing these fumes and just, like, rattling their organs. Like, sometimes I would look at them and just like, visualize their organs shaking in their bodies from the physical work they were doing to, like, destroy something on my property so they could fix it. And it just gave me this deeper appreciation for how much, when you are really working with your body, which is what a lot of folks are working class, that’s what you’re told to do with what you have to do. You have to put your emotions and physical sensations aside. You have to dissociate. There’s no way that those guys are not dissociating in order to be able to physically do what they do. And from like, if I think about an IFS perspective, like a parts perspective like that is managers. They have manager parts galore that are like making it. So it’s like, “Nope, you do the work” and like “Yep, your knee hurts and it’s been hurting for three weeks, but you can’t go to the doctor right now because you’ve got this contract to finish”. And so you just like you put it down, you manage, you manage, you manage, you manage and like some of those things that I think we might be able to have more access to in the kind of work that we do, of just like being present and slowing down and feeling it. It’s just like that kind of manual working class work is not conducive to really being like present, in like the more emotional parts of life. Like, I’m curious about your thoughts about that. 

Celeste [00:13:09] I really appreciate how you described and phrased that, because that does describe in this very empathic way the ethos that I grew up with too. There isn’t time for emotions too and I realize I began, my Psychology Today profile begins with the sentence that sounds similar to ” There may not feel like there’s time in my life to voice complex feelings and emotions” and that aspect too, of pushing it aside to continue really deeply resonates to me. My father had a lot of trauma and work was a way of it helped him heal, I believe, in some ways. And it also put aside and what are some other forms of intergenerational healing too, as well. 

Linzy [00:13:55] Totally, yeah. I mean, it makes me think about my grandfathers. I feel like my family, actually, that’s not true, my father is not college educated. My mother is community college educated, like, went into professional programs. But you’re, what you’re describing is very much how my grandfathers both live their lives. It’s like you work hard. Work is good when you are working. It is good. You are providing for your family, that is good. But like my one grandfather would like work hard and then like, go drink with the boys all night because he had like, done what he supposed to do. He had provided, and so he wasn’t going to, like, show up and hang out with his family. Like he needed to go drink, and he had a lot of trauma that I’m sure he was also avoiding at the end of the day. And so, yeah, there is it’s a different ethos than I think what has obviously been the kind of work that we’ve moved into and the kind of lives that we’re able to live. 

Celeste [00:14:40] And at the same time being mostly now seeing clients one on one and supervising too, I do run some groups as well and a little bit of teaching. But most of my work is one on one with clients. I do feel things and have the experiences emotionally in my body and how the experiences with my clients are things that do take time too to process and make space for, with myself and other relationships in my life too and what I’ve learned through all of self-compassion work and things that I do with my clients too, is how to give those grace. Because I think what growing up and seeing the men in my family work that way and the women in my family too, took on a lot of hard physical labor task too. My mother is around 70 years old and she chainsaws things and the things that she does just four pull ups every morning.  

Linzy [00:15:39] It’s amazing. I could do zero pull ups at this moment, I’m quite sure. 

Celeste [00:15:42] Oh, I think I’ve even at my fittest and youngest, I couldn’t do the flexed arm hang. I’ll do it. I’ll hold on to it. 

Linzy [00:15:49] Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can cling but not pulling up. Yeah. 

Celeste [00:15:54] And so I this is the people I grew up with too. And there are some ways to have the sensitivity to, how to be mindful of my own sensitivities and gifts and value them equally and definitely too is something that I work on too. And I think that has been something that my family more broadly has come to recognize as an asset too, because it was so different. I mean, I don’t think I was thinking about this the other day, and I didn’t know anyone when I was growing up who volunteered or elected to go to therapy or and if so, they didn’t speak about it. 

