[00:00:02] It is a lot of work to run a group. Like, a lot of work. There’s so many moving parts between all the admin that has to get done, managing other therapists and practitioners with their various personalities and their needs, insurance money not showing up, grumpy clients complaining to you about the services that they’re getting, clinical notes not getting done. Sometimes it can feel like you’re working harder than ever, and it’s definitely not the passive income that you dreamt about when you started your practice. 

 

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

 

Hello and welcome to our special mini podcast, Money Skills for Group Practice Owners. This podcast is appearing in my normal Money Skills For Therapists podcast feed, as you probably noticed, but the next few episodes that are coming out are going to be focusing on group practice only. In celebration of the launch of Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, which will be starting in June. So if you’re not a group practice owner, you’re welcome to listen in, but it might not relate to you so much. You are also welcome to ignore the next couple podcasts that are just for group practice owners. We’ll be coming back with season six in just a few weeks. But in the meantime, group practice owners, these next couple episodes are for you. We all know that solo practice finances can be emotionally daunting. I mean, I built Money Skills For Therapists on that premise and hundreds of therapists coming through the course and accessing our supports have definitely proven that point over and over again. But there’s a reason that group practice is even more difficult. 

 

Today we’re going to talk about why group practice feels so much harder than solo practice. First of all, let’s start with what it’s like to be a group practice owner from the dozens of group practice owners that I’ve talked to while I was putting together this course. I know that you love being a group practice owner some days. When group practice is good, we all know that it’s really, really good. You got to build something bigger than yourself. You can see it meeting the needs of your community, filling a gap in what’s available in your community. By having folks working for you, they’re offering specialized services that otherwise just wouldn’t be available in the way that you folks are providing them. You get to make a bigger impact than you ever could by yourself. You get to feel proud when you think about all of the lives that are impacted every week by your team, which is way more people than you can reach on your own. You get to enjoy the community that you built. You don’t have to work alone anymore. You get to mentor other therapists and practitioners. You get to have a team who share your vision and your values. And generally, you just have colleagues so that you’re not working alone anymore. That isolation that is such a hard part of solo practice goes away in a certain sense when you have a group practice. Now you actually have people that you’re working with all the time. You also get to wear different hats. You get variety. You get to be a leader, a mentor. You get to be an administrator if you want to. You can also hire that out, of course. And you don’t have to be a full-time therapist anymore. You get to use diverse talents and enjoy that variety. Plus, you don’t have to rely on seeing clients to get paid, which can get really tiresome. You have built something bigger than a 1 to 1 business by building your group practice, and you get to see the fruits of your labor and feel pride in all of that. 

 

But we also know that when it’s bad, it’s bad. Some days, I know many, many, many group practice owners are unsure if they made the right decision by starting a group practice. It’s heavy, carrying the weight of not just paying your own paycheck, which can sometimes be stressful enough in solo practice, but having to pay a whole team. You might worry about money a lot. You might hold your breath when you go to run payroll. Kind of that white-knuckled experience of being unsure if the money’s going to be there. It is a lot of work to run a group. Like, a lot of work. There’s so many moving parts between all the admin that has to get done, managing other therapists and practitioners with their various personalities and their needs, having to chase people and put out fires like insurance money not showing up, grumpy clients complaining to you about, you know, the services that they’re getting, clinical notes not getting done. Sometimes it can feel like you’re working harder than ever, and it’s definitely not the passive income that you dreamt about when you started your group practice. 

 

A note about passive income in general. That’s a term that I wish that we would just kind of cancel. If we could just take a vote on that and get rid of that term. But we do know that group practice is scalable. And when we build something bigger than ourselves, we imagine it getting easier. And yet group practice can actually end up feeling a lot harder than solo practice. Also, and I’ve heard this over and over and over again, the revolving door of employees is exhausting. I’ve seen this with my own group-practice-owning friends, when they have a therapist leave, but it can really feel like just when everything is going well, when everything’s coming together, you have a cohesive team, the money is working, you get a resignation letter or two and your stomach just drops. Thinking about that big hit to your revenue, all the resources that you spent on these therapists going down the drain, all of the time and energy it’s going to take to find and train someone new, not to mention actually filling their caseload after that. It’s also hard to take an actual break and set boundaries around your work. Sometimes your practice and your personal life can feel all bound up together. You think about your business all the time. You find yourself working evenings and weekends. You can’t imagine being able to take a vacation and really walk away from it because you know that something would come up and you’d have to jump back into your group. Your business is deeply part of you and that can be lovely. But also sometimes it’s a bit much. And finally, to top it all off – and on your worst days, this can really feel like insult to injury for all of this work you’re doing – you are definitely not being paid like a boss or CEO. You might still be relying on your own client income in order to be paid well, or you might be getting paid last and making even less money than you used to make when you worked full-time in client-facing work. 

 

Either way, when you think about all the work you do and the hours you put in, you shudder to think of how much you’re being paid an hour to run your group practice. These are numbers you’d rather not know. And I will say I’ve met several group practice owners where the answer to that is actually zero. They’re not being paid at all. So they’re being paid from the client income that they’re generating, but they’re not actually getting paid for all of that other work that we just talked about. Basically, they’re doing that in a volunteer role functionally, and the ups and downs of group practice, like those days that you feel good and proud and everything’s amazing, and then the resignation letter and the type money and the like, exhaustion. They can just come one after another. The good moments and the good days can be immediately followed by something bad happening. 

 

Your practice can often feel like an emotional and financial rollercoaster, which is not at all what you were going for when you set out building it. So I think many of us can agree, but maybe not all of us, that roller coasters are fun for an afternoon once or twice a year, but they’re not for your business and livelihood. I personally enjoy centrifugal force rides, which is a bit of a controversial opinion. The rides that spin you and, you know, like use the force. So flying saucers were on the outside, spinning cups, that kind of thing. And that is fun for a little bit, but I definitely wouldn’t want to do that for more than like 2 hours once a year. Rather than a roller coaster, what you’re looking for in your group practice, would be more like a luxury train car – if we want to keep going with the vehicle metaphors – a train car rolling steadily along the tracks, confidently headed to all the right places at the right pace, and also with a nice dining car and fancy drinks and snacks. Obviously, I know that you want to feel a sense of stability and safety in your group practice, knowing that the money’s going to be there. You want to feel proud of running a group that really reflects your values, takes care of your team members, and has a positive lasting impact on your community. You want to feel less like you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole all the time. Moving from one crisis to the next, and more like you’re competently steering your group practice ship. Weathering the natural ebbs and flows of business, including therapist resignations, with confidence and with ease. You want to be the empowered CEO of your group practice with a confidence and the paycheck to reflect the leadership and the vision that you’re bringing to the table every day. 

 

This practice was born out of your brilliance and your vision, and I want you to really connect with that. This wouldn’t be here if not for you dreaming it and making it happen. And you want to enjoy that rather than dipping in and out of owner’s remorse. And you can have all of this by strategically setting up your group practice finances so that your practice is healthy and sustainable and allows you and your team to thrive. When you started a group practice, you stepped into a higher level of business complexity than you had when you were a solo practitioner. There are so many moving parts that will make or break the financial health of your group practice. But so often, those decisions that you make on the fly while you’re building your group are the key elements that are determining if your practice finances work or if they don’t. I like to think of a group practice like a machine, and it’s one that you’ve built, but you might not have realized all the different parts and how they worked when you were building it. All the moving parts of group practice come together to shape the end results. How much money will be there at the end of the month, how much you and your team can get paid, whether you can afford employee benefits to take care of and retain your team, whether you can save up for your group practice, visions, and dreams. 

 

You’ve built your practice in a certain way and it’s going to give you certain financial results because of that. Things like the fees you set for your therapists’ sessions, your income splits or wages that you’ve set up with them, the operating expenses that you’ve taken on, your admin team wages, your client policies and how well they’re enforced, your training policies, the benefits that you offer. All of these things come together to create financial results. And if you’re like most group practice owners, you don’t fully understand that machine yet or how to fix it to make it give you the results that you want. In fact, if you set your machine up wrong, no matter how many clients your therapists see, you will never have the financial stability that you’re looking for. Which I know is like ugh. 

 

This is why, despite what we tend to think – and the solution that good practice owners tend to go for when they’re thinking about this problem – hiring more therapists is not the solution. It’s easy to just think – and I’ve seen group practice owners do this time and time again – I’ll just hire a couple more therapists and then everything’s going to be okay. And it might be true in your case. But also, unless you know that you’ve set your numbers up so your practice is actually designed to work and designed to be profitable for you and have money going to all the right places, then you’re actually just guessing at what the solution is. It’s our tendency, and we’ve talked about this many times on the Money Skills for Therapy podcast. It’s our tendency to always think that more is better. But having taught finances to hundreds of therapist, now I can tell you that more is more, but when we don’t have our businesses set up properly, more money coming in the door doesn’t mean it’s going to stick around or do what you need it to do for you. You need to fix your machine for that to happen. 

 

The good news is your machine is totally fixable and you can learn how to make it into a financially stable practice that pays you well, that practice that you were dreaming of when you started out. And I would love to help you do that. We’re starting our beta cohort of Money Skills for Group Practice Owners in June, and the doors are open now. The course is about taking you from feeling like an overworked, stressed, underpaid group practice owner to being the confident and empowered financial leader of your group practice. If you want to learn more about it, click on the links for this podcast episode where you’ll find a link to the sales page and you’re going to find all the information. Trust me, there’s a lot of information there about this course and all the ins and outs of it. You can also find a link to book a discovery call with me so we can chat about the course and whether it’s right for you and where you are right now in your group practice. I’d love to connect with you about it. Thanks for listening today. 

[00:00:07] Again, these are numbers that sometimes we might want to avoid because it’s like, Ooh, that sounds like a number I don’t want to know. But if you’re looking at finding your ideal numbers and making things better, you need to understand what is happening now. 

 

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

 

Hello and welcome back to our special mini podcast, Money Skills for Group Practice Owners. Now this podcast is for folks who own group practices, in celebration of the doors opening to Money Skills for Group Practice Owners. This is a brand new course that is starting in June. It’s a six month course that’s all about helping group practice owners become the empowered financial leaders of their practice. And today’s podcast episode, and the next one that’s going to come out as well, are completely focused on group practice. So you’re welcome to listen in, if that’s not you there’s still lots of things here that are going to be relevant for solo practice, but we are really going to be getting into that next level of complexity for group practice that is part of running group practice and what can make group practice so much more challenging than solo practice. 

 

So last time we talked about the idea of your group practice as a machine. That idea that your group practice is a machine with all these different parts and components and you might not have thought about that as you were building it. Often the decisions that we make on the fly as we’re building things, it’s like somebody comes in and they ask for a certain fee split and you’re like, I don’t know, that sounds good. Ends up becoming your default fee split. And there’s a part of your machine that you’ve just built without necessarily intentionally making it a certain way. Now, one part of your machine is in place, and there are many, many parts like that, that come together to give you certain financial results from your group practice. If you have built your group practice machine wrong, no matter how many clients your practitioners see, you’re never going to see the financial sustainability that you’re looking for. 

 

So today I want to talk about finding your ideal numbers for your group practice. Every group practice has its own set of ideal numbers, and those ideal numbers are not just about like what’s going to make the most money. That’s not the purpose of business. I want to say that maybe that’s the purpose of business in a very like capitalistic view, but I don’t think that’s why you’re in group practice. I know that’s certainly not why I’m in business. The purpose of business is to help you to generate money from doing what you love in a way that aligns with your needs and your values. And that is this beautiful opportunity that you have with your practice by figuring out your ideal numbers and how to hit all the right sweet spots. So group practice leadership is actually a role that you want to stay in long term, not something that you’re waiting to get out of as soon as possible, waiting to sell your group practice. So let’s talk about what figuring out those ideal numbers for your group practice actually looks like. 

 

The first thing that you need to do is understand the current state of your numbers. We need to start where you are. How much does it cost to run your group practice? Getting into your numbers and deeply understanding what’s happening in your group practice is so important and it can be a step that people want to skip. When I’ve worked one on one with folks, this is like really the step that I start at if I can see that they don’t know their numbers. The first thing you need to do is really get acquainted with these numbers and understand how are things working now. That’s really going to help you start to see what is not working. So how much does it cost to run your group practice would be one piece. How much are you paying in overhead? How much is your rent? How much is your admin team? How much are you paying your practitioners? How much does each employee cost you? Not just in terms of those wages that you’re paying to the folks, your income-generating folks, the therapists who are working with you, or health practitioners, but also in terms of the benefits that you pay for them, the trainings that you offer to them through their work with you, how much is each employee costing you and how much they’re making you is that second really important part of the puzzle. Sometimes that number can be really surprising for folks, and sometimes that number immediately shows you why it might feel like your machine is broken and your group practice is not working is how those numbers are shaking out of what folks are bringing in the door and then what it’s costing you to employ them and manage them and take care of them. 

 

The next piece – and this is one that a lot of group practice owners want to skip and ignore – is how much are you getting paid for your leadership work? With this, I am not talking about your clinical time. I’m not talking about the clients that you’re still seeing and that revenue that it’s bringing in and that part of your paycheck. But I’m talking about how much you’re getting paid for the time you spend managing your staff, hiring and training them, setting a marketing strategy for your practice, networking and promoting your practice in your community, making big picture decisions about your business. I’m talking about your leadership. How much are you being paid for that time that you spend doing leadership work? Sometimes the answer to this is $0 or very, very little. Sometimes you might do the math on this and realize you’re getting paid $10 an hour or $50 an hour. And that’s really helpful information. Again, these are numbers that sometimes we might want to avoid because it’s like, ooh, that sounds like a number I don’t want to know. But if you’re looking at finding your ideal numbers and making things better, you need to understand what is happening now. 

 

Finally, how much do you need to be setting aside for taxes? You can look at, you know, your your taxes you paid for the last few years. Understand what is the obligation, that tax obligation that your business has and make sure that you understand that number as another part of your responsibilities. So those pieces, again, were: how much is it costing you to run your practice in terms of operating expenses? How much employees are costing you and how much are they bringing in? How much are you getting paid for your leadership work? And how much needs to be set aside for taxes? All of these pieces come together to create your financial picture and determine how much money is in those bank accounts and whether things feel spacious or whether things feel tight. Then once you understand where you are and some of those financial obligations that you have and the way that things are currently set up, because you can’t just snap your fingers and change your practice overnight, right? 

 

We need to understand where you are. Once you’re grounded in that, then you can start to move into understanding what’s possible and how you want things to be. Start to set a vision for where you want your group practice to go financially. Part of that is thinking about how much of your time is going into running the group practice and what your time is worth. What do you want to actually be paid for that leadership work? What is your salary or wage when it comes to being the leader of your group practice, not just a clinician working within it. But if you’re spending 10 hours a week running the group and then another 15 hours seeing your own clients and taking care of your own clinical work, how much are you going to be paid for that? Ten or probably it’s more like 15 or 20 hours a week that you’re doing of that work. What is that portion of your pay need to be? And that leads into your leadership paycheck, right? What is the paycheck that you need to be seeing coming home between that leadership work that you’re doing – and if you’re still seeing clients, part of that paycheck will also be your client paycheck – what do you need to be paid ultimately to make this worth it for you? 

 

I’ve heard from so many group practice owners that say that they’re actually getting paid less now than they did as a solo practitioner. That can be an okay place to be if you’re like in an investment stage and you’re going somewhere and there’s a vision, but that is not a good place to live. Right. We don’t want you to basically be exploiting yourself for the work that you’re doing, leading other folks by having you get paid way less than you would get paid to see a client yourself or to do some other kind of work. Next, you want to think about how much money needs to be left over at the end of the month to allow you to build buffers. Right. We don’t want money to just go down to zero every month and start over. Part of building a sustainable business – and this applies to all types of business – is having extra money that builds up. Having those buffers so that if you have a down month, if some of your clinicians have to go on leave like maternity leave or sick leave or caregiver leave, there’s still money in the bank accounts to pay everything, right? You’re not going to be in trouble if suddenly sessions drop for a couple of weeks. And with many businesses, the reality is that is where they are. They’re at a place where if they didn’t make sales for a couple of weeks, they would be done. They’d have to close their doors. And we don’t want you to be there. Right. So part of it is starting to set your goals. 

 

When you’re looking at those ideal numbers, what are the buffers you want to see in all those different bank accounts? How much money do you want to see in that payroll bank account so that you don’t have to like white knuckle it every time you run payroll? How much money do you want to see in your operating expenses? And there are guidelines for this, but it’s also personal. Again, we’re talking about your needs and your values. What are the amounts in those accounts that could be serving you really well, giving you that financial stability that most group practices do not have right now? Finally, what are your hopes and your dreams for your practice? Where do you want to go with it? Are there other things that could be requiring money that your practice should be saving for every month? Things like maybe buying a professional suite or being able to offer retreats and having money that you can put down to deposit for, you know, a retreat space to do these retreats that you’ve been dreaming of doing. Those are the things that can really feel exciting and expansive. And I know most entrepreneurs that I know – most group practice owners and many, many solo practitioners, too, you know – we don’t want to get bored. We like to do different stuff. Right. And so what is that Dream Fund look like for you and your group practice? That is money that can be put aside to move towards new and exciting and expansive things beyond what your group practice looks like today. 

 

Once you have point A, which is where you are, and point B, which is where you want to be, all of the things we just talked about in terms of your ideal paycheck, those buffers that money to be scared of in the business, then you can work with your numbers and see what needs to happen to get where you want to go. Using a cash flow projection tool can be a great way to do this, and we have a beautiful one that we’ve built that we use for this in our own business and that we use in next level work, like Money Skills for Group Practice Owners. This is going to be included. You can start to play and be curious about your numbers to see what changes, even gradual or small changes can be made to get you where you want to go. You can play with the number of clinicians that you have on staff and how many clients they see. Would you have more part time clinicians? Would you have full time clinicians? How many sessions at a minimum are you going to require as an employer? And this is also a space where you have the opportunity to be a great employer by setting an expectation for your team that’s reasonable and sustainable for them as practitioners, rather than trying to squeeze as much money out of them as you can. And this is something that I see in group practices that are not in alignment and that don’t have financial health, is they can exploit their employees. And I don’t think that’s who you want to be. I don’t think you want to be a group practice owner that’s trying to squeeze as much money out of your clinicians as you can before they burn out and leave. 

 

You have an opportunity when you really have control over your numbers, to set sustainable expectations that make people want to stay with you. So seize that opportunity. You’re also going to want to be curious about the fees that your clinicians are charging. Are they insurance based? Is there maybe an insurance company that you realize you prefer working with and that pays better and you can get off the other panels? Or do you look at switching your clinicians to be out-of-pocket and then get really curious about what their fees could be and what that could do for overall numbers, how that can get you to those ideal numbers you want to see. 

 

Policies are another piece you can be curious about if you actually started having your clinicians enforce the policies that you already have in place. And often that’s the first step. What would that do to your numbers? Or do you start charging cancellation fees because you’re not doing that at this time. And with a tool when you have different cancellation fee numbers, you can see like, okay, well, what if we charged half the cancellation fee? What would that do to our numbers? What if we had a 48-hour cancellation policy and we charge the full fee because that’s appropriate for the folks that we work with? What would that do financially? Those are all places that you can play with and that will have impact ultimately on how your machine works. 

 

You can look at your operating expenses. Is there something that you can cut? Are there places you could do things differently? Are there investments now or things that you’re paying for by default that you could cancel for now? Or things that you were planning on buying next month that you could defer till later until your numbers really support them? You can think about other offers, too. And this is something we also have built into our cash flow projection tool. Playing with questions of like, what if your clinician started running a group? What if you had workshops and what is that money coming in the door do to your overall picture? And how close does it get you to your ideal numbers? All of these things together give you the ultimate financial results of your practice on the tool. We have all of the these factors at the top: fees and number of clinicians and how many people they see and your operating expenses. This all goes into the top end, and at the bottom you see the financial results. 

 

How much money ends up being left there at the end of the month? How much money is building up for tax payments? Is that going to meet your tax obligations? How much money is available for your paycheck? Is that getting you to that ideal leadership paycheck that you need to make this work worthwhile? Are there leftover operating expense money so you can see buffers building up? Is it hitting the goals that you want to see in your buffers? Being able to play with your numbers and put them all together and be curious about them lets you really see and understand how your group practice machine works and what is possible. I love doing this work with group practice owners because it lays bare the workings of that machine. Once you can see it all come together, you can find those sustainable numbers and understand exactly what needs to happen to make your practice work. 

 

Would you like my support in making your practice sustainable, paying you and your team well for the work that you do? Our beta cohort of Money Skills for Group Practice Owners starts in June and enrollment is open now. This course is about taking you from feeling like an overworked, stressed, and underpaid group practice owner to being the confident and empowered financial leader of your group practice. Click on the links in the show notes to learn more or to book a discovery call with me so we can chat about whether the course is right for you. I’d love to connect with you about it. Thanks for listening today. 

[00:00:01] When you started your group practice, you did so with a vision. Maybe you seized an opportunity without planning to saying yes to someone who wanted to intern or work for you. Maybe you’ve always known, though, you wanted to have a group practice and you couldn’t wait to start building out your team and moving into that leadership role. Either way, you are the leader of your group practice and no one else can replace you in that role. This is also true when it comes to your financial leadership. 

 

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

 

Hello and welcome back to our special mini podcast, Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, in celebration of the beta launch of the Money Skills for Group Practice Owners course that is starting in June. Today I’m going to talk about financial leadership in your group practice. I want to start this episode with a really simple idea. You can delegate tasks, but you can’t delegate out your leadership. When you started your group practice, you did so with a vision. Maybe you seized an opportunity without planning to saying yes to someone who wanted to intern or work for you. Maybe you’ve always known, though, you wanted to have a group practice and you couldn’t wait to start building out your team and moving into that leadership role. Either way, you are the leader of your group practice and no one else can replace you in that role. This is also true when it comes to your financial leadership. 

 

I know that money is probably not your favorite part of your group practice. A love of finances is usually not why we go into school to become therapists. I see so many group practice owners happily digging into mentoring their employees or trying their hand at marketing and networking, but wanting to pretty much ignore the financial side, thinking that if they make those other things work, then the money is going to work itself out. But the bad news is, it won’t. So what many therapists do is hire a full service bookkeeper or an accounting service. And then they feel like they did what they were supposed to do. The finances are taken care of. But that is also not true. 

 

Going back to my first point, you can delegate tasks, but you can’t delegate out your leadership. And this is what I see happens when we try to think of bookkeeping as a substitute for us stepping up and learning money. You get all sorts of reports from your bookkeeper each month, and maybe they even explain them to you sometimes, but you still have no idea what they mean. Sure, all the information is one place now. That is a good thing. The task of bookkeeping is done. But you’re still as confused and disempowered as ever about your group practice finances. 

 

I know several successful business owners, including group practice owners, who, despite having built large businesses, feel like a total hot mess financially. They have bookkeepers and accountants who give them reports, but without having the knowledge and the confidence to understand what they’re seeing and to do something with the information in front of them, they can’t really make money work for them. They can’t even connect with their own success. Because when you look at the numbers, the numbers are meaningless to them. Are these good numbers? Is there money here to hire someone? Am I paying myself too much? Am I paying myself too little? This is why I don’t believe that group practice owners just need to be the CEOs of the group practices. They need to be the CFOs. What is a CFO? The CFO is a Chief Financial Officer. That’s the person who looks at the numbers deeply, understands the information in front of them, and can make strategic moves needed to reach their business goals. 

 

So what are those goals for you? Is it buffers in all of your bank accounts? So you don’t need to hold your breath when you run payroll? Is it finally being paid well? Is it having the big picture perspective on your numbers that means you don’t privately burst into tears after one of your best clinicians gives notice because you know that financially things are actually going to be okay? Those things are all possible when you build your CFO skills and confidently step into the financial leadership role that is already yours, but that you may not be fully claiming yet. So what does real financial leadership look like in group practice? It looks like many things, and that includes being able to read financial statements and understand exactly what they mean. Because we still want you to delegate tasks, and bookkeeping is a task. 

 

So I’m all for therapists trying their hand at bookkeeping to start and in Money Skills For Therapists, which focuses on solo practice. That’s very, very important. So I want you to have some knowledge of how to do bookkeeping. But as the group practice leader, quickly that’s going to be a task that you delegate to somebody else, even internally. But you need to be the one who can make meaning out of the numbers, even if you’re not doing the task of putting the numbers together. You’re the one who looks at it and understands what it is telling you. That is part of what looking like a CFO looks like. It also looks like running your practice with a vision and a plan because you know where you’re going and why. You know how many therapists you ultimately want to have on your team. You know what their fees are going to be. You know the wages or the fee split that you’re going to have with them. You know how many clients you want them to be seeing each week. You know what your monthly overhead is going to look like. And you know what you can start spending money on when you hit different milestones. 

 

When you have that perspective of where you’re going, you understand, okay, when I get to this point, I’m going to give myself this raise. When I get to this point, we’re going to be able to have that second office location that we want. You can actually see where you’re going and what can happen when you hit those different points. It looks like having buffers in all the right places so you can weather the natural ups and downs of business without worrying about running out of money. And this is really, really important. And it’s a step that a lot of people like to skip, but that is part of being the CFO is having those beautiful buffers to alleviate your anxiety. It looks like having a good regular CEO and CFO paycheck, so you’re paid well for the work that you do and know that you can keep receiving that paycheck even if client sessions are down for a couple of weeks or during the summer or during the winter holidays, because you’ve set up money to make sure that that paycheck keeps coming. It means having the ability to zoom out and see the big picture in your business so you don’t get stuck in the weeds with your numbers. 

 

You understand what numbers are important. You understand how to put them in perspective, and you don’t get caught up in the little decisions or the little details anymore. All of this together will give you a sense of safety and stability. It will let you feel proud of running a group that really reflects your values. You’re going to feel less like you’re playing a game of whack a mole and more like the empowered CEO and CFO, that financial leader of your group practice, with a confidence and a paycheck to reflect the leadership and vision you bring to the table every day. This practice was born out of your brilliance and your vision, and you want to enjoy it rather than dipping in and out of owner’s remorse, wondering if you made a huge mistake. 

 

You could forevermore pay a full service accounting firm 600 to 800 bucks a month, which is 7200 or 9600 a year, or a fractional CFO for those of you with bigger practices, fractional CFOs, people who can come in and try to bring this financial expertise to you, charge 3000 to $5000 a month. Seriously. And even with that, you can still feel confused and disempowered about your group practice finances. Or you can join me in Money Skills for Group Practice Owners and do the work that’s going to allow you to deeply understand your numbers. So when your just-does-your-books bookkeeper or team member shows you a report, you know exactly what you’re looking at, what the numbers are telling you, and what strategic actions need to happen to keep you on track with your financial and your practice goals. It’s your business and your vision. 

 

No one can steer the ship better than you can. So it’s time to learn the skills to step confidently into your CFO role and lead your practice with intention and clarity. Would you like my support in confidently owning your financial leadership role? Our beta cohort of Money Skills for Group Practice Owners starts in June and enrollment is open now. The course is about taking you from feeling like an overworked, stressed, and underpaid group practice owner to being the confident and empowered financial leader of your group practice. You can click on the links in the show notes to learn more or to book a discovery call with me to chat about whether the course is right for you. I’d love to connect with you about it. Thanks for listening today. 

 

Tiffany [00:00:04] It’s not just about raising your fees and earning more money. It’s about showing up as a different human in the world, a different clinician, but also a different mom, a different spouse, a different friend, a different son or daughter. You have to be different to do this work. 

Linzy [00:00:28] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host Linzy Bonham therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today we have our final episode of Season five. That time has come and I’m really excited that my guest for today is Tiffany McLain. You may know Tiffany as a clinical strategist for therapists in private practice. Her mantra is “Full fees are the new black”. Through her program, Lean In Make Bank Academy, she helps therapists ethically earn significantly more per month while seeing fewer clients and doing better clinical work. Tiffany I think of her as the the fee person in our space, like she really owns this space and she’s been teaching Lean In Make Bank since 2016? 17? Is back when I first connected with her. Today, Tiffany and I get into why fees and money can be such a conflicted kind of a sometimes a tortured area for therapists, something that can be really hard for us to talk about. We talk about people literally fighting on her ads and arguing and winning each other over on her Facebook ads. If you see her Facebook ads go by, you can click on the comments, it’s the most dramatic comment section I’ve seen on Facebook ads in our space, in like the therapy health practitioner space. And I think the reason of that is fees are just such a loaded, loaded topic and people, you know, get so entrenched in to our beliefs about fees and what is fair and what is ethical and what is right and like what the role of therapy supposed to be. You know, folks have a lot to say. And I think, you know, Tiffany and I get in to today where a lot of that messaging has come from for us, we talk about being helpers and how that contributes to our role. And we also actually get into the topic of staying small, having folks in our life wanting us to be small, but also how sometimes maybe we can be invested in our clients staying small when we don’t do our own work around setting boundaries. Really enjoyable conversation with Tiffany. I always love talking with her. Here is Tiffany McLain. So, Tiffany, welcome back to the podcast. 

Tiffany [00:03:14] Thank you. I am happy to be here. And folks who are listening, Linzy and I talk all the time. So this is going to be like, kind of podcast, kind of Linzy and I talking all the time. 

Linzy [00:03:23] But we did just like stop talking. We were like, okay, we okay, well you have to like, do the thing. So this is this is not a conversation about our children. This is not a conversation about interior decorating. We’re going to talk about money. Okay. 

Tiffany [00:03:35] Good. I’m ready. 

Linzy [00:03:36] So, Tiffany, as I just mentioned, no pressure, but this is our season ender. Season closer. For whatever season I’m on. I think it’s season five now. And so I’m really excited to have you here and have you back because you are on season one and it’s been a minute. 

Tiffany [00:03:48] I can’t believe it was so long ago that I was here. 

Linzy [00:03:51] The seasons are pretty short. 

Tiffany [00:03:53] This is good, consistent work. Way to go on your podcast. 

Linzy [00:03:56] Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it’s actually I’m loving it. I’m loving it. I should have done this years ago. So Tiffany, folks probably know who you are, but do you want to, like, tell them a little bit, if they haven’t heard from you or heard of you somehow, what would be your like your quick intro? Who’s Tiffany McLain? What do you do? Who are you? 

Tiffany [00:04:13] Holy mackerel. I help therapists ethically raise their fees so they can have more money while seeing fewer clients and doing better clinical work. This is controversial. Therapist, if you’re listening, you might be freaking out, but that’s what I do. I really advocate on behalf of the therapists, while you therapists and clinicians are advocating on behalf of your client. That’s my job. 

Linzy [00:04:36] Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yes. And I will say you might have seen Tiffany’s ads go by because I feel like your your ads are everywhere. We were just talking about your ads. Christelle, my operations manager, actually, she’s come up with a very bold International Women’s Day. And I was like, This is really bold. She was like, Well, I was looking at what Tiffany does, and I was like, Well, Tiffany is Tiffany. You’ve got some really great ads out there. So folks have probably seen those go by. And always interesting discussion on your ads, too. I feel like you have ads where people fight on your ads. 

Tiffany [00:05:05] People really fight and people attack each other, they attack my appearance, but also therapists come on and advocate for each other, too. There are really thoughtful conversations, even transformations happening in the comments of the ads, which I have never seen before in other people’s ads. So I feel really excited, and proud of that. 

Linzy [00:05:24] So so with this, like, what do you think that’s about? Like, what is it about this topic that is so, I mean, specifically around fees, because like I also I teach – we’re both in the money space – but I’m teaching like skills and mindset and like but you are talking directly about fees and there’s something that is so- can be so activating about that for people. What do you think this is about? Why is this so loaded for us? 

