(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hey, our Live Ask Allison's are an opportunity for you to get free live conversational support from me. You're hearing an excerpt from one we did recently. I'll give you details on how you can join our next Live Ask Allison at the end of the episode. So I've talked about therapy notes on here for years.
I could talk about the features and the benefits in my sleep, but there are a couple of things I want you to know about therapy notes that doesn't typically make it into an ad script. First is that they actually care if you like their platform. They don't only make themselves available on the phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your hair out when you get stuck.
They also take member suggestions and implement those that there's client demand for, like therapy search and included listing service that helps clients find you, internal and external secure messaging, clinical outcome measures to keep an eye on how your clients are progressing, a super smooth super bill process, real-time eligibility to check on your client's insurance.
In my conversations with the employees there at all levels, they all really believe in their product and they want you to love it too. Second, they are proudly independently owned. Why should you care about that? Because as soon as venture capital becomes involved, the focus shifts from making customers happy to making investors happy. Prices go way up, innovation plateaus, making more money with as little output as possible becomes the number one focus.
With over 100,000 therapists using their platform, they've been able to stay incredibly successful and they don't have to sacrifice your experience to stay there. You can try two months free at therapynotes .com with the coupon code abundant. Yay. Okay. I'm glad they all are here. So who wants to start us off with a question? There is no dumb question. The question you have is something I'm sure somebody else here has. Yeah, Isabel, go for it. Thank you.
My question is actually when you talk about the median income, do you talk about before or after taxes? I do whatever it has, like the median household income statistics that always pops up at the very beginning. I believe, I don't know if that's before or after taxes, but I know comparatively, like I know what it's like in my area and I know what it's like in some of the bigger cities where I've had a lot of students. What does yours say?
Well, I'm in Canada, so apparently the statistics come up different. So before taxes, it's 97,000 and after taxes, it's 71. And so I'm wondering then the next step is given those numbers, how do you, you know, calculate, guesstimate, what's the, you know, what's the formula then for your hourly fee? Yeah. So that's a great question. And I think a lot of people make the decision on what to charge based on what people around them are charging or what they assume people can afford.
I would rather you look at your numbers. What is your life cost? What do you want to put into retirement every month? How much time do you want off? I want you to look at your numbers. Tiffany McLean has a really good fun with fees calculator on her website. I'll put it right here in the chat. It's leaninmakebank.com and it will help calculate all of that for you because what you charge actually has everything to do with your life and nothing to do with the therapist next door.
And I want all of us to own whatever number pops up, which can be really hard because we think, you know, well, that's a high number or whatever, but that's literally what the numbers just told you it costs to live, to take the vacations that you need to take for this, to be sustainable, to make sure that you are fine when you can no longer work. And yeah, it can be really uncomfortable. And yeah, Jillian just said in the chat, we have this tendency to undercharge.
So we definitely need to not base our fees on other therapists who have their own money stuff they haven't worked through. So you know, if you've got student loans, get those in there. If you've got yoga classes every week, you want to take just making sure that you're accounting for the things that make your life good. Because when we're run ragged and we're not able to take our time off and we're not able to set up our future, we're not the best therapist we can be. Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely. Hi, Jesse. I had a question, and I guess I haven't really formulated the question yet, but I'm in a position in my practice where like, I'm generally, well, yeah, I'm pretty full, right? I'm at like 20 clients a week. I don't want to see more than that. I've been exploring, I'm in the abundance party, so I saw the masterclass with Carly Hale and I've just been interested in like, should I explore coaching, like other income streams?
Like, I want to make more, but I don't want to take on more clients. Yeah, yeah. You just touched on like a soapbox I've been on lately. So I'm excited. I'm going to try not to get too intense. I think the vast majority of people should not do alternative streams of income. So I'll say that up front.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't, but typically if somebody wants to make more money than they're currently making and they're in private practice, I recommend instead that you raise your fee to make it more of a premium fee. So at 150, you could definitely raise it. We just discovered like I'm charging a hundred dollars more for you and your town is more rich than mine. So I would instead suggest you raise your rates.