Linzy [00:16:36] MmMmm Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I think about my family, which again I think is one generation removed but still has a lot of this trickle-down stuff, that’s still the case in my family, I think I’m the only one. Yeah, No, I shouldn’t say that if I go extended, but certainly it is amazing how much that mindset can persevere generation to generation. Of just kind of like well, I think I think now the ethos in my family is more like, “Well, it’s good that other people do it, but like, I don’t need it”. It’s good that other people have it. Even when my grandmother went for therapy because my grandfather was basically failing and going to die and she had all this stress and she was carrying so much stuff. So she saw the therapist once and she was like, “Well, that’s good”. Like, And the therapist wanted her to come back and she was very surprised. Because she was like, “Well, what is there to talk about? We just talked.” you know. So just like this idea of like, well, I did therapy. I did this. I talked about it. Now I’m going to go back and like, you know. You know, my grandmother, a similar program is going on like this very, even when she was retired, this very rigid, like chore routine and like things would happen annually at certain times, like work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Like even every day was work well into retirement. 

Celeste [00:17:37] And I’m thinking, as you say that about your grandmother, putting it on this checklist and checking it off too, and how much of acculturation there is and to do with and to therapy too what it means to be in a culture of therapy as well, and having a sense of its rhythms, a sense of even the routine, self-care routine too. I’m thinking about how clients too may come in unaware of what is this. People who are in therapy for the first time, who haven’t known anyone in therapy, like, I have to do this every week. Why? Then here we are saying just, just trust us, right? 

Linzy [00:18:18] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:18:19] And they’re like, Who are you? I like to start. I mean, and like, you don’t have to immediately trust me just because I’m a therapist. I mean, I know that that’s a message too that people get. It may take time to build that relationship and that groundwork. How we frame and talk about it too as well. And I’m thinking too, about even the culture of training as a therapist, which is something that I had an earlier career before. I’m going back to graduate school too. And so that was different for me to come into psychology, graduate school of training. I guess after we experience some things and really grapple with a lot of differences or things that I didn’t know too. 

Linzy [00:19:08] Hmm. Can you say more about what those looked like or some examples of that? 

Celeste [00:19:13] There’s a lot of discussion of like “We as therapists know this” and I’m like, this is my first year in a graduate program. I did not study psychology and I was this before this, I’d done a lot of crisis work and community crisis work too. And so asking for clarification on those things too, and like how to not know without any kind of judgment, because there was an idea being raised and going to school and going to public school, you get that there are “right ways to do things”, quote – unquote, and answers like that’s how you are a good student along the way. And even it comes almost naturally now to say, “Oh, there’s no right or wrong here” to that those embedded idea, I mean, when you are coming from a trades and crafts person-type background, right my mom would say, “Wait, what do you mean there’s no right or wrong? If you put the table on wrong, it’s going to fall down”. 

Linzy [00:20:12] Like, yeah, there is a right and wrong in the real world. If you build the bridge wrong, it’s going to be wrong. It’s going to fall apart. That’s very wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, that makes me curious to just like in your experience, do you think were you encountering in that any kind of like, I don’t even know the language for this, but some sort of like class disconnect or an assumption about who you were and what you had experienced before getting to this point that was not accurate in your case? 

Celeste [00:20:40] Yes. And they had the fortunate experience of having some other graduate students and colleagues to connect with about that, too. I mean, another one was the idea with money issues is don’t worry about it, you’re going to be fine. Which maybe reinforced this feeling I already had too, that was out of this place of unknown fear. I was already stretching it a bit. And then this was being felt like mis validated in a way too, thinking that wasn’t the message that I grew up with. And definitely, I mean, sometimes I had done that was much younger “Do not worry about it would be fine” and it wasn’t, it really wasn’t.  

Linzy [00:21:20] Right. Yes. Yeah. Because the assumption that “Don’t worry about it, it will be fine”, the unspoken part I think there is that there are safety nets like your parents can swoop in and help, or you can get a job through this connection. Like there’s a lot of, I think, assumptions there. That would make someone fine that are not accurate if you’re not actually in like a connected middle-class, upper-class situation. 

