[00:00:00] Diane: It’s just the relief and the opening. I use the word liberating sometimes. It’s like it just opens up so many more choices. And I think there’s a lot of I can’t do this because I can’t earn enough, or I can’t do this because I can’t… And when those things are figured out, it means you can make choices. If what you really want to do is X or Y, you’ve got the system in place that’s going to now say, go! Go do that!

[00:00:26] Linzy: 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.

[00:00:47] Linzy: Hello, and welcome to season nine of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. I’m very excited about today’s episode because I feel like in a way today’s episode is bringing an aspect of the business of Money Nuts and Bolts forward to share with our podcast.

[00:01:03] I’m having a conversation with our coach from Money Skills for Therapists, Diane Webber. So Diane is a therapist based in Pennsylvania. She specializes in financial therapy, supporting women going through transitions. She’s a graduate of Money Skills for Therapists. She’s a graduate of the Money Boss Mastermind, which was a small mastermind I did a couple of years ago. 

[00:01:21] And now, since last year, she is the coach inside of Money Skills for Therapists. So in that course, Diane and I each do some calls, and together we coach students, and help them through building their skills and changing their relationship with money. And so I’m really excited to bring her onto the podcast today, both to introduce you to her, but also to give you all a taste of the conversations that we also have behind the scenes, like what is it like to help people inside Money Skills for Therapists. 

[00:01:44] So in my conversation with Diane today, we talk about her changing relationship with money through different chapters of her life, right? Through a first marriage, and pregnancy and solo parenting, and a second marriage, the loss of her father.

[00:02:05] We also talk about money in relationships in general, what she sees in her clinical work, how relationships with money can also change through being in a partnership. And we talk about our shared experiences with coaching inside of Money Skills for Therapists. What it’s like to work with therapists; what it’s like to support therapists with talking about something that is very stigmatized and vulnerable and difficult to talk about, which is money.

[00:02:29] Diane made some great connections between money and sex and food, in terms of the charge and stigma around all these things. Very excited to share this conversation with you. Here is my conversation with Diane Webber.

[00:02:58] So Diane, welcome to the podcast.

[00:03:00] Diane: Thank you. I’m very excited to be here.

[00:03:03] Linzy: I’m very excited to have you here. Diane, you are the coach in Money Skills for Therapists right now. I talk about having a coaching team, and Christelle does some support of students, but really it’s you and me. We are the coaching team in Money for Therapists.

[00:03:17] Diane: Yeah.

[00:03:18] Linzy: I’m really excited to have you on today so that, you know, we can talk about you and your experience with money, what you’ve learned about money, as a therapist in private practice and coming from all sorts of interesting professional backgrounds that you do, too. So before we dig in a little bit more to your story, can you tell folks a little bit about yourself?

[00:03:37] Diane: Sure. Absolutely. My name is Diane Webber and I have a small private practice in Northeastern Pennsylvania. For anyone who watches The Office on TV, I’m just north of Scranton, and we carry that with pride here. I opened a private practice in July of 2018. And before that, I spent 16 years working in one of our local universities.

[00:04:01] 11 of those years I supported college students with disabilities and provided accommodations and accessibility, any kind of services and supports that they needed. Prior to that, I worked in corporate America in the Northern Virginia and Washington, D. C. area. So I have, kind of a, a colored work background but in a lot of fun and different ways.

[00:04:22] And what I have truly found is that each of those milestones or steps along the way has informed the next one.

[00:04:29] Linzy: Mm hmm.

[00:04:30] Diane: And when COVID happened in 2020, I switched to a fully online telehealth platform, and I never went back.

[00:04:38] I work from home most of the time, and I meet a lot of dogs, a lot of cats, I see jammies and robes as well as, it’s a very interesting shift to move a private practice into a telehealth platform, but I really enjoy it. And it really works well with my life these days, so I’m happy about that.

[00:04:56] Linzy: The telehealth thing is interesting. It’s just making me think like I didn’t do a ton of online work like after COVID, because after COVID, I only saw like kind of a small handful of clinical clients before I finally just went, you know, 100, 100 percent into Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:05:10] But it does make you think about I remember one session I did with a client where he held the phone at this really kind of funny, weird angle as he was like, you know, doing his EMDR. And I’m like, kind of like looking up his nose. And it’s yeah, this is different than it would have been in person.

[00:05:21] Diane: Yep.

[00:05:21] Linzy: There’s something kind of very intimate about being in somebody’s home, as you say, like with pets and robes and, yeah.

[00:05:28] It has brought a different aspect to therapy work.

[00:05:31] Diane: Yes. Yes. Very much so. You actually really get to see a different aspect of people, too. You know, you see their lives beyond what they present when they bring it to your office. So it’s been, it’s been really interesting.

[00:05:44] Linzy: You know Irvin Yalom, the therapy writer, I remember reading a book by him where he says, if you have not met your client’s partner or family member… If you haven’t done a family session or you haven’t seen their home, you need to do it because you get this completely different perspective, as you’re saying, Diane, of what that person’s life actually looks like. We all have our own ways of talking about our life and telling our story.

[00:06:07] But for a therapist to actually see somebody’s home or sit with them with somebody they’re in a relationship with is a totally different perspective on the folks that we’re supporting. Mhm.

[00:06:18] Diane: I couldn’t agree more. I also tend to use a lot of very everyday metaphors and analogies in the work that I do. It’s just the way my brain works. I’m all the time going, that’s like this and that’s like that. But when we’re trying to make sense of thoughts and feelings and, anxieties and decision making, it’s hard to wrap our heads around it.

[00:06:37] And so being able to use everyday analogies, it brings it way down to a much more relatable level for people. So I often will use things I see in, on screen and, and, you know, not to mention stories that, you know, I bring back stories and make connections with things. I actually have a lot of fun with that too. You know, it’s kind of a fun aspect of the work.

[00:07:00] Linzy: Yes, certainly. So, in terms of your entry into the role, we were chatting a little bit off mic before we started recording about your journey into actually becoming the coach of Money Skills for Therapists. And I feel like it actually encapsulates a lot of the stuff that we tend to talk about in our community and on this podcast. So can you tell your experience of actually applying to become the coach for Money Skills for Therapists what did that look like for you?

[00:07:26] Diane: Sure, sure, absolutely. If I can back up just a little bit, I was maybe in my second year of private practice and, you know, eager to grab all kinds of learning and resources. And some of the things I was kind of collecting talked about how it was important to have a niche. And when I first opened my practice, I had a long history of working with individuals with disabilities.

[00:07:48] And so I did pick up some of that aspect, but I realized I didn’t want to keep doing that. I wanted to shift. And a lot of the specialties that my colleagues were doing, I honestly, I wasn’t interested. I was like, nah, nah. I don’t know. What’s me? And what I found was that the common thread across so many of my clients, the ones that I was excited to work with when I said, “ooh, they’re coming,” you know, was there was some kind of transition that they were trying to make and money was a key component.

[00:08:17] So, whether they wanted to leave a relationship that was unhealthy and they didn’t think they could afford it, or they wanted to change careers, but they didn’t think they could manage that financially, or they had a loss and now they were in charge of the finances and didn’t know how to manage any of that.

[00:08:34] There was this money piece that I found really interesting and also not commonly talked about. And also not commonly talked about. And I was in a workshop and I said, I don’t know what this is, but this is what I want to do more of. And one of the colleagues said, you might like financial social work.

[00:08:51] You might like financial therapy. And I said, that’s a thing? And she said, yeah, that’s a thing, and started to give me some resources, which then led me down a rabbit hole to some different podcasters and eventually to you as well. And it was in one of your podcasts that I learned about Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:09:07] And it was at the end of 2021. And I remember signing up, and I took the program in January, February, March of 2022. And I just loved it. I love that detail and that I, you know, for those who can see, I’m just curling my fingers because I like getting into some details sometimes.

[00:09:28] And this was a kind of fun and safe place for me to do that. And, I really enjoyed that course and immediately implemented a lot of what I learned both in my private practice and in my life. And then a few months later you offered the Money Boss small group coaching which I signed up for. During that time my father also passed away very suddenly, and my father was… an accounting and finance person in his career and money was always topic of conversation in our household.

[00:10:00] So as soon as I started working after college, I had a retirement account set up. You know, talking about money was a common thing in our household. Whenever you do an exercise where someone says money is, my immediate response is, is like this precious treasure. And, which is, has its pros and cons, because I do very much regard it positively and I see it as something very important, but I also can hold it too tightly sometimes.

[00:10:26] And, so that’s been a great, you know, growth experience.

[00:10:32] Linzy: When I see that gesture from you… like the hands and, you know, folks who are watching on YouTube will see this, but the shadow side, I think, of that is it reminds me of Gollum.

[00:10:40] Diane: Yes, exactly. And you’re like, oh, this, my precious. Yeah.

[00:10:46] Linzy: Yeah. There can be a clutching or clinging, to that reverence.

[00:10:50] Diane: Yes, yes, and that, that can get in the way very much. So part of through the Money Boss small group coaching program, it inspired me to do a workshop with our local college community about financial therapy, about financial anxiety, and how that may be an important topic for college students.

[00:11:08] Personally, I have a 17 year old. So thinking about his relationship with money as he gets ready for college, my past history with college students, I thought this could be a really interesting topic and a fun way to practice speaking about it. And it was really well received from that. One of the local universities has asked me to come and do more workshops about it.

[00:11:30] And the topic was really about our relationships with money and why they’re important. Just like we have a relationship with food, we have a relationship with our loved ones. We have a relationship with ourselves and our bodies. We also have our relationship with money, and it’s not often talked about, or talked about comfortably, and it’s important.

[00:11:46] So, that was a really neat experience that started to bolster my confidence in that area. 

[00:11:51] And I just kept kind of coming back to this piece because I really enjoy that education component, and I like the community component that private practice, and especially at telehealth private practice, lacks. And I kept thinking if you want this you have to go out and find it. You have to create it. You’ll have to get it because your job isn’t giving it to you right now, and that’s okay. You just need to find it somewhere else. And it was June of 2023, and you posted an announcement that you were hiring a new coach.

[00:12:23] My family and I were getting ready to go on vacation. We had saved up to go on a trip to Italy, and my mom had decided to go with us as a really neat thing to kind of feel connected to our family despite my dad’s passing. And when I submitted the application, it was really great. really fun and I have a lot of pride in being able to say, I, as I write this, I’m about to go on vacation.

[00:12:47] And through this course, I have money set aside for vacation. I have money set aside for my operating expenses. I can lighten my workload for the next two weeks while I travel. And, um, so this is that work in action.