You don't need to raise them a hundred dollars right now, but I would raise your rates instead to make more money because the learning curve that goes along with starting another business, most likely it would need to be a different business with the coaching world is a completely different learning curve. I thought when I started abundance, like, Oh, it'll be like, I know how to start a practice. So it'll just be that just a little bit more, but it is not, it's a totally different world.
And I did it because I was so on fire about it. So if there was something specific that you were like, I'm going to, it's going to be hard for me to not work on this in my downtime because I'm so excited to work on it. Then I want you to do that alternative stream of income. But if you're like, I would like to make more money and I would like to maybe explore something do that, I would rather you raise your rates and have more time with your family.
But if, like I said, if you're on fire about something, I really like, I want you to follow that passion, but it's much easier money just to raise your rates. Yeah. Thank you. There's not something I'm big. I didn't mention this, but my practice is I focus on like men's issues, masculinity, you know, healthy masculinity, things like that. So I've been thinking of weekend men's retreats, I don't know, a men's group, something like that. Yeah, it does.
I get really energized thinking about it, just the momentum that it takes to get that built and marketed. I don't know if I'm in it to win it yet. Yeah. Yeah. And it also might be phase of life, like with such a young child and I'm making the full assumption that you're a great dad, right? And so it might be like in a year or two, you've got more space for it. It might be something happens and you get on fire and you find a way to make it all happen.
It's one of those things kind of similar to what we were talking about earlier with Jillian about like if somebody is handing you their clients to help them with this thing that only you can help them with and then they get to have their clients back, it's a pretty easy referral. So something like a men's group or a men's retreat, I think could be one of those things where people are really eager to have their clients do it.
I think a men's group is probably easier to fill than a retreat simply because it's less expensive for people. It's more of a taste test kind of. So I would definitely wait until the new year to start promoting that because everybody's starting to check out for the year, but it's an underserved market also. Probably most people here are niches women. So I think it also really, really be useful and helpful to a lot of men and their families. I appreciate that. Lots of good thoughts.
Got my mind going. Awesome. Love it. All right. Jillian. Yeah. I had a quick question about doing trainings for CEUs for therapists and that, and I've considered it and I've had some other therapists suggest it as, I mean, I enjoy teaching other therapists about financial therapy and also connecting with other therapists in that way. They think of me as, they know me as the financial therapist in the area. So I guess I've sort of been intimidated by exploring what that entails.
Like is it a super complicated process? Is it expensive? Like should I be anticipating? I would go with a company that's already credentialed so you don't have to get credentialed. So like any graduate school around you, like we have Lenora Ryan over here and they will, they will look for speakers once a month or at least they used to, once a month they'd look for speakers pre-COVID.
One of us would go speak to our colleagues about whatever we're an expert in and they would make sure all the CEs were handled. So unless you're going to do it a lot, I would just find these places that have all that handled just to take it off your plate. If you do decide to go forward with it, we have, I have a new business that's going to launch in the, in the new year called Not Boring CEs. And so we had to go through the process for that.
And the CE process is really different based on license. Like the APA, the APA rejected us and it was like, okay, well I guess I'll write a dissertation to get you to say yes. They have different levels. NBCC was not hard. It was just, it just took a while. Like it took about six months, but I would only do that if you want to do this a ton and maybe like build out a thing where you do it a lot or something like that.
Maybe start with people who aren't, somebody who already does it and see how it feels and maybe explore that later. That sounds like it. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. Brittany, hey. Okay. So I started my practice back in March and I'm one of those people who don't, it's just me. I had maybe like a three month cushion and that three month cushion has come and gone and I really need to start making some money. I'm about half full now. It's been much slower than I expected.
So I guess I'm just asking like marketing, I want to, and an actual plan is probably a bigger conversation than five minutes of like a marketing plan, but maybe telling you a little bit about like what I'm doing and then if you can give me things to think about so I can go into 2025, that would be helpful. Yeah. So I'm doing Instagram and I'm a part of an Instagram like program. So actually following a strategy for that one. Good, good.
