How Fear of Loss is Stopping You From a Successful Side Hustle
Make the shift from therapist mindset to entrepreneur mindset.
It will truly open doors for your online business.
Once you flip the mental switch, you’ll be able to…
✔️Think and operate outside of the time-for-money box
✔️Transition to the forefront of your business
✔️Fully embrace your new identity
Learn how you can make this shift and start shaping your side hustle with courage and curiosity here
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Show Notes:
Hey, Risers. Welcome to episode 176 of Empathy Rising. I think there's a T in that word, one-seventy-six, I think I said one-seventy… whatever, 176 of Empathy Rising.
We are driving down to the beach tomorrow, which is about a three-and-a-half-hour, four-hour drive from here. It still boggles my mind how this part of the country has zero interstates. If we were able to drive on the interstate from here to the beach it'd probably be two hours, but it's a little two-lane highway most of the way and so it takes four hours to get there.
It's our last time that we will be in this area and our last time where we will have access to these Emerald Coast beaches, which are world-renowned up here in the panhandle of Florida.
We go to a place called 30-A, which is this 30-mile little highway and there are these little beaches all along the highway. It's between Dustin and Panama City beach. If you're familiar with the area, that's where we will be going.
After this, every time we go to the beach, it will be either to Mexico or to the Southern California area, which is about twice the drive. Rocky Point is about five, or six hours from Prescott where I'll be. San Diego is about seven hours.
This is much closer, and these beaches are really cool. They're white sugar sand and stuff. We're excited to take advantage of that for the last time. We'll be pulling the girls out of school, but it's only kindergarten and third grade. I think they'll be okay.
When I priced this same exact beach house out in July, in the summer season, it was five grand for just this house. Now—two weeks off-season—it's less than half of that. I'm okay to take the girls out of school and not pay more than double what the house is going for right now. That is what we are going to be doing today.
This is one of the things that I love about having an online income stream is I have work on Wednesday and Friday of this coming week, and as long as I have internet I can work and I don't have to reschedule things. I don't have to put clients off. I don't have to lose out on income but I also get to have a whole week's worth of vacation except for an hour and a half on one day and three hours on another day and then that's it.
I feel grateful for the way that I've structured my business and I also just feel really grateful that I'll be able to sneak away from my family and do something for me, which is working and have a reason to go and let them be on their own and find a little peace of mind for myself. It's going to be a really fun week. I love the flexibility of just being able to take off whenever I want and still run my business. That is what I will be doing.
Today, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the transition to what I'm talking about. Being able to have this level of freedom, where your lifestyle can be whatever you want it to be, and your income doesn't have to change. It doesn't have to be a sacrifice. Doesn't have to be...you're not tied to a chair.
Could you travel when you're seeing therapy clients? Sometimes, depending on the rules and you have to double-check everything, but sometimes you can travel. Yet you're hardly on vacation because you still have to be giving up a bunch of time. While yes, I will be trading a little bit of time on this vacation, it's minimal compared to if I were seeing all one on one clients.
There is an identity shift that happens when we make this transition and it can be scary and it can bring up a lot of things. That's what I want to dive into today. One of the first mindset shifts that my Side Hustle students have to walk through is the difference between the therapist mindset and an entrepreneur mindset.
We're going from this helper, healer space, but a helper healer who's been trained. In two particular ways, 1) to be in the background, and 2) to help in a traditional model, which is one on one trading time for money. If you see couples or families that's two to one, or several to one, but it's still that dollar-per-hour mentality.
When you start to shift into an online entrepreneur, and when you start to have multiple income streams, you shift, you develop, and you evolve into somebody who's in the driver's seat of the business. You're no longer in the background.
You're taking a much more active role in the shape structure of your business, but also the way you show up with these students or clients or members or whatever that you are facilitating and you're thinking about creating a way to help others at scale.
We're not thinking about trading dollars for hours anymore. We're talking about making money at scale. Even if you're still doing one-on-one coaching, we have this scalability factor because you don't charge per hour for coaching. You build out a coaching package, and you charge for the all-encompassing package, which makes it more valuable and allows you to structure your time.
Maybe you're seeing a client every other week and then providing homework in between or providing Voxer support or some other means of communication between, so it still doesn't have to be dollars for hours.
This shift is super desirable. This is what you're here for. This is what you're craving, is this time freedom, the ability to make money at scale, the ability to make money and have the lifestyle you want to make money without obligating yourself to being stuck in a chair.
You also have invested a lot in your current career and I don't want to diss therapy entirely. Sometimes I miss it. Sometimes I do miss that intimacy and that deep connection that can come with a therapy caseload and the depth of work that can happen more easily in therapy.