Tiffany [00:05:49] I have spent, as you know, a lot of time thinking about this. And over the years I have found that there are three factors that contribute to it being so hard for us therapists to charge fees or look at fees or even talk about the exchange of money between us and our clients. There was actually a psychologist, her name was Ella Lasky back in the 1980s, and she did a survey of psychoanalysts actually, and she was looking at this difficulty with money. And one of the things she found, especially for women and I would also say people of color or people from marginalized communities. But all therapists, regardless of that, number one, serve as the helper, the role of helper in their family of origin. She found that they are more likely than their siblings to have been the one to mediate arguments. We are highly attuned to what was happening with the other family members and make sure that everybody was being taken care of, often to the neglect of their own emotional needs, wants, and desires. So if you’re a therapist, that was likely the role you served. You’re nodding, Linzy, Is this familiar to you in your business? 

Linzy [00:06:52] Absolutely, yes. I think most therapists were therapists long before we actually became trained and licensed. That’s right. That’s that’s the role that we often played, you know, in some capacity, like whether it’s peacemaker or attuner or, you know, we already had that read on everybody’s emotions and we’re making sure that everybody was okay long before we actually went into the field. 

Tiffany [00:07:14] That, okay, so then we take that right now and then we go into a wider society again, back to especially if you’re from a marginalized background, but even if you’re from a working class background for generations. So first in your family of origin, you’re the helper who’s putting aside her needs for other people. Then you go into a wider society that’s telling you you don’t actually deserve to make as much money as that person over there, Right? Like the quintessential person who is allowed to make money in our society is not going to likely be you, who’s ever listening to this podcast. And so we’re told that we need to be giving back first, making sure everything is- everybody’s taking care of, making sure that we’re helping our community, being accessible. Society is telling us then that we need to be putting our needs second again and making sure everyone else is taken care of so we get it in our family of origin. Then it’s reinforced by a wider society. And then of course we go into the field of psychology or social work. Yeah, well then it’s the echo chamber reinforcing these very same ideas. So again, you’ll hear from professors or colleagues, supervisors, things like, I didn’t enter this field to make money. Your job is to be accessible. It’s unethical to be charging fees that so that some people in the world can’t afford you. So you get in your family of origin, larger society, and then you go to the field of psychology where it’s just battered at you. And so, of course it’s hard! Therapists come out of this condition to not want to think about money and not want to talk about money. Not not even allowed to have the desire for money. And then they say, Now do I say charge premium fees at all? 

Linzy [00:08:43] Yeah. So there’s like three layers of conditioning right there. You know, family origin, societal position, and then the actual field itself. That just weighs down on us. 

Tiffany [00:08:58] Absolutely. 

Linzy [00:08:59] Right. Yes. Yeah, that absolutely resonates with me. As you were talking, I was like, I have definitely talked about all these things. So I think you and I like we are we’re preaching from the same songbook, you know, for people who are listening. Then it’s like if they’ve gotten past the point of, you know, because we’re talking with this hurdle of being able to even say, I need money, I want money, like, I want to be okay. When people have started to do some of that work and they’re starting to think about like, okay, maybe my fee does need to be different than what it is. Often I think people know when it’s not working right, and that’s what I see in money skills so often. It’s like it’s like if you are having a hard time paying your bills at home, there’s no savings for the future. We often know that pain point of like, it’s not working, right? So when we’re starting to think about how to make it work and we’re starting to think about a fee, how do we actually figure out what a fair fee even is, trying to balance our values and our needs? 

Tiffany [00:09:54] Yeah, I love that. So I love also that you highlighted this pain point. So therapists, I spoke a few weeks ago with a social media manager who works with therapists who’s not in the field, and she was telling me about what she did and she said- What did she say- I said, I asked her, why did you choose to work with therapists, given that this is not you know, you’re not a therapist? And she said something like, All the reasons she loved working with therapists, but then she said therapists something like They take more than any other professional I’ve ever met. They just put up they put up with more. And I was like, Oh, what do you mean? And she’s like, The therapist will just scrimp and save and take. They’ll take so much shit. Folks, before they realize like, Oh, maybe something needs to change now. Opened my eyes because I’m a therapist and I know that. But then again, to hear it from an outside professional was like, Wow, that’s right. And so I love, Linzy, that you pointed out. It takes a lot for a therapist to start recognizing, Oh, something needs to change with money. Like, I’m not able to save anything for the future or I can’t even pay my bills. Like when it gets that extreme, then sometimes therapists start having some alerts go off. Oh oh. So when that happens, the first thing I recommend, I recommend three steps. The first thing I recommend is they make space for the feelings. Because when you’re in a space where you’re really trying to help people and you’ve done everything right according to what you’ve been told, and then you’re still not even able to pay your bills or you’re not taking lunch breaks because you’re just sitting back to back to back clients. Once you start acknowledging that, it can be very shameful. Yeah, there might be guilt or anxiety about recognizing that you might want to do something different. It’s just- there’s so many feelings involved. And so before we do anything, I encourage therapists to acknowledge and make space for all of the feelings that arise in this situation. 

Linzy [00:11:45] Yeah. 

Tiffany [00:11:45] The second thing, the feelings don’t go away, folks, also keep doing that for the rest of these two or three steps, right? Number two, therapists have to get into reality and therapists, when it comes to money – you know this because you work with therapists around money – they avoid it. You’ve got to get real about what you need. We have a calculator. We can link to that in the show. People can go to Lean In Make Bank dot com forward slash fee calculator and we actually walk therapists through, step by step, their monthly expenses, their dream expenses. So not just like, here’s what I need to get by and suffer, but also what I need for clinical supervision. What do I need to be able to have enough time to write that book I want to write? What do I need to take a vacation every quarter for a week, right, the dream along with the needs. And then we also have therapists go through: in your ideal world where you have energy to show up, where you’re excited to do the work you want to do, how many people are you actually seeing a day? How many days are you actually working a week? So we have people do all of that work in this calculator and then we spit out: here is the fee you need to be charging if you want to have a life that really allows you to show up fully for yourself and your clients and whatever relationships you value. That’s number two. The third step. Once you do that, it’s phone a friend, you gotta phone a friend because if you do that calculator right, you’re going to have a large discrepancy likely between what you’re currently charging. Maybe that’s a $70 you’re taking from an insurance panel or you’re doing 125 or maybe even charge like 180. But that’s like one person and the rest pay like 110. Right. There is likely going to be a large discrepancy between what you need and where you’re currently at. And in that moment, I encourage you to call someone. It doesn’t have to be a therapist. Maybe even I’d encourage it not to be a therapist. 

Linzy [00:13:31] Yes. 

Tiffany [00:13:34] Someone who wants you to do well, someone who is excited by the possibility of you earning more, and have more luxury, and having more joy and more financial freedom. Call that person and walk through the results of your calculator and what the fee came out to be and let them know how you’re feeling at this point. 

Linzy [00:13:52] You know, it’s so interesting, Tiffany, when you say that, and I don’t know if this is like if our listeners are going to have this response, too, but I was thinking about I don’t know if everybody has that person. Like, I think when you’ve been the helper, I mean, you should have that person. That’s the next step: if you don’t know that person, go make that friend. Go to a café and find that friend. Because I think when you have played that helper role, so like when you’re really entrenched in it, like when you really live and breathe it and when that’s who you are in your family and that’s who you are in your work, that’s often also who you are in your friend group. And I think you and I have both, you know, I know we have because we’ve talked about this over the years, had, you know, these experiences where we do have to kind of shift and find those people because we have actually built relationships where people are like, well, unconsciously, I actually feel more comfortable when you stay small. And so I am actually going to probably not validate these things and not want you to have luxury because there’s something about that that’s serving me. And so I’m just thinking about that, just like how much this conditioning generalizes into our life and makes it hard to make these changes because, you know, it makes you think about kind of like family of origin, like there’s a metaphor kind of about family therapy. I do not do family therapy, by the way, if people listening, you’re going to be like, Oh, she’s butchering it. But there’s kind of a metaphor of like a family, like a mobile, and when one person tries to move, everybody else also shifts and tries to keep you in that fixed position because it’s like, no, no, no, this is your role, this is who you are. And I think that happens, too, in the other relationships that we build, right? Like folks try to keep us in place. So just curious what your thoughts about that. Like what what do folks do if they realize that that’s a case? Or like, what are your thoughts on all of this, these relationships that we build in these patterns sometimes? 

Tiffany [00:15:36]  I love that you bring that up. It’s super on point. You’ve talked- we’ve talked about it amongst each other. I’ll say two things. I think the lack of community is one of the things that motivated me to start my program because I was wanting to talk about fees, understand what was going on interpersonally. And I looked around and the messaging I got was, don’t charge, it’s scary. Don’t talk about money. From even my supervisors. Everywhere I looked, I got that. 

Linzy [00:16:03] Yes. 

Tiffany [00:16:03] And so, you know, being a helper, I’m like, I’m just going help myself. I’m going to create a whole entire business where therapists do not have to be alone with these kinds of conversations. 

Linzy [00:16:12] Yes, yes, yes. 

Tiffany [00:16:13] I think that’s the first thing. So if if this is something, if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, I don’t have anyone, come to work with us because we have a whole lot of people who have to learn to have these conversations in an honest, powerful, clinically appropriate way. The second thing that came to mind is, you know, sometimes in the comments – talking about the ads I put out there for the business or the program – sometimes therapists say, well, just raise your fees. What’s the problem? Hmm. Because the exact thing you’re talking about, Linzy, that’s the problem. Our fees are a projection. I like to talk about money as a canvas. Right? So we can we can project all of our thoughts, feelings, anxieties, and all of our existing patterns. We play out in money. So raising our fee often isn’t just about raising our fee, it’s about addressing these relationships. You’re talking about, Linzy, where we are the caretakers, we sacrifice ourselves. Other people have come to rely and depend on us for that. And if we shift, whether it’s with our clients or our spouses or our family, it’s disruptive to everyone around us. And without having a clear community, step by step system, a place with people and a container – we have a yearlong container. So a container where, as you make these shifts, you can come back for help as other people and things in your life start to shift. Yeah, it’s not just about raising your fees and earning more money. It’s about showing up as a different human in the world, a different clinician, but also a different mom, a different spouse, a different friend, a different son or daughter. You have to be different to do this work.  

Linzy [00:17:50] That’s so true. And that’s so profound. And I mean, it makes me think about when I found you, going back, where are we now? We’re in 2023. Would have been in 2017 that I found you. I was so hungry for that community. And to be with people who are like, Let’s be therapists. Also, let’s open our gifts and take up space and like, talk about, you know, for me, I’m like, let’s talk about money. Yeah, that’s something you and I shared back then. I flew across the continent to go be with those people. And that’s still my community of peers, like, you know, I’m planning a trip to San Francisco this year because it’s like you’re in San Francisco, Annie Wright’s in San Francisco, like, Megan’s just a little bit north. Meagan Megginson. Like these people that I connected with, through being connected with you, have become my peers who have cheered me on and like, taken up space with me, right? Because I think a lot of my – literally all of my peers – couldn’t come with me on that journey. It’s like I picked a different road and like, I think that is the power of that community. So, you know, if you’re listening and you’re hungry for this, like Tiffany’s program provides that. You know, if you’re looking more for the skill side of things. My program provides that, like, get with your people because it does take months and months and years of work to undo, you know, this conditioning that that we’ve received family of origin, society, and in our, you know, professional training. Like it really is deep ongoing work that is so much easier when you’re walking alongside people who are doing it as well. 

Tiffany [00:19:16] Yeah, I haven’t felt – I don’t know if you felt that – I felt a little grief as you were talking because there was a lot of grief as well. To say goodbye to these patterns often means saying goodbye to relationships because we’re changing and it’s intolerable to other people. So even those kinds of things. This is why – back to the original question of why is it so hard to talk about? Because often shifting the way as we relate to money and our desire and ourselves taking up space, like you said, means there are people who no longer want to be in relationship with us. And that’s that’s a big change. And it’s often there’s often a lot of mourning involved, for sure. 

Linzy [00:19:51] Yeah. And I will say too, there’s people that we no longer want to be in relationship with either because they don’t want us to be this new version of ourselves. 

Tiffany [00:19:59] Correct. 

Linzy [00:19:59] And I’ve I’ve had those kinds of discords over the last few years where it’s like every time I hang out with this person, I feel small again, right? Or I feel bad or I feel like I should be hiding my success. And then it’s like, right, I actually I don’t feel that way. So I need to make a choice. Yes. So no longer. And yeah, there is a lot of grief there. Absolutely. So thinking about fees, like I know some some folks listened to this podcast and it may be you listen to struggle with scarcity and this feeling like there isn’t enough- there aren’t enough clients, like maybe their caseload is not full and they see those empty spaces on their caseload. I’m reading their thought bubble right now, and I think one of the thoughts in that thought bubble would be like, Why would I even think about raising my fee if I can’t fill my caseload at the more affordable fee that I have right now? Like, isn’t that kind of putting like the carriage before the horse? Why would they think about raising their fee if they’re still trying to fill their practice or get the referrals that they haven’t been able to get yet? 

Tiffany [00:20:57] Yeah, it’s so counterintuitive. It’s so counterintuitive to be charging $150 per session and then have someone come tell you, actually, you should be charging based on your own calculations. Yeah, $180 per session. So let’s work on raising those fees with your current clients and then a new client to call. What, Like, it’s just. It’s almost unthinkable. And on the other side of things, and the years I’ve been running this program, one of the most difficult things that I see therapists going through is when they did the marketing first and got an entire caseload of people at a fee that was too low. And now they’re realizing, Oh, I’m seeing – I really hope it’s not 40, but it could be – 40 people a week. But let’s say it’s even 25 or 30 people a week, and they’re still overwhelmed. More overwhelmed. Are totally burned out, resentful, feel so relieved when a client cancels. They aren’t enforcing the cancellation policy. Aren’t going on vacation. They’re now in a place where they feel trapped by the caseload they worked so hard to build, and they’re still nowhere near being able to pay their bills or pay off their loans or save for retirement, life insurance. And heaven forbid, you know, sometimes therapists, often, if they’re in a romantic relationship, married, let’s say, they kind of put off the reality of these things because they have a spouse. 

Linzy [00:22:17] Yes. 

Tiffany [00:22:17] We’ve had people in our program for whom their spouse has passed away or a health condition has happened and suddenly they’re the primary breadwinner. So really, it’s- therapists are avoiding taking these things seriously. It can put us in a difficult position. So therapists will come to us and say, I really- I realize I need to raise my fees. I can’t do this anymore. I just get goose bumps. But I don’t know how to raise fees now with these 25 people who I’m already working with, I wish I could just start with new fees, but I don’t even have room to take anyone new, much less market, much less do anything else I need to do to take care of myself, so I- we can help people. Those are those are most of the people come into our program. The people who are sometimes luckier are the folks who join the program. Maybe. Maybe they only have five or ten folks. Then they can raise their fees with those five or ten folks. And guess what? They’re now maybe they are only seeing five folks, but they’re charging 200 per hour, which gives them enough income to then have time to understand how to really market to clients who can afford the premium fees and also who they have to be as a therapist to have a conversation with somebody such that that client is confident to say, Yeah, I want to pay this therapist, I’m going to make a sacrifice to pay this therapist $200 because I truly believe they can help me. 

Linzy [00:23:33] Mm hmm. 

Tiffany [00:23:34] If a therapist is seeing 28 clients, burnt out, overwhelmed, frustrated, stressed, financially insecure, and someone calls them on the phone. All of that is conveyed. 

Linzy [00:23:44] Yes. 

Tiffany [00:23:44] All of that comes through in those no matter what marketing you’re doing. Yeah. You’re unconsciously communicating. Please, I can’t take anymore. That’s a new client. And the clients are even saying right now they feel it. 

Linzy [00:23:55] Right? Yeah. Yeah. So, like, I mean, part of what I’m hearing here is, like, if you can build a machine that works in the first place, like build a practice that’s actually going to meet your needs. Because when we do build those practices at like super low fees. And I remember those days. I don’t remember – I don’t know if you ever went through this when you were building your practice – but I remember those days where it’s like, Will you be my client? Or You’ll be my client? Okay, you have a problem I’ve never dealt with before. That’s fine. I can learn how to do, you know, like I’ll look up how to do gender affirmation. Like, I’m, like, looking up stuff that is, like, so not in my, like, clinical realm because it’s just like this- there’s desperation that can happen there, right? And that’s when we’re setting our fees from that place. We can build a practice where the math will never work, the math will never work. And when you’re saying, like you said, 40 and then you said only 20 or 30, I’m like, even that makes you want to lie on the floor and cry like, that’s so, so much emotional labor. Like, it’s so much profound work that you are doing. I think it’s- there’s very few therapists who can thrive at that level of caseload. And those who do tend to be people who have super superhuman levels of energy. And maybe you could like take up rowing or something instead, you know, like they could possibly channel some of that energy to a hobby. But yeah, when you build it so it doesn’t work, you’re never going to be okay. I love this piece and I feel like this is a piece that I’ve heard you talk about more and more over the last few years of like the clinical excellence part of like when you charge a fee that makes you have to show up differently, like you’re actually a better clinician. Can you speak more to that or talk about some examples of what that has looked like for your students? 

Tiffany [00:25:32] I certainly can. I’m going to just be talking about our Facebook ads all day long because there’s so much learning that happens there. There was a therapist who came on, This is disgraceful, he said about the ads and he said, I make 400,000 and I take insurance. First of all, someone checked. They’re like, there’s no way that math adds up. 

Linzy [00:25:47] Awful math. Okay. Yeah. 

Tiffany [00:25:49] But so when asked how many people are you seeing. So this conversation is going back and forth. And he said something like 40 clients a week. So and I think and someone added up like you, you saw 40 clients a week for 52 weeks. With this insurance rate, you’re still not making enough, so you take no time off. So we can all see in those egregious examples. Yeah, if you are seeing 25 or 30 people a week, you’re not making enough money yourself. You’re not examining your own needs, the boundaries that you would have to take on to be able to have those conversations to actually make sure you’re advocating for your needs. As much as you want to believe you’re helping your clients do that in their own life, I assert that you actually are missing something and you can’t fully help your client do a thing that you’ve never been willing or able to do in your own life. As therapists start taking the risk to see what they really need to be charging, feel all – I’m getting goose bumps again – feel all the loss and mourning and fear that comes with making that change in their own life. They start shifting in their clinical work, are being able to challenge their own clients more, really being able to go to emotionally vulnerable places when their clients are struggling with setting boundaries or making changes, they’re able to show up more fully in a way that they’re never able to do. Therapist Listening, you’re not actually able to show up fully when you’re cutting out this whole part of your own unconscious process and saying, I’m not going to look at those boundaries for my own needs in this fundamental way. 

Linzy [00:27:26] Totally. Yeah. And it makes me think about how even just on a very almost obvious level, when we’re working in such a way that we can go home and have the energy to have like a great date with our partner or have some great sex or go away to a spa with friends. Like we show up the next day with a spark, right? Like that lights us up as humans, and then we’re actually maybe practicing what we preach a little bit, right? And like those days where it’s just like you have actually, like, lived life and you’re actually sometimes able to clinically even bring that in and like, talk about something that suddenly has real meaning because you have been applying it in your life, right? Or you have had, you know, an experience. You’re not telling somebody what to do. Well, you know, like working eight clinical hours a day, going home, bingeing on Cheetos. Yeah, passing out, right, like that never feels good when we’re out of alignment. And so even from that direct level, like, we all know that we do better clinical work when we’re happy. 

Tiffany [00:28:26] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:28:27] Right. And when we’re actually living life like there’s so much integrity there. But I also love this whole piece, you know, and being friends with you. Over the years, I’ve become more acquainted with psychoanalytic language because you and I live – we’re in different therapy. towers – I live in the like trauma EMDR parts work tower, and you’re in the psychoanalytic tower. But, like, yeah, all of these disowned things, right? Like, if we’re not even willing to think about taking a risk and think about our own needs and have hard conversations, yeah, how can we really be authentically helping our clients do that work? And how can we really actually understand what we’re asking them to do when we are coaching them to do those same things? 

Tiffany [00:29:03] And absolutely 100%. There’s also something about the projections, Speaking of the kind of the psychoanalytic world and other modalities as well. When therapists say – I’m in a conversation, I have email conversations. If you will email me, I’ll probably email you back. So I’m having this along, over the period of a week, conversation with a therapist who’s saying she’s not in the program. She’s like, I could never raise fees with existing clients and we’re going back and forth about it. And even that, I haven’t asked her this yet. I may or may not. But the assertion, if you’re out there listening to this podcast and you said I can, you’re thinking I can never do it, I can never raise fees more than five or $10. My hunch is there’s a lot of your own over-identification, your own projections. You’re basing that on your own life, not the actual lived experience of the person sitting across from you. And even the even in that statement, I could never raise fees or I have to be accessible. You’re already cutting off the potential of a person across from you. You’re cutting off the possibility that they could find other ways to make money, that they may already have money somewhere, that they can actually grow and change and make a different professional choice so that they can afford to pay more in therapy where we’re limiting them because of our own fears, anxieties, and projections lately about relationships, where we’re playing in our own family avoidance. Now we’ve brought them here and we’re playing them out with our clients as well. 

Linzy [00:30:34] Spot on. Spot on, Tiffany McLain. As usual. Like I- the thing that that makes you think about too. An adjacent piece to that is like we really are in that way treating our clients like victims. 

Tiffany [00:30:46] Yes. 

Linzy [00:30:46] It’s like do you actually believe that your clients can solve problems, grow, change? And I’ve talked about this with my students before because I’ll even see this come up in money skills where people are like, well, I can’t come to calls ever because I have a client on Tuesday at 1:00 and I’m like, okay, well, the client, have you asked them about changing times? Like, you know. But it’s like in that, here’s the belief, the belief is my client is so inflexible, they have no other availability. They’re so tied to this specific time with me that it would be damaging to our relationship for them to realize that I have other things that I do that might come into this time. Like it’s such a limited view of your client. And like, what I try to remind my students of is like, your client actually might be relieved. They might actually have been hoping to see you at four, but they think that one’s the only time you have available, right? There might be a different day that works better for them anyways. Right. We make such limited stories and I think so much of that is as therapists we sit with our clients, like in their vulnerability, in their trauma, in their shame, like we are experiencing such specific parts of them and we don’t see them when they’re like kicking ass and getting a raise at work or when they’re like really good at board games, or when they tell a really funny joke and everybody at the table laughs. Like, we don’t see those moments in their life where they’re like shining and feeling strong because that’s not what generally the content that we’re talking to them about. But they have those parts. And if we don’t acknowledge that our clients can solve problems and grow and change and as you say, even make like big career shifts and take up more space in their own life, there’s an inherent limitation to the work that we’re doing with them because maybe, maybe Tiffany, part of us wants them to stay small. 

Tiffany [00:32:25] Yeah, wholly. Okay, let’s stop. Let’s pause on this for a minute. Wow. How can you wax philosophical about that for another second? 

Linzy [00:32:36] Well, I think, you know, okay, this is a new idea. So we’re going to talk it out. But I do think that when we. When we’re really married to this idea of like, people really need me. They need me to solve these problems. We are invested in them not changing and growing, right? Like, you know, another language around it I think would be codependency. want to be needed. And unconsciously we might be committed to the idea that they shouldn’t change and grow, that we you know, this is what makes us feel comfortable. This is the role we’re comfortable playing. And if our role is helper, then, and if we can’t imagine ourselves being in any other role, I think unconsciously we’re going to put other people in our life into the role of being helped. Right? The dependent we are. And if We are so committed to that role of helper and we cannot do the work to step outside of it and to expand and be excited about being other things in our world. I do wonder if that is going to contribute to relationships where we don’t want our clients to go away and we don’t want our clients to have a breakthrough and graduate from therapy and maybe even do work that we haven’t been willing to do on ourselves yet. 

Tiffany [00:33:46] Wow. As you’re talking, this is fascinating. This is wild. You’re making me think about the students who come into our program. Often when therapists come into our program, they are seeing their own therapist on a sliding scale. Yes. Yes. And one of the changes that a lot of them are making to their sometimes a lot of a lot of grief around it, sometimes relief, is they end up finding a new therapist who charges more. And when therapists start talking to their own sliding scale therapist about the changes they’re making in their own practice, often their therapists, sometimes they’re encouraging. And that’s great. Often they’re encouraging them to keep their fees low, stay at their agency jobs, don’t go into private practice. So this phenomenon you’re talking about, I was, as you’re talking, I was thinking, is that really true? What therapist would- yes, therapists literally, to each other, discourage them from making changes in their life that would improve their own financial situation. I would encourage our listeners to really take some time to think clearly about whether this dynamic may be going on, whether this is going on with your own clients and patients, folks. Yes. 

Linzy [00:34:55] Yeah, absolutely. Because I think too, you know, an adjacent piece here is scarcity, right? So when we have fear of like, I won’t find more clients, there is going to be parts of us that are invested in our clients just sticking around for years. Right. And as a clinician, something I used to say to my clients, it’s like my job is to get you out the door. Mm hmm. I want you to leave. I like you a lot. And also, I’m successful when you don’t need me anymore. Right. And I think I would have that conversation openly because I wanted to make sure that we were not fostering a dependance. Right? That, like, we had the goal of them going. And I do. You know, that’s also a value that I have. And I don’t know how you feel about the work you do, but I actually have that value too, in the work, the money skills work that I do. Right. Like, this is why I don’t offer endless coaching and like recurring programs, even though I have folks that I love to work with and I know who would like to work with me on a repeating basis, like I want to give you the skills that you jump out of the nest and you saw a way and I’m like, buh bye! Right? Like, I want other people to also be big. But I think it’s too, doing the work on myself and being okay with myself, taking up space and doing continued work to keep pushing those growing edges out further and further. That allows me to want my students to even grow beyond what I have accomplished. Yeah, but it’s, you know, there’s there’s work that has happened there. I’m curious, like, how do you do you have a relationship to that piece? 

Tiffany [00:36:20] I’m the opposite cause I’m psychoanalytic. So I’m like, I want to see my analyst two times a week at $325 for the rest of my life or hers, rest of her life, when she’s much older than me and not the rest of my life. Yeah, you’re going to have a problem. And that may change, actually. I’m sure as things change, I will leave her, but I don’t want even imagine it. So it’s definitely a different modality. 

Linzy [00:36:41] Just a different modality, Yeah. 

Tiffany [00:36:42] Thinking about even like currently I offer I don’t offer a forever program. Yeah, but seeing I’m thinking about offering something that goes on until I’m ready, like you said, to grow and change because it’s so hard to find continued community that is doing this work in this deep way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I often have therapists say this: in this program was the only place I found a community that is doing this. And in fact, I went into the limb community today. It’s in the mighty network. And I saw Texas live meet up, California zoom meeting. It was even seeing them. They are continuing on their own. And if there’s a way that I can continue to create a container that folks can continue to do this work, I haven’t come up with it. I don’t know if I can, but if I could, I would. 

Linzy [00:37:26] Well, and that is one of your superpowers for sure, is community building, like creating the space where folks can build community. I think like you are. You’re the best, Tiffany, I think in our space, I think that you are the best of that. So I think I also to give credit where credit is very, very due. I know you’re very, very good at that, at fostering those spaces for folks to make those connections. 

Tiffany [00:37:48] Thank you for saying that. And I think I’ve still, you know, this, Linzy, I have a son in preschool now and I’m like, I don’t know how to bust into this community. How do I make friends? So really, I do think that there’s a a creating a- continuing to create a space that I want and I can do it here and help other people do it as well. And therapists, it’s very difficult for us to have a space where we can not only feel supported and seen, but give and take critical feedback to help us grow. That’s a that is a thing that I really emphasize and that I’ve really worked on cultivating. Just like I want my therapist to do with your clients, folks, I want to be able to do it with each other. Colleagues.

Linzy [00:38:28] Have hard conversations.

Tiffany [00:38:29] Yeah. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:38:32] Tiffany, Tiffany, this has been really wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me again on the podcast today. If folks want to find you, if they haven’t already, where is the best place for them to connect with you? 

Tiffany [00:38:46] I’ll get folks to places because you’re listening to a podcast right now. I encourage you to search the money sessions wherever you listen to podcasts. I no longer create that podcast, but there are something like 80 episodes where you can hear therapists literally having these conversations that Linzy and I are talking about how they implemented these things in their own practices and the difficulty of it and the challenge and the other side of it. You can go hear those stories today, and if you are in the place, we’re saying, I hear you where you are saying, I think I want to take the step, but I’m not sure. I encourage folks to check out our free workshop. You can go to Lean In Make Bank dot com forward slash workshop, and you can check out that workshop there. 

Linzy [00:39:33] Awesome. Thank you, Tiffany. 

Tiffany [00:39:36] Thanks. 

Linzy [00:39:50] Something that I appreciate so much about Tiffany. And I was thinking about it, you know, before we recorded it. You know, as Tiffany and I talked about, Christelle, my operations and marketing coordinator and I were talking about her just before Tiffany recorded, like, she’s so bold and unapologetic in her assertion that therapists deserve to be more than okay. And that does bring up kind of this conflict around her. I just really admire and love how she doesn’t waver. Like she’s just really – she’s on your side. Therapists and health practitioners who are listening, like she wants you to be more than okay. And I know that internally we can have parts of us that, you know, really get caught up and worried and guilty and unsure about what we deserve or what’s okay and accessibility. And like these are things where I think there’s lots of space to have nuanced conversation. But I just always appreciate how Tiffany, at the end of the day is just so clear that therapists deserve to be paid well for this work that we do, and then it’s valuable work, and that when we do step into a feature that meets our needs, it actually allows us to do the work better. Just so, so grateful to Tiffany for the work that she’s done in our space. And it’s, you know, you get to decide what you need, like she said, like there is no fee. You can go check out her fee calculator. It’s it’s a really great tool I think it was lean in make bank dot com slash fee calculator. Check out that tool. The number that you get is going to give you some idea of what it’s going to tell you what you need and that’s going to look different for everybody. Some people may find that that number is $300 an hour. Other folks, if you’re living in a more affordable place or if you have, you know, a joint income situation where you are not the main breadwinner in her family, it might be a much lower number and it might be a number that’s quite close to where you are. But getting clear about that number and taking those steps to actually have your needs met, it’s very powerful work. So I appreciate Tiffany coming on the podcast today. If you’d like to follow me on Instagram, you can find me @moneynutsandbolts. We post practical and emotional money content on there on the regular. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, you can use the gap between seasons now to take 3 minutes to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. You’re probably going to have several weeks to do this, but it only is going to take 3 minutes. So take 3 minutes now and leave a review of the podcast. Let folks know what episode you enjoyed or what you like about the podcast. That helps other therapists to find the podcast and be part of these conversations. Thank you so much for listening and making the podcast just the wonderful thing that it is. I love making it and I love hearing from you folks about the impact that it’s having for you. And we’ll be together soon again when Season six comes out. 

Brittany [00:00:02] I’m going to tell them during the consultation calls or whatever, like, my fee is 150. And leave it at that. 

Linzy [00:00:13] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host Linzy Bonham therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So today on the podcast, we have a coaching episode with Brittany. Brittany is a student of Money Skills. She’s about halfway through the course lessons and she is the owner and therapist behind Reflect to Grow Counseling. She loves to help her clients organize their thoughts, develop strategies to accomplish their goals, and she’s currently taking a postgrad class for fertility counseling with the intention of specializing in that field. And we do get into that in this episode. She has lots of experience working with people struggling with anxiety, LGBTQIA+ exploration, and perfectionism. And today in our conversation, Brittany and I got into a topic that I think so many therapists can relate to, which is feeling guilt at her fee. So Brittany and I talk about how she feels guilt charging her full fee, which is she’s aiming to charge a fee of 150 and all the obstacles that come up to that. And Brittany has identified that she needs to have at least half of her caseload on out of pocket at 150. She’s able to keep the other half at insurance and sliding scale, which is important to her. But is finding it’s very difficult to actually command that fee and and set that fee with people. And so we get today into some of the money stories underneath, that are some pieces about, you know, valuing our work. And if you’re a therapist who struggles to charge a fee or has struggled, there’s lots in this episode today, we kind of take a few different paths over the course of the episode. As the conversation unfolds, we end up in a nice, practical place. Here is my coaching episode with Brittany. So, Brittany, welcome to the podcast. 

