Side Hustle Spotlights with Kaci Schmitt
Your online business impact could be more powerful than you think….
Side Hustle student Kaci built an online business to help therapists cultivate an intentional relationship with their money.
But her work is about so much more than doing the math—she actually empowers people to start steering themselves towards the financial future they desire.
Find out where Kaci’s side hustle idea came from and how she brought it to life in the latest podcast episode.
Tune in now
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Show Notes:
Hey, Risers. Welcome to episode 183 of Empathy Rising. We're here with another Student Spotlight, and today we are talking with Kaci. Kaci is somebody who I just remember talking with a year ago when she was considering Side Hustle and the word that comes to mind when I think of Kaci is genuine. Her genuine desire to serve.
Even in the episode brings up that money motivation is great, and time motivation's great, but really it's this impact motivation, this desire to help and serve others that's at the root of her starting a side hustle. She's not just talking and she's not just blowing smoke.
That's true. That is straight from Kaci’s heart. Today she's gonna talk about her new venture under The Invested Therapist, which is the financial self-care membership.
Kaci is somebody who firmly believes in equitable access to wealth for everybody and she really wants to help therapists learn how to plan for retirement and plan for other future savings goals, as well as just have a more solid and stable relationship with their money currently.
I really hope you enjoy this episode with Kaci and her story as to why she joined Side Hustle and what she was able to build through the process.
Also don't forget, applications are open for the Side Hustle Support Group. If you want to have a similar experience that Kaci shares here with us today, go ahead and apply over at marissalawton.com/side-hustle.
We are only taking 30 students this round and many of those spots are already full. If you know that you want to be part of this Side Hustle family, then go ahead and apply and we will start the process to see if you'll be joining us for the live version in January.
Marissa (M): Hey, Risers. Welcome back to episode 183 of Empathy Rising. We're here today with another student's spotlight, and today we're chatting with Kaci. Kaci is somebody who I have just really enjoyed getting to know.
I've asked her personal questions because of her expertise and just been like, what do you think about this? What do you think about this? She's never been shy to guide me, which has been cool because, you know, I'm guiding my students, but there's so much wealth of knowledge that you guys bring to me too. I've selfishly taken advantage of that with Kaci.
If you could give us a little bit more of a formal introduction. Tell us a little bit about your clinical work and where you're at and all that stuff, and then we'll dive into how you found your way to Side Hustle.
Kaci (K): Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on Marissa. My name is Kaci Schmidt and I am a therapist in private practice located just outside of the Portland, Oregon area. I see clients in my private practice in Oregon and Washington currently.
Generally speaking, the people I work with tend to be usually millennials who are highly sensitive. I work a lot with anxiety and burnout. I love doing the clinical work that I do. Then I started my second business, which Marissa has helped me so much with through Side Hustle.
The second business is called Invested Therapist, and with Invested Therapists, I aim to help therapists who are feeling confused and overwhelmed by their finances become confident, secure stewards of their money through saving, and investing, both for retirement and also other financial goals.
M: I love your approach to this because even when you're saying like stewards of your money. You're not saying maximize your money, you're saying capitalize on your money, or these other words terms that we hear of in the financial industry.
You're saying stewardship, cultivate, so you're bringing this gentleness is the word that comes to mind, but that's not exactly right. You're bringing this intention—that's probably a better word—to this idea of wealth and growing wealth and starting wealth. Whereas a lot of times it has a harder achievement-oriented lens to it. I think it's neat that you have this new or different kind of approach.
K: Totally. Yeah. I appreciate you saying that. I really think about our money eventually as being able to take care of us. It can do that both in the present and in the future.
One of the components of it being able to do that, at least for most people, certainly, I think one of the components of being able to do that is being able to really understand financial principles so that you can take care of your money so it can ultimately take care of you.
M: I love that. We've talked about this at length and if my listeners don't know, they won't be surprised that my undergrad was actually in finance. When you get a finance degree, especially from a top 20 business school, it's not a personal finance degree.
It's basically a glorified math degree, and you're doing all of these calculations on shorts and futures and all of this stuff, and you're not actually learning how to invest. That happened to me in my internships and stuff like that.
I went into finance because, no surprise, everybody knows how money-motivated. I am, especially when I was younger, very money insecure and so hello trauma response.
Okay, this is my biggest source of worry. I'm gonna learn how to control it and go get a degree in it and be a master of it. I have this experience or this language around investing but not always in a personal finance kind of way.
I think that's really cool that you understand the dynamic that an individual can have with their money. How did you even get into that? Is it something you studied or is it just a passion?
