[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These are our short and sweet Friday episodes to answer questions from listeners of the podcast like you, the therapists and health practitioners and coaches, who are part of our community.

[00:00:20] So today’s question comes from Cierra, and here is her question.

[00:00:25] Cierra: Hey, Linzy. My name is Cierra, and I’m a group practice owner with a background in the public sector. One of the money related challenges that’s weighing really heavily on my mind is navigating the tension between my own evolving money mindset and the perspectives of some of the clinicians in my practice.

[00:00:44] Coming from the public sector, I’ve had to work really hard to shift my own beliefs that all therapy needs to be free and accessible into recognizing the value of private pay and the sustainability and care that that can offer. I’ve built my practice with fairness and empowerment at its core, and I strive to support both the clinicians and the clients we serve in ways that feel balanced and ethical.

[00:01:08] However, when it comes to clinicians in my practice pushing back on business decisions and suggesting that I’m “just in it for the money,” it really begins to stir up old doubts, and I feel conflicted. On one hand, I’ve worked really hard to create what I feel is a sustainable model that I am proud of, but on the other, I understand the deep seated concerns around accessibility and fairness in mental health care.

[00:01:32] Linzy: So my question for you is how can I continue to support others in their money mindset journeys, especially, you know, when there is a value difference between them and mine, while remaining confident and grounded in my own perspective as a group practice owner. Thanks so much. Thank you so much for this question, Cierra, and it is a tricky one. There’s multiple pieces here that you’re having to navigate leading your group practice, and I’m hearing that you’ve done a lot of work on your own relationship with money, and recognizing the value of therapy, and moving out of a model where it should be free and accessible to everyone, which to be clear, I actually do think that at the end of the day, therapy should be free and accessible for everyone, but somebody needs to pay for it.

[00:02:19] So in the absence of a government actually paying for health care for the folks who live in a country… Like the country of Canada, for instance, does pay doctors for health care. In the absence of that, money has to come from somewhere. Thinking about your question, there’s a couple things that come to mind for me.

[00:02:37] The first is about your role as a group practice leader, as a leader and a boss, and a coach for your own team members. So the first thing that I’m thinking about is, you know, if your team members are really grappling with their own ethical questions around accessibility, and maybe they’re pushing back on you…They’re making this about you, and projecting onto you, in terms of you running the business, that you’re all about money, I would look at how can you explore your team members in digging into their own beliefs and their own internal conflict around money. And take it out of something that, because it’s kind of abstract or not explored, they can project onto you.

[00:03:25] I know in my own team, we have regular one-on-one meetings. You might be meeting with your own team one on one, or they might have a clinical supervisor, depending on the size of your practice. But, this is something that could be actually explored with your team members as an area where they could be supported.

[00:03:42] Because if they are looking to be accessible and charge lower fees, maybe it’s really important that they stay on insurance, or they want to have sliding scale available, or pro bono, depending on how your practice is set up, chances are that is actually going to be impacting their income.

[00:04:00] If you have any kind of split or set wage that is going to be in relation to, you know, the fee that is collected for them, that will be impacting how much they are getting paid. So I would explore with them, or have your clinical supervisor explore with them, what are their financial needs?

[00:04:17] What do they actually need to be well financially? You know, what do they need to be able to send their kiddos to school, to take care of their basic everyday needs, to have financial security, to be able to save for their futures? It doesn’t mean necessarily getting to the numbers, but recognizing that they do have financial needs, and then how do they balance that as a clinician with their desire to be accessible, right?

[00:04:40] Is there actually, for your specific clinicians, a sweet spot there, around them being able to see half folks on insurance, half out of pocket, and that helps them to meet their own accessibility standards, right, but also get their financial needs met? Or is it that when they take time to really look at their own financial needs, their financial needs are actually in conflict with them being able to work on insurance?

[00:05:05] You know, within each of your clinicians, there’s their own relationship with money and their own internal conflict, and their own conflict that they’ll have which would be much like yours and mine and everyone else who has had to sit down and really do this work. It’s just the conflict between our own needs, and our own desires and wants to have a life that is safe and fulfilling and allows us to actually enjoy our lives and take care of the people that we love, and balancing that with being accessible, right?

[00:05:35] And helping other folks, and having them access therapy, right? So that internal conflict that you have worked to overcome, they are also experiencing that internal conflict. And with you being the leader of your practice, you are going to be an easy target to project their own internal conflict and feelings about money onto.

[00:05:55] It’s easy, when you are in a position of leadership, to be made into an object upon which all of those feelings can be projected. That if you are, you know, charging enough that the business is stable and profitable, that you are doing something wrong, but really this is about your clinician’s own relationships with money.

[00:06:12] So that’s the first thing that I would think about is how can you,or your team members, support your clinicians in starting to clarify their own relationship with money and their own needs and making sure that they’re setting up their own caseload and their own schedule so that they’re okay, and yet they’re also able to do the work that they love to do, right?

[00:06:32] What does that look like for each of them? So I would start with that, that’s my first thought. My second thought is that it is common, as the leader of the practice, as I just mentioned, that folks are going to project their stories onto you. Part of that is that you are the one who’s actually running the business side of things, and you’re the one who has to see the numbers and make those tough decisions around, okay, we can provide this, but we can’t provide that, because for everybody to get paid, and for the bills to get paid, and for you to get paid as the financial leader for all your time running the business,

[00:07:06] every dollar that comes into the business has a lot of jobs to do, and you see that because you’re the one who’s sitting down with the numbers, you’re the one who sees when the bank account gets low, you’re the one who is having to make these larger strategic financial decisions, and your team isn’t.

[00:07:21] And in many cases, folks end up working in a group practice, the folks who are going to stick around, they are there because they don’t want to think about those things, and they don’t want to make those hard decisions and be more involved in the business side of things. They want to focus more on the clinical side of the work. I’ve noticed over the years, it took a while for some of my friends and peers in group practice to start to realize like, oh, the folks who want to work with me long term, they’re not actually entrepreneurial. They’re not folks who necessarily are going to be as driven and as ambitious and as willing to do the kind of like, ugh, parts of things, as the person who chooses to lead the practices.

[00:07:57] You often end up with different types of personalities. So for those folks who are working for you, who may be people who never want to run their own practice, who don’t want to have to deal with the unpleasant side of the business and the money, part of it is thinking about, then, how do you support them in having their needs met to make it a positive workplace

[00:08:18] so that they are able to show up and do what they love to do and see their clients, and have their own financial needs met enough, but also so that they understand that there are business things, and there’s bigger decisions being made, that are being taken care of for them, The folks who are going to stick around are working for you because they don’t want to work for themselves, right? So there is a piece there of recognizing maybe a different kind of personality, a different kind of motivation, between you and your team members and thinking about how do you help to meet their needs?

[00:08:47] How do you address the fact that like yep, there are these like bigger pieces to the business. There are these business pieces that we are taking care of, you know, that is one of the great things about you being here with us is we are taking care of these financial pieces. We’re taking care of supplying the toilet paper, doing the advertising, taking care of the administration, and making sure that folks are really feeling cared for in that way so that, they can focus in on their clinical work.

[00:09:14] Because they’re possibly the types of folks who are never going to want to actually have to make these like really hard decisions in the big picture. So there’s a couple of different ideas there that I’m talking about. But to recap, the first is to look at how do you support your team members to, work on their own relationships with money so they start projecting onto you, and then how do you take care of them so that their needs are being met, so that the reason that they’re there, which is that they don’t want to deal with the money, is being taken care of, and they’re able to just show up and be great clinicians, right?

[00:09:42] And that’s about creating a positive workplace as a group practice owner. These are all things that we dig into and explore in Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, because it’s a vast and complex world, as you know, Cierra, and it sounds like you’ve done a great job of building a practice that you are proud of. But I think recognizing that this is your clinician’s own stuff, and then taking care of the needs that you can take care of

[00:10:03] is going to go a long way. The final thing in this equation, of course, is your own groundedness in the decisions that you have made. Right, and how do you keep that kind of, emotion and doubt and noise and internal conflict that belongs to your team members, how do you keep that from undermining you and the decisions that you’ve made?

[00:10:22] And it sounds like you’ve been very thoughtful and intentional in building a practice that is values aligned, and in valuing your own work. And you’ve probably done that work of having to really accept your own financial needs, and the financial reality that we live in. And so my question is, how do you surround yourself then with people who also are in the same place as you?

[00:10:43] Right, who get what you’re going through? Other group practice leaders who’ve made similar choices, and have done that hard work, and have landed in the same place as you. Surrounding yourself with that community of people who love to lead and are happy to do the business side of things, and therefore have also put themselves in the position of being group practice owners.

[00:11:02] That’s one of the things that’s really nice about courses like mine, Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, and other group practice courses, is you do get to be in the company of other folks who can remind you and reassure you, that like, no, you have made these decisions for a reason. We have to do these things for a reason.

[00:11:16] Even if our teams don’t understand, it doesn’t mean that you’re making the wrong decision. So surrounding yourself with a tribe of folks who get you. would be the first thing that I would think about with that. And then the second thing would be just really taking care of yourself, right?

[00:11:30] Making sure that your needs are being met emotionally so that you can ground and center back in yourself, whether that’s giving yourself enough time off, nurturing yourself in other ways, like having time to be out of work, and out ofthe noise, the cacophony of personalities and emotions that come when we have a bigger business, and there’s just a lot of people going on. Just making sure that you’re really taking the time to ground back in yourself, ground in what you know so you can show up and be a leader, because you are bringing something different to the table than your team members are, and recognizing that your personalities and needs are different, is going to be helpful in being able to take care of them without having their questions and their internal conflicts

[00:12:12] undermining you and where you are and what conclusions you’ve come to in your own money work. So thank you so much, Cierra, for your question. It’s a great one. It’s something we could probably talk about for hours, but those are my initial thoughts and keeping yourself grounded in the decisions that you’ve made. If you, like Cierra, have a question that you’d like me to dig into on an episode of Feelings and Finances,

[00:12:36] all you need to do is click on the link in the show notes. It will take you over to our podcast page, you will see a little widget, super simple, that just says, record a question for Linzy, or something very similar to that. All you need to do is press record, share your name, share a little bit of context, and share your question, and I would be happy to answer it on a future episode of Feelings and Finances.

[00:12:57] Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:00] Amity: It’s figuring out your North Star and aiming towards that and you have all the skills and all the tools within you and now outside of you to access to do whatever you desire to do and to change the world and make it a better place.

[00:00:30] 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, Lindsay Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is Amity Cooper. Amity is a seasoned entrepreneur with decades of experience before becoming a trained mental health professional and she’s also an entrepreneurial coach. And today Amity and I talk about tech in therapy. We dig into what are the technologies that are available to therapists.

[00:01:14] We talk about discerning which texts you want to use, but ultimately the fact that there probably is a technical solution to most problems that you are having in your therapy practice. And we ended up having a little bit of a discussion too, about techno optimism. Is tech good for us? Is it bad for us?

[00:01:33] Something that’s definitely on my mind as I’m a parent is I’m thinking about my son’s development, and his social development, and what does technology mean for us in general as humans in the world. Interesting conversation there with Amity as somebody who is very much in this space. And ultimately, we ended up talking about the importance of therapists being involved in these tech conversations.

[00:01:54] You know, these tools and these apps, they are happening no matter what. And we often underestimate our expertise that we have to bring to the table, when it comes to the development of these kinds of tools. Here is my conversation with Amity Cooper.

[00:02:10] Linzy: So Amity, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:22] Amity: Oh, thank you so much for having me here. I’m really excited about our conversation.

[00:02:27] Linzy: Me, too. you are bringing a topic today that is a topic I do not know a ton about, which is we’re planning to have a chat about technology in therapy. So I wanted to start, with kind of a, a toe dip question as we get in. For folks in private practice, therapists and health practitioners, what type of tech should they be thinking about and should they have in their private practices?

[00:02:55] Amity: I love this question. And let me just say that, for many of us, it’s going to be different. We have different type of practices. We have our different skillsets that bring to bear on any choice. Whatever technology we bring into our practices, it has to fit us first and because they’re tools , they’re not running the show.

[00:03:16] We are. So I just have to give that disclaimer to it because there is a plethora of softwares and actual physical tools that we can apply and utilize in our everyday life. Now I’m wearing multiple hats. There’s the hat that we put on to be the business owner. And we think about all of the different software programs that run our back offices seamlessly.

[00:03:43] We can use AI to kingdom come if we want for all the different tasks that make the boring things less boring because we don’t have to think about them that much anymore with these AI agents, it’s generative AI that I’m speaking about. So we have all of these integrations that are taking place where software is being able to talk to each other.

[00:04:09] So different software platforms are now interconnected and entwined so that we, as the human being, are just pushing a button and following through our particular workflow process, but we have the software and the tools to produce that 24/7. So I hope that sort of rounds that one component out.

[00:04:33] When you start to put on your clinical hat of work. There are about three, three to four things that I see on the horizon that are already being used, but we’re slow to adopt in this industry. First and foremost, let me say what the lowest hanging fruit is: video. I mean, we have multiple new generations of video and access to using social media and all of these video telehealth services at large.

[00:05:09] We have really grown in the last five years when we look back, and we couldn’t even imagine. We didn’t even know what the word Zoom was in 2020 and look at us now. I mean, this is incredible. We’re on Squadcast, and there’s numerous different products available for us. So I want to stress to the clinician out there who is really comfortable in their therapy

[00:05:35] seat, explore and sort of expand because telehealth is here, and you can run, and you can reach people at scale with video services. So I think this is a good reminder that we can take it to the next level. But that next level is going to be determined based on what you want and what you need in your desk.

[00:05:56] Okay. So then the next sort of cluster of tools that I see are these interactions with wearables. I’m wearing my aura ring. Okay, so this is a sensor-based accessory, and it can be from your glasses to your aura ring to the fabric you wear.

[00:06:18] The sensor tools that are available at our fingertips and specifically through our smartphone is a game changer because now we have diagnostics. We get real time biofeedback on a particular therapist and a client’s homeostasis. We can monitor those in real time now. Oh, the other thing I was, I couldn’t remember what it was. It’s called Muse. They look like Wonder Woman headbands, and you put them on, and it gives you biofeedback on your meditation.

[00:06:57] Okay. Now you can take that data on a professional level and you can track somebody’s progress on their mindfulness practice. So I think there’s all these ways in which digital therapeutics are infiltrating and coming into the therapy room in a way that really adds value and interest and care and attention that clinicians… We’ve been limited.

[00:07:25] We’ve been limited by what we observe. We listen to the intonation. We listen to the voice. We can look at affect. We see if somebody is depressed or anxious or manic, whatever that may be. But now we have the data to back it and to validate it in a way that we’ve never had before. So that is an exciting entry point into these exponential technologies.

[00:07:53] Linzy: Yes.

[00:07:57]  Amity: We’re seeing that there is an economical step up for you as a clinician. If you were unsure about what you should be trying.

[00:08:07] Linzy: Cause as I think about, the folks who, I work with in Money Skills for Therapists, and probably many of the folks who listened to this podcast, those first two pieces of tech are almost, just, part of the air we breathe right now, right? Like your clinic management system, be it like Jane or, or Simple Practice or Therapy Notes.

[00:08:23] There’s many, many out there. They’re so helpful, and they automate so many things that can be a total pain in the butt. And I think, my observation is, most therapists are using something like that. There’s still folks who are not into it. There’s still folks who, want to do, more of, like, the handwritten notes, and those are folks who I find tend to either have low confidence with technology, like, they’re like, I don’t know how to do that, I don’t how to learn that, but also folks who have low trust in technology.

[00:08:49] Amity: It’s just this is… this is my system, and I’m good with that. Don’t mess with me.

[00:08:54] Linzy: Yeah. So, but I do find the default is that most folks are using a tool like that. And then the second type of tool you mentioned, the video, as you say, has like exploded onto the scene. I remember offering Zoom sessions as a backup if folks couldn’t make sessions, and this would have been in 2018 and that was like, weird, like that was a very strange, unusual thing to be doing. And I remember meeting a therapist who worked only online in 2018 and being like, what do you mean?

[00:09:18] Like you, you only see them on the internet? It was so, so strange and like little did I know that two years later that would be All of us, that would be everybody, for so much time. So yeah, that video piece certainly has also become quite ubiquitous. Most folks at least used it for a while with their clients, if they’re not still doing some of that now.

[00:09:37] But this third piece you’re talking about… This is new. This is something that yeah, like I stopped practicing therapy. So I feel like I left the therapy space before this was even remotely around, which is yeah, this biofeedback, bio monitoring. Yeah. Yeah. and you’re talking about Muse.

[00:09:53] Amity: Actually, somebody that I went to high school with was part of the Muse development team. How cool is that?

[00:09:57] Linzy: Isn’t that interesting? Yeah.

[00:09:59] Um, Yes. But this information, because what I’m hearing you say is, before we’ve had to rely on our clients self reports of like, how anxious were you this week?

[00:10:08] How is your sleep? But now there’s actually information that they can choose to have tracked that actually creates data. We’re not just basing on somebody’s self report and their impression of how things went, which might vary, because we all are very subjective.

[00:10:22] Amity: Subjective, right? We don’t know. We don’t know. Now we have the backup. We have data. We have the information, we have the algorithms, we have everything. And there, there’s a wonderful, there’s a couple of new tools just off the cuff that I, then I’m thinking. One there’s a lot of new services, SaaS services, out there for note taking.

[00:10:43] So it’s transcription services, things like that, that are specifically applicable to our industry. So that’s something if note taking is just the thing you hate to do. Try this out. I mean, just the podcast world has exploded, and you think about how you’re creating all of this content.

[00:11:07] Now you can record or video record. You could get permission from your clients. And you can do transcription services. Now, that is a tricky situation. That’s not going to be for everybody. And of course, there are all ethical rules and regulations for this. And I’m not saying just go out there willy nilly doing this.

[00:11:27] But if this is a curiosity for you, there’s a tool for that.

[00:11:31] Linzy: Yes.