[00:13:03] Diane: That was really fun to be able to do, to just, you know, crank it out, which is not my style. I am a very methodical person and I was like, if you want this, you’re going to focus on it over the next three days and get it submitted. And, yeah, which was also fun and a bit of a stretch for me as well. But, as we see, it worked out. I’m just loving the work and loving watching the transformations happen as people join the course and work through it.

[00:13:29] And, the lessons that they learn and feel comfortable sharing at the end are, are really fun. I’m sad when some of the folks graduate. I’m sad. I’m like, Oh, I’m going to miss them.

[00:13:39] Linzy: Ha ha ha ha ha! The course used to be cohorted, right? So it used to be that there was like a group that would move through together, and it was much shorter, right? So now the container right now for Money Skills for Therapists for folks listening is a six month container, right?

[00:13:50] So it’s kind of like folks have lots of time to access as much support as they need, and like Diane and I really get to know people in that time because if folks decide to show up a bunch, like if you show up to every call, you’re going to see Diane and I each 12 times, right? And so it’s like we really build those relationships.

[00:14:05] But before, when I first built the course, it was only six weeks long, not six months. And so it would be very intense, getting to know everybody over six weeks and then having to say goodbye to everybody all at once. And one of my decisions that I made when I really leaned into this business is I was like, I can’t

[00:14:22] actually do that emotionally. I can’t be saying goodbye to a group of people all at once every, you know, three months to have to say goodbye to a group of people that I’ve gotten attached to, like the emotional kind of ugh that was so much because yeah, we do really get to know students.

[00:14:39] And this is what I say to folks. If you show up, like we will know you, we will support you. We will love you. Because we do really get to see folks progress and grow and understand what makes folks tick over our six months together.

[00:14:52] Diane: Yes. And there is often life that happens in six months, and that is also what happens in our businesses. So we’re constantly adjusting and recalibrating. And so for us to be able to experience that with them, and help present options can also be really useful for now and well into their futures.

[00:15:15] Linzy: Absolutely. As you were telling your story of going through Money Skills and then going through Money Boss, and stepping up to, basically like putting yourself out there, right. In your own community and starting to do this financial education. I mean, I remember supporting you through that process, and the other amazing therapists in that group supporting you through that process.

[00:15:32] And something that I remember noticing towards the end of Money Boss, which I would say is still very much alive now, is like you’ve developed so much more of a sparkle.

[00:15:42] You sparkle so much more.

[00:15:44] You and I, similarly, are people who tend towards a kind of safety and we can be probably overly safe of weighing out, does this make sense? Right. And more on the probably staying small side of things rather than the… you know?

[00:15:56] Diane: Yep.

[00:15:56] Linzy: That is something seen in you over the last a couple years that we’ve known each other is like you have really… and for you it is sparkle. I don’t know how else to say it.

[00:16:04] Diane: Thank you. Ha, ha.

[00:16:06] Linzy: You sparkle so much more in the work that you’ve done and in putting yourself out there and realizing oh people want to hear more of this, like they’re asking me for more in your community and then like through coaching in like Money Skills you’re just so much more yourself. So much more open than you were a couple years ago when we first started working together. Like I can see that work that you have been doing on that, that aspect of your life. Yeah.

[00:16:31] Diane: Thank you. First of all, I really appreciate that, and I’ll say it doesn’t come without being terrified. My first coaching call, I had a very detailed outline of what I was going to do, and I had a PowerPoint, and you know, I was like, and, and then I realized everyone in the room is human, and they were so enthusiastic and excited, and, yesterday’s coaching call, we did takeaways at the end, and it was really powerful to hear each of the students say what they were taking away, and I was like, wow, okay, that’s awesome.

[00:17:04] Christelle and I joked about it not long ago. I said, I’m starting to use more GIFs. I’m getting a little pizzazz in the mighty networks. And, it’s like, it’s in there. it’s in there, but I am a very methodical person. I tend to be more on the reserve side. I grew up, I was born in 1975.

[00:17:20] So I grew up very much in the eighties and nineties when the societal pressures were to stay small. No fat, low fat, be tiny, you know, and I’m a petite person also. And so it was like every message I got was just be very, very, you know, under the radar, and don’t make a lot of waves. And, so it’s been interesting to really think about if you’re in a service profession in your own business, it’s important to be seen and heard, and people can’t know about you unless they know about you.

[00:17:51] And that’s been a real kind of back and forth. interplay or I don’t want to say struggle, but it’s been a really interesting conversation in my own head about, no, no. And then yeah, people don’t know you’re out there unless they know you’re out there. And that’s an important message for us and all of our students as well, you know, in the work that they’re doing.

[00:18:09] Linzy: Yeah. And this is what I see in the therapists that we support: folks are so talented, and they’re so capable, and they’re so brilliant in whatever niche they’ve carved out for themselves. They know so much about the thing that they know, whether that is mental health or folks who are, you know, SLPs or OTs, like they just have such brilliance.

[00:18:27] But when you keep your brilliance privately in your own little home office.And then, you know, wonder why folks aren’t finding you. It’s well, they’re not going to wander through your house.

[00:18:37] Diane: No one else gets to enjoy it.

[00:18:39] Yeah.

[00:18:41] Be like, where is this person? Haha, yeah.

[00:18:46] Linzy: For me, being in the online space and being like the face of, of Money Skills for Therapists and like trying to get folks in the door to like work with us so we can help them with all these pieces that we support them with, you know… There is this phrase, which is like selling is helping.

[00:18:59] And it can feel super uncomfortable to sell and be like, I’ve got this thing. This is what the thing does. This is the results we see. I’m not making this up. You know, and the things that you and I see in the program every day, it can feel extremely uncomfortable. And sometimes people get… They’re not happy that you’re selling.

[00:19:12] They try to tell you to be quieter. But if we don’t let ourselves be seen, if we don’t help people understand, this is how I can actually help you, then we can’t actually help them. They’re not getting the full support that we’ve already created a container to do. And so that’s true of therapists and like the therapy work that they do, but it’s also true of courses and the kind of work that we’re doing. Like you need to kind of toot your own horn and be like, this is really great.

[00:19:36] I’m over here. Otherwise, nobody knows what you’re doing, and they’re not going to get the benefit of what you do.

[00:19:42] Diane: Yeah, I fully agree. I think it’s worth pointing out, too, especially for those in the United States, there was a cyber security breach and, to just point out that even those of us who’ve had a lot of experience and would like to think our money skills are fine tuned or fine tuning, still experience fear, you know, still are like, Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?

[00:20:06] How’s this going to work? And, myself included, My practice is 100 percent insurance reimbursed and, the EHR system that I use for my records management uses Change Healthcare significantly. And so there’s been a huge delay in any kind of reimbursements coming in. And for me, even though I’m in this all the time, every day, to go, Oh my gosh, what is this going to mean?

[00:20:34] And then to be able to kind of pause and say, okay, you have your systems, you know, you know what you do. You just go back to those basics and look at what you have. And you can move things. That’s what it’s for, you know… And so I try to be very real throughout as, as a human and, and someone experiencing all, all kinds of things as well as someone who has done the work and seen the results.

[00:20:58] Because that’s also really important that there is no arriving, there is no, you like, we keep reviewing, revisiting as our businesses change, as life circumstances like this, that are completely out of our control happen, to be able to kind of pause and regroup is an important thing also.

[00:21:16] Linzy: It is. And you know, it makes me think about a podcast that I recorded recently with Jenet Dove, who’s one of our grads, I did a coaching episode with her and she used this phrase of “life lifes,” right? You know?

[00:21:27] Diane: Here it comes. Yep.

[00:21:28] Linzy: You make plans; you’re like, oh, I’m actually going to die.

[00:21:31] So figure that out, right?

[00:21:33] And so that’s the only thing that we can anticipate is that unexpected things are going to come up, right? So how do we build systems to help us navigate that without, without the opposite of what you and I are talking about in the place that you and I have both come from, which is like making yourself too small or like controlled, trying to control everything about life.

[00:21:49] How do you make systems that are robust and that will take care of you, but also give you flexibility to live? And still be present and enjoy life… You know, it’s not about, building up your 100, 000 emergency fund, which, you know, we can do, and those of us with kind of hoarding tendencies can do, but it’s the robustness of having a buffer here, and a buffer there, and a bit of savings here.

[00:22:10] And, those things make a really big difference when things like, you know, the Change Healthcare, cyber attack happen.

[00:22:16] Diane: It happens. Yeah.

[00:22:17] Linzy: Right now I’m sure the folks who have the buffers, are feeling, you know, that security and safety much more than the folks who, who haven’t. Because we’re also reliant on these big systems that we can’t control.

[00:22:29] Diane: Right. Right. And to be able to look at accounts and say, okay, I think I could float for about a month. I think I could float for about six weeks. It is nice and concrete. You know, as opposed to what am I going to do? How are we going to do this? Well, let’s see, we’ve got six weeks. If we get to four and we’re still not there, then we look at, do I pick up a part time job?

[00:22:51] Do we get a loan from the bank? You know, but to have those concrete pieces of information reduces the fear quite a bit.

[00:22:58] Linzy: It’s clarity that we’re all about.

[00:23:00] Diane: Yes. And to circle back to the preciousness, you know, it’s that idea, I’d look at my operating expenses account and say, see, you have a buffer in there.

[00:23:10] And I’d be like, but that’s the… And that’s what it’s for. It’ll sink. It’ll shrink. And then you’ll rebuild it. And that’s fine. And so this is your opportunity to actually see it in action. And use it.

[00:23:21] Linzy: Use it for what it’s there for, which is moments like this. So, I mean, speaking of this idea of, kind of, “life life-ing,” and things happening to you, you know, one of the things that I so expect appreciate about you, Diane, and, you’ve already talked about some of your professional experience, which gives you this kind of diversity of experiences that you bring to your coaching.

[00:23:39] But also, you’re someone who has experienced some distinct chapters of life that I think give you a maturity and wisdom around money, having gone through certain things. So I’m curious,

[00:23:50] Diane: Yeah.

[00:23:51] Linzy: Can you tell us a little bit more about what you have learned about money? How has your money relationship changed through some of the different chapters of your life?

[00:23:58] Off mic, you mentioned divorce and remarrying. And you mentioned in this recording about your father passing away unexpectedly. What have those things taught you about money? 

[00:24:08] Diane: It’s been really interesting. and I like using the word interesting because I tend to be an emotional person. And so I can get very tearful very quickly. And so when I use words like curious and interesting, it keeps me in a different space. Not that I’m not comfortable being emotional because I absolutely am.

[00:24:29] Very early on I knew I wanted to be a working mom, and I graduated from college during the dot com startup phase that was huge. So, we had all these little college graduates going into corporate jobs and our little suits and our little bonuses and our, and, you know, now that I think of it, I’m like, Oh my gosh, I was so young.

