Financial Coaching for Therapists with Lindsay Bryan-Podvin
Do you feel like the only way to make a meaningful impact is to martyr yourself for your clients?
In the latest podcast episode, Financial Coach Lindsay Brian-Podvin dropped in to spill on how you can run a fair, impactful practice without introducing a sliding scale or lowering your rates.
You don’t need to make yourself a martyr or sacrifice your income to make a difference.
Supporting your clients and making an income to support your financial goals are not mutually exclusive ideas.
Discover the financial mindset that will help you set yourself and your clients up for success here
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Show Notes:
Hey, Risers. Welcome to Episode 153 of Empathy Rising. Today, I'm really excited to introduce you to Lindsay Bryan-Podvin from Mind Money Balance. Lindsey is a licensed therapist in private practice who provides financial therapy for her clients and has also shifted into the financial coaching space for other therapists.
As a clinician herself, she understands the unique barriers facing therapists, charging sustainable rates, moving beyond one-on-one, the direct exchange for time for money, and all of the other money-mindset issues that we tend to have as helpers and healers.
In this episode, we're going to talk about things like money anxiety, money story, money mindset, all of those things. If you've been in a financial self-care place, this is the episode for you. Without further adieu, here we go. Let's listen to my chat with Lindsay.
Marissa: Hey Risers, welcome to a super fun interview. Today we have Lindsay Bryan-Podvin with us, and she is going to be talking about all things finances, which I think is a great subject for us to talk about as clinicians because money and our money story and our money anxiety and our money mindset are all things that we have to work through when we are breaking out of the therapy room.
Lindsay is also a practicing clinician, and she is building this financial success business on the side. I thought that would be really cool for us to come in and talk about, not only how she's managing her time and her energy between her practice and her side hustle, but also how she's helping other clinicians with their financial health and wealth as well.
Lindsay, if you could come in, introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about where you're at, what you do clinically, and then this new venture that you're in.
Lindsay: Of course. Well, thanks. I am so happy to be here, Marissa. This is going to be a fun one today. My background is in clinical social work, and I specialize in financial therapy.
A few years ago I felt just like many folks in the therapy field. I was not being compensated very well and I was stressed out of my mind and I was doing all the things. I was cutting my budget and restricting and realized when I got a better paying social work job how much better I felt physically and mentally, and it was this light bulb moment of "yes", knowing how to manage your money is a key, but also earning more is a huge component in moving the needle and we don't have to suffer.
I'm not a better therapist because I make less money or I'm not more helpful because I took, like, a vow of poverty or anything like that. It moved the needle for me and shifted my perspective and I wanted to then help my clients with their relationship with money, less about the budgeting and the bookkeeping. But the way I described my work is less "how to make a budget" and more "why can't I create a budget, what's getting in the way, how come I can't maintain it?"
I definitely do the emotional side of money. In terms of where I'm at, I am on the occupied land of the Peoria, Fox, Pottawatomie, and Wyandot, and that is currently known as Michigan. I'm in Southeast Michigan. I split my time between a few different things like many private practice owners. I wear a lot of hats. I was telling Marissa right before we hit record that I currently have a caseload of 12 that I see between Tuesday and Friday.
Fridays are really super light. Fridays are reserved after my one or two sessions that day for catching up on notes and admin tasks, and then Mondays are really about the coaching arm and about making sure that I can record podcast episodes and write blog posts and things like that. My time is 80/20 in terms of 80% of it is still therapy and running a private practice, and 20% of it is the coaching arm.
M: I love that you broke that down. It's not like you started your coaching side and then you cut your practice by more overnight. I love that you're at 80/20. By the time students finish Side Hustle with me, they're probably ready to be 90/10, 80/20.
I'm always saying it's a two-year process before you're really getting full-time income from this side hustle, and then you can start really shifting that ratio. So thanks for sharing that. There are a couple of things I want to dive into just from your intro.
I love the way that you talked about where you live and introduced the Indigenous peoples and all of those things. My husband and I purchased a couple of acres in our hometown, and we're actually having our local tribe and indigenous peoples come and do kind of a ceremony on that land and rededicate it to them and things.
That's really on my heart, really important to me. I thought that was really neat. There are a few things that you've said that I want to dive into. That martyr syndrome that clinicians have when you're like, "I am not a better clinician because I'm broke".