[00:11:32] Amity: You know, I think that’s what I think we both need to stress. there’s a tool for that.

[00:11:36] Linzy: Yeah.

[00:11:38] Amity: There’s a way to make your life simpler.

[00:11:40] Linzy: Hmm.

[00:11:41] Amity: Or easier and more efficient. So you’re not constantly on top of these things. These things are supposed to alleviate the busyness so that you can be with your clients up close and personal and knee to knee the way you want to be.

[00:11:59] Amity: So, I think that’s the disclaimer to all of this.

[00:12:02] Linzy: Yes. Yeah. There are options out there. It’s not for everybody, but like the notes is a great example. like I was just chatting with a student in my course this morning about how she’s having trouble getting to her notes, and getting to the other administrative pieces of the business.

[00:12:15] Amity: And she’s got ADHD in the mix, which I find many, many folks, who I work with in my course are women who’ve discovered at 40 that they’re like, Oh, shoot, I have ADHD. This explains so much about my life. That’s a whole nother topic, right? I mean, diagnosis in adulthood, my goodness,

[00:12:33] Linzy: So, like where something like notes can become a massive stressor and hang over your head and make you feel very ineffective, and just be this constant area that you’re, your critic, your inner critic is going to tell you you’re failing in your practice…

[00:12:45] There are tools that can facilitate that. And, so there are options, right? We, we don’t necessarily have to do all the grunt work anymore. And if there’s an area of real pain that’s undermining your professional confidence, there might be an option for something to, to help to ease that.

[00:13:03] Amity: that. Absolutely. And this is what is so amazing about today. The world that we’re living in. I’m a cautious optimist, but, I have to say as an innovator… I’m entrepreneurial. Okay? And that entrepreneurial mindset is always scanning and looking for openings and opportunities.

[00:13:24] And the world that we’re in right now, we’re unlimited in all our potential and our services, and this is why I feel so thrilled and purposeful about talking about exponential tech because it’s disrupting our industry. We have a technological and clinical gap in our world that we’re facing. The world is speeding ahead, and all of these companies and technologies are advancing and our industry is so slow to catch up, and I want to bridge that digital divide And I encourage

[00:14:07] everybody that I talked to really looked at this as just an amazing frontier to step into. And to scan across the landscape and really take in the view because it’s changing, and we can be part of that conversation. Traditionally, and I think you’re probably aware of this. I mean, traditionally, the institutional powers that be really just have told us how it’s going to be.

[00:14:33] They set the certifications. They set the course, and the pace. Well, technology doesn’t work that way. It is, they have an idea and they figure it out and it’s a minimal viable product

[00:14:47] Linzy: So your job, I see this as our job as clinicians, is that we have to be in alignment with all of these new tech companies because the digital therapeutic space is exploding and they’re coming to us in arrears… They’re coming…

[00:15:07] Amity: After the fact, after the product has already been developed, and they go, Oh, we should fact check this.

[00:15:12] Amity: This is a perfect case of hallucinations that AI has. When you start to input data into a large learning language model,

[00:15:23] Linzy: Yeah.

[00:15:24] Amity: they’re just pulling in and taking in the data that’s inputted into them, processing it, and regurgitating it back.

[00:15:32] It’s a process response structure, and that’s a loose description of it, right? I might not be perfect on that, just give me grace.

[00:15:42] Linzy: Sure. Sure.

[00:15:43] Amity: But they have found with the studies is that there’s biases that are built into these algorithms

[00:15:50] Linzy: Of course. Yeah.

[00:15:51] Amity: My point is, how do you correct those? how do you change the way this algorithm regurgitates the information that it

[00:16:02] experiences? And that means that we have to have the experts, the people that understand these nuances, involved in the research and the development.

[00:16:13] Linzy: Yes. Yes.

[00:16:15] Amity: I think that’s where I’m going. It’s like we have a responsibility here to be co creators with this new tech.

[00:16:20] Linzy: Because, the norm that I see more is that, as you say, they come to us later. They’re like, Hey, there’s this thing. Is this good? Does this make sense? Because yeah, there isn’t the same sense of ethics in that world. That’s not what they’re there for. Whereas what I find with the therapy space, and I’m thinking specifically about the mental health therapy space, we can be so almost paralyzed by questions of ethics, right?

[00:16:43] We’re like, is this okay? I don’t know. Yeah, I, I see a lot of stuckness that can happen with us because we are so, so, so focused on being ethical. But what I’m hearing you say is, basically, we’re getting left behind, right? All these technologies are being created, and if we’re not in there being part of these conversations, like if we don’t have a seat at the table, these technologies are going to happen anyways,

[00:17:04] and we’re still going to be beating our brows over whether it’s okay to use a tool to make this part of our practice a little bit easier, and what all the implications of that could possibly be.

[00:17:16] Amity: Exactly. And then we’re going to say, it’s not a sound product. And that’s our own fault.

[00:17:23] Amity: That is something that’s, the onus is on us for that. Because we were never part of the planning, or the discussion, or the integration. And so I, it’s a call out, not only to us to step up into that role. Okay, as advocate, as innovator. Okay? But it’s also a call out to these digital companies whose purpose are two things. They want to make money, but they also want to create and innovate and bring new tools to the world. So there is a, a back and forth, a titration between these things, but ultimately all we all want the same result.

[00:18:07] We want to advance humanity. We want to solve this mental health crisis. The tools that are available today will definitely help us at scale.

[00:18:17] Linzy: I’m hearing you say that you’re a reluctant optimist. Was that the phrase you used? I’m getting techno optimist vibes from you. I’m to have to say. Yeah. I feel like you might be more than a little bit reluctantly optimist because I also, I’m probably more on the techno critic side of these discussions.

[00:18:34] And, and I’m also, I’m doing a lot of active thinking right now about these things. Cause I also have a child who’s five. So it’s like, What do these technologies mean for social development, brain development? If we’re engaging in these technologies, what are we not doing? I have a lot of these questions and I’m, I’m a big fan of, of Cal Newport, who is kind of like somewhere in the centrist.

[00:18:53] He’s a centrist in all ways, but certainly has techno criticisms. And I’m reading Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation right now, which is pure tech

[00:19:01] Amity: Oh, I’ve heard of that.

[00:19:01] Linzy: criticism. Like he’s not at all optimistic or positive about the impacts on mental health of technology. So this is kind of refreshing to hear you have so much hope around this as a therapist who understands technology.

[00:19:14] Because I think there, a lot of folks would actually make the argument that in many ways, technology has created a mental health crisis, right? Has made us more lonely and isolated, and made us think that we’re connecting with people, but we’re, we’re actually more disconnected. I am curious, and we were not planning to talk about this, but I’m just so curious, as somebody who’s in this world, what is your response to that kind of…?

[00:19:35] Amity: Okay, I’m going to go all the way back to the Gutenberg Bible and the printing press. Okay? Okay. I, I look at the whole discussion around technology is, are we a lemming or not? Like this fear, a Luddite, right? A Luddite had an uprising because there was all this new tools and advancements in manufacturing and development, right?

[00:20:03] Factories. And they fought it because it was against what they knew. Okay. Now I look and then I go back and I think about the development of the Gutenberg Bible, and I think about how the majority of society at that time was illiterate. And then all of a sudden you have a book that is able to share life, and humanize the experience that we’re all having individually. And we can share it and we can access it. I look at technology as our own printing press, right? It is mission of

[00:20:43] Linzy: Yes.

[00:20:44] Amity: And it’s happening regardless.

[00:20:47] Linzy: If we like it or not.

[00:20:49] Amity: It is. We’re moving in this direction. There is singularity that is coming around. This is where A. I. All of this information is running up and meeting in the middle with humanity. Okay, It is destined to be where A. I. is going to be take on a human like form, if you will, like the sentient abilities that we have.

[00:21:19] These machines will eventually start to get there. When is that going to happen? That’s for Ray Kurzweil, the futurist to really discuss, but like we’re on this path.

[00:21:28] Linzy: Mm hmm.

[00:21:29] Amity: So we have to be engaged and part of the design build process.

[00:21:35] Linzy: Yes. Yes. And I’m curious, what could that look like? Like for folks who are listening, and they’re like, okay, yeah, it’s true. It’s happening no matter how we feel about it. This technology is being developed. There’s lots of folks who are very, very smart, in the tech space who are interested and curious and, and innovating and wanting to make these things.

[00:21:51] How do we as therapists claim a spot in these conversations? Should the folks who are listening who also have some tech vision or skills be going out and working to create apps themselves? Should we be emailing companies that we hear are developing a thing to be like, Hey, you need to talk to me because I am an expert on this area.

[00:22:09] How do we insert ourselves?

[00:22:10] Amity: That’s a great question. And, yeah, we can say a lot of you should be doing this, this, this…One thing is, companies are always running pilot programs. They’re always running studies and research, and it’s government entities, too. So I think that there are ways in which you can offer up your expertise and be part of the advancement of science.

[00:22:36] So I think there’s that. I think there’s a couple of crowd sourcing platforms like Citizen Science. Citizen Science is a platform where you go and you say, Okay, I’ve done this kind of research. I’m adding to this conversation.

[00:22:52] Out to the crowd. You put it out to the community at large, and there’s feedback, and there’s engagement, and there’s this wonderful community of like minded individuals who want to just improve humanity. And so I think you can do it on a small individual level, all the way up to a massive scale, however you see fit.

[00:23:16] It’s your life. You decide.

[00:23:18] Linzy: Yes. And I think, too, something that I notice with therapists sometimes is we tend to undervalue or underestimate our expertise. You know, therapists, certainly the type of folks that I end up attracting, tend to be perfectionistic. We focus more on what we don’t know than what we do.

[00:23:33] We’re like, Oh, yeah, I’ve been doing this for 20 years. But, you know, there’s this other thing I don’t know how to do or… Part of what I’m hearing is, own your expertise, right? Own what you know. Own the fact that you’ve done possibly thousands of hours of clinical work with folks around a certain diagnosis or issue, and bring that to people who are making things that know literally very little to nothing.

[00:23:55] Cause the other thing that I think about is a lot of folks that I see in Money Skills for Therapists, and in my audience in general, it’s kind of like, sometimes you get to that point where you’re like, my private practice is full. I’ve kind of like capped out here, but I feel like I have more to offer.

[00:24:09] Maybe those folks should be actually looking to develop technology, like make apps, get into using these tools. Cause I’m thinking like the combination of I’m going to talk directly about that person, the combination of your expertise and your sense of ethics and your understanding of what doesn’t work,

[00:24:27] plus somebody who can develop technology, you can make something incredible that could really positively change people’s lives. But if we’re not inserting ourselves into these processes, then our expertise is left to the side of the road.

[00:24:40] Amity: I, yes, absolutely. And, you know, it’s interesting because when you look at our demographics, we are a group that we’re one of the most highly educated, top performing professionals in the world. We hold second degrees. We have so many unfair advantages. Really?

[00:25:08] If we’re talking from a marketing standpoint, just, I mean, we’re highly educated. We’re great listeners. Oh my gosh, our emotional IQ is like through the roof, and yet we sit there, and we’re some of the lowest earners in professional service industries. And we’re still questioning whether or not we’re good enough.

[00:25:33] Like it is unbelievable to me and I just, it doesn’t sit right with me internally. I just, I’m like, you have so much to give and share with the world. Go make an app. And who’s to say, I mean, the reality is I do most, mostly career coaching, transition coaching, and at this point in my life, I look at if I were to speak to somebody who has been a clinician for 20 years and they’re wondering about what’s next, the world’s your oyster.

[00:26:08] You can do anything you want. You can imagine and be and develop anything you want because you have skills that are desirable in the marketplace and are

[00:26:18] Linzy: Yes.

[00:26:19] Amity: So good.

[00:26:22] Linzy: That’s a really helpful perspective because I know your professional history was outside of the therapy industry for many, many years. And I think when we are inside just one industry for our whole careers, we don’t necessarily realize what we have going on as a group of people that other industries do not have going on.

[00:26:37] And this is what I’m noticing as some of my students and peers step into, say, the business space, and talk about the impacts of trauma, and they’re like blowing everybody’s minds at that table. Like all these highly successful people, look like they have their whole life figured out, are just completely baffled and amazed by the information that’s being shared with them, which is information that for that clinician is like something they talk about literally every day, multiple times a day.

[00:27:04] It’s just like, obviously everybody knows this, but anyways… But they don’t . So, yeah, I think that that, especially coming from you, is a good affirmation for folks listening. You know so much more than you think you do, and you have so many more skills than you think you have.

[00:27:18] Amity: You have so much to offer the world. And, I challenge you all to, to think about what’s holding you back for making that impact or whatever. Now, I also tend to think in grand scale. Okay. So, the work that we do is so personal. And not everybody wants to be out there making an app.

[00:27:43] Not everybody wants to be the advocate and the promoter or to serve thousands of people. The intimate details about being knee to knee with somebody, or screen to screen with somebody…It’s magical and it’s a gift and it’s humbling. And I am so appreciative of that. And I know that if I can make a difference in one life, I feel really honored and part of that, a greater piece.

[00:28:12] So I guess what I’m trying to stress is it’s figuring out your North star. And aiming towards that. And you have all the skills and all the tools within you, and now outside of you, to access to do whatever you desire to do and to change the world. And make it a better place. So I think, if I could leave with that, that, that would be it.

[00:28:40] Linzy: Yeah. Beautiful takeaway. Amity, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This was a very inspiring wrap up to a conversation about tech and therapy. For folks who are interested in learning more about you, learning how to work with you, where can they find you and follow you?

[00:28:57] Amity: Oh, please, please, please come find me at clinical career collective. I created a professional development company for us to tech up and care wide. Get out into the world. And I run an e course that is called Do This First, where you learn over the course of seven days, all about the nuts and bolts and the foundations of business, and then I throw in and I sprinkle in a bunch of this new technology that’s coming online for you.

[00:29:29] Linzy: Wonderful. Okay. So we’ll put the link to that in the show notes and thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today, Amity.

[00:29:35] Amity: Thank you for having me. Great conversation.

[00:29:38] I so appreciated Amity’s optimism and also realism, that this tech is happening, whether we like it or not, so the importance of us being at the table. And it does bring me back to something that I often come back to when it comes to all of these facets of business, which is, it is about being with.

[00:30:10] Linzy: Right? Being curious. These tools are out there. Are there tools that could be helpful to you in your practice? Are there technologies that could help your practice? Do things end up hindering instead? How can we use the tools that exist in ethical ways? Not everything is going to be for everyone. And if it’s not broken, you don’t need to fix it, right?

[00:30:27] Like if you love taking your notes by hand, and you have files in your filing cabinet full of written notes, and that works for you. There’s no reason to change it. But if you are finding that there are sticking points, problems that can be solved, you know, it gets me thinking about, in Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, we end up talking about systems and doing system audits, and talking about the questions of what could be automated, what could be delegated?

[00:30:49] How do you take certain tasks off your plate so you’re able to focus on the areas where you really have an impact? And obviously tech helps hugely with this. It helps us automate. It helps our clients book themselves online. It helps them change their own appointments. So we don’t have to email back and forth.

[00:31:03] There’s AI tools to help you write your notes. There’s all of these things, but being curious about what is helpful to you, what aligns with you, what feels good, what doesn’t? But not turning a blind eye to what’s out there, but really looking at it, with wide open eyes and discerning what could be helpful for you to practice, and what do you want to leave to the wayside.

[00:31:22] But I do also love Amity’s call to action that if you do feel called to be part of this technology and be part of these conversations, there’s lots of ways that you can do that. And you are probably sitting on a bunch of expertise that would also make a great technological tool that would help to make a great app, right, or could be integrated with some of these biofeedback tools, for instance, to really help folks in this world.

[00:31:46] So also another area there that you can have a bigger impact in the world, if that’s something that you feel called to. So lots, lots of interesting pieces to chew on from this conversation today. If you’re enjoying the podcast, you might also enjoy some of my freebies. If you head over to moneynutsandbolts.Com, we have a resources page with lots of free resources. We’ve got some mini courses, we’ve got guides for almost anything private practice, finance related that might be challenging you. We have things on mindset and taxes and paychecks, giving yourself a regular salary. So head over to money, nuts and bolts.

[00:32:22] com and check out the resources tab, to grab yourself some beautiful free resources to keep yourself moving on this money journey. You can also follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts, and you can watch this episode on YouTube. I keep saying it at the end. I should say at the beginning, but I’m saying at the end of this one, so you can remember for the next episode, all of our episodes are also on YouTube.

[00:32:44] So you can always check them out on video if you want to see our facial expressions. And if you want to see me drink a bunch of tea, which I always do during podcast recordings, and all of the hours of the day, you can do that on YouTube. Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These are our short and sweet Friday episodes where I either answer questions from you, the listeners of the money skills for therapists podcast,or I share some other little like 10 minute nugget of financial wisdom for you to take into the weekend with you.

[00:00:21] So, today is our third part of the biggest mistakes that I made in my own private practice and this is my final mistake that came to mind for me. I’ve got some other things that I’m going to talk about in our next episode, that I did right that I’m really glad I did right but this is my third mistake and it’s… it’s a doozy. And it was not setting a sustainable fee.

[00:00:44] So, I remember when I went into private practice, part of going into private practice was that I was basically fleeing my agency. So I knew that I needed to quit my agency. I knew that my mental health couldn’t really do it any longer. I was going on a trip to see my brother, which gave me a natural transition point.

[00:01:03] I’ve used these natural transition points a few times in my career. This is one of them, where I knew I was going to go see my brother. That was really exciting and special. My brother lives on the other side of the country from me. And so I decided this would be a nice natural transition point to stop working at this agency.

[00:01:19] And then when I’m there, I don’t have to worry about work. And when I come back, I can start my practice. And I can step into my practice. So it was a nice little buffer going out west was going to give me. But that meant I had to act

[00:01:31] pretty quickly by the time I made that decision. I’m fairly sure I gave three weeks notice and then, of course, people are naturally asking, what are you going to do? I knew that I probably wanted to start a private practice, but mostly I just needed to tell people that I was doing something. I couldn’t just say I’m running out of here as fast as I possibly can.

