[00:00:00] Linzy: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Feelings and Finances. These are our short and sweet Friday episodes for a little bit of financial and emotionally intelligent goodness to bring you into the weekend. Today’s question is from Diane Webber. Diane is a grad of Money Skills for Therapists. She is the coach who works with me inside of Money Skills for Therapists, and she has submitted a question.

[00:00:27] My team is getting us started on this question and answer series for the podcast. She’s submitted a question here that we’re going to listen to. 

[00:00:36] Diane: Hi, Linzy! This is Diane Webber, Money Skills for Therapists coach, and I’m a long time fan of Money Skills for Therapists, and hello to all the listeners as well. I have a two pronged question for you that comes up a lot in the course. It comes up a lot in my conversations with peers, and it’s something that I continue to noodle on.

[00:00:58] And those two pronged questions are, one, I’d love some advice on reconciling, or coming to terms with, what we think we’re worth in terms of our fees and rates and feeling comfortable and confident in that number, whatever it is. For many of us who receive insurance reimbursements, the insurance kind of dictates what we are worth, and that is both a source of security and also a major source of frustration.

[00:01:28] And the second question is, in general, advice on how to normalize conversations around money. I realized that I personally love talking about money. I just find it so fascinating and interesting, but that’s not necessarily the norm. And I’d love your advice on how you have been able to normalize it more, both in your business and in your daily life.

[00:01:52] Linzy: Okay. So let’s start with this first piece about fees and worth. Well, I mean, one thing that occurs to me immediately off the top of my head, as I’m listening to Diane’s question, is there’s the question of the worth of our work, but that is not about our own self worth. Our own sense of self worth comes up and gets in the way when we’re trying to determine the financial value of the work, right?

[00:02:16] When we’re trying to set our fees. And we’ll talk about insurance in a sec… But when we’re trying to set our fees, something that, you know, Diane and I see come up a lot is, a personal sense of self worth, right? Of like, I’m not good enough. I have more to learn. Therapists, I find, tend to be very perfectionistic.

[00:02:32] We’re always focused on what we don’t know, where we want to be, and where we’re not, and we don’t recognize all the goodness that we bring to the table. And that can come into like a shame story of I’m not good enough. And that’s where those self worth struggles come in. And that gets in our way of setting fees, right?

[00:02:49] And setting a fee that works for our life. But fees are not really about what we as humans are worth, right? That’s a deeper question and piece for like therapy, for spiritual work, right, for getting to the root of why we might not feel good enough. but actually your fee, the amount that you charge, the amount that you earn has nothing to do with your inherent worth as a human being.

[00:03:16] So I want to start by saying that, right? Like it’s easy for us to conflate these two things and low sense of self worth can get in the way of setting the fee that we need to set to be well, but also having a high sense of self worth doesn’t mean that we can charge infinite amounts, right? If we have a high sense of self worth, it doesn’t mean that our service is infinitely worthy and we could charge a million dollars an hour.

[00:03:37] Although, of course, that would be nice. We need to separate this identity question from a service because what we are doing in business when we are providing therapy, folks listening, whether you’re a mental health therapist and you’re providing talk sessions or trauma therapy, or whether you’re a manual practitioner and you’re doing massage or physio treatments, or you’re doing like SLP work with folks, speech language pathology.

[00:04:01] What we are providing is a service, right? And as we’re thinking about the worth of that service, the fee, it’s about the value of that service to the person receiving it. And there’s to be two pieces here. One is about you and your client recognizing the value of that work, right? What is that work worth to them in their life?

[00:04:23] What is it doing for them? But then there’s also the always this like financial question of like your own financial needs, right? What do you actually need to pay for your life? That’s a very important piece in the fee setting question and then how much money do they actually have? Right. Are they making $10, 000 a month or are they making $3, 000 a month?

[00:04:40] You know, there’s like actual numbers. There’s this material part of fee setting that is also really, really important. So coming to this piece about value, with this question, Diane of like, how do we feel comfortable and confident in the fees that we’re setting?

