Meet Diane Webber

[00:00:02] Diane: As our students are learning these new skills money is still flowing. They’re learning how to swim or how to fish in a moving stream So even the complexity of changing a bank account has to be done with some thought And so teaching patience through that process, And so that’s why we’re going to go slow and we’re going to look at these small wins and we’re going to celebrate when there’s a small win that’s important. Because this is hard.

[00:00:30] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapist podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money, shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money, coach and creator of the course, Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:50] Linzy: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s episode is with Diane Webber. Diane is our very own coach inside of our courses, Money Skills For Therapists and Money Skills for Group Practice Owners. She is a financial therapist in Pennsylvania, a grad of Money Skills for therapists and the Money Boss Mastermind that I did a few years ago and now she’s been coaching with us for at least a couple years now. I am excited to have Diane on again today. She has been on our podcast once before, to dig into our own experiences and relationship with private practice, being self-employed. We talk about entrepreneurship and how that term does or does not connect for us. We talk about the highs of being self-employed, why it has been worth it, but also what it takes to be self-employed.

[00:01:41] This is a fun conversation today about the kind of the air that we all breathe in this space, in private practice as therapists and health practitioners. And for those of you who, like me, also have built something else out of that or on the side here is my conversation with Diane Webber. So Diane, welcome back to the podcast.

[00:02:09] Diane: Thanks, Linzy. I’m glad to be here.

[00:02:11] Linzy: I’m very happy to have you here. You are one of the parts of the business that I think is one of our best kept secrets. I realize, with the folks listening to the podcast, it would seem like it’s just me in this business, but something that I really value about my business is that I have a team of wonderful people who support me in different ways. And you are our coach. You are a one and only coach, who works alongside me in both of our courses and gets to support folks and walk them through all the things with me. So I’m excited for folks listening to actually get a chance to get to know you better today as we dive into our topic.

[00:02:46] Diane: That’s great. That’s great. I’m excited.

[00:02:49] Linzy: No pressure, but you’re about to be known.

[00:02:51] Diane: Okay. All right. I’m ready.

[00:02:54] Linzy: So as we were thinking about what might be fun to dig into today, we were each reflecting a little bit on our own careers and private practice and of the place of that in our lives and I was thinking about how, we’ve both made this very specific choice to be self-employed.

[00:03:11] Diane: Yes.

[00:03:12] Linzy: That’s a choice that statistically speaking most folks don’t make. Most folks are employees their whole life. I don’t have the stats on hand, but I know that it’s a very small amount of folks who end up starting a business and an even smaller amount of people who end up staying in business. and we are part of that little cohort of humans, and that comes with some highs and lows.

[00:03:31] Diane: Absolutely, yeah, and a lot of terrified and then feeling good and then terrified.

[00:03:37] Linzy: Yes, the rollercoaster. The rollercoaster. So I wanted to start by thinking about the highs as we think about our own experiences of self-employment, entrepreneurship, like private practices. What are your favorite parts of having a private practice being self-employed?

[00:03:54] Diane: The first thing I immediately thought of was, early on when I first opened my private practice, I found myself at Sam’s Club on a Monday in the late morning. I kept looking around and then there were other people shopping there too, and I was like, what do they do?

[00:04:08] Linzy: Like, who are you?

[00:04:09] Diane: That they could be at a Sam’s Club on a Monday in the middle of the day? This is so weird. And that freedom in a schedule has become really great. I have found that I take advantage of it a lot, and I don’t mean to take advantage of it in terms of exploiting it, but I really think carefully about how I want my time spent, and with whom I love or care for, and I’m caring for. And having a private practice has really helped me be able to do that and still pay the bills.

[00:04:41] Linzy: Yes.

[00:04:42] Diane: Which has been really nice. So I’m at a stage in my life where my father passed away a couple years ago. My mom is now 81 and my kids are 18, almost 19 and 13. And my husband, recently retired, but working part-time. And so there’s a lot of needs and wants to be with my loved ones and I’ve been able to do that, as an entrepreneur.