Yeah. And I am doing networking, networking with a lot of couples therapists because those are good referral sources for me. I have a website. I'm on psychology today. Psychology today has not done much for me. Maybe I need to optimize that. I don't know. Um, that's what I have so far. Okay. Great. Don't know where I need something because I need more clients coming in. Got it. What's your niche? It's anxiety, people pleasing, but really that stems from childhood trauma.
They don't always coming in knowing that it's childhood trauma. Those are my clients. Yeah. Okay. And the people that have found you, how have they found you so far? So most of my people followed me from a group practice. Okay. The newer folks have been referrals from one particular couples therapist and then also word of mouth from my clients. So it's good. I feel, and the people who are with me stay for a long time, so I feel confident and like once I get them, they're in and they're there.
It's just a matter of getting them to come. Got it. There are the kind of like in real life kinds of things you can do. Your niche is tough because if that client comes to most therapists, the therapist is going to take them on. Right. It's not like, Ooh, I don't have experience in that or I don't know how to treat that. So that's why like the individual therapists networking with full individual therapists is going to be a benefit. And are you private pay or do you take insurance? Private pay.
Okay. Great. Okay. So I would say search engine optimization might be a good option. Like getting to that first page of Google, there's one company I trust for this. I don't get paid to promote them. I don't have any affiliate anything, but simplified SEO consulting. I've hired multiple SEO companies in the 10 years I've been helping therapists and I've been ripped off a lot in this company. I have referred them to so many people and they're really solid. It's expensive.
So given that you've run through your savings, that might be not a, for right now option. Though I think they have a DIY program that can teach you how to do it. If you're like me and you would rather like drive toothpicks into your eyes, then learn how to do SEO, then I totally get that. I might go to where your ideal client is and give talks. So is there like, how old is your ideal client? What do they do to blow off steam or where do they spend their time?
My ideal client is like 35 to 42 ish. And their kids are a little bit older, so they're not in the midst of like early motherhood or parenting. They're usually the people that they're talking to about this stuff is like OBGYN is what I've found. And some of them are exercising and socializing. Most of them are not, right, is what I have found. So and they're really like keeping it private. They're not really talking about friends because they, you know, have to have the mask on all the time.
So that part's a little bit harder of like where they are in the community. Yeah, yeah. Like that's what they're hard workers. They're career people. Yeah. Have you tried networking with OBGYNs offices? I haven't yet. That is something that's on my to-do list for 2025. Okay, great. You're not going to grab coffee with a doctor, most likely, but you can call and ask to speak to the referral coordinator.
And you're not going to grab coffee with them either, but you can ask like, how do I get on your referral list? I find most of my clients realize they need help when they're talking to their OBGYN and it's suggested, you know, just kind of give them, have it written out because the medical model is so like fast paced. They don't want us therapists who tend to ramble a bit with one another and explore this side and this side. They just want the quick and dirty.
So I would write out a little script that you use. I would call the, since you're private pay, I'd call the offices and more affluent areas first. Yeah. And still a lot of medical offices will be like, oh, well, if you don't take insurance, like we can't refer to you. There's almost this expectation that like everybody has to use their insurance because that's their business model.
I would also call any concierge practices like where I live, like my doctor is a concierge practice, which sounds a lot fancier than it is. It just means I don't use my insurance with them. I pay them a flat one hundred and eighty dollars a month, whether I see him ten times or zero. And it's the best care I've ever had. So I think that could be an option is finding concierge practices or functional medicine doctors who are typically not taking insurance.
OK, so going into that route of more of the doctor realm, you feel like would be a good place for me to try and find. Yeah, it could be great because really you just need one one or two doctors. One really could fill your practice, most likely if it's an OBGYN. But they are it's like I mean, it's like dating when you're in your early 20s, you know, like things are not going to land. They're not going to land. They're not going to land. And then maybe one will land for a little while.
It's just kind of the way it is. So creating a good follow up situation for when you're sharing a client with a doctor. We have a script in the Abundance Party called Doc, I'm seeing your patient that is good for continuity of care, but also lends to more referrals. Yeah. So, yeah. Perfect. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Let's see. Nikki. Hi. Hi. It's good to meet you. You too. Yeah. So I guess I wanted to explain kind of my plan now and just see what your thoughts were.