Celeste [00:21:43] I remember one colleague, a graduate student along with me, saying that “your parents don’t give you an allowance?”, right? And I was thinking, “I’m 30 years old… No!”. And also “What?”, right. And, and they did, I mean, they did when I was a kid. She was, like, not even, like, $500 a month. And my mind at that moment, I was just, I just realized, because I didn’t see her as someone particularly wealthy even, and yet it was a that felt like a market class difference there. 

Linzy [00:22:15] Sure. 

Celeste [00:22:15] It was like the idea even, and it’s common, and usual parents can support and help and children and adult children that they they will and do. And that wasn’t an idea. It was if you needed it, of course we’ll be there. The sense of like really making sure that we took care of ourselves and knew how to do that was so ingrained in me and at a very young age. 

Linzy [00:22:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now, Celeste, as a supervisor, you know, working with clinicians who are pre-licensed folks coming into the field, I’m curious like, what do you see your supervisees struggling with as they’re, you know, building their practices and working with clients when it comes to, you know, these pieces that we’re talking about? 

Celeste [00:23:02]  The first one is the fee setting and discussions around money and the emotions that they bring up for clinicians too as well. And so in my training experience, I first worked at the Duquesne University Psychology Clinic, and it was a community clinic that had a sliding scale. And at the time I believed the most that we had ever charged for the fee was $40. Then at the Green Clinic, we’re in Brooklyn, where I did my postdoc. The sliding scale ranges with the high end to $225, which is the usual and customary for the zip codes the clinic is in. And so the supervisor trainees, I mean, people would come in at a 40 or $60 sliding scale, 150 or 225 and those are very different situations too as well, and how to have those discussions and take that into account. How the Green work is the higher fees help subsidize and make it possible for trainees to see people in the community that don’t have insurance or out-of-network benefits. And there and yet having a conversation about the higher fees or what someone can’t afford to pay is difficult when someone’s coming in saying I’m looking for help here and I’m paying for therapy. And how do you have that money conversation as part of the initial clinical conversation and continue to work with that in the relationship, especially if you haven’t had that experience or that discussion. And I feel really fortunate we have didactic agreement and a lot of support and process around that aspect of training too. And yet, you know, it’s something that this point, you know, I still have work to do around the emotions that come up with it. 

Linzy [00:24:59] Yeah, I was going to say like, what are some of those emotions that come up for your supervisees that you still notice coming up in yourself around those conversations? 

Celeste [00:25:07] So supervisees, I hear of anxiety and fear, too. As well guilt, shame too, so some difficult ones. Some frustration too because when having a discussion about money can bring up so much else. And it’s hard to know, you know, what are someone’s real assets and aspects of their of their life, too, that feed into the full picture, too. And so and I really do, I mean I still feel the call and we have some class shame too around those differences and, and fears of loss or rupture too in the relationship are common. 

Linzy [00:25:50] Like if you do the conversation wrong, you could ruin this relationship? 

Celeste [00:25:54] Or lose good parts of it too? Definitely is, that the aspect that comes up too, like the how to keep money intertwined and see it as a part of social and relational exchange rather than. I mean, it can be this idea, I mean, it comes in art too, as well, other factors of life like, “Oh, here’s something that where money is separate, here’s the art, here’s the money. Here’s the therapy, here’s the money”. And I think this is in lots of cultural aspects to the idea about money being dirty in and of itself. 

Linzy [00:26:28] Right. Right. We don’t contaminate the relationship with money. Yeah. Yeah. And like what? I mean, I’m glad to hear that there is training, in the place that you work. But I’m thinking in general, like, what a setup in a way, right? Where it’s like, you know, when we are providing service, whether it’s within a larger framework where we have to help somebody figure out what fee, where they should land, or whether it’s if we’re in private practice and then it’s just us by ourself trying to figure out, okay, like what? What am I offering? How how do I know what to ask? Like, how do I determine what somebody with sliding scale somebody “deserves to access”? I’m putting this in quotations. Like what a loaded heavy topic to have to deal with when we have no training on it. 