It's not a badge of honor. Just like "busy" isn't a badge of honor, being poor or broke or struggling financially is not a badge of honor in our field either. I do think that exists. I do think perhaps even in the social work arena, even more, because there's such an advocacy component to that pedagogy and such a giving component. I wonder if that kind of shows up. What are your thoughts on that?
L: Yeah, for sure. The messaging that we get, again, my lens is through that of a clinical social worker, so of course, that's been drilled into my head, but I can remember in grad school, a professor telling us if we went into private practice, we weren't real social workers.
The message there is: If you work and care about money, then you aren't really doing justice-oriented work. Kelly Diels, who is a "social justice oriented" marketer, says (I'm paraphrasing from her here), that when we think about economic justice, we also have to include ourselves in it. When we advocate for others to have living wages, we too need to make sure we have living wages and not just the ability to get by, but the ability to thrive.
As you mentioned, therapists are often chosen to be on all of these boards and these committees because they do bring such a unique lens to things. I don't have kids, but my friends who have kiddos, they're often being asked to sit on different boards at school or at their faith organizations because they bring this mental health lens.
We do have these talents and this skill set that are so needed, and just because we have those doesn't mean we need to just give of them at the time. When I think about that martyrdom, who does it impact? It impacts us and it makes us truly worse clinicians.
When I say that I was not doing well when I was being financially compensated poorly in my first social work job, I had chronic insomnia, I was getting sick constantly. I was physically and mentally unwell. I was earning less money than I did as a waitress, but I was being told, "You should be grateful. You have a job. Do you know how hard it is in this economy? You're doing really good work. The money shouldn't matter".
I had so much self-judgment, like, "why can't I push through? My clients have it harder than me. What's wrong with me?" We feel it personally, but also just in our field, it's pushed on us that we need to be doing more with less.
M: I think that part is fascinating. I'm starting a lifestyle offer in addition to what I do with Side Hustle, and it focuses a lot on this. It focuses on the eight areas of wellness and financial and occupational are only two, and that's what we're going to dive into today is that financial wellness and then occupational wellness.
I almost consider, in my mind, that these eight areas of wellness are almost superimposed on the Maslow concept, which again was taken from Indigenous people that there are the basic needs, and until those are met, we can not meet the intermediate needs and we cannot meet the self-actualization needs.
Financial and occupational wellness, I feel like are door openers to the other six: The intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual, we can't even go there until these two are taken care of. Before we jump into that, because I know that's where your work is specialized, what was the choice for you between why not like grow a group practice? Why not make your practice bigger? Why did you go into the coaching realm or have you done both?
L: No, I love that question because what you're pointing out is the trajectory of what therapists are supposed to do. You've talked about this on your show, but also we have one path for becoming therapists that is like really sold to us, and that's: go to an agency, put in your time, get your full licensure.
Go to a different agency now that you have your full license or work your way up to being a supervisor. If you supervise for long enough, then eventually maybe you can own your own group practice and then manage that.
There are a lot of reasons why I chose to not do group practice. One is that for better or for worse, I am pretty darn independent, and the idea of taking on all that additional responsibility is a lot for me. I think that's also just knowing my own limitations. I also struggle with a lot of the group models. Not that they're all bad, but a lot of them are like a 50/ 50 split or a 60/ 40 split, and coming from a social justice-oriented background that feels highly inequitable.
It just doesn't match up with my values and the way that I would want to do something like that. As you know, trying to kind of shift the landscape in the narrative in the field of therapy is really tricky.
That was just the boulder I chose not to push uphill, it was very intentional to not do it. Why I chose coaching was… it sounds so cliché, but people were asking me for it. I started fully my private practice in April of 2020, which is like "hahaha", but I left a group practice that I loved and they were great because I saw the writing on the wall.
Not from the pandemic because I had to put in my notice in January of 2020, but because I'm a financial therapist, there are so few of us that I already had to do my own marketing and my own getting my name out there and getting my website up and running.
About 30% of my clients were coming to the group, coming to me from my marketing, and practices really pride themselves on like "you'll have a full caseload because we have an establishment in the community and you won't have to market". Because I was in such a unique niche, providing financial therapy, people were seeing me from all across the state.
So I was already doing tele-therapy. Just from a financial perspective, it didn't make sense to stay. I was paying to be in a physical office space to use some of the services that I wasn't using, so I left and quickly filled up.
That's when I had friends and colleagues saying, "How did you do this? How did you figure this out? What is the deal?" and I wanted to lend my knowledge of having this financial therapy background toward therapists.