I don't want to make it sound like therapy is the worst thing in the world. Did you guys see that meme a little while ago that came out where it was like people who regret their career choices and like therapists were number two or something like that?
There are still great things about therapy, and even if you're done - I work with several students who are done. They want out of the field. They have a lot invested in this and you do too. You have (most likely) student loans. We are looking at getting some of that forgiven, but for a lot of us, it doesn't even put a dent in it if I'm going to just be straight-up honest.
We have a lot of student loans invested in this. We have a lot of hours, the hours in grad school, the hours in the internship, and the hours to get licensed. If you've pursued a further certification then you probably had supervisory hours for that.
For EMDR, there are certain hours you have to put in, and for IFS there are certain hours you have to put in. We have a lot of money wrapped up in this, in the pursuit of the occupation and then also money spent on certifications. We also have a lot of time wrapped up in this.
When I'm talking to students, they fall into a few different categories. I mentioned this a few weeks ago on an episode a little while ago, with the different levels of income that you can earn from your side hustle.
Some of my students just want to offset these student loans 500 bucks extra a month or something like that, or they just want some pocket change. They just want to have a little more breathing room financially. It's one category.
There's another category of my students that they want to do half and half. They want their side hustle to make enough money where they can shrink their caseload and just have more breathing room, not only financially, but more breathing room just in their day, in their life, to be a little more expansive.
I have that third category of students who want to transition out. They want to either shrink down to one to three clients or walk away from therapy, be it a sabbatical or for good, altogether. They want this side hustle to become their main hustle and to replace their therapy income together.
It doesn't matter what category you're in. You have put a lot into your existing career. When I'm asking you, and when you're asking yourself to transition away from that, even slightly to dedicate time, effort, and energy to something else, there is a fear of loss.
That's the first barrier that my students come up against. Ultimately it's a fear of loss, but sometimes the things that are being lost or the things that people are losing are a little different.
Here's what I've seen. The first thing that I've seen students battle with is a loss of professionalism. In the media and in certain movies and shows and things like that a therapist is presented as a very professional career.
We still have that image of the dude in the Tweed jacket with elbow patches and so very sometimes in line with academia, very professional, put together. Also, we all have advanced degrees. Damn, we earned some of our professionalism.
When we compare and contrast that the juxtaposition to coaching where sometimes there are 21-year-olds or whatever, people who don't have the educational experience and the life experience that we do and they're out there as coaches.
There's this professionalism of, "am I stepping into a bullshit industry and stepping away from a prestigious industry?" so a loss of professionalism.
Along with that is this loss of therapist identity I sometimes see. This can be tied up in a lot of different things, because there is a bit of a martyr syndrome in the therapy industry of self-sacrifice and giving, giving, giving, and not taking that helper identity.
That's the downside of the therapist identity, but the upside of the therapist industry is, "dang. I help people". Somebody came to me - just as just an example, a client came to me postpartum and was really struggling and having trouble bonding with her baby and da da da, and six months later I see her with her kiddo in session and she's a totally different woman.
There's some pride in that helper identity to know that we make a difference. When we lose a little bit of that going into maybe courses or going into a business model that we lose a little of that touch or we lose a little bit of that insight. Yeah, we made that choice because we wanted time freedom, but sometimes we lose a little bit of that tangibility where we see our students or our clients' results.
Another loss that comes up is the potential loss of income in the short term. We know that it takes a while to get a business off the ground. That's why Side Hustle is nine months long. It's preparing you for your first launch and then you have a second launch and the third launch after that.
I always tell people who are interested in the program, "this is an 18 to 24-month process and I'm realistic about that. I'm not promising you to replace your therapy and come in six months, I'm just not".
Sometimes there's "oh, do I choose to take an extra client or fill a slot that somebody's terminating or do I choose to focus on my side hustle?" Sometimes there's a fear of loss of income in the short term until the side hustle is raring to go in, picking up steam, all these clichés that are coming out of my mouth.
Until the side hustle is making the money there's this choice of "where does my energy go? Where does my focus go?" and because our time and our energy are so tied to our income as clinicians, it can mean, "oh my God, how much money am I going to lose out on the short term?" That is a fear of loss.
I also see the fear of loss come up and this one I think is really interesting, (and I'll toot my horn, I'm good at helping break through this one) a lot of my students have been doing this for a long time. A decade, two decades. When they sit down in that therapist's chair, they're so confident in their ability to help they're confident in the work that they do.
But then when they're like, "oh, I need to be a teacher if I'm going to have a course" or "I need to be a group program facilitator", or "I'm going to run a membership site" they are afraid of losing their effectiveness.