[00:01:49] It was sensible that the next thing I would do was start my private practice. And because people were going to ask, I… It almost felt like pushing me into starting that private practice right away. Because I felt like I needed to have an explanation besides just like I needed to get the heck out of here.

[00:02:03] So I remember speaking with somebody in that agency who was older than me, had a lot more business experience and wisdom, and her advice to me was: don’t set your fee too high. She was like, don’t… Set it at like 90 an hour, like no more than that. And as somebody coming into private practice, I was like, yeah, that yeah, I shouldn’t ask for too much money.

[00:02:22] That would be bad. And so I didn’t quite take her advice, but I was pretty damn close, and I set my fee at 100 an hour.

[00:02:29] So this is about 10 years ago now. I believe I started my practice in 2013. So a hundred dollars an hour. Now, when I got into practice and I started working, a hundred dollars an hour doesn’t go very far if you’re like me, and you can’t see a lot of clients.

[00:02:46] I talked about this in the previous episode about the mistake that I made around scheduling, trying to see too many people, or trying to see people at the wrong time of day. I don’t have a huge capacity as a therapist. I know there are folks listening, and there’s folks that I’ve known, who can see 20-25 clients a week.

[00:03:03] That always blows my mind because my embodied response is the deep belief that I would drop into a coma if I did that. I just cannot understand, I cannot imagine, it is not at all within my capacity to see 25 clients a week. My maximum was 16, usually I did 16. Even better would be 12. So, when I set that 100 fee, as I started to build my practice, and I started to hit that natural limit of like, oh, I can’t really see more than 16 sessions a week, or I start to get exhausted, I had entered into a math equation that did not work.

[00:03:43] So I’m going to play with this math equation right now. if you’re watching on YouTube, you get the pleasure of watching me look at my phone calculator, which is sometimes my top used app, which is really geeky, and I’m kind of proud of that. But 100 an hour… so I’m going to put 100 an hour into my calculator right now.

[00:03:58] I’m going to put in 16 hours a week, which is me working full tilt. Probably 16 sessions for me would have also included some hour and a half session, so it’s probably something more like 18 hours of actual session work. But I’m going to make it a little bit less because, of course, my folks get sick. I get sick. People miss sessions.

[00:04:15] I’m going to multiply that by… I’m going to multiply it by 47. So that’s like four weeks actually off and then I’m going to give an extra week there for illness and people missing sessions. I’m just making the numbers a little more conservative. Actually I’m going to make it 46 because let’s be real. People don’t always show up, and there’s two weeks of normal holidays in any given year.

[00:04:37] And then if you’re actually going to take time off as well, or get sick, which is, you know, something that I like to do sometimes. Okay, so I’m going to do a hundred dollars an hour times 16 sessions a week times 46. These numbers are still probably optimistic. That makes my revenue for my practice for the year 73, 600, but that money couldn’t have all gone home to me.

[00:04:57] I was running a business. I had rent. I think my rent was about 850 a month at that time. So I’m going to multiply it by the normal Profit First amount of 0. 7 percent actually going to me. That’s assuming 30 percent goes to operating expenses. So now I’m like taking up the portion of the money that actually would have gone to running the business.

[00:05:15] And that puts my potential salary, if everything goes exactly to plan, at 51, 520. 51, 520, was a lot of money, in the 1980s. But now, and I’m increasingly seeing this working with therapists all over North America, that is no longer enough money to really have your needs met, in this modern age of inflation.

[00:05:43] So basically I had set up a practice that if everything went perfectly, and I took some time off and I was sick a little bit, but my clients basically showed up 95 percent of the time, I could only make about 50, 000 a year. That’s not enough. It’s not enough to be able to save up for a down payment.

[00:06:02] It’s not enough to be able to save for retirement. It’s certainly not enough if you have kids. And I have heard it said now that a middle class family, a true middle class income, now would be about 300, 000 a year. So each parent, if it’s a two income household, contributing about 150, 000 pre-tax each, puts you into a comfortable middle class. Life has gotten a lot more expensive.

[00:06:27] So in setting my fee at 100 an hour, because I didn’t want to charge too much and ruffle feathers, I set up a practice that could never actually really take care of me. And I felt that for several years, and for folks who have watched the masterclass, or worked with me in Money Skills for Therapists, you will have, you know, heard me talk about this, kind of reaching that limit and realizing this, this practice isn’t actually going to be able to take care of me.

[00:06:51] And so for me, eventually, doing some fee races was necessary to get me to the point that I could actually be okay. Right? Because being okay financially isn’t just about covering your needs today. It’s also about being able to actually save some money for the future. And with saving money for the future, with investing, the money that you save today is always more valuable than the money that you’re going to save two years from now.

[00:07:13] That is the magic of compound interest. And if you want to learn more about compound interest, you can check out my episode from last season with David Frank, where he helped to explain the difference between simple interest on investments and compound interest. Compound interest is powerful, and when we can put money away for retirement in our 20s and 30s and 40s, that money grows much more and goes much further than the money we’re going to put away in our 50s and 60s and 70s, right?

[00:07:38] So having a sustainable practice isn’t just about covering your bills now. It’s being able to put money into investments. It’s about being able to invest in a home. Real estate is another form of investment. And there’s, you know, debate about what’s better, but ultimately it’s generally a good thing to spread your money around.

[00:07:56] And for me setting that fee at a hundred dollars an hour was never going to get me there. And it was only when I started raising my fee –and this is about my personal expenses –once I started raising my fee to 150 and eventually 175, which is where I ended off my fee several years ago now, that I was actually making enough money that I could be well, show up for my clients and be the good therapist that I wanted to be and have my current needs covered,

[00:08:20] and the future. Setting up a practice at a hundred dollars an hour for me could never have done that, and didn’t do that. And I gradually made that change to get me to where I wanted to be, but I did it too slowly. I raised my fee. My first fee raise was 10, up to 110. You know, I thought I was going to barf.

[00:08:37] I thought everybody was going to fire me. Nobody did. But at the end of the day, that didn’t actually make the financial impact it needed to. It’s for me when I got into that 150, 175 range that my financial needs could actually be taken care of with the capacity that I had. So if you’re listening right now, and you’re wondering about your own fee,

[00:08:54] you can play with the numbers in a really light way, in the way that I just did. Just think about, okay, if most of your clients show up in a week, let’s not say all of them show up, though, how many hours a week is that that you can work? What is your hourly fee, or what is your hourly reimbursement from insurance

[00:09:08] if you’re an insurance panels? Multiply that by the amount of weeks in a year that you actually want to work, take away the money that it takes to run the business, and you’re going to see a number that is basically your potential salary. Is that salary enough to cover your needs for the place that you live?

[00:09:24] the specific situation of your family, your specific medical needs, saving for the future, kids’ education, retirement… Getting sober about that number is not fun, but if we’re not sober about it, then we are diluting ourselves, unfortunately. And when we can start to see what our fee actually means for our salary, for our cost of living, then we can start to make informed decisions about how to make the business actually take care of us, which I’m very passionate about.

[00:09:53] So, that is my big mistake that I made out the gate. and I wish that I had raised my fee sooner. It would have given me the compensation that I actually needed to take care of myself, doing that hard work that I was doing. If you have a question that you would like me to answer on one of these upcoming episodes of Feelings and Finances, all you need to do is click on the link in the show notes, or head over to our podcast page, you’ll see a little link, submit a question for Linzy. Just click on the record button, introduce yourself, give a little context, and record your question.

[00:10:23] And I should say, those questions are edited. So, if you are nervous about getting it right the first time, don’t worry about it. You can start recording, and you can pause, you can start over, you can re-record if you want to. But you can also just keep asking your question until it comes out right.

[00:10:39] Trust me, I did not record this podcast episode in one take. There are many edits that have happened to make me sound articulate. And we can do the same for you. Ashley, our editor, makes me sound articulate and like I don’t have to start over, which I do regularly. And she will do the same for you.

[00:10:56] So do not worry about getting it right on the first take, but I would love to hear your question, and I would love to answer it on an upcoming episode of Feelings and Finances. Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:00] Tracey: I’m really kind of digging into my numbers, figuring out what makes sense to be paying my employees, and I want to look at where I can increase revenue 10%, cut expenses 10%, 5%, and kind of get to my sweet spot.

[00:00:29] 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, Lindsay Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the podcast.Today’s podcast episode is a coaching episode with listener Tracey Steger. Tracey is an acupuncturist. She owns a group practice with two associate acupuncturists. She also has some administrative staff. And today Tracey and I dig into a question that many, many, many of us have asked many times, which is, where is all my money going?

[00:01:12] So, even though Tracey’s business has grown, and they are seeing 65 to 70 clients a week between her whole team, there is not any money to show for it. So today Tracey and I dig into her numbers a little bit, but really at a hundred mile view. We really zoom out on her numbers, look really big picture to understand generally what’s happening with these numbers, identifying places to be curious, places to tweak.

[00:01:36] And something that Tracey and I dig into as well is when we have things not working in our businesses,it’s really easy to fall into these parts of us that are kind of these burn it down parts, right? Like really thinking about our escape fantasy, just burning it to the ground.

[00:01:51] This isn’t working. I should just go back to solo practice. I should drop out of this profession altogether. And something that Tracey and I explore is the fact that her numbers are actually closer to working than she thinks they are. And that’s the case for so many of us is when our numbers aren’t working,

[00:02:06] rarely is it actually the dumpster fire that we think it is. Usually there’s places to make tweaks. Right? Like little changes that will get you to the numbers that you want to see, right? The machine is generally set up well. It’s starting to tweak the way that that machine is working to give you different results.

[00:02:23] So we play with some of that, that curiosity and exploring where she can start to explore how tweaks can be made. A really important skill for all of us as we’re trying to assess what’s happening in our business. Here is my coaching episode with Tracey Steger.

[00:02:38] So Tracey, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:49] Tracey: Thank you for having me.

[00:02:50] Linzy: Yeah. I’m so glad that you are here. So Tracey, let’s set a little bit of context for your practice and where you’re at, and then we can dig into what’s going to be most helpful for you today. So tell me a bit about your practice.

[00:03:04] Tracey: Yeah. So I own an acupuncture clinic in Maple Valley, which is just like an hour outside of Seattle. I’ve been in practice for 10 years now, and I currently have two acupuncture employees, one office manager, and then another part time front desk. And we see about like 75 to 80 patients a week.

[00:03:28] Linzy: Wow. Okay.

[00:03:29] Okay. Yep.

[00:03:30] Tracey: Quite a few.

[00:03:31] And I feel like as we’ve grown and we’re seeing more and more patients, that I feel like I have more and more expenses. And I’m at the point where I’m like, do I just go back to just me? Because that felt a lot easier in a lot of ways.

[00:03:47] Linzy: Okay. Okay. Yeah. So tell me about what would be helpful for us to zoom in on today. What is not working?

[00:03:52] Tracey: Definitely, like, I feel like we’re seeing more clients. We should be making more money. But then I feel like it’s getting lost

[00:04:03] Tracey: somewhere. There are some leaks somewhere.

[00:04:05] Linzy: Money is disappearing. Because we have this idea, naturally, that as your business grows, more money coming in the door means obviously there’d be more left. There should be more for the business, more for you. But I’m hearing that’s not, not what is happening.

[00:04:19] Tracey: Yes.

[00:04:20] Linzy: And you’re even considering like, should you just go back to just yourself?

[00:04:23] Tracey: I think about it. If I didn’t love my team so much, I would very much consider it because I, I just feel like it was easier and it was like, I see this many people a week. I make this much money and now that’s not the case.

[00:04:38] Linzy: Yeah, yeah, I think we all have our escape fantasies from the business model that we’ve built. Sometimes our escape fantasies are accurate, like it might actually be true that it would be more efficient for you to work alone. Sometimes they’re just like the things we tell ourselves would be better that maybe wouldn’t actually be better.

[00:04:54] I’ve had an escape fantasy before about working at the Costco bakery. I don’t think it would actually be better than what I do but I think it’s a nice place to work. they’ve got great benefits. So yeah, so it’s about, yeah, I’m hearing like your brain is turning to this like maybe I should just go back to how it was before. Yeah, okay. Okay, so 75 to 80 patients a week. So I’m curious, Tracey, right now, how, if at all, are you tracking your numbers? Like where do you know what money’s coming in, what money’s going out?

[00:05:24] Tracey: I kind of track through Jane, and then also in QuickBooks.

[00:05:27] Linzy: Okay, okay, so you’ve got your revenue in Jane then, your income, Jane being practice management software, and then you’ve got expenses in QuickBooks. So we do have those pools of information. How up to date is that information for you? Jane’s going to be up to date because you’re using it with patients.

[00:05:43] What about your QuickBooks?

[00:05:45] Tracey: It’s up to date.

[00:05:46] Linzy: So we have numbers. Do you want to look at numbers together? That would make me so happy. Okay. So you do have the ability to share your screen. you’ll see at the bottom, so you can take a minute to cue up your QuickBooks and cue up your Jane, and then we’ll poke around together.

[00:06:01] Tracey: Awesome. And do you want, like, the last month or year to date?

[00:06:09] Linzy: Let’s look at the first five months of this year. cause you probably don’t have like the month to date is not going to be a complete set of numbers yet. Do you think your main numbers are complete?

[00:06:21] Tracey: I think they are. Yeah, because my bookkeeper… We have closed the books through May.

[00:06:27] Linzy: So let’s look at January through May so we have a nice, like, five month snapshot.

[00:06:31] Tracey: Perfect. January to May.

[00:06:34] Linzy: And you know what? Actually, let’s do December through May, because then we catch the holidays. Let’s look at the low times, too.

[00:06:41] Right?

[00:06:42] Tracey: Let’s do it.

[00:06:43] Linzy: So that gives us a nice six month period to look at.

[00:06:46] Tracey: Cool.

[00:06:47] Linzy: Okay, beautiful. So we’re in your QuickBooks now, which is where your expenses are captured, and we’ve made a six month picture, right?

[00:06:55] We’re looking from December to May, so we’re catching the holidays, right? Like, sometimes we like to exclude the downtimes when we’re thinking about numbers, because they’re not as fun.

[00:07:02] Tracey: I know. 

[00:07:03] Linzy: But they are important. They are part of the picture all the way till May. So we’ve got a good six month period, which is, as we’re starting to get to know your numbers, that is a good amount of time to start to look at, to have a zoomed out perspective of like between higher months and lower months, what starts to look normal and average, right? So I see in that time there was 164, 000 of money coming in that quickbooks knows about which is probably going to be money coming in minus like your processing fees for jane like credit card fees

[00:07:32] Tracey: Yeah. There’s all these expenses.

[00:07:35] Linzy: Then there’s all yeah, go and go. Okay, so let’s take a look. We’re gonna do, a bit of an analysis here just to see, yeah, what’s going where from a really big picture perspective, right? Like, these are numbers that obviously are much larger than what you have to look at on a monthly basis, but they let us see Again, between those highs and lows, how do things work out?

[00:07:53] So, that very top number, if you can go to the top again, Tracey, I’m going to grab the number coming in the door. So in that period of time, you had 164,341 in revenue. So that’s money coming in the door. It’s probably after credit card processing fees, but that’s fine. That’s what you have to work with.

[00:08:09] So, Then we’re going to go down. Does that seem low or high? Are you pausing on that?

[00:08:15] Tracey: Oh I was… I think that’s without.

[00:08:18] Linzy: Okay. It’s before.

[00:08:19] Tracey: The way I do it, I add it back in as income and then it out.

[00:08:22] Linzy: Great. Okay. So you’ve got that in there. Okay, great. yeah. So when we go down here, then let’s look at your expenses. So your expenses, we have like supplies, which for acupuncture is something additional. That’s an additional thing that you have to pay for as somebody who uses supplies in your work.

[00:08:39] So we’ve got supplies, advertising. I see that there’s some tax paid there. Like that’s a business, business tax…

[00:08:46] Tracey: you know? Okay. Yeah. We’ve got insurances. Okay. Not a lot though. 

[00:08:55] Linzy: This is just like your overall practice insurance. Some interest paid, probably on like a credit card.

[00:08:58] Tracey: Yes, that’s another…

[00:08:59] Linzy: Okay, yep, yep, that’s in the mix. Okay, so I’m going to pull those expenses out separately from payroll because then we have payroll down below, right? So if you scroll down to the bottom of this

[00:09:09] section, there we go, total expenses. So I’m just going to take those total expenses, and looking at that number, I can see why money’s not feeling great because this is a bigger number

[00:09:19] than the number at the top. So we’re going to look into that in a second. So it’s 172, 325. I’m just going to subtract what I see there as your staff expenses, right? because you’ve got those in a separate little section. So I see here that your operating expenses, like the money to run the business, is 50,693 for that six month period.

[00:09:42] Your payroll expenses are 121, 623. Okay, let’s just scroll down and just see if there’s anything else on here.yep, so it’s showing a net loss in that time of 8, 000. Does that ring true? Is that your lived experience?

[00:10:01] Tracey: It is, and this, like, December, January, February, I actually had, let go of an employee and hired somebody else in November and it took us like four months to get her credentialed with all of our insurance panels, so things are looking brighter currently, but, this is still…

[00:10:23] Linzy: This captures that period of time where there was a new practitioner that you were building her caseload. Okay. Okay.

[00:10:29] yeah, Okay. So when we look at this, just to give a general sense of numbers, again, this is a nice zoomed out perspective. It’s good to hear that you know your numbers are trending in a better direction now.

[00:10:39] But let’s just take a look at… to answer this question. Where’s the money going? Why does it feel like you have no money? So when I take your operating expenses and I divide it by the money coming in the door, your revenue, your operating expenses are about 30, I’m going to say 31%, it’s 30. 8%. So 31 percent for OPEX is pretty good.

[00:11:00] Like that’s pretty typical, for operating expenses. Do you have a space that you rent? I would assume so, yes. Virtual acupuncture, not a thing. Yeah.