So I help therapists. Outside of my private practice, I help therapists with the financial side of their practice, but really the emotional side of their practice. What's their relationship with money like? What's their money story? How true is it that they really can't manage their money? All of that stuff. I think I answered your question, I forgot.
M: Okay. It was perfect because then you brought me to… let's go, let's dive into: What are your offers and how are you helping people? I'm a little bit more curious about your business model, if that's cool.
L: Sure. I just did a breakdown of how I'm generating income. I can't remember the percentages off the top of my head, but it's about 55% therapy/psychotherapy, 30% from coaching, and 7 or 8% from affiliate income.
My website has just exploded over the last year. I went from about a thousand visitors a month to 10,000, in the past year talking about products or services that I use in love. I'm not just propping up "work with Better Help" because that's not my values, but if I'm working with an accountant who I really love, I'll say, "Hey, you can check them out, they're transparent, there is an affiliate link".
Then I think the remaining, what is it? 3 or 5% is from workshops and my book sales. It's a combination of smaller offers. That's the breakdown right now.
M: I love this because us having a transparent conversation about where the money comes from, how it's coming in, and what we're doing to earn that money is modeling for people who are maybe a little more reluctant to have that conversation or to even look at their numbers.
I know when I was financially insecure… you'll have much more insight into this, but I've come across two different types. If they're financially insecure or checking their bank every day or multiple times a day, or they just don't check it at all: Obsessive or avoidant.
For me, I was the avoidant one. I was like, "I'm just not going to check it. I think there's $5 in there, maybe" so to have this conversation about, "oh, well, take a look at your breakdowns and your revenue and your percentages" it just makes it more accessible to people willing to take a look when they hear that others are doing it, is what I'm trying to say in a roundabout way.
L: Yeah, there's so much noise in the online space that you can, overnight, create a brand new business out of thin air. There's a ton of energy and effort that goes into creating other offers, and I recently shared that I think we need to reframe passive income into leverage income because there's nothing passive (as you know) about creating a course, or a group, or writing a book or anything like that.
It's a ton of energy, effort, labor, marketing, and fill-in-the-blanks for the hope that it will generate enough revenue to eventually become less active, but it's definitely leveraging. You're really taking a risk. There's nothing passive about these "passive" offers.
M: For my listeners, they typically (there are offshoots of this, but typically) have a very full private practice. They're feeling very close to burnout, overwhelmed by therapy, and the golden handcuffs that it provides in the sense that it's very regulated.
They're looking for more autonomy, a chance to be more creative, and aren't necessarily looking for the group practice because they want that independence just like you said "I don't want to be now managing people or responsible for other people's salaries or incomes” or things like that.
Money motivation is probably half of my people, but time/freedom and that leveraged income piece that you're talking about. Being able to continue to make money or more with less time. What do you see from the financial standpoint, main concerns or main problems or issues that come up at that?
L: Yeah, I think one thing is that we get caught up on being fair and being accessible in our private practices, which we should be fair, we should be accessible, but it's more nuanced than just "lower your rates, slide your scale".
When it comes to having a full practice, one thing I usually invite people to consider before they move into creating a side hustle, creating an additional income stream is; what do you think you could do with a little bit more spaciousness in your life?
That usually looks like increasing your rates by 10, 20, or $30 so that you can have an additional day in your week where you aren't seeing clients. To open up that space to get creative, to start thinking about "what are other ways that I want to generate revenue, instead of trying to see 30 clients a week or 40 clients a week?" and then try to build something on top of that. That's also just not sustainable.
I think this idea of "the only way to be fair and the only way to be just is to slide my scale", I invite people to think about other ways to think about accessibility. Visibility is accessibility. If you are a marginalized therapist and/or work with marginalized folks, being really vocal about who you are and what you do and who you serve, and who you don't serve helps to create accessibility.
Tele-therapy has been such a gift for so many people who are physically disabled or a lot of my clients who have ADHD love it because they're like, "oh my gosh, I forgot my alarm just went off. Cool. I can open up my laptop and get there".
Whereas in person, they may end up missing one out of every three appointments. We have to think about other ways to measure accessibility outside of just what we are charging.
M: I love that. Also, something that comes up for me when you're talking about visibility is the reach. When you introduce an online offer, so many people think, "Oh, coaching is for the affluent".