They don't know how to be effective in a different delivery method, or a different business model. Now, I help them break through that one real quick, but it's a fear of loss of confidence. There's also the fear of loss of time and I am so honest about this, and this is one of the very first conversations we have. In fact, it's in my welcome video of Side Hustle.
You are taking on something additional until you get to the point where your side hustle is making the money you needed to make to draw down your caseload you are taking on something additional. How can we make that work for you? How can we make that fit for you? How can we make that enjoyable and feel good?
But there is the fear of loss of time, "Oh crap. This is going to eat into my time" and so you're also not sure if the thing is even going to work, "what if I invest all this time and what if I spend some money on this program and it doesn't even work?"
There's the fear of loss of time, and the fear of loss of money. The last loss that I see that comes up is this loss of license. "What if I lose my license because I become a practicing coach?" or "what if I do this wrong and I screw up the ethics and all of this stuff, and I lose my license?"
Which, side note; is part of the reason that I encourage people to step outside of the therapy room is to have more autonomy in their career and not have to worry so much about doing things right or wrong.
That is a big emphasis inside of Side Hustle. In fact, that's the premo after the welcome video is, "how do we do this ethically? Where do we need to look? What do we need to look for? How do we need to make sure (per our state and per our license) that we are setting things up appropriately?"
Loss of license is another fear that I help my students work through because the truth of the matter is there is risk involved in every new venture. That's why (another cliché) nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Fear of loss is a little bit different than taking a risk. Acknowledging the risk is saying, "yes, I see that this has potential upsides and potential downsides, that's okay". Fear of loss is paralyzing. Fear of loss is letting this barrier get in your way from taking steps forward to something that I know you really want.
There's this idea of being attached to an old version of you and being scared to step beyond it. That is the fear that we need to work through because whether it's starting an online side hustle or whether it's moving across the country or whether it's becoming an expat or whatever, any of these things that involve you chasing your dream involve you stepping out of your comfort zone, they just do.
Let's take a look at: is this risk aversion, or is this a fear? Is this a barrier? Either one, we can work through it together. When you continually think about what you're going to lose (I said this just a second ago) you start to paralyze yourself with fear. It's this immobility, this lack of ability to move forward.
You're just stuck contemplating the what-ifs and then you're also stuck dreaming about the what-ifs. You've distanced yourself in your current situation from what could be over there and you see it as external. Whereas, getting woo with it, what if those dreams were inside you already?
What if it was just a matter of moving towards them? Your dreams stay dreams and they don't become reality because all you're thinking about is what is the downside.
What could possibly be lost? What could possibly go wrong? When you stay here, ultimately you're just stagnant for another day, another month, another year, or another decade.
Are you sitting in the same therapist chair, billing maybe a little bit higher rate, but still billing one-on-one for your hourly work, a decade from now, or have you stepped beyond the fear?
Because when you focus on the experience, when you focus beyond the fear and just allow yourself to go through the journey, you're less attached to the outcome. I think that what contributes to the fear is, "it has to work this way" and so you're just white-knuckling it.
What else happens is you're able to play and you're able to experiment. I think that is the coolest thing. When I see my students and one of my students LaDonna right now, she's like "I'm going to do a workshop" and I'm like, "okay!" and she throws this workshop together and she gets five sales, I think is what she's at right now.
If she had been thinking, "I need this workshop to make $10,000 and dah dah dah". If she were holding on to that outcome, maybe she'd be disappointed with five sales. The fact that she's like, "I want to try this. I want to play around and I want to see what happens" and holy crap, like throwing something together and getting it out in a week and she's got five sales, that is so cool. It's so cool.
This is how you develop into the next version of yourself. It's trial and error in a supportive environment. It's trial and error with love all around you, from me and your fellow cohort, and all of that stuff.
This is how you realize your potential, your next level of potential. I don't think we ever can fully become our potential. That sounds silly, but we can harness a little bit of our potential and step forward and evolve.
The next thing we want to try, we harness our potential and we step forward again and it becomes this process. That's what I think happens when you let go of the fear and you embrace the fact that this is an evolutionary process for you, it's you becoming the next version of yourself and I think really freaking cool.
How do we do this inside of Side Hustle? What helps you get there? A few different ways. I talked about how even early on in the program this fear is the first thing that we come at in the welcome video in the pre-module, very strategically we're working through some of these early barriers.
We're also having you define what kind of time commitment and what kind of energy commitment you want to give this year. Because there is a part of you that's craving something new. This is why you're listening to this podcast. Whether that's a new way of working, teaching/running a group program, or running a membership site and scaling and helping people - sometimes hundreds of people at a time.
A new way of working that doesn't involve sitting down in your chair and talking to a person or a screen for 50 minutes and then running to pee and maybe writing your note and doing it all again.