[00:24:50] And so I worked in management consulting and government contract work in the Washington DC area. And I saw a lot of working moms there, and I knew that was important to me, but I did not like what I saw. You know, and so I thought I wanted to be a working mom, but not that kind. And that was a really powerful observation for me to hold.

[00:25:14] And, which then made me think, okay, so then this isn’t it for me forever… I need to find something else. And my mom worked in a college library her whole career. So she kept pushing, you know, you might want to work in a school or work in a university where your schedule is a little more family friendly and it’s a fun environment and, and so on and so forth.

[00:25:35] I ended up getting married in DC and, and my now ex-husband was from the Pennsylvania area, which is how we ended up back here. And we were trying to decide: do I go to grad school? Does he find a different job, or do we move closer to family? And what we decided on was that we would move closer to family, and I would go to grad school, and he would find a job

[00:25:55] in this area, which is what led me into going to get my master’s locally here. I loved the counseling program. I did not want to be a therapist, but I loved the counseling program. I wanted to work in higher education and researched all the different paths that I could get to. So,one thing that was really interesting is when I went to grad school, I was not working.

[00:26:16] I had a graduate assistantship, but I wasn’t working and I really did not like not bringing in very much income. It felt very uncomfortable for me. I have a vivid memory of standing in front of a vending machine and debating over a dollar fifty for a candy bar because I was like, I didn’t earn this.

[00:26:32] I didn’t feel like I could spend it. And so that idea of having my own source of income was really important and has been throughout.I got my master’s and ended up getting a job at the university where I got my master’s and then I got pregnant with my son, and unfortunately our marriage did not survive.

[00:26:51] Fortunately we’re still very close. We do a great job raising our son together. But, so I was on my own. I was still pregnant actually, and that was really, really challenging. So that idea of I need to be able to support myself and I need… I can, you know, part of it was, I know I can. And so I, and I will, and I’m kind of figuring those things out. Forced me to grow up really quickly in a way. And my family was three hours away, and my brother’s out in Chicago. So I was, you know, pretty much on my own and trying to kind of figure things out with the local community. Which I did. And I have an amazing son, and I met my second husband, as he was a teacher at the university, and it’s really interesting. His relationship with money is very different.

[00:27:37] We both do not like debt, which is the same. I very much like to save and he’s, he supports that, but he’s an artist and an art teacher. And, one of the things that very much stands out for me when we first started dating was that he said, I earn enough money to pay for a trip to Italy, and then I go.

[00:27:56] And then I earn more money to pay for the trip. And then I go, and I was like, wow. Because I was raised to save, save, save. Watch it grow. You know, and I was like, but that makes so much sense. You know, that just, that makes so much sense. So we do balance each other in very nice ways in that regard, because I have a tendency to hold it precious.

[00:28:16] He has a tendency to say, like, why?

[00:28:19] Linzy: Yeah.

[00:28:20] Diane: We want life experiences. And we have a son together, and so we have really made it a goal to have really neat experiences with our kids. And we are very open to say we are saving for this trip, and then we’re going to go. And in between, we do inexpensive camping trips or things like that because I feel it’s important to be more transparent about money and its purpose and its use, and that it’s important to work for what you want.

[00:28:48] And then you go, and then you celebrate, and then you do it again, and then you do it again.

[00:28:53] Linzy: That’s interesting. Yeah, so your husband really has had quite an impact, it sounds on your relationship to money. It’s changed a lot through that marriage.

[00:29:00] Diane: Yes. Yeah, it has, and in both marriages I was the keeper of the checkbook. I was the keeper of things. And in both cases, my spouses were very fine with that, which was nice. I did not, we did not have conflict about money in either marriage.

[00:29:16] I never felt that was an issue. And I have several friends, and a lot of clients, who experience that a lot. And so I find that really interesting. And it’s one of the things I really like to explore. One of the ways I got more interested in financial therapy was the idea around control of money, literacy, awareness, knowledge, and also different comfort levels around debt.

[00:29:40] Financing things. And I just find that fascinating. You know, I’m like, wow, in a way that I don’t get tired of. You know, there are other things where I might get a little tired and this one I’m like, “Say more.”

[00:29:56] Linzy: It’s so true though. I think that compatibility, I guess it’s compatibility. I’m sure there’s other aspects to it, too, but just being able to be on. By the way, I love that you’re drinking from your Money Boss mug. I just need to say. She’s got her Money Boss mug from the Money Boss Mastermind..

[00:30:12] Diane: I love it. 

[00:30:13] Linzy: Mine broke recently, which was so sad. The handle just fell right off. 

[00:30:14] That compatibility with a partner of being able to come on to enough of the same page about money that it’s not a conflict in your relationship or marriage is a big deal. 

[00:30:26] It’s a big deal because I certainly know couples that do not agree about how money should be managed and don’t agree about what’s valuable and what’s not. Or couples that even though they’re married manage their money very separately, so it’s like one is broke and one has a lot of money, that’s a huge stressor when you can’t get on the same page about money.

[00:30:47] Because everything is money. As a couple, your project is to build a life together.

[00:30:52] Diane: I fully agree, yeah. I find it really interesting, I have some clients that have some debt that they have not shared with their spouse, and I find that really interesting, and try, you know, to gently explore but respect their reasoning, you know, and I’m like, okay, huh.

[00:31:09] Linzy: Mm hmm.

[00:31:11] Diane: And vice versa, clients whose spouses don’t allow them access to their finances. And I think, how can they not allow you?

[00:31:19] Your name’s on the account. How can you be limited? And, you know, but even having trouble at banks trying to get access to statements or things like that. then the whole piece of, I just don’t want to talk about it.

[00:31:29] I don’t want to… One of my very dear colleagues, you know, I personally am very modest. I don’t like talking about sex. I said, I realized one day to others who don’t like talking about money, it’s if I were to have a very frank conversation about sex, I’d be like, or about food, like those are areas that can be very complicated and, and, and I was like, again, interesting.

[00:31:54] There’s a lot of parallels, a lot of parallels in those three areas of how much do you talk about? How much is not enough? How much is too much? That also has allowed me to be much more compassionate and also curious and careful in terms of any of the conversations that happen, whether it’s with clients or in Money Skills.

[00:32:13] Linzy: Yeah, that’s an interesting parallel, money and sex. I’ve never thought about that before, but I’m definitely the kind of person who will be hanging out with friends and I’m like, yeah, well, how much do you make a year?

[00:32:21] Diane: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:32:23] Linzy: And when I do it, I know that I’m breaking the rules. I know I’m not supposed to do that.

[00:32:27] And of course I will gladly tell them everything about our own financial picture. But I’ve definitely, I’m thinking about one couple that Rodrigo, my partner and I, were friends with for a little while. They moved out of town unfortunately. They were a very cool couple, but I remember, you know, having a conversation with them and they were like, yeah.

[00:32:42] And then our accountant got us like a big tax refund. And I was like, Oh, 5,000 big? Or 10,000 big? I’m like, what are we talking about? What does this even mean? But yeah, you are like breaking the rules, and something I’ve been speaking about, what I was reflecting to you about seeing you sparkle so much more… 

[00:32:59] In myself, too, I’ve noticed myself sparkling a lot more in the last few years. And part of the question I have to ask myself now is: Am I obnoxious? Am I not reading the room? Because it’s like I’m just so excited to talk about these things. But yeah, I’m sure so many folks do maybe experience the exact same way as somebody who starts talking about, you know, sex in a very detailed, personal way at a dinner party and you’re like, I don’t really want to talk to you about this. I don’t even know you.

[00:33:25] Diane: Exactly.

[00:33:26] Linzy: It’s parallel in terms of intimacy, like the level of intimacy and vulnerability that comes with money. Cause we’re so used to it, but I’ve definitely met, you know, sex educators who just will talk about anything.

[00:33:36] And I also am not someone who talks a ton about sex with people that I don’t know. So I would probably feel a similar level of discomfort to what lots of folks feel about trying to, you know, talk to them about money in a really frank way. You got to kind of read the room, you know, with where folks are at.

[00:33:52] And I do notice like with Money Skills for Therapists, I’ve had moments like this on calls and I wonder if you have, too, where like I will say to somebody like, if you’re up for sharing your numbers, it would be really helpful. Sometimes like folks share no problem. They’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:34:04] Here’s my YNAB or here’s my QuickBooks or my bank. And it’s so educational for everybody else who’s there. Like it is this shame reducer for everybody in the space to see somebody else’s real numbers, whatever it means, whether they’re bigger or smaller or different or like totally different system, like it’s just so demystifying and that’s one of our, our values as a company to have transparency around money, and facilitate those types of open conversations, but also, you know, I’ve had students before who were like, I want to share, but I think I’m going to barf. But I want to share, but I think I’m going to barf.

[00:34:35] Like it is really… it can be really, really activating to share that. It’s kind of like taking your clothes off. You know, but then when you do it, you’re like, Oh, it’s not so bad. Like whenever I’ve gone to a women’s spa, and everybody’s naked, at first, it’s okay, okay, I can do this.

[00:34:51] Diane: Right. Right. Right.

[00:34:52] Linzy:  And then it’s: we all have bodies. We all have bodies. 

[00:34:53] Diane: Exactly.

[00:34:54] Linzy: We all have bank accounts. It’s kind of like all the same thing.

[00:34:57] Diane: Yeah. Mm hmm.

[00:34:58] Linzy: But, it definitely can be very, very charged… Lots of defenses and responses that come up, for us around these types of topics.

[00:35:05] Diane: And I have very recent experiences of it myself. When we were doing some initial training on YNAB, and you were helping me get some things set up, I vividly remember you said, you know, “Can you open your account?” And I was like, “Now?” You’re like, yeah. And I did. And then it was open for a while, and I was like we need to shut this down.

[00:35:27] Someone’s going to get at it. And you were like, I think you’ll be okay. You’re sitting at the computer. I think it’s fine. You know? And I’m like, in my mind, I’m like, you get in, you get out. Like you don’t, you don’t like, cause someone could hack your computer and get it. And so to have it there and to have it there for a long time was really interesting.

[00:35:46] And, You know, so I get it, you know, I get it from living it. An example I often use in more of my clinical work, which is also similar. I have a lot of clients that are debating medication, and they’re very nervous to have that conversation with their doctor, and I normalize it.

[00:36:03] You know, we talk about all the pros and cons and what they’re comfortable with and things like that, and then I often normalize it by saying, so for example, if you had a rash, you’d go to the dermatologist and nobody likes to talk about a rash, but they look at it and they’re like, Oh yeah. I know exactly what that is, and here you go, you know, or, and so various in very similar domains and it’s another example of how everyday analogies can kind of bring it to Oh, Oh yeah, yeah. I see how it’s really not that big of a deal.