Perhaps your coaching package is $10,000, then we can maybe open up a sliding scale in our practice, or we can talk about having an open path or even pro-bono sponsor at our practice, or keep your practice rates high and open something like a membership site that's 20 bucks a month and have your accessibility come there.
Yes, coaching on average or the typical rate is more lucrative than the therapy rate, but there are many different types of online offers where accessibility could be your prime motivator for the online income stream, which is not bound by states, which is not bound by where you're licensed, and things like that. Accessibility can have an even bigger impact outside of your practice.
L: Yeah. Yeah. I love that as well because it isn't just one-on-one work. Whether we're doing coaching or therapy, when we're thinking about other offers, charging entry, essentially to a course you teach or to a class that you provide means that if you're going to have 30 people, they can pay you less than one person would need to in order to afford your time. That is a great way to increase both financial accessibility and also that reach and visibility.
M: Well, one thing that you were talking about is financial anxiety. I'd love to know what that looks like, and how that shows up for your people, and maybe for my people who are thinking about that side hustle journey, where some of this financial anxiety can come in.
L: Yeah. So financial anxiety is just like our traditional anxiety friend in that it shows up in our thoughts and our feelings and our behavior. It can be helpful in some ways to alert to you that maybe there's something amiss that I need to look at, but when it gets to be invasive and gets to prevent us from being able to do the things that we need to do— you hit the nail on the head earlier when you were saying it kind of falls into two buckets.
The two buckets that financial anxiety usually manifests itself in is either perfectionism: "I need to check, I need to quadruple check that I paid my taxes. I need to make sure my rate is exactly right. I need to make sure that the office bills or lease payment went out on time" or it manifests in procrastination - "Yeah, I'm just not going to look at it. If it's not there, it's not really happening. I'll deal with it when there's a due date".
When we do that, when we allow financial anxiety to be something we get perfectionistic about, or we procrastinate on, it's different than say social anxiety in that the consequences can be quite high.
Meaning, that if my social anxiety is such that I don't like to go to parties because I'm worried that people will judge me, the outcome is that I don't go to a party. If I'm not engaging with my money, because my anxiety is so bad, the consequences can be quite high. Not paying taxes, not charging an appropriate fee, all of that stuff.
When it comes to your side hustlers, I invite them to notice when and where and how their financial anxiety is showing up and to start addressing it now so that when they move into side hustling or maybe investing more time or energy or money into it they already know what areas will be triggering them.
For example, if they're already struggling with pricing, if they're getting anxious and worried and avoidant about pricing, that won't go away when you create a side hustle. It'll show up again.
If you get avoidant about looking at your retirement accounts, that won't go away when you start a side hustle. You'll still need to know what accounts are ones that I can contribute to, how much from my side hustle can I put into a retirement account? Those are all things that you have to address.
M: I love that you brought that up because my students, they've been doing therapy for a long time. They feel grounded in their skills. They feel really competent, maybe not on the money side of things, but in their actual clinical delivery and then Side Hustle, when they start doing this, it's like they say, "oh, I feel like I'm an intern all over again" or "I feel like I'm like back at grad school because the skillset is so new".
I love what you're saying because once you kind of go back into this place where you're new or you're out of your comfort zone, some of those old patterns can come back or you can recognize that they never really went away. I think that's really fascinating.
L: I think being a small business owner has challenged me in ways that I never was challenged in a traditional role in that it brings up all of your fears and insecurities and the imposter syndrome that you were like, "wow. If I was just kind of, like, punching a clock, I could hide a lot of that stuff or I wouldn't have to face it", but when it comes to marketing yourself, talk about being vulnerable as all heck right?
Like, "Oh, hi, this is me. I'm an expert in what I do, and you should buy my widget" is like, oh really?
M: I was just home for my daughter's fifth birthday and we had it with family, which we never get to do because my husband's in the army. My uncle is an established entrepreneur.
We were chatting about our businesses and I said, "You know, entrepreneurship is a mirror. It's going to show you what you're really, really great at. It's going to show you what you're really, really bad at the same time, and stepping up to the plate and acknowledging that and then doing something about it".
When you were talking just a minute ago, what came to my mind was eating disorders because it's something that's like beyond the scope of normal therapy and you want to go get like certifications in that, or you want to go get extra training in that, because like you were mentioning, when the client isn't eating or is having trouble eating the consequences are dire.
This financial stuff that you're talking about, it's different than social anxiety or it's different than some of these other things where, yes, the consequences are terrible, but it's not like you're going to get evicted or some of this stuff that could happen with the finances when the financial stuff isn't taken care of. There's this level of seriousness when it's not managed.