K: That's a really… I think this is such a pertinent topic to talk about because you and I have such different backgrounds with this. I didn't study it formally. One of the tenants that I believe in is that we actually don't need a degree in finance.
M: You're basically just learning complicated equations. That's all you're doing.
K: Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's interesting because I never was interested in this really at all. When I was going through undergrad and just thinking about how my life was gonna unfold, I saw it unfolding in a really specific path: First I thought I was gonna be a teacher, and then I wanted to be a school counselor.
I thought "I'm gonna work in this job for 30 years and my retirement will be taken care of for me. So all I have to do is be able to get this job and keep it and I'll be secure".
This is where I think it's really interesting that we can have different backgrounds, but a lot of similarities with how you approach money. I felt not necessarily... I don't know, I had a complicated background with money where I knew I was gonna be fine, we had enough when I was a kid, but there was some scarcity that came in and some critical time periods in my life.
I just was always searching for that security and I thought knowing nothing about finance, I thought this job is the way to get that. It was meaningful work that I wanted to pursue. But then, going into working in public education and I graduated right after the great recession, I graduated at the end of 2009.
Jobs were super scarce and so I cultivated this financial scarcity really unintentionally and I thought I just gotta this is my way to security. What I realized working in public education was that jobs were always like… there was always this threat looming over them of you could be let go if you haven't gotten tenure in this district or the equivalent of tenure.
That felt so scary to me. In order to learn that actually there are things that every person can do to take their personal finance into their own hands, and that became so empowering for me. For me, I think it was a sense of... part of me doesn't really know where this intense curiosity and passion for it came from, but another part of me feels like it represents what I love, which is freedom, it's independence.
It's being able to make life choices that you want to and now I'm not employed in a school district at all. I'm totally self-employed and to me, that's the biggest... there's just so much freedom and potential and abundance that can come from that in a lot of different ways.
M: Yeah. The way that you're talking about this investing potential, that's how I feel about entrepreneurship. You don't have to be an entrepreneur to take advantage of the things that you're gonna talk to us about today.
If you're still working at an agency or if you're employed at another group practice, everything that Kaci talks about still works for you, but that threat of I could be fired or relying on other people alone versus revealing all of her shadows today.
But that is what entrepreneurship gives me is if it's a failure, it's my failure. If it's a success, it's my success. And it doesn't rely on anybody else. That can be, a lot of people get scared or intimidated by that, but I'm more scared or intimidated to be reliant on somebody else.
K: Yes, I totally agree.
M: …the door shut, very loudly. If you heard that was my cat.
K: Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. I think we could like really unpack this, it’s not something that you or I or anyone else who experiences this, probably cultivated in a vacuum.
Women before us, it wasn't until the 1970s that women were able to get their own bank accounts to get their own lines of credit without a man as a co-signer. To me, hearing things like that and knowing everything that came before, and I was born in the eighties, right?
That's it's just shocking to me that we have had such an incredibly short history of any type of financial independence from that type of perspective. I think it then becomes even more important when I contextualize all of that to have that sense of empowerment.
M: I actually had my mom on the podcast about a year ago now. If anybody's interested in that, you can go and find that episode. But my mom, she'll hate this, but she was born in 1952, and so she was in her twenties, marching for a lot of these things and demonstrating for a lot of these things.
All the stuff with Roe this year, my mom and I were breaking it all down and she's "this is what I fought for, and now it's gone". We had these conversations about what it was like for her mom and watching her mom in her twenties and thirties, and then what it was like for my mom to get these things granted to her.
These quotes, if you can't see, or like the listeners can't see, but then for me to grow up, assuming that they're always gonna be there. Now we find out that maybe they won't, so it's a very interesting dynamic and I love that it's a part of your work is you also bring in empowerment pieces you've talked about, but equity pieces and systemic pieces.
You're teaching not only how to invest, but some of the barriers and some of the blocks that different groups of marginalized people have when it comes to money. Really, also looking at the privilege side of things, which I think is incredible. Do you wanna talk a little bit more about that?
K: Absolutely. There are so many different ways that it has become, or just historically been hard for pretty much anyone who isn't a white man to have access to the same types of opportunities that white men have had. This doesn't mean that in my group, white men are not welcome in any way. Everyone is welcome.
But like you're talking about, there have just been so many people who have been marginalized, and have not had equitable access to opportunities. For me, even though I definitely still consider myself very much a student of history and justice work, I just think it's so important to have that as a foundation for why these conversations are so necessary.
These conversations are important for us to break down any stigmas of talking about money and saying that we want money and that we wanna have our money working for us. What's amazing is that right now, in 2022, we have a lot of access to the information out there. It's available in ways I don't think it was available prior to our lifetimes.