I'm actually going to be done at my current full time job in mid-January. And so I'm at like the end of it. And so I'm having all the different emotions and feelings about leaving because I actually really like where I'm at, but I'm ready to be on my own and be my own boss. And so I've had my private practice open for about a couple of years and just have done it outside and have had long days, a couple of days a week where I'm seeing people after work.
So I guess like I have a couple of months of just saved up money where I don't have to worry about it too much while I'm building up my practice. But I'm so burnt out and tired. And so my my plan right now is to take a couple of weeks and to decompress, relax and take time to just kind of like dream and be creative so that I can really go at my business and be in a rested state. And and so but I'm also like scared about that, too, because I'm like, I do really well with structure.
And I was talking to my spouse last night and he's like, well, you could just you know, you can just have it so that you create that structure while you're resting. Right. And doing that kind of thing. So I guess I guess I'm just seeking reassurance that that's like a good plan to kind of just like kind of wipe the slate clean. I've been here at this job for 11 years, and so it's a big transition. Yeah. Yeah. I think that taking some time off after like I think that's brilliant, I think like.
You're going to come back more restored, and if you just keep trudging through like it's like, OK, well, now I'm in business for myself, it's a Monday, Friday was my last day, and now I have to get everything ready to like market to a broader audience so I can get more clients. I want your nervous system to have a minute to settle down. Yeah, because there might also end up being some grief leaving this job. There might be like all sorts of things that I would rather you attend to.
A lot of us end up having some workplace trauma and that needs to be attended to. But when we're go, go, go, we don't have the opportunity to process that at all. So I love the idea of just being still and creative and like not pushing if you have the ability to not push. Yeah. Do you have any other advice about like what what could be helpful to just kind of reset before kind of going into that? Reset like during your time off? Yeah, yeah.
Like I start like I mean, obviously I know me and I know what works well for me. I guess I'm just trying to be like, OK, well. You know, I want to get in this mindset of like I get to dream of whatever I want for this. Yeah, it's right. And so I need to get in a good headspace for that. And so. I don't know, I think I'm just just taking reassurance, that's all so. Yeah, it's great. And I mean, I would think about we end up putting these.
Like. Non real structures in our head around what we think our practice has to look like, and it's always based on our experience, you've had 11 years at this agency, so there are certain things about your agency work that you're going to bring into this that have nothing to do with what your practice can be if you want it to be. So I would get really clear. Are you in the abundance party? I am.
Yeah. OK, so like the build the right practice course, I would take that if you even if you did it like before, I would do it again during this time off specifically because it's going to help challenge some of these ideas you have about when you can take off, like what hours you're supposed to work, the fee, the clients, all of it. It's going to have you question the current norm. And that way you can dream bigger and you can then build plans based on that dream.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited for you. I get a little when you were like, how do like what's a good way to restore? Because I am about to have two weeks off and I'm like, I don't know what to do with myself. So I giggled a little because I'm just not quite there yet. I'm oh, every year I have to relearn how to not work, basically. So I hear you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Nikki. Hi. Hi. I know this was really helpful hearing, I mean, a lot of questions that were sorely in my mind.
Everyone already asked, which is great. So I just launched my private practice in August. I'm about to leave my group practice next month. That has been kind of like my security blanket in this process. So one thing that I'm curious about in marketing is specifically navigating the social realm, like social marketing, like with social media. Do you have anyone that has done marketing towards LinkedIn and have had any success? Because I've been curious about that.
I had a trainer once come and do a training in the abundance party about LinkedIn and she did like kind of health care, LinkedIn. Right. So she worked with doctors and things like that. I don't know any therapist personally who has had success with LinkedIn. We thought like, oh, well, that would make sense for abundance. Right. Like I can see what those jobs are, but we're also not super aggressive. We're not going to like send people messages out of nowhere that don't know us.
Right. So I'm not going to do that kind of marketing. But even if like we have very little interaction with people on LinkedIn. So I have not seen it to be super useful for them. I've seen it as a way. The best way I've seen it used is like if somebody wants to get in touch with a doctor to talk about like getting referrals or whatever, you can never go through their office.