[00:04:57] Something that I find really helpful is to take time to think about the the best work that you do with your favorite clients. What is the transformation that you create for them, right? What is the change that happens in their life because of your work together? That is the value of the service, right?

[00:05:14] So for instance, I remember years ago I saw a client, who was on leave from work. She had really spiraled into like a deep depression and she started seeing me two days a week to do her trauma work, to do family of origin trauma work. And she was like, I want to just like get rid of all of it. I want to have these things stop hanging over my head,

[00:05:34] and I don’t want to be like living with all of these memories and feelings anymore. And we basically did this like really deep dive work into just kind of clearing the table, working on all of these memories from all throughout her childhood. and at the end of our work together, which was really only a few months long because she got in there and she really did the work, and I really did the work…

[00:05:54] She said that, you know, that work had not just positively impacted her own life, but the life of everybody around her, right? Now she was going to show up as a more present mother, which impacts her children’s lives. It impacts her husband’s life. It impacts her mom’s life, right? Like her ability to be a child and a neighbor and,you know, what she did in her work, all of that was positively impacted by

[00:06:18] the work that we were doing together, right? That work that we were doing at one hour at a time was bringing immense value into her life, right? So that’s the first thing that I encourage folks to think about when we’re starting to try to build confidence and comfort with what we have identified we need to charge is really think about what does this work do for your clients’ lives? Chances are, if you think about your favorite clients and the best work that you’ve ever done, it has had an impact that would almost be beyond a dollar value, right?

[00:06:48] Like what is the impact of somebody being able to now have healthy relationships for the rest of their life, right? What is the impact of somebody no longer feeling suicidal on a regular basis? Or from a physical health perspective, what is the impact of somebody no longer being in immense pain every day?

[00:07:04] Like how much would somebody pay for that? So much money, right? And so that’s the first thing that I suggest when you think about the value of the work is like sink into your best work and identify how valuable it is to the folks that you serve. Right? That’s the one piece. The other side of it, Diane, is then this real material question of like, money buys us things in our life.

[00:07:26] How much do you actually need to live the life that you want to live and that you need to live? And that’s where we get more into being able to look at numbers and look at, okay, this is how much it costs me to live. For the life that I actually want, I want to be able to go on vacation. twice a year. How much would that cost, right?

[00:07:44] That’s when we can start to actually crunch numbers and look at like, what do you need to live? And what somebody needs to live a life that really nurtures them is going to look different in Kentucky than it’s going to look in downtown Toronto, right? So this is where there’s this like, getting real aspect about it, right?

[00:07:59] It’s like, sure, our work might have infinite worth, in an emotional sense, but how much do we actually need to live? And then thinking about the folks that you want to serve, how much does it make sense for them to pay you? Right? And you can market yourself really well and put across the value of what you do.

[00:08:14] For the people that you want to work with, how much are they actually willing to pay you? And you can test the market with this. You can always put out a fee and say like, okay, I would really like to charge $200 an hour. Right? You can put that out there knowing that if you charge 200 an hour, that’s actually going to get you a life that allows you to be well, that allows you to keep doing this work, that that is a very reasonable amount of money for you to be earning.

[00:08:34] And then you’re going to see, are you able to put across the value of what you do in such a way that people are willing to pay it? There’s a conversation when we set a price, right? But if you can ground in the value of what you’re offering and the fact that you deserve to be well, right? You deserve to also go on vacation sometimes.

[00:08:50] You deserve to be able to save for your kid’s education. Just really owning that you are a human with inherent worth and your needs and your wants are valid. When we can sit in those two places, then we can have a conversation with somebody, when we’re setting a fee and just let it be a conversation and say, I do this, I’m really, really good at this.

[00:09:08] I’m really good at helping these specific people with a specific problem, and it’s $200 an hour. And you will get feedback from folks who contact you as to whether or not they also immediately understand the value, whether you’ve put that across in your marketing, whether that’s something that they actually have the disposable income for the people that you are attracting, are you attracting the right people?