Celeste [00:27:11] And again, to go back to we only know what we know. We can’t know what we don’t know until you come into encounter it. Too is, you know, when I moved from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn, I mean the sense of the disparity and the difference between that, I mean, I purchased a house in Pittsburgh in graduate school for $65,000, ready to move in, four bedrooms, in the city. I could walk to the campus. 

Linzy [00:27:38] Whaouh. 

Celeste [00:27:38] And that’s not the case there. You don’t. 

Linzy [00:27:40] No? Okay. Yeah. So I was a little while ago. 

Celeste [00:27:42] Well, it was ten years. 

Linzy [00:27:44] So it’s not that long. 

Celeste [00:27:45] Pittsburgh still affordable. I’ll put in a plug for Pittsburgh any day. 

Linzy [00:27:49] You get a house for not 65,000, but not also 6 million. 

Celeste [00:27:54] Yeah, under, under 300. A nice house in the city and then coming to New York to where, I mean studio apartments, a basic one-room, between 300 and $600,000 minimum for studios. Very different kind of experience and you know the kind of money that people make is a lot more and sometimes a lot less. 

Linzy [00:28:20] Yeah, yeah. 

Celeste [00:28:21] You as well. And so even just knowing that is a cultural monetary context took some time to get oriented to because my first response is I, I’m not even licensed. I can’t charge people $225. 

Linzy [00:28:36] I remember those conversations. 

Celeste [00:28:38] And now it’s very, very different. Like, I mean, that feels right, and it’s an even it’s possible to charge more than the too as well for the service and quality of service too. And yet, I mean, I had the first idea that “Oh, there’s no one who’s going to be able to afford that”. I’ll see no clients. It was kind of an all-or-nothing thinking about it, and it was coming from a place of fear and insecurity myself, too. And that’s a hard way to begin and set off on one foot when there’s now all the other training too, and all this other conversation around so many topics and some of the other hardest topics in life grief or death, sexuality, trauma, abuse too, talking about all the incarceration, talking about all these hard things. And yet somehow, I mean, in at least in graduate school, I didn’t have a class where we talked about class or money. And now at this point, I’m amazed because it’s something that people’s, people experience extreme distress over and we’re using every day in our life. I mean, they think that be hard pressed to find a clinician who hasn’t had a class about eating and food and and have problems with eating disorders, too. And yet money that’s not our area. Seems like it’s engaging in the same, it’s avoidance. 

Linzy [00:30:11] Yeah, totally. I mean I think that really speaks to just how powerful that taboo is around money, right? It’s like these other things, at least we know we’re supposed to talk about them. We’re like, “Well, even it’s just uncomfortable, we will like, learn how to talk about sexuality with our clients”. But it’s like money, as you say, can still be perceived as this, like dirty, separate, let’s not bring it into the therapeutic relationship, even though, as you say, every day, every day people eat and every day they need to either make money and/or spend money in order to just like survive in the world, right? It’s a non-negotiable. It’s not even like an optional interest topic that might apply. It like literally applies to every single person that we see, as well as all of us as individuals. And yet it’s not taught, not even that it’s not taught robustly. It’s just not taught, period. 

Celeste [00:30:59] Yeah, I mean, I wrote a dissertation on Kink in BDSM at a Catholic university which had its pledges, and yet the big money stuff in large yet has been had more silences, more gaps to in ongoing to than that experience. And and I wonder about what might be possible in terms of a new generation of clinicians in thinking forward and trying to build some of this education into our discussions and training processes in a much less abstract way too. I mean, that is maybe what I bring from my background as well. And what I really appreciated about your course too, is the nuts and bolts are also emotional pieces too, and having that foundation through the course and work allowed me to feel like a more confident, grounded clinician. Even simple things like how I set up my bank accounts. Would you run this through even when they didn’t have any money in them? 

Linzy [00:32:09] Right.  