[00:05:04] Linzy: Yeah, really in that sandwich generation position, which I see coming for myself. Right now my parents are in their early seventies and they’re super healthy, in terms of early seventies, barring things like a hip replacement and some cataract surgery. But I can see how even in just five to 10 years, it’s going to shift a lot in terms of where caregiving is happening. And I’m hearing for you, like being self-employed means that you can show up in those places for your people.

[00:05:31] Diane: Exactly, it does take work. I have to remind myself, and not feel like I’m suffering somewhere else. So for example, last week I drove to West Virginia to pick up my son Cameron from his freshman year at college, and the next day drove to Rochester, New York to see my mom and help her through cataract surgery. And there were certainly moments where I felt very stretched thin and thinking, when am I going to earn money? You know, and then reminding myself, I had a busier schedule the week before. I have a busier schedule this week. 

[00:06:04] Linzy: Yes.

[00:06:05] Diane: And I could use those three days and just be with those people that I loved and that my business was also taking care of me and I could be with them. It’s not always that they needed to be taken care of, but just that I could be present and be with them in that too.

[00:06:19] Linzy: Yeah, and this is what we teach folks, right? Building businesses that you can take several days off and it doesn’t negatively impact your income, right? Like you have that stability that you’ve created. I’m hearing there’s still that like playing hooky feeling or that something’s wrong still. That kind of comes into your mind. I wonder, why do you think that is?

[00:06:38] Diane: I think for me personally, I spent so many years working, at least eight to five, nine to five, nine to seven. I worked in a corporate environment and then I worked in a higher education environment for many years, and so there was a lot of putting your time in. And so it’s more like you’re putting your time in effectively and efficiently. Not necessarily quantity. And I’m also coming to realize that I do better work when I have room to rest or I have room to play. That has taken a lot of, practicing it or reinforcing it to go see, like this thing you keep hearing. See, there it is again. and it’s no, I know they say it, but I don’t know if it’s really true.

[00:07:23] Linzy: Not for me. Yeah.

[00:07:25] Diane: And then just really recognizing that, that space, especially for the clinical work, is really important to get refreshed. In your most recent podcast, you talked a lot about the length of time. That and the relationships that we build with our clients in a clinical setting that is different from other medical providers.

[00:07:45] Linzy: Yeah.

[00:07:46] Diane: I think a lot about how I have been with clients through miscarriages, and pregnancies, or divorces, or new jobs, and lots of life changes. So you build this history and this life together and also are working. I’m also on the clock. I’m paying attention. I’m looking for patterns, I’m looking for progress, and I’m identifying that for my clients because they don’t always identify it for themselves. It’s a lot, you know? And so having those breaks have been really important to be able to keep doing good work.

[00:08:17] Linzy: Yeah, for sure. It makes me think of quality over quantity, which being a higher sensitivity person myself, I don’t have a lot of quantity to give. And, I had to accept that about myself maybe five years ago, but the quality is really what our folks are actually looking for.

[00:08:33] And I think about that both in terms of your clinical clients that you’re working with, and also the coaching clients that we work with who we call students. The quality of those interactions is really what folks need from us, right? They need us to show up in that co-working call, in a private conversation for them, and really be able to hone in and hear exactly what they’re saying and connect it back to something that they said two calls ago, to help to draw a connection, or just have recall, that context that we’re carrying in our brains and we wouldn’t be able to do that infinitely.

[00:09:03] Diane: No.

[00:09:04] Linzy: There’s only so much of that energy to give, and this is somewhere that genuinely I see therapists, we have to start to think differently about our work than other types of work is we don’t have, let’s say, 40 hours of actual quality emotional energy to give, even if we did try to work a 40 hour week. It’s tank that we’re working with is a different size than that. It’s smaller than that and I think we all have our own size of tank, but I’ve never met anybody who can do 40 great one hour sessions in a week. It’s just not the way that humans are built, but there’s a certain amount of permission giving or unraveling from this idea of being productive I think that we have to do to really acknowledge and be okay with that. To be okay with the fact that actually going to the garden center in the middle of the day on a Tuesday might be exactly what your business needs from you.