L: It's not about scaring people because I think anybody who is a therapist can adequately manage their business finances. I believe that with all of my being, we've all made it through undergrad, grad school, and we've passed our boards. We are smart folks.
Also, I failed college algebra. The math that you need to run a business is not that hard. Also, Google exists, so plug in your numbers to a calculator, you don't have to do this on the back of a napkin. You can also Google things and get an accountant that you trust and get somebody who can help you with your taxes, who isn't speaking over you, who is speaking the same language as you.
Just like we shop around for a therapist that works for us, we can also shop around for financial professionals who are a good fit. We are so good at finding resources and advocating for our clients. We can also do that for ourselves. We can also find ways to generate income, engage with our money, and find people who can be in our corner, who align with the way that we think and the way that we learn, and with our values.
M: For sure, and that's that "why" piece, right? Not necessarily the how to handle the money, but why? Because the words and the deservedness and all of that comes up, like, "Yeah. I'll advocate for my clients all day long", but okay, are you going to advocate for yourself? I think that that's really cool.
What would you suggest therapists who are starting a side hustle they've got maybe, you know, 10, $20,000 extra coming in now that they've got the side hustled established, from the "why" standpoint and maybe a little bit of the "how" standpoint, what would you have them do or suggest they do with that extra revenue?
L: This is such a fun question because my mind goes to all sorts of places. First, for them, I would invite them to think about what are the goals that are the most important to them. I think, as therapists, it can be really easy to do one of two things with that extra income and that is put it in a savings account and never look at it again or get rid of it.
It's this subconscious self-sabotage of "I don't deserve to have money. I'm not supposed to have money. So then I'll spend it. I'll donate. I'll lend it. I'll do anything else because having that money in my possession freaks me out and brings up a whole bunch of stuff".
Getting clear on goals is huge, and like you said, not just setting a goal of like, "I want to buy a house", but why do you want to buy a house? What type of house? Where do you want it to be? What do you envision it looking like? "Oh, I want to go on more vacations".
Okay, get super granular. Do you want to do slow travel, where you spend a month a year abroad and you rent and you dig into a place, or are you the kind of person who's like, "I just like getting away and I want to do as many long weekends as possible that within like an hour from my house"?
Getting granular on what you want to do can be huge, and also thinking ahead. I think we forget what an extra 10 or 20 grand could do in 10 years. What I'm talking about is investing, and I know that could be very scary, but we know historically speaking, the markets have returned between seven and 10% every single year.
Well, of course, it goes up and down, but if you're like, "I don't want to be a therapist into my sixties", or "you know what? I want my side hustle to take up 10 hours a week instead of 20 hours a week", we want to be planning ahead. Often I find therapists are better about planning for others than themselves.
They're better at saying, "I want to save money for my child's education, aging parents", or "for an organization that I used to work for". All of those things are great, and putting a little bit of that emphasis on your personal needs first and then kind of using that overflow for college funds for charitable donations, for taking care of others.
I would say check in with your goals and then also just play around with the numbers of what makes the most sense for you. There are different things that you can do. There's no right or wrong, so long as you know why you're doing what you're doing.
M: I think that's the number one thing is getting clear on what you need. 10,000 for one person could mean something else, and 10,000 for another person could be something totally different. I think, like, knowing the "why" behind it…
I'm super into manifestation, and it's not just the visualization. You can visualize being on the beach in Hawaii, but what makes it more embodied is; how will you feel when you're on that beach in Hawaii? That's the connection that people, when they're manifesting are like, "oh, well I made a vision board for it" and I was like, "but you didn't embody what it would be like".
That's almost what I'm picking up from you is like, "yeah. Think about the nuts and bolts of the money, but also, what would it be like for you to have that and how it feels in your body and how would you live that way?" I think that's a cool piece to take it even deeper.
L: When you were talking about that manifestation, I also think it's so important for folks to know that when we talk about manifestation, we're not just like "click your heels and it'll happen" it's also the funding of that manifestation.
In order to be on that beach in Hawaii and to feel embodied and grounded and relaxed, there's probably a price tag attached to how to get there, where you want to stay and there's nothing wrong with saying "and to do the vacation and the way that I want to do it will cost X dollars".
M: I love that. I love that because money is not evil. There are evil people who do evil things with money, but money itself is neutral. It can be used for great good, and it can be used for terrible evil.