[00:36:35] It just brings everything down so that it is not nearly so intimidating or scary and and it kind of puts us all of us on a much more human level

[00:36:44] Linzy: It does, and I think by doing that, we can address something that otherwise will just be a problem forever. Right, like it’s interesting you make that analogy with medication because I personally started on antidepressants for the first time like last year. You know, like I just turned 40, so I was 39 years old.

[00:37:03] I tried medications for the very first time. I’ve done lots of therapy, obviously, but I finally kind of had that conversation with my doctor of I think maybe it’s time I had some other stuff come up, some PMDD come up.

[00:37:13] Linzy: Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. It’s not fun for folks who are listening. And the treatment for that is antidepressants. And so I was like, sure, I’ll try antidepressants. I’ve always been kind of curious. And I will say that it has changed everything about my life. My life has become infinitely easier, right? But it was getting to that point of having the conversation, and things getting bad enough to ask for help.

[00:37:34] And now what I’m having to process is the grief that I didn’t do this 25 years ago. And this is what I see with our students around money, right? And you know, I just had that come up the other day on a Money Skills for Group Practice Owners call where somebody was talking about how just like, “Shit, for so many years, I haven’t been looking at this.”

[00:37:52] And for so many years, like it hasn’t been working and like the pain of that. And then when you finally start to get it working and you’re like, “Oh, I could have done this so long ago.” There is a grief that comes up.

[00:37:59] Diane: Mm hmm. Yep. Yep.

[00:38:02] Linzy: Because it’s hard and it’s scary, but once you address it, you’ve changed something fundamental about your life.

[00:38:09] So it’s worth the work, but it’s hard to get there. And, yeah, it takes many of us many, many, many, many, many years to deal with all sorts of things.

[00:38:17] Diane: All sorts. Yep. And I always say, you weren’t ready then, and you’re ready now. Right?

[00:38:21] Linzy: True. So true. So Diane, coming towards the end of our conversation today, I’m, I’m curious for you, working with students, who are therapists and health practitioners in Money Skills for Therapists. I’m going to ask you, what is your favorite part about supporting therapists with money?

[00:38:41] Diane: Mm hmm. That is a great question. And my instant response is that I genuinely get excited when they have a success. Like I, I literally, I’m like, yes. Like I, when there’s that, aha. And especially if they’ve been working at it, working at it, working at it, and they’re like, I got it. that is so much fun, because I know that feeling of relief and accomplishment when you do something that you have found to be so hard,

[00:39:11] Linzy: hmm.

[00:39:11] Diane: and then it works and the ease that comes after it is, I just get so excited about that.

[00:39:17] Linzy: Yeah. And you know what’s so funny? I don’t know if it’s just because like attracts, but I feel the exact same way in terms of excitement. and this is something that I’ve, I’ve written before about in you know, promotional emails selling the course. Like when I was a therapist, because I did complex trauma therapy and like folks had just so many defenses that were present at any moment,

[00:39:35] part of my demeanor as a therapist is I was very calm, right? Because sometimes my excitement could actually be overwhelming for somebody. If I see them doing some really great parts work, or like processing trauma, my excitement could actually run interference on this very delicate emotional work that they’re doing.

[00:39:50] So I had to really keep that zipped inside. But as a coach and as a teacher, you just get to be excited. And I find that when I’m, you know, often saying goodbye to folks, like when folks are leaving the community and they’ve been there for six months. The word that I always use and I try to find synonyms, but I just can’t. I am so excited for you.

[00:40:08] I’m so excited for what things are going to look like in the next six months. Cause we also know that this is like cumulative work, right? So like the

[00:40:13] good habits that you build add up over three months and six months and a year. And yeah, I feel like I’m just telling everybody that I’m excited all the time, but I am because like, it is such powerful work.

[00:40:23] And once you see somebody get through whatever that barrier is for them, whether it’s like an emotional barrier, like a story, some you know, childhood trauma around money or being small that they start to shift, or whether it’s like learning an actual skill that they needed that now they have forever.

[00:40:38] Like it is so exciting. The possibilities are endless.

[00:40:42] Diane: It’s limitless. Yeah, it’s just the relief and the opening like I use the word liberating sometimes It’s like it just opens up so many more choices where… and I think there’s a lot of I can’t do this because I can’t earn enough or I can’t do this because I can’t… and when that those things are figured out, it means you can. You can make choices. If what you really want to do is X or Y You’ve got the system in place

[00:41:07] that’s going to now say, go! Go do that. I’ve got this. I got this over here. You go do that. And that’s really exciting because they’re going to just add so much more value to the world. And we need that right now. So it’s yes! Go do great things out there.

[00:41:20] Linzy: Exactly. Exactly. Now that you’ve got this sorted out, all that energy can go towards all the amazing things you didn’t have the bandwidth for before.

[00:41:26] Diane: What you’re meant to do. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:28] Linzy: Well, thank you so much, Diane, for coming on the podcast.

[00:41:31] Diane: Oh, you’re welcome. It’s been really fun.

[00:41:33] Linzy: Yes. Thank you.

[00:41:49] Linzy: My conversation with Diane just really brings to mind for me the richness of money. Like we could have talked for like six hours. There’s so much to talk about, especially when you’re somebody like Diane and I, who want to dig in and get into money. There’s just so many facets in terms of money in life and different relationships to money and like building the systems that support you.

[00:42:11] Money is just like a whole universe unto itself. and I’m really happy to have Diane on the team. having those conversations with money skills for therapist students alongside me. So just really appreciative of Diane today. And I’m sure there’s lots of pieces that got folks wheels turning, about money.

[00:42:28] and life and what we want our relationships with money to look like. You can follow me on Instagram at Money, Nuts and Bolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, those podcast reviews on Apple Podcasts really are helpful. They show people that we are a real podcast that people really listen to,

[00:42:45] and that they should want to listen to. so if you can take three minutes to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, sharing about your favorite episode, what you appreciate about the podcast, that’s really helpful for us. Thank you so much for listening today.

[00:00:00] Maegan: You, me, the people who listen to this podcast, not to toot our own horns, but we’re really awesome. We’re smart, we’re empathic, we’re emotionally intelligent; we’re the whole package. And when you’re the whole package, you are going to be good at just about anything you put your mind to. What that means in practice is that we’re extra vulnerable to getting caught in the trap of believing that because we’re good at something, it’s what we should be doing.

[00:00:26]  Linzy: 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.

[00:00:48] Linzy: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. So maybe this is a tradition. It’s a season closer, our final episode of season eight. And for this episode, I’ve invited on my biz bestie, Maegan Megginson, to talk about what I have been jokingly calling Burn It All Down with Maegan Megginson. That’s probably not going to be the episode title that you’re going to see on here.

[00:01:13] Cause what does that even mean? But Maegan and I today have a conversation about pivoting, about what to do when you have built something that you notice is no longer feeding you. We talk about her own journey with leaving therapy, stepping away from a group practice,

[00:01:30] and even doing some major pivoting in how she is coaching, and changes that she’s making literally right now in her business, that have not landed, to try to make her business more and more aligned with what actually feeds her. So this is a great episode for you if you’re feeling if you’re dissatisfied or trapped in the work that you’re doing, if you’re curious about expanding or doing something different.

[00:01:54] There’s lots of wisdom in this episode that Maegan has hard earned by making these big changes and also by being mid change, but also an interesting trajectory of looking at how she has changed what she’s doing, but also has built some financial stability along the way, which has allowed her the freedom to explore and do work in different ways as she’s figuring out how she wants to be working now, today, in the present.

[00:02:22] Here is my conversation with Maegan Megginson.

[00:02:41] So Maegan, welcome back to the podcast. 

[00:02:44] Maegan: So happy to be here. Thanks for having me back.

[00:02:47] Linzy: I’m so happy to have you here. Always. We were joking before we started that we ended up in like a gratitude loop of like jokingly thanking each other.

[00:02:53] Maegan: No, thank you.

[00:02:54] Linzy: No, no. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:02:56] Maegan: No, uh uh. Thank you.

[00:02:59] Linzy: Which would make a really boring podcast episode, but I think sums up a lot about our relationship.

[00:03:03] Maegan: Speak for yourself. I would love it. Season

[00:03:07] Linzy: So thank you for coming on. This is going to be a season closer of a season. I don’t know what I’m at season a million. Let me see here. Season eight.

[00:03:14] Maegan: 780, Season 8, Got it.

[00:03:17] Linzy: Season 8, so episode 96. I’m coming up to episode 100. And I like having you on the podcast for many, many reasons. One is that I do feel like you’ve become one of the recurrent guests.

[00:03:26] It’s Linzy has on her friend to have kind of more casual conversations. Rather than the conversations that I get to have that I really enjoy, but that are much more, a first date where I’m meeting people for the first time and like seeing what they’re about, and like we’re almost like discovering as we’re having the conversation what do we have in common?

[00:03:43] Where do we think differently? Will we have a second date? Usually the answer is no, but with you, it’s endless dates.

[00:03:50] Maegan: Endless dates. It’s the romance that never ends.

[00:03:54] Linzy: From across the continent.

[00:03:56] Maegan: From across the continent. Well, in all seriousness, so I can have the last gratitude word, thank you for having me on as a recurrent guest, and I’m also really honored to be the final episode of the season. So, yeah, I feel really grateful, and I’m excited.

[00:04:11] I know very little about what we’re going to talk about today, which feels fun. Like we’re bringing a little mystery into the relationship, which is very important for long term relationships. I’m happy to be here and I am ready to be torn apart with your probing questions.

[00:04:25] Linzy: I was going to say, that’s very much like your couples sex therapist knowledge coming in. I was like, oh, I didn’t, we’re just going to talk about trauma now. Let’s get into the depths of your soul, Maegan Megginson, because that’s what I was trained to do. when we were talking about what we would chat about today, the joking episode title that I’ve given you, but it’s like a joke that won’t go away, is Burn It All Down with Maegan Megginson.

[00:04:48] So, I wanted to chat with you today about pivoting, and about… Is there another way to say pivoting about making changes in your business or like reassessing your business or being flexible and open? Because I think you more than anybody that I know in the business space kind of emblemize this of like really trying to consciously align your business with what really feeds you.

[00:05:10] And so you are in a pivot at this very moment. You are mid pivot. Have you landed a pivot? Tell me about pivoting.