There can be barriers to how people think about what might be available to them or how people are raised to even think about money. There are studies that show that (and this is coming from like a binary lens and so of course like gender is not binary, right?) women are often taught that we need to focus on saving.
Whereas men, if we think about like cis men, the message that they often get is: save and invest your money. Right now there may be more men represented when it comes to investing just who are investing, period.
What's really interesting is that—and of course again, this is looking from, just a lens of like cis women and cis men, and who knows how that will develop in the future as we continue to have studies that come out—but interestingly, cis women tend to be better investors because (of course there are people who don't conform to this, generally) we invest, we leave our money alone.
We are not trying to day trade. If people wanna do that's totally fine, but we tend to have better investing behaviors that yield better results. That's why I'm just like, "let's get as many people who historically have not been represented and given opportunities to have these opportunities to cultivate financial wellness and build their wealth".
M: Yeah. My wheels are spinning because I'm like "I wonder if that's like a cyclical thing because we are so used to living cyclically".
It, like, brings up all this Rooted stuff for me, which is like not the point of this podcast, but you're talking and these light bulbs are going off in my head. Just all kinds of stuff. That's just fascinating.
K: It's all relevant, yeah. I think it's logistical. Finances can be very logistical and the numbers, you're talking about the equations, but it's also so deeply emotional and it's very it represents our energy, right?
The energy that we have, what we have put out there in the world that's then come back to us and what we can then do with that and how we wanna have that help us build a life that really supports who we are and what we wanna do in this lifetime.
M: Yeah. We are talking a little bit about what you stand for and then we'll also get into the program that you develop, but let's focus on just your experience in Side Hustle first, and then we can kind of transition to what you built.
If you could think back to a year ago, you were deciding to come into Side Hustle, what was that decision process like? What drew you to the program? What ultimately made you want to decide to enroll in the program?
K: Yeah. I remember, I think I found your podcast in 2020. I want to say, it might have been right before, but I wanna say it was during those early pandemic days. I remember thinking about joining Side Hustle, the cohort before I joined. I just didn't feel ready to make that type of commitment.
I really wrestled for a few years about whether to even start the second business because I had a lot of what we might call some imposter syndrome coming up. Also had thought of: How can I actually make this work for me where I don't feel overwhelmed trying to do both my private practice and then something separate?
Even though I didn't decide to join that cohort, I was still listening to your podcast and that was how I was consuming a lot of information about other opportunities that there could be with just like you talk about using our clinical skills in a different way.
As I started to think more and more about it, I just was thinking to myself, this inkling, this idea to work with therapists in this way, having the second business, I don't think it's gonna go away.
I could just let it stay here and not do anything about it, and that would be its own kind of pain versus the pain of actually doing the thing and going through everything that it brings up for you and trying to build something from nothing.
I could live with that pain of not doing it and just die with that eventually and definitely not really think from this existential lens: How do we wanna live our lives?
Talking with you back last fall, it felt really clear that this was gonna be a program that I could try, as I've told you before, I could totally try to learn these things on my own and cobble together a plan.
I'm so amazed at how much in Side Hustle I really wouldn't have known what to look for as I'm trying to put this together on my own. It's just been so systematic and so helpful and I didn't know this part at the time, but the community has been so beautiful.
M: This has been one of the coolest communities. We always have a good community and I call it the Side Hustle family, but you guys, I call I always give each round a nickname and I nicknamed this one the collaboration round because you guys have literally had collaboration events together, but also just the way you rally around each other is so cool.
K: I know, I just got chills when you said that it really has been such a cool mix of people and I know that every group that you join or whatever might be different in your life. It's really amazing seeing everyone who they're just as passionate as I am about their thing, right?
It's just so cool that everyone's coming together and we're not working on the same exact types of things necessarily, but we're all driven by the same desire to create something.
M: Would you say that you had your idea pretty solid before coming into Side Hustle, and you were just—I'm like putting words in your mouth, so feel free to correct me—you already knew what your vision was, but you were looking for the process to follow.
K: Yeah I knew that my vision was to work with therapists around financial independence, learning about investing and retirement and all that. I knew that for sure, but even at the very beginning of Side Hustle, I was thinking my first offer might be a group program, and that still is likely gonna be something that I offer at some point.
I wanna say maybe four months, I realized I wanted to start with a membership, but I didn't even really know the different types of offers that you could have prior to listening to your podcast or how to think about what might be most aligned with the way that I wanna work.
I definitely don't think I had a fully formed idea of this is the exact type of offering I wanna do. I just knew the content and the intention.