[00:09:54] Yeah. Then there’s something weird about that, the playing hooky feeling is funny. You’re mentioning that ’cause we’re just coming out of, a big cohort of Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, our largest cohort that we’ve had. And part of what we do in the course that is different from a lot of courses is, I still give my one-on-one time to folks. So I just came out of the end of a cohort where I had so many individual calls that were owed to students. There were two or three calls that they got with me, that I’ve been so busy that I’ve almost been in that mode where you sit at the desk and you stay there all day until the end of the day. And now that I’m finding we’re coming into a little bit of a quieter period, and I think it’ll still stay quieter in terms of my calls that I have to do, I have to remember that I can just go for a wander, and I can go to the drugstore to get that thing. ‘Cause I also love errands. I love errands in the middle of the day, especially if my brain is stuck on something or I’m just feeling meh and I’m quite prone to hyper arousal. That’s always the risk of just getting really sleepy and not being able to think clearly.

[00:10:52] Diane: Yeah, I’m the opposite.

[00:10:52] Linzy: Yeah. You’re the opposite.

[00:10:54] Diane: I call it squirreling.

[00:10:55] Linzy: I don’t squirrel. I don’t squirrel. I burrow. I’m whatever burrowing animal goes into the ground and just has a nap. That’s what I do, and it always seems compelling and it is the right thing I should do if I’m tired. But what I should usually actually do go for a walk or go grab some groceries or just be out with the humans, but I have found that even just this period of being busier has put me back into that space of, it’s hard to remember that it’s totally fine for me to go visit my mom in the afternoon ’cause I have a two hour window and that could be a great use of my time.

[00:11:25] When I first started building this business, a therapist that I had at the time, he would talk about this idea of letting the programs run in the background. ‘Cause I think he saw me really struggling to just grow my business with my frontal lobe at all times: must think my way through every problem. And obviously that’s not a very sustainable and great strategy. So he would often remind me, the programs run in the background, go do something else, do some yoga, go for a walk. The programs are still running in the background. And that I think is also part of the work that we do.

[00:11:55] When you are out at Sam’s Club or the Garden Center, part of your brain might be thinking about that client that you just saw, right? And, processing what happened or might be thinking about an upcoming conversation that you’re going to have and you want to get out of that conversation. We have conversations in our heads all the time, or at least I do. I’m fairly sure that’s a normal human thing.

[00:12:15] Diane: Yep.

[00:12:16] Linzy: And that is part of our brain’s way of making sense. and it is such a gift that we have a profession where we can actually make space when we’re in private practice to let our brain process in this way, right? We don’t have to basically perform busyness all week long. And as you were talking too, I was thinking about, Cal Newport has this concept of pseudo productivity, which is the performance of busyness, where you’re like, oh, I’m checking emails. Oh, I’m looking at these numbers. Oh, I’m like, again, performative busyness where we are showing ourselves mostly when you’re in private practice, just yourself, nobody else is watching you, that you’re busy and therefore you’re successful. But his argument is that most folks who do great things in this world, they don’t actually accomplish those things by working hard every day. Great ideas or great work actually happens by people percolating and having space, right? And letting something cook over a long time and then writing that amazing book or making that TV show or building an incredible business. But that hard work, I think this idea of hard work, doesn’t always belong in our field.

[00:13:18] Diane: No and one thing that is sparking for me, funny that I use the word sparking is you described yourself a few days ago as,

[00:13:25] Linzy: Yes.

[00:13:26] Diane: or having this, which I love, and we’ve often talked about our different approaches; that I’m the circle the wagons kind of person and my approaches, and you’re a, grow wings on your way down off the cliff kind of person or burn the boat, and figure it out. And I think that, in both cases it’s important to know how we work well.

[00:13:44] Linzy: Yes. Yes.

[00:13:46] Diane: And then to, and respect that. So for you as the business owner and Money Skills for Therapists and Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, you’ve generated these beautiful ideas and these visions, then you’ve had to create the container for yourself to then form it and then execute it. And that takes a tremendous amount of energy that then also requires the rest to recover on the other side.