[00:11:08] Tracey: Not a thing.

[00:11:09] Linzy: Okay, yes, okay, So including all of that, when I look at your staff expenses, I see 121, 623. I’m going to divide that by the number coming in the top, and I see that that’s 74 percent.

[00:11:24] Tracey: Mm hmm. And that includes myself on payroll as well.

[00:11:29] Linzy: Yeah, so that’s you, too.

[00:11:30] So, that’s that 8, 000 loss is that in period time. It’s like you spend 105 percent of what came in the door in this particular period. That happens sometimes just to put that in context, like there’s going to be periods in the business where more is going out the door for various reasons rather than coming in.

[00:11:46] But in the six month period, that’s how those numbers shook out. So let’s zoom in on staff. and your staff expenses. Tell me more about how you’ve structured your, payroll.

[00:11:58] Yeah. So my employees… Well, the office manager and the front desk are paid hourly.

[00:12:06] The acupuncturists are paid a base hourly rate plus a bonus per patient.

[00:12:13] Linzy: Okay. So tell me about their base rate and the bonus per patient.

[00:12:17] Tracey: So, for the acupuncturist, it’s 20 base rate. I just felt like, you know, if there’s cancellations I felt weird about people being in my office without being paid if they’re, even if there wasn’t patients. So that’s our base. And then for, first acupuncture visit, it’s 40 as a bonus.

[00:12:38] And then for return visits, it’s 25.

[00:12:41] Linzy: Okay.

[00:12:42] Tracey: Bonus.

[00:12:43] Linzy: Okay. So the 20 base rate, is that an hourly rate? Is that what you mean?

[00:12:47] Tracey: Yes.

[00:12:48] Linzy: So like if I’m in the office for five hours, I’m going to get a hundred dollars for being there.

[00:12:53] Tracey: If nobody shows up.

[00:12:53] Linzy: Even if nobody shows up. Okay. Okay. So, I’m curious, like, tell me what led you to set up that particular model. I’m hearing you felt bad.

[00:13:03] Tracey: Yeah, I set it up that way because I did, and I haven’t really done this, but if there was downtime to then have other tasks that they could do, if that makes sense. And then also to have time, so like they could, spend 30 minutes finishing up their charts at the end of the day and still have that as part of the payment.

[00:13:24] Linzy:Okay.

[00:13:24] Tracey: The idea then is you’ve built a base rate so that they could be doing other things. It’s like you don’t want them to be like, wasting their time, hanging out at the office, I’m hearing. but that this hasn’t necessarily always happened that that other work has been found.

[00:13:38] Yeah, I mean, they’ve been consistently busy enough

[00:13:44] to where that, hasn’t been an issue, yeah, and I think the, one of the bigger, like, overarching issues is, like, me wanting to pay a living wage, and we’re 75 percent

[00:13:56] insurance. And just declining reimbursement rates.

[00:14:00] Linzy: Because this is what I’m wondering is, how do these numbers shake out? Like what, do you get reimbursed by an insurance company for an acupuncture session?

[00:14:08] Tracey: I mean, on average, for a return visit, so I averaged, like, all of the visits for new and return all together, it’s 100 per visit.

[00:14:17] Linzy: Okay.

[00:14:20] Tracey: If they see people back to back, they can see three people in one hour.

[00:14:26] Linzy: So it’s a hundred dollars a visit and they could have up to three visits in an hour.

[00:14:32] Tracey: Essentially there is, yeah. So it ends up being like, I think like two and a half in one hour. Cause we see people on the 20.

[00:14:40] Linzy: Yes. Okay. Okay. Yes. So yeah, two and a half in an hour. So like, it sounds to me like there’s actually pretty high earning potential for folks if they’re full. Yeah. So I’m curious then, with this, like, have you run the numbers to see for one of your average employees, how much they end up bringing in in say a month and then how much gets paid, first of all, directly to them.

[00:15:02] Tracey: I haven’t done that.

[00:15:05] Linzy: Because with this, what I’m hearing, Tracey, and this is something that I so appreciate and admire and also very much relate to, is like, you don’t want to be an exploitative employer. Right? And I don’t want you to be that either. Right? So you’ve set it up to try to

[00:15:17] make sure that you are thinking about the value of your folks’ time and making sure that they are getting paid a living wage, not just like a scraping by wage.

[00:15:25] And that is totally doable as long as the money coming in the door can cover that, right? And so like, generally speaking, when we’re looking at group practices, for the wage, like for the payroll for your employee, we usually don’t want to see an employee’s payroll being more than like 55-60 percent of what they are bringing in.

[00:15:50] Right. So that’s a guideline. That’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s like a starting point. Like if you run the numbers and it’s 75%, then we know like, okay, this is where the problem is because the money that they bring in the door, it has to pay them, but it also has to pay for expenses in the business.

[00:16:05] And then there also has to be something left over to pay you and your administrative staff is part of that business. Right. So you also have an administrative team. So it’s kind of like with that one person’s wages,, our general focus as an employer is making sure that they get paid, but also your admin team needs to get paid.

[00:16:23] The bills need to get paid. And you need to get paid for your leadership work, right? Like for that CEO, hopefully CFO, chief financial officer work that you’re doing that you’re not getting paid to see a patient because you are working on running the clinic instead, right? So there’s like a lot of work that those dollars have to do. And something that i’d be curious about is right now what work are those dollars doing, right?

[00:16:48] So taking time to look at your employees. This is a complicated equation. I’m going to tell you that. We have a tool in Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, which is our group practice course, which is extremely robust and complex that helps you think through, like, okay, this is how much the overhead is for everybody.

[00:17:05] We’re going to divide it between all the employees. So, each employee, if they are paying in equally, has to cover like 600 bucks to run the office before anything else even happens, right? And then they have to pay 500 towards the admin team wages, right? And then the money that’s left gets divided between them and some profit going back to the business, which is the oxygen of the business, right?

[00:17:27] And so when we set up our numbers, it’s not easy to think it through this way, and it’s not fun, but this is the work that these dollars have to do, right? So I’m thinking, for you, that would be a next step. Another wondering that I have is your admin team overhead. Like, how much is your admin team costing per month?

[00:17:45] How much are those folks getting paid?

[00:17:48] Tracey: My office manager is getting paid 27 an hour and then the other, like, front desk super part time is 23 an hour.

[00:18:00] Linzy: And so how many hours a week are those folks working, or how much are you paying them a month?

[00:18:04] Tracey: That’s a good question. Maybe like 30 hours a week.

[00:18:08] Linzy: Okay. For your, your full time admin or between both? Okay. 30.

[00:18:13] Tracey: Kind of between both. My super part time just restarted and she’s taking some hours from the other admin.

[00:18:20] Linzy: So she’s taking some work off their plate. Okay. 

[00:18:25] Tracey: Maybe 30, 35 hours a week total.

[00:18:29] Linzy: So would we say 30 is for your main admin and then five for your front desk, something like that.

[00:18:35] Tracey: We could say that for now. Yeah.

[00:18:37] Linzy: Cause this is another piece for us to look at, right, is, these support teams are so important, and also, they add up, right? And so it’s just making sure that we’ve built the numbers away, that there’s enough money for them to get paid.

[00:18:49] So, 30 hours a week at 27 hours, if I multiply that by 4 weeks, and I’m doing 4 instead of 4. 33 to make it more conservative, assuming that they’re sick sometimes, or they take a day off. So your admin then would be, her base wage is 3240 a month before any taxes. Is she a contractor or an

[00:19:09] Tracey: employee?

[00:19:09] Mm hmm.

[00:19:11] Linzy: Okay, yeah, so before those extra, taxes that you pay, and any other benefits you have for her, and then your front desk at 23 hours a week, times 5 times 4, is 460 a month. So those two positions together are, 3240, 3700, and between taxes and benefits, I would probably add another, 10 percent to that, So if we do that just for So you’re probably looking at 4, 070 a month for your admin team.

[00:19:42] Tracey: Okay.

[00:19:43] Linzy: Does that number make sense?

[00:19:45] Tracey: Yeah, that feels right.

[00:19:47] Linzy: Yeah. And if we just look at that number, like I’m just going to take that number. You can really dig into your real numbers and really see. I’m kind of trying to get like that zoomed out.

[00:19:55] We’re getting the hundred mile view, right? So if I look at over six months, you’d be paying your admin team 24,420. If I divide that by your revenue for a six month period. Then your admin team is about 15 percent of your expenses.

[00:20:13] Tracey: Okay.

[00:20:14] Linzy: Which I would say is a bit high.

[00:20:17] Not that you can’t stay there, but it does make me wonder about what would happen to your numbers if you were able to add another practitioner.

[00:20:25] Tracey: Yes.

[00:20:26] Linzy: The beauty of an admin team is they allow practitioners to be supported and just focus on their work and like they run the show. And when you add another practitioner, chances are that’s not going to mean you have to add many admin hours if any at all, right? Just adding one more person, but you’re adding one more person into the team to generate that revenue to pay for everybody, right?

[00:20:47] It’s kind of like your group practice together. It’s like you’re all pulling money into a pot that has to take care of everybody. It’s kind of like you have to tip out the kitchen, right? Like if you work at a restaurant. That’s kind of like your admin team. They’re doing that behind the scenes work, but enough money has to be getting generated that they are also getting paid.

[00:21:02] Paid, right? And there is sustainability there. So

[00:21:05] Tracey: Yeah. That makes sense.

[00:21:06] Linzy: As I’m thinking about this, Tracey, like there’s numbers here for you to run and play with. Something that I’m curious about is as you’re thinking through this, like, what are you noticing about thinking about like diving into these numbers in a more focused way and seeing what’s happening?

[00:21:21] Tracey: Yeah, I am kind of excited to see, I think, I mean, adding another practitioner would be great. It’s more of like a timing of, you know, we only have so many rooms, so really only one person can be there at a time, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have, you know, hours into the evening if we wanted to expand there a little bit. And also, maybe this is different for a therapist, but I feel like 15 percent sounds pretty good. Like, just knowing everything that my office manager does, you know? Like, laundry, insurance billing, you Yeah, for sure. Yes.

[00:22:05] Everything. So that actually, like, to me, I’m like, okay, that makes sense.

[00:22:09] Linzy:Yeah, and with these numbers because like, as we look at this, there’s ranges on what a healthy practice’s numbers look like, right? But generally speaking, your staff is more around 65%, right? You’re at 74 percent right now. Your OpEx could stay about the same, frankly. But it’s like, We look at what tweaks to get you to that place where it’s just like that little bit more breathing room because right now I’m hearing you don’t have breathing room.

[00:22:36] Linzy: There’s nothing left over. In fact, it’s been the opposite where you’re actually losing. So all this money is coming in the door, but it’s actually going out faster than it’s coming in. So I can completely understand why you have this thought of going back to solo practice where it’s simple.

[00:22:51] Because with group practice, what I have found, Tracey, is there’s these sweet spots. There are certain sweet spots where a certain combination of numbers works and it’s not always necessarily more is better, right? Because as you say, if you brought on three more practitioners, you would run out of space.

[00:23:05] Right. Right. You’d have to move into a bigger office. Right now we’re looking at more expenses, and you would probably have to bring on more admin team. So it’s like, as you say, it’s like the revenue goes up, but your expenses would also go up, right? So it’s looking at where you are right now, what are some of the tweaks that you can make to bring up that revenue a little bit or bring down some of your team expenses a little bit, you know, without doing anything kind of drastic?

[00:23:30] Are there some little tweaks you can do there?

[00:23:33] Tracey: I mean, definitely considering, I mean, not with the contracts that are in place now, but if I was to hire another person…

[00:23:40] Linzy: Mm hmm. Yes.

[00:23:41] Tracey: like instead of just making up numbers that I decide I’m going to pay them to actually look at the numbers and maybe go just based on a percentage of what they bring in.

[00:23:52] Linzy: Mm hmm. Yes.

[00:23:54] Tracey: Versus the hourly plus the bonus.

[00:23:56] Linzy: Because sometimes, too, what I notice is like when we have these more complex systems, it’s like we’re really trying hard to be fair. Right? Like you’ve really thought about how to be fair. Like you want to make sure they’re not wasting their time. You want to make sure they’re rewarded for a new client.

[00:24:10] You want to make sure that they’re also paid for everybody they see. So you’ve got this blend of like a base rate, so there’s a bottom that’s safe, but also they’re getting rewarded for working more, which speaks to, you know, you really being thoughtful and trying to really set up a system that takes care of your team.

[00:24:27] But sometimes at the end of the day, a simpler system actually just works better. Right? In terms of even for them.

[00:24:33] Tracey: Yeah.

[00:24:34] Linzy: Because I’m curious for you, what kind of bandwidth is involved in running payroll and keeping track of who’s owed what?

[00:24:42] Tracey: Yeah. I mean, I have a system down now with a spreadsheet and I just go through the Jane schedule and kind of count up the different types of appointments.

[00:24:51] Linzy: Okay.

[00:24:52] Tracey: And it’s not

[00:24:53] too bad.

[00:24:54] Linzy: You’ve got a system. Music to my ears. Yes, yes. So as we’re thinking about this, like what I would be curious as you’re looking at your practitioners is, is there a way for revenue to go up like 10 percent in the practice, right? That would be one place where if you have wiggle that creates that profit, right?

[00:25:12] Is there a place for expenses to come down a little bit? A little bit of wiggle. Is there a spot to add another practitioner? Now adding practitioners also adds more of what we call like, base expenses, right? So when you add somebody, for instance, you’re using Jane, which I love very much. So you are going to have to add another user on Jane, right?

[00:25:32] And like, you’re gonna have to pay for another person on your payroll. So there are expenses that show up as soon as we hire somebody, regardless of how much money we make. And this is why onboarding. can be costly, right? So it’s thinking about this, too. It’s not always necessarily adding a new person that actually tends to be the more expensive option when you already have a team.

[00:25:49] But it’s like, yeah, is there a little bit of wiggle room there, where you can encourage folks to take one more client or you make a new partnership and you maybe change the schedule around a little bit. So there’s room for a couple more clients a week, just starting to be curious as to where there’s a little bit of room because your, your numbers, they are not working now.

[00:26:07] But also they’re not like dumpster fire numbers. You know what I mean? Like they’re close, they’re close to working. So it’s starting to be curious about what are the little things you can do to tip them over to that point where you are now profitable. and right now it’s like, you’re off by, basically you’re off by 15%.

[00:26:24] Right. Cause you like, you had like a minus 5 percent over that period of time. We want to see a plus 10%. So you just need to be 15 percent more efficient.

[00:26:33] Tracey: I think kind of going after the patients that owe us

[00:26:38] Linzy: money

[00:26:38] Mm hmm.

[00:26:39] Tracey: more aggressively. I struggle with that a lot. And then I think maybe looking into I mean, I have a bookkeeper and I’m honestly really not totally sure what she does that I pay 355 a month for.

[00:26:56] Linzy: Great question. Yep. Yeah. Starting to look critically at those things. And I will say for that piece around client payments, like having to chase folks, there’s also maybe some curiosity that you could have there around your systems. Can you keep cards on file?

[00:27:10] Do folks get charged when they arrive at their appointment, Or charged automatically at the end? Like how do you streamline? or is it copays that you’re owed?

[00:27:18] Tracey: Mostly like when we haven’t heard from insurance and they end up owing like fully deductible, and then they are not clients anymore and…

[00:27:27] Linzy: yes, yes. So having a policy for that, like anticipating that, right? Because that’s one of those things where it happens enough times you’re like, Oh, this isn’t a fluke. This is going to happen. So having a policy around having card on file, you know, like figuring out what

[00:27:39] makes sense. Yes. Beautiful. And then you just inform folks, Hey, this is what you were owed. Thank you so much for your service. We are charging a card on file as per our policy. You know, we look forward to seeing you again, like making that a neutral part of your business because those accounts receivable, that money that you’re owed also is going to be part of this picture.

[00:27:55] Right. At this point, it sounds like you can’t really afford to have money out there that’s supposed to be in the business.

[00:28:01] Tracey: Right. Yeah. And I feel like it could be that. I mean, at least 5%.

[00:28:06] Linzy: Yeah. Which puts you to the break even, right? And then there’s just like that 10 percent to find to put you into profitability and have those buffers, extra money starting to build up rather than money disappearing.

[00:28:17] Tracey: Mm hmm. Yes.

[00:28:20] Linzy: So Tracey, this has been quite a zoomed out conversation because there’s like a lot here. What are you taking away from our conversation today? What do you see as your next steps?

[00:28:29] Tracey: Really kind of digging into my numbers, figuring out what makes sense to be paying my employees.And I want to look at where I can increase revenue 10%, cut expenses 10%, 5%, and kind of get to my sweet spot.

[00:28:49] Linzy: Beautiful. Yeah. I think you are much closer than you think you are. And we always have those parts of us that are like, burn it down, run away. But at this point, I don’t think that point, like that part of you has enough evidence to actually do that. I think…

[00:29:03] Tracey: I know, yeah. And I, like, another part of the puzzle is like, I actually, I only am in the office and see clients like one and a quarter days a week so I can be home with my

[00:29:16] kids, so like, that’s really important.

[00:29:20] Linzy: Yes. And that’s all part of the picture, right? And that’s also something that will change as your kids get older. They won’t want to hang out so much. They won’t need you quite as much. But yeah, as you’re thinking about this chapter of your life too, it’s like, yeah, how do you just set up this business so that it’s paying you enough?

[00:29:33] Cause you’re also getting paid in time freedom, right? In time with your kids that you can’t get back, which is also extremely valuable.

[00:29:39] Well, thank you so much, Tracey, for coming on the podcast today.

[00:29:42] Tracey: Thank you.

[00:29:43] My conversation with Tracey reminded me both of the complexity and simplicity of group practice finances. On one hand, all of the different tiny decisions that we make add up to give us this specific result. And there’s so many places that we can make tweaks, right? We can make tweaks in terms of our policies on how many clients our employees need to be seeing to be considered part time or full time, right?