Celeste [00:32:10] I think I just started my private practice account and I was like, okay, I’m just I trust and trust you, so I’m going to get four bank accounts, even though only one of them has a balance. And we’Il see how this goes. 

Linzy [00:32:24] Yes, Yes.And something about that, you know, Celeste, this is where I was saying the beginning to like you have like, you’re just such a student, right? Like, you know how to learn because I think that’s something that sometimes folks struggle with when they think about doing this work before practicing, right? Like before being in private practice. They’re like “Well, I want to wait until I’m making money. Otherwise there’s nothing to do”. But there’s so much to learn before you do, right? And if we don’t learn before we do, we end up all of this. Like, you know, there was a visual that came to me as you were talking a few minutes ago, of like, kind of like pulling through the muck. It’s like we’re like all of this money, you know, cultural messages, class messages, personal experiences, like all of it. All of it, All of it. We’re trying to kind of like, sort through and make movement. And if we don’t learn about these things early on, we are going to end up creating like practices and systems and relationships with our clients where all this money murkiness is like very much defining it. Whereas you like trusted the process, did it anyways, even though there was literally no money. And in doing so you built something that worked before it was even happening. 

Celeste [00:33:31] Well, I found that making those bank accounts was a doing and was a future oriented effort too in that way, that it was a, it was also an experience of seeing that I had agency in building that future too. And so and that was really that felt so empowering too is to take the actions that are possible in the moment of learning and while they’re possible and then just continue to build on it. And so I just, I don’t have the vision for this yet, but I could see a group of clinicians or people coming together in a way to say like, “how can we really keep this as a core part of curriculum in going forward?” I mean, again, outside my field of practice, but I even wonder about that. You mean how classes use come into other forms of education before we get there? In public school, there’s a lot of classes about many, many topics. And even in all of the calculus, algebra, even economics, which I think covers money stuff, economics I took did not talk about how do you invest your money or how do you structure needs  and wants. That kind of foundation could then help us prepare, is the emotional side of what it means to plan for particular goals or futures or what happens when you have a crisis or if things go awry too. How does money move between people and family members, and then what emotions come up around the ties that money binds too. And there’s ways that we could work across fields for that. 

Linzy [00:35:06] Yeah, like it’s just as you’re saying it, you know, it’s just really sinking to me. Like what a massive omission it is in our education because there’s so much there. And, you know, it makes me curious, Celeste, like, of your perspective, do you think there’s a reason we’re not taught it? Like, is it is the taboo the full reason, or is there a deeper reasons like or other reasons? What do you think? 

Celeste [00:35:27] I believe it benefits power and the, the current system to keep class divisions as well. Even if that’s never said explicitly, I believe what we leave out, you know, we can see this with race and curriculum too, how story is told and what’s not told perpetuates the things that are in the status quo in power, because then it’s not it seems like it’s less possible to say “Wait, look at that there”. 

Linzy [00:35:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Celeste [00:35:56] Students are empowered with knowledge. They can call it into question, engage with it, and and have an access point for change. 

Linzy [00:36:06] Yeah. Yeah. It’s like the system perpetuates itself through education. Yeah. Okay. So for folks who are listening and maybe folks who are listening and like relating and they’re like, this is so much like my story and my experiences. I’m curious, Celeste, or for folks who are maybe stepping into private practice, like what would you suggest as a starting point? Where do they go if they’re feeling like all of these things are? They’re ostraging. And all of these things are stacked against them, like what is a starting place to start to build a more empowered relationship with money. Get where they want to go.

Celeste [00:36:42]  I really feel like I started with Money Skills for Therapists, so I have to lay that out there. It was so foundational in getting to this discussion today. In addition to that too, I really start talking to others about it. I mean, like, that’s the most important aspect there is begin to have the conversations with money, with supervisors, with colleagues, with friends and family. See how it feels too and what’s possible to find that edge, I’ll say, and notice what kind of emotions come up around it. You start to bring awareness and money awareness into one’s, one’s psyche and as much as possible in a non-judgmental way, because so much judgment can come up around it or to notice the judgments too. I find that so helpful in my clinical practice, really to make that explicit, whether it’s like keeping a log and writing it down and really looking at it and saying, “Now I believe that. Does it necessarily mean that it’s true?”. 