Brittany [00:02:29] Thank you. It’s great to be here. 

Linzy [00:02:31] Yeah, it’s great to have you here. So you Brittany, you’ve worked kind of through like half way of Money Skills at this point, is that- just to give folks a sense of where you’re at? 

Brittany [00:02:40] Yes, I’m still working my way through. 

Linzy [00:02:43] Yes. Okay. So you’ve got some like you’ve done some kind of mindset work already, a little bit with the course, but you’re still building out systems and stuff like that. 

Brittany [00:02:52] Yes, exactly.  

Linzy [00:02:54] Okay. So for our time together today, Brittany, what did you want to get support on? 

Brittany [00:03:01] I would like to talk some more about the idea of charging full private pay fees and the guilt that I feel around that. And I know that’s a big topic in private practice industry these days. I see it a lot. 

Linzy [00:03:20] Oh, yes. 

Brittany [00:03:20] But it doesn’t do anything- I still feel immense guilt. So I kind of wanted to kind of explore that with you a little bit and see it ways to overcome it. 

Linzy [00:03:29] Okay. Okay. So to give me and the folks listening a sense like what is your full fee that you’re trying to charge. 

Brittany [00:03:36] 150 for 45 minutes sessions. 

Linzy [00:03:39] 150 for 45 minutes. Okay. And where are you at in terms of what most folks are paying? 

Brittany [00:03:45] So I take insurance. So it’s a majority of my caseload is insurance pays. And then I do have a few who are sliding scale for different reasons. And I have very few. Like the vast majority minority of my caseload is full fee.  

Linzy [00:04:07] Yeah. And with this, like, I’m curious about your vision and where you want to go. What do you want? Your kind of composition of your caseload to eventually look like when it comes to this stuff? 

Brittany [00:04:18] Oh, I would love to have over half my caseload be private pay full fee. And then the other less than half be insurance based plus sliding scale. 

Linzy [00:04:34] Okay. Okay. So you’re aiming for half private pay at that 150, and then the other half will still be insurance sliding scale. 

Brittany [00:04:42] Yeah, because I was doing the math and I would be in a much better place if that was the situation. 

Linzy [00:04:47] Right. Okay. Okay, great. And I love to hear the phrase, “I was doing the math”. That’s good. So, I mean, do you have a grounding, right? Like you understand what these numbers will actually mean for you? And this is the target you’re setting for yourself, which is great. Right. Okay. So tell me then about the guilt at the thought of charging your full fee. What is that like? 

Brittany [00:05:06] Okay, so I come from a more, let’s say, modest financial background. Growing up, I was very fortunate in the sense that therapy was always encouraged in my household and was just seen as a reality. So that is very, very fortunate. But at the same time, it was always insurance, like the idea of paying a mental health professional. Their full price is for the rich and for people with disposable income. And all of that kind of stuff was like it was never even a notion for things. I’ve heard about therapy kind of growing up and even in like early adulthood. So that’s kind of where I come from with all of it, where it’s like insurance covers mental health for a reason. And all of that kind of stuff. 

Linzy [00:06:00] Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, first of all, it’s nice to hear you grew up in a pro therapy environment. That’s cool. But the idea is like, yeah, therapy is is should be covered by insurance. And let’s dig a little bit more into those stories about paying full fee for insurance. You said it’s for the rich. Tell me more about it. 

Brittany [00:06:18] Which I don’t believe currently, but I was kind of like. 

Linzy [00:06:20] Okay, but this is the story. 

Brittany [00:06:21] Yeah, yeah. That was kind of the message I would get because, you know, you would watch TV and it would be like the rich, the rich person paying for the fancy schmancy psychiatrist and the office kind of thing. And people I knew who would go to therapists, it would always be at a nonprofit clinic or something like that. I really didn’t become familiar with private pay therapists till I got into private practice myself. 

Linzy [00:06:49] Right. Okay. Okay. Yes. So you you said there that this isn’t quite what you believe now. Like you don’t believe now that therapy is for like that private pay is for the rich? 

Brittany [00:06:59] Absolutely. 

Linzy [00:07:00] What do you believe now about private pay therapy? 

Brittany [00:07:03] I believe that it’s an investment. 

Linzy [00:07:05] Right? Okay. Yeah. So I’m hearing you have some positive beliefs about what private therapy can do. An investment means that there’s, like, value there. Right. There’s something that comes out of it. So tell me then, when you are going to thinking about moving to this space of charging full fee to half of your caseload or what comes up. 

Brittany [00:07:26] Because then. So it’s one of those things where looking at a big picture, just looking at the numbers, it sounds beautiful and it’s all perfect. And yes, it’s an investment and all that stuff. But then you look at the individual stories, and that’s where I get stuck. Because people are struggling out there. It’s a hard world out there. And even when I’ve had discussions with some sliding scale folks, it’s it’s been difficult conversations. It’s like some of my sliding scale folks are people whose insurance I did take initially. And then the insurance got changed for whatever reason and then they didn’t. Like, there are so many different stories out there. So I get stuck with the individual. I even find- even for when someone does have to go private pay, I’ll find myself volunteering a sliding scale. I mean, like, but where you don’t have to be the full 150 like whole job because I feel terrible myself. But yeah, I mean, let’s go from a $10 co-pay to now a 150. 

Linzy [00:08:28] Right. So you’re not even giving them the chance to express how they feel or to react or to even agree. You’re jumping in there and saying, but obviously you can’t afford that. That’s the message, right? Like. 

Brittany [00:08:40] But obviously, that’s insane. So. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:08:43] Right, right, right, right. Okay. Okay. And I am curious, like, where are the folks that are working for who are paying full fee? And I know it’s a very small number. What is that like for you and for them to be paying full fee? What do you notice? 

Brittany [00:08:57] Yeah, so actually initially for them too, I started doing a new system where my sliding scale fee is temporary and it and it last three months and then every three months we reassess. 

Linzy [00:09:08] Yes, yes, yes. 

Brittany [00:09:10] So I’ve noticed that typically everyone starts out with sliding scale because it’s just my system. It’s in my own- it’s amazing. I’ve noticed, even when starting off with sliding scale, like the clients who do pay full fee were okay with paying full fee, right? Like, yeah, that’s your fee. Yeah. And I even had one person say, like, it’s worth it to me. Yes. And I was like, Oh, like, that took me a back. 

Linzy [00:09:42] Right. Right. And can you take that in, like hearing one of your clients, like, not a hypothetical person, but like someone you really work with saying to you, it’s worth it? 

Brittany [00:09:54] It’s my initial response that even is like, That’s not true. That can’t be. It just me talking, which I think is a problem. 

Linzy [00:10:01] Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Right. So what is your perception then, of the value of your work? 

Brittany [00:10:06] I have a very difficult time believing that sessions with me are worth over $100, even though they’re- like most of my clients are long term clients. I haven’t had openings in my caseload for months at this point, and even then I still have people emailing me, asking for openings. So like I have proof that people come back for one reason or another. But I still have a very difficult time believing that like I’m doing something good here and that I’m doing something valuable here. And that’s a me thing, and I recognize that. But all the same, it still affects my business. 

Linzy [00:10:42] Well, of course it’s a you thing. That’s why we’re here, right? We’re working on like, these deep stories that because this is really shaping how your practice looks at in turn, it’s shaping how your financial life looks. You know, you’re telling me if you can get to the point where half your caseload is at full fee and we’re not even talking about like your whole caseload and we’re not talking about a premium fee or all of these kind of other things, you know, we’re talking about half your caseload being full fee would dramatically change your financial picture. Right. But what’s in the way here is, by the sounds of it, you really owning the value of what you do. 

Brittany [00:11:16] Absolutely. And I’m also at a point to where I hope and plan to hire a therapist to work under me. But I really need to work through my own stuff first before I could be a leader for others. 

Linzy [00:11:29] Yes. Yeah. If you want to be able to model somebody owning the value of their work and it’s very wise, I’m glad to hear you say that you want to do this work before you start mentoring, you know, somebody else in such a close way. So with this, then I’m curious. And you know, we’re going to be really vague here because we don’t want to give to anything that could be identifying, obviously. Yes. But I’m curious, like, can you think about a moment where you really felt the impact of the work that you were doing with someone like one of those like, magical sessions? Can you think of any of those, like magical sessions where you’re just like, sometimes I know from for me, when I was practicing therapy, there was sometimes be an eye outside of myself being like, Whoa, this is like, profound. Yeah, the part that’s watching the work. Do you have any kind of memories like that that you can connect with? 

Brittany [00:12:16] It’s very hard to think of, like on the spot. Yeah, but I get those moments a lot where I’ll just be like, Where the hell did that come from? Right? A moment. 

Linzy [00:12:27] So, yes, when you say, Where the hell did that come from, do you mean something that you’ve done or said? 

Brittany [00:12:32] That has been something that I said that I would never say to myself with my own problem. Right. Of course. It’s like magically came out of my mouth. 

Linzy [00:12:38] You’re like, Oh, she’s good, right? And so those moments then, like, if we can connect to one of them for you, like what is the emotion that goes with those moments that I’m hearing happen? 

Brittany [00:12:51] Often it feels like elation, like I’m so proud of myself in that moment of like, Oh my God, I did choose the right career path and I am doing what I’m supposed to do, but it doesn’t last long. The feeling. But like it’s there temporarily. 

Linzy [00:13:05] Yeah. Yeah. So that elation – and if we can just stay with that elation for a minute, you know, like what’s happening in your body when you are elated. 

Brittany [00:13:13] It’s like the opposite of the dread you feel and stomach. It’s like instead of, like, the heavy feeling in the stomach, it’s like a little lightness in the stomach. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s kind of just like an absolutely just like, lightness that just feels feels wonderful. 

Linzy [00:13:27] Yeah. 

Brittany [00:13:28] I never realized that before. Thank you for asking it. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:13:32] So, you know, with that lightness, you know, that elation that like, well, I’m like, I’m in the right place. I’m doing the right work. From that place. Brittany, how much would you say a session with you is worth? 

Brittany [00:13:47] Guess at least 100. 

Linzy [00:13:49] So you dropped right away. Your energy was totally changed. What just happened? 

Brittany [00:13:54] I don’t know. I think a lot of it, I think, has to do with the whole notion of, like, helping people and, like, the whole notion of like, I heard recently from – I don’t know where – the concept of like pink collar, instead of blue collar, where pink collar like women aren’t. Yeah, I yeah, there are so many new terms coming out that start with. 

Linzy [00:14:15] Yeah. 

Brittany [00:14:16] But that’s when I heard was like teaching and helping professions and counseling was like, well, we should be helping if we have that demeanor and especially for females and whatnot. And I’m always stuck with like, well, of course I should be helping people if I have that skill. But then it’s like, but why shouldn’t I be able to make a good living off of it and like own a house one day, kind of live off of it. Right. 

Linzy [00:14:42] Yeah. And it’s a good question. Why shouldn’t you be able to make a good living and buy a house one day off of this? I would dare to say this gift that you have on top of all the training that you do, right. Because I will say, like, the work that we do, Brittany, it’s like there’s lots of training that goes into it. We spend lots of money to get here, you know, there’s all the little things then we’ve also made. But I will say, I do think that the best therapists have a natural gift that others couldn’t learn, right? It’s like if you have that that attunement and that natural empathy and just that like immense intuition, I think most people come into the work because they have that and it’s not something that somebody else could learn in school right now. 

Brittany [00:15:24] I mean, it’s true. 

Linzy [00:15:24] Yeah. You know, so, so thinking about all of that together, like, why shouldn’t you be able to make a good living off of the work you do? 

Brittany [00:15:33] I guess there is no reason ultimately. 

Linzy [00:15:36] Well, is there a reason inside? There’s some sort of objection here internally. And I know logically it might not make sense, but I’m wondering, like, what is maybe the illogical objection inside that makes it hard to even say that you should be getting paid $100 for this, like life changing work. 

Brittany [00:15:53] Because then I keep thinking, I don’t know, like the economy is so rough out there, the world is freaking hard out there. And so then I keep thinking of like, Wow, what about people who can’t afford it? But then again, like I do offer a sliding scale for people who can’t afford it. I’m not taking that away completely. I’m just talking about for people who can’t afford it. And there are people who could afford it. 

Linzy [00:16:17] Yeah. And you know, something that I think about too, Brittany and I’ve noticed in some clinicians there’s like less flexibility around this than I certainly used to have when I was practicing, is you can set your price and your clients can determine what they can afford, which could also look like a weekly client goes down to biweekly. Or like I remember I had this client who did not make very much money and they worked, you know, like as a kind of educational assistant role. And that’s an underpaid role. Pink collar. If we want to have a pink collar, that’s another one. And they had been doing therapy for a long time, but knew that they needed like EMDR processing. And I believe my fee at that time would have been 150. Same fee you’re talking about. And so they would come once a month for therapy. That’s what was in their budget. But when they came that once a month, they worked so frickin hard and they came ready being like, okay, this is what I know. It’s the month, this is what I want to work on. I want to keep doing this work that we did or I want to pick up on this new thing that came up, or I need to talk about this experience that’s happening. And they worked so hard and used that time with such intention and empowerment that in some ways it was like in that one session we would get done what someone else might get done in a whole month because they really owned the work? I wasn’t holding the responsibility for the work. They were responsible for the work and like they knew my skill set and what there was to do. But it was like this real like shared ownership of I was bringing my best to the table, but they were also bringing their best to the table, right, in this shared project that we had of like healing from trauma. And I’m curious like, how does that kind of idea sit with you that your clients can also like step up and take responsibility and solve problems when you set your boundary around what you’re able to? We’re able to charge, and I’m saying in your case, what you’re able to because I know that you’re talking about just getting to like a reasonable standard of living, right? Like we’re not talking at this point – and that could be a whole other conversation – we’re not talking about like luxury and travel and expansiveness or any of those kinds of things. Like we’re talking about being able to buy a house one day. 

Brittany [00:18:21] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:18:22] Okay. So if that’s a boundary for you, I’m curious, what do you think about the idea that your clients could rise to meet that boundary? 

Brittany [00:18:29] Yeah. That does make sense. I think it’s going to be one of those things where it’s going to be really difficult in the moment. I think it will be easier to try with new clients in the future that I get, to kind of just start like off the board like this. This is the-. 

Linzy [00:18:46] Like starting off on the right foot. Yeah. Mm hmm. 

Brittany [00:18:49] Yes. 

Linzy [00:18:50] Mm hmm. 

Brittany [00:18:51] With current clients, I really just don’t feel so comfortable with most of them doing that. And also, I’m not so sure that that’s a bad thing. Like, right now, I’m at the lowest. The amount of sliding scale clients I have right now is the lowest it’s been since I started my private practice. And I foresee that going further down, depending on whether insurance situations change and whatnot. So my thought process as of now is kind of having my sliding scale list closed. Right. Like, no more, no more spots. 

Linzy [00:19:25] No more sliding scale. Yeah. 

Brittany [00:19:26] Which is true, because I literally don’t have any more spots left in my client list.  And then just insurance clients I get. I have a lot of struggle with insurance clients who then change to an insurance they don’t take. But that’s a different thing to kind of be even in that situation. Like this is my new fee and I could help you find a therapist who does take your new insurance if that’s an issue. Which which will- is so hard to do. 

Linzy [00:19:51] But yeah. And what is hard about that. 

Brittany [00:19:54] Is that my clients, I don’t know, I feel like I work with people long term and I feel like I know them as well as one could know another person for the most part. And I enjoy- I genuinely enjoy working with my people. So that’s always hard when it’s like, well, let’s talk about maybe switching to a different therapist, but I think I’m going to try that in the future for those kinds of for those kinds of situations. 

Linzy [00:20:19] Yeah. You know, with that Brittany, I wonder to kind of turn over that coin and look at the other side. What can be good about somebody starting to work with a new therapist? 

Brittany [00:20:30] Oh, there are a lot of positives about it, but a lot of times too, it’s that the client is is hesitant to do that for whatever reason. 

Linzy [00:20:38] Yeah, they’re meeting somebody new. Stranger danger. Starting over. 

Brittany [00:20:41] Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, it’s not something I’ve really done in the past, but I’m open to trying. Going forward. 

Linzy [00:20:48] You know, it makes me wonder, then, in terms of beliefs, too, do you believe that other people can be as helpful to your clients as you can? 

Brittany [00:20:55] Oh, totally. Completely. Even better. 

Linzy [00:20:58] Okay. So that’s also something to, I think, connect with, you know, when these kinds of scenarios come up of like, you don’t take their insurance anymore, you’re not going be putting them on your sliding scale. And so it’s going to be a discussion of this is my fee or I’m happy to help you find someone else, is remembering there might be someone else who has a totally different angle than you get into something that is just not territory that you’re interested in or would have naturally taken them. The good things that can come from folks seeing multiple therapists over time. 

Brittany [00:21:26] Right. Yeah, that’s a good point. I could bring that up with with clients. A lot of times clients are just, like, hesitant to change. 

Linzy [00:21:34] Yeah. 

Brittany [00:21:35] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:21:36] Yeah. And, you know, I’ve closed my practice a couple of times. I closed my practice when I went on my maternity leave. And then I, like, closed my practice more full stop when I came back and was seeing a handful of clients. And I remember one of my clients saying to me, like, you know, that her family member said, like, well, maybe you’ll find someone even better. And she was like, I don’t know if I can. And I said, You might. Like, you’re going to find someone different. Right? And like, there’s always going to be therapists out there who work differently than we work and like, yeah, open like a new chapter in that person’s healing. But again, it’s just not work we would have done with them. And so that is something that I certainly talk to my clients about with closing things down is, you know, there’s going to be things that you and I have missed working on for years because I have a blind spot. Right. Or like you haven’t felt comfortable telling me or whatever. Right. Or it’s not a type of work that I do, that someone else is going to be able to get into with you. So the opportunities that come when somebody switches to a new therapist are also I find helpful for having those conversations. Obviously, not to dismiss the grief and all of those things that also. But of course. 

Brittany [00:22:35] Yeah, but that makes sense though. Like I think- 

Linzy [00:22:38] With endings come new beginnings. So coming back then to your work, like I’m hearing a decision to not add more folks to your sliding scale, your sliding scale is full. But also we started this conversation by talking about how you want to get to the point of getting to half your caseload being full fee. So let’s talk about that, what that road can look like for you. How do you actually want to start to make the changes to get to that place in your practice? 

Brittany [00:23:04] That’s where I get stuck because I have all these grand ideas. But actually like getting there is a whole thing in itself ultimately right now. I mean, my caseload is closed. I anticipate probably reopening it in like a couple of months or so based on just like for summaries and closures and all that. I’m working on improving my marketing to get clients who aren’t looking specifically for insurance based therapy. I’m I’m actually on a postgrad course now trying to work toward a specialty. So I need to kind of up my marketing around that specialty. So I’m working on a specialization in infertility and loss, perinatal mental health, maternal mental health, maternal mental health. That whole realm. 

Linzy [00:23:53] Yes. 

Brittany [00:23:54] Yes, yes. Specializing in infertility and loss. So I’m in a postgrad course for that now. And for that I feel like that is worth more like a more premium fee. So that is something that’s a specific specialization that I would like to be studying. 

Linzy [00:24:09] Yes, absolutely. 

Brittany [00:24:11] I need to work on really improving my marketing to reflect that specialization because I am like at it. I’ve done like a maybe a handful of people in the population. 

Linzy [00:24:21] Yeah, they can’t find you yet. 

Brittany [00:24:23] Oh, they’re not. Yes. Okay. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:24:25] So attracting those folks in and owning this is a specialization. And I will say as someone who has sought those services before, they’re very hard to find and it’s hard to find someone good. And so folks who are looking for you and who find you and you both do the work that they do and it feels like a personal fit are going to highly value what you do, right? It’s such it’s such a specialized niche. So I would say that you’re kind of on the horizon is like you’re going to have this specialty, you’re going to be marketing towards those folks. What about, I guess, what is the timeline on that, Brittany? 

Brittany [00:24:54] So my course will be ending in May. And I mean, it’s more of an ongoing thing where something I’m just continually educating myself. Yes, but I feel like I’ll have the confidence to say, like, I studied this in a postgraduate course. 

Linzy [00:25:07] You’ll be ready. Ta-da. Yes. Okay. 

Brittany [00:25:10] After May, I’ll be like, magically, like. 

Linzy [00:25:12] Roll out the carpet. 

Brittany [00:25:13] Yes, Yes. 

Linzy [00:25:14] Okay. And that’s not very long from now. So that actually sounds like I was thinking you were talking something like kind of far off. But no, that’s actually in the next. It’s in a month in a bit. So with that in mind, then. What I’d like you to think about is what is your goal to get to that half of your caseload being full fee and then reverse engineering? Here’s what the steps I’m going to take, because what I- what I’m feeling in you as we’re talking is I am feeling this like, yeah, that’s good. Kind of like I’m not I’m not feeling action yet. Right. I’m still kind of feeling a contemplation energy from you. Is that accurate? 

Brittany [00:25:50] Accurate. Yes, totally. Well, you’re on that. You’re you’re on point. 

Linzy [00:25:53] Yeah. Okay. So I’m curious then, like, what do you think you need to get you connected- keep you connected to the value of the work that you’re doing, that kind of like elation and also owning this new niche. How do you actually take these things so they help you make the changes you want to make to get your practice to where you need it to be financially? 

Brittany [00:26:15] I think kind of thing that comes to mind is that I’m going to need to change my referral source completely because all of my referral sources are insurance based or all of them are like, the first question is like, whatever. They’re very intertwined with insurance. So that’s kind of like if you see the kind of like contemplation on my face, which like I could kind of feel it’s between us like, well, how on earth do I find how on earth do I find new clients then? But that’s something that comes with more experience, more marketing that that realm of things. 

Linzy [00:26:50] Yes. And that networking piece, I mean, I, I really like humans, so I get really excited about networking because I’m like, oh, to meet new people. But it makes me think about, you know, who in your community is interfacing with those folks that you want to be serving that you can grab a tea with, take out for lunch, you know, like connect with this, start to build those referral sources, right. Like other folks who are supporting one of them, fertility naturopaths, like fertility clinics themselves. I know like I went through IVF with my son and since then, and so I know my clinic actually had a therapist that they was associated with the clinic who didn’t work for them but who they made referrals to. And she- 

Brittany [00:27:34] Oh wow. 

Linzy [00:27:34] -Was not good. 

Brittany [00:27:35] Oh. 

Linzy [00:27:36] So it’s like it makes you think about all the folks who would have, like, seen her like I did for one session. I was like, Well, that was an experience. I never went back. If you could be associated with a fertility clinic, as just- if you’re like, Hey, if you have folks who are like, you know, walking this road and having a hard time, send them to me. They they have literally hundreds of clients going through that process like every week, you know? So it’s like my brain goes to like all these places, you know, that I’ve been and that women that I know who have, you know, walked this road have been that with women. Women would be so excited to get your name and know about your services. 

Brittany [00:28:14] Yeah. And I even spoke with an acupuncturist recently who does infertility acupuncture, and she doesn’t take insurance and she’s like, Oh, I have tons of clients. You’re right. So I think just more networking. 

Linzy [00:28:23] Those are the people to talk to. Yes, right. And so, yeah, it is, you know, in a sense, Brittany, like what you’re talking about is rebranding your practice. Right? And when I say that, I don’t mean that you have to do like a fancy, beautiful, multi-thousand dollar website overhaul or anything like that. But like, you are changing your what you’re doing, right, and you’re going to have to change in that, how you talk about what you’re doing, who you’re connecting with, and like, to me it sounds like that work needs to be done because I also- but here’s the thing. Mm hmm. How do we make sure that when those women come to you, that you you offer them your full fee? 

Brittany [00:28:58] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:28:59] That you don’t talk yourself down, right? How can you commit to making sure that your full fee is actually what those women hear about? And you don’t take away the opportunity for them to pay you that? 

Brittany [00:29:11] That’s something I don’t have an answer for. I’m going to try my best to stay strong on that and keep a picture of the overall goal. 

Linzy [00:29:21] Yes. Part of this, Brittany, I think, is like, this is a fake it till you make it piece. Right. We need to give them the chance to show you that they value what you do. And so there’s just a behavioral piece here where I wonder what would happen is when a new woman calls you and she says, Hey, my acupuncturist told me about you. I’d really like to see you. You just say, Yeah, I would love to work with you. My fee is 150 an hour. Stop talking. Can you imagine yourself being able to do that? 

Brittany [00:29:47] Yeah. Yeah, I can. 

Linzy [00:29:50] Because when we stop talking, we give them a chance to actually respond, and most of the time they’re going to take a half a breath and say, okay, that sounds good. When are you available? We let them be in charge of the conversation, like, we like, we give them empowerment in that way, right? Rather than us deciding what they can afford to pay. 

Brittany [00:30:08] Right. 

Linzy [00:30:09] Right. Well, what do you notice in your body thinking about just doing that when when people start to call you because you’re going to make some great connections. Yeah. And just stating your fee and just ending the sentence there. 

Brittany [00:30:19] It’s totally against my nature because I just tend to try to fill up the silence, which is a clinical thing that I’m trying to work on anyway. But at the same time, like it makes sense that that’s a really solid idea, a really solid plan of action to just kind of shut myself up. 

Linzy [00:30:40] To stop talking. 

Brittany [00:30:41] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:30:42] Yeah, yeah. And then with that too, you know, you can also keep your eye on your sliding scale list and you will know if you have a spot available or not. Like what I’m hearing with a lot of this is what I get from you is like, you’re very caring, you’re really empathetic, you really like, feel your client’s hardships. Right? But sometimes with that, we can underestimate our client’s abilities to solve problems. Like there’s there’s almost like a little bit of like a codependence piece that can happen there where we like. We want to prevent any kind of discomfort from them or any kind of friction. But like you are working with adults and if you’re moving into, you know, as you continue moving this, like work with infertility, like you’re working with adults who’ve, like solved a lot of problems, navigating a lot of systems, and like, yeah, you know, I think there’s a lot that comes from just believing that our clients are competent. 

Brittany [00:31:31] Yeah, you’re right. 

Linzy [00:31:33] So with this, then, you know, we’ve kind of we’ve walked a couple paths in this conversation. So what is your action plan? What’s happening next after our conversation? 

Brittany [00:31:43] I think next steps are. To work on my networking more decide which local institutions, professionals, whatnot. I would like to get in contact with. And that also includes, like, working on marketing, boring marketing stuff like making business cards that are physical and go with a QR code that goes to my website and kind of- I don’t know, I’m sorry, you’re like, hitting right on my issue. Like I’m good at seeing the big picture where I want to be. I struggle so much between like getting there. 

Linzy [00:32:26] So yes. Yeah. And these are great steps. So you’re going to create a new referral network. And what I would suggest Brittany is, if this is an area where you’re just like gah, like, you know, you’re kind of like holding your head a little bit right now. It’s break it down, then, into those walkable steps. Right? So, like, what is the first step? Maybe the first step is generate a list of like ten people that, you know, work with folks that you want to be supporting more and reach out to five of them to start. And then you reach out to five the following week, making an ask of, Can I connect with you? I’d be happy to connect over coffee or tea or lunch. I’d be happy to come to your space. You know, like think about, you know, with the folks that you’re connecting with, what’s going to be an easy, natural way for them to want to connect, letting them know the value of I serve, you know, families who are going through these things. I’m perinatal mental health, I’m doing continued specialization, and I’m opening more and more space to serve these folks at my practice. And I would love to support the folks that you support with the emotional side of of the path that they’re walking. Right? You’re letting them know the value, right? If their clients are getting emotional support and aren’t crying in their office and are able to, like, think clearly and make good decisions and show up for their appointments and all that stuff, everybody’s better off for it, right? So it’s part of it is thinking about that. So I’m hearing that. And then you were mentioning a second step of like making business cards, so it’s easy for folks to access you. I would say that that’s something that’s like helpful but not essential in today’s day and age. I think it’s more helpful that you make good relationship with someone who’s going to be like, I know the perfect person for you. It’s Brittany, I’m going to give you her name. Here’s her website. And those people are just going to happen over their phone or like save a note in their phone and go online when they get home. And so I think in terms of like the most important tasks, it’s making those referral relationships right now. 

Brittany [00:34:16] That’s a good point. And yeah, that’s absolutely doable. 

Linzy [00:34:19] Yeah. And then after that, when people call to book, what are you going to do? 

Brittany [00:34:26] Well, I actually have a virtual assistant I started working with, so I’ll let her know as well which life changer. But aside from that, I’m going to tell them during the consultation calls or whatever, like my fee is 150, leave it at that. 

Linzy [00:34:42] Great. Good. And how does that feel to say that? 

Brittany [00:34:46] Immediately I start having questions come up like what if? What if they do have an insurance that I actually do take? What if they are all these things? 

Linzy [00:34:57] Yeah. And you also take insurance. So, you know, it could be a phrase of I take the following insurances or my out-of-pocket fee is 150. End of sentence. Right. And let that sit like I think part of what it sounds like the work that you have to do is letting people show you that they’re actually happy to pay your fee. And if they’re not happy to pay your fee at 150 and they’re not on the insurances that you take, then you know it’s not a right fit. Right. And they’ll find someone else who is the right fit. 

Brittany [00:35:23] Right. 

Linzy [00:35:24] Right. So with this Brittany, I can feel there’s more digging into to do. But we do have like this action steps for you. 

Brittany [00:35:31] Absolutely. 

Linzy [00:35:32] What are you taking away from our conversation today? 

Brittany [00:35:34] A lot of confidence, actually. I was so nervous going into this as, you know, like the first thing when you were like, how are you? I was like, I’m so nervous. I’m actually feeling really confident now. I’m I’m grateful for this coaching call. Like, maybe my sessions are worth that price and maybe people will pay that money and maybe, maybe we will own a house one day. Like, I don’t know, it gives me, like, kind of hopeful energy. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:36:04] Yeah. And if there’s a part of you that’s able to, like, collect evidence, I’m going to ask that part of you to, like, collect those moments when you’re just like, in the flow in session and you’re just like, Whoa, I’m in the right place doing the right work. Like, collect that evidence and like, let the words sink in. When you do have clients, say things like, of course your fee is worth it. I think there’s a lot more evidence there than you’re probably taking into your body, but as much as possible trying to actually absorb that because I think it’s plentiful of evidence that people are very happy to pay you 150. 

Brittany [00:36:38] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:36:39] Well, thank you so much, Brittany, for coming on the podcast today. 

Brittany [00:36:42] Thank you so much. I appreciate it. 