A new way of being creative. So sometimes in sessions, people throw us a curve ball, and we're like, "whoa didn't see that coming!" and we get to be a little creative. But a lot of times when we're seeing six clients, one-on-one back-to-back, it starts to just become rote. It just becomes the same thing over and over again.
A new way of being creative, and also a new way of helping people. You're stepping into a new modality, a new way of working, but you're still able to be that helper. You're still able to be that healer.
Also, I think what's cool is it's a new way of challenging yourself. A lot of my students say that they haven't been challenged like this since grad school or since early on in their therapy career when they were new clinicians. Going back to the beginning and being a newbie again. Crazy and scary, but it's also really exciting and a challenge to just prove to yourself how you can do it.
Of course, probably the first one that comes to mind is a new way of making money. The fact that you're craving something new, that's the reason why you're here and this is why I'm going to encourage you, that it is time to step forward into that.
The first thing that you will do inside of Side Hustle is to build business skills. That's the primary thing we're doing inside that program is building your business skills, and learning to read the market.
We don't always do that for our therapy practice. We don't always do market analysis. We don't always do competitive analysis and things like that. The other cool thing is designing your own curriculum.
This part feels intimidating sometimes to students, especially when they've been used to, research and evidence-based and empirical, whatever that is, but designing your own curriculum.
Most of the time when my students get into this, they end up really enjoying it because we know how much of what's taught in grad school is regurgitating stuff that old white men came up with and coming up with new theories and new ways of practicing.
It's being introduced to the therapy industry a hundred percent. I'm not going to deny that, but being able to compile your experience and your expertise and create your own curriculum, that's pretty cool.
The other thing, of course, you're going to learn is marketing. We're going to learn hunting strategies like LaDonna with her workshop, go out and get it, go out and hunt and get those sales.
We're also going to learn farming strategies, meaning those marketing strategies that set you up for long-term sustainability, a business that's going to serve you for years. Not just something that's a flash in the pan. That's also really important to me.
The other thing you're going to learn is sales. Sales is a skill set that we don't often have to cultivate as clinicians, because if you're on insurance, somebody's calling and they're like, "Hey, Blue Cross sent me to you. Do you have an opening?" and you're like, "yeah, I do. Can you come Monday at three?" you don't have to sell.
Oftentimes even if it's private pay, by the time somebody is either calling you or filling out your form online, they're already pretty interested in working with you. It's not a hard sell. Now, I teach you how to not make hard sells in the first place, but some sales skills have to happen and you will learn those skills inside of Side Hustle.
Yes, these are all the skills that you're going to learn, but (if you've been following along with the last few episodes, you probably know what I'm going to say here and it's the fact that all of these skills are amazing, but) what's underneath, and as you are working through these fears, what's underneath these skills is cultivating a new level of trust in yourself and respect for yourself.
That is something that has become so important to me as I've cultivated that in myself, but as I deliver this program over again and over again, and as these skills become more proven and more and more students have success with the business stuff, this underneath stuff becomes even more important to me.
The mindset, the fears, the risk, helping you mitigate all of that, helping you shift all of that and evolve into somebody who just has the utmost trust in yourself.
Whew, man. It makes me emotional just talking about it because I feel like that is my work. I'll teach you all the business stuff, got that covered but this work that drives me, this passion that drives me is helping you with that self-trust and that self-respect.
If you are ready to step into something new, if you're ready for this challenge, and if you're ready to go and accomplish something new with that love, with that support around you, with me around you, with your cohort around you, you're going to want to join us for our third annual open house.
This open house is happening on October 19th, it's going to be at 7:00 PM Eastern, 4:00 PM Pacific. There will be a replay. Of course. If you're in session or if you can't make those times, still register so that you get the replay and you can re-watch it. This is where I'm going to take you behind the scenes and show you this proven approach.
This proven method that I am now will be on round seven of teaching and show you how well it works. You'll get to see the Side Hustle curriculum, as well as all of the extras, like the templates, and the trackers. Our support staff is going to be there, Shayna and Kristen, our copywriter and our designer.
You'll be able to ask questions about their role in the program, and they'll be able to show off their stuff. Shayna has some new stuff coming this round, which I'm excited about. She'll be able to show some of that off.
Of course, current students and alumni will also be there, that way you can ask them what it's really like because they're the ones who have just worked through these fears that you might have, and they're the ones who are knocking down these barriers in real-time that you might be coming up against.
I think it's an awesome way, if you're interested in Side Hustle, to get a feel for it and to be able to make a really good decision for you. If you want to join us for that open house, the link is super easy.
It's just marisssalawton.com/openhouse and you can go ahead and save your seat. That's where you'll get all of the details of how to attend and how to catch that replay. All right guys, until the next episode, keep on rising.