Is there anything else that you want us to take away from your work or just some concepts that you think are really important for people to think about?
L: I think one thing is just knowing that there's no such thing as being bad with money. I think a lot of therapists assume that they're bad with money. I invite us just to use some of our own knowledge about guilt and shame and to separate it out a little bit instead of "I'm bad at money", which would be shame.
What I think therapists should know or take away is just that you're not bad with money. I think so many therapists have internalized that they're bad with money instead of separating it out and pushing it into guilt, which sounds really strange.
Guilt is "I did something bad", and shame is "I am bad". Then a lot of us are like, "I am bad with money". I invite you just to push that out a bit and be, "I'm learning about investing", or "I made a mistake with my student loans" or whatever it is.
Separating it from who you are with something that you've done, and we're all really well versed in learning how to cope with mistakes and cope with disappointment and we can use all of those skills to feel better about that but I don't believe that any therapist is bad with money and I don't think we should use that language.
M: If somebody were listening right now and they were like, "okay, what's my first action step?" What do you recommend? Do you recommend them opening up their bank account and looking if they haven't looked for a while, or what do you think is kind of that first way to meet your money or get familiar with it?
L: Such a good question. So there are so many different ways to go and this is a very therapist answer, which is: It depends. I think starting with the path of least resistance is usually a good bet versus going with the thing that you've been avoiding for five years.
If you're like, "yeah, I look at my money, but I only look at it quarterly when I have to pay estimated taxes" or "I look at my money, but I only look to make sure that my PayPal money actually hit my account" that might be the first step to log in and look at some of those things.
When it comes to therapists, we're good at kind of going back in time and digging into what had gone on, so just like your relationship with other things outside of you—food, shelter, work, a lot of those stories were imparted on us when we were children.
Going back in time and being kind and compassionate and just asking yourself, "what are some of the first messages I got around money? What did my caregivers say about money? What were some of those first money memories to help start figuring out why we may have those certain associations with money that we do?"
M: One of my girls was like, "we're rich aren't we?" and I was caught off guard because I was "well, what makes you think that?" and she's like, "well, you know, we get this, and this, and you know".
She brought something for lunch, she brought blueberries and strawberries and one of her friends said something like, "oh, that's the good fruit" or something like that. I don't know, I didn't get the whole story, but then she comes home and was like, "we're rich, aren't we?" So it depends on what you mean by rich.
We're not Bill Gates, but you guys certainly have a heck of a lot more money than I did when I was a kid. Then I'm like sitting here exactly what you're talking about going through like, "okay, well, what were the money messages that I received? They were 'these'." and then I made a conscious effort to put almost the exact opposite out to my kids.
Now it comes back almost like the 180 of like, "oh, I grew up poor" and my kids like, "well, I grew up rich" and I'm like, okay, well we have to talk about this now what this means. I think that going back to those messages and then being careful about the messages that you're putting out.
L: When it comes—again, I don't have kids—but oftentimes when I'm working with parents who are struggling. How do we talk to our kids about money? Because usually, it is "we didn't talk about money" or "money was stressful in the household and I don't want to give those messages to my kids".
So oftentimes they think about it like talking to your kids about sex. You don't want to shame them or demonize it, but also there's a time and a place to talk about it.
You can always say to them, "that's a great question. Why don't we talk about it when we get home?" and then just kindly lovingly sharing that, "you know, some people are really uncomfortable talking about this. You're always able to come to mom or dad and talk about it, but maybe don't talk to your friend", again using the same type of language you would when you're talking about another tricky topic and teaching your kids about it.
M: Well, and then it becomes, instead of another topic that we pushed away, it becomes another serious or important topic, but we talk about it and we integrate it into our family structure or whatever.
The next thing that I thought of is, when we're entrepreneurs, we almost have two pools of money because there are the businesses and then there are our personal funds. What do you see in that? Are you working with mainly therapists in private practice or both, or?
L: My coaching arm is definitely therapists in private practice, particularly the ones that are like halfway to full and they're just like on the road to burn out, but they still want to do private practice and they're trying to figure out how to make it more sustainable.
When it comes to the business versus the personal one we do a lot of mindset work first, but when we come to the fee setting exercise, we always include what are your personal needs and your business needs, and how can we ensure that the fees that you're charging cover both of those, plus tax because we want our business to generate money, but we also need to take care of ourselves.