Linzy [00:36:57] In my conversation with Brittany today, a familiar piece, you know, that I’ve seen in myself and so many therapists is how in a certain sense, we can underestimate our clients. Right. That like jumping too quickly, you know, saying our fee and then jumping to quickly offer the sliding scale. I know it’s something that lots of therapists do. We can really sometimes in seeing their struggles and in knowing what’s hard and sitting in that with them or knowing that we’re about to or knowing a bit of their story when we’re having those first conversations of setting the fee, It’s easy to underestimate that someone who struggles and is going through maybe a hard journey or has had losses or trauma also is someone who can solve their own problems and show up and make good decisions for their life and decide how to spend their money. Those things can coexist. And I think as therapists, because we sit so much with the vulnerability of our clients, it’s easy to forget that they also have jobs that they might be really good at and they can earn money, or they have family who can help, like they can solve problems. And when we jump in and try to solve problems for them, especially around fear, before they even name that as a problem, or you can express that they can’t solve the problem. Not only are we undercutting ourselves because this is somebody that might happily pay you your full fee and now instead you’ve negotiated a lower fee with them. But also we’re not letting them function as adults and and let us know what is possible for them and let them make an empowered decision or have a, you know, grounded conversation with us about their needs to see if we can find some sort of center point. So it’s you know, it’s a challenge I think we have as therapist because of the role that we play. But I always find it helpful to think about the resilience of our clients, think about the stories that they tell us of things that are going well, and remember that we only see such a small slice of their life and we see generally the hardest emotions and we hear the hardest stories and we don’t see all those other parts of them that sometimes are like kicking butt at life or figuring things out, you know, with great competency at the same time as they also have something that they’re they’re working through with us. You can follow me on Instagram at @moneynutsandbolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, I say it all the time. I know, but I want you to hear it. If you enjoy the podcast, I would super appreciate if you could jump over to Apple Podcasts for I think it would take you literally 90 seconds and leave a review for the podcast. It is the best way for other therapists to find us and be part of these conversations. Thanks for listening today. 

Julie [00:00:02] I don’t want business owners to live on leftovers because business ownership is a lot of work. It is so much work. And you deserve more than than leftovers. 

 

Linzy [00:00:13] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question How can therapists and health practitioners go from money, shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host Linzy Bonham therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So today I have a returning guest, but she’s returning with a book under her belt. Julie Herres has written the book Profit First for Therapists, and she’s here to talk to us about it today. She is an expert in profit. First as an accountant, she uses it with her clients who are, I think, exclusively, if not mostly therapists. She’s the founder of Green Oak Accounting, which is the country’s largest firm serving the mental health industry. She’s an accountant, she’s a consultant, she’s a speaker and now an author of Profit First for Therapists. And she’s also the host of the Therapy for Your Money podcast. So today, Julia and I got into profit first. So if you’ve heard about profit first but have been like, what is that? Or if you’re already doing profit first. Either way, there’s lots here for you. Julian I get into taxes and profit first and how that can be confusing. She goes over the basic principles of profit first, which, like really do connect to human behavior and what tends to drive us and make us tick and how we tend to respond to certain situations. She really explains why profit first works with people as they are, and we get into what to do if your numbers are not where you want them to be, where can you start to actually start to get your numbers in your business? The amount that’s going towards your paycheck and operating expenses and you’re pretty aside for taxes. How do you get from where you are now, which is maybe a place that is not working to the numbers that are actually going to work for your business? Here’s my conversation with Julie Herres. So, Julie, welcome back to the podcast. 

 

Julie [00:02:22] Hey, how are you? 

 

Linzy [00:02:23] I’m good. How are you? 

 

Julie [00:02:24] Good, good. 

 

Linzy [00:02:25] So since we spoke last, you have been a little bit busy. 

 

Julie [00:02:31] A lot of a lot of fun things in the work. 

 

Linzy [00:02:34] A lot of fun things. And one of those things is that you’ve written the book, I would say the profit first book for therapists, a profit first for therapists is coming out May 2nd. Do I have that right? 

 

Julie [00:02:46] Yeah, May 2nd it will be out. It is available for pre-sale today, but it it will be out in the world, what I call affectionately my fourth child. Profit first for for therapists. The book. 

 

Linzy [00:02:58] Yes, a very cute name for that fourth child, I have to say. Very sweet. So I’m really excited about this book because you and I are both profit first fans. We both like use it and teach it and teach therapists how to use it. And now you’ve actually put your knowledge and expertise like into a book that folks will just be able to buy and read and absorb it all, even if they never, you know, work with either of us. Yeah. Which is a beautiful gift to the world. 

 

Julie [00:03:25] I’m so excited to get this out into the world. This book was for sure a labor of love. But I. I kept going back before I started writing to Why me? Why should we want to write this book? Like, why would I? And then. But the answer was like, It has to be me. That was my answer to myself. Like I have so much knowledge from implementing over and over again. Like I want to get this information out into the world because it’s so transformational for so many practices. It gave me changing completely. 

 

Linzy [00:03:56] So, yes, yes, I love that because you as an accountant, you really like get the rules and the system. But you specialize in working with therapists. So you also really see how this applies to like our business model and who therapists tend to be as people. 

 

Julie [00:04:10] Yeah, definitely. And obviously I’m an accountant based in the US, but I, I also knew, you know, this book is so important. I need to put all the basics of profit first. I need you to put like the very therapy-specific items in there. But I also knew that most practitioners needed other stuff too. Yeah. So I talk about scaling, I talk about hiring admin team member, clinical team members, leadership. I talk about the emotional side of profit first and kind of that journey that people go through. But I also included some tax basics because these are the things that I feel like people need. Yeah, So whether they’re ready for them right now or later, like you kind of have everything you need for the financial side of your practice within that one book. 

 

Linzy [00:04:49] So exciting. Okay, so which I take two steps back because we’re nerding it about something we’re excited about, but what is profit first for folks who are listening, who are not familiar with it? 

 

Julie [00:04:59] Yes, so profit first. The original book was written in 2016/17 by Mike Michalowitz. It’s the the premise of profit first that the whole system. Right. It’s ultimately a financial system for cash management. What profit first does is it turns the accounting equation upside down. So if anyone has ever looked at a profit and loss or an income statement, which hopefully listener if you own a business, you have you have hopefully looked at the accounting equation on the profit and losses. Income minus expenses equals profit, right? That is the basic accounting equation. What profit first does is it turns that equation upside down where we look at income minus profit equals your expenses. And so that one shift right there, carving out the profit first, as the name implies, means that then instead of taking the profit at the end, as the left over whatever’s left, that’s going to be the profit. You’re being intentional about allocating funds to profit and then whatever’s left, that’s where you have to run your business. And so for most practitioners, if you can run your business on $1,000, you probably can run your business on $950, right? If we carve it out at the front. But if you just wait for that to be left, that’s not always the case. 

 

Linzy [00:06:17] Yes. Yeah. And I love that the flipping of the equation, you know, and this is Mike’s kind of this is the idea he introduced into accounting because I have I’ve noticed as a business owner and maybe even experience this to Julie like it is so easy to spend money in your business. So there’s just something about our business. It’s like something about, well, you’re spending to make money. Like I will think about buying things in my business that I would really pause or never buy out of my personal household. There is something just very easy about spending money in a business, which means if we don’t have boundaries around it, we can end up spending so much that we end up taking very little home like the profit we end up getting like the crumbs. Yes. 

 

Julie [00:07:00] Yeah. And that’s why I like the term leftovers where it’s kind of because it’s not intent. The flipped over is not intentional. It just happens to be there. Right? Right. It’s kind of an accident. Like, oh, we made too much soup today. Now we have leftovers. Like, it’s not that. That’s not- I don’t want business owners to live on leftovers because this ownership is a lot of work. It is all it is so much work. And you deserve more than than leftovers. I like to tell the story of my my mother was a serial entrepreneur, loved just the starting of a business. And so what I know now as an adult is when she would say like, Oh, you know, Julie, you’ve got to spend money to make money. She was about to buy something she could not afford. That typically was kind of the the Q in our household. So whenever I find myself like, oh saying that where you got to spend money to make money, I kind of go back and think to myself, Am I just saying that to justify this expense or is this actually going to have an ROI, a return on investment? Like, does this actually make sense? Because I agree it’s easy. It’s easy in the business to justify like you do have to make investments, but not every investment is worth your money. 

 

Linzy [00:08:05] Absolutely. Yes. So okay, so profit first, then flips that equation. 

 

Julie [00:08:10] Right? 

 

Linzy [00:08:10] We’re no longer profits, no longer the leftover. Now, expenses are the thing that is more boundary metered. I don’t know how to describe that. 

 

Julie [00:08:18] Boundary does- is a good is a good way to put it so that there are four core principles within profit first and I think if I go over those that then the leftover piece will make a little bit more sense. But core principle number one is you use a small plate. And so I will be the first to say I’m not a nutrition expert, I’m a financial. But there are a lot of similarities in the way that humans make decisions about money and about food, Right? Because it’s not about like the big sweeping decision of, you know, I’m going to spend less than I make. Right. That’s easy to say. But the proof is in the pudding. Of all the hundreds of micro-decisions that you make every single day. So that’s ultimately how people make decisions about money. And so I know for me, I was born in the generation of finish your plate. So whether I eat from a large play or a small plate, I’m most likely going to finish my plate unless I spend a whole lot of mental energy thinking about it, right? Deciding like, am I finishing the vegetable or that or the protein or What am I leaving? How much do they have? One more bite that takes a lot of mental energy for me. And so I just know when I eat from a smaller plate, I’m naturally going to eat less. And so within profit, first those smaller plates are bank accounts. We use multiple bank accounts to create smaller plates for ourselves. Yeah. So those bank accounts are going to be, for example, an income account where all the money comes into the business, coming into the business, goes into that income account, then we have a profit account, as you can imagine, right? That where there’s money earmarked for profit, then we have an account for operating expenses. That’s all the things like liability insurance, dues and subscriptions, software. Then we have an account earmarked for owner’s pay. That’s how much the owner pays themselves, right? That’s super important. Then we have an account earmarked for tax as well, where the business is able to pay taxes on your behalf. And then last but not least, an account for payroll as well. So I’m a firm believer if you have a team, that you should have a separate payroll account. So whether that’s contractors or employees, admin, clinical, whatever, a payroll account can be really helpful. So by separating that money onto those smaller plates, that really helps us see the how much is actually available for you to spend. So you’re not accidentally spending next quarter’s tax payment or you’re spending the money that’s actually earmarked for payroll next week. Right. So you know what actually is available to you. 

 

Linzy [00:10:46] Yes. Yeah. And the word for me for profit first, always with those separate accounts is clarifying. Yes. It’s just so clarifying. And even if you don’t like what you see, at first, it’s just very clear what money is actually for what. And even if you want to steal from yourself or do it differently, you’re it’s very clear that that is what you are doing when you do have your money actually separated like this. 

 

Julie [00:11:08] Absolutely. Like you can- because most humans will will look at their bank app on their phone right. Like or log in on the computer. That’s how most people do things, including me. Right? I’m an accountant and I don’t look at the profit and loss of balance sheet, the statement of cash flow, before I decide if I can spend something right. So you’re taking a natural human behavior and you’re just leveraging that instead of trying to change it. 

 

Linzy [00:11:29] Yes. 

 

Julie [00:11:29] So principle number two is you serve sequentially, right? So you have all of those bank accounts on a regular basis. You’re going to move money from that income account to the other bank accounts. And you’re doing that in a way that is sequential. We tend to attribute importance to things that happen first. So. The profit allocation comes first when you’re making transfers to those accounts without necessarily looking at your bills or what is due. So that because your bank is going to your bank accounts are going to tell you something, they’re going to give you information when you go to pay those bills. Principle number three. So we remove temptation. And this one, I feel like is really important. They’re all important. But this one, this one is. I can’t tell you as as an accountant, like, how many times I’ve encountered a client who cannot pay their tax bill. Right. Where they- we get to April. And it’s just not it’s just not doable. They maybe someone that just started their business just came to us like maybe in February or March, like the year is already over and we’re doing their tax prop 8, and they owe, you know, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of a business. Yeah. And it is always I always have a pit in my stomach when I see someone who just is blindsided by that because it just doesn’t have to be that way. Right. And and so by moving that money over, by having allocation, by having a separate bank account, it’s really, really hard to accidentally spend that money. Right. It’s there. It’s allocated. I know some of our clients will call that bank account, like Uncle Sam’s money or, you know, something just funny. But you clearly know when you’re looking at your bank. Yeah, there’s money in there that is not yours, that is already someone else’s who you cannot and should not spend it. And it’s such an anchoring thought, but there’s also so much relief when you get to that time of the year and you already have enough money to pay everything like that. That’s the the opposite end of that, where we remove the temptation to accidentally spend that money accidentally or on purpose. But and it’s there to take care of you. And I love that piece of, of profit first as well. 

 

Linzy [00:13:46] Yeah. 

 

Julie [00:13:47] And then last but not least, principle number four is you enforce a rhythm, right? So kind of like going back to nutrition. You do have to eat on a regular basis or you’re going to be starving. You might not make the best food choices, or at least that that’s how I operate. Yes. And so on a regular basis. Right. Your money, your business needs money to survive. It’s like the nutrition for your business. And so on a regular basis, you have to feed it and give it money. And so on a regular basis, you’re moving money from your income account to your other accounts. And for a lot of our clients, we recommend starting with a weekly transfer. And that’s not part of the core profit first principles, right? That that in the in the original book that was twice a month on the 10th and the 25th and I think that can work really well. But what I kept seeing over and over again in implementation is unless you have enough money to really fund those accounts upfront, it’s really hard to make it to four weeks without making a transfer. It’s already hard to do one week sometimes when you’re starting from a tight cash flow. So I find that that weekly allocation is really helpful from a… Ease of implementation, right? Really, it’s just a little easier to implement. I also think there’s something really amazing about making transfers on a weekly basis, because if you do it, for example, every Friday, you get a really good sense of the ebb and flow of money in your business, right? You know, every Friday I’m expecting to see this dollar amount. Yeah. If that’s not there, you can start troubleshooting right away instead of if it’s buried in, you know, your credit card payment and your rent and this and that. Like, it could take weeks longer for you to figure out that there is a problem. Whereas if you’re making a transfer every week, you really get to see that. And then after a while, like once you really have a sense of the ebb and flow, then you can sometimes move to every other week or twice a month, right? Like that is a natural progression where you don’t need to be looking quite as closely, but by doing it weekly, I feel like it really gives practitioners a true sense of comfort with their money. And it’s really not a time-consuming process. It usually takes ten, 10 to 15 minutes is generous. Like, yeah, I think five for most people in. 

 

Linzy [00:15:53] Mine is five, five for sure. 

 

Julie [00:15:55] I would say mine is five also. I see 15 just to give like, oh yeah, yeah. 

 

Linzy [00:15:58] Let’s just, you know, give a buffer. 

 

Julie [00:16:00] But I would agree five, five of the time. 

 

Linzy [00:16:03] I’m right with you in the weekly. I also like first is one of the options we give in Money Skills For Therapists in terms of budgeting systems and I find most therapists do choose it because it is so powerful but also simple at the same time. But I also recommend weekly and for additional reasons to what you’re saying. What I also find is if folks have a very kind of unbalanced relationship with money where they either avoid it or they want to touch it all the time, a week is like a nice middle ground amount. Like it’s it’s close enough together that like if you did your- because you know, I also suggested folks like preference allocations might go with general money time too of just like looking at your numbers getting in touch if you do it every week it’s like recent enough that you remember what happened last week. If you’re building new skills, they’re available enough that you can make to build your confidence. But it’s not so long that you start to build up like avoidance or fear. Because what I do find is sometimes when folks are like, Oh, I just do it like once a month, then that can build up into this big phobia and it’s like, you can’t remember how to do it. It’s like, Wait, do I pull from this bank or do I get this in for. And here like I just saw and there’s something in about once a week that’s a really nice rhythm to just keep you in touch with your money. Just enough on top of all those other great reasons that you just gave for weekly disbursements. 

 

Julie [00:17:17] And weekly is often enough that you shouldn’t have to move money in between with monthly. Like if something comes up, you have a bigger than usual credit card bill or something. You might have to go in and then off cycle. And that that kind of has a trickle down effect too. Yeah. 

 

Linzy [00:17:33] Yes. Yeah. Great. So principles do we. Let’s summarize them.  

 

Julie [00:17:37] We covered all four. Yeah. So use a small plate- principle number one. Serve sequentially is number two. Number three is remove temptation. Yes. And then number four, enforce a rhythm. 

 

Linzy [00:17:48] Yes. Beautiful. Okay. So you know something that I see Julie, with profit first and you probably see this with your clients, too, is taxes can be a really confusing part of profit first for multiple reasons. So what are your thoughts on taxes and profit first for folks who are listening? 

 

Julie [00:18:07] Yeah, so that’s probably where we get the most questions, like in an open Q&A type of forum. So taxes within, you know, within the book, profit first for therapist. We do have tax applications for various stages of private practice. And I want to be super clear that taxes do change as the practice grows. So I go over four stages or four sizes of private practice, and that’s based on just the data that we’ve accumulated over the years. So we have different ratios for solo practices where it’s just obviously just a single clinician. Yeah, then a small group practice and that’s where there is perhaps a very small team, but the owner is typically doing 50% or more of the clinical work in that small group. Okay. That’s right. That’s kind of the that’s a defining. That’s a defining period. Okay. Yeah. So usually maybe one full-timer, two or three part-timers. Right. Something along those lines that we go to, medium group practice where that’s that happens right around that switch rate of more than 50% of the work is being done by other people to raise the ratios shift at that point. And then for a large group practice, which usually happens around $1,000,000 or more, the main defining piece at that point is the addition of leadership. Mm hmm. Usually by the time you get there, there’s 8 to 10 clinicians. Getting just too much for one single owner to manage. So there’s addition of leadership role. So those are kind of the that’s the 10,000 foot view of of the size of private practice. And so as the practice grows naturally, the profit margin gets smaller, right? And sometimes I see that people are like, Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Why? 

 

Linzy [00:19:42] That’s not what I want. 

 

Julie [00:19:43] That’s not- yeah, I wanted to get a bigger. Dollar amount gets bigger, but the profit margin gets smaller because more and more people other than you, the owner, are doing the work in the business. So as a solo practice owner, for example, you’re the only one doing the work we can reasonably expect. Your owners pay to be 30 to 60% of everything you bring in, right? That’s reasonable. So then there’s tax, then there’s profit operating expenses. But as you get to, let’s say, large group practice, over million dollars in revenue, we usually assign between five and 10% to owners pay. So much, much lower because there’s probably ten clinicians. You have to pay those ten clinicians to do the work, right, andn the piece of the- so it’s just a bigger pie, it’s a smaller piece of a bigger pie is how that happens. So for a solo practice, for example, we usually look for a tax allocation somewhere between five and 35%. It’s a really big range. 

 

Linzy [00:20:38] A big range. 

 

Julie [00:20:39] That’s a really big range because people have very different tax situations. We often see someone starting a solo practice as a side gig where they also already have, for example, full time job and then they’re starting as a side gig. So they may not be making a whole lot of money. Their profit margin may not be huge. So sometimes 5% can be can be enough. There are other cases where you do need a full 35% because you’re the only breadwinner in the household. You have to account for federal tax, state tax, self-employment tax in the U.S.. Right. All three of those. So that’s kind of why we see that that range. There are some fringe cases where you might even need more if you’re in a high income household, for example, where you know, you have a spouse already bringing up the household into a high tax bracket that could create a need for more. So so the ratios I’m talking about are kind of what most people will fall under. Then as you move to a small group that might move to 5 to 25% rates already, that got lower because the- you’re again you’re paying clinicians, right. You’re doing 50% of the work but like there’s clinicians to pay and then as we move to a medium and a large group, usually we see allocation tax allocations between five and 15%. For both of those, that typically is going to be enough. And again, because you’re getting just a smaller piece of that bigger pie, right? In a large group practice, usually at least 50% of the money that comes in is going right back out to clinician wages and sometimes even more. So once we allocate for all of those items, there’s just a lot less left. Right. 

 

Linzy [00:22:14] And because in this case, like when you’re talking about taxes here, you’re talking about just the owners taxes. Is that correct? Yes. 

 

Julie [00:22:23] Yes, that’s correct. So we’re talking we’re not talking about like employee payroll taxes. Right. So when I talk about employee the payroll allocation in that, for me, I include wages, payroll tax and benefits in. Yes. Yes. Right. So wages, payroll tax and benefits. So when we talk about tax in the U.S., again, like most private practices are pass through entities. And so that means that the the business itself does not pay tax at the federal level, rather, the profit flows through to the personal tax return where it is then taxed. Right. So so technically, the business does not pay tax, but it pays tax on behalf of the owner. And so then there’s always federal tax depending on the situation and the tax entity, self-employment tax as well. And then depending on the state again, state tax. Right. So just like you in Canada have provincial tax, I think all provinces have tax rate. 

 

Linzy [00:23:16] I believe so, yes. 

 

Julie [00:23:17] Yeah. So most states in the United States have have a state tax as well with some, some do not. And so that you know, in that case, there’s no tax. 

 

Linzy [00:23:24] It’s a wide range. 

 

Julie [00:23:25] It’s a very wide range. Yes. 

 

Linzy [00:23:27] And something with the with taxes and profit first. And this is a mistake that I see folks make. And I wonder if you see people making this like with profit first, you’re getting your tax percentage based on all the money coming in the door. Yes. Right. Not just what you’re getting paid in terms of what you said in your like your allocation percentages. Could you speak to that a little more? Because I think folks can get really confused of like what number are they’re getting? Are they applying their tax number to or where does their tax number come from? 

 

Julie [00:23:53] Yeah, that’s a really good point. So when you implement profit first, all the money coming into the business goes into that income account. Right. So that is ultimately your your gross income or close to it. All right. GROSS income is that income before you take out expenses. So then on your profit and loss or your tax return, your net income – your profit – that is ultimately what gets taxed, right? So you’re going to pay a percentage of that. So when we do a profit first allocation, we look at all the dollars coming in and then we’re going to allocate some to each category, each bank account, basically. Right? So of all the dollars coming in for solo practice, 5 to 35% of that is going to get allocated to tax. Some of that is going to get allocated to owners pay. Some of it is going to be allocated to operating expenses. And so just because you’re you’re saving, for example, 20% of your gross income for taxes doesn’t mean that your tax bracket is 20% rate is probably higher than that. But you have deductions that are legally allowed. You’re not taxed on your gross income, you’re taxed on your profit. And so that’s where it gets a little bit. That’s where it gets a little bit confusing. So we’re saving based on the gross income, and that’s why that number might be a lower than your actual tax bracket. 

 

Linzy [00:25:12] And that like when I first read Profit First years ago, that was the equation that for some reason took so long to get into my head. Like whenever I went to do it, I was like, Wait, what is that equation again? Like to turn your tax rate, like your effective tax rate, Like, let’s say I talk to my accountant, they’re like, okay, well, you know, because of what you make, you should be saving 28% for taxes. You don’t put 28% though, into your profit first calculator or allocations. Right. It’s a lower number. And I know for me that equation, which now I have in the course as a lesson, took a long time to like click into place. But this is where I see folks like sometimes on therapist Facebook groups and stuff, Julie, like this is a mistake that I see them making sometimes where they’re like, Well, my tax rate is 30%, and so I save 30% of everything coming in the door. Can you just clarify and speak to like why that is? Yeah, what what doesn’t work about that? 

 

Julie [00:26:02] If I mean, if that’s the case, then great. Right. You’re probably saving too much. And I think that’s a better problem than the opposite of saving not enough. 

 

Linzy [00:26:09] True story. 

 

Julie [00:26:10] But like, okay, let’s just use round number. So if $100,000 is coming in and you’re saving 30%, that means you’ll have $30,000 saved for taxes, right? Yes. But let’s say you have 25,000 in operating expenses, which is very doable. Right? Very reasonable to expect. So that means your actual your taxable income is not a hundred thousand. It’s hundred -$25,000 of expenses. 75,000. Yeah. So now you’ve saved almost 50% of your actual taxable income. So good problem to have. But that’s why I can feel like this is really hard. Yeah, it’s hard because it’s so. It’s more than you actually need. Yeah. 

 

Linzy [00:26:45] Yeah, it’s hard because you’re over saving. 

 

Julie [00:26:47] You’re over saving. Yeah. When someone asks about tax, that is our client that we’re we’re working directly in their books, I would say number one, like, obviously your accountant was always going to have the most accurate answer. Right. Because they can look at your whole tax situation. They can look at your tax return, your credits, you have rental income. We like all the all the pieces that come through and take that into account. So that’s number one. But if you’re not able to do that in the U.S., we have a form called the 1040 ES that’s for estimate. So you can use that form to estimate your quarterly estimate in terms of the seven-page form. Most people look at it in like, oh, no or no, no, I might not be doing that. So that is kind of your next best option. Then after that, if you’re not willing to quote, go, go down that road. You can also take your pull out your tax return to the 1040. Look at the first two pages. Look at the total tax that’s usually on the second page. And divide that by your gross income adjusted – AGI, adjusted gross income. And that’s going to say like, okay, this is your ultimately your tax rate. You can also. So that’s going to give you a piece of information, right, That if you saved that of your gross income, that’s going to be too much like we just talked about. But it still gives you a data point. Yeah. Or you can also look at your total tax if you’re making a very similar amount this year. Like, you can that can be the number that you plug in to your profit first instant assessment, right? Like that’s the dollar amount that you need ultimately to pay in taxes. And so you can look at that. Then your total tax as a percentage of all the income that you bring in and calculate it that way. Great. 

 

Linzy [00:28:22] Yeah. Yeah. So so helpful tips there. If folks, if you’re feeling unsure about your tax bracket, Julie just gave us some good information there. Seven-page form, if you like forms, that form is out there for you. Which form is that again? Julie,  1040ES. Okay. Yes. Or you can look at your tax return. Calculate those numbers. Look at how much you paid in tax. Divide that by your annual gross income, AGI. 

 

Julie [00:28:45] Adjusted gross income. 

 

Linzy [00:28:46] Adjusted gross income. There you go. Or talk to your accountant. Yeah, because accountants, you know, they love us. And especially we were talking about this a little bit before we start recording. Like in Canada, you don’t file based on your spouse’s income, like you pay taxes separately. So that’s not in the picture. But in the U.S., if you are married and if you’re filing jointly, like your spouse’s income is also in the picture, you and your accountant would be able to like actually look at all of that context and give you probably the most accurate number, I would guess. 

 

Julie [00:29:13] Yeah, they’ll they’ll get you pretty pretty darn close. 

 

Linzy [00:29:16] Usually I’m pretty darn close is all you need to be. 

 

Julie [00:29:18] Yeah, it doesn’t have to be. Done is better than perfect in this case, right? When you’re paying or saving for taxes, I’d rather you have a little bit of money left over in your tax account if possible. Than nothing. But close is better than nothing. Yeah. Yeah. 

 

Linzy [00:29:32] So when would you say is the best time to start using profit versus like, if folks are listening? People listening are going to be at different stages of business. Some of them maybe haven’t even started yet, but they’re thinking about starting or some have started, but maybe they’re making like a few hundred bucks, you know, a week with their first few clients, whereas other folks are more established. Like, what do you think is the right time to actually roll out profit first in your business? 

 

Julie [00:29:52] So I would say May 2nd is a good time because the book will be available to you. 

 

Linzy [00:30:01] That’s the moment. 

 

Julie [00:30:02] So I joke about that, but there’s a Chinese proverb that says the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. So I think starting where you are today is always a good idea. I get asked all the time like, can I start profit first as I start my business? And the answer is absolutely yes, right after your initial investment. You can you can start profit first. So let’s say you’re starting your practice and saying like I have a $2500 budget, right? Like I’m contributing personal funds to start this practice that you would not put your profit first with because that’s not income. You just put all of that in your operating expenses account. But then as dollars as the first dollar starts coming into the practice, you absolutely can start allocating to all of those. And then as an established business, in most cases you can you can start it at any point. It doesn’t have to be the end of the year or the end of the quarter. Like there’s it’s always a good time to take control of your money, in my opinion. There’s actually a handful of times that I think you should not start profit first. And I think I may be a little controversial there, but I think if you are not ready to actually spend some time looking at your money, you should not start it because having five accounts is not going to help. Five or six accounts. If money is so tight in your business that you’re regularly bouncing payments. Yeah, I personally think this is not the time to start splitting your money into five. Yeah, it’s just going to make that harder. I still think there’s a lot to be benefited from the book because we do talk about paying down debt, for example, and then getting your expenses under control. But I think that needs to happen before you actually start implementing right before you start moving 1% to profit. Yeah, you need to get that under control where you’re not bouncing payments, Right. So something structurally needs to change there. Yeah. 

 

Linzy [00:31:50] Okay. And so and for folks who do feel ready to tackle and they’re like, yeah, no, I do want to actually try to apply this, but things have been really tight in their practice or, you know, they they’re maybe their numbers they’re going to find that they’re out of. Islands that they’re like paying themselves too much or not saving enough for taxes. What about those cases where you go to look at people first and you’re like, Oh, no, these numbers that I’m supposed to be is like not even close to where I am. What do you suggest to folks in those situations? 

 

Julie [00:32:18] Yeah, well, so I think one of the beauties of profit first is that it actually encourages you to start where you are today. Right. So when you do the instant assessment and anyone who’s either pre-ordering the book or ordering it will have access to that on, you know, on our website at the instant assessment. You actually start your first quarter, you start implementing profit first at your current locations exactly where you are today, because just the act of moving your money from one big account to five or six bank accounts, that’s enough. Change now is going to just allow you to see the ebb and flow of the money and start making changes, right. To say, Oh, well, maybe I don’t need this anymore, let’s cut that piece. So that actually is encouraged to not make huge amounts of change right away, because if you try to go from 0% profit to 10% profit overnight, I think you basically need to change everything in your business. That’s really, really hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so even if you’re not where you want to be, that’s okay, because profit first will give you the kind of the map to get there. 

 

Linzy [00:33:17] And I like that. And I think, you know, that spirit is in the original profit first book and I love that you carry that and I’m sure that’s that’s in your book as well, because I think that something that therapists experience often is, you know, it’s like you’ll talk to a financial person or go listen to a finance podcast. They’re like, Just do it this way. This is the right way. So you just need to do this. Like I saw a financial advisor once and she was just like, You just need to spend a lot less money. I’m like, Okay, Oh, like, how can you figure out how to make this work better? But it’s like, there’s no how do I say this? Like it’s such a hard way to approach money. And like, often people end up doing it just like throw their hands up in the air and be like, okay, well, apparently I just suck at this and I can’t do it. Whereas like that softness of being like, okay, start where you are now and then start to slowly move towards where you want to be is so much more human and so much more compassionate and also just is much more likely to actually give you success. Right. Because as you say, like in your business, if you find your numbers aren’t where they want them to be, you’re going to need to change a lot of things. And you can’t change those things overnight. But if you let it be a gradual process of moving your numbers towards where you want them to be, you know, then you’re moving at a pace of actually being able to like make changes that make sense, integrate those changes, feel out what’s right, and then, you know, you’ll still get there. But you’re maybe moving things like what do you suggest like 1% of the time, 2% of the time each month? Yeah. What’s the piece that you find works for people? 

 

Julie [00:34:43] So I recommend either a four-quarter or eight-quarter rollout. So depending on how far you have to go, once in a blue moon, we have a client who just really wants to kick it into high gear and they instead of four quarters, they do four months. But still you have a clear sense of like this is this is, what I- the change I need to make this month. So usually based on that, it’s plus 1%/ -1%, right. Because they all your allocations ultimately have to equal 100%. Yes. Because because math you know so you’re making small one, one and a half percent change each quarter ultimately, because that gives you it’s kind of a, you know, a little stepping stool where you get to like, okay, this is our new place. Like, so now we have to tighten our belts a little bit more. Where does that come from? Right, right. I want to pay myself more. So something has to come right down here. Right? 

 

Linzy [00:35:31] So it’s like operating expenses go down 1%, your paycheck goes up 1%. And like, there’s that that dance that happens. 

 

Julie [00:35:38] Yeah. And really profit is is not an event. It’s a habit. It’s not just something that happens on paper at the end of the year. And so this is a little bit like, going back to nutrition, it’s like you’re trying to change everything all at once. It’s like a crash diet. Yes. You’re just trying it. You’re so far off from where you are in a way that’s sustainable long term that it doesn’t often doesn’t last. But if you’re just making those small incremental changes like walking 20 minutes or eating a little bit less. Right. Like those are the changes that long term can be sustained. So that is the goal with profit first, like you’re not trying to change everything all at once. It’s really hard. It’s not doable in many businesses. So you’re just making small incremental changes and they become habits. 