[00:05:17] Maegan: hmm. Mm hmm. I have so many thoughts about pivoting, we’re going to have to stay really focused for this one podcast interview. I joked last year… It was it was spring last year when I realized “Oh, I know what’s happening here. It’s another pivot,” and I joked that I needed to add Professional Pivoter to my resume that actually it’s just like Maegan Megginson Professional Pivoter, I also loved the double alliteration, but alas, I can’t actually call myself a professional pivoter But I do have a lot of feelings about pivoting and a reframe I would love to offer people who are listening is, that pivot in itself can have a pretty negative connotation.

[00:06:00] People hear pivoting, and they think giving up, you know, or they think, Oh, I’m like, wasting all of the years that I invested into this other thing, all of the money that I invested in this other thing. There’s something about a pivot that feels like a sharp right turn where you’re leaving everything behind.

[00:06:17] And I’ve really had to work in my own personal process this last year on letting go of that very colonized way of thinking about our career trajectories. Because we’re all up against this internalized, capitalistic, colonized belief that we need to get one job straight out of high school, we need to major in something in college, and then get an internship, and then get a job, and stay in that one field forever, and just keep climbing the ladder until we retire and then we die.

[00:06:44] And for some people that fits. But for most people it doesn’t, because actually we live life in a cyclical way. We make laps around the track. We evolve. So for me, I’ve really reframed pivoting as allowing myself, giving myself full permission, to be in evolution, to be a person who is constantly evolving.

[00:07:06] And instead of thinking about my changes as sharp pivots, I just think about this kind of gentle winding path. And I let the path lead me to where I’m I need to go next instead of only walking due north because that’s what I was told I was supposed to do.

[00:07:23] Linzy: It’s a much more embodied way to be with what you’re doing with your whole life, right? Because we are talking about career, right? And so as you said, there’s this kind of upward trajectory, or this locked in narrative that we get. Like you do the things to jump through the hoops, to be locked into the thing there you want to be in, you do that forever.

[00:07:42] What you’re talking about is a much more present way, I think, to be with what you want to do where it’s not, life is not an upward trajectory where you hit the top, right? It is like a path where there’s different seasons, and different priorities and values at different times. And what I’m hearing from you is just such a present relationship with what you actually want to be doing in a given season or moment in your career, rather than still being locked into this thing that you agreed to when you were 22 years old.

[00:08:12] Maegan: Yes. And I think this conversation is especially applicable for people who own their own business because our business hopefully is an expression of who we are and the work that we want to be doing in the world. Most of us go into business for ourselves, especially as therapists or healers, because the work feels like an extension of our soul, of our core identity.

[00:08:38] So as a small business owner, the work that you’re doing, the business that you’re running, it needs to be an extension of who you are. And inevitably who you are is going to change over the decades that you are hopefully alive on this planet in this lifetime, however you want to think about it. So I do think that,different people in different circumstances, of course, are going to have different relationships to what it means to evolve or what importance they place and the type of work they’re doing in the world.

[00:09:07] But if you are a healer, and you have created your own service based business, you probably identify with that feeling inside of wanting your business to be an expression of who you know yourself to be. And we have to give ourselves permission to change and grow as we grow.

[00:09:26] Linzy: Yeah, absolutely. I’m hearing a piece here about identity, right? Of like an expression of yourself and who you are. But something that I think about too is when we create certain services in our business, when we agree, this is the way that I help people. We are creating a job that has certain tasks, right?

[00:09:43] Like we are saying I go into my workplace at this time, I do these kinds of things, right? And that is how you’re spending your human life. That’s how you’re spending your day, right? So when we do lock ourselves into an idea of who we were, when you are doing work that’s not feeding you, not only is it not aligned with you in terms of what you want to be in the world, but it’s like you’re spending your day doing stuff that maybe you don’t enjoy anymore.

[00:10:06] And that’s not actually feeling like a good use of your energy. And if we think about how much of our life we spend working, that’s a lot of time that you’re spending doing something that you’re not actually being fed by anymore. If, if you’re in that place.

[00:10:20] Maegan: I think it’s one of the biggest contributors of burnout. Sometimes people are burnt out, and they love their work, but they’re just not doing it sustainably or they’re doing it in the wrong way or whatever. But often there’s something much deeper at the root of burnout, and I would say nine times out of ten, it has to do with the person who’s feeling burnt out is showing up in the world in a way that’s no longer in alignment with who they are.

[00:10:49] Maegan: So yeah, I mean, what you’re saying, it feels so true in my own personal experience and the work that I do with other people that if you are acting out of alignment in your work and your business with who you are, you’re going to be unhappy, you’re going to get bitter, you’re going to get resentful.

[00:11:03] Eventually you’re going to feel burned out by work that used to energize you and used to light you up. So that’s, that’s actually one question I love to ask people when they’re saying, “I feel… I’m so burnt out. I’m so burnt out” is, “Hey, take a breath. And I’m actually really curious is the work that you’re doing now

[00:11:21] connected to who you are in this moment? What’s the relationship between your work and your identity, and if they have grown apart, then they might need to get divorced. you might need to consciously uncouple from what you’re doing professionally if it’s no longer Working for you

[00:11:38] Linzy: Okay. So, we’ve been talking abstractly, philosophically, spiritually, lots of metaphors, as we do. Let’s get concrete, too, for folks who are listening. What are we talking about when we talk about you wandering the path, pivoting? Can you tell folks who are listening about the changes that have been happening in your business?

[00:11:57] The changes that you’re making… What has that been looking like for you?

[00:12:00] Maegan: Yeah, I can. I don’t know how concrete it is. That’s another part about the quote pivoting process or the evolution is you, you have to give yourself permission to go through seasons where you are wandering alone in a dark forest. And you’re like, I know in general I’m heading in the right direction, but I also have no idea where I am right now.

[00:12:22] And I feel mostly safe, but also I hear a wolf howling in the background. This is not for the faint of heart. Like burning everything down, as you said, and, and building from the fertile ashes is a really intense psycho spiritual emotional process. So I don’t want to downplay that. I don’t want to say this is easy.

[00:12:41] For me, it’s the only way to be, because I know if I’m not living in alignment with my own personal process, I do feel burnt out. I do feel unhappy. So anywho, backtracking. I became a therapist really early in my life, I went to college straight out of high school. My first year of college, I was a double major in theater performance and psychology.

[00:13:04] And at the time I had spent all of high school acting, and I had done summer programs in New York City. And I was just committed that my path was in the arts. And I, I did one year of theater school in college and was like, These people stay up way too late. Honestly, that was like the number one thing that wasn’t working for me, is I was like, you guys, I need more sleep than this.

[00:13:25] This is not going to work for me. So, I, I dropped the theater major, and I, and I will say, as I’m reflecting on my whole life, that was my first big pivot, was letting go of the part of my identity that had been so over identified with who I was in the arts. And it was, somewhat easy because you’re in college, you know, there’s room, there’s permission to explore, to change, to evolve.

[00:13:50] But I remember there was grief. I felt really sad. I felt really scared. Am I making a mistake? But I was also loving my psychology classes. There was something about those people and conversations that was lighting me up. It was stimulating a part of my brain that hadn’t been stimulated before.

[00:14:06] And I trusted. Intuitively, I trusted that I’m going to follow the breadcrumbs, right? I’m going to follow the breadcrumbs of alignment and energy and excitement, and I finished that psychology degree and then went straight from undergrad into grad school. I think there was an overlap before I had my college graduation ceremony, the summer term for my marriage and family therapy program started.

[00:14:30] So there was no break between college and grad school, which in hindsight, I don’t think I recommend, but we do what we do. And I became a therapist really quickly. So,went to grad school, worked in a group practice for about a year after grad school, and then left that group practice and started private practice, and was a couples therapist from day one.

[00:14:51] Couple years later, added on the certified sex therapy specialty. Did that for a while, and let me just pause there before I continue the story, but that was the first pivot was like the, Oh, I’m this, the arts isn’t quite right for me. Let me pivot into psychology. Let me move from psychology into marriage family therapy.

[00:15:09]  Linzy: Something that sticks out to me about this story is it was fast, which is interesting to note because knowing you as a person…

[00:15:24] Maegan: Yeah. I’m not fast.

[00:15:25] Linzy: You’re not fast. You’re slow. I remember having a conversation with another friend of ours, who’s a very fast moving person and you were saying, “Yeah, I could just sit in, you know, my beanbag chair and look out the window and think for hours.”

[00:15:36] And she was like, “What are you talking about?” But like you, you do have that thoughtful, slow pace. And so it is notable to me that you moved so quickly into these pretty major decisions and these pretty major commitments. What do you make of that?

[00:15:54] Maegan: 15 years of therapy. I think I’ve, I think I’ve cracked the nut of that mystery. But thanks for naming that because it does, it feels really important for me to name that. It has taken, you know, two decades to come back to the part of me that is authentically slow.I experienced some traumas in high school that really reinforced in my nervous system that moving fast, and being a people pleaser, were the strategies for survival.

[00:16:27] Always have a plan. I think something I learned in surviving these traumatic experiences was, “Hey, just have a plan,” you know, cause if you have a plan, you’re going to be out of here in this many days. And then in this many days you’ll be here and there. It was reinforced really early in my life that having a plan and knowing exactly what comes next creates the illusion of safety and security. And I think, I mean, I can say unequivocally that my trauma response is fawning, and, I think that is so reinforced in college and grad school and academia as a whole, you know, when you are the type A perfectionistic people pleaser who just exists to, you know, make sure others feel seen and validated and supported, you’re going to thrive in an academic setting.

[00:17:14] You know, your professors are going to fucking love you, and they are going to like dote on you, and they are going to also probably groom you into becoming something very similar to what they themselves have become. And that certainly was true for me. So I think there was this double whammy in the first chapter of my professional life, if you will, where I was moving really fast with a plan because that was how I knew to survive.

[00:17:40] That’s how I knew to operate in the world, and it took decades to really unwind from that way of operating, and giving myself permission to pivot and evolve professionally has been a big part of that healing process to realize, hey, it’s okay if you don’t have a plan. It’s okay if what you thought was going to happen next year actually turns out to be entirely different.

[00:18:04] We’re safe now. We don’t have to play by the rules. We don’t have to follow the plan. So I love when I see people who are also really, They’re like over planners, you know, when they’re like following a plan. I love now just to slow down together, take a breath and, and ask when did you learn that planning would make you feel safe and secure?

[00:18:29] And are there ways maybe that that isn’t true anymore? And are there ways potentially that the plan is blocking you from tuning in to what is trying to come through you now? always the answer is no. Yes, that is happening, and we have to just slow down and deconstruct that to be able to, to know where to go next.

[00:18:51] Linzy: Yes. Yeah. I’m, I’m laughing a little bit cause I’m like, it sounds like a, it’s a leading question. You know that that’s true most of the time when you’re working with folks, obviously, also because we attract folks who tend to have similar patterns to us. But yeah, as you’re talking, something that I’m thinking about, too… you know, you and I talk, too, about kind of moving the goalposts or like this idea of what you’re looking for is just over the horizon.