[00:14:09] Linzy: That’s it. And you know, the creation of those courses, and for folks listening who are thinking about courses, this is often what I tell people is, making those courses was a very creative process, right? And I made them, on the fly. Even Money Skills for Group Practice Owners, which I only made two years ago, well into the life of this business, I made as I went.

[00:14:30] And the reason that I make my courses as I go is that I have to do it. I don’t have a choice. And it stops me from falling into perfectionism. It stops me from getting in my own way. If I know that I owe folks a batch of videos next week, for the next module, I am making those videos and that is a very energy consuming process. it’s again, phosphorus, that’s where I’m burning bright, but I wouldn’t be able to do that all the time. So it’s really in this business, we think about it, I have really burned really bright twice, once when I made Money Skills for Therapists, once when I made Money Skills for Group Practice Owners.

[00:15:10] And then we’ve created a container and a team that can continue to deliver those courses, and where we show up and we connect with people and we create the space for them to process and integrate and learn, but in some ways the most intensive part of the business has been one of those times when I’ve been building those courses and really just pulling it outta my brain, which I think would be akin to an artist creating a piece or a writer writing a book. There’s this intense period but the beautiful thing about having a business like ours is now we just have this container where we have to just get folks in the door to connect them with this thing that we know works and that is great.

[00:15:46] And then we get to tweak it and fine tune it and improve it. And that’s something that you and I have done with Money Skills for Therapists over the last couple years is, adding in videos and tools as people ask questions. oh, it’d be really nice to have a tool that addresses this piece. So again, it hasn’t been consistent grinding energy, but it has been really letting myself really create when I’ve needed to. and then having lots of naps on either side.

[00:16:09] Diane: On either side. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:11] Linzy: Something else that I know drives both of us is variety. So can you tell me about your relationship to variety in your work?

[00:16:17] Diane: Sure, and I have this mixed relationship. It’s a love-hate relationship. Because I am a circle of the wagons kind of person. Change or, when COVID happened and the word pivot was so popular, I was like, I do not pivot. I don’t pivot. And yet everything I was doing required a pivot. The example I gave last week of going to West Virginia and then to Rochester, that’s a lot on my nervous system.

[00:16:45] Linzy: Yeah.

[00:16:46] Diane: On the other hand, I also really have a variety of different parts of my brain or different ways of thinking having to be used. So when I took the Money Skills course as a student, I really enjoyed getting such a nice handle on my income and how I was taking care of the business, how I was taking care of myself and my family, and the coaching role. And the teaching of it. I really like the minutia. The detail work.

[00:17:12]Linzy: Yeah.

[00:17:13] Diane: In a very different way than the clinical work that is soft, nebulous. Sometimes there’s a lot of emotion, sometimes there’s struggle, sometimes there’s a very different effort. And then the money skills work is crisper; crisper. It’s cleaner. There’s also this emotional piece, too. That has been really powerful to see and be with our students and see the transformation happen.

[00:17:40] Linzy: Yes.

[00:17:41] Diane: So the initial discomfort in asking the questions and showing their screens and talking about where they’re getting stuck or being able to share what they’re earning or what they’re spending and then being able to normalize all of all of that, and then get into those nuts and bolts of things, I have found really enjoyable ’cause it’s much more concrete. Yes. You know, there’s a concrete progress that’s noted that’s different from the kind of progress that I see and experience with my clients.

[00:18:08] Linzy: I agree and I think I had partially started Money Skills for Therapists off the side of my clinical desk because the clinical work that I was doing, back when I started Money Skills for Therapists was this really nuanced complex, multiple layers happening at once. It was never tidy. Humans, we’re not tidy, right? and so that’s not going to change and I love that work, but I’ve always had this side of me that also just really loves order clarity, And it’s interesting ’cause as a clinician sometimes I would get feedback from my clients that I would take something that was nebulous and make it feel like now we have a plan.

[00:18:49] And with EMDR, it really works that in some ways we do an inventory of let’s talk about every terrible thing that still bothers you, which is so terrible. Doing those trauma inventories is the worst, and I didn’t do them with everybody, but some people they were like, I just want a clean house. Let’s just get it down. When I was seven, this girl stopped being my friend. When I think about it, I still feel eight out of 10 activated, blah, okay. When I was 12, these boys cornered me and it really scared me, and I still feel it nine outta 10 activated when I think about it.