But often their LinkedIn will give an email or some way to get or I guess get in touch with them on LinkedIn notifications. So I've had some people get in touch with doctors that way, but I haven't seen anybody blow up because of it. I know I don't know all the therapists, so. Yeah, I ask because so like my demographic that has come to me, I think it's based off my marketing is a lot of older Gen Z millennials and young Gen Xers. And so I did a Google search. I was like, where are they at?
Like, where are they living in the social realms? And LinkedIn came in, but Instagram also came in. And I'm going to be honest, Instagram, I consume it a lot. But to produce, I'm just like, oh, God, like I get like all these creative blocks. I'm like, these are so cute that people are doing. I was like, what would I do? And then I freeze. I don't do anything.
So, yeah, so I don't know if you have any suggestions about like getting past that hump, because and I know that some people and I've heard this, I think I've heard you say this, like if you don't like it, don't do it. But I also want to like speak to my target audience as well and maybe challenge myself, like, is this like an internal thing or is this something I can do and maybe I can enjoy it along the process? I don't know because I'm paralyzed. So. Right. You do like social media.
You just said you like love consuming Instagram. So it's just your fear holding you back. And I never want our fear to be the thing holding us back or driving us either way. So what I would suggest is making videos, like making little reels and just don't post them. You are not allowed to post them. All you can do is make them save the drafts in case at some point you're like, Oh, I just love this and would love to post it, but I would not put any pressure on yourself to actually make them live.
Are you on video very much in general? Like do you ever video yourself? Um, so interesting story. Two years ago, my best friend and I did a limited series podcast. So I was posting videos. There was moments where I enjoyed it and then I hated it. And we just literally last weekend did a one-off episode just to process everything happening post recent and entry into a new presidency. And we did it recorded like video and we'd never done our podcast that way.
And so it was like, okay, I'm doing this thing that feels awkward, but I was told I have not seen the rough draft, but I told that I was told it looked really, really good. So I think that maybe the internal, it's not emitting outside. It's more of a mindset. I think thing that's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So make reels, make yourself watch them on the days you don't make reels.
I just want you to pull out your phone and I want you to talk like video yourself, talking to yourself about whatever. Ideally, like you could talk about something your clients care about, but I just, I want you to get used to being on video because that's the first time we have to get okay with seeing ourselves on video. You're never going to be like, it's just so amazing on video.
None of us, I mean, maybe a few people get there, but very few of us, even if we've been on, I've been on video for 10 years now, I'm still kind of like, oh, well, um, so I would get really comfortable just with yourself on video. Then the next scary part, the next step would be to actually post some things, which you're not allowed to do yet. But when you post some things, you start to realize like, okay, well, nobody screamed hate at me. Maybe nobody even commented.
Maybe it was just like real neutral. In a way that we're both, uh, relieved and disappointed by. I think knowing like your audience isn't going to be huge at first. And so you can kind of grow into getting feedback from an audience as you grow unless something you create just hits viral real quick. And that's, you know, that's an interesting experience for people. It's a wild ride, but it's not common at all. Thank you. That's really, really helpful.
Yeah. Yeah. And Instagram can be great, but I would definitely follow a strategy. Brittany talked about one in the chat, but definitely follow a strategy. Cause what I see, I think there were like the vast majority of therapists on Instagram are not getting clients. That's the vast, vast, vast, because they're not following any sort of a strategy. They're kind of posting when they want to, or they're, it's not a priority. It's not like our marketing strategies are priorities.
And so if you're still posting the appropriate, like best practices, number of times per week, you're solid and you're doing it in a way that's effective. This was fun. So I'm going to do this again because it was good. So thank you for being here and asking your questions. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening in on a live ask Alison sponsored by our friends at therapy notes.
If you'd like to join us for the next one, send an email to help at abundancepracticebuilding.com and we'll send you the link. If you're listening, you probably need some support building your practice. If you're a super newbie, grab our free checklist using the link in the show notes. I'd love for you to follow rate and review, but I really want you to share this episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.