 

Linzy [00:36:22] Yeah, I love that. That’s a very a very human, very human way. I’m approaching these numbers. Julie, thank you so much for joining me today. I am so excited about this book. I’m so excited that you wrote this book that you have your fourth child coming out in the world. So if folks are wanting to preorder the book and just wanting to be able to follow along and be more in your world, tell it. Tell them where to find you. 

 

Julie [00:36:48] Absolutely. Well, and we do have a special giveaway for your listeners if they go to profit first for therapist dot com slash linzy, they will be able to find our calculator to reverse engineer your practice. Your. So this is a we haven’t really we didn’t talk about this today. But when you want your practice to give you a certain amount, like how how do you get there so you can get that calculator there. You can also preorder the book depending on when you’re you’re listening. I’ll get access to the tools as well. And if you’re listening, after May 2nd, you can just order it and you’ll get it within a couple of days. 

 

Linzy [00:37:27] Wonderful. And as a fan of tools and calculators, I’m very excited to see that tool. So thank you. So. And so it’s profit versus for therapist dot com slash linzy. And Linzy – for folks listening – is L I N Z Y. Because my name often confuses people’s brains like just a little bit. Julie thank you. Thank you. And congratulations. I’m so, so happy to have had you here today. 

 

Julie [00:37:52] Thanks for having me. 

 

Linzy [00:38:07] I so appreciate Julie coming on the podcast today and it was really nice to to get like that refresher in private first in the principles that make it work. You know, like there’s just so much human nature that I think a system like profit first and you don’t have to follow it to the tee by any means. But there’s so much human nature that having a system like that addresses. I’m a big fan of this idea of build systems that are smarter than you are. And that’s not to say that we’re dum dums because we are definitely not. But as humans we have natural vulnerabilities and then as people we have our own additional vulnerabilities or behaviors that we need to set up systems that are going to stop us from doing the things that ultimately hurt us. So, for instance, if you’re someone who tends to steal from yourself, you tend to look at money and be like, That’s probably fine. I’m just going to take this and buy the shiny thing or sign up for this course when I’m already in five other courses and have no bandwidth. But this is exciting looking, you know, if you have that tendency to overspend, then the principle of profit first, where it’s like you have those smaller plates, you can actually see what money there is to use for operating expenses. When you’re going to make those kinds of decisions tends to make us just more thoughtful in how we spend. And I like that plate analogy, but I also like the analogy that’s in the original profit first book of tube of toothpaste. Like when we first get a tube of toothpaste, we’re like, we go nuts with toothpaste and you can put like an inch of toothpaste on your brush because you have so much toothpaste. And we tend to be very liberal. But when you get to the bottom of that tube of toothpaste, you’re like squeezing super hard to get out just like the smallest little, you know, pea sized drop of toothpaste and like, that’s enough. And you make it work and you still brush your teeth and everything still works, but you’re using much less. And that is natural human nature. So when we create those natural boundaries around our money, we tend to use it better, use it smarter because we’re giving ourselves boundaries. People do well with boundaries. So I loved going over that with Julie today, so excited about her book. If you do want to pre buy her book or buy her book, depending on when you’re listing and also get that great freebie, that reverse engineering tool for our listeners. It’s profit first for therapist dot com slash linzy. Linzy is L I N Z Y. You can follow me on Instagram @moneynutsandbolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, please jump over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. It is the best way for people to find the podcast and be part of these conversations. Thanks for listening today. 

Annie [00:00:01] I’m hanging out still with people who share my values. My friends are still asking the same questions. I think that’s a good question for us to ask themselves is what would those values be that we would be afraid that we would step into? And are we living in a community with people who would question us if we were starting to shift into values that are like really inauthentic to us? 

Linzy [00:00:28] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host Linzy Bonham therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast. Today’s guest is Annie Schuessler. Annie’s a business coach and she’s also the host of the Rebel Therapist podcast. With her rebel therapist programs, she’s all about helping therapists, healers, and coaches make an impact beyond traditional private practice. Today, Annie and I got into investing in your business, what it feels like to launch and like, put yourself out there and be in the middle of something. We talked about money and her increased ability to earn because of like the big work that she does now, the scaled business that she’s built, how her relationship to money has changed and not changed. If you’re curious about building something beyond private practice, this is going to be a great episode for you. Annie and I have some pretty honest conversations during this episode about what it feels like to have a bigger brand and to not be a therapist anymore and have a brand that is based more on like launching and bringing people into your program at certain times and being seen and money coming in in chunks like these are kind of some of the maybe more challenging parts of having a business that is beyond private practice, but also is, I think, an amplification in a lot of ways of what all of us struggle with at all stages of business, whether it’s just starting out in private practice or having a larger private practice. What we talking about today in terms of the challenges around those negative stories that can come up and the fears about money happen at every level. They just kind of get bigger. When your business gets bigger, those fears can also get bigger. Great conversation today. Here is my conversation with Annie Schuessler. So Annie, welcome to the podcast. 

Annie [00:02:44] Thanks, Linzy. 

Linzy [00:02:45] We were just talking before we start recording that. It’s nice to see each other again because we connected for a chat last year at some point. Yeah, and we’ve been wanting to do it again and now we’re doing it and recording at the same time. So this is like a treat for us as well as a podcast episode. 

Annie [00:03:01] I just get excited to talk to you and, you know, connect with your brain. It’s so fun. Thank you. 

Linzy [00:03:08] I was just saying to you, like we’ve not had on the podcast yet, too much discussion about like the real nitty gritty of like expanding and scaling and going beyond therapy, which I know is something that lots of therapists think about. And certainly lots of folks that I work with or listen to the podcast, I’m sure have had at least a fantasy of, you know, expanding, growing, doing something beyond therapy. And so I’m excited to have you here because this is the space that you live in now. Am I correct about that? 

Annie [00:03:40] Yeah, that’s completely my jam is helping people create their programs beyond private practice, so not really within their therapy license, but in addition or sometimes even a replacement of having a private practice. 

Linzy [00:03:59] Now, you no longer practice as a clinician, is that correct? 

Annie [00:04:03] That’s right. 

Linzy [00:04:03] Yes. And I am in the same boat. I am curious, do you still have your license now? 

Annie [00:04:09] No, I let it go. 

Linzy [00:04:12] You don’t. Okay! Nice! 

Annie [00:04:12] Yeah, that was a moment. 

Linzy [00:04:13] Yeah, I bet it. 

Annie [00:04:15] Because it was time to either renew or let it go. And I really thought about. Hmm. What part of me wants to renew this or keep this? And what part of me is ready or wanting to let it go? Yeah. And so I took that leap of faith and just recycled it. 

Linzy [00:04:40] You didn’t just let it go. 

Annie [00:04:42] How about you? 

Linzy [00:04:43] I do still have my license. Only because it’s also only $300. Yeah. And so there is like, there is an equation there for me of, like, the $300 to just be like, Yeah, fine. Here’s my renewal money versus the energy and bandwidth to investigate what happens if I do let it lapse? And what would be the process of like getting it again. And so for me, it’s been completely just based on like a time, you know, time for money equation. Yeah. It just hasn’t made sense yet to let it go because I’m like, I’m not sure if I really understand the full implications of letting this go yet, but yeah, I haven’t practiced in a couple of years. I just, I’m like an MSW in name, but not in practice at this point. So I’m just like, Yeah, yeah, sure. I’m doing professional development. Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap, yap. Renew. Yeah, that’s where I am at this point. But I- you’re inspiring me a little bit because I do feel like that’s a- it’s a statement. It’s a move, right? To say like, I’m actually just going to let go of this piece of paper that has defined me and bound me in certain ways for so long and just pursue something different, like outside of those bounds. 

Annie [00:05:50] Yeah. And feeling sure that I really wouldn’t want to go back. 

Linzy [00:05:57] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so for folks who are who are listening, I mean, I know for me, part of growing my practice beyond therapy or going, I should say, part of growing my business beyond my practice. Starting to move out of that space did involve having to make some big moves. Right. And making some investments. And I know that’s something that folks – especially if folks already have anxiety around money or lack of confidence around money – can really struggle with to know when and where do you invest as you are thinking about building out these things. What are your thoughts on how do you figure out what to invest in as you’re thinking about growing your business? 

Annie [00:06:38] So for me, it’s been in stages. At different stages, different investments made a lot of sense. Yeah. So right now, like I just re-upped with a business coach who has a $9,000 package that works really well for me. And it wasn’t a very big deal to make that decision. I know that I’m going to get at least $9000 back from what I do with her, and I wouldn’t sign up if I thought I was just going to get $9000 back. 

Linzy [00:07:12] Right. Yes. 

Annie [00:07:15] But I’m confident. I’m completely confident I’ll make that $9000 back. And I feel like, considering what I want to put into it, I’m going to probably get ten times that. Back, and that’s really important to me. Yeah, but in the beginning I would not. It would have been a terrible idea to start with that coach. Right. Like the stages have really been different for me and I feel like for me and I think for a lot of folks in the first stages, it’s really important to first just get clear on what do you want to create and who do you want to create it for and to start there. And so if business coaching, like working with a business coach, is going to help you get really clear on those things: who is this for and what do I want to create and how can I get out of my own way to really make those things happen? Then that can be well worth the investment. And sometimes I see people wanting to invest in things where I’m like, Oh, I don’t think it’s the right time for that. Yeah. So things like branding. Sometimes people start with branding first. 

Linzy [00:08:33] Yes. 

Annie [00:08:34] And I’m like, Oh my God, that money you’re spending, it will be so much better spent once you have the, like, what and who stuff really figured out, Right? Then you’ll be able to do some really magical branding work with someone.  

Linzy [00:08:50] So true. It’s right thing, right time. Yeah. Like, there’s so many. At some point, almost everything is important, but it’s like, is it important right now? And what do you think it is about branding? Because this is a common one I hear folks who support people who are helping to scale and grow talk about is like there is something very compelling about branding or that like beautiful website, you know, the $15,000 or $20,000 website. What do you think it is about that that like pulls folks in at the very beginning of this work that they’re doing? 

Annie [00:09:19] I wonder if it’s partly because it’s what we can see so easily. So we can see what someone’s website looks like. We can see how many followers someone has on Instagram. So some of these more visible things might kind of pull us in first because we think, Well, that’s what a successful business looks like. And actually, a lot of successful businesses have sales pages on Google Docs actually like run through mostly referrals, and they’re not very visibly glamorous and they’re making a really good living behind the scenes. So I think it’s partly just that misconception that started. 

Linzy [00:10:02] Like this is what success looks like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And certainly something that I have experienced is like a lot of the work of building something is this kind of like behind the scenes unglamorous working through building something, feeling it out, information, interviews, all of these things that are not very sexy and don’t have a nice color scheme. But those are the things that actually allow you to answer the questions you were just talking about there. Right. Like the who and the what. There’s a lot of kind of sorting through that has to happen there before you can even start to think about what your brand might be. And I will say too, I think also at the beginning, like there’s also a good chance you’re going to pivot and you’re going to serve those people and be like, Oh, actually, never mind, that was a mistake and end up doing something different. So when we do all this like branding around something that isn’t solid yet, there’s also the risk that we’re going to end up having a completely different business in two years and the branding is not going to be relevant anymore. 

Annie [00:11:03] That’s really likely. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:11:05] Yeah. 

Annie [00:11:06] That also makes me think of the when we think about branding – and this probably isn’t really even true of branding – but when we think about branding, it feels like it’s going to be easier to do. It’s not going to hit our visibility and our vulnerability buttons as much as doing something like what you mentioned, like getting on Zoom with the kind of person who you want to serve and asking them questions. Talking to our colleagues, really just putting ourselves out there and asking for help, those things can feel really disgusting and they’re really worth it and useful. 

Linzy [00:11:46] That was a very surprising word choice, I have to say. Disgusting was not the word I was expecting. Tell me what you mean when you say disgusting. 

Annie [00:11:55] Like vulnerable. 

Linzy [00:11:56] Vulnerable. Okay. Okay. Yes. Yeah. 

Annie [00:11:58] Feeling like- so many times when I’m working with folks, they would rather do anything than, like, get on Zoom with somebody and get into a conversation and put themselves out there when they don’t feel, quote-unquote, ready yet. 

Linzy [00:12:15] Right. Which also actually, it makes me think about kind of like the branding in the website. That’s the cloak that we want to put on to make it look like we have it figured out. Yeah. When it actually takes a long time to figure it out. And even when you figure it out, sometimes it changes because something else changes beyond your control or the culture changes or the market changes. So yeah, I, I do wonder if it’s like unconsciously folks are trying to skip that messy, vulnerable part and go right to the like, Ta-da! Yeah, here’s my beautiful color scheme, here’s my beautiful graphic design. But without all that, that initial work that you’re talking about, the who and the what and the like, getting on Zoom and talking to your people and realizing your assumptions were wrong and being surprised by something and then hearing it over and over and over. Without that, you can’t build something of substance. 

Annie [00:13:05] Absolutely. Yeah. Did your niche change beyond private practice, or did you always know it was going to be around money? 

Linzy [00:13:13] Oh, I always knew it was going to be around money. 

Annie [00:13:15] Love it. 

Linzy [00:13:16] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was like. That was the thing. That I identified as like, Huh? I have this thing that I love that everybody else hates. And I have not even grown remotely tired of it. In fact, I have to almost fight to stay in the space because I think- I will get advice from folks like or my students will give me the feedback of like I want- if you were teaching, like, how to, like, scale and like, build a new brand, I would do that. I’m like, Yeah, that’s cool. Annie does that. This person does it. This person does that. Like, that’s not what I do and it’s not what I want to do. And I don’t feel compelled in that direction. It’s like I want to- I’ll be the person who will help you learn how to do cash flow projection so you can make strategic decisions about what you’re going to build and how many folks are going to serve and when you’re going to roll out your courses and how much your operating expense ratio is going to be like, I will stay in that nerdy space with you, like this is where I want to to live. And so I’ve had to like really just commit to this space over and over because I think there could have been a lot of shiny object pull had I not felt so clear like, no, this is my zone of genius and other folks are really brilliant at marketing and that’s never going to be me. And that’s totally fine. What about you? Has your focus shifted over time, the folks that you serve? 

Annie [00:14:28] It did. In the beginning, I was serving therapists in private practice and therapists who wanted to create private practices, and it was all about practice building. 

Linzy [00:14:38] Yes. 

Annie [00:14:39] Yeah. Okay. And I wish I had switched sooner and listened to that inner voice like you’re talking about sooner, if anything, because this work always kind of pulled me a little bit more like what’s beyond private practice and what are people doing and how can I help them do it faster? Yeah. So beyond private practice. 

Linzy [00:15:03] Yes. Like, yeah, that, that spark and like, you know, this is something I talk about with students and this is what you guide folks in doing for their next level thing is like find that area either within your practice, the folks you love to serve within your practice or the way you love to work. Whether it’s like intensives or hour-and-a-half sessions or whatever. Find that area where there’s that like spark and pull and follow it, because the work that we love is easy to do. The other stuff can be really hard. 

Annie [00:15:29] Yes. 

Linzy [00:15:30] So you and I now live in a in a similar kind of space, this online space where we have to sell and show up and launch and all of these kinds of things. And I think that this is something that often terrifies therapists. Yeah, this is like something that they’re like, Oh gosh, I have to do all this sticking my neck out and not knowing what’s going to happen. I’m curious for you, how do you handle and how do you manage and probably what do you teach your folks about that work of like having to launch and open your doors to your course and show up and be seen and all of that stuff? How do you handle being in the middle of a launch? 

Annie [00:16:12] I am finding that I’m finally having less of a trauma response when I’m in the middle of the launch. So- and I say finally, like I’ve launched dozens of times. 

Linzy [00:16:24] Yes. 

Annie [00:16:24] So this is hard work for me. And I know for a lot of my clients, it’s really hard to, like, put ourselves out there, know that our money, our income really depends on launches doing well. Along with, like, all the feelings that I have about myself when I’m launching, like, all of that is a lot to manage and to feel like, you know, my friends have pointed out that there’s kind of been launch Annie and then rest-of-the-time Annie and launch Annie is just more anxious or insecure, more kind of fragile than rest-of-the-time Annie. 

Linzy [00:17:07] Right. 

Annie [00:17:09] And I feel like that’s finally shifting to where I feel like there’s a just a stable Annie that gets through all of it. And then I can kind of, like, talk myself down more easily. Yeah, but that’s like, that’s after dozens of launches. So I really feel for people, especially when they’re starting out with launching. And part of what I want to help people do is set realistic expectations based on what they already have going on. So knowing what their audience size is, who’s in their audience, how many people they’ve asked for help, how many conversations they’ve been having, so that they really know, okay, I’ve got this set up for myself. And so. Here’s what’s likely to happen with this launch. Like, here are my numbers going in and then my expectations so we can like, set that together and think it through. Because otherwise I think you’re looking at what other people’s lunches look like from the outside. Which might be total bullshit depending on who it is and how honest they are. 

Linzy [00:18:26] Yeah, right. Yeah. 

Annie [00:18:28] And. It’s also like you’re not getting the behind-the-scenes look at what they’re going through during their lunch. So, you know, I also, I really like to help people choose a less risky way to launch the first time to look at do I want to maybe just launch a one-on-one program as my first offering so that if I got one person, I’ve actually had a successful one like running my program. And that doing that for a period of time while you build your audience and then go into a group launch. 

Linzy [00:19:06] Right. 

Annie [00:19:07] So like, I’m working with someone right now who’s planning on starting a group, no doubt, and this program is going to be so valuable for a group. And it’s, you know, it’s a group of people who tend – like so many – it’s a group of people who tend to feel isolated and need each other. So she’s going to run it as a group. Probably in the fall. And in the spring she’s going to launch it as a one-on-one program and then just run it enough times until she hits critical mass and can see. All right. I have enough people knocking on my door that this can be a great program. 

Linzy [00:19:46] I love that. You know, you’re letting I think that that’s a very strategic way to start because you’re toe dipping. You’re still getting the experience of what it’s like to run a launch, like to put it out there, open your doors, have a deadline, all of the things. But you’re making it much more likely that you’re going to succeed. Yeah. And it’s nice to have an experience of success at the start rate and like set a goal that means that you can be like, Oh, I did it. I got my one person or my two people. Then you also, I’m sure, got to work through and refine your program by going through it individually with these people. Yeah. Which is going to also make it that much better as you do grow your audience and bring more people in the next time. That’s very strategic. I love that you do that with people. 

Annie [00:20:34] I really like it too, because then she’s going to have testimonials when she launches it as a group program in the fall. And otherwise, she could just put- but I mean, there’s nothing wrong with doing it this way either. But she could put just a ton of energy into audience building from now till fall and not be making a dime in all that time. And so I would rather she make back the investment that she put in my program and the other things she’s doing and then go into the fall and start bringing in real money. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:21:07] And it’s nice to actually be able to do the work that you’re wanting to do and like run the program that you’re building and actually get that experience. 

Annie [00:21:14] You’re so excited about it. 

Linzy [00:21:15] Witnessing the transformation and helping people. And, you know, I think what you’re talking about here, you’re talking about like “launch Annie”, “rest-of-the-time Annie” coming closer together. I’m sure so many therapists have experienced this even when they’re just marketing their private practices. But when you have a scaled offer, when you have something like a course where you’re really like putting it out there and trying to call in, you know, a certain amount of people at the same time to share an experience, you know, a scaled model. It really is multiplied, right? Like, I think there’s just so much invitation for so many parts of us. And we all have our special blend, you know, of like activation to come up. Like, I was joking to you before we started recording, joking, not joking. Like I just did a launch in January. I do challenge launches twice a year. So the money momentum challenge, which folks listening have probably heard me talk about or maybe have participated in, that’s an example of a type of launch that’s very intense. Right? It’s like it involves me showing up every day. There’s teaching, there’s lives every night. There’s engaging all throughout the day. It’s this like really intense burst of energy, which is like fun but like not where I live on a regular basis. So it’s kind of like I’m, like, partying hard for a week. Yeah. And then after you’ve kind of done your thing and you’ve shown people like, This is how I work, this is what the experience is, this is what I’m offering, there’s this five-day period, you know, where folks have the opportunity to join the course where you’re just like, have to wait and you continue. Like, I continue showing up and the emails are going out and everything’s happening. But, you know, I think for me, you know, what it brings up is this The part of me that can come up is the like. Well, just shut it down. This is fine. We can just burn it to the ground. It’s okay. That kind of, you know, thing where it’s like all this effort and, like, again, we’re all going to have those parts, but just noticing, like, Oh, there’s the burn it down part. Hello burn it down part. Welcome back. I’m doing a launch. 

Annie [00:23:11] For you, what triggers burn-it-down? Is it like a day of cricket or like, what is it that comes in and makes you say. 

Linzy [00:23:19] Here’s the incredible thing, and this shows that it’s trauma, right? It’s like it’s very black and white. I’m very numbers oriented. Obviously, this is what I teach. So I have my percentage that I want to see my conversion percentage like of the folks who are in the challenge, who aren’t students or grads already, because also some of those folks are participating. Of the people who haven’t joined me in money skills and who might be considering they would be eligible to be new students. There’s a percentage that you know, based on past launches, we want to see join. And the last time our goal was 4% and I landed at 3.6. Failure. Right? 

Annie [00:23:54] Wow. 

Linzy [00:23:54] That’s what the voice says. Right. So that is that like, you know, and that’s very black and white thinking, which, you know, is always a cue that you’re not in your balanced wise mind where it’s like four would be success, 3.6 not success. And that’s not how it works at all. That’s not how life works. But I noticed that in myself and to the point that I almost have to like, you know, when I’m venting to business friends. I have to almost like, walk it back after like, you know, I’ll have friends after who were like, Well, okay, let’s think of how you do this differently because you’re never hitting the number you want. I was like, Well, to be fair, we are talking about 0.4% difference. You know, it’s like I have to almost like add-  

Annie [00:24:33] You have to remind them how to be- yeah- how to be the voice of reason for you. 

Linzy [00:24:36] I wasn’t, I wasn’t being reasonable when I said that. And now I am being reasonable again. And reasonable me sees that, that was great and I really had fun and lots of amazing people joined the course and others now have had an experience that might help them decide to join the course later if it’s the right thing. So it’s like, that’s my like post-launch. I’ve had a weekend. I’m like, you know, everything’s back online again, but- and I’m sure there’s many, many other responses that I’m not even thinking of right now that I have, You know, when launches are are going on or when launches aren’t going well, when there is crickets, you know, that’s always a moment, too. But I do agree like it is getting easier over time, partially just because now I’m at the point where it’s like, okay, it’s launch feelings. 

Annie [00:25:18] Here they are. It’s launch feelings. 

Linzy [00:25:20] Feelings. We’ve been here. 

Annie [00:25:21] Hi Launch. Hi launch Linzy or launch Annie. Like, we’ve met. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:25:26] Yeah, exactly. I’m like, you know, like launch feelings will require some sushi and cinnamon buns from, you know, the overpriced store downtown. Yeah, Like, that’s really the best thing that we can do for them. But, yeah, it is. I think, you know, this is just such an example of how business and especially when we start to build brands where we have our faces out there and our voices out there and we are trying to call in our people, it’s really vulnerable. It can bring up a lot of vulnerable parts of us. 

Annie [00:25:54] Yes, there’s so much stirred up at once because there’s that vulnerability piece about like our value or our worthiness. And then there’s the money piece that can feel so panicky, right? Like if somebody is- if, well, I’ll just keep it to me- if I’m not hitting a number that I had hoped and I’m in the middle of a launch and I’m doing all this predicting, which is not really a good use of my energy. But no, no, no, I’ll do it anyway. That’s a time when I can get into just money fears big time. 

Linzy [00:26:30] Sure. Yeah. I like. And I’m curious, would you be up for talking more about that? Like, what do you think your specific stories or fears are that surface in those moments? 

Annie [00:26:40] It’s a little bit like burn it all down, but it’s the language that comes up for me is, oh, never mind, Oh, never mind. This whole program and this whole business that I actually really love and get a ton out of. Yeah. It’s just sort of this like shrinking. 

Linzy [00:26:59] Yeah, I was going to say like a part of like defeat or something like. 

Annie [00:27:01] Yeah, yeah. And going invisible like, Oh, never mind. Yeah, that’s what feels tempting to me. 

Linzy [00:27:07] Sure. Yeah, I can see that. And I think, you know, the thing about businesses like this and folks who are listening, like, if, if you are, you know, thinking about building an expanded brand like Annie has and like I have, this is something that’s very different from private practice is that the money does come in in chunks. 

Annie [00:27:25] Yes. 

Linzy [00:27:25] Or it doesn’t come, you know, like when you’re selling a course, you know, depending on the ratio you get, like folks are pay in full to like payment plans. You know, obviously, depending on the structure of your business, sometimes like, you know, it’s feast or famine the way the money comes in. And I think that’s such an invitation, again, to like all the parts of us, like all the scarcity, all the money fears can easily come out in that model because it feels like so much is at stake when you’re in those times, when you’re like, okay, now this is the time when all my work is going to pay off. And it’s like, Oh, well, maybe it’s not okay, that’s fine.  

Annie [00:27:59] What if it doesn’t? 

Linzy [00:27:59] It’s okay. 

Annie [00:28:01] Yes. 

Linzy [00:28:01] Yeah. Yeah, it is this like next level I think of money mindset work that you have to do. And then also, of course, I would argue, of systems that you need to put in place so that you are not actually, you know, relying on this one launch to make the money work. Like I think in businesses where you have feast or famine and this is true in private practice, too, for folks who are listening, who are never going to build businesses like this. This is also true in private practice – just not as extreme. You know, we need to have the systems in place to give ourselves stability. Yeah. Even if the money comes in in ebbs and flows, we need to have that stability of like a regular paycheck and a certain amount of money in the bank. Otherwise, emotionally, I think there’s just so much at stake and financially so much at stake. Most of us, I don’t think, are doing our best work when we are stressed. Stress to the nines. 

Annie [00:28:49] That has really helped me. Having- yes. Thank you for pointing that out. Having my actual salary not dependent on what’s about to happen with a current launch is so helpful. Absolutely, so helpful. So I can look ahead to worst case scenario. Yes, it could happen. It hasn’t actually ever happened for me, but it could totally happen. But like, worst case scenario, I wait till the next launch and that would totally work out. Yeah. Another thing that I do to kind of hack myself is I like to come up with, like early in the launch the worst case scenario and find a part of me that would love that outcome. Hmm. So like, let’s say the worst case scenario is: my program has room for 20 people, but the worst case scenario is I guess I could just say no one signs up, because if I can find a way to fall in love with this scenario, then I’m going to be doing great. 

Linzy [00:29:55] So then you can’t lose. 

Annie [00:29:57] Right. 

Linzy [00:29:57] Interesting. 

Annie [00:29:59] To really, like, dream into it until I can find, Yeah, that isn’t my first choice but if that were to happen. 

Linzy [00:30:06] Yeah. I mean I think it’s kind of like that CBT intervention of like what’s the worst that can happen. 

Annie [00:30:11] Yes. 

Linzy [00:30:12] Which I’m always surprised that that doesn’t just like send people into like pure catastrophe, but somehow it does seem to work where you’re like, oh okay, well if that happened, then I will reopen my private practice and launch it again next week with a different branding. Like, you know, it’s like then you realize like, Oh, that I could even solve that problem. 

Annie [00:30:28] Yes. 

Linzy [00:30:29] Yeah. Which is powerful because the black and white tells us that it’s like success or doom. 

Annie [00:30:35] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:30:36] And actually there’s a huge spectrum in the middle that we can manage. 

Annie [00:30:39] It does usually surprise my clients when I ask them to go into that a little bit. Like what might be great about that happening? Yeah. And at first they’re like, That’s what I’m telling you. I really don’t want to have happen. Like, Yeah, no, I got that. 

Linzy [00:30:55] I am listening. Yeah, but I can see that you’re kind of, you’re inoculating yourself against that. Yeah. And so, I mean, I am curious, Annie, with where you are and then like, what you’ve built, you know, you’ve come through private practice, you start practicing, you’ve now built this, like, coaching business around helping, you know, therapists expand beyond therapy. How do you think differently about money now than you did, you know, when you first started off, let’s even say back in private practice, what do you notice different about how you think about money now compared to when you were just starting out? 

Annie [00:31:32] Yeah, One thing is that my expectation of my income is a lot higher. So like now I really expect to make- like to gross in my business, like over 300 K and my goals are a lot higher than that moving forward. And as a person in private practice, I just had a much smaller range of where I could see my goals. And I wasn’t unhappy with that. That was okay. But I just noticed when I look back at like, my old goal setting documents, I’m like, Oh, wow, I really like could see my income ceiling is a lot lower. So that’s one thing is just like I’m, not really linking hours to income anymore. Yeah, I’m much more linking like the value of my program, the value of the outcomes. How I can make my programs better and better. I think about that tied to income rather than how many hours can I work. 

Linzy [00:32:40] Right. Because that is scalable. Right. Like the value and like the transformation deliver in the way that you find ways to have more folks have success, you know, with you doing a similar amount of work or working differently like those, there’s just so much more potential there than your time, which is like obviously got a finite limit of how much direct service you could ever do in a week and probably how much you could charge for an hour of direct service with an individual person also has a limit that’s going to look different. That’s interesting. So that makes me curious then, like has your lifestyle has your life changed a lot now, having built a business that has such higher capacity or such higher potential for the money that you bring in. 

Annie [00:33:25] Some things I’ve noticed changing are I feel more ease with being generous. Like I feel like it doesn’t feel like a big deal to make decisions about like donating more. Or just little, little things with, you know, treating a friend to something. Those things don’t feel like as big of a deal. And then with what my kids get to do, yeah, they get a lot more options than they did- not into- I mean, they would be surprised to hear me say that because they don’t get a lot of presents or things like that. And we don’t go out to eat a lot. But in terms of the activities that we pay for, yeah, they’ve got a lot more options. So those are some things I just notice a lot of ease around. Yeah, but if you look in on my life it doesn’t look that different. It’s more like those kinds of things and being able to put a lot into retirement. 

Linzy [00:34:24] Right. Yeah.  

Annie [00:34:25] Which is a big deal. 

Linzy [00:34:26] Yeah. That is a big deal. That’s a big, big deal. And that’s something I’ve just been thinking about this week – a couple of times I’ve thought and talked about it this week with people – where it’s like when you’re not earning a lot, you can still kind of like get by while you’re actively earning, but it’s in retirement that we’re really going to see the impact because that’s when that little stream of money starts coming in. You’re like, Oh shit, now I’m on this small fixed income. Yeah. Then it’s like the reality of it really is going to settle. So, yeah, having the more you would put away for retirement, you’re dramatically changing the last few decades of your life. Yes. At this point. Right. Because our retirement now is a long chapter of our life. 

Annie [00:35:02] Yeah. And I don’t know how long. Like I’m 51. Yeah. I’m not feeling any pull to retire. 

Linzy [00:35:08] Yes. 

Annie [00:35:09] But you never know what’s going to happen. We don’t have a safety net in the U.S., so. Yeah, yeah. 

Linzy [00:35:17] Yeah, absolutely. And I think about like my mother-in-law who retired earlier than planned because she had an injury and that was kind of like, oh, well, that’s the end of her working life. She needed her body to work. She now has this injury, like, she’s retired. The end. It’s not always the time or the way that we think it’s going to be. 

Annie [00:35:34] Yeah. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:35:35] But something that I’m hearing and that may be helpful for people here is: it does not sound to me like earning more has like fundamentally changed you as a person or you’re like, I’m hearing more ease. You know, your kids have more activities, there’s more security in the future. But I’m not necessarily hearing. Did you buy a yacht? Anything like that. 