[00:19:18] So you’re just making this list, but what you’re doing when you’re making that list is you’re taking this really swirly, overwhelming, nebulous, intrusive thing, and you’re creating order. You’re creating a plan where you can start to work through those things one at a time. And the beautiful thing about something like EMDR is as you resolve issues, when you come to issues that are later on the list, it’s oh, that one actually feels a lot better because of this other work we’ve done. So it’s all connected, but by coming at it in an orderly way, it’s just resolving right? Putting things in their place. Right? There’s again, an order making there and of course as humans we’re never orderly. ‘Cause you might be feeling amazing one day and then the next day a tragedy happens in your life, right? That’s not how life works, but I think as a clinician, I got some of that orderliness through EMDR, but nothing compares to a spreadsheet.

[00:20:09] And I think I’ve always been someone who enjoys numbers and math for that reason, is that there’s a dumbness about them, which we don’t get in human life. Human life is messy and unresolved, and just when everything seems great, everything falls apart. Right with numbers, once you have your numbers organized for the year, you’re like, okay, I did it. It’s all good. My taxes are filed. I’m finished. There’s a finishedness to the task, although the task itself is never actually done.

[00:20:35] Diane: It’s never, no, nope.

[00:20:36] Linzy: So the discrete tasks are done, but the overall responsibility, I guess we could say, is never finished.

[00:20:42] Diane: Right And what a lot of what we focus on the course, both courses and different ways with private practice owners versus group practice owners, is really feeling comfortable and confident in the process of doing all of that. So it’s not that I’ve nailed my numbers for good and they’re locked in, and we’re set. Yes. Now I know how to look at my numbers and how to make decisions about those numbers and feel confident that I am able to do it and here’s what I’m deciding and why.

[00:21:09] Linzy: Yes.

[00:21:10] Diane: And one conversation I had yesterday with one of our students that I think helped to validate the complexity of it. I said you open up a really full messy closet and it’s like, where do I even start with organizing these things? Sometimes you have to just pull a whole lot of stuff out before you can see what’s there, and decide what to keep and what to get rid of, but also as our students are learning these new skills and putting them into practice, money is still flowing that whole time. So they’re learning how to swim or how to fish in a moving stream where their money is still coming in and still going out.

[00:21:46] So even the complexity of changing a bank account has to be done with some thought because you don’t want to miss a bill. And so teaching patience through that process, normalizing that, yeah, it is messy. And so that’s why we’re going to go slow and we’re going to look at these small wins and we’re going to celebrate when there’s a small win that’s important. Because this is hard.

[00:22:07] Linzy: Yeah, there’s an ongoingness about it, an ongoing relationship, that’s language that I started using with our students I think in the last couple years. It’s not something you do once and it’s over and so with that in mind, too, sometimes there can be this energy that we can have around money when we feel like we’ve been avoiding it, where it’s I’m going to do it. I’m going to get in there and I’m going to do it right. And sometimes I’ll see folks come to the course with that energy and they zoom through the first three modules in two weeks and you’re like, whoa.

[00:22:34] And it’s not sustainable, right? So it can still feel great to ride those waves. And I was just talking earlier about the creative energy that can do great things in your business, but that’s not the way you can always be with money, right? There’s going to have to be after that initial burst of cleaning house and diving in and maybe being obsessed and working on it two in the morning… after that, there has to be a more sustainable version of that relationship that

[00:22:58] Diane: Yes.

[00:22:58] Linzy: Will be your continued relationship with money throughout your working career and your personal life after that too even into retirement, right? Of a more sustainable candor with it, of checking in. At a certain point there has to be an unwinding and a groundedness with it because yeah, it never goes away until the day you die or until you descend enough into dimension that somebody else manages for you. I think those are our two options.

[00:23:21] Diane: Unless someone manages it for you.