[00:19:14] Like we do a lot of kind of reflecting on how it’s so easy to defer life. Like life is going to happen over here. Happiness is over here. Stability is over here. Safety is over here. And that’s what I’m hearing in the story is like the plan is always to get somewhere else. The plan is not about being here.

[00:19:28] It’s somewhere else. Somewhere else is safe. But it’s, yeah, catching up to yourself as an adult that like you have actually built a safe life. You can be here. And think about what you want to build here. You don’t always have to be going somewhere else.

[00:19:43] Maegan: Oh, it’s such a good point, Lindsey, and it feels so true, and it reminds me of something I talk about in my own work with my clients. It’s like the when then paradigm, right? When we’re constantly in this position where we’re saying, when this happens, this happens, then I’ll be happy. You know, when this happens, then I’ll feel safe.

[00:20:04] When I have this much money in my bank account, then I’ll feel secure. When I have, you know, this certification, then I’ll feel smart enough. When I have a business that’s generating this much revenue, then I’ll feel successful. We’re on this hamster wheel, and at the same time, we’re constantly moving the goalpost.

[00:20:19] It’s just so unsustainable. It’s so unfair. It’s so incongruent with what it means to be embodied in the human experience, living each moment fully and authentically. So yes, what you’re saying about being present, it feels so important and, and that in itself is a life lifelong learning for almost all of us, you know, of learning how to be in the present moment and how to know where to find, in the present moment, safety and love and success and calm, peace.

[00:20:55] Relief. It’s all here. It’s all available to us all the time. We have to learn how to slow down long enough to find it. And it’s really hard to slow down and find it when we’re running businesses that make us really unhappy. I mean, businesses that we’ve outgrown or moved away from or whatever, however you want to think about it, take so much psychic and emotional energy.

[00:21:19] So even if you’re like, quote, only seeing 20 clients a week, If you’re seeing 20 clients that you don’t like, don’t thrill you, and you’re not getting paid what you need to live a comfortable life, that 20 clients a week feels like 40 clients a week.

[00:21:35] Linzy: Yes.

[00:21:35] Maegan: I want to name that: it’s easy when we’re talking about this philosophically for it to sound easier than it is.

[00:21:41] There are so many competing factors and forces and variables that make this work really hard to do, but it starts with a planting of seeds. You know, and maybe the one, the seed that’s being planted in your mind right now is, “Hmm, can I catch myself when I’m doing when then, you know, oh, can I notice when maybe I feel intuitively like there’s a part of me that wants to be doing something slightly different?”

[00:22:08] Linzy: Mm hmm. So back to your story.

[00:22:11] Maegan: So, act two. I was a therapist. And I was a really good therapist, and I want to say something about that. You, me, the people who listen to this podcast, we are pretty good… not to toot our own horns, but we’re really awesome.

[00:22:27] You know, we’re smart, we’re empathic, we’re emotionally intelligent, we’re the whole package. And when you’re the whole package, you are going to be good at just about anything you put your mind to. What that means in practice is that we’re extra vulnerable to getting caught in the trap of believing that because we’re good at something, it’s what we should be doing.

[00:22:48] And this was a big part of my transformation away from being a therapist. I mean, it took probably three years for me, two to three years of being in the process of exploring my ambivalence about whether or not I still wanted to be a

[00:23:05] therapist. My own therapist, bless her soul. She had to be so annoyed with me by the end because I would just keep going through the same ambivalence every single week. She was so patient.

[00:23:17] But what I discovered in that process was like, wow, being good at being a therapist has become the main part of my identity, and I don’t actually know who I will be when I can’t identify in that way anymore. And it’s reinforced by all of the people who say shit like, “But you’re so good at it!”

[00:23:39] Or I can’t, what do you mean you’re not going to do that anymore? It’s obviously what you’re meant to do. You know, all of these people who are like, I think trying to give you a compliment, but actually are just, reinforcing… because what’s being said under the surface is, Oh, but wait, that’s your calling.

[00:23:56] That is your identity. I, really what they’re saying is, I don’t know who you are when you’re not a therapist. And then they project that uncertainty all over you, and you’re left in this black hole of fear and mystery where you don’t know if it’s safe to let go of this profession or this identity because every, it’s how you know yourself, it’s how everybody knows you, and it’s a huge process.

[00:24:25] Pivoting, when your career is your identity, is a huge personal process.

[00:24:31] It’s a huge process when the thing you’re pivoting away from, or evolving away from, is a huge part of your identity, both within yourself and if other people know you in that way as well. It’s a big job. You have a lot of layers that you have to shed before you can actually hang up that hat and move into something else.

[00:24:50] Linzy: Yeah. Well, and I was thinking, there’s a couple things that come up as you’re saying that. One is I’m thinking about something I know almost nothing about, which is family constellation kind of theory of therapy, but I just have this visual, from that model, which is like a mobile where it’s like, when you have a mobile, you’re in these fixed relationships with these different people in your constellation.

[00:25:10] And when you try to move, they all rebel because they’re like, no, no, no, that’s your spot over there, right? So that occurs to me about how people… and we do this to other people too, no doubt, unconsciously police people into the role that we’re used to them playing. But it also makes me think about what have, have we done in our lives when we do play one role so well?

[00:25:28] That the people around us also have a lack of imagination for what else is possible, right? Because I could totally think of another scenario where it’s I’m going to leave my job as an engineer and they’re like, I’m so happy for you because like your art is so important, and it’s so great that you’re going to make space for it.

[00:25:41] Like when somebody has kind of those competing parts and like the friends and families can feel that and see how there is all this other potential. But being a therapist can be so all consuming, and can take so much of our little time and energy that sometimes those other parts of us aren’t apparent to other people and, and they don’t know who we are besides being a therapist because we’ve kind of gone all in on this part

[00:26:02] Maegan: Yeah. Well, because you don’t know who you are, besides being a therapist.

[00:26:05] Linzy: They’re reflecting back to you what you’ve been doing in the world, which is therapisting 24 seven. Even at parties, you’re still a therapist.

[00:26:12] Maegan: Right. It’s how everyone knows you. And I think you’re speaking to another side of the coin, too, when the thing that you’re pivoting towards… And to be clear, that, that might be nothing, you know, you might be saying, I’m, I’m shutting down this business or I’m quitting this job and I’m just going to do nothing for a little while, or you might say, I’m quitting this lucrative job as an engineer and I’m going to be an artist.

[00:26:33] And then people project their capitalism, like stuff onto you and be like, Oh, how are you going to survive? How are you going to make money? Oh my God, you’re giving up your business. It was so successful. How could you give that up? So, no matter what you do, people are going to project onto you.

[00:26:49] It’s really threatening, especially if you’re female identified. I think the world at large gets really threatened when females are shedding layers of identity, especially when those layers are about being a martyr, or being in service to other people, stepping into more powerful identities and expressions of themselves in the world.

[00:27:08] People are going to get activated, and it’s part of the personal growth process to learn how to thicken your skin, but not thicken it to the point where you’re jaded. It’s like thickening a permeable skin, you know, like we have to be able to withstand people’s projections, but we want to hold on to the parts of us that are intuitive, that are empathic, that do have our finger on the pulse of the collective emotional experience.

[00:27:37] So again, it’s a really big process.

[00:27:39] Linzy: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. The word that comes up to me, when you say that is like sturdy, like we have to learn to be sturdy where we’re like, we’re solid, we’re holding it, but it doesn’t mean that we’re rigid. I’m going to point out that we’ve totally fallen away from your actual story.

[00:27:53] Maegan: Okay. So the TLDR of this chapter of the story. So I was a therapist. Let’s reverse. I was a therapist. I was a good therapist. I was in private practice. I, my husband and I, and our three dogs moved from Texas to Portland, Oregon. And when we moved here to Portland, I started my private practice 2.0, I called it. And I was full within a month. I mean, I had figured out the game in Texas and I got here and bam, I was full. It was going great. Now, my husband, he had quit. He was in corporate America. He was in oil and gas. He was an engineer, actually. I don’t know why I didn’t catch this parallel earlier.

[00:28:31] And he was really burnt out because what he was doing was not in alignment with who he is. So he quit that job. We knew he was going to take a sabbatical. Moved to Portland. That sabbatical turned into actually, I don’t think like a nine to five is for me at all. And the question in our family became, okay, so what are we going to do?

[00:28:51] We want to honor this and we want to pave our own way. We want to honor that this isn’t for you, but also we now live in Portland, Oregon which, spoiler alert, is really expensive. So we needed money to live comfortably in this city, and we decided, as so many therapists do, that since my private practice was going so well, we should just hire a few more therapists and start a group practice and run it together.

[00:29:13] And we did, and that group practice still exists here in Portland, the Center for Couples and Sex Therapy. And it is a smashing success and I’m so proud of what we created. I am so proud of the livelihoods that we create, the work life balance that we create for these clinicians, and the impact that we have in the community.

[00:29:33] These are all things that I’m so proud of and are so meaningful to me. And it became clear to me pretty quickly in that process that being a group practice owner was not what I wanted to do with my life. It did not serve me, personally, in many ways, at all. And it had become another identity, being a group practice owner.

[00:29:55] So at the time I was a group practice owner and a couples and sex therapist. So I went through a really dark season where I had to look in the mirror and acknowledge that I’m doing two things. I have two identities, and neither of them feel like a true expression of who I am. So I started coaching on the side, because why not add one more plate into the spinning mix, you know what I mean?

[00:30:20] Why not? I was like, let me try this. And, and I will say something I’ve reflected on that I am grateful for, like to myself. I am grateful in how, naturally, I have chosen courage in my life, the courage to, to just try something new. And this doesn’t work. Let me just try something new. There’s definitely been downsides to that, i.e. running three different projects at the same time. That’s too many, especially if you’re a highly sensitive person. So there’s, there’s pros and cons of all choices that we make. But I think part of the reason I’ve been able to do so many things in, you know, my relatively short existence is because I am not afraid to try and fail.

[00:31:04] Because I know the only way I’m going to get closer to what feels right is to try something that doesn’t feel right and to scratch that off the list and to move to something else. That really is the philosophy that I think first was very natural and unconscious, and I’ve taken that

[00:31:23] and made it explicit in my life. And I really try to honor that as a way of showing up in the world. So there was a period of time where I was doing all three things. I was running the group practice. I was seeing couples and sex therapy clients, and I was experimenting with business coaching. And that was a wild time.