M: I think that's really important to highlight because the way students get to me is different. Some students have, "I have so many ideas, I need help organizing them". Other students are more like you where they're like, "I have this burning desire, but I don't know the first step or I don't know how to move from desire to action" or whatever.
Whether you're listening and you feel like you identify with Kaci, you know what it is you wanna do, you just need the plan, you just need the information, you need the accountability or you're somebody who's "I know I want something more, but I'm not quite sure either way", Side Hustle can really support you.
I think it's cool that you came with...in our language, we use person, problem, promise, and price. You had your person and problem really solid.
K: Yes. Yeah, totally. But like you said, we learn through this program about different types of offerings and it really helped me to clarify how I wanted to work with people.
M: Then you decided to join. What was the impetus? "Okay, I'm doing this".
K: Yeah. I thought this would definitely be a commitment in terms of time, in terms of money. These resources that we have, this is a commitment. If it means that I'm gonna hold myself accountable and I'm going to work with any fear or questioning that comes up, can I expand myself to be able to do this and not let go back and forth?
That was a huge thing for me. I know that if I make this decision, I'm gonna have these weekly meetings and this group where I'm gonna take that seriously, so that was huge. I also just thought, it is so important for me to give this a shot.
Even though I am a pretty self-driven person, I just think I would've made so many mistakes or wouldn't have grown as fast as it's grown so far.
Of course, I'm still in the beginning part of my growth with this. But there's no way that I would have been able to be where I'm at even right now, just in this still beginning phase without it.
M: That's a really good point about the streamlined nature. Everything I teach you can go find out on your own, right? You can listen to my podcast and five others. You can Google. You can find people on Instagram. You can find all of this information, but the synthesis of it and the following along step by step, I think that's a big feature of the program the way that it is.
That you can start at one point and look back and be like, "Holy crap, I've come so far". The other day, we were having a conversation, I don't remember if it was office hours or one of our Friday calls, but one of the students was like, "I threw together a landing page and I did this and that", and I actually paused them. And I was like, "Okay, do you..." I think it was LaDonna.
I was like, "Do you realize everything you just said? You were basically speaking a different jargon, a different language". The way... the flippant isn't the right word, but the casualness of the way you said it. "Oh, I threw together a landing page and da da da. Think back to eight months ago. Could you have done that? Or could you even talk like that?"
And she was like, "No" and then the other students were all like "me either", so it's just so cool that in (nine months is not a short time, but it's also, it's all relative) the nine-month span, just to see that.
K: Absolutely. It is, I will say, I just, I, and I think you talk about this, I don't know if it's on your podcast or as part of our meetings, but entrepreneurship. I really look at this as it's just another, like, arm of it where most of us are in private practice and we're just starting this new venture, right?
It really does encourage so much expansion, not only of you personally but all that we have learned from just the framework and the content that's in Side Hustle.
Thinking back to this time last year or even this time back in January, it's really surprising I think, how far all of us have come and it's just, it's really cool to see.
M: Yeah. Before you started, you'd made the decision. You were like, "Okay, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it" but did you have any apprehension? Did you have any nerves or worries?
K: I did… I felt, I think a little nervous about, am I really going to be able to build an audience? Am I really going to be able to make this work?
M: I'm laughing, you guys can't say, but I'm just like, and you have a big audience.
K: Seriously like part of me wants to say surprising, but yeah, I think my biggest nerve about it was, I feel like I can definitely create something, but what if I put it out into the world and it's crickets, right?
Of course, I'm still about to have this first launch, and I still don't know how that's gonna go, but what is really what I think is really been so helpful about Side Hustle is I could have stayed stuck in ideas.
I could have stayed stuck in indecision and thinking, "oh, like it's only the like lucky people who end up being able to build an audience". I think until you actually try it, you just don't know. I think it does take different forms for different people.
M: Then even when something goes right for me, I'm like, "Oh, that's just luck". It's like only the lucky people get it and then I "get it", and I'm like, "Oh it's totally a fluke. It's totally just luck".
K: Absolutely. Totally. I definitely still relate to that too. Who knows what we might think 5, 10 years from now, but I think just the apprehension of I don't know if I'm actually gonna be able to make this work, but I know for sure that if I don't try it, then I'll be in that same spot that I'd been in for a few years of "I wanna do this. I don't know if it's gonna work".
M: I'm curious too, what would you say was your primary motivation? Was it more money motivation, or was it more lifestyle motivation? You've mentioned time freedom. What was really your driving force behind wanting to bring on this second business? Whether you joined Side Hustle or not.