[00:23:22] Linzy: But both of them hopefully are a long way off, for all of us. Thinking about self-employment too, I’m curious about your relationship to the idea of entrepreneurship. Is that something that you identify as an entrepreneur, as being a therapist in private practice and then doing this coaching work with us? Does that resonate? Does it not?

[00:23:43] Diane: That’s a great question. I, personally, I do not.

[00:23:45] Linzy: Yeah.

[00:23:46] Diane: I do consider myself self-employed for sure, yes. I identify myself as more of a doer in general than as a visionary. And so when I think of entrepreneurship, I think of visionary.

[00:24:01] Linzy: Interesting.

[00:24:02] Diane: And it’s hard for me to see myself as an entrepreneur. And maybe part of it too is because my private practice, I entered into a profession where there are lots of self-employed, private practice owners, you know, and then in my work on the team with Money Skills for Therapists is in a supporting coaching role helping to execute your vision which I love and I have a great time with it, but it’s interesting that you ask because I don’t necessarily see myself as an entrepreneur.

[00:24:32] Linzy: That’s so interesting ’cause when I hear you say that, I’m like, but don’t you have a vision for your private practice? Didn’t you build it? Didn’t it come from you?

[00:24:42] Diane: It did. Yes, and part of that is that my decision to go into private practice was more as a consolation or a default rather than a long term goal. It turned out to be wonderful. This wasn’t my idea, but I’m doing it anyway, kind of thing. It was, I’m glad that it happened but the idea didn’t originate within me. I think even when I went to grad school, I went to school for a master’s in counseling, but I really didn’t want to hang a shingle. I could if I needed to, but really wanted to do this other kind of work. And through, you know, a variety of different things that shifted and I got a lot of encouragement to go into private practice and so I think that community support of yeah, you’d be great at this. You should do this and I was like, okay. Yeah.

[00:25:32] Linzy: Yes, that’s very much the same way that I became a complex trauma therapist.  When a colleague referred me, somebody, and I called my colleague after and I was like. She has full DID, and she was like, I know you’re going to be great. I was like, what?

[00:25:46] Diane: What?

[00:25:47] Linzy: I think my colleagues chose me as the person who was going to bring these skills to our community. There’s sometimes a bit of a, it happens to you, experience of these things, which I do hear the difference in our identifications with entrepreneurship. ‘Cause I do identify as an entrepreneur. And although I don’t remember this, I do have one of my friends from my masters who told me in one of our classes once I had said, I’m going to start a private practice, which I don’t recall now, but I did say it apparently in a room full of people and I was the only one ’cause becoming a social worker in Ontario, that’s not usually the path that folks go, and it’s certainly not discussed at all. There’s usually the assumption you’re going to be part of some sort of system.

[00:26:25] So self-employment, many of my colleagues from my masters have now gone on to start private practices, but certainly right out the door, that’s not something that anybody was really thinking about. So I think I always had that entrepreneurial spark and where I see the spark in myself now especially, is when I start to think about it, I wonder if I could make another business successful. Just for funsies!

[00:26:47] Diane: Which, where I’m going, it might be fun for you.

[00:26:48] Linzy: Yeah, You’re like, okay, okay.

[00:26:50] Diane: I’ll be over here cheering you on and I’ll be happy to help, but yeah.

[00:26:54] Linzy: Which I see in some of my friends, too, where we’re kinda like, I wonder what a business like this could… a different business, if I could make it work. ‘Cause the skills transfer. and there’s something too about having a business that’s very much my personal brand. It could be cool to just run a bookstore, which is not true, by the way. Don’t go into being a bookstore owner right now. It’s not a great time. but that idea of, if you plug into a different business model, what could you build? And I think part of that for me now comes with being in an entrepreneurial community with others… I joined a group for Canadian women entrepreneurs, so meeting folks who own mediation companies and yoga studios and just this whole range that I’m like, oh right, there’s other kinds of businesses that women own, not just private practices like me and my friends. So yeah, but that sparkiness. And something else that I notice about myself that definitely means I’m an entrepreneur, is reading books about business and entrepreneurship.