[00:09:26] But it can be a conversation with curiosity once we’re grounded in the fact that the work is really valuable and that our needs are valid. So those are my thoughts about setting fees. The insurance piece, Diane, does make me think about, you know, you mentioned this piece of like insurance tells us our worth.

[00:09:44] Again, insurance tells you what they’re willing to pay you. That’s not about your worth, right? So if you are a very experienced clinician and you’re extremely good at what you do, and insurance is only paying you $75 an hour, that does not mean that the work only has a value of $75 an hour. But that means that that is the business relationship you’re in with that insurance company, right?

[00:10:05] And if we can remove that story about worth, and you could just ask yourself, okay. Am I willing to do this work for 75 an hour? Can I live the life that I want to live making 75 an hour? You might be able to. And if you can, and that allows you to serve the folks that you love to serve, and have the life that you need to have to be well, then that’s great, right?

[00:10:26] Like that is a sweet spot. And if you can’t… if you can’t afford to live the life that you need to live off 75 an hour, then you can start to think about which insurance companies are you willing to work with? Do you want to start having some, some out of pocket clients, right? But those are conversations you can ask yourself with curiosity, and you can ask yourself strategically when we get away from this idea of what we as humans are inherently worth.

[00:10:51] So that’s my answer to your first question, Diane. The second piece about conversations about money is a great one, and I feel like I could talk for a whole other 10 minutes on that, which I’m not going to, but I will say that something that I have done in my own life in terms of conversations about money is I let folks know that I like to talk about money and that I think it’s important, and that I teach other folks how to talk about money, and how to be clear about money.

[00:11:15] And so what I have found, similar to other vulnerable topics, is in let’s say a personal relationship, if I want to talk about money, which generally I do, because I think it’s important and interesting and we all need to do more of it, I will share a little bit of information financially. Like I’ll kind of be a little vulnerable first, right?

[00:11:34] I’ll put myself out there first and maybe share, oh yeah, because I make this much money a year, right? And that allows us to do this and this and this. I will disclose first, right, and be vulnerable first before I ask somebody to tell me something that could feel really personal. And then I’m going to like read their body language, right?

[00:11:50] Diane, and I recorded, we recorded an episode together for this podcast, and we talked about how it’s, it’s very much akin to talking about sex, right? Like, I wouldn’t want to be at a dinner party and start talking about sex in a really like raw, personal way if the other people at the table don’t want to talk about sex with me.

[00:12:06] Yeah. That’s not very fun. It’s not fun for them. I’m making them uncomfortable. I’m not forging connections. So as I’m thinking about these conversations, I’m thinking about how do I create connection with the person that I’m talking to? So I’m going to like toe dip and share a little bit of financial information or ask a financial question or talk about something financial that maybe folks don’t usually talk about, but I’m going to be light about it.

[00:12:25] And then I’m going to see how they respond, right? Because ultimately when we are trying to bring these conversations to light, we’re trying to create connection, not disconnection. So if somebody is uncomfortable, if somebody kind of like bristles, then I’m not going to keep going down that road. I’m going to leave it alone.

[00:12:40] Right? But then maybe when I hang out with them in another few weeks, I might mention something again, and then maybe they might decide to tell me something that they wouldn’t usually talk about, but they’re seeing that they can talk to me about this thing and it’s comfortable and neutral and fine, right?

[00:12:51] So I do think that there’s a culture change piece here that we have to be mindful of. You can’t just like start bombarding people with discussions about money because they’re going to like turn and run screaming. But we can start to gently model what having a curious neutral open relationship with money looks like, and we can invite them to join us in that space.

[00:13:12] Thank you, Diane, for your questions. I really appreciate you bringing these topics forward today. And I appreciate you recording it. And for folks listening, I would love, love, love to answer your questions, too. You can go to the podcast page or click on the link in the show notes for this episode to connect to SpeakPipe.

[00:13:30] That’s our service that allows you to leave your own question. You can just leave your first name. You can leave no name. But we so appreciate getting your questions so that we can put them together here for Feelings and Finances and just keep the conversations about money and therapy and health practitioners going.

[00:13:46] Thank you so much for listening today.