[00:30:16] Linzy: Like, what does a caseload look like? What does full mean? We can make tweaks in terms of how they’re getting paid. As Tracey talked about, she could look at tweaking instead of an hourly base pay with an extra wage on top for every client, she could look at doing a split, right?

[00:30:28] There is all of these places to make changes where a small change can sometimes make a big difference, and this is why we have Money Skills to Group Practice Owners, and a team tool that we have in that that lets you really get into those granular details because sometimes it’s the smallest tweak that suddenly makes your numbers work.

[00:30:45] So on one hand there’s like that complexity and it can feel very opaque, trying to figure out how to fix something in a business that has that many moving parts. On the other hand, there is this simplicity, right? It’s like we look at her numbers from a big picture perspective. We see, yeah, you know, a hundred and a five percent of what it was earned was spent.

[00:31:01] So that’s why there’s this 8, 000 loss. This is why it feels like there’s no money because there’s no money, but we know generally speaking that we want to see, you know, our wages around 65%. So how can you look at bringing that down? Or how do you look at bringing up your revenue enough, so that you hit more of that 65 percent number?

[00:31:17] There’s also these zoomed out views that we can take that let us know where to start, right? So there’s so many places to intervene and I’m excited for Tracey as she digs into her own numbers and spends time with them and starts to see where can some tweaks be made to make up that 15 percent difference and get her to that profitable place where the business will have oxygen and actual money left over.

[00:31:37] If you’re also a group practice owner, and you are feeling overworked and underpaid in your group practice, I do want to mention my free opt in for group practice owners. It’s called, fittingly, How to Stop Feeling Overworked and Underpaid in Your Group Practice. It’s a free guide that empowers group practice owners to feel calm and in control of their finances.

[00:31:56] So if you are a group practice owner who also feels like you’re working harder than ever in your group practice and worrying about money and feeling that weight of paying not only yourself but an entire team, if you’re ready to take action and become the empowered financial leader of your business, then you should check out this free guide.

[00:32:11] I will put the link for it in the show notes. It’s how to stop feeling overworked and underpaid in your group practice. You can follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, it’s super helpful if you can tell your colleagues, It could be folks in other professions.

[00:32:25] If you’re a psychotherapist, and you have a great friend who’s an acupuncturist like Tracey is, tell your other folks that you know in the health practitioner fields about the podcast so they can be part of these conversations, too. Thank you so much for listening today.

[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These are our short and sweet Friday episodes where I either answer a question from you, the listeners of the money skills for therapist podcast, or I share a little nugget, just a little short takeaway, about private practice and finances for you to take into the weekend.

[00:00:22] And today’s episode is one of the latter.Today, I’m going to talk about the second of the big mistakes that I made in my own private practice. And that mistake is one that pains me to think back on, because this is a really important thing for me and what I need is it was setting a schedule that did not actually suit my needs. So, there’s a few elements to this mistake for me.

[00:00:48] One was trying to see too many clients. That’s a big deal for me. And then the second piece is seeing clients at a time that didn’t really actually work for what I needed as a practitioner. So number one, seeing too many clients. When I was in private practice, there was this idea in my head. that a full caseload, you know, for a full time practitioner was like 18 or 20, something like that, right?

[00:01:14] So it’s like four clients a day, five days a week. I knew that if I did more than four sessions a day I tended to basically be a zombie afterwards. My partner would comment on this. If I had done a day where I, you know, tried to squish somebody in, fit in an extra appointment because I couldn’t get somebody somewhere else, and if this is, something that’s relevant to you, you might want to listen back to the previous Feelings and Finances episode about setting a regular appointment system and how I wish I’d done that way sooner.

[00:01:39] One of the costs of not having a regular appointment systemis trying to squish people in here and there, so that you can still see them in a given week. And whenever I would schedule a day that had even five sessions, I would deeply pay for it. Like, I energetically did not have it.

[00:01:57] It was not in me. I would basically be depleting myself emotionally and I would get home and be a zombie, basically. This is something that I did before I had kids.

[00:02:07] When I became a parent, I had to really take an audit of how much work was generally costing me emotionally. And at that point I actually had to realize that I couldn’t be the parent that I wanted to be and continue doing the clinical work I was doing. But, this is an even more pronounced version of that which is kind of playing with my own limits and overstepping my own limits in terms of how many clients I could see.

[00:02:30] So for me, four clients a day, I would have called it my sweet spot. My partner would tell you adamantly that it was actually three. If I saw three clients in a day, which might be like an hour and a half session and two one hour sessions, so let’s say three and a half hours of sessions or maybe even four hours of sessions.

[00:02:46] But if it was only three people, when I got home, I still had energy in the tank. I could still be playful and want to make dinner and maybe want to do something. But when I would see more than four clients a day, it was at great cost to myself. And it’s one of those lessons that I had to learn over and over and over again, like so many humans, where, you know, I hadn’t done it for a while.

[00:03:09] I hadn’t seen a five client day in a while, so I would do it again just to remember exactly why I didn’t do it, which is, it’s so emotionally exhausting for me. I would pay for it on many levels. So that was one thing. Overbooking myself. Trying to see too many clients in a day or too many clients in a week. On weeks where I would have 18 sessions, I would go into the weekend very, very depleted.

[00:03:30] Like I kind of gave away all my goodness throughout the week. and then the weekend I would just spend basically recovering. I used to have what I called nothing days. This is before I was a parent. Not an option anymore. But I would have nothing days where I would just basically zone out for half a day, like just like watch Netflix all morning.

[00:03:47] mostly I think it was probably watching Netflix if I reflect on it, but where I would basically be going into like a hypo arousal, like, you know, it was rest, but it was rest because I was depleted, to try to just get back to some level of functioning again. As a parent now, I can’t do that. So I have to be a lot more thoughtful about my energy in general.

[00:04:05] The other thing that I wish I had done sooner, a mistake that I made, was seeing clients outside of the hours where I was really actually a good therapist. So seeing clients in the evenings, trying to accommodate evening sessions, you know, catch people when they were done with work, because it worked better for them, obviously, it was more convenient for them.

[00:04:25] It felt like an easier way to get a client to say like, sure, yeah, I’ll see you at 530 when you’re done work. But for me, this is a joke that I still make… And it’s a joke, and it’s also true. I’m pretty dumb in the evening. I really run out of cognitive energy as I get into the evening, and at a certain point I started to realize that even my 4:30 sessions were not getting the same quality from me

[00:04:47] as my daytime sessions, right? So yes, I was able to see these folks. I was able to fit them into my schedule. We were able to have a clinical relationship, which was great, but I definitely was not my best. Like they were not getting the best of me. And I was tired, and I was kind of ready to go home.

[00:05:02] But I had committed to doing like really vulnerable, important work with somebody instead, right? And it’s never good for us and it’s never good for our clients if we don’t want to be there. If you’re exhausted and you are already thinking about dinner or thinking about a phone call you need to make later that night, you are not giving somebody your best service, and

[00:05:22] they would probably actually be better served by even somebody else rather than us when we are in that state. So, stretching myself beyond my schedule limits and trying to see too many clients cost me a lot of energy over the years. It made therapy into something that was burdensome emotionally, because I was giving too much of myself away.

[00:05:44] And as I started to be more honest with myself about my limits and, of course, having a full caseload allowed me to do this more easily, right? Because I did have enough demand, and I had a wait list. When I got to that point and I could actually reflect on what actually works for me, I had to accept the fact that I really

[00:06:04] was not doing well on any sessions after 4 p. m. Like 4 p. m. was actually my last spot of the day, and for my last couple years of being a therapist, that was my last appointment slot of the day, right? I did four sessions a day I had two in the morning two in the afternoon or maybe one long one in the morning three in the afternoon, always had a lunch break, and my last session finished at 5, when I still was giving quality, quality therapy to somebody.

[00:06:30] I wasn’t bending myself to try to accommodate them, and in doing so actually giving them worse service and exhausting myself. So, for folks who are listening, if you’re finding yourself in this schedule trap, I know it can be a tough one to unwind from… There’s all sorts of stories and scarcity thinking and objections that can come up internally.

[00:06:51] But at the very least, I would encourage you to be honest with yourself about, are you actually doing your best work? If you’re seeing six or seven clients a day, is client six or client seven getting the same quality of work as client two or three? What is the cost to you emotionally of the schedule that you have set in terms of quality?

[00:07:11] In terms of quantity of sessions, and also in terms of the timing of your sessions? AndI’m a big fan of incrementalism in general. So if you’re not in a space where you’re ready to make some big move around no longer working evenings or something like that, are there little changes that you can make that would start to give you your energy back?

[00:07:30] Let you have more energy for your life, and also let you see yourself doing really good work. I think that one of the things that can contribute to therapists having a hard time thinking about charging the fee that they actually need to be well is If we don’t feel great about our work, if we see ourselves feeling burnt out and depleted, it’s hard to value it.

[00:07:50] And you’re probably still making a very big positive impact in your client’s lives, but you’re certainly not thriving, right? And you’re not feeling yourself really in that, that zone of being really good at the work and enjoying the work. Because when we are depleted, when we’re overextending ourselves, we are doing the work, but we’re doing so at great cost to ourselves.

[00:08:09] So if you are in that space, I would encourage you to think about how do you start to tweak your schedule a little bit, you know, take away one or two evening sessions, see a couple less clients, give yourself a light Friday. What can you do to start to get more of a taste of what a balanced schedule would feel like for you.

[00:08:25] So you can start to give some energy back to yourself, back to your life. And in doing so your clients will actually get better care from you. So it is a win win, and it is something that I wish I had done much, much earlier in my own practice. If you have a question for me for one of our Feelings and Finances episodes, all you need to do is click on the link in the show notes, or head over to our podcast page and you just, you’ll see a little button there.

[00:08:50] It says, do you have a question for Linzy? Or something like that… You just need to click the button, share your name, share a little bit of context, and share your question. And I would be happy to answer your specific private practice finances question, whether it’s more emotional, more practical, more technical, on one of our upcoming episodes of Feelings and Finances.

[00:09:11] Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:00] Liane: It starts with recognizing that your practice revenue is your income, right? It’s not separate. And the other piece of it is a mindset shift, right? I want to start thinking about every dollar that’s coming in and recognizing that this dollar should be working for you as well as for your practice.

[00:00:30] 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 working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Lindsay Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is Liane Wood. Liane is the owner and CEO of Build Your Private Practice, which is a Canadian practice-building company.

[00:01:01] They’ve been helping health practitioners launch, grow, and scale private practices since 2016. And today, Liane and I got into the topic of magic money. It’s the magical thinking that we can have about money as practitioners in private practice. That the money is not real, that it’s easy to spend, and what this ends up looking like is, even though you’re making good money in your practice, it seems to all disappear and there’s not much left at the end of the day to go home to you.

[00:01:33] So today, Liane and I dig into what this looks like, some possible reasons for this, you know, places that this comes from, and what to do if you find yourself overspending in your private practice, maybe experiencing some of this magic money thinking, here is my conversation with Liane Wood. 

[00:01:50] That’s all for this video. If you did, please the like button and subscribe.

[00:02:05] Linzy: So Liane, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:07] Liane: Thank you for having me.

[00:02:09] Linzy: Yeah, I’m excited to have you on. You are a fellow Canadian consultant, builder, and supporter. Can you tell folks a little bit about the work that you did before, we dig into all the stuff we want to talk about today.?

[00:02:22] Liane: For sure. Yeah. I’m a registered psychotherapist, and I also coach and mentor therapists and mental health practitioners to build thriving, successful private practices. And my company is called Build Your Private Practice. And we’ve got, yeah, courses and coaching and all that type of stuff to help therapists focus on the business side of their practice and understand the business side of running a private practice.

[00:02:46] Linzy: Absolutely. And, it’s great that you are a Canadian doing this work because I know some things about Canadian business are different than American business, and, we love our American friends. But also often I’ve had folks say to me that they’re really glad that I’m Canadian because there’s some, there are cultural differences, there are tax differences like there are specific things about being Canadian.

[00:03:07] So it’s really neat that you’re able to offer that very specific Canadian context around practice building.

[00:03:11] Liane: Thank you. Yeah. That was important for me as well to provide that, background and that context that, you know, this is coming from a Canadian lens or perspective. And, again, yeah. I think there’s a lot of crossover with our American neighbors, and there are some differences.

[00:03:28] Linzy: Yeah, for sure. So what we’re going to talk about today though, Americans, don’t turn off this podcast. We’re going to talk about things that apply to everybody. You talk about this, concept of therapists treating money like, like magic money, the revenue coming into their practice. Can you tell me what more you mean about this magic money concept and why that can be so problematic for therapists?

[00:03:50] Liane: Yeah, I wasn’t quite sure what else to call it besides magic money or maybe monopoly money, but I like magic money better. And it’s just in working with therapists and talking with them about, you know, the business side of their practice. And, oftentimes, you know, that spills over into the financial side and this business idea.

[00:04:10] It’s not a conscious idea. I think it’s like kind of running under the surface of consciousness, that the money coming into our practices isn’t real money. So this money, you know, we do client sessions, and then the money comes in for those sessions, and then therapists treat it like, Oh, I can go and spend it on this, that, and the other thing for my practice.

[00:04:31] But then at the end of the day, when they need to take money out of their practice for their income, there isn’t enough there to cover living

[00:04:40] Expenses, right? And so then there is this, this scarcity mentality or this lack mentality that is coming in. Well, I can’t afford… you know, to get the good groceries or I can’t afford the vacation, or, these important pieces.

[00:04:53] And I’m like, okay, but when I look at, you know, their overall revenue and what is coming into their practice and what’s the talk my way, you’ve got a really good practice. You’ve got good revenue coming in. And so we just need to, you know, tweak a few things.

[00:05:08] Linzy: There’s a couple of things that come to mind about that because I’d like to dig into and theorize a little bit about what is this, and why is it. One thing that comes to mind for me right away is that therapists are nerds.

[00:05:18] We love what we love, right? And so that’s part of how therapy works. I, I think it says good things about us that we want to invest is like when the money comes in the door, and you see money in your bank account and you’re like, Oh, but I also want to learn about, you know, sensory-motor psychotherapy or, Oh, now I can do that cool conference in Minnesota.

[00:05:37] The part of us that gets excited and just wants to know everything, and be the best possible therapist, probably kind of gets its hands on the money before the other parts of us that are like, oh right, I have a mortgage. My child needs to go to school, which can be less fun stuff, right? Like it’s harder to hold excitement about everyday expenses, and the good groceries, although the good groceries are good.

[00:05:58] That’s one thing that I see is, and one theory that I would have is like, you know, the parts of us that, you know, get excited, but also don’t feel good enough, need that constant, constantly need to be learning to prove ourselves that we’re good enough and constantly aware of our deficits. So there’s, there’s a duality there, but that part that always wants to learn more and improve can be deceived or delusional.

[00:06:18] That’s it’s money, that it’s all about that. And forget about the other responsibilities, and obligations that belong to that money.

[00:06:28] Liane: Exactly. Yeah, you’ve got it.

[00:06:31] Linzy: So that’s one thing that I think of. What are some other things that you’ve observed that you think lead to, this magic of money thinking? 

[00:06:39] Liane: I do think it is coming from that, like what you just hit on, you know, that I need, I need this for my practice. And then I think that you know, the other area that I will see therapists kind of spending a lot of money on, but not necessarily getting the return on is marketing. And, a lot of therapists are uncomfortable with the idea of selling themselves and marketing

.[00:07:01] So, I don’t want to do marketing, but they recognize that they need marketing for their practice to grow. And because they’re uncomfortable with it. They’ll just pay somebody else to do it

[00:07:15] because it’s uncomfortable for them. They don’t like it. They don’t take the time to research, okay, well, what marketing is going to be effective.

[00:07:25] And they, may miss that. Nobody knows your practice the way you do. Nobody knows your ideal client the way you do. And so just hiring someone to do marketing may not be effective because the person you’ve hired isn’t you, doesn’t know you, and doesn’t know your ideal client.

[00:07:46] And they’re… it’s not bad. They’re probably doing their very best to market your practice for you, but they need a lot of input.

[00:07:54] from you. And that’s something that therapists, you know, like, like the whole marketing piece, they kind of run away from. And so it’s easier, easier, you know, air brackets to, to throw money at somebody and say, you market my practice.

[00:08:08] But then what happens is because there isn’t enough input from the therapist into the marketing, it’s oftentimes not nearly as effective as it could be and that’s money down the drain. 

[00:08:18] Linzy: It is and I have seen therapists pay 20, 000 for a website and marketing package. But when I look at their website, it’s not hitting on the things that their ideal client is going to be looking for. 

[00:08:32] Liane: Right. 

[00:08:33] Linzy: So, and that’s very much true, as you say, folks who are outside of our space don’t understand. Mindset our potential clients are when they come, right? Like when your potential client lands on your website, they don’t want to hear about you and your credentials. They want to see their language reflected in them. They want to know that you get them, like all of these pieces that being in the field and being able to put ourselves in the perspective in, in the shoes of our clients, we could think through like, Oh, of course, like I need to share these things, but somebody who’s in marketing.

[00:09:04] They don’t know your ideal client’s motivation and where they’re at emotionally when they’re looking for you. And, and also I would say too, how perhaps little bandwidth they have to process whether or not you’re the right person for them before they’re like, no, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just going to move on.

[00:09:18] Right? Because people, if they’re in pain, too, any kind of friction will get in the way, but folks in marketing might be used to selling to people who are interested and excited and want to buy something, not people who are in distress, you know, and like looking for somebody who

[00:09:32] gets them. It’s very different. It’s very different, but you know, there’s that thing of you don’t know what you don’t know. And so what I’m hearing you say here is, you know, the temptation to throw money at something without necessarily thinking through, is this the best use of my money, right? So you’re maybe putting a bunch of money into marketing.

[00:09:49] It’s not necessarily going to be very effective if the person doesn’t get your ideal clients and who you’re trying to reach.