[00:31:41] And. One, something had to go, it was too much, so that kind of led to the first big pivot in this space when I hung up my hat as a couples and sex therapist. And that’s been about two and a half years. It’s been two and a half years since I stopped seeing therapy clients. It was hard. It was painful; it was emotional. There was so much grief, so much grief, especially as I was saying goodbye to clients I’d been working with, some for almost a decade.

[00:32:09] It really was a shedding of a huge part of my identity in a similar way that letting go of being in the arts was shedding a huge part of my identity. So I did that. And on the other side, I was running the group practice, and I was coaching. So over the last five or so years, my coaching has evolved in so many different ways.

[00:32:33] And I’ll say more about that in a moment. And for the group practice, I’ll say, I’m still very actively invested in the process of moving away from the group. You know, we’ve hired a full time manager. We’ve hired a clinical director. I’ve really done everything I can do to remove myself from the day to day operations of that business while still supporting its existence in the community. And pros and cons to that. But I’ve at least been honest with myself that it can’t be you. So how do you get yourself out of the thing that’s not serving you, even though everyone in the community is like, “Oh my god, but it’s so great, and we love it so much, and look what you did!” And whew, there are strokes to the ego

[00:33:13] everywhere you turn, and you have to be strong enough to withstand that feedback to really honor with integrity, what is true for you. With my coaching work I was really intentional when I started coaching to name my company,just myself, Maegan Megginson Coaching. And I did that because I didn’t want the name of my business to inform them

[00:33:38] or influence in any way, what I was doing inside of the business. I felt really constricted in my therapy practice. I had the center for couples and sex therapy. I felt like the only thing I could do was couples and sex therapy, because that’s literally what the thing was called. So when I opened the coaching business, I said, I want to create a business that is a playground for me.

[00:34:00] I want to create a space that I know probably for the rest of my career will house me showing up and serving and leading and lots of different capacities. I need a business that is… I don’t know, like a series of blank canvases. I need room to move and grow, and I need it to be okay if I changed my mind and I, and I want to be able to move through that process with more ease than I had been able to move through that process up to that point, and that’s very much what happened.

[00:34:32] And as I’m allowing that to be a more fluid process, it also gets harder and harder to tell a succinct story about what the pivots have been, because I actually feel like I’m constantly evolving in my coaching work. At the beginning of the coaching business, I was working with a lot of group practice owners, and my husband was also supporting group practice owners and understanding their finances.

[00:34:54] And, you know, I started there because that’s what I knew. And as I was moving away from that part of my identity, surprise, surprise, I didn’t want to talk to group practice owners every day in my coaching business. So I pivoted and started moving more into supporting highly sensitive therapists and more introverted entrepreneurs.

[00:35:12] And then that started feeling a little too restrictive. You know, I was like, Hmm, this isn’t, this is interesting and I like it, but this doesn’t feel quite right. And then I moved into the personal branding space and really committed for several years to being someone who was offering skills and strategies, but through a different lens, and that was going great.

[00:35:32] And that worked really well, but probably about midway through last year, also in the midst of some really deep personal healing and personal transformation that I was doing behind the scenes, I had to name that that absolutely was not what I wanted to be doing. Again, another example of just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean it’s the thing you are being asked to do in the world from your highest, wisest self.

[00:36:03] So all of last year, we behind the scenes have been slowly deconstructing everything that we spent the last few years doing and building. I had this beautiful program called Next Level Therapist that I spent so much time and so much money creating. And I’m so proud of everyone that came through that program and everything that we did, and I stand by it a hundred percent, and we shut it down because

[00:36:29] it’s not in alignment with the way that I want to show up in the world now. So here I am in February 2024, and I’ve given myself permission to do very little this year. I’ve gone back to my roots of working with clients one on one. I’m thinking of myself as operating in more of a mentorship role now, really bringing together the emotional, the spiritual, the visioning, the long term plan

[00:36:59] for mission driven business owners, right? I see myself as kind of paving the way in the world through my own process to be able to offer something different to people now. I want to be what I needed three years ago for the people that I’m serving, so I’m experimenting now with what am I, and what am I doing, and how do I describe this?

[00:37:20] And I’m getting more and more comfortable saying to you, to anyone who asks, I don’t know, but it feels pretty magical and it feels more aligned than anything I’ve ever done before, so I’m just going to keep following these breadcrumbs and trust that it’s all working me towards some bigger plan for my life and my work in the world.

[00:37:43] Linzy: Mm hmm. Something that I’m thinking about, listening to your story kind of in such a clear sequence is, it’s kind of like you’re getting, you’re serving yourself from three years ago.

[00:37:55] Maegan: Mm hmm.

[00:37:56] Linzy: Has that been the case at other times, too? That you’re going back for yourself three years ago?

[00:38:02] Are you always serving Maegan from three years ago, but Maegan’s needs are changing because she’s growing and evolving as a person? I don’t know why I’m talking to you in the third person, but you know what I mean.

[00:38:10] Maegan: Yeah, I know. It’s great. Keep doing it. I think there are times when It’s really clear to me that I’m serving myself from the past. I don’t think that’s what I was doing as a therapist. I think that the clinical work that was calling to me was, much more about healing, probably like ancestral wounds if I really go back in time.

[00:38:31] I mean, certainly it’s weird that I was a 21 year old couples therapist,My caseload were often couples who were like, 40 and above and I think about my husband and I now going to see a 21 year old couple therapist and I’m like, no, thank you. And I’m like, Hey, what a hypocrite.

[00:38:48] That’s exactly what you did. So you know, I don’t… I just have to believe that I was called to that work to heal wounds that I don’t even fully understand.

[00:39:00] Linzy: Mm hmm.

[00:39:01] Maegan: It worked. I also think that, I did it. Quick tangent:, I really believe that there are two kinds of therapists, or we can say healers more broadly.

[00:39:11] There are two types of healers in the world. There’s the type of healer who’s drawn to the work to heal themself, and in the process they get to heal a lot of other people, too. And there is the healer who is genuinely designed to serve as a healer for others. Regardless of their own personal journey.

[00:39:30] And I feel like you discover which of those healers you are when you reach a big milestone in your own personal process, and your own healing work. And I saw it with myself, and I’ve seen it with so many people since then that when you reach a point in your own healing that you’ve, you’ve really, not that we’re ever fully healed, but you’ve checked a lot of boxes in your process.

[00:39:53] You either realize, “Oh, I don’t actually want to be a therapist anymore,” or you are more enlivened by the work than ever before. And I was definitely in the first category. So I don’t know exactly what was calling me, into being a couples and sex therapist. I feel like I was healing things I didn’t fully understand.

[00:40:15] I feel like doing that work through my twenties into my early thirties allowed me to deepen my relationships in a really meaningful way. It allowed me to deepen my understanding of my sexuality in really meaningful ways, But it was never as intentional as what I’m doing now, which is very much, you know, getting comfortable with my life path of doing the work that I’m here to share with others.

[00:40:42] Linzy: The language that you’re using here is really interesting to me because there’s a part of my brain that… We’ve talked before. We did an episode together about kind of healing our way out of being therapists, right? Because that was both of our trajectories. Yeah, we did a whole episode on it.

[00:40:55] If you’re listening and you’re really interested in that part of the story, Maegan and I deep dived into our, both of us, our own journeys to leaving being therapists. And that was a few seasons ago. Something that I’m, I’m thinking about now as you’re, you’re talking in kind of this healer language, cause this has been an evolution that I’ve, I’ve seen you undergo in the time that we’ve known each other.

[00:41:15] I don’t know if this is language you really would have used like seven or eight years ago when we became friends. But it makes me wonder, like, how do you define healer? Like when you’re talking about people who are like just healers at heart, am I a healer, Maegan Megginson? Or is that, that’s something different?

[00:41:33] Tell me more about what you’re talking about when you do talk about somebody who’s just really called to the work, regardless of what they’re working through themselves. 

[00:41:42] Maegan: That’s a great question, Linz. and I appreciate that reflection. As I’m listening to it, I’m nodding. I’m like, yeah, you’re right. I have, I, that has been an evolution for me. And I think part of that evolution has been my own decolonizing work around therapy and the mental health field in the Western world, and all of the ways that therapy has really been so profoundly colonized, right?

[00:42:09] You have to be very privileged to be in a position to go to grad school, to get the certifications, to pay for supervision. There’s so much gatekeeping that happens. There are so many rules and parameters that we really are, in so many ways, brainwashed in graduate school to believe that being a good therapist requires staying in a very narrow lane of rules and ethical guidelines, and we have to, ascribe to the different models and theories of all of the smart white men who came before us, and we are also taught to look down on people are

[00:42:47] healing in other capacities. And this is taught explicitly in some programs and implicitly in others, but there is a superiority about being a therapist. We get to kind of, you know, look down our noses at people who haven’t been to graduate school, people who are only coaches, people who are doing something that maybe is woo or spiritual and not evidence based.

[00:43:12] So I have really worked in my own process to wind my way out of that paradigm and to look with fresh eyes at the many different ways that people show up in service for the healing of other people in the world. And the last four or five years, I’ve also tried hard to, for me, to experiment working with people that 10 years ago, 

[00:43:45] I would have had a big opinion about. you know, I…As a therapist, I’d have been like, Oh, I would never work with this kind of person or that kind of person. What are their credentials? You know, are their practices evidence based? I would have asked all these questions. So I feel like it’s important for me to know you go, you pay your money, and you experience working with every possible person who are showing up and doing healing work in a way that’s really aligned for them. See what your experience is.

[00:44:14] And the more I do that, the more I realize that it’s kind of bullshit that being a licensed therapist is somehow superior to the other way people are showing up and doing healing work in the world. So, what do I think it means to be a healer? Well, I think it doesn’t matter what I think it means to be a healer.

[00:44:30] I think, what do you think it means? What do you need to be healed? And if what you need to be healed is financial education and support, then Linzy Bonham is a healer. And if what you need is someone who does EMDR to help reduce symptoms of your trauma, then your EMDR certified psychotherapist is a healer.

[00:44:52] And if what you need is a life coach to encourage you to advocate for a raise at work, then that life coach is a healer. And I don’t get to be the arbiter of who is a healer and who isn’t a healer. I am just more, in my professional work, as someone who serves healers and mission driven business owners, I am more curious about how you define yourself and what your intention is behind the mission that you are trying to bring into the world.

[00:45:22] And if you say to me, I feel really called to support, serve, help, heal in this way, then, in my mind, you’re a healer.

[00:45:33] Linzy: I like that. Yeah. It’s funny, you know, you, you mentioned like therapy has been colonized and my brain. Isn’t therapy colonizing? Was it ever not colonized?

[00:45:45] Maegan: Right? yeah.

[00:45:45] Linzy: Just the whole structure of it. But, yeah, like this, this openness, I mean, this, this I think has really been part of your evolution.