Annie [00:35:58] No, and what’s funny- but although we did go to Italy last year. Yeah. So that- I find that thing of spending more on experiences than things I know that’s not black and white. Like, what exactly is an experience? What exactly is a thing? But I do find that I want to invest in those things more. And I drive a clunker. And like I would have thought, like my sort of dream vehicle would have been like a really adorable, like Fiat or Mini Cooper. And like, when it comes into real life that just keeps not being what we want to spend money on. So we just keep buying used cars that will get us from A to B and that’s it. For example.

Linzy [00:36:43] We are the same. We are the same. Yeah. 

Annie [00:36:45] And like, I don’t wear expensive clothes. Like, I also would have thought that, like, maybe I would have upgraded my wardrobe and like, I just keep not wanting to. 

Linzy [00:36:55] Yeah. And so what does that tell you or show you? What have you taken from that? 

Annie [00:37:00] I think it’s about like what truly gives me joy and pleasure and matters to me. Yeah. And, like, really comfortable t-shirts, it turns out, are what I want to be wearing. 

Linzy [00:37:12] But it’s not just what you could afford. It’s actually what you like. 

Annie [00:37:15] Yeah. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:37:16] And I’m asking this Annie, in part because, you know, I do think that sometimes therapists like have a fear that if they make more, they’re going to change in bad ways. They’re going to become more materialistic or they’re going to forget about what really matters to them, or they’re not going to share the money. They’re going to become greedy and more, more conservative. And these kinds of things, which I think are cultural narratives. But I think also, you know, therapists are we tend to be very invested in like we want to be good people. We want to be doing good things in the world. And so I’m pulling this out partially because it’s like, yeah, seems really clear that that has not happened to you. 

Annie [00:37:51] It has not. I don’t think- and I think maybe part of that fear because I’ve had that fear, too. I wonder if part of it comes from we’ve seen rich assholes, right? And like, we don’t want to be a rich asshole, but I feel like that might be partly that we’ve seen that when people have surrounded themselves with other people who will not question what they’re doing with their money or with their, you know, with their resources in general. And like, I’m hanging out still with people who share my values, some of them with more money than me, some of them with less. But like my friends are still asking the same questions. I’m still hanging out with the same people and some new wonderful people. So I think that’s a good question for us to ask themselves is like, what would that- what would those values be that we would be afraid that we would step into? And are we living in a community with people who would question us if we were starting to shift into values that are like really inauthentic to us? 

Linzy [00:39:00] Right. Yeah. Like I think having authentic connection with your people, whoever that is, is going to keep you grounded and keep you connected with what actually matters. Because I’m sure there are folks where you do get pulled in. They do get pulled into things that in retrospect are like, Well, that was a dumb way to spend my money, or that was a dumb way to spend my time. And I do think there is a level of class and I’m not going to adjust to too much because this is kind of beyond the scope of this podcast generally. But, you know, I think there is a level of wealth where it does really start to change your life in ways that could be seen as negative. Like it’s hard to trust people if you have a lot of money. Do they like you for you? Are there to try to get access to your resources and what you have? You know, and you know, there are people who have written and talked about this, but that’s so far from where we are, most of us, that I don’t think that that’s something that is really going to be a concern if you’re making 100 K or 200 K or even 300 a year, especially if you’re living in a city, like you are like, you know, San Francisco. All right, that money doesn’t go super far. There’s not a ton of disposable income. We’re living in more expensive places. But yeah, I do think that there is a fear that folks have that I will if I expand, if I build a bigger brand, if I start taking up space and if I’m successful, I’m actually going to lose myself or lose my values. 

Annie [00:40:18] Yeah, Makes us scared to make more money, even though that’s what a lot of us really want. Yes. So yeah, I mean, the reasons. Yeah. And me. Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I like to talk about how much money I make and I like to be honest about the numbers because it feels like I could never. I remember when I was first becoming an entrepreneur, I felt like I couldn’t get anybody to tell me the real numbers. And that made it so difficult. 

Linzy [00:40:44] Yes. Yes. That transparency is so valuable. Annie, thank you. Thank you for joining me today. It’s been really wonderful. Have you on the podcast. And if folks want to get further into your world, where can they find you? 

Annie [00:40:59] A great place to start would be Rebel Therapist dot me. That’s where all my stuff lives. And speaking of transparency, thank you so much for the honesty and the amazing stuff that you bring us. 

Linzy [00:41:15] Oh, thank you. 

Annie [00:41:16] So appreciate you. 

Linzy [00:41:16] Thanks, Annie. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

Annie [00:41:20] Thank you. 

Linzy [00:41:34] I really appreciated Annie’s honesty today. I know she thanked me at the end for my honesty. I think her honesty was also so, so valuable because Annie- I would say Annie is probably a little bit ahead of me of where I am, you know, with the numbers she’s talking about. She’s kind of two or three steps ahead of me. And it’s always interesting to, like, talk to someone who’s 2 to 3 steps ahead of where you are, wherever you are in business, and hear about what’s happening there. And, you know, hearing Annie’s experience of like, yeah, she has her goals are so much bigger now, her income is so much bigger and this is what has changed, but also this is what has stayed the same. I think sometimes we can have fantasies about – with our businesses and with our income when we earn more. This is what is going to change about me, for better or for worse. We can have the fantasy of Everything’s gonna be fine. I’m never going to feel anxious ever again. That’s usually not true. But we can also have that negative fantasy of I’m going to lose sight of myself. I’m not going to be a compassionate person anymore. I’m going to lose sight of my values. Right. And I you know, I so appreciate Annie sharing about her experiences with what it’s been like to build a large, sustainable, successful business beyond private practice and what has changed and what hasn’t. And just to summarize, the core of it is she hasn’t really changed a lot, but she does have more money to do great things with her kids, save for retirement, and create memories, which sounds pretty great. So I appreciate you coming on the podcast today. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at @moneynutsandbolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, I would so appreciate if you could give me a review on Apple Podcasts. I know you hear me say it every time, but I say it because I mean it. If you could take 2 minutes to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, it’s incredibly helpful so that other therapists can find us. Thanks for listening today. 

Silvana [00:00:07] I’d rather stay in what I know in my comfort zone. Right. Because it’s so comfy as opposed to going to my learning zone where I can realize things can be different and they can have a different relationship to, again, to money, to my practice, to everything that I do. And that gives you so much more space and it gives you so much more energy to do things and to continue thinking differently in a way that it’s not harming anybody. It’s pushing against the system as it is, but it just allows you to have so much more space and a healthier relationship with everyone and everything that you are interacting with. 

Linzy [00:00:58] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host Linzy Bonham therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Before we get into the episode today, first of all, disclaimer, I will say that as you can hear, I’m a little bit sick, so be prepared for that today. My voice is a little bit off and I wanted to share a review from Apple Podcasts because I so appreciate when you folks leave the reviews that one of our listeners left. The review is titled Informative Podcast. They write: the podcast has been such a blessing and is so needed. The strategies have been helpful and Linzy’s eloquence, empathy, and constructive approach is so refreshing. This topic is so needed. Thank you so much to the listener who left that review. It means a lot to me. And I say this at the end of the episode a lot, but you know, you’ve probably stopped hearing it at this point. Leaving reviews is really the best way for other folks to find us on the podcast platform on Apple Podcasts. So if you are enjoying the podcast and you could take a minute to go leave even just a short little review, I really appreciate it. Today’s episode is a conversation with Silvana Espinoza Lau. She is a psychotherapist and a clinical supervisor in private practice, and she’s also an embodied liberation coach for mental health clinicians. She supports mental health professionals who want to incorporate liberation-focused and anti-oppressive values into their practices in an embodied way. And this is very much what we got into today. Silvana and I talked about specifically BIPOC and marginalized therapists, their relationships to money, some of the specific messages that folks get around money in those communities. We talked about the silence around money and how it keeps these systems in place. Like the silence is not accidental. And we also got into perfectionism and shame and not-good-enough. All these things that impact all sorts of folks, of all sorts of identities, the self included, that are actually part of these bigger systems and help to keep these bigger oppressive systems in place. It was a really interesting conversation, kind of coming to some of the topics that I feel like I explore with my students, that I’ve explored before, but in a new way. And with this lens, I really enjoyed this conversation with Silvana. Here is my conversation with Silvana Espinosa Lau. Silvana, welcome to the podcast. 

Silvana [00:03:45] Thank you for having me, Linzy. 

Linzy [00:03:47] Yeah, I’m really excited to have you. So before we dig in today, we’ve got – I’m really excited about what we’re going to chat about today. But let’s talk a little bit first about the work that you do for people who might not have heard of you yet. 

Silvana [00:03:58] Sure. Yeah. So I am a marriage and family therapist in the state of Oregon. So I have a small caseload and I do therapy with people of color in particular, and people of other marginalized identities. I am also a clinical supervisor in the state of Oregon, and I am also a consultant and a coach because of the experiences that I have had personally and professionally. I decided to expand the type of wellness services that I can offer, and I also coach other clinicians who want to incorporate social justice values in their practices. 

Linzy [00:04:38] Great. Awesome. And I think that’s often how, you know, whether you want to call it like a side hustle or like your expanded offers. Like that’s often how it grows, right, is like out of our own experiences or like identifying where the holes are for us. 

Silvana [00:04:51] Exactly. 

Linzy [00:04:52] We step in to do the work that we also have needed. 

Silvana [00:04:55] Yes. 

Linzy [00:04:55] So I’m curious then, from your experience and your perspective, what affects BIPOC or otherwise marginalized clinicians’ relationship with money specifically? 

Silvana [00:05:05] Yeah, yeah, that’s a great question. And yes, that question applies both to BIPOC clinicians and to clinicians of marginalized identities as well. And I think that’s one of the many things that affect that relationship, is the fact that for people with marginalized identities, the idea of imposter syndrome is way, way bigger. The idea of, I have to work harder than my peer who has privilege identities – whatever those privileged identities are whether it’s the fact that you are a white person, a white clinician, or the fact that you have a PhD, so you have educational privilege, or if you have financial privilege or any other of the privileges that you can have, right? You can feel that you have to work harder, that you have to work longer hours, that you have to prove your worth, that you have to prove that you know the same things and that you have to adapt and even code switch to what the norm is in our society and by our society. I am assuming we’re both talking about American society, right? With all the normative expectations that we have in culture, in our culture right now. So it’s like I subconsciously feel or I have been given this message that I have to adapt to that norm in order to succeed in that norm. And because I am not that norm, I have these extra hoops that I have to jump through and I have this extra energy that I need to spend. And that definitely impacts the relationship that a clinician can have with money. 

Linzy [00:06:48] So with that imposter syndrome or imposter phenomenon affecting, you know, BIPOC and marginalized therapists so much more, what would that actually look like in the relationship to money? Like what what would actually kind of be some examples of how that’s going to be showing up for them? 

Silvana [00:07:04] I think that one very clear example – and this comes not just from the fact that some of us have more marginalized identities and others – is the messages that we have received. It’s this idea, for instance, for all of us or for most of us, I am assuming people who have been through grad school to go to mental health or, you know, some profession that has to do with serving others. It’s this idea that we are here to serve others, but we’re not here to make money. Right? And if the first example that we have right out of grad school, in practicum or in our internships, is you’re here to learn, but I’m not going to pay you what you deserve. 

Linzy [00:07:48] Yes, right, Right. 

Silvana [00:07:49] You have to have a certain productivity. You have to work certain hours. You have to meet this quota of this many clients per day. And all of these clients with all these experiences. And we are supposed to do it all. So we already learn this expectation of I have to give myself and they have to put other people first and I have to put my clients first before me. And in the case of people with marginalized identities, I am already code switching in this world where I am not the norm. And on top of that, I have to put others first. My clients. Right. Or I have received a similar message to that. My clients are very important. I need to help them if there is a crisis. I am supposed to answer that phone call even if it’s 7 p.m. at night, right? Yeah, because it’s their well-being. So it’s this idea of putting other people first and this idea of, I have to do this so that I can prove that I am worthy of this position or that I am worthy of graduating, or so that I have this experience on my resumé, on my CV, so that so-and-so agency will hire me. And of course, that expectation is bigger implicitly for people of marginalized identities. And that’s so huge. That’s some extra energy. The connections are expanding. 

Linzy [00:09:17] Yeah. When you’re saying this, I was an EMDR clinician when I used to practice, and there’s this list in EMDR of like negative cognitions, which I didn’t really use once I became a more like, experienced clinician, but like, I remember that list and as you’re saying this, like, I’m thinking about the belief, like, I am not important. Right. And the way that you know, that belief or, you know, side versions of that belief, like I’m not worthy or I don’t have worth or how those are just being reinforced over and over again for folks through marginalization in the first place and through that, you know, the messages, the subtle, systemic and overt messages that you’re getting. But then also through the training that you get that gets layered on top of that, which just reinforces like, you’re not important. But then as you’re pointing out, and what I think I’m hearing, is then you have to work even harder or accomplish more to get what the privileged person next to you, the person who has more points of privilege to you, is going to get. So it just seems like everything is- I shouldn’t say everything, that’s that’s a little bit over-encompassing, but like, it’s stacked against you. 

Silvana [00:10:19] Exactly. 

Linzy [00:10:20] Right. Like, you’re- the way that you work is so much going to be to your own self-sacrifice. 

Silvana [00:10:25] Exactly. 

Linzy [00:10:26] Because of these different pressures. Yeah. With that, you started to talk about our training. Like, what messages do you think that clinicians in general get about money and about being business owners like, you know, within the bigger systems, one of them being capitalism. 

Silvana [00:10:42] For sure. For sure. I don’t remember a single class in grad school that would generate the discussion of, Let’s talk about money. Right. Whether you are going to private practice or you’re going to work for an agency. Nobody talked about money in grad school. And for some of us, nobody talked about money in college. And for some of us, nobody talked about money in our families. So we have all these different layers of nobody ever talked about money. And how is that possible in a capitalist society? It feels like such a double bind to me. I am supposed to live in this system that is a capitalist system, whether I like it or not, whether I agree with it or not. So I am supposed to think of money day in and day out, but I cannot have those conversations and I don’t have those conversations in grad school. I guess the fact that there is not a message – that in and of itself is a message, right? Is we don’t talk about money. We talk about helping people. And we talk about – at least my experience – this is what community mental health is and this is what private practice is and this is what group practice looks like. And we highly suggest that you start with this or that you do this or that. You get this experience or, you know, these are the evidence-based practices and that is all good, but there’s not a conversation about money ever. There’s not a conversation about you should not equate your worth to how much you’re making, and you should still make a very decent salary. I never received that message in grad school or elsewhere. Therefore, that was a non-message message that I have received. And I think that most of my colleagues have also received either in grad school or as they were going through their professional development. 

Linzy [00:12:41] Yeah. To really clarify it, like what is the non-message message that you think we get through that silence? 

Silvana [00:12:47] We don’t talk about money, right? 

Linzy [00:12:49] Right. 

Silvana [00:12:50] Yeah. Just don’t talk about money.  

Linzy [00:12:53] Because what I mean, what it makes me think about too, and like, you know, capitalism as a whole thing unto itself. And I- it’s been a while since I’ve done some in-depth reading about capitalist theory, but it does make me think in a very general sense, how there’s kind of like people who, like, strive and win in capitalism by like having others who they’re pushing down and then those who are being pushed down. And I’m like, if you’re of the class that doesn’t talk about money, you’re probably the ones who are supposed to be not making money, and the ones who are supposed to be like kind of being exploited, right? If we want to be very simplistic, exploit or be exploited. Yeah, we are certainly not being set up to exploit others for sure. But in doing so, then there’s like this, as you say, like we do also need money though, to live. 

Silvana [00:13:34]  Of course. 

Linzy [00:13:35] Right. And so there’s a contradiction there. You know, it’s like, exactly. We don’t want to get into the thing where we think that we’re only worth- you only have a successful practice if you’re making six figures or if you’re, you know, heading these certain like lifestyle, these materialistic goals. But at the same time, we know that we need money to be well and to navigate the world that we live in. 

Silvana [00:13:55] For sure. For sure. And I do think that it’s so hypocritical, the fact that for some people, because of the messages that we have received, for some people, it’s okay to make money, right? We have these millionaires, billionaires, making money and investing and, you know, all the things that they do. And yeah, we can criticize them and- period. We criticize them, but they continue making money. But what about us? I think that there’s nothing wrong with changing our relationship to money and there’s nothing wrong with creating generational wealth, for instance. To me, the idea is if I am going to live in a capitalist society because I just cannot move to, you know, to my plot of land and live off the land, if that is not a possibility, if I have to live within these systems, I will try to make- I would want to make the system work in my favor. And how can I, if you will, reappropriate that system so that it benefits me and it benefits the people around me in a good way. What’s wrong with me making more money and so that I, in turn, I can be a better clinician, in my case, have more space, have more energy, to serve the people that I want to serve and serve them better, and have enough money so that I can rest, so that I can be creative, so that I can think of other ways in which I can help others and be even more creative and have more space to think of other ways in which I can invest that money still in benefit of my community, which is what I want to do. And I think it’s possible. And I know that I’m not the only one doing that. So I think that, again, it’s so hypocritical that for some people it seems to be okay that they have this money and they can continue investing and they are educated about money. But that is not our reality. Like how can that happen if we are both existing within the same system? 

Linzy [00:16:02] Yeah. And I mean, what it makes me think about too, as you’re saying, that is like I think sometimes it’s easy to get into this very simplistic narrative about like money’s bad look at like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk and like, what are they doing to make the world better? Good questions. 

Silvana [00:16:19] A very good question. 

Linzy [00:16:19] You know, but it’s like you look at a fortune like that and the money that that one person is amassed could drastically change the quality of life and the well-being of community. Of literally hundreds of thousands of people. What this one person individual has amassed. And it’s like there is so much potential in that money when it gets into the hands of people who- like making the difference between a household bringing in $40,000 a year and $100,000 a year is a massive quality of life difference. It brings down the stress in that household. It builds up the opportunity and supports for the children of that household. You know, it’s like positive ripple effects outwards. And it’s not the same as the immense amassing of wealth on the far end of somebody who could never actually possibly get more enjoyment out of money than they’ve already got because they have multi-billions. 

Silvana [00:17:10] Exactly. 

Linzy [00:17:12] At that point, the money is having no more positive impact. But if you think about all the households, that would benefit immensely from 100,000 more a year, it’s a different- it’s almost like a completely different situation. The way that that money work is going to work in those different circumstances. And yet we’re all within the same system. And it’s like we were feeling bad because we want to make $100,000 a year. 

Silvana [00:17:34] Yes. Yes. 

Linzy [00:17:35] But somebody over here is making 300 million a year or even a billion a year. So, yeah, there’s kind of almost like a different set of ethics that’s being put on people. 

Silvana [00:17:43] Completely, completely right. And we’re supposed to be the ones who are so ethical. And we have these boards and, you know, all these institutions and agencies to ensure that we are acting and behaving ethically. But again, there’s not a conversation about money really for clinicians. And I think we should have. I think the fact that there’s not a conversation is also very oppressive. It’s you know, how again, for those Jeff Bezos, as you were saying, for those Elon Musk’s, it’s okay, but why it’s not okay for us, I think that’s very oppressive. You know, we should be able to have those conversations. We should be able to make it okay that I want to, I don’t know, I want to leave my 9 to 5 and they want to go into private practice or I have enough energy to create change within my 9 to 5 job in, you know, community mental health. That should be an okay conversation to have. 

Linzy [00:18:40] Yeah. And I think, you know, as we’re talking about this, it also makes you think about how having these conversations is powerful because you are pushing against the silence. Like that silence is part of what keeps things the way that they are. 

Silvana [00:18:52] Yes, completely. Completely. Yeah. When you talk about pushing against the silence, it reminds me of even in private practice, if you’re working, if you’re a panel with insurance companies, you are not- you sign an agreement that says you are not supposed to share your rate with other clinicians, right? You’re not supposed to talk about your rate. And at some point I thought, well, yeah, that makes sense. But does it make sense? Really? Isn’t that also oppressive? Can’t I talk about what is my fee compared to your fee? 

Linzy [00:19:23] Mmhmm. 

Silvana [00:19:24] To make sure that we are being paid a fair amount. Yeah. Because if I know how much you make and it’s way less than what I make – again, doesn’t equate my worth. Right. But still, can I go to that company, to that insurance company and request for, for an increase. But if I don’t know. 

Linzy [00:19:41] Yeah, that silence is disempowering, right? Yes. It kind of keeps people apart. And it almost makes me think like, you know, because I’m thinking about capitalism right now and it makes me think almost like they’re stopping you from unionizing. 

Silvana [00:19:52] Exactly. 

Linzy [00:19:53] Right. They’re stopping the clinicians from getting together and being like, just a second, why is this person getting 87 and this person’s getting 77? That’s not fair. That doesn’t make sense. 

Silvana [00:20:00] Completely. 

Linzy [00:20:01] That silence keeps people apart. 

Silvana [00:20:03] Exactly. Exactly. Which is, again, very. Very oppressive, Right? The idea of oppression is the fact that you are over here in your world and I am over here in my world, but we’re not together in community supporting each other so that we can effect positive change, whatever that looks like. Right. And that silence really is detrimental to community and to being together and to connecting. 

Linzy [00:20:28] Absolutely. Yeah. So another piece, you know, thinking about oppressive systems is is white supremacy. And I’m curious from your perspective, like, how does capitalism and also white supremacy, how does that affect the relationships that clinicians can have to money and to being successful when they have actually done the work to build up a successful practice? 

Silvana [00:20:50] Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great question. And again, I think it’s tied to what we have, what we’ve been talking about because at least for clinicians, right, the idea of existence within a white supremacy culture, it’s the idea of we have grown up and we have received this message that there is a norm, right. For clinicians it’s the fact that we all learn, or 99% of us, if not 100% of us, we learn Western white psychology and we live in a Western white patriarchal system, right? And it’s not until someone points that out that we realize sometimes that we realize that something is wrong or it’s not until we are experiencing so many illnesses and so many stressors that we realize that something is wrong. So I think that capitalism and that white supremacy culture also affects us, affects us as clinicians and especially clinicians of marginalized identities, because it’s again, it’s this pushback of this is the norm and this is how things are supposed to be and this is how therapy is supposed to be done. And they serve the expectations and the requirements, and this is how you should conduct yourself and this is how you’re supposed to be professional. And these are the conversations that you can have and these are the conversations that you cannot have. 

Linzy [00:22:20] Right. 

Silvana [00:22:20] Right. So, again, as a clinician, maybe in the beginning, I don’t realize that I am doing this, but I am code switching to fit this norm of the – I will say it again – of the evidence-based practice and a treatment that lasts a 10 to 30 sessions or, you know, this very many hours of work. And the fact that I am not supposed to talk about money or I should not prioritize money because shame on me for thinking of money. I should be thinking about my clients and I should be thinking about the next training that I am going to take. 

Linzy [00:22:58] Right. 

Silvana [00:22:59] So that I continue my professional development. So I think it’s very tied to what we were talking about before, and it is very toxic because again, I have nothing against evidence based practices. They are very useful for certain people. Right? And I have nothing against the ten session treatment. It’s also very useful depending on the challenge that you have. And I have nothing against the fact that you may be more or less open to talking about money, but as long as you are educated around money, that’s that’s great, right? But it’s the fact that we have these expectations from the culture and from the system and from the norms. And I think that we should question those expectations. And I should have this conversation with myself of, am I okay with this or not? And if I am not okay, what can I do different that is not harming others, right? Because as long as it’s not harming others, why can’t I do things differently? Or why can’t I operate differently? Or why can’t I have a different relationship to my practice, to money, to myself, to my clients, etc., etc., etc.? 

Linzy [00:24:10] Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, when you’re talking about- I’m kind of picturing as like, you know, white supremacy is like this box and it’s like, stay in the box. You can’t step outside the box because anything outside of the box is lesser-than. 

Silvana [00:24:21] Exactly. 

Linzy [00:24:22] A certain way of doing things and evidence based practice. And, you know, I remember thinking back in the day when I was practicing like, well, yeah, but who has the money to pay for evidence, right? Like, which, which modalities get the funding to gather evidence to be evidence-based design. Like who are they benefiting? Exactly. You know, like these, these bigger questions, it’s like, you know, the white supremacy is like, get in the box. Don’t think about it. Don’t talk about it. And if you are deviating from this, you’re not good. You’re not as good. You know, you’re lesser-than and like, yeah, it’s something else that I, you know, was also kind of coming into mind as you were talking about. This is- I saw a list of like the tenets of white supremacy, and one of them is perfectionism, right? Like, that’s one of the things that holds it in place. And like, that’s something I see so much. Clinicians struggle with this. It’s like needing to be perfect, needing to be good, like not even wanting to work on their relationship with money because it’s like it’s such a mess. It’s embarrassing. It’s shameful. I don’t know what I’m doing, so I’m just going to stay over here where I’m good at this thing because I need to be perfect. I need to be perfect, like the tightness that comes with that and like the lack of connection or curiosity or like, willingness to kind of like, learn and stumble and feel your way through something is also part of white supremacist culture. You’re not allowed to deviate or make mistakes. 

Silvana [00:25:38] Definitely. 

Linzy [00:25:39] Or be like a work in progress. 

Silvana [00:25:41] Oh, yes, work in progress. I love that. Yeah, I bet that many of us have Googled, you know, white supremacy culture or the what is it, the iceberg, I believe they call it, of white supremacy culture. On top you have like racism and all of this big -isms and phobias. But in the bottom or under the surface, you have things such as perfectionism, right? That some of us may think, well, of course, that sounds like a good idea. I am trying to be better day after day, but the idea of perfectionism is so unattainable, and it’s the idea of being perfect compared to this norm again. Right. And it’s a norm that not everybody fits. Right? 

Linzy [00:26:24] Exactly. Yes. 

Silvana [00:26:25] I am not white. If I am not neurotypical, if I am not sane, if I am not, you know, a citizen, etc. and so many more things, then I am not going to fit that idea of the norm. And so this perfectionism becomes so unhealthy. Right. And like you’re saying, I can feel so much shame because of the things that I don’t know and that I am assuming that others know. And yeah, I’d rather stay here in in what I know in my comfort zone. Right. Because it’s so comfy as opposed to going to my learning zone where I can realize things can be different and they can have a different relationship to again, to money, to my practice, to everything that I do. And that gives you so much more space and it gives you so much more energy to do things and to continue thinking differently in a way that it’s not harming anybody. It’s pushing against the system as it is, you know, but it just allows you to have so much more space and a healthier relationship with everyone and everything that you are interacting with. 

Linzy [00:27:33] Yeah, I mean, like a word that you’ve said multiple times during our conversation is like, like connection. And I think so much of what, you know, we’re talking about today with like capitalism and white supremacy and and even I think our lack of education around money, there’s like lack of connection, connection, lack of connection to self, to your community, maybe even to your clients, because you’re practicing in a way that’s not authentic to you or that’s not going to reach them because it’s within certain norms that don’t fit for them. And I’m curious, like, is connection an antidote for some of these systems or are there other things you think about that are like, you know what? Like what do we would have folks do instead? And I say “we” and it’s not an equal “we”, right, like as you’re talking about perfectionism, like I’m looking at my extremely pale face on our recording and it’s like as you were talking earlier about that, like imposter syndrome and like needing to strive and be more and do more, that’s not equal across the board, right? Like I as a white person start way ahead in terms of being ideal or perfect or like being able to be recognized as successful than so many other folks. Right. But I’m curious like, yeah, what do you see as, as the balance to this or what are, what are folks to do to offset living in these systems? 

Silvana [00:28:47] It may sound simple, but I think that the balance is finding connection and relationships and community. And by connection I mean connection to everyone and everything. Right. And I don’t mean I need to find a best friend and I need to find a buddy or I need to find a peer. We think of connection and we think of relationships as other people or the people around me and sometimes myself, right? I definitely need to be in connection with myself. I need to know what I need, what I want. I need to know what my boundaries are. The things that we discuss with our clients. Right? I need to apply that to myself as well. I need to be in connection with the people around me, whether those are family members or friends or my coworkers. And I am not saying befriend everyone. But the idea of being in connection is understanding who this person is, understanding what my identities are, maybe not understanding or experiencing the identities of my coworkers or peers or friends, but understanding that there’s a gap between me and them. Right. And understanding that because of that gap, I have had a certain set of experiences and they have had a certain set of experiences. Neither is better or worse than the other. It’s just a set of experiences that we’ve had, and those experiences are either more privileged or less privileged, right? But we don’t think about our relation sometimes. We don’t think about our relationship to things, right? My relationship to my practice and my relationship to the board and my relationship to this set of rules from my governing body, the ACA or the Social Worker Association or the one for LMFTs. And I don’t think of my relationship to money or to all the other things that I need in my practice, right? How am I feeling towards that and how are my paths or my different identities feeling towards that? What are the messages that I have received? How would I like to change that relationship in a way that would make me more content or more satisfied with the values that I hold? So that is something that we sometimes don’t think about, right? So again, I’m not talking about necessarily befriending everyone, but just being in connection because then I can understand better what the other person needs, what I need, what are my- again, the boundaries that I want to set and the needs that I have. And I think that’s very important to be in community, to be in connection, because then they can understand that I am not alone, that I’m not the imposter, that people around me are also dealing with perfectionism and- just like group therapy, maybe that can help decrease the shame or the guilt or the frustration or whatever other feeling that I am having. I can understand that those feelings are more universal and that it is more about the systems that I am living in. It is not about the people so much, but about the systems and how we have made that system so okay when it shouldn’t. And that would empower me to actually question the system as opposed to question myself. Right. So I start thinking maybe there’s nothing wrong with me, maybe there’s everything wrong with the system that I am living in that is asking so many things of me that don’t make sense. 

Linzy [00:32:17] Absolutely. Yeah. And it makes me think about earlier you mentioned, you know, about like, insurance companies, not you’re not supposed to communicate with a neighbor next to you, like your peers, about your fees. And it’s like, yeah. Because when we do that, we realize like, oh, there’s this weird, unfair thing happening here that’s not actually because of me. Like, I’m not only getting paid $55 an hour because I’m a bad clinician and I can’t support my family and all these things that these shame spirals that we can expect. But like, oh, there’s like this uneven kind of injust system at play. That by connecting with others, you could actually illuminate that experience rather than having you be the problem.  

Silvana [00:32:57] Mm hmm. Yes. Yes. If we are in isolation, we can start thinking that we are the problem or that there’s something wrong with us. Right. But if we are connected, we can start realizing that, oh, there are other people unfortunately having the same or a similar experience to the one that I am having. Therefore, what’s the thing that needs to change here? Is it us? Or is it the, you know, the systems in place that we’re living in? 

Linzy [00:33:23] Right. Yeah. The problem is not that you are not good enough. 

Silvana [00:33:27] Exactly. 

Linzy [00:33:27] Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Silvana, thank you so much for joining me today. Of course, if folks are listening, want to get further into your world, where’s the best place for them to find you? 

Silvana [00:33:38] Sure they can find me at WWW dot seventh self consulting dot com or they can also find me on Instagram and my handle there is Decolonize your practice. 

Linzy [00:33:54] That’s a great handle. 

Silvana [00:33:56] Thank you. 

Linzy [00:33:56] Great. Thank you. It’s been great talking with you today. 

Silvana [00:34:00] It was nice talking to you as well. 