[00:09:56] Liane: Exactly

[00:09:58] Linzy: Yeah, and then another piece that I think about, and that I talk about in my course, which I think hits on this, this magic money thinking is in, I believe it’s module two of my course. I’m not sure. I’ve got a lesson, which is called your business money is not your money. It feels like an unfun conversation to have to have with people.

[00:10:16] But it’s something that sticks out to people because people who have this kind of magical thinking are like, Oh no, she’s right. Right. But I think, too, when we start to earn, it can feel like, Oh, my gosh, I’m rich.

[00:10:30] Linzy: you know, in your household, you’ve never had 10, 000 showing up a month before, or 8, 000.

[00:10:36] And so, when you start to think about that as your money, we can very quickly get into like, “I’m rich. I don’t even need to think about if I can afford this! Of course, I can afford this! Look at all this money.” But we don’t think about, the business expenses, like just the overhead. We don’t think about the tax obligations.

[00:10:51] We don’t think about needing to leave some money in the bank account in case next month is quieter. And then as you say, when it comes down to your, your paycheck, suddenly there isn’t enough money for you to be okay at home, because all of these other jobs have had to be done by the money first.

[00:11:05] And if you’re paying yourself last, which can be the default, you, and your household, end up taking the hit for this kind of lack of boundaries with your money.

[00:11:16] Liane: Absolutely. 

[00:11:18] Linzy: What are some other traps that you see therapists fall into that lead them to overspend Like we just talked here about the kind of like throwing your money at a problem, trying to get somebody else to kind of do the work that you don’t want to do. What other traps do you see therapists falling into that lead to overspending?

[00:11:34] Liane: Maybe another trap would be subscribing to services or software that they think they should have. Right? Those must have practice management tools when you know, something that’s simpler or more cost effective would work just as well. Right? So, if you’re online for any amount of time and sort of, you know, searching for therapist tools, there are so many different subscriptions and tools that, you can, you know, like with all the bells and whistles and this is fancy and it’s going to automatically send, I don’t know, we’ll pick on assessments.

[00:12:07] It’s going to automatically send these assessments. It’s going to send them back to you. It’s going to look pretty. It’s, you know, all these things and you think, oh, wow, that would make my practice amazing. And, and so we sign up for it and then. Do we use it? Right? And, are we using it the way that we were imagining, what I find often is that there is no check or balance, right?

[00:12:28] We will sign up for a subscription or we’ll buy a tool that’s supposed to be helpful for us in our practice. And then either we forget about it. It’s kind of like a gym membership. You know how people sign up for the gym membership and they go for like three weeks and then they’re like, eh, I don’t want to work out.

[00:12:42] Linzy: Yes

[00:12:43] Liane: Then two years later, they’re still paying this monthly

[00:12:45] Linzy: I got to go to the gym and cancel that membership.

[00:12:49] Liane: It’s the same type of idea, right? But we’re doing it in our practices with different tools and, and different things that way. And so it’s another trap that I, I think that you know, we can fall into is just thinking that, Oh, this is, this is going to help me, or this is going to be good for my practice.

[00:13:07] And so we buy it and then we don’t use it. 

[00:13:10] Linzy: And I’m hearing like a couple, like almost two different pieces in that, right? It’s like, the first is getting something that maybe you don’t need, it’s shiny objects. Again, this is a kind of shiny object in a different zone, right? Rather than the education shiny object that we were talking about.

[00:13:25] This is the tool that is going to make my life so much easier, so much better, which of course is what good marketing promises us. Right? Your marriage will improve because of this tool that you have in your business. Like, you know, prompts the moon and the stars. But the other thing that I’m hearing here is then not being in touch with the fact of like, Oh, I’m still paying for this thing.

[00:13:41] Have I used this in the last three months? So losing track of what we’re spending on, and not being in touch with where the money is going every month. And I will say the subscription-based model that is now the default for software is so good at playing on this weakness that we have as humans.

[00:13:59] So good at it. And like all these things that you used to be able to just buy, used to be able to just own software, now you pay for it every single month. And the math on it is like, we pay so much more now for these software than we did, you know, five years ago. But it takes advantage of this vulnerability that we have of people just doing something and then just kind of forgetting that we did it, right?

[00:14:22] Or like not stopping to reassess and think, huh, do I need to make a change here? What is coming out of my credit card? Wait a second, that 15 charge doesn’t seem like a lot, I haven’t used that software in eight months. And I’m sure that a lot of software that is on subscription, like SaaS. I bet that half the money they make is on software that is not used, if not more.

[00:14:45] People just forgot that they have something.

[00:14:47] Liane: I think that’s highly possible.

[00:14:50] Linzy: Yeah. So just really that, like not going back and being with your numbers, seeing what’s happening.

[00:14:57] Liane: Just thinking about, you know, how useful is this? You know, like gym membership is not what a therapist would do, but, you know, like saying like, am I in better shape now because I’ve been using this, right? Like, has this software or whatever in my practice, has it saved me time by making me more efficient?

[00:15:14] Like I thought it was going to? Am I actually using This to its fullest potential, or did I get it and then go, Oh, that looks like a lot of work to learn. And so we don’t learn it, but we’re paying for it. And I’m laughing about this, Lindsay, because like guilty, right? Like I, I’m not saying this, you know, to like, I, like, I’m talking about myself here as much as I am about anyone else.

[00:15:40] Right. I’ve done this. I’ve done all of this.

[00:15:43] Linzy: And I will say, I was also laughing with familiarity. I was just muted. But yes, it’s like, this is such a human thing. Right? And I can think very clearly of examples of things that I was like, Oh, that’s amazing. That’s going to change my business which I never used. Right. And this is, I think also the peril of, Instagram ads, and Facebook ads, which I use in my own business.

[00:16:01] So like, I’m, I’m not, you know, ethically exempt from this, but certainly the kinds of things that seem like a really good idea at 9 pm when you’re tired and you’re scrolling on your, your phones maybe not always the best purchases for your business. Yeah, like really stopping to think, as you say, can I use this?

[00:16:18] Am I using this? Is this having the effect that it was supposed to have? And reassessing, you know, if this is something you want to keep paying for because the default is it’s going to keep paying that company forever until you cancel those subscriptions. You will pay for them until the day you die.

[00:16:37] So we have to stop and interrupt that. How can therapists then shift their mindset around some of these pieces? Move away from this like, you know, magic money thinking into being more intentional about how they grow their practice and manage their money.

[00:16:52] Liane: I think it starts with recognizing that your practice revenue is your income, right? It’s not separate, and the other piece of it is, is a mindset shift, right? Start thinking about every dollar that’s coming in and recognizing that this dollar should be working for you as well as for your

[00:17:16] Practice, your money should be working for you and, and getting that mindset there, right? And so I, you know, think about getting clear about what you need versus what feels nice to have. 

[00:17:35] And so, you know, kind of going through your expenses and evaluating your expenses.

[00:17:41] And we were just talking about subscriptions. So, you know, really asking yourself, is this subscription really necessary? Right? If you’re talking about a certification or another modality, do I actually need this, or do I already have a certification or modality, this different one than the one that I’m looking at taking this course on, do I already have something in my practice that helps me when I’m working with people with X, Y, Z?

[00:18:09] And so, you know, if I have something already that works when I’m dealing with XYZ with clients, then do I need that new modality or certification? Or is it that I want it, right? And so we need to be able to prioritize, you know, what we’re spending our money on, looking at this as an investment.

[00:18:30] Right. And when we do an investment, you want to return on income,

[00:18:36] and that return can be, you know, if it’s a subscription to software that’s going to save you time, it’s going to make you more efficient than it should be doing that. 

[00:18:45] Linzy: Yes.

[00:18:46] Liane: right? If it’s marketing, it should be bringing you new clients, like enough new clients that you’re making money, right?

[00:18:54] If you’re spending 5 on marketing like you should be making 15,

[00:18:58] Linzy: Yes, and that’s that return on investment equation, right? So stopping to think about, I’m hearing, you know, first of all, like slowing down and asking yourself, do I need things before you buy them? But if you are investing in things, are they working? If you’re paying for the software to get time back, are you getting time back and turning that into something else of value, whether it’s money or whether it’s just like, this allows me to go home for dinner every night, which is

[00:19:23] invaluable, right? So it’s not always, you know, I think the return on investment isn’t always just financial. Sometimes it’s energetic or emotional, but yeah, are you getting something back from this purchase? Is it delivering value to you? Is it an investment or is this just an expense?

[00:19:37] Just money going out, out the door? Yeah, that like slowing down and being unintentional, and thinking, too, about the first piece that we were talking about, you were just referencing of, do I need this training, you know, like, or do I just want it? Something else that comes to mind for me is like, where’s that coming from?

[00:19:54] Right? Like, is it excitement, but do you, are you maybe prone to kind of like a manic excitement that runs out, you know, the gas runs out of the tank before you get the benefit of the thing? Yeah. Noticing if that’s a pattern, is this that you don’t feel good enough as a person in general, and you’re constantly trying to do things to bolster it?

[00:20:11] Is it that you have one client that you feel like you need this training for, but maybe they’re not a good fit for you? Like, you should be referring out? 

[00:20:20] Liane: You maybe don’t even want to work them… 

[00:20:21] Linzy: A hundred percent, right? So like slowing down to ask yourself: what is this? Cause I think too, when we have money, it’s so tempting to throw money at pain.

[00:20:29] and just be like, Oh, well, this will make me feel better. Like I’ll feel good enough if I do this other $4,000 certification, or if I could just figure out how to work with this person, then everything would be better. And when you have money, it’s easy to just throw money at those things, but you might not be getting to the root of the issue.

[00:20:45] Liane: So slowing down that intention piece. Any final thoughts on these pieces about magic money, spending, intentionality, I think it’s, you know, we’re talking a lot on, on the practice side of things, which I think is important, but I, I also think it’s equally important for us to be setting aside money for ourselves, right? Whether it’s, It’s self-care, life enhancements, you know, whether it’s taking a much-needed vacation or just giving yourself the financial flexibility to work fewer hours, right?

[00:21:16] When we’re intentional with our revenue, it should be, positively impacting, both our practice as well as our personal lives, right? We want to be able to support a lifestyle that keeps us energized and balanced so that we’re not burning out as therapists. 

[00:21:34] Linzy: Yeah. Absolutely. That is, ultimately what our businesses should be doing for us, is giving us a life that we enjoy. 

[00:21:43] For our clients’ benefit, so we can keep doing the work, but for us, because this is… this is your life, right? So make sure that the money’s taking care of you. Thank you so much, Liane, for coming on the podcast today.

[00:21:54] If folks want to hear more about you, want to find you, follow you, learn from you, where can they find you?

[00:22:01] Liane: For sure. Our website is buildyourprivatepractice. Ca and we’ve also got a very thriving, energetic Facebook group on Facebook so if you search groups and search for Build Your Private Practice, you’ll find us that way.

[00:22:15] Linzy: Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, Liane.

[00:22:18] Liane: Thank you for having me. 

[00:22:34] Linzy: If you find yourself experiencing this magic money thinking in your own business, I hope there are ideas in this podcast that you can use to stop and investigate and be with your relationship to money. Start to be curious about where some of this magic money thinking is coming up. And as Liane said, ultimately think about where can this money serve you better.

[00:22:56] Does this money need to be serving you in your business? If so, what are the things that you can invest in your business that will get you a return? Or should this money be coming home to you and your family? So often our businesses and our therapist selves get so many more resources than we give ourselves at home.

[00:23:13] And that, that is not fair to ourselves. That’s not fair to our families. And ultimately that’s not sustainable. So lots of ideas here on where you can get started if you find yourself overspending, or if you have this magic money thinking in your practice, thanks so much to Liane for bringing these ideas to us today.

[00:23:30] If you’re enjoying the podcast, it’s so helpful if you leave me a review. You can leave me a review on the Apple podcast. You can share what you enjoy about the podcast or a favorite episode. And also tell a friend while you’re at it. Why not both? Why not leave a review and tell a friend? Those are really helpful ways for other therapists and health practitioners to find us and be part of these conversations.

[00:23:48] Thanks for joining me today. 

[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to another Feelings and Finances episode of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. These are our Friday episodes where we answer questions from you, the therapists and health practitioners who listen to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, and we also just generally keep things short and sweet.

[00:00:19] This is your little bit of financial num nums, your financial snack, if you will, coming into the weekend.So today, I’m going to be starting a little mini series, a mini series within a series. Feelings and Findings as being a sub series of our podcast,

[00:00:37] this being a mini series of that sub series on the biggest mistakes that I made in private practice. So I’ve been reflecting on what I did well in private practice, what came more naturally for me or I was lucky to learn early, and what are the things that looking back I wish that I had done differently.

[00:00:55] So I’m going to start today with one of the things I wish that I had done differently, a mistake that I had made. I’m going to record a couple more episodes of mistakes, and then I’m going to also share an episode of things that I did well and that I’m really glad that I did early. So I’m really digging into my own experiences here to share about what I wish I had done differently looking back on being a therapist in private practice.

[00:01:17] So the first thing that I am reflecting on that I wish that I had done differently as a private practice therapist and that I wish that I had implemented a regular schedule system earlier. So this idea of having a regular schedule system came onto my radar probably around 2018, Tiffany McLain, I believe, is the person who put it onto my radar first, talking about this idea of having regular appointment slots for your clients, a spot that belongs to them.

[00:01:46] For instance, Tuesdays at 2 is their spot every week, and maybe they have a weekly spot, and maybe they have a bi weekly spot. But it’s this idea of setting up a regular appointment system in your practice, so you 90 percent of the time, or even 100, folks are coming at the same time every week or every two weeks.

[00:02:05] When I was first introduced to this idea, I had so much resistance. My clinical practice focused on trauma, developmental trauma, complex trauma, dissociation. So I was working with some folks who had quite severe dissociation, people who had trouble functioning in daily life sometimes, people who had a lot of charge and triggers around attachment.

[00:02:29] And I really convinced myself for a couple solid years that my clients would not be able to tolerate being asked to come to appointments at a regular time. I told myself that that would be demanding too much of the folks that I worked with, that it wouldn’t work for people, that I would lose clients, you know, all those normal kind of scarcity stories.

[00:02:48] But generally speaking, I really held this belief that my clients could not adhere to a regular appointment system with me, that they needed more flexibility. They had other appointments they were managing. It would be too much to ask them to make a commitment to a certain spot. And I really believed that for a couple years. When I finally got to the point of rolling out the system it was because I had to, like I was feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by my schedule and I I knew that as a full private practice clinician, my schedule shouldn’t be painful.

[00:03:21] Like when you get to the point where your practice is full, that should not be causing you duress and stress, right? That should be a point where we breathe as clinicians, and can, you know, cruise a little bit, be at a nice cruising altitude. And instead I found, I was having a hard time fitting all my clients in.

[00:03:37] I was bending my schedule to fit somebody in because I didn’t want them to miss a week, but they weren’t available for the spot that I had available the following week. So by the time I rolled it out, I had quite a bit of scheduling pain in my life. It had become a real headache. And when I first rolled out the idea that I was going to be starting a regular appointment system, I did it in a really intentional way.

[00:04:01] Really glad I did that, that was not a mistake, of creating a letter for my clients. I find I share this letter now often with my students in Money Skills for Therapists as an example of how you can communicate about a regular appointment system and why you’re implementing it. That letter includes the value of regular appointments, what it does for them, what it does for me, and it includes helping them understand that they have some responsibility in therapy, that it’s good for them to hold some responsibility for coming at a regular interval, that clinically that’s very helpful.

[00:04:34] the letter laid out what’s helpful about it, laid out how it was going to work, was very clear on the number of cancellations which people got. And I know some folks who roll out regular appointment systems do it with, you know, a very limited or no cancellation policy.

[00:04:47] I didn’t feel that was appropriate for my clients. So I rolled out, I believe it was that they could have three free cancels in a year. And then after that, you know, there would be discussion about whether or not maybe the spot wasn’t working for them anymore. So when I rolled it out, I was anticipating the worst.

[00:05:04] I thought people would, say, well, that’s not going to work for me, other kinds of objections. You know, your brain comes up with all sorts of stories. And what I remember instead is a young client that I had, which is somebody who I would have thought of as more vulnerable, somebody I didn’t want to demand on, for coming to regular intervals. When I told her about my regular appointment system, she literally jumped for joy in my office. And I was like, okay, this is just as beneficial to my clients as it is to me, right?

[00:05:31] Because what it meant for her, from a client perspective, is now she could see me every week. She could see me every week on Thursdays at one o’clock or whatever time. And she didn’t have to have that anxiety of maybe the next week the one or two spots that I have available, or even three or four spots, don’t work for her and then she’s not going to see me at all, right?

[00:05:51] There’s a cost to our clients when we don’t have regularity in that every time they go to rebook with us, they’re kind of rolling the dice, right? Or I know some practitioners that I see who don’t have regular appointments slot systems, and it might not make

[00:06:04] as much sense for the types of treatments that they offer, I’m having to book way ahead to know that I’m going to be able to see them as often as I need to see them to get the treatment that I need. Right? So that puts a lot of stress on me as a client if I’m, you know, having to book several months ahead and then I know oh shoot if I have to cancel those appointments I’m not going to see them for another several weeks until my next appointment.

[00:06:25] Having that regular appointment slot lets your clients know that people who are coming weekly or bi weekly, their needs are going to be met. I wish that I had done this so much sooner. The other benefit of doing this is that I could actually see when I was full. And I love doing this with my students in Money Skills for Therapists when schedules is a challenge for them, where we can lay out a schedule.

[00:06:49] You know, if you’re listening now, you can totally do this yourself. Lay out a schedule. Of course I use a spreadsheet, but it could also be a word document to show, you know, this is my week. These are the spots that I have available. These are the times that I can work. This is the most sessions I can do in a day,

[00:07:05] so I’m going to schedule, you know, those four slots available. Who has those slots already? Like who’s already kind of regularly seeing you on Tuesdays at 10? Put their name in there. And then if you’re somebody who sees clients biweekly, cause I tended to see clients more biweekly than weekly, actually, for the type of EMDR work I was doing that worked well for my clients and I, I’d have a week one, week two.