I often say to them, "your business should give you a paycheck, you want it to pay you and you can literally have it on a paycheck, using paychecks and pay yourself a paycheck, but that's what we want to happen. We want to grow the business, but a lot of therapists also get anxious about taking the money that they've earned.
They'll let their business account grow and grow, but they don't take a more generous paycheck. It's really fascinating. I think about it as they intertwine because our businesses have to not just stay sustainable in and of themselves, they have to sustain our lives outside of the business.
M: A couple of months ago now I did two episodes that money focused on my show. One was the "why" behind my money, and then one where I shared my revenue for 2022 and broke down what it costs me and all that stuff and I bought two coaching packages this year from my business account as business coaching, but still I feel like I'm treating myself with them as well because they're solely for me.
One was a $12,000 package, with Jacqueline, who I know you know. She's been my coach for a long time, like seven years now. We've worked together off and on either one-on-one or in her masterminds, or her programs or whatever, and then the other one—this was funny. It was an $8,000 astrology package, but it was astrology for my business.
L: Oh my God. I love that.
M: I don't know if I would have spent $8,000 on, like, a personal astrology package from my personal account, you know what I mean? But business astrology, we planned the dates for my Rooted launch, which is my lifestyle program. We plan them based on astrology and stuff like that.
Of course, I split some personal questions into her. We have Voxer between our calls, so I'll be like, "Hey, this new moon is like, screwing me up or whatever", so I will use it a little bit personal, but I justified the purchase because it was a business purchase. I am almost the opposite of what you were saying. I'm much freer with my business money, but my personal money I don't spend as freely.
L: So interesting. Yeah. Everybody has a different "why" behind why they do what they do. I will say that some therapists do get in trouble because they say things like, "well, it's a write-off", but they don't really know what that means. I'm like, "yeah, that's not free money, that's not how it works".
They're like, "well, I just upgraded my entire office furniture set because it's a write-off" and I'm like, yes, you do write it off, but it doesn't mean it's free". A lot of that too, "what's the difference between this and this?"
M: Yeah. Like it offsets at the end of the year. It's not like it was free. Awesome. Well, where can my listeners go to find out more about you? If you have a little freebie for us or anything for us to kind of follow up with you?
Because I know that money motivation, even if it's not my student's primary motivation, it's high up there, and I love when you mentioned that (even if it might feel like it's handled with your practice) when you start getting into your side hustle, a lot of other stuff comes up. Where can my listeners go to learn more?
L: My business is called Mind Money Balance, and I'm everywhere at that handle. That's the name of my website, the name of my podcast, I'm most active over on Instagram, and that is where you'll find me if you hang out on social media and then for a freebie —I'm a quiz junkie, as you know, because I took your quiz and I think I'm, what am I regrounding? Re-wintering? What am I? I sent it to you.
M: I think you got “rewilding”.
L: There it is, “rewilding”. I took your quiz on what stage of becoming, but my quiz is helping you understand your financial archetype. Understanding some of the strengths and challenges of why you do what you do with money.
It's free. It's fun. It's at mindmoneybalanced.com/quiz, and then of course you consent to opt into my email list. You can always leave, but it's fun. I like it.
M: I have a quiz for this business which is "which online income stream is right for you" if you're familiar with that. Then for Rooted, I also did a quiz, which is marissalawton.com/rootsquiz.
So everyone listening, act like you're 17 again with your Cosmo and you're taking all these quizzes in the magazine. Go take Lindsay's, go take my new one.
I think just getting clear on your relationship with money makes a huge difference as you are stepping in into more earning potential, as you're launching a side hustle, taking up space, claiming more revenue, making sure that you've got your head on straight when it comes to where the new revenue is coming from and also what you're doing with it. I really appreciate you being here, Lindsay.
L: Oh, such a pleasure. I'm so glad we finally connected. You know, I shared with Marissa that like, we have a lot of people in common and I don't know how we hadn't crossed paths yet. It's really fun to connect with you and to be here on your show.
M: Well, thanks so much and we will talk with you soon.
Alright. I love having other financial experts or financial matter experts on the show because I think finances is one of the reasons, one of the main motivators, for us to move into a side hustle, that money motivation.
But sometimes we start earning in a different way and all of our money trauma, or money triggers from the past, come up again. I love how Lindsay was able to address that for us and walk us through some of the financial and money pitfalls that can come up even when we're starting a side hustle.
Alright guys, I will be back next week with another episode, and until then keep on rising.