Linzy [00:34:15] In my conversation with Silvana, something that really stuck out to me is that the double whammy that folks get when you’re marginalized in any way or, you know, multiple marginalization depending on your identity, and then also a therapist at the same time. It’s like from two different sources, you know, based on your identity, but then also based on your profession, you get the message over and over again that you’re not good enough and you need to strive and you need to be perfect and your needs are not important and other people’s needs are. And just how- what a powerful cocktail that is in the worst sense of the word, getting those messages in all these different ways and how that deeply impacts people as clinicians, as people living their lives, but also deeply impacts your financial well-being. Right? Your ability to make the money that you need to make, relate in positive ways to the money that you make, are deeply impacted by these messages that, you know, people get it from all sides. So I really appreciated this conversation today with Silvana. And if you are curious about her, definitely check her out. We’re going to put her links in the show notes so you can get further into her world. If you’re enjoying the podcast, as I mentioned at the beginning, please do leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. It’s super helpful. It means a lot to me. I’m going to be sharing more reviews this season in season five and I would love to share your review. So take a minute and jump over to Apple Podcasts, leave review. And of course, if you want to hear more from us, you can also follow me on Instagram @moneynutsandbolts. Thank you for listening today. 

Andrea [00:00:01] Because we feel like it should be hard. We overcomplicate things and we just bring all the systems that are the most complicated things. One spreadsheet for this, this software for this, my notepad for this, and then it just becomes so ever complicated because we think that it should be hard. So we unconsciously go at it to make it hard. 

Linzy [00:00:28] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host Linzy Bonham therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast. So today I have a conversation with bookkeeper Andrea Rotondo. After spending a few years at home with her little ones as a military family, Andrea was ready to start something new. Her background in psychology, volunteer work, and her firsthand experience with frustrating accounting processes filled her with a desire to help others in a meaningful way, merging both worlds – numbers and emotions. This is where Liquid Cents, her business, came from. Through her bookkeeping firm, she supports women business owners and wants to build wealth while helping others. So those of you who are listening, if you heard the numbers and emotions together, you’re going to understand why Andrea was a natural fit to come on the podcast. We’ve been connecting with her over the last while on the Internet because I think we share some very similar values around money and numbers and bringing in that emotional side and making numbers make sense. And today in our conversation, Andrea and I get into how to have a successful relationship with a bookkeeper. What goes into making a relationship with a bookkeeper work? We talk about how negative money stories can really feed into our relationship with bookkeepers, maybe create a little bit of drama on our side as the people trying to get information to bookkeepers. And then we also talked about the value of bookkeeping, not just at tax time to have everything in order, but also throughout the year. So if you’ve been curious about bookkeeping or if you’ve had bad experiences with bookkeeping in the past, you’re definitely going to want to listen to this episode. Lots of interesting and insightful points from Andrea and just insight into how she works and how bookkeepers think and what they want for their clients. Here is my conversation with Andrea Rotondo. So, Andrea, welcome to the podcast. 

Andrea [00:02:46] Thank you so much for having me, Linzy, I’m so excited to be here. 

Linzy [00:02:48] Yeah, I’m excited to have you. So, Andrea, you are a bookkeeper. 

Andrea [00:02:53] Yes. 

Linzy [00:02:54] I feel like bookkeepers and therapists – at least in therapists’ minds – occupy different parts of a spectrum. Or maybe a universe from each other. And so I wanted to start by asking you, like I think a lot of folks who are listening might not necessarily have the best impression of bookkeeping sometimes. A story I’ve heard many times – and I know a story that we experienced with my partner’s business when he owned a restaurant here in the city we live in – is like lots of times bookkeepers might not be a fit and people have had an experience of like working with someone who didn’t end up following through or was hard to get a hold of or to communicate with or where they didn’t just- it just didn’t really like flow or fit, you know? And I’m curious from your perspective, when folks have had experiences like that, what would you say would be helpful for them to think about going forward if they’re going to need a bookkeeper again in the future? 

Andrea [00:03:49] Yeah, that is true. I definitely have had a lot of people coming to me telling me kind of like I can see their attitude towards the relationship a little bit hesitant or a little bit with reservations. And then either because I ask them or they just tell me they share that they have had a negative experience before. Yeah, I would say that’s just like any other professional relationship. Communication is so important. So when you are looking for a bookkeeper, you want to see – either because they’re telling you as part of their consultation or as part of their website or social media or any way where they’re putting information out there about them and how they work – about communication and their communication style. Because sometimes it’s not necessarily that they are doing something wrong or you are doing something wrong. It’s a matter of connecting with each other. And sometimes if your preference is a phone call, but the bookkeeper or accountant doesn’t really do phone calls, but uses a different method, then that might not be the person for you. Or sticking to email. You want to do only email and your bookkeeper wants to do only phone calls. So there’s a lot of technicalities that sometimes it’s not necessarily the person, it’s just the way that we’re communicating. And also because this is such a heavy topic on many therapists that I have seen, it also feels uncomfortable because we are the ones bringing the uncomfortable conversations inside of you and we have no hesitation. 

Linzy [00:05:26] Yeah. 

Andrea [00:05:26] We’re going to ask you. 

Linzy [00:05:27] Right. That’s your job. 

Andrea [00:05:28] Part of what we do. Yes. So there might be a little bit of reservation in that case because you might feel that we’re probably being too pushy when in reality this is just what we’re doing. 

Linzy [00:05:39] Right. 

Andrea [00:05:40] And again, that’s something that you can vocalize and tell the person that you’re working with. Like, look, this is a pretty big issue or a big deal for me when it comes to managing my finances, being open with you on being vulnerable and sharing where I am in the process. And the more that the bookkeeper knows where you are and how you feel about things, they’re going to be able to help you and assist you because just like you are in your profession, what you’re doing to help others. We are also in on our side. Yes, we are here because we want to help you succeed and we want to be part of your success story in a way. So we do want the most the best for you. And that’s where I have seen, for example, clients feeling judgment or I have seen many therapists say, Yeah, I just don’t like to talk to my accountant because I either don’t understand what they’re saying or I feel like they’re looking down at me, or just the words and the phrases that they’re using make me feel uncomfortable. Again, that’s something that you can choose the person that you’re working with, and if it’s not a good fit, it’s not a good fit. But also communicating like this is where I am in my stage of my business or with finances. How can you help me go through this better? And they are probably going to give you, you know, the answer or may adapt to the way that- to where you are. 

Linzy [00:07:08] You need to tell them what you need. Yeah, I- that’s- I mean, that’s such an interesting point, Andrea, about like the loadedness of money. And when we have all these feelings about money like a bookkeeper is making or your accountant is making what they think is a very neutral request, like, they just need this information. Like, you know, as financial professionals, they understand all the pieces that need to get pulled together to like, do your taxes or understand your big picture or whatever they’re trying to do for you. But on the receiving end, like the therapist or health practitioner side, if we have all this like shame and confusion or embarrassment or stress around it. Those – what is maybe neutral – asks from one side can feel very loaded and we can like perceive judgment or perceive other negative things. Like I’ve even noticed with myself. I started working with Bookkeeper for the first time just last year. I was like, okay, there’s a ton of transactions to categorize. As much as I like doing this, I just was starting to find I wasn’t getting to especially my sales tax. I have to do sales tax. So I hired a bookkeeper and I like the owner of the company. She’s lovely. And I actually recently had like a quarterly meeting with her, which really like solidified like, Oh yeah, I know she’s really great. But the way that they communicate is through a lot of like automated messages. So it’ll just be like an automated email that comes of like submit these documents. And they’re obviously they’re just it’s all automated, it’s just robots. But if you don’t, you know, fulfill the request and check off the things. And like three or four days later it emails you again. Yeah. And as a feelings and relationship-oriented person I’m like, what there’s no hello how are you? Like, for me there is this piece where it’s like I, I’m so oriented towards that kind of interpersonal connection that without that, it does open up space for me to feel like I’m being demanded on or like they’re telling me I’m too slow or not good enough. Like, right. It opens space for all those negative stories that really have nothing to do. Like this is actually an automated system. They probably don’t even realize it sent me a reminder because they haven’t looked at my file and seen what’s happening yet. But there is just like so much opportunity basically for drama in our minds on the receiving end. You know, what I’m hearing, one thing is like improving that communication when we don’t have that like nice open channel and we feel that maybe that trust that the person thinks well of us. But also I think, yeah, when we still have like things about money that feel unresolved or negative stories, there’s just like such an invitation for those to pop up when somebody is just being like, Hey, I need these forms from you. Or like, Hey, what’s this thing that you spent money on? Just so much opportunity for negative stories to come popping up. 

Andrea [00:09:38] Absolutely. And I think that that’s also rooted in what your goal is with working with a bookkeeper. Yeah. So your goal is simply to get a report at the end of the year so that you can give it to your tax preparer to file taxes. And you don’t really look at the numbers, You don’t really use that to you- for example, if somebody is working with you, you might ask them, Hey, what is your PNL for your business? You know, they’re not having any other conversations. Then they might feel that, like you were saying, those negative stories around all of these requests because you are not really having an open communication and your expectation from this person is to do all the work and give you a report at the end of the day. But if you’re hiring a bookkeeper because you want to improve your relationship with money because you don’t really know like how to do this, you know, like you went to school, like everybody says in this world, I went to school to become a therapist, not to learn business. So if you are like, okay, I need a team of people, you know, I need Linzy to help me with this. I need a bookkeeper to help me with this. I need a tax expert at the end of the year, or quarterly, depending on your need. Then you’re approaching it differently. And when somebody asks something from you or asks you a different question, or you feel like I need to know something and you’re the one that is going to ask a question, then that communication is going to feel a little bit more, I would say personable because there is an expectation of communication from each other. It’s not just one sided. In either way.

Linzy [00:11:13] Yeah. And so it it’s the relationships that you take because I think to, you know, something that I teach, Andrea, that I really value deeply, is like the idea that therapists and health practitioners, you know, we are the bosses of the business, so you need to be the CEO of the business, whether that’s like your business, where you’re seeing, you know, ten clients a week or whether that’s a group practice where you have 20 people working for you. Like you’re the boss and you need to have enough financial literacy to understand the numbers, be able to make educated decisions. And like if you see bookkeepers as folks who are like helping you in that cause, then I think that can be a much more empowered framing, right, where you’re like, okay, there, there, I delegated, right? I haven’t given away responsibility, but I’ve delegated the data entry, data organization piece to someone who has more knowledge and more expertise than I do. But ultimately they’re giving me back information that’s going to be helping me be empowered and make good decisions and tweak and adjust what I’m doing to make my business look how I want it to look like. That’s a very, you know, that’s an empowered framing. But if we’re just kind of like if we hand it off in a disempowered way where it’s just like, I don’t know, you take the stuff, it’s like, Oh God, you want more from me? And like, I don’t know what that thing is. I don’t even know what I’m doing. Like, when we don’t have that empowerment, then I think that can feel like an even more overwhelming and disempowering relationship too, because I think that what can happen is when a bookkeeper doesn’t understand something or doesn’t miss a piece or, you know, there is that breakdown of communication that can just like deepen that sense of like powerlessness and lack of control and lack of understanding. Right? Because now it’s like you hired this person to fix it and then they didn’t fix it. And now it’s even worse than it was before. I’ve heard that story so many times from so many people in all different business fields. They made it even worse. And you still use it from a negative story perspective with just even more baggage coming out of those experiences. I think when we maybe are expecting somebody to do something that is not what they’re promising to do, if that’s not actually the service that they’re telling you they’re going to offer. Right. But they’re not taking over the financial responsibility in your business. They’re just trying to pull together the information that you give them to create a clear picture, right? 

Andrea [00:13:19] Absolutely. That was incredible what you just said. And it’s so true, for example, when I have consultations with new people that probably just found me and they haven’t been following me on social media and they don’t really know how I work, yeah, that’s one of the important pieces that I tell them. Like you’re not hiring me to hand things to me and then you never hear from me. Like you’re going to hear from me on a constant basis. Not every day, you know, like I don’t want you to feel like you’re not really hiring me to have things off. You’re hiring me because I’m part of your team, because I’m going to be of assistance and step forward in your own process of becoming better at finances. I don’t think that we’re all – in really anything in life where we made it, you know, there’s always improvements that we can do. So that’s how I feel, like that’s how I position my business with the businesses that hire me. I’m here to support you. I’m here to be of assistance to you. And of course, I’m going to do all the work in QuickBooks and I’m going to do all the categorizing, but I’m going to come back with questions and I’m going to come back and tell you, Hey, it’s time for us to meet because I want you to look at those numbers and I want you to understand what that means, because I hear all the time, like, you have to know your numbers. You’re a business owner. You have to know your numbers. What does that really mean? 

Linzy [00:14:37] Right. 

Andrea [00:14:38] And we all have where we all come from, different backgrounds. We all have starting- like different starting points in our own businesses. We are in different points in our own relationship with money. So the way that you understand those numbers is really not so black and white. It’s very- it’s one piece of your own story with your numbers and your business. And ultimately the majority of the therapists that I work with and that I see in this world in my professional space, this is part of their livelihood. This is not just, you know, I’m just doing this or I’m not really in the business and this is just a huge corporation. This is part of their personal the way that they live. So when you are not fully clear on this, you don’t really check out of this at the end of the day, like because you finish your last session, you go home, this is going to be heavy on you, on your shoulders, is going to be hindering in your mind because now you go home and you have to go pay for something and you are not sure, right? 

Linzy [00:15:43] Yes. 

Andrea [00:15:44] If you have the money left back or oh my God, I have to pay taxes or. 

Linzy [00:15:48] Totally. 

Andrea [00:15:49] You know, so many questions that are going to be left there in your mind. 

Linzy [00:15:54] Like when we don’t have that clarity in the business, that’s going to permeate our personal lives because they’re like, the one completely depends on the other. 

Andrea [00:16:02] Exactly. Yeah. Yes. 

Linzy [00:16:03] Yeah. So for folks who are listening, when would you suggest it’s time for someone to work with a bookkeeper? Because like some folks who are listening might be like brand new or even just thinking, there’s even folks, you know, who listen, who are thinking about starting a practice and they’re kind of thinking ahead and trying to glean the things that are going to help them start successfully, you know? So when do you think it is time for at least somebody to think about bringing a bookkeeper into their team? 

Andrea [00:16:30] That’s a great question. I have two answers. The first one is I think you should have a meeting with a bookkeeper right like before you have your first client, even if it’s like a one-time session, just so that they can help you build your bookkeeping system. So the way that you are getting paid, for example, simple things for us, might be new information to you. So you don’t really know what you don’t know. Not everybody knows that they should have two separate bank accounts, for example. That’s something that everybody throws out there, but not everybody knows that. So having that initial communication with a bookkeeper that knows not only how things work financially, but also your industry, is going to be really helpful so that you can set your systems up correctly from the start because if you start them incorrectly, you can’t just kind of like skip that period of time that you didn’t really do things correctly. 

Linzy [00:17:28] No, no. 

Andrea [00:17:28] We’re going to have to go back and fix everything and catch everything up or do a clean up, and that’s going to be more costly later on. If you don’t want to hire somebody from the start because of finances, which is totally understandable, I would say speak to somebody. They can help you figure things out, maybe set things up in Quickbooks. Maybe if you are going to use QuickBooks or anything else, but they can kind of guide you through it. 

Linzy [00:17:55] Right. 

Andrea [00:17:57] And then the other part of it would be bookkeepers are not as expensive as you might think that they are. So once you’re starting to feel like you have consistent income, I would say just reach out to somebody. Usually consultations are free. Just check it out and see if you feel like this is a good time. Right? Because another aspect of, for example, using a software like QuickBooks or any other software, is that therapists or business owners in general think that the best, like the software itself knows what they’re doing, like the software. 

Linzy [00:18:33] Right. Yes. 

Andrea [00:18:34] The software doesn’t know. Like it’s built there. 

Linzy [00:18:39] Yes. 

Andrea [00:18:39] But they assume that you know what you’re doing. So if you don’t have a basic understanding of bookkeeping or accounting, then everything that you’re putting that seems very simple might be ending up in the wrong place. 

Linzy [00:18:56] Yes. Yes. 

Andrea [00:18:57] And then you go back and you’re like, oh, my gosh, but I’m looking at my EHR and I’m making this much. But when I look at my QuickBooks or anything else, it’s wrong. So and then you start again. Having all of that feeds into how your perception about money is and your relationship with money. So if you can set it up right from the beginning the right way, you’re going to save yourself a lot of negative moments. 

Linzy [00:19:22] Yes, it’s a lot of headache, a lot of cleanup. And I think also a lot of that like, you know, again, the deepening of the story of like this is hard. I can’t do it. Like, I’m never going to get this figured out. And, you know, you’re definitely speaking my language in terms of, like, get it set up from the start. You know, like folks who I worked with, too, who do it from the beginning. Sometimes folks talk about like when they do Money Skills and they don’t have a business yet, they’re like, but it feels kind of academic, like, it’s not really yet. I’m like, That’s great. I know it would be like meatier if you had like numbers to really dig into, but the fact that instead you’re like setting up your system thoughtfully from the start and you’re going to be directing money where you want it to go from the beginning, you’re saving yourself so much headache, right? That like, you know, that is like so much more valuable than, you know, being able to apply the things to real numbers that are terrible and that you realize you need to fix, right? Like it’s like the opposite experience of having, you know, sometimes I see a therapist – and you probably have too – who’ve been in the field for ten years, 15 years, 20 years, who never kind of got it locked in. And still it feels like confusing and cumbersome and unwieldy and they don’t understand their numbers. That’s like literally decades of headaches and uncertainty and financial stress that could be headed off, had the work been done at the beginning. And to be fair, I think, you know, a lot of these things are becoming more accessible. I’d like to think that the work that you know, you’re doing and I’m doing and being out on the Internet and trying to help the right people find us is making these solutions easier to find than they used to be 20 years ago. But yeah, the stress that can be saved when you do it from the start is significant. 

Andrea [00:20:59] Absolutely. Because in the beginning, you’re going to have a very minimal amount of transactions. So you’re learning how to do something. It’s less work. It’s going to take you 5 minutes, 10 minutes. But if you’re working, like if you’re hoping to start it all later on, we want to have everything happening. Not only you’re going to be busier, you’re already seeing more clients, you’re already doing billing, you’re already doing social media, like you have so many other things to do. And then you’re coming at this with 50 transactions, 30 transactions. And this is income, and this is expenses. How about a credit card? And then what about this? So then it just becomes overwhelming. And like you said, we start going back into that negative narrative of like, oh, but I’m not good at this. When it’s not, but it might not be the case. You know, in most cases, I think that that’s not the case. I think it’s just we’ve got to put the pieces in place and let everything flow. 

Linzy [00:21:53] Totally. And, you know, as you’re saying that, too, I’m thinking about how I think so many therapists and health practitioners have the story. Money is hard. So when they hear things like this of like, well, make it easier, they’re like, Well, but it’s not easy. It’s hard. So I’m going to unconsciously, I don’t think consciously, but like, that’s what I noticed in the course of this like contrast of folks who are building system for something that isn’t a problem yet. They’re like, but it’s supposed to be hard. So I must not be- this must not be right because this isn’t hard. Right. And so I think, you know, part of it is letting yourself start to understand that money can be easier – if not easy – when you do have these conversations with folks who can help you set up the right systems from the beginning. And when you do have the right supports in place, money isn’t hard. I think what’s made it hard is that we have like the lack of education, you know, like the lack of knowing how to use the tools. You know, we don’t have money modelled to us. Like there’s all these reasons that it’s been hard, but it doesn’t have to stay hard. Even if that’s been your past experience. 

Andrea [00:22:53] Right. And because we feel like it, like you were saying, it should be hard, we overcomplicate things.  

Linzy [00:22:59] Oh, my gosh. Yes

Andrea [00:23:00]  And we just bring all the systems that are the most complicated things. And just – one spreadsheet for this, this software for this, my notepad for this. And then it just becomes so over complicated because of what you said – we feel and we think that it should be hard, so we unconsciously go at it to make it hard. 

Linzy [00:23:24] Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So when folks are working with you and getting bookkeeping and there is an up to date bookkeeping happen, you know, they’ve got that delegated to somebody on their team. What do you see are the benefits of that? What’s helpful about that for therapists and health practitioners? 

Andrea [00:23:40] I love that. That’s one of my favorite parts of bookkeeping, because bookkeeping is that, sure, like the actual recordkeeping of things, but then it’s what you do with that information that really makes a difference. And you were saying, for example, like, I want my clients to feel like they are the CEOs regardless of where their business is at. And everybody’s going to have different goals. So for somebody, ten clients is their goal. Somebody, a group practice is their goal. It doesn’t really matter where your goal, where you are, or what your goal is. Bookkeeping and the information that bookkeeping provides for you is kind of like that map of this is where you are and it shows you the reality. And when you know where you want to go, you start putting like the steps in place in front of you and you can grab that information. For example, one of my clients, she works with a business coach, and according to her business coach, she was telling her, I think you can spend 5% of your expenses into marketing, according to where you want to be. 

Linzy [00:24:49] Right. 

Andrea [00:24:49] So we were looking at the numbers. Where are we right now? We’re at 3.4. Okay. So next month, I know to put more money into that. Okay, How about next month? Where are we at? Okay, we have a little more room. So it’s also a good compliment to folks who are working with somebody like you, with a business coach. Because you can easily grab that information that is kind of expected for you to know in many situations. And it’s going to be easier to make those choices if you don’t know how much you’re spending on something or how much money. How much money is coming in is not really an issue. Having seen that to be an issue because just know that. Yeah, but is where the money is going. Like, for example, a very common question is I know that I’m making money, but I don’t know where my money is. We have that, right. By having your bookkeeping in place, you know where it’s going. And sometimes it’s a hard reality and you have to work through it. And it really shows you your conscious and unconscious- I say beliefs around money. If you tend to withhold on, for example, spending money. You’re going to see that in your. 

Linzy [00:26:02] Yes, you are. Yes. 

Andrea [00:26:03] If you like to spend without reservations, you are going to see that. And for example, the benefit of a customized start of accounts, which is just the list of categories for your income and expenses. Yeah, it’s really, really important as well. Instead of having just like a regular whatever comes with your software kind of thing. To customize it a little bit more for your preference so that when you’re looking at it, you can find answers a little bit easier according to what you’re looking for. So how much of my spending on contractors. Are all of my contractors therapists, or are some of them at minimum? Okay, I know now how much I should save because everybody talks about saving, you know, like you have to have money saved for payroll or things like that. You know, how much money to save, you know, your net income, which is going to help you to save for your taxes, which is something else that business owners kind of struggle a little bit with. So it just provides you the information that you need on an ongoing basis. And if you have it up to date, it’s not going to be such a struggle to find any. You can literally get these reports with just a few clicks if you are using a software, and you can just go in and check, okay, I have room for more or I have some bills coming up or you know, it’s just providing information for you to make better decisions. 

Linzy [00:27:31] Absolutely. And the word that comes up for me around that is clarity. Just gives you clarity. You understand sometimes you might not like what you see when you have clarity, right? Sometimes it might be better than you thought, but either way, you now have clarity and then you can make informed, empowered, and strategic decisions ultimately by having that information. But without that information, what I also find too, is often our negative stories will lie to us about what’s happening. You know, like it’s like I sometimes will see folks’ bank accounts and like from talking to the person, my impression, you know, in the course is that they have very little money and things are very tight. Their practice is not doing well. And then I see their bank account and it’s like somewhere in the realm of ten times more money than I would expect to see. And it’s just like there’s a complete disconnect here, right? But without because they haven’t yet developed the literacy and the understanding of the numbers and like what the numbers need to look like and then really being in touch with what they actually do look like. They’re living in a totally different reality than their numbers. Yeah, they are living like they have no money. And their bank account is overflowing with money. That’s really just kind of sitting there not realizing any potential, not paying down even debts that they have or taxes that they owe because they’re so mired in the story that they don’t have enough. Right. So there can be complete fiction going on when we don’t have that clarity and don’t understand our numbers. 

Andrea [00:28:50] Yeah, we jump into assuming pretty much we just think. And then, like you said, we tend to like- our assumptions tend to be negative stories about things instead of, you know, I’m going to think of the best case. It’s just always, I don’t have anything. I’m going to run out of money. I don’t know what I’m going to do next month. 

Linzy [00:29:09] And close my practice and live in a box. 

Andrea [00:29:13] Why am I doing this? I should have stayed back in my group practice like, yes, we just jump into assumptions that are terrifying when having this information is really not that complicated and it’s really not that hard. And I know that it feels that way, but it’s not. It doesn’t have to be that way. Yes. 

Linzy [00:29:33] Yes. So, Andrea, then to give us a sense of how you work with people, what is your relationship look like with your clients? What are you doing for them? How often do you communicate with them? 

Andrea [00:29:43] Yeah. So when it comes to the actual bookkeeping, I’m the one who takes care of pretty much all the categorization. Sometimes people come with spreadsheets, for example. That’s what they have been using or if they haven’t been using anything at all. So I. Kind of like start them up in software. I take care of their monthly reconciliations, which that’s another word that people run away from, like, Oh my gosh, reconciliation. Yeah, we took care of all of that. And then either on a monthly or quarterly basis, what I do is I have a client call with my clients and we go over their reports. But I always like to start with asking my clients, what is it that they want to talk about? Because I don’t want them to feel like I’m just lecturing them, you know, like you’re just coming with your coffee and you’re just listening to me. I make it very conversational because ultimately I’m doing this so that they can get better at managing their money and managing their business. So we- I ask them, you know, what is it that it’s bothering you? What is it that it’s just hovering in your mind? What do you want to talk about? And we look at those numbers, and when you have everything organized and like again, I keep talking about software because that’s how I do it. And for example, Quickbooks. Yeah, we can literally just click on a number and then you’ll have a list of transactions. 

Linzy [00:31:01] Everything that makes up that number. 

Andrea [00:31:02] Yeah, right. And then they’re like, Oh, okay, this makes sense. Oh, okay. All right, got it. Or for example, professional development is something that it lately it has been one of the biggest expenses across the border. Oh, yeah. So we look at those and then I ask them, for example, questions like, okay, is this giving you the benefit that you’re in for? If not, do you think that it is time to maybe not continue or what about for next year? Or if we look at the totals of the bank accounts every month, okay, this is how much money you had last year compared to this year. What do you think about this? 

Linzy [00:31:45] So, yes. 

Andrea [00:31:46] I’m mostly asking questions. And I think that therapists are so good at listening and so good at asking questions that because of that, you’re in such a good place when it comes to money, because that is exactly what I do in these calls. Yeah, just kind of like sparking that curiosity when it comes to money and just saying, Oh, what is making this number? Like what is a total? Why am I spending money on this? Am I making the money that I’m making? Does that make sense to the amount of time that I’m working? 

Linzy [00:32:20] Yeah. 

Andrea [00:32:20] Is it time to hire somebody else? Should I hire a VA? I’m not making that much money, but I feel like I’m working 50 hours a week. Yeah. So all of these things, it just takes taking this time and looking at your numbers with a few questions in hand. 

Linzy [00:32:38] Yeah. And I think like a mindfulness kind of phrasing around that would be like being with like you’re helping just, you’re facilitating people being with their numbers and helping to guide them on like, what are those key numbers that we look at? What are the key numbers we compare those with? You know, like when we do see a number that’s not what we want it to see. I’m hearing like you ask some reflective questions. 

Andrea [00:32:58] Right. 

Linzy [00:32:58] To get them thinking and, you know, those are skills, you know, that I’m also trying to help folks build and learn. But it can be so nice to have somebody with you, right, like that kind of – coregulation would be the therapeutic term for it – like somebody else’s nervous system with your nervous system to, like, keep you from going, like I’m failing or whatever negative story pops up. Right. But you know, also with you, they have that professional expertise of like you, this is what you do, right? Like you are a professional bookkeeper. And so you’re going to be able to help them focus on those numbers that really matter. 

Andrea [00:33:33] Right. And because you are, for example, you are paying me or any other bookkeeper that you hire, you are going to want to get what you’re paying for, if that makes sense. So it’s going to be harder for you to skip that, meaning that if you were to just not have anybody, that you’re paying them for that. So you just leave it for next month and then next month comes around and you’re really busy, so you just leave it for next month and then the end of the year comes and you never really got caught up and you keep going. You’ve never really looked at anything. But if you have somebody there as part of your team, you’re more likely to get things done. Your bookkeeping is more likely to get up to date. Like, our work depends on the information that you provide. So, you know, and you coming into that call, again, it’s you showing up. 

Linzy [00:34:23] Yeah. Yeah. 

Andrea [00:34:25] And it takes time. Like, I like to say we all have different starting points, so it takes time. You can’t really expect that. You’re just going to be super hearing numbers after the first call. You know this. It takes practice, it takes time. And the more that you get into the conversation, the more that you come into these calls, the better you’re going to feel about it and the more confidence that you have that is coming from that practice, it’s going to show up. And you making stronger decisions. You feel confident about them because we make choices every day, whether we see it or not. We are making choices every day. But are you making stronger decisions than before. 

Linzy [00:35:10] Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I love that. I think part of what I hear in that and something I love about delegating is when we do bring the right person into our team, we are delegating a task, but we’re also delegating bandwidth. Right. Like you’re holding kind of that bandwidth to be like, Hey, finances, let’s check in. I need this thing from you. Right. And like, because that’s, I think, something that can be such a struggle when we’re busy, and especially if folks are like running a practice and you have kids at home or you’re taking care of aging parents or like there’s all these other demands on our time and energy. And part of staying on top of finances, like staying on top of all the other services, is just like the bandwidth to be like, okay, now I’m going to focus on this. I’m going to shift gears and I’m going to create space. And one of the nice things that I’ve noticed about delegating, you know, now that I’m at a place where it’s like I’m the boss of the numbers, I’m not giving responsibility, but I am giving up tasks is it’s like somebody else is like, Oh, hey, it’s the first of the month, let’s get your stuff together, which is something that therefore I don’t have to hold that in my mind. And I get to use my energy to do the things that I’m really good at or the things that only I can do in my business. Because bookkeeping is not something that only I can do. But recording this podcast is something that only I can do, right? So right, you get to use your energy differently. 

Andrea [00:36:25] Absolutely. 

Linzy [00:36:26] Yeah. It’s the beauty of having support and and a good team and the right team when you find the right fit. 

Andrea [00:36:32] Exactly. And so, for example, something else that I like to do for my clients is keeping notes of our conversations. Like when we’re talking, I keep notes and I think that that is I don’t know, you tell me, Linzy, like I feel like that is such a good, like great gifts because you guys are always taking notes. 

Linzy [00:36:49] Yes, we are. 

Andrea [00:36:50] And I know that that’s one of the, you know, like, oh, my gosh, notes. So, you know, at the end of the call, your notes are here. And usually the feedback has always been like, Oh my gosh, great. Like, I don’t have to keep track. Not only of everything that you’re telling me right now, but I have to keep notes. It’s all there. It’s all organized, and you can always come back at it. 

Linzy [00:37:10] Yes. Oh, that’s great. That’s very therapist of you, Andrea, to keep notes. I feel like that’s not standard financial professional process or whatever. I’ve certainly never experienced working with somebody who’s also keeping track of our conversations. So that’s great. 

Andrea [00:37:26] That’s good to know. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:37:29] So, Andrea, thank you so much for joining me today. If folks want to get further into your world, where can they find you? 

Andrea [00:37:38] Yeah, well, they can find me on LinkedIn. That’s where I kind of like hang out the most. I just find me with my name, Andrea Rotondo. And you can also find me on Instagram @andrea.rotondo And my website is Liquid Cents Bookkeeping. Cent is C E N T S, but Liquid Cents Bookkeeping dot com. 

Linzy [00:37:58] Awesome. Thank you so much. 

Andrea [00:38:00] Thank you for having me. 