[00:27:43] A lot like I’m hungry for it. Right now I have a list of books in my brain that have been just mentioned to me by colleagues in the last week that I’m like, okay, I’m going to read Essentialism, then I’m going to read Rocket Fuel. I’m going to go back to fix this next. I have just this list in my head. ‘Cause there’s like a hunger and a spark there for me that is really helpful when you are doing these kinds of businesses because it takes a lot of spark, it takes a lot of energy to keep coming back to it all the time.

[00:28:11] Diane: Yeah, and I think one of the things that came up when we were at the ACA conference conference, and I’ve thought about a lot too, and that I find admirable is when a a business owner identifies a gap, there’s a hole, a need that’s not being met, and says and I’ve got the tools fill it. So a lot of what we talked about was this gap in training for therapists when it comes to their money skills.

[00:28:37] And I will say that’s how I ended up shifting my own private practice towards the financial therapy and the money skills stuff because I found that so interesting and colleagues of mine hated money. They hated talking about it. I was like, what? I think it’s so much fun. So when there’s a gap and there’s a need, and this ability to say, see I see that gap. I see the need and I know how to fill it in a way that’s going to be great. That’s been really exciting to be part of, and to watch happen, and then be part of that process.

[00:29:10] Linzy: It is exciting and in some ways, I think this is what clinicians do, too. Once you can own your niche, private practice can be the same where you’re like, “I love working with complex couples, send them my way!” And people are like, “Oh, thank God. Do I have people for you?” So when we can each own that thing that really lights us up, you are both lining yourself up to do work that you actually enjoy, which is such a gift. And you’re also meeting a market need, right? To use economics language. There is a need there for that thing. Most people don’t want to do it. There’s folks who are looking for it, who can’t find it. So when you hang your shingle and you say, this is what I do. If this is you, I can help you.

[00:29:47] It’s such a gift to people, and that’s something that we talk about with our students sometimes. I certainly use this language of “You’re doing folks a disservice if they can’t find you.” If you’re an incredible therapist who does psychedelics work or who helps adult women with ADHD who are overachieving, whatever your niche is, if you really put that out there, you are sending out this beautiful beacon for your people to find you. And they need you. They’re looking for you. Like I’m just on the hunt for a new therapist right now, and I’ve looked at certain therapists websites four or five times before I’ve reached out to them, right? I’m really evaluating, are you the person for me? Are you going to understand me? Can you help me with the stuff that I’m bringing to you about me, but also about parenting?

[00:30:30] And so when you find somebody who has that website that’s like check, check, check. It’s such a relief to find that as a client and as therapists, and business owners, ’cause you do this in your private practice. We do this together in putting ourselves out there with Money Skills for Therapists and Money Skills for Your Practice Owners. It’s such a beautiful gift when those two sides can meet the need and the service comes together. Yeah. Yeah. I get really fired up about it. It is exciting. It is exciting.

[00:31:00] Diane: Yeah, it makes me think about, too, when we have conversations about outsourcing certain tasks. So the idea of and you always say it so beautifully, there’s someone out there who loves… if there’s a job you hate, there is someone out there who loves it. So helping our students determine what are the parts of my work that I really don’t like and can I hire someone to do that. Do I have the money to do that so I can do more of what I love? And that’s information that we help them figure out through better knowledge of their money skills and their business finances.

[00:31:34] Linzy: Yeah, yeah, there’s so many possibilities, always, in any set of numbers. So I’m going to start to wrap up our conversation, and I want to do a closure that is similar to the kind of closure we do in our money skills calls, or that I do. I’m going to ask you to share what are your three words for self-employment that come to mind when you think about self-employment? What are your three words?

[00:31:54] Diane: Freedom, the first one that came up. Responsibility. And the thrill, the third image was like a rollercoaster.

[00:32:03] Linzy: Yes, mine would be challenge, creativity, and purpose.

[00:32:10] Diane: Nice.

[00:32:10] Linzy: Which I feel like is rollercoaster adjacent, but it’s it’s challenging work. It’s challenging to show up and make your own container, right? And to have to like reassess and be with, and sometimes take a hard look at yourself and be like, I really messed that up. Okay. What am I doing differently? 

[00:32:25] Diane: And I’m going to show up again tomorrow.