Linzy [00:37:43] Yeah, right. Yeah. And like, you know, I’m, I’m hearing there like a being with, that’s starting to create some distance because these stories are running in our minds whether we’re vocalizing them or not. So if we start to externalize them, whether that’s to like a journal or talking to your best friend or having a conversation, asking your mom some questions about money, then we’re actually putting those things out loud and starting to create the opportunity for some like distance and for maybe those to start to be shifted or at least questioned or softened. Because, you know, they’re so powerful. The stories that we carry and the experiences that we have and yet so often we never fully vocalize and actually put words to the thoughts that are bouncing around our heads all the time about money. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much, Celeste. It was wonderful talking to you today. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. 

Celeste [00:38:31] Thanks. It’s been great too. 

Linzy [00:38:32] And Celeste, before we finish up, is there anywhere you want to direct folks who are listening to the podcast, any resources or things you’d like to share with them? 

Celeste [00:38:40] So for anyone in the New York City area, I like to put out a plug for Greene clinic in Brooklyn. It’s a community based, psycho dynamically oriented training clinic and center too, that provides affordable and sliding scale psychotherapy individuals, couples, children and adolescents, as well as some options for art therapy. With a mission to help prepare clinicians and training for their future careers, as well as to provide services to the broader community. And so the website is www.greeneclinic.com. 

Linzy [00:39:20] Greene like the name. Great. Thank you. Celeste. 

Celeste [00:39:24] Thank you. 

Linzy [00:39:37] I really appreciated Celeste coming on the podcast today and talking about her experiences and also talking about, you know, just this pervasive lack of education about money and, you know, thinking about class and who does learn about money, who’s assumed that they’re going to have money and should know how to manage it, who doesn’t? And it just makes me feel very grateful that, you know, Celeste and I’m sure other wonderful supervisors out there are at least starting to have these conversations about money with their supervisees, you know, pre licensed. So folks are getting the support earlier in their professional journeys. I mean, the ideal, obviously, is that we would be getting financial education at home when our kids like when we’re four years old and then in grade two and in grade five and all the way through. Maybe this will be my next career will be getting financial education into public schools so that kids actually have literacy and skills around money from the very start. That would be the dream. But, you know, I think the second best is getting it into our professional education, you know, and making influence or having positive influence on the therapists who are who are coming up and who are stepping into this space and can benefit from learning the things that some of us, some of you listing have already learned and started to put into play around your relationship with money. 

Linzy [00:40:55] If you can impart some of those things to someone who’s newer in their journey, it’s an amazing gift. It’s going to save them a lot of headache and pain. And as Celeste mentioned, she took Money Skills before she even started her practice. And that’s something that I often suggest to folks, if it’s possible doing Money Skills before you even start your practice. As we talked about, let’s you, set yourself up for success before you even have money to manage. You get to do the learning before you actually, do the learning, but as she said, also like putting things in place, like building out a system before you’ve already had your relationship with money and your negative stories around money impact the way that you shape your practice. That’s a beautiful thing. But of course, always the second best thing is that we learn from exactly where we are today. So if you’re listening and you feel like there’s so much to learn about money and you’ve set things up wrong and you’re ostraging like Celeste, I love her suggestion of just start having conversations with folks around you. You know that Money Skills for Therapists exists and that support is there for you as well. And I would love to help you in this work. It’s powerful talking about money, that lack of education has a huge impact on us and anything we can do to start to break the silence and build skills and help the people around us build skills is powerful. 

Linzy [00:42:06] If you’d like to follow me on Instagram, you can find me @moneynutsandbolts And if you’re enjoying the podcast, please jump over to Apple Podcasts and leave a review. It is the best way for folks to find us. Thanks for listening today.