Linzy [00:38:14] In my conversation with Andrea, I was so struck by how invested she is in wanting her clients to really understand their numbers and feel empowered. And I think it just says so much about how personal fit is so important, right? Like, if that’s something that is important to you, looking at a bookkeeper, there are people out there. There is Andrea. There are people like Andrea who just like we are invested in our client’s well-being as therapists and health practitioners. They are equally as invested in their client’s well-being as bookkeepers. Right? And it’s finding someone who is going to take that- have that same kind of value values that you have. If that is something that you want and need. I think it’s so easy for us to make stories about folks in different professions and, you know, put thoughts into their head, you know, which are usually just our own negative thoughts, like they’re judging me. They think my numbers are terrible, they think I’m an idiot, whatever. Right. And we put those words into their minds and we end up having this very- sometimes we get very messy relationships to financial professionals because of what we believe that they’re thinking. But often it’s not what they’re thinking at all. They’re here to help us and support us. And if you do feel like your accountant is actually judging you, or your bookkeeper’s actually judging you, then it’s time to move on and find someone else if there really is bad vibes in that relationship. I so appreciate Andrea for coming on the podcast today. If you would like to follow me on Instagram, you can find me @moneynutsandbolts. We are sharing free emotional and practical money content on there as well as some reels – working on my reels. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, jump over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. It’ll take you 2 minutes and it really helps people to find the podcast. Thanks for listening today. 

Linzy [00:00:04] What are you noticing with this? What comes up? 

Jenny [00:00:06] Well, 8000- just seeing- I just felt more relaxed just hearing that number. It just seems so much more attainable. Like sometimes when I set these goals, I just, you know, kind of feel like this is just not possible. And the self-doubt and. 

Linzy [00:00:28] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host Linzy Bonham therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So today’s episode is with Jenny Smith. Jenny is a therapist. She’s currently a student in Money Skills For Therapists. And in our conversation today, Jenny and I get into savings. She has savings goals. She’s always struggled with savings, though. How much to save, how to save, how to actually, like, keep money out of reach so that she doesn’t steal from herself. And so Jenny and I dug in today, starting with the topic of an emergency fund or a buffer. Looking at those numbers and then how to actually make it so that she can see herself and be integrity with her goal of saving and not steal from herself. So if you find that you struggle with saving, either putting money aside or actually leaving that money alone so it can be left for the actual purpose, the savings purpose that you have determined for it, then you’re going to get a lot out of this conversation today. Here is my coaching episode with Jenny Smith. So, Jenny, welcome to the podcast. 

Jenny [00:02:10] Yes, thank you. Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. 

Linzy [00:02:13] Yeah. So, Jenny, you are in Money Skills For Therapists right now and you’re like a few months in at this point. 

Jenny [00:02:22] Yes. 

Linzy [00:02:23] So we’ve had some coaching conversations already in our work together in the course. What have you brought today that you want us to dig into together on the podcast? 

Jenny [00:02:33] Well, I’m, I have some goals, and one of them is for my savings and to save the 3 to 6 month buffer. And I’m just it’s been really challenging for me to do so. And, and so that’s been a really big struggle for me, even probably before I came into the into the group. 

Linzy [00:02:52] Sure. Okay. Okay. And that 3 to 6 month buffer – to help me understand – is that like your buffer in your business for operating expenses, is that like an emergency fund for your personal life? What is that money for? 

Jenny [00:03:05] Well, you know, I have separated my business and personal. So really, I would like to have a buffer for my business and then also doing it for my personal. 

Linzy [00:03:14] Okay. Right. So those both sides you want to see. Okay. And so in your business, then, would we be talking about just saving operating expenses, like money to keep the business running because you’re going to have personal money saved in your personal accounts for like paying for your life. Okay, Awesome. Great. Okay, So that’s 3 to 6 months. First of all, let’s talk about that goal. You’ve got a range there of 3 to 6. Tell me, like, where does that range come from or like, what number do you want to land on in that range so we can make it like a really specific goal? 

Jenny [00:03:44] Yes, I was thinking probably about 10,000 would be a good a great little buffer. I’m kind of seeing my operating expenses around 2000 – 3000 depending on if I do training or or have to pay for dues and so forth yearly or or. 

Linzy [00:04:01] Okay so, your monthly operating expenses is 2000 to 3000. And for folks listening. Operating expenses is the money that we spend to run our business as Jenny’s saying, like, trainings, rent, software, the things that you know, we’re not talking about Jenny’s paycheck or taxes, we’re just talking about the money to keep the business running, keep the machine running each month. So $2000 to $3000 is your monthly. And so you’re thinking 10,000. So I could see like 10,000. Yeah. Like if you’re spending 3000, that’s like three and a half months buffer. If you’re spending 2000, it’s like five months buffer. With that, Jenny, like this is about kind of your your personal risk tolerance. What is it, about $10,000 that feels like the right amount for you for that goal? 

Jenny [00:04:41] Well, you know, 10,000 is a good amount. If there was an emergency, I could always use for the business or, you know, or if I get into, you know, a medical accident or condition, I’m able to take some time out and still have the business running efficiently. 

Linzy [00:04:58] And with this, like something I would want to reflect to you is that if you’re not working, your business expenses will also go down. 

Jenny [00:05:06] Correct. That’s true. 

Linzy [00:05:07] Right. So like, if it’s like I don’t know if you like, I don’t know. You’re laid up in bed because I don’t know. You have an accident or a surgery that takes a long recovery time. You’re not gonna be taking new trainings at that time, but you might still be paying on payment plan if you’ve signed up for other trainings. So that’s also just things to think about as we’re thinking about this number is, you know, at that point your business would be kind of just like you just be maintaining the minimums or if it’s actually something that’s more like a six month break, you probably would actually just shut a lot of stuff down. 

Jenny [00:05:35] Right. Right. 

Linzy [00:05:37] You wouldn’t keep paying for EHR if you’re not seeing clients, you would put it into like a dormant state and reactivate it. Yeah. So thinking about that, I’m curious, like if we think about your base business expenses, how much would that number be? We want a safe number, but I wonder if there’s a lower number there that would actually cover just kind of like covering your subscriptions for a month while you go away on vacation or for a couple of months if you break your leg? 

Jenny [00:06:03] Yes, I would say probably less than a thousand. 

Linzy [00:06:06] Okay. Okay. Because that’s kind of like your floor business expenses, your operating expenses. 

Jenny [00:06:10] Yeah, maybe 5 to 500 to 1000. 

Linzy [00:06:13] Okay. So a lot lower than that 2000 to 3000? 

Jenny [00:06:16] Yes. 

Linzy [00:06:17] Okay. What do you notice when I. When I say that, pointing out like the that lower number, that’s possible. 

Jenny [00:06:23] It makes it more doable. I guess. That makes me feel like it is more doable. 

Linzy [00:06:27] Yes. Because 10,000 like that is an ambitious goal to save in the business for your business, as I understand it. Your business being like a sole proprietorship where it’s just you. Right. And like, it sounds like most of the spending that you would do would be on professional development, But you’re not going to be doing if you’re not able to work. So if we actually had the floor at like $5000 to $10000. How many- how much time do you want to be saving for? Is it three months? Is it six months? 

Jenny [00:06:52] I would probably say six months. 

Linzy [00:06:54] Okay. And why six months? 

Jenny [00:06:56] Well, I guess emergency. You know, since I am the primary breadwinner of the family, I would probably like to save six months just to have a bigger buffer if something happens. 

Linzy [00:07:08] Okay. So with that, what do you think about the idea of saving for six months at home but saving for less time in your business? Because as I say, if if there is actually something that happens that you’re like, oh, my gosh, this crisis is happening in our life, I’m not going to work for six months, you’re just going to shut things down. 

Jenny [00:07:26] Right. 

Linzy [00:07:27] Right. Maybe you’d have to pay like a subscription or two, like a payment plan. But mostly you would just go dormant in your business. And it sounds like where you could actually use the money, since you’re the main breadwinner, would be at home, right? 

Jenny [00:07:38] That’s true. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:07:40] What do you notice, like thinking about that of kind of making the priority more about having that six months at home, but maybe only having two or three months for the business? Maybe taking some number between this low floor OpEx amount we talked about and this like higher amount. 

Jenny [00:07:55] That sounds a lot better actually, and it makes a lot more sense. Okay. 

Linzy [00:07:59] Yeah. Okay. So six months, we’re gonna talk about that as your home goal. But in the business, if you know your base expenses are somewhere between 500 and a thousand and your top end expenses are 3000. What if we say it’s like 1500 a month is kind of like your average safe number. So three months would be $4500. 

Jenny [00:08:17] Mm hmm. 

Linzy [00:08:17] How does that number land with you? 

Jenny [00:08:19] That feels a lot better. Yes. 

Linzy [00:08:21] Okay, good, good. I’m noticing, like, some relief or relaxation that’s just happened. 

Jenny [00:08:27] Absolutely. Yes. 

Linzy [00:08:28] And I am curious, Jenny, with that. Like, what do you notice is different for you about thinking about the 4500 as a goal in the business rather than 10,000? 

Jenny [00:08:37] Well, it seems to be more attainable for me. It doesn’t seem it’s such a far stretch like you know, it kind of makes you feel like you’re unmotivated to get to ten. You know, that’s like you can’t really even get there. 

Linzy [00:08:48] Yeah. And what I’m noticing with ten is like ten is a really large goal for being in solo practice, but it’s also an unnecessary goal because there wouldn’t really be a scenario where you would actually need a full ten because if something is really that serious, you would be cutting down and reducing expenses. Yeah, so we don’t need to make you save for something that’s difficult and also unnecessary. 

Jenny [00:09:08] Yes. Yes. 

Linzy [00:09:09] Whereas the money could be necessary at home. Okay, good. You’re smiling. So that tells me we’re going in the right direction. So. 

Jenny [00:09:14] Yes, we are. 

Linzy [00:09:15] Okay. So that would be a goal for the business. Now, a goal for home. Again, we want to think about the fact that if something happens in your home that you can’t earn, you’re probably also going to adjust some of your expenses, right? Like probably not going to be living the high life right. While also having some sort of like medical or family emergency. 

Jenny [00:09:34] That’s true. 

Linzy [00:09:35] Right. So thinking about that, what would be a monthly number that you would want to see set aside given your role in your family’s finances that would cover an emergency, a monthly number? Let’s start with a monthly number. 

Jenny [00:09:47] Yeah, I would say maybe around three thousand, you know, maybe to 2500 if I’m really pinching. 

Linzy [00:09:54] Yes. 

Jenny [00:09:55] With meals and everything. Right. Everything. 

Linzy [00:09:58] Okay. Okay. So maybe let’s not go that low. Let’s go 3000 then. And so $3,000 for six months would be a goal of $18,000. 

Jenny [00:10:09] Yes. 

Linzy [00:10:10] Okay. What do you notice with that number? 

Jenny [00:10:12] That’s a lot. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:10:14] That was a bit of. Ooh, yeah. Okay. Yes. But now we have two real numbers. Aim for one for your business, one for home. 

Jenny [00:10:21] Mm hmm. 

Linzy [00:10:21] Okay, so now let’s think about how to actually make these things happen. So tell me, like, what has been your relationship with savings so far? 

Jenny [00:10:31] So far, it’s been a very difficult role. I don’t think I have ever really been a great saver. If I have it, I’ll spend it. And so that’s been challenging to just be able to save. And if I do have it in savings, sometimes I’ll go and use it for something else. 

Linzy [00:10:48] Okay. Right. So there’s even like stealing from yourself when you have put it into savings. Yes. Okay. So right now in your business, you are- you’ve set up profit first. Do you have this as part of your profit first yet like an OpEx- right now, let’s think about the OpEx part of it and operating expense emergency funds. Is that part of some of the calculations you’re doing so far? 

Jenny [00:11:11] It is. It’s just not really consistent, I guess. 

Linzy [00:11:16] Okay. And tell me about that lack of consistency. 

Jenny [00:11:19] Well, one is due to each month fluctuating and since December, you know, kind of went into a little bit of a slump. So I’m trying to get back up to it. 

Linzy [00:11:29] Okay. Yeah. And when you have those lower numbers, what do you end up kind of doing in those months with your numbers, with you’re dividing up? 

Jenny [00:11:38] Well, really, it’s mostly going to either salary or, you know, taxes or the operating expenses and not nothing to the savings or, you know. Right. 

Linzy [00:11:49] Okay. So these ones get kind of deprioritized when money’s a little bit lower. Okay. Yes. And with that, like our you know, I’m picturing in my mind your profit first calculator, which obviously folks can’t see on the podcast, but we do have a calculator in the course that I know that you have where you know, you put in the money that you’ve made that month and then it tells you how to divide it between the different categories that you’ve determined. What is the paycheck amount that you want to see that you’re like prioritizing when money is lower, what is that paycheck that you send home? 

Jenny [00:12:19] Well, it would be nice to be about 4000, but three three, you know, would be a good start. Yeah, at least. 

Linzy [00:12:28] Okay, so 4000, but 3000 is like doable, but 4000 is what you actually want, right? 

Jenny [00:12:33] Just because I have some other you know, I want to save up for a new car, you know, I want to put some in vacation. 

Linzy [00:12:39] Rights. 

Jenny [00:12:40] You know, so I can fill that up a little bit. Yeah. Okay. 

Linzy [00:12:44] So there’s those goals at home, too, that you’re trying to fund in addition to the ones we’re talking about here. So with this then, Jenny, tell me, what have been like the numbers that you’ve been seeing that have meant that you had to move things around? Because I know for a while you were above ten every month. 

Jenny [00:13:01] Yes. 

Linzy [00:13:02] And so $10,000, I should say, to people, $10,000 revenue, you were above that. And now that’s shifted, right? 

Jenny [00:13:08] It has shifted even down to like 6800 a month, you know, maybe seven a month. And so I’ve even used the profit first calculator and done it like for weekly. 

Linzy [00:13:20] Okay. 

Jenny [00:13:20] Yeah. Gone down to weekly, which sometimes it’s like 1700 a week or something. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:13:25] Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And doing those disbursements weekly is a good idea to actually move the money around weekly just as part of your money time flow. But okay, so you’ve brought it down to 7000 and what’s the percentage that you have set aside for paycheck in your calculator? 

Jenny [00:13:39] In the calculator it is 45%. But then I have a salary too, which is the retirement, saving up for college, and you know, vacation, car – in savings, which is 17%. 

Linzy [00:13:51] Okay. Right. You have that big goals fund. So something I’m noticing is you have a lot of savings goals. 

Jenny [00:13:57] Yes. 

Linzy [00:13:57] Which is great. But I can see how it’s stretching the dollars in different directions. 

Jenny [00:14:02] Yes. 

Linzy [00:14:02] Right. 

Jenny [00:14:03] Okay. 

Linzy [00:14:03] Yeah, because I’m sitting here. Okay. So at 6800, 45%, your paycheck would be like 3060. So it just gets you that low amount. When you had those 6800 dollar months. 7000 at 45% would be a take home paycheck of 3150. So still on that lower end of what you want to see. So we’ve got that 17% and tell me about that 17%. Again, what are those goals for retirement? 

Jenny [00:14:29] Yeah, I have a college fund for my son. Yeah. Vacation eventually. Want to get a new car. I would love to pay cash for the car. That’s a big goal of mine just to be able to do that. Yeah, that’s great. And then also now for the $18,000 I need in savings, right? 

Linzy [00:14:47] Yes. And this emergency fund. Okay. So what I’m hearing then is you have a lot of goals. We’ve got these emergency funds, we’ve got these, you know, retirement. That’s a very important goal. We don’t want to forget about that one. College fund, vacation, new car, all of these things. And then also at the same time, sometimes you struggle with saving and end up taking money out of savings. At least historically that has happened. 

Jenny [00:15:10] Yes. 

Linzy [00:15:10] Okay. There’s two pieces to this here. The first one that I want to think about is priorities. You know, priority. Like Jesse, the founder of YNAB, has an article that I like about budgeting with children. You’re a parent, you have a son. I also have a son, similar ages. And he talks about when you teach kids about budgeting and you you know, his suggestion is like you- every time they see a toy that they like, you add it to their budgeting list and then when they get allowance, you say, okay, is this going towards the Lego? Is this going towards that dragon action figure? Is it going towards this? Kids are very good at picking one thing. They understand what a priority is. A priority is one thing. As adults, we never use the word priority. We use priorities. And then we list five things because we’re trying to balance all these things at the same time. And that’s really what I’m feeling from you here, right, is like this money is being pulled in all these directions because all of these things are important. So I’m going to ask you, which of these things is your number one most important? 

Jenny [00:16:07] Well, I think right now, obviously, retirement and savings would be probably the savings and. 

Linzy [00:16:13] Savings for what? 

Jenny [00:16:15] Emergency.  

Linzy [00:16:17] Okay. So your emergency fund. Okay. So retirement is up there. An emergency fund is number two. Okay. And your retirement goal, how much do you like to see going away for retirement, you know, each month?

Jenny [00:16:28] I would like to do 500. My max I can put in is like 6000 a year. So that kind of. 

Linzy [00:16:34] Okay so that hits your- beautiful. Okay. So that’s very clear and simple. 500 a month. Great. Which still gives us quite a bit to work with. So that emergency fund. Jenny, how important is it for you and also think about your life circumstances and any kind of like illness or family stuff that might be swirling about? When do you actually want to see your family have an $18,000 emergency fund? 

Jenny [00:16:57] I would like to have that as a goal this year if possible. 

Linzy [00:17:01] By the end of this year. 

Jenny [00:17:02] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:17:03] And right now, do you have any money towards that goal or are we starting at zero? 

Jenny [00:17:08] I have like about 800. 

Linzy [00:17:12] And tell me, why do you want to have it by the end of the year? 

Jenny [00:17:14] Well, one of it- just to kind of cross that off my list of things that are on that I need to do, you know, kind of is done. And so it’s financially okay. 

Linzy [00:17:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels good to like, got that, you know, pat yourself on the back. Because the other things here, like your college fund for your son. Is there a certain annual payment that you want to make or need to make in terms of those investment rules? 

Jenny [00:17:42] Yes. It’s about 169 a month. 

Linzy [00:17:45] Okay. Okay. So not very much. 

Jenny [00:17:46] Yeah, that’s a little bit more doable. Obviously, my goal is to be able to put even like a thousand a month or something to get that paid off sooner than the time. But. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:17:57] Okay. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And that would definitely be very nice. But 169 is your obligation. 

Jenny [00:18:02] Yes. 

Linzy [00:18:02] And then the new car. Do you see yourself needing a new car in cash this year or is that more like in the next four years? Five years? 

Jenny [00:18:09] I would say like three years. 

Linzy [00:18:11] Okay. Three years in the road. Great. And then what about vacation. 

Jenny [00:18:15] That I would like to maybe do one or two this year would be great. 

Linzy [00:18:20] And how much do you want to see for that vacation fund? 

Jenny [00:18:23] Maybe around. Maybe 4000 total for the year. 

Linzy [00:18:27] So 4000 total would be if we’re looking at the rest of the year, I’m going to divide it by ten. That’s like $400 a month. 

Jenny [00:18:34] Okay. 

Linzy [00:18:35] And just to give a sense of like you’re going back to your numbers again, like if we’re looking at 7000 months – and I think you can get your practice income up again, but we’re going to play with these super safe numbers just to be conservative. If you’re putting aside 17% towards these big goals, you’ve already got that built into your profit first calculator. That would be $1,190 a month that you’re working with. Okay. And if 500 is retirement, if 169 is college, because I know for our sons where, you know, I’m Canadian and you’re American, so different rules. But we do set aside that money because we make up we have to there’s a matching that happens so I know that that one is small but important. And then your new car I’m going to pause that for a second just to see what the numbers can do before that. 400 for vacations, and then emergency funds. You want to have the $18,000 by the end of the year. I’m going to run these numbers. So what I’ve done is I’ve just taken the 1190, which is kind of our very safe number for savings. I’m going to take out the 500 for retirement, the 169 for college, the 400 for that vacation fund. So it leaves 121 a month would go towards your emergency fund, which is lower than you want. 

Jenny [00:19:48] Mm hmm. 

Linzy [00:19:49] Now, if we’re curious, you have had $10,000 months before. 

Jenny [00:19:53] Yes, Right. 

Linzy [00:19:54] And, you know, practices ebb and flow and there’s always some things you can explore around your marketing and networking and all of that good stuff. If you have a $10,000 month, that 17% now becomes 1700 dollars. Mm hmm. And at 1700 dollars, if I take out the ones that we talked about here, that gives you 631 a month to put towards emergency fund. Mm hmm. So that gives you a lot more wiggle to start building up that fund. Now, that’s not going to get you to $18,000 by the end of the year, but it is going to build. And so this is something for you to think about is like really gut check with yourself. Of that pool of money that you are right now, that you’re earmarking for savings. And you could also look at your optics and see like, okay, can I bring down my OpEx a little to bring up savings a little? How would that feel? But if you saw it, divide it up in this way, how would that sit with your body? Would you feel like you’re on track or does it feel like you’re not making enough progress on those goals? I am curious to read you the numbers. 

Jenny [00:20:54] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:20:54] Okay. At a lower month, it would be $500 going towards retirement. Mm hmm. 169 Going towards your son’s college fund. Mm hmm. $400 towards vacations and $121 towards that emergency fund. 

Jenny [00:21:08] Mm hmm. 

Linzy [00:21:09] On a higher month, it could be $631 going towards an emergency fund. Okay. Now, in this, I will point out we have prioritized vacation over emergency fund. 

Jenny [00:21:18] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:21:18] So if you wanted to say, like, okay, vacation is important, but I’m going to do one trip instead of two and it’s going to be 2000. Right. Then that extra 200 could go towards the emergency fund instead. 

Jenny [00:21:27] Yeah. And get that going. 

Linzy [00:21:29] What are you noticing with these numbers? 

Jenny [00:21:31] Well, I don’t know. Part of me is like, well, maybe 18,000 for emergency is too, you know, unrealistic right now. I dont know.

Linzy [00:21:38] Yeah. Yeah. And what I would think about is, as a self-employed person, our circumstances are a little different, right? Because it’s like if you’re working for Twitter, for instance, if you were recently working for Twitter, your world got changed upside down when it was acquired by somebody and like all these people got laid off. You are more precarious when you work for somebody else. Working for yourself, unless you actually become like injured or some other way incapable of working at all, you are able to earn money quite quickly because you have a skill set where you get paid a high amount of money for like literally an hour of work. 

Jenny [00:22:14] Yes. 

Linzy [00:22:15] Right. Because we have this kind of like quality over quantity profession where it’s like in one hour we can like change someone’s life. Therefore, you have like high earning potential. So that six months may or may not actually be super important given your life circumstances at the moment. 

Jenny [00:22:31] Right. 

Linzy [00:22:31] Right. If there was like chronic illness on the horizon, if there’s like cancer scares or possibilities, like there’s going to be reasons that we might not be able to work, that would mean that six months is going to be a really important number. But right now, in the constellation of these other things that are important to you, I wonder if maybe a lower number for this year, but still a real number. But like, if you aim to get your emergency fund up to $8,000 this year, how that would feel to bring down that bar a little with the intention and the next year you can save another 8000 and then the year after that you can save another 8000 and you could have 24,000 three years from now, which chances are you’re never going to use all of that money. 

Jenny [00:23:09] Right. 

Linzy [00:23:10] Even if you have it, you might dip into it a little bit. It’s kind of worst case scenario money. 

Jenny [00:23:15] Yes. 

Linzy [00:23:16] Right, Right. What do you what are you noticing with this? What comes up? 

Jenny [00:23:19] Well, 8000- just seeing- I just felt more relaxed just hearing that number. 

Linzy [00:23:24] Yes. 

Jenny [00:23:25] It just seems so much more attainable, like sometimes that these goals, I just, you know, kind of feel like this is just not possible and the self doubt. 

Linzy [00:23:35] Yes. And $8,000. Like if we’re looking at, you know, if you can get your practice back up to the place that it has been, you know, and that it was in the fall, $8,000 divided by 631, you would be there in a year. Right. So in a year you could be at $8,000. If you have some higher months, that would go even higher if you deprioritize your vacation a little and plan to save 2000 instead of 4000, it would be much faster. Maybe it would be nine months or ten months instead of 12. So there’s like, you know, there’s variables here. But having that as a goal, what do you think the impact of that would be, having an $8,000 goal instead of 18,000? 

Jenny [00:24:10] Yes, I like that a lot better. I really do. It just seems so much more doable. Just like with a business. 

Linzy [00:24:18] Exactly. Yeah. Yes. And with that operating expense goal that we talked about, too, which we also brought down from 10000 to 4500, that’s something that you could look at saving inside your operating expense fund. So you could look at, you know, okay, every month in my fund, I actually have a line in my budget, which is my OpEx buffer goal. And every month I’m going to put away. Same thing.  Think about when do you actually want to hit that 4500. So if it’s like if we wanted to see that 4500 in a year, you would put away 375 a month that would get you there. If you want to make it a little bit longer, a little bit shorter, you can wiggle it. But like building that into your profit first budgeting is going to be a really powerful way, especially for the OpEx goal where you’re just like, keeping it in the business, right? Of making it happen. Okay, so now we have adjusted numbers. So now we’re onto the next piece, which is like actually making the savings happen and not stealing from yourself. 

Jenny [00:25:06] Right. 

Linzy [00:25:07] Right. Because numbers, numbers can be beautiful, but if they don’t end up doing the job that we want them to do because we end up using them for something else, then they’re not serving us in the way we intended. So with these numbers, I mean, we can think about each of these goals individually or you can think about them all together. Knowing yourself, what do you need to do with this money to make it actually stick around and actually be available for the goals it’s intended for, rather than getting used on a month where money’s a little bit tighter. A shiny object that comes along. 

Jenny [00:25:37] I mean, make it where it’s not accessible. 

Linzy [00:25:40] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Out of reach. 

Jenny [00:25:42] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:25:42] Do you have somewhere like that right now? Do you have a bank account that’s out of reach? 

Jenny [00:25:47] Well, I do have an extra one for my business, but I have different savings accounts lined up just for my different expenses. So I can maybe make one of those, like, savings accounts difficult to get into or something. 

Linzy [00:26:03] Yeah, Like, I mean, when we have the tendency to steal from ourselves. And it talks about this in profit first, it’s like, put it far away, Make it hard. Right. Like if you know, you have a piece like a part of yourself that is prone to thievery or prone to scarcity and therefore grabs the money because you feel like you need it somewhere else. Hmm. You need to set up, you know, the saying, Jenny, is like, create systems that are smarter than you are. 

Jenny [00:26:27] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:26:27] Right. We all have our own kind of like, things that challenge us, or our own flaws or areas that we’re working on. And so it’s like build a system that is going to make it hard for you to do the thing that you’re trying not to do. And so having a totally separate bank, a bank where you cannot make an easy transfer. 

Jenny [00:26:43] Right. Right. 

Linzy [00:26:44] There’s a lot of sucky banks in the United States. Find a sucky bank. Where it’s very hard to get the money out. Where they make it difficult. Because you want it to be difficult. 

Jenny [00:26:53] Right. 

Linzy [00:26:53] Yeah. Right. We want this money. We want the vacation money to be there when it’s time for your vacation. Right. And your retirement money. Could you just directly send that to your investments fund? 

Jenny [00:27:03] Yeah, I could. I usually just save it and do it at one bulk, but I could. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:27:08] Yeah. And with that, you could look at doing an automatic transfer if it’s going to be 500 a month. Like if that’s the number that it’s going to be. From your business account, you can set an automatic transfer. An automatic bill payment is I know how we do it in Canada. I don’t know how your bank specifically will talk to each other, but, like, get it out of your account every month and, like, into that retirement fund. And then you can always, like, invest. If you have to invest that money in a second step, you can do that later. But just like get it where it’s supposed to be basically as soon as the money’s ready to go. 

Jenny [00:27:37] Okay. Yes. 

Linzy [00:27:38] So that might be like an end of the month transfer. Like the 26th of every month, $500 gets sent to your retirement because, like, automation is a great thing. You know, it takes- we don’t have to actually make the decision. There’s an opportunity for another part of you that’s like, Oh, but we could really use the money somewhere else, or It’s a bad month and we should just keep it in the business. We know there’s parts like that in the mix, so we want to remove the opportunity for them to kind of interfere with our bigger plans. 

Jenny [00:28:01] Yes. Okay. Yeah, I can definitely do that. 

Linzy [00:28:04] And same with the college prepaid. Does that already automatically going out? I think I’ve seen that in your books before. Or does that sit around too? 

Jenny [00:28:10] Yeah, it goes out every month. 

Linzy [00:28:12] Okay, so that’s already. So same thing. You can automate that if it’s not already. A vacation fund. Think about where to put that. Does that need to be at a separate institution? And then emergency fund. Maybe it’s your vacation fund and emergency fund live in two different bank accounts. Yeah, in some bank that is out of sight, out of mind? 

Jenny [00:28:30] Yes. Okay. 

Linzy [00:28:31] That’s what we want. How does that feel for you? 

Jenny [00:28:34] It feels a lot more doable, for sure. Just having this conversation. Yes. 

Linzy [00:28:38] Yes. Like your numbers. Your numbers are good, right? And we know that your numbers have been even better at different points in time. So it’s just building out this system so that what you want is automated and that happens automatically. And that’s the default rather than what has been your behavioral default, which is maybe scarcity or taking. We don’t want that. So we want to make it super easy for the thing you actually want to have happen. Happen. 

Jenny [00:29:02] Yes. Yes. That sounds doable. 

Linzy [00:29:05] Awesome. So, Jenny, coming into the end of our time, what are you taking away from our conversation today? 

Jenny [00:29:10] Well, I just feel a lot more, you know, motivated and feeling like this is possible and more calm about the situation rather than scarcity or anxiety, right? 

Linzy [00:29:22] Yes. Yeah. So I would encourage you, if you have 20 minutes after our time together, just like put this stuff in place. 

Jenny [00:29:28] Yes, I will. 

Linzy [00:29:28] Make it happen. And yeah, I’m excited for you. I’ve said this to you many times in the course, but like I see your growth and I also like, see your potential with, like, the earnings that you’ve built up, the practice that you’ve built, your ability to hold all these goals. So it’s just like building out these systems. You are, you are on a very good path. 

Jenny [00:29:45] Okay. Well, thank you so much. Yes. 

Linzy [00:29:48] You’re welcome. Thanks, Jenny. 

Jenny [00:29:49] Thank you. 

Linzy [00:30:03] In my conversation with Jenny. You know, something that I noticed at the beginning, and I think this is so common when we have stress and perfectionism and scarcity around money is the goals that she had set were just way higher than she needed. There could be scenarios where, you know, we do need to have a six month buffer right away. You know, if we have a parent who’s in failing health and we know that we want to stop and like take a caregiver leave to be with them, or if we’re having a serious health scare, you know, there are scenarios where we might eventually need to have six months of money. But in Jenny’s case, at this time, compared to her other goals, those initial numbers that she set, first of like her operating expense buffer in the business, once we talked about that, it didn’t need to be 10,000. It only needs to be 4500. And that emergency fund for home, rather than being 18,000, you know, we settled on 8000. Having that as a goal by the end of the year, releasing these ideas that, you know, creating stability needs to be by hitting like these high numbers, like doing it right – and putting this in quotations – often just sets us up to feel like we’re failing because we set goals that are so hard but also unnecessary. Right. So once Jenny actually identified realistically what she actually needs to achieve this year, she could align those emergency fund goals next to the other things that are important to her in her life now and her retirement and her son’s college fund and vacation and have a much more kind of balanced approach to saving. And then, of course, that piece of putting it out of reach using automation will mean that Jenny has a system that will work against her tendency to take that money and will allow her to have the money go where it actually needs to go and have that vacation money, for instance, actually be available when she wants to go on a vacation. So such a lovely conversation today with Jenny. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me @moneynutsandbolts. We share emotional and practical money content on there all the time as well. As I’ve mentioned, some reels working on reels and if you are enjoying the podcast, please leave me review on Apple podcast. It takes literally 2 minutes if you have an Apple account. I actually tried to do it the other day at an Apple account that didn’t work. But if you have an Apple account, if you could take 2 minutes to let me review, it’s super helpful and is the best way for other therapists to find us. Thanks for listening today.