[00:32:26] Linzy: Exactly, that’s it. It’s that coming back to it that lets you really contribute something very specific and unique to this world that literally nobody could contribute like you can, which, and that drives me. 

[00:32:37] Diane: So well said.

[00:32:38] Linzy: Thank you Diane. It’s so lovely. So lovely to have you on the podcast. You are a therapist based in Pennsylvania. I feel like we should say that. If folks are looking for financial help, can you tell a little bit about the financial therapy work that you do for people in Pennsylvania?

[00:32:53] Diane: Sure, so I’m licensed in Pennsylvania, and I am on a panel with almost all of the commercial insurances. So my caseload is almost a hundred percent insurance reimbursed which I take a lot pride in and that I’m very accessible, but it also means I have to be pretty clever and on top of my finances. And I have wonderful clients and what we really enjoy figuring out is life changes that they’re looking to make in their relationships, in their jobs, in their family situations, where money is a component. So helping them understand their money stories, how that affects their mindset now, and how that’s affecting their behaviors and what might be getting in the way of the changes that they want to make. And it’s been so exciting to see some really powerful changes in that work. So I just love it.

[00:33:42] Linzy: That’s a great niche. So Diane Webber, folks can look her up if you’re listening and you’re like, I could use some financial therapy and I’m in a transition. Diane Webber in Pennsylvania. Thank you. Thank you, Diane, for joining me today.

[00:33:54] Diane: Thanks for having me. And also look out for us in the course.

[00:33:57] Linzy: Yeah. Yes. In my little outro, I’ll do my little shout outs to our two courses, so thank you, Diane.

[00:34:02] Diane: Awesome. I loved Diane’s example of, being at a Sam’s Club on a Monday afternoon after she became self-employed, and how that feels to have the freedom to do whatever you want with your time as long as you’re thoughtful, and that you can go do errands on a Monday afternoon when there’s nobody else there.

[00:34:29] Linzy: And that is something that I notice, as I mentioned in myself and the folks that I work with something that can be hard to really embrace, but it’s such a gift of self-employment on entrepreneurship that you’re not chained to your desk, and sometimes actually being at your desk is the worst thing that you could do for your business and stepping out and taking care of yourself and going to visit a friend or having a nap.

[00:34:51] Or if you’re like me and you want to have a nap, but you should probably go outside and see other people instead. Those things can often be what is actually best for our businesses is to take care of ourselves and let ourselves be present and get out of this idea of a 40 hour work week. I think the idea of a 40 hour work week generally just does not apply to private practice, depending on how you structure your clinical days and when you tend to work best and the kind of work that you do.

[00:35:19] Your work week might look really different from that and you might be someone who thrives on routine and you have the same schedule every week. I did that when I was in private practice, but also built into that schedule was spaciousness. And built into that schedule was no clients on Fridays, and no clients after 4:00 PM and all of these kinds of things that when we don’t fully own the power that we have as self-employed people, as business owners, we can forget that. You get to set it up in a way that works for you and you get to go do that errand in the middle of the day, or you get to do that noon yoga class. Nobody is stopping you and usually it’s for your own benefit and the benefit of the business when you do those things.

[00:35:59] So invite you to just notice if you have found yourself having a hard time really owning that freedom that you’ve created and thinking about what is one way that you can really savor the freedom of your private practice today? Something that you can do that you wouldn’t be able to do if you were working for somebody else. I so appreciate Diane joining me on the podcast today. And if you are interested in getting Diane and I’s support with your private practice finances, as we mentioned, we have our two courses. There’s Money Skills For Therapists, for solo practitioners, and there’s Money skills for Group Practice owners.

[00:36:34] For our group practice owners. You can find information about both of those courses in the show notes. They each have their own door to go through, but when you go through those doors, you will learn about the course that you’re looking at, and you will have the opportunity to work with Diane and I to really set up your private practice to serve you and support you.

[00:36:51] You can also follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts, and if you’re enjoying the podcast, leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really does help other therapists and health practitioners find us when you leave us those reviews, so I really appreciate it. Thanks for joining me today.