[00:07:25] So I know that on week one, Jim has this spot, and week two it’s Lorraine, right? And I know that they rotate. And so by having set spots, you can also see, are you full?Because that’s another thing that I struggled with as a practitioner and that I see my students in Money Skills for Therapists struggling with is, you don’t know when you’re full, right? If your schedule is all over the place, if some weeks you’re going to have 10 sessions and the next week you have 18, are you full?

[00:07:48] Are you not full? Do you have room for more clients? Do you not? When you start to set a regular schedule, you can actually see, okay, I work 15 sessions a week. These are the spots. When spread out the clients that I have, and I put them into regular spots, I have three weekly appointment spots left. Now you can actually make informed decisions about how many more clients

[00:08:10] you take on, what type of spots are available. You can think about even how you spread out your schedule and how to distribute clients so that you’re balancing your days better, right? So you’re not having one day that’s like so intense that you’re exhausted at the end and then the next day is light, but you feel burnt out from the day before, so it doesn’t really matter.

[00:08:26] Yeah. There’s so much benefit to having clarity. Folks who listen to this podcast, or who have taken Money Skills for Therapists know that clarity is one of my favorite words. Having the clarity to know is your practice full? Is it not? And if it is full, then you can move into those bigger questions of financially,

[00:08:43] is it meeting your needs? Is seeing your sweet spot amount of clients, your 15 clients a week or whatever, do you actually get paid enough? Or do you need to start thinking about other things that need to change in your practice? You can only know those things when you actually know if you are at capacity or not.

[00:08:58] So I wish that I had rolled this out at the very beginning of my practice. I probably didn’t roll out a regular appointment system until four years into my practice. And the four years before that had a lot of headaches that were unnecessary. And the final years where I had my regular appointment system had much more clarity, flow, my clients felt taken care of.

[00:09:18] It helped with their attachment needs because they knew they were going to see me. They didn’t have to worry about whether or not they were going to get in for an appointment. It also meant that if they knew that in three weeks they were going to be on vacation or they had another appointment on that day, we can either reschedule within that same week or we could choose to skip that week or see them twice the next week.

[00:09:38] You know, we could actually plan ahead as a duo, right, as a team in supporting their mental health, rather than it kind of being left up to chance. So, if you are listening and you do not have a regular appointment slot system, I strongly encourage you to think about it. If you have objections internally, I would encourage you to interrogate those a little bit.

[00:10:00] You know, if you tend to work with folks who work shifts, because that’s something that I hear sometimes, it doesn’t work for people, you can still have 50 percent of your clients on a regular appointment slot system, and then have floating spots for those folks needing more flexibility. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, but the more that we can create that consistency and regularity for us and our clients, the more regular your income is going to be, the more consistent your care for your clients are going to be, and the more clarity you’re going to have in where your practice is at.

[00:10:27] So it’s something I’m very passionate about consistency, very passionate about stability, and I love the regular appointment slot system for that. If you have a question you’d like me to answer on one of these feelings and finances episodes, I would love to hear from you.

[00:10:42] All you need to do is click on the note in the show notes or head over to our podcast page. You’ll see a little spot to say, record a question. All you need to do is press record, introduce yourself, share a little context if you’d like, and share your question. And I would be so excited to answer it on one of these feelings and finances episodes to send our fellow therapists and health practitioners and coaches off into the weekend with just a little financial nugget to take into the weekend with them. Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:00] Linzy: Welcome back to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. Today we have returning guest Julie Herres, the owner of Green Oak Accounting. This accounting firm specializes in working with therapists and is also the author of Profit First for Therapists. Julie and I are talking about this phrase today: the idea of moving at the speed of cash.

[00:00:23] We explore what that means to move at the speed of cash. What are some of the risks that can come with incurring large amounts of debt? Like what has she seen happen when folks end up incurring too much debt? What does that mean? What does that look like? What’s involved and needed to move at the speed of cash in your business?

[00:00:41] This is a phrase that Julie brought to me, and I just immediately got it and, and loved it. And this conversation, too, ended up spinning off maybe a little bit too far. We’ll see what Ashley, our editor, leaves in, down a bit of a road of philosophically, you know, what is worth it, right?

[00:00:59] And, and how do we get what we want? And when is that about money? And when is it not about money? Maybe challenging this idea that taking on debt, or making big moves fast, is going to get you what you want in your practice and your life. Here is my conversation with Julie Herres.​

[00:01:22] Hi, Julie, and welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:25] Julie: Good to be here, Lindsay. I always enjoy our chitchats.

[00:01:29] Linzy: And I just noticed I had the desire there to two name you. I wanted to say Julie Herres, is not how I refer to you when we speak on one since you wrote the book and you’ve been out there, it’s like Julie Herres is like you’re a presence now.

[00:01:43] Julie: Thank you. I am here.

[00:01:46] Linzy: So I’m excited, to chat with you today about something that it’s something you had mentioned in a call that you did. Where are we now? Like six months ago with some of my students in money skills for good practice owners. I believe that I grabbed this phrase that you used, because I was like, whoa, I love that idea.

[00:02:04] I have never heard it expressed like that. Can we please like have a podcast and just jam on it? And that is this idea of moving at the speed of cash. It’s a phrase that you just threw out casually, as you do, you know while answering a question, but I think it’s such a rich idea. So can you start by explaining this concept that you have of moving at the speed of cash and, and why you generally advocate for that over folks taking on debt?

[00:02:29] Julie: Yeah. So I am generally a fan of moving at the speed of cash because it is a way to pace yourself in business, right? I think as visionaries of a business, right? The owner is that visionary, there are always ideas and there are often more ideas than you necessarily have the time or the money for, right?

[00:02:51] So there’s always this kind of culling of the ideas and saying like, Oh, I do like this, but we’re going to have to wait, right? Or yes, I could expand, right? If money was no object, you could probably expand your practice quickly. And especially in the case of a group practice, but usually there is a restriction, right?

[00:03:09] That is a reality of most humans that money is an object and you just don’t have unlimited funds. And so moving at the speed of cash is this concept of, well, we’re going to save up for things in advance and then be strategic in planning for them and then executing. And so when we do the thing, it’s a lot less scary.

[00:03:29] Because we have already done the planning, whereas debt can be exciting and it’s easy to get money now. It’s more expensive these days than it was a year ago, but it’s still pretty easy to get into debt. And then I, I just think that often it’s not thought through in the same way of like, Oh, well, let’s just, you know, take some money from the line of credit and try this out versus if you have to spend a couple of 

[00:03:52] months, or even a couple of weeks, planning and getting the things ready. You’re thinking through it and, and, and, pausing to put some plans in place. And you might do things a little bit differently. It also feels a little harder to spend your own money.

[00:04:08] Linzy: I was just thinking that, yes.

[00:04:10] Julie: Yeah. And so we’re like, Oh, it’s the bank’s money. Really? You’re going to have to pay it back later. But it feels more personal since you’re usually a little more judicious in your decision-making. And spending money a little bit differently. 

[00:04:23] Linzy: It is way less sexy.

[00:04:26] Julie: Yeah, yeah,

[00:04:27] Linzy: Yeah, I was thinking about that exact thing and I was just racking my brain. I was like, is it in Profit First that he talks about that idea of like, angel investors, and when folks have other people’s money they spend it faster? Is that Profit First that he talks about that? Or am I getting that? 

[00:04:38] Julie: I do think so. Yeah, I do think Mike Michalowicz talks about it there and I have a story there. My husband was right after college, or actually, he dropped out of college, to work for a startup that was, angel funded. Ane, the stories he tells me about the spending there, like their money was no object, right?

[00:04:59] You were going out to 500 lunches regularly. It wasn’t their money. And then many, many years later, he started his own company. Very, very different decision-making on like, what are we willing to spend money on or not when it’s our own money, right? Such a different perspective.

[00:05:16] Linzy: It’s that free money feeling and as you said, debt is easier to get now. Especially with online applications and whatever and, and credit cards. A strategy that I see American therapists use a lot, which I don’t think is so available to us in Canada, is also like the interest-free credit cards, where it’s just like, oh, I’ll just grab an interest-free credit card, put this thing on it.

[00:05:36] And sometimes I have seen people do that strategically where…I see it happen when I do my enrollments, especially for like Money Sales Group Practice Owners, where folks are thinking, okay, if I do the payment plan, it’s 10 percent more if I put it on a credit card and I pay it down.

[00:05:47] Like, And you can just get that card. Like, it’s so easy to get a card with, you know, a 15, 000 limit or something. And what I have seen is if folks are very thoughtful and intentional, they can pay it down. But also, it makes it very easy to just accumulate more and more debt, right? This easy availability of what feels like free money, even though it’s not free money.

[00:06:09] Julie: When you’re taking on debt, you are essentially spending tomorrow’s money today, right? Or tomorrow, next month, next year, but you’re spending it in advance because you’re going to have to pay it at some point, right? So that’s a little bit of the difference is the mindset shift between growing at the speed of cash we’re saving in advance and paying For tomorrow’s expenses today, right?

[00:06:32] Making sacrifices today to be able to afford next month or next year’s expansion versus the opposite of we’re spending it today and then we’re going to have to pay for it, at a later time.

[00:06:44] Linzy: Yeah, and I remember seeing an, it would have been a blog article, I remember seeing a blog article in YNAB, where they talked about how there’s now this availability, too, of so many online checkouts have this, I think Klarna is one of the brands, like, you know, where they break out the payments, and you don’t pay any more, but you pay it in four installments.

[00:07:02] The author talked about looking at like a blazer that he didn’t have money for now. It was like, let’s say a 200 blazer. And it’s like, okay, he could buy it now and pay 50 bucks and then pay 50 bucks for the next three months, but he was like, if I save the money for it, will I want the blazer by the time I save the money? Like, will I still want it? 

[00:07:22] Julie: Right. 

[00:07:22] Linzy: And, and he concluded that he actually wouldn’t. If he actually had to set aside 50 bucks a month of his own money and have that sitting in his accounts, and then had to make the decision, okay, now that I have the 200, do I still want the blazer? It’s like by then the sparkly newness.

[00:07:37] will have worn off, and that will no longer feel like the best use of that 200 bucks, once he has the 200 actually in hand, right? And it doesn’t feel like free money. Which I thought was a concrete illustration of like, yeah, when you slow down too, you get out of that like a shiny object, kind of response because you, you kind of have time to sober up on whatever idea you’re, you’re moving towards.

[00:08:00] Julie: Well, and when we’re talking about expansion specifically, right, in the context of a group practice, there’s a big difference there as well. When you are moving at the speed of cash, you are saving up in advance, and for a lot of our clients, and what I talk about in Profit First for Therapists is, you know, if you save the money in advance, then you have X dollars to go spend and you know it costs you, for example, 50 grand to go open up a new location.

[00:08:25] Okay, now we have 50 grand, or maybe 40 grand, we start looking for a new location, knowing that by the time we find it and sign the contract, all that we’ll have 50 grand. Then you can go and pay for that expansion. But then you’re in a situation where you know the income that you’re that your practice is generating on that day pays already for your expenses So you don’t need that new space to generate income from day one. But when you are using debt to finance that, really you’re saying like we know that when we borrow this money, we’re going to start having to make those monthly payments almost immediately, right, within usually 30 45 days something like that and so you immediately increase your expenses and Without necessarily having an increase of income right away.

[00:09:10] So there’s a lot of ways that this can be beneficial. But so you’re in that crunch and saying we’re hiring, right? We’re spending a lot of time energy and often money to recruit new team members for this space. We’re buying all the things that need to go in that space, the couches, then the tables and the, you know, waiting room and all of that.

[00:09:28] And at the same time, our other expenses still exist, but there’s no additional money to come in versus if you have saved up for it, you know, this is how much money we have to spend. So when you’re going out and buying those couches and chairs and all the equipment. You’re making decisions a little bit differently.

[00:09:46] but you also know the practice is still paying for its expenses. So we are okay. And so you can ramp that new space up in a way that is more intentional because you don’t need the money on day one.

[00:10:00] Linzy: Yeah, I was just thinking about the huge amount of pressure that you end up creating by trying to create ease and kind of grabbing, you know, money earlier. If you’re not intentional about it, it’s like, as you say, for this example, your new space needs to start generating maximum money right away, more money than you need to generate before, which is a huge amount of pressure to put on your business, on your team, on yourself.

[00:10:24] I could see that having a lot of costs, not just financial costs, but emotional costs to then have taken on this, this much larger debt burden, right? These payments are now going to start having to be made every single month.

[00:10:38] Julie: And even when you are planning, I think debt can always be the backup plan, right? I am a big advocate of group practices having a line of credit because emergencies will happen, right? Things will come up. And having a line of credit means that you’re not going to the payday lenders of the small business for really, really expensive money, right?

[00:10:59] Where you have kind of this buffer, like, Oh yeah, this payment didn’t come through. We still have to make payroll, right? So, the money will be here in a few days. But it’s the backup, and not the main plan because when you, use it as like, this is the plan and you’ve maxed out that line of credit if something happens, then there is nowhere else.

[.00:11:18] to go. Or… the more desperate you are when you’re looking at debt, the less those terms will be favorable for you, right? We often see emergency loans have almost a 50 percent interest rate, right? It’s loan shark-style interest rates. And once you do that very first one, it is such a hard hole to get out of.

[00:11:42] It is so hard to get out of that. I’ve seen it more times than I can count over the last, you know, several years, unfortunately. 

[00:11:49] Linzy: And I’ve seen folks in that position before, and those loans are highly predatory. They’re set up so that you can’t pay it off early, even if you do manage to find the cash, you’re not getting out. And yeah, and the amount that you are charged is, is astronomical, and I think, you know, what I, what I’m hearing here is, almost like debt is supposed to be your plan B. If you use plan B first and there’s no plan A, you become very vulnerable, right?

[00:12:11] Especially in a larger practice as you’re talking about where there’s payroll and suddenly you need 15, 000 because some, you know, insurance payer stopped, which we all saw last year. Then, you are going to people who do not care about you and are looking to wring as much money out of you as possible.

[00:12:28] So I’m hearing that that is a pitfall of folks, you know, using debt up front is in some ways it makes you even more vulnerable to worse kinds of debt because you’ve already used kind of your healthier debt as your first move and then your second move is terrible, right? Your options dry up very fast.

[00:12:48] Julie: And when you are already in a tough situation, it’s harder to get loans.

[00:12:54] So when things are not going well is usually not the time that your bank is like, Oh yeah. We would love to give you money. Right. I know, I am just going through a line of credit increase. I’ve never used my line of credit, but I still have one.

[00:13:07] And we’re increasing it because the needs of the business are just different at this point. And it has been a month-long process just for an increase of a line of credit that I already have. Right? And so we’re not in a desperate place. It’s not, it’s just more of a risk management, tactic at this point.

[00:13:22] But if I needed that money, I probably wouldn’t have a month to wait to get that loan. And that’s, that’s how, You know, practice owners can get into hot water. And I talk about it from a group practice perspective. It’s not that, solo practices will never need that or never incur debt, right?

[00:13:38] It’s not that it’s just the numbers get bigger as we are in group practice. 

[00:13:43] And there’s more moving pieces, right? So if you are in solo practice, and you didn’t get an insurance check this week, yeah, it’s a big deal, but you know, hopefully, you have a little bit of personal savings at home. Maybe you have a spouse that also works.

[00:13:57] And so it’s not just a life or death situation, but if you have 200, 000 in a monthly payroll, and a hundred thousand dollars didn’t come in, I mean, that is the livelihood of, 10 plus people on your team, right? And so they’re a little bit more extreme situations.

[00:14:16] Linzy: the principle that you’re talking about is amplified in group practice. It’s just, there’s just so much more risk that you’re taking in general as a group practice owner, more reward, but more risk, which means that, yeah, if you run into a situation like this, it’s going to be much more extreme. I’m curious, what other pitfalls have you seen private practice owners face when they start to grow their business on debt? Like I’m hearing a few costs already. Are there other things that you also see?

[00:14:41] Julie: Yeah.There’s this, this narrative sometimes that they, or the story that the business owners will tell themselves of, Oh, but we’re doing this because dot, dot, dot, right down the road. Right. So we’re incurring debt now, but it’s because we’re going to get this big contract.

[00:14:56] Linzy: Yes

[00:14:58] Julie: And the big contract will save everything and in a lot of cases that will be true, but what if you don’t get the contract, What if you were laying this foundation for something that is never coming? And then what, right? Then it starts the spiral of debtAndnd so, It can be a slippery slope, and we were chatting about that a little bit before we started recording, but I come at accounting from a place of, you know, with my family narrative, right?

[00:15:25] And I had a mom who started a lot of businesses, and her businesses, unfortunately, all failed. I saw as a child how that affects everyone around the business owner, right? It’s not just about, Oh, my business failed. It affects the children, the community, and the people who work in the business, right?

[00:15:41] There’s so, so much, downstream effect from that. And so I tend to be just a little bit cautious when I approach the money side of things because that’s how I feel comfortable with things. And so I’m not a particularly aggressive accountant. That’s just not my style. And sleep well at night, by doing things that way.

[00:16:04] Right? I would always prefer to err on the side of my client being protected and okay with ensuring the survival of their practice, rather than being a little too aggressive and taking too many risks maybe it pays off, but maybe they lose their business in the long run. That’s not a gamble worth taking for some people.

[00:16:24] It might be, but for me it’s not. 

[00:16:25] Linzy: Yeah, and I will say that narrative resonates with me as well because I also had, my dad was a business owner, who had a business that failed, as a large, business. And yeah, that knock-on effect, because You know, I’ve talked about this on the podcast a little bit before. I did an episode with Megan Megenson and Tiffany McLain talking about our dads in business and the stories you end up inheriting as a child growing up in an entrepreneurial household.