[00:45:52] Maegan: I do, I mean, your woo factor has gone way up to be real with you. I, I would actually just say that what I’ve allowed you to see has gone up.

[00:46:00] Linzy: Ah, there you go. Different parts. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like that openness. But like that I think also really aligns with what you were talking about earlier of, you know, the, like the path that you’re taking where it’s like, wander, and see what’s there. And so in your business, this is how you’re approaching your own work that you do for others, is what I’m hearing, is like letting yourself see what feels good, trying things.

[00:46:22] Does that feel in alignment with…? does that not feel in alignment? What I’m hearing too is that’s also what you’re recommending and what you’ve experienced with working with other folks too, right? Like just try things and see, and let yourself be surprised by what is amazingly helpful and even more helpful than EMDR from somebody who’s got no, you know, official education, but it’s got these incredible healing gifts.

[00:46:41] Maegan: Yes, and you know, I want to own something else, too, and this is actually something I’m like very actively processing right now,

[00:46:48] I am owning in my work and in my life that I got swept up in,what I’m going to call the online business cult, because that very much is what it is, and how it operates.

[00:47:00] And I think we as therapists are really vulnerable to getting swept up into this whole section of the internet that’s about passive income and scalable offers and sales funnels and audience growth and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are good elements to all of those things, but there’s a way that the whole vision is sold to us as a magic pill that will solve all of the distress that we feel in our private practices. And it’s not true, and that’s not how it works, and I’m really in my own work right now looking at how I got swept up in that, how I contributed and perpetuated some of those beliefs that I think are false and harmful, and there are ways that they harmed me and took me away

[00:47:47] from the core of who I am, these parts that you’re reflecting back to me now.

[00:47:53] So this is part of why I’m giving myself this year of… I’m calling it my year of being in the void, where I’m showing up and working and serving in ways that feel deep and intimate and authentic, and very, very, very low pressure. So I am just wiping the slate clean of anything that puts me in a performance mode or anything that turns the volume up on the need to make a certain amount of money or a certain number of sales or grow my audience by this many people.

[00:48:25] I just, I need to take a big step away and come back to who am I, and how do I want to integrate who I am with the work that I do in the world. So I’m also thinking of this as a big healing year for myself and a deepening of my own understanding of what I’m doing and where I’m going and my work.

[00:48:46] And I’m really committed to sharing really openly about that in interviews like this, but also with my email community. I just want to be a voice in people’s inbox who’s telling the truth, and really giving people permission to also tell the truth to themselves, to their clients, to their communities, to their families.

[00:49:07] I just think we all need to be more committed to telling the truth.

[00:49:11] Linzy: So the financial side of this… this is a podcast called Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:49:16] Maegan: Oh, yeah, sure.

[00:49:19] Linzy: How have you made the money work to give you this? Cause I could, I can imagine some folks listening are like, I would love to be able to give myself the space to really think about what feeds me or checking with who I am now.

[00:49:30] Maegan: Yeah.

[00:49:31] Linzy: How do you actually float yourself while you’re letting yourself wander?

[00:49:36] Maegan: Yeah. I wish I could say I was a trust fund baby. That would make my life so much easier, but alas, I am not. So this is a great question, and I’m so appreciative of you for asking it. Three things. Thing number one, part of the ruse of the whole online business industry is that you need to make a ton of money.

[00:50:01] And the more money you make, the more successful you are, and you know, just look every day at how you’re holding yourself back. And what could you do to, you know… Okay, you made 250,000 last year, great, next year make 400,000, the year after that make 600,000. When does it stop? When is enough enough?

[00:50:17] And a big part of trying to wiggle my way out of that world was really looking at how I have been making more money than I need. and, And that’s fine, and I will one day return to making the amount of money that I was making and hopefully more. I’m not ashamed to have money, and I’m not closed off from financial abundance.

[00:50:40] But I think it’s really important that we’re looking so very closely at the relationship between how much money I’m making and how much of myself I’m giving, and I was giving more of myself than I wanted to give. So thing number one was sitting down with my husband and my team and going, okay, here’s how much of myself I want to give next year.

[00:51:04] Here’s how I want to feel. Here are the kinds of projects I want to work on. Can we all be okay with making a lot less money than we have been making. All in favor? Say aye. Great. Everyone agrees. The next question becomes how much money do we need to be safe, secure, and comfortable. And that is where we’ve spent most of our time financially.

[00:51:29] The last four months or so has really been dialing things down, and looking at what expenses can we cut. What things are superfluous, and how much do we need to just be okay to just be comfortable, back midway to our conversation, a reminder that I still own another business and I feel really fortunate right now.

[00:51:52] It’s not lost on me. Sometimes I can get lost in like why do I still do this? Why do I still have this other business? No, it’s not lost on me that maybe I still have it because I actually need it right now. Because I’m able to pay myself from that business it reduced the Transcribed Need to make more money in the coaching business.

[00:52:12] So we are pulling money from my therapy center, and we’re pulling a little bit of money from the coaching business. And then we did the math. Okay. If we know our personal financial needs are X, we’re going to meet this percentage from business number one, this percentage from business number two.

[00:52:27] We have one full time team member. How much do we need to pay her, and what are our recurring overhead expenses? We have written down that Maegan is not allowed to make any purchases without first approving them by the team because I do have a bad habit of being like, yeah, I’ll buy that thing. Yeah.

[00:52:44] I’ll do that course. Yeah. I’ll join that Mastermind. This is a year of trying not to spend very much money. So it’s math, and we did the math and now we know, okay, in order to keep the coaching business afloat during this year of exploration and healing, we need to generate x amount of money per month. So we have this baseline that we know we need to meet.

[00:53:06] And we figure out how do we meet that through the ways I’m willing to show up and serve clients now. And so far it’s going just fine.

[00:53:17] Linzy: I mean, what you’re talking about is my dream combination always, and what I’m, I’m always trying to support folks doing, which is take the math, combine it with what you actually want. What matters. Values aligned. And have these two things integrate. And that sounds like exactly what you’re doing, right?

[00:53:33] Like you’re not being delusional. You’re not, cutting your expenses down to nothing where it’s hurting you. You’re not, setting yourself up to make a ton of money. It’s like you, you found this, I don’t know, sober center, the, the workable number, that checks all the boxes.

[00:53:48]  Maegan: Yeah. And again, it’s for now. And because like you said earlier, this is about being present. In this moment. I’m not kidding myself. You know, it’s not like I think that making the amount of money I’m making right now is going to work for me for the rest of my life. No. Next year, we’re going to have to up the ante a little bit so that we can make some investments that we want to make, or do a little bit more travel, or fill in the blank, whatever’s comfortable to us then.

[00:54:20] But in the spirit of letting go of the need to know exactly where I’m going all of the time, we’re trusting that if we know what we need right now, and the needs of right now are being met, and we really are just showing up every day curious about how it’s going and what direction we want to move, we’re going to get to exactly where we need to go, and we don’t have to stress about it.

[00:54:41] We don’t have to panic about it. We don’t have to be scared about it. There’s a big part of this process for me right now that is about learning how to trust.

[00:54:50] Linzy: Beautiful. 

[00:54:55] Maegan: I still have a mortgage to pay, you know.

[00:54:57] Linzy: Yes. It’s a both and. It’s a both and.

[00:54:59] Maegan: Exactly that.

[00:55:00] Linzy: Maegan, thank you for coming on the podcast. For folks who want to get further into your world, it sounds like they could also get live updates of this process through your email list. Can you tell them where to find you? Wonderful.

[00:55:16] Maegan: So you can find me at MaeganMegginson.com and, we’re… I’m also happy to share something I just recently created: Recover from Burnout. It’s a 10 day email series to help you recover from burnout without doing anything or buying anything. So really taking what I’ve learned in my own process and turning it into 10 little seeds that I’ll sprinkle into your inbox and let you absorb at your own time and your own pace.

[00:55:43] In your own way. So I’m happy to share that. And I also host a weekly writing group called Express Yourself. So if you’re interested in hanging out with me and exploring more of who you are through writing, you can register for that at ExpressYourselfStudio.Com.

[00:55:57] Linzy: Thank you. Thank you, Maegan.

[00:55:59] Maegan: Thank you, Linzy. Thanks for having me. 

[00:56:16] Linzy: Something that always impresses me about Maegan is, as she mentioned herself actually, her courage. I do remember having a conversation with her probably sometime in the last six months, maybe even a little further back than that, where we were talking about her shutting down her program, Next Level Therapist;

[00:56:33] shutting down her program, Spotlight, or considering it, which was her second level program. Again, as she said, very successful programs. And when things are successful, it’s very difficult to justify closing them down, but she was clear that she wanted to change the way that she’s doing things.

[00:56:50] And I said to her that of all the people who I know, she is somebody who I totally trust is going to figure out exactly what makes sense for her. Right? Which is probably not one final destination, right? But I know that Maegan always figures out the next step. And part of why I know she can do it is because she’s built skills, and she has resources and support.

[00:57:15] And that’s something that, for everyone listening, I want to remind you of if you are not happy in the work that you’re doing… If you’re thinking about doing it differently, changing your niche, exploring a different career path, turning what you do into a course… whatever you might be thinking about that is working differently is all the skills that you have accumulated through your education and experience, all of that experience that you have earned, all of that lives on inside of you. Like it doesn’t go away.

[00:57:44] And when you have kind of that backpack that’s filled with all of this resourcing that you’ve done for yourself, the relationships that you’ve built, the education that you have received… that doesn’t go away, and you get to carry that with you, and that is going to allow you to land on your feet, to figure it out, to solve problems in the meantime, right?

[00:58:06] Like something that I found myself increasingly wanting to say, especially at the school council that I’m part of, as we’re talking about issues that are coming up is, “We’re all adults here. We can solve problems,” right? And the same is true, especially for therapists and health practitioners.

[00:58:19] Like we’re all adults, we can solve problems. And if you can trust yourself to solve problems, and if you can trust yourself to apply skills to new scenarios, then you can. step out and do different things. You do not have to be trapped because you get to take all of that with you. So I appreciate Maegan coming on the podcast today and sharing about her midway journey.

[00:58:42] You can find me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts, and if you’re enjoying the podcast, giving me a review on Apple podcast is super helpful. I know that you know that because this is episode 96. So I’ve probably said this, I don’t say this every time, but I’m going to say, I’ve probably said this at least 90 times.

[00:59:01] But if you do have two minutes to spare, to help out a former therapist turned money coach with a podcast, if you can head over to Apple podcasts and leave me a review, that is the best way for other therapists and health practitioners to find us and be part of these conversations.

[00:59:17] Thanks for listening today.