[00:16:47] And, when my dad’s business failed, it left my parents with a hundred thousand dollars of debt in the nineties. Which is a lot of money, and I do see the effects of that, not just financially, but also emotionally, the kind of resentment that can be around that. And in my family, it ended up being fine in the sense that we had other folks, in the family who had financial stability,

[00:17:11] who are my grandparents who interestingly were completely debt adverse. Like I think my grandparents had a mortgage for all of five days when there was a gap between selling the farm and the money showing up from the farm, and paying off the house in town. And my grandfather like was losing it for that whole time.

[00:17:24] He was like the opposite, like so tight, so conservative, like never opened the purse strings. But yeah, there can be a huge impact. And I think this is where there’s this balance point because the other thing that I do find myself talking to my students about is kind of the opposite perspective of this, which is that debt can be strategic, or at least it’s not bad.

[00:17:48] If you have it already, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not shameful. You didn’t mess up. This is the financial situation you’re sitting with, and it can be managed thoughtfully. But what I’m hearing you talk about here, and what you’re pinging me into is that if we are too casual about it though, if we’re not thoughtful, if we’re like not even regarding the speed of cash, we’re just trying to move as fast as we possibly can, that we can like paint ourself into a corner when it comes to debt.

[00:18:14] And I’m curious like what you’ve seen with that where folks when it starts to kind of like spiral out of control for folks in private practice.

[00:18:21] Julie: Well, so what I have seen happen, there’s, there’s a lot of different scenarios that can happen, but one thing that I’ve seen often is like, oh, I grew my practice from zero to 1 million. Surely I can, You know, I can double it again, right? And absolutely, that’s possible. But, what often happens is in that 0 to 1 million, lifestyle has increased as well. If you’re making a lot more money in your practice, you should, et to enjoy some of that, right? Like zero shame for that. But often we see at that point is like, but they’re not willing to make any sacrifices at all on that. And when you’re growing a business, it’s very normal to make less money.

[00:19:02] And it’s something that I talk about often. And then we try to prepare our clients for like, Hey, in this, Six to 12 month period after you’re opening a new location, there’s a good chance you’re going to have less profit. And we know that, right? Let’s go in knowing that and prepare for that. So that when we’re in it, we can remind ourselves like, oh yeah, we’re in the hard part.

[00:19:22] But we’re doing this because then later we’re going to make more money. But if the practice owner is still trying to live the same life and take out every single penny they can from the practice, they can paint themselves into a corner personally and professionally in the business where they’re racking up credit cards and then coming to a meeting and say like, Hey, I have like 20, 000 in credit card debt that I need to pay off.

[00:19:45] Like, can I take more money from the business? Like, wait, wait a second. What happened? 

[00:19:49] You can’t, there is no money for you to take right now because we’re in this period, right? So then that will just keep growing and snowballing and then there’s riskier and riskier loans on the business side at that point.

[00:20:03] And so it could just make for a difficult situation, right? So it’s always okay to say, Hey, at this point of the business or in my life, I want to take as much money as I can out. And so I’m going to choose to just keep things where they are right now. That’s super valid. That’s super valid to say my home life and the expenses I have at home are more important right now.

[00:20:25] So we’re not going to make changes. But when you’re going into that period of growth, there are some sacrifices to be made generally, right? Both financially and in time. Unreasonable in most cases to think that you’re going to double your business and that you’re not going to have to work a little bit more in it, right?

[00:20:42] Like that you’re not, you’re going to, you know, work four hours a day and golf every Friday. That’s probably not the case if you’re doubling your business. So kind of, thinking about those things help you. Look at reality as well what does my life need to look like for this to be true?

[00:21:01] And am I willing to make those sacrifices?

[00:21:04] Linzy: I mean the word that’s coming to me here is a phrase that, that I use when I talk with my, especially my group practice students, but also my solo practice students is having that big picture perspective. And I think the concept of moving at the speed of cash is a big big-picture perspective. It’s like the money’s coming, but it’s not here right now.

[00:21:20] So rather than making this purchase today, I’m going to make this purchase in a year and I’m going to save, 4, 000 bucks a month. And then by the time I get there, I’m going to have. 50, 000 almost, to work with cash. So that’s a big big-picture perspective. But what I’m also hearing here, too, is having that perspective and self-restraint in terms of we’re going from A to B, and things are going to be harder in the middle, but we’re doing this for a reason, but sacrifices have to be made, right?

[00:21:45] I can’t expect everything to look the same when I’m also trying to make these huge changes in my practice. Right? And it’s like having that zoom out to, to be able to see it will be worth it. But right now. Things are going to be harder or there’s going to be, as you say, less profit available. And the numbers are not going to look the way that I want them to look.

[00:22:03] But if you’re working a plan, then they will look how you want them to look six months or a year, into that new situation. And I think that those can be hard skills to build for people to have that big-picture perspective. And think about maybe discipline and sacrifice. I don’t know. There was a part of me that wanted to say, I don’t think that those are big parts of our culture in North America. But then I also know certain folks are self-disciplined and self-sacrificing, almost to a fault if I think about like my grandfather, for instance, but he was from, you know, a different generation.

[00:22:34] They saw the depression. You know, that was a different time. But I, I am curious, like, why do you think this can be challenging for folks to have or develop these more zoomed-out perspectives? Like, why do we even have to have this conversation about moving at the speed of cash?

[00:22:49] Julie: I think we are now in an era in our culture where we want things now. We know what we want and we want it now, and we’re not often willing to wait. Right. I’m a hundred. Guilty of that. But there’s this kind of immediacy to the Amazon Prime culture, right? Like, oh, you can get it tomorrow, right?

[00:23:11] I was just telling my kids yesterday, back in my day, uh, if you wanted something, sometimes you had to wait until Christmas to get it, right? And there wasn’t like, Oh, let’s just order it and it will be here in two days. That’s that wasn’t a thing. I think we have become like that, to some extent, you know, as adults as well, right?

[00:23:30] I’m like, Oh, well, if I did that in three years, maybe I can do it in one, right? And like, let, let’s just see. And, I think there’s a very big difference between growing a practice, From one to two million over five years, and not doing that in one year, right? Everything’s going to break.

[00:23:47] Everything needs to be reinvented. So like it always is possible if you want to grow your practice, it’s always possible, but the speed at which you’re trying to do it is going to have an impact on your cash, your cash flow, your cash needs, and your personal life as well. And to, to think that’s not going to be the case, it’s not helpful because then you end up mid-project and realizing like, Oh wait, this is not what I was hoping for.

[00:24:13] Linzy: Yes. Yeah. That, that culture of, of what it would be like, uh, immediate fulfillment or whatever, I know, there’s a more succinct phrase for it, but, I do think that it’s kind of like the Amazonification of life, as you say. And we just become more and more used to the fact that you can just get things instantly.

[00:24:33] And I would be. Interested almost like zooming out and understanding this from… I think global production has a lot to do with it. Like we can just get stuff so easily now. And the availability of stuff that, just wasn’t available in previous generations that yeah, there is this, this lack of patience.

[00:24:51] We’re impatient. We want everything today. And sometimes, you know, I think there’s some good questions to ask ourselves are like, Why? Why do you need to grow your practice in a year instead of five? Like, what’s the actual benefit of that? Because part of it too is I think often that fantasy of what it’s going to be, right?

[00:25:09] Where we’re buying into the fantasy of, well, it’s worth it for me to take on this debt to have this thing today because it’s going to make my life so much better. And what I also think is true of so many things in life, including personal things that you can buy or personal experiences, but also business experiences is once you get to a new level, you just kind of get used to it and it’s your life, right? And there are certainly, I think, huge improvements that happen in our life between making 11, 000 a year, which at some point in my 20s is what I made, and 100, 000 a year, right? There’s a huge difference in quality between that range. But once you start to get kind of above those numbers, Life doesn’t get that much better once your basic needs are met. And I know there’s, there’s debate about this idea. I’ve seen other folks debate that life does get easier and easier the more money you have, but I am, I am curious, about your perspective, on this.

[00:26:02] Julie: It’s almost like more of a philosophical question of, yeah, like, Yeah,

[00:26:07] And… what is true about what makes, Life or business so much better? Yeah, I think there’s often this fantasy in, group practice. Like if I get it, if I could just get it to this bigger size, then I will finally be able to work less. And it’s not… it’s often not about the size. It’s about the systems that you have set up, right? There is a certain point where you can now afford to have admin, right?

[00:26:35] Where you’re not doing that, right? Like, so there are some milestones where, okay, that’s, it’s possible. You’re not doing that thing anymore, but you’re still doing a lot of other things. And it’s not usually about the dollar amount. It’s really about how have you set things up. Are they dependent on you or not?

[00:26:51] And this is something funny. I hear often solo practice owners, say, well, I’d like to start a group because that’s going to be passive income and I cannot help but laugh because there is nothing, nothing passive about a group practice. It is so much work, right? And, but they sometimes don’t realize that until they get in and like, oh, wait! I will also often hear from

[00:27:13] New group practice owners who say like, Oh, I have two part-time clinicians. Can I stop seeing clients? No, you cannot. Absolutely. There’s not enough revenue coming into this practice for a full-time administrative person. Right? But like, just have that expectation of what it is. What it is going, to be and what it’s going to do those things.

[00:27:41]  Linzy: Yeah and you know, it makes me think about, you know, this kind of like larger piece that I’m, I was trying to get at is it’s more about the how rather than the what is what I’m hearing. So it’s like, we have this fantasy of when this, then this, but it’s, it’s usually more about how you’re actually.

[00:27:56] Managing your schedule day to day. Are you taking the time to take care of yourself? Right, like, are you prioritizing things that matter to you that you could be prioritizing now and you don’t need to be at x, y, z point to be able to go for a walk at lunch, or like meet up with your best friend, or take the day off early to go see your kids play, like, those things are often available to us way sooner than we think, but there is this fantasy that once we get here, then it’s going to be… It’s almost like once we get here, then our behavior will magically change because that’s what needs to happen it’s, your behavior needs to change and your systems need to change or your way of relating to things needs to change.

[00:28:33] It’s not actually about the dollars or the numbers to, you know, again, once we’re past that certain point where your basic needs are met.

[00:28:41] Julie: Right. Basic needs are met. And I think there’s, definitely an opportunity at any size of practice to build in the things that are important to you, right? And it’s not like what is important to everyone else. As for me, I love it, I have school-aged children. I love going to the bus in the morning and the afternoon.

[00:29:01] I love that because my kids are very chatty at that time of day. And so that’s something that I prioritize. It’s on my schedule. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time, but most days of the week I go to the bus twice a 

[00:29:15] Day because I love it so much, right? Like I don’t that doesn’t need to be something that’s a big milestone in the future, right?

[00:29:23] And so some days I work a lot longer than I should, but I make time for that one thing that’s super important to me and then I’ve had that moment of connection with my kids and I go back to work and I do the things and like That has been my win. Right. So like, it’s not a specific dollar amount that magically changed all of that.

[00:29:44] It’s just, how I organize my day in a way that I can make that.

[00:29:47] Linzy: Yeah. And I think it’s owning that that’s important to you and prioritizing it. Not letting it fall to the wayside because somebody else wants to, some random person wants to have a meeting with you to network at that time, which is not more important than your kids.

[00:30:00] Julie: Guess what? It’s blocked.

[00:30:01] Linzy: Yeah

[00:30:01] Julie: It’s not available.

[00:30:02] Linzy: Yes, you’ve defaulted toward what matters to you. And I think there’s so much wisdom in that. And I think that applies to private practice. It applies to our lives. Like make sure that you’re, even if it can only be incremental, you’re incrementally bringing the things that matter to you now.

[00:30:18] And not thinking that some magical point on the horizon is where you’re going to start living the life that you want. Because a lot of living the life that we want is about, you know, habits and, and discipline and like sticking with it. And those things don’t just show up when you have a certain net worth.

[00:30:33] Julie: Yeah, and it does take some money in some cases, right? Some of it takes money. But if the, if the goal is, I want to take a vacation once a year with my kids, like, okay, I think that’s great. Or my, my family or my spouse or my best friend, That doesn’t require millions of dollars to do that, right? They might be, for now, more modest vacations.

[00:30:55] And then later fancier vacation, right? But like, there’s, it’s not if we don’t do a 20,000 vacation, it’s not worth it, right? Like, it is, is worth it. Like, how can we make this happen now? We digressed so far from our topic.

[00:31:12] Linzy: Okay. Let’s come back. Let’s come back. Coming back to this moving at the speed of cash, you know, like managing money effectively. What, what are some strategies that therapists can use to not fall into these debt traps, and to avoid taking on so much debt that they do create a problem? What do you suggest?

[00:31:29] Julie: Yeah, I think planning is, the big one. So just by planning, even if you’re going to use debt, I would still encourage planning. Like, okay, if we’re going to take out a 5,000 loan. How are we going to use this money wisely so that we can? Make our money back, right? Plan it in a way, that is going to generate income for the practice.

[00:31:52] And then what’s the plan for paying it back? How are we going to make those things happen? If there’s no plan to pay it back, then why are we doing this? And if it’s not going to help us generate more money, then why are we doing this? Right. And so there’s a big difference between getting a loan of 5, 000 to hire a really.

[00:32:09]Keyy person on the team versus tbuyingnew furniture, right? The furniture is not generating income. A person generally is, right? So just sit down and look at what other alternatives are there as well. Is there another way for us to do it? Can I wait two three or six months? Is there a payment plan, right?

[00:32:27] Maybe you’re thinking about making a big investment in your business, mand aybe that is working with a coach like you, Lin Zy. That absolutely can have a huge return on investment for your practice. But if you can’t afford the full payment today, can you do a three or

[00:32:46] Maybe that makes sense. And then you are at that point, moving at the speed of cash. Yeah, it’s going to be a little more expensive typically, but you are, you are doing it in a way that makes sense for you and then it’s not putting you in a difficult

[00:32:57] Linzy: Yes

[00:32:59] Julie: So that’s kind of how I like to, to think about it.

[00:33:02] And, the third piece would be, do I need to do this now? Is this a decision where if we don’t make it today, it will never come back again? Is it truly or will there be another opportunity in the future that we should wait to be more financially prepared for?

[00:33:20] I just think my philosophy is that as a business owner, your primary responsibility is ensuring the, continued success of the practice, that the practice survives.

[00:33:35] And so a lot of the decisions that you have to make are in the spirit of, is this in service of is the practice surviving or not?

[00:33:43] And so that applies to so many different decisions, right? If you are paying someone more than you can afford, is this in service to the practice long-term or not? Right? No, it’s, it’s putting us in this hole that we’re going to have to dig out of. We’re better off not making this decision.

[00:34:00] Because the goal is for the practice to continue to operate successfully and profitably that means it keeps serving the people that it serves.

[00:34:10] It is in service to you. It is in service to you, your clinicians, your clients, your community, to everyone around you.

[00:34:16] Linzy: Yes, that big-picture perspective.

[00:34:18] Julie: Yeah, exactly. That takes a zoom-out again, right? I’m like, it’s not just about this one decision of really want to hire this clinician, or I want this new office…

[00:34:26] Linzy: Yes

[00:34:28] Julie: Does it support the survival of the practice? Yes or no?

[00:34:32] Linzy: Great. Beautiful. Julie, for folks who want to get further into your world, where can they find you and follow you?

[00:34:39] Julie: Yes. I have a podcast called Therapy for Your Money, where all I do is talk about, money topics for therapists in private practice. And so that’s a great place to start. I also have an entire accounting firm. We serve practice owners across the United States, and you can find us, including a whole lot of resources,

[00:35:00] Our blog, we have some courses and our monthly accounting services. You can find that at greenoakeccounting. com.

[00:35:07] Linzy: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Julie, for joining me today.

[00:35:10] Julie: Thank you, Linzy. 

[00:35:11] Linzy: There are so many pieces to this conversation today that I would love to just like, keep jamming on, but I am not going to record a 15-minute outro. But what Julie is talking about here with this moving at the speed of cash relates so much as we were talking to being able to zoom out and take perspective on your business and your life.

[00:35:30] And this can be so hard in the culture that we live in, this instant gratification culture, and also with the fantasy that more is always better. It can be very tempting to just go for what we want right away, to take on big debt, to do what we want right away, but it is often so much more strategic to slow down.

[00:35:52] And whether it’s slowing down and waiting to take that course, the next time that it comes around, rather than this time, or as Julie said, saving up the money to do a build-out on a new space before you move into that space. Slowing down also lets you double-check that this is actually what you want and actually what is good for your business.

[00:36:15] And by the time that opportunity comes around, or by the time the money’s saved, maybe it’s not going to be what makes sense for you anymore. But by slowing down, you give yourself the gift of being deliberate and thoughtful, which is moving against the current of capitalism and this idea of endless growth, and bigger is better.

[00:36:32] But also as we mentioned, this kind of like Amazonification, which is way too long of a word, but you know what I mean, of our culture and this, this desire for instant gratification. So, so much here. And I love Julie’s suggestion of, you know, these budgeting skills of like deferring the purchase. I’m always a fan of the idea of the right thing at the right time, and I have that conversation with folks a lot when they’re considering joining me in Money Skills for Therapists or Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, is it the right thing at the right time?

[00:36:58] Just because something is right for you doesn’t mean it’s the right time, and sometimes something not being the right time is because the money’s not available and you’re going to put yourself into financial duress to try to make it happen now. But the money will be available in six months or a year when this opportunity comes around again.

[00:37:13] So lots and lots to think about here. I always love talking with Julie. You missed the part before we recorded and after where we just loved on each other for a while because I have so much respect for her. And, and likewise. She’s a wonderful person in this very specific little pool that I’m in of helping therapists with money.

[00:37:31] And so appreciate her coming onto the podcast today. You can follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, please tell other therapists about it, other health practitioners, or coach friends that you have. We are having such specific conversations here. And it is so helpful for us when you tell the folks that you know will benefit from these conversations about the podcast.

[00:37:56] It’s the best way for other folks to hear about us and be part of these conversations. Thanks so much for joining me today.