K: Yeah, so I would say in the very very beginning when the idea first came to me, it was driven from this perspective of learning about investing specifically, saving and investing and just living really intentionally with your money. Learning about that was so incredibly life-changing for me.
I just have something in me where if I learn something, I want other people, if they want...
M: Oh, like that impact, motivation. Yeah. Yeah.
K: Yeah. I definitely think it started like just the idea came from an impact place and that of course like definitely still really matters to me.
I think what I love about it too is, creating this second business, I still have plans to work in my private practice. I don't have any plans to stop that at all, or at least altogether.
I know that it's a different way of making money in this second business. I'm so just really looking forward to the time freedom and more lifestyle freedom that making money in this way absolutely can offer people.
That's why I am interested in investing in the first place. Eventually, when you retire you have that and just like living a very full life where you have more choices.
M: Yeah. I think that's really cool too because like your investments, and this is something that we'll talk about in just a little bit, your investments are already like another income stream for you basically. I'm sure you have some money in motivation here, but you already have revenue from different sources or income from different sources.
This is really a way for you to continue that where time freedom and lifestyle freedom and impact are more of the driving factor. I think that's cool. Let's take it phase by phase, break it down, phase one being the offer validation and the funnel.
What was your experience with that? What was fun or the positives of it? What was hard or challenging about it? Whatever you wanna share about Phase One.
K: Phase One. I know that I always had that idea of what I wanted to do. It was just figuring out how it would pan out for me and how I wanted to make that work.
I think in the beginning you're starting Side Hustle, it's new. We did the validation interviews and it was really helpful hearing from the therapist that I interviewed for the validation interviews that this was something that people thought was really going to be helpful or necessary. I think when it's so new, everything just feels so big, right? And so it's "okay, I'm actually doing this".
I will say like creating the funnel, it now feels very second nature in terms of understanding the different components of it. I'm sure there's still pieces I don't understand, but I understand it so much more, but it was something like, I don't have a background in sales in any capacity. It was like learning something totally new, and just going through like the tech process of that could be a little tricky.
But it, again, I really think it's this expanding of "okay, now I understand" like you were talking about with LaDonna earlier, with this new language, it fits in my brain in a new way where I'm like, okay, this makes sense.
M: Once the funnel is built, we move into the marketing phase, which, I wanna say you went a little rogue but in a good way. In a good way. Let's talk about marketing and how that's ended up for you.
If you feel comfortable sharing numbers in terms of audience size and things like that, you're more than welcome to talk to us about how you've ended up marketing. Is it the same as the way you planned on marketing and all of that?
K: Oh my gosh, definitely not. What we learn in the marketing phase is the initial thing that I created which the intention was just to market this opt-in. Just a free offer that in exchange for the free offer, people give you their email address.
Then they end up on your email address and then you provide them with education content. I learned that and that was what I started to do. Then I remember it was one night in June.
It was right before the end of the second quarter of the fiscal calendar. I Voxed you and I just had this idea of seeing therapists in these different Facebook groups that I had joined and they were talking about a fear of a looming recession.
I Voxed you and I was like, "hey, I have this idea. What if I offered this free workshop for people or training of some kind, talking about a recession in a way that was really informative?" Not just from an economic perspective, but for us, as therapists working in healthcare, it's very different than if you work in different industries...
M:...and cash pay versus insurance and all of that kind of stuff.
K: Your response was, "I think that could be really great". I just decided to market that first in different Facebook groups and I was...Oh my gosh, just the nerves of letting people know because before side hustle, I was not someone who was like posted in Facebook groups at all.
That was very nerve-wracking to let people know, "Hey, I'd like to offer you this training" but I started with that. Some people...I can't remember the number of people, but I wanna say it was about a hundred, a little more than a hundred total ended up signing up for that particular training that I did.
Then a month later, I saw the success of that, and then I thought to myself what if I offer retirement 101? Because a lot of people, myself included before I learned all of this, just have no idea how any of this works. That one, even more people signed up for that one.
Then it was, I think around the same month that we were talking about socials as part of Side Hustle. I remember saying, "I just don't know if I wanna do social media as part of it". Literally the day or two after I said that...
I'd saved this Facebook group back in September when I first decided to join Side Hustle last year.
I had created a Facebook group, but only myself and my really good friend Lacey were a part of it. I was like holding it so that no one could take the name, but not doing anything with it.
I just decided, let's just start a Facebook group. I've had people join since either, I think it was either June or July and right now we've got 2,700 people in the Facebook group, which is just incredible.
It's been really cool. So far I have 1400 people on my email list, which I just never would...my goal was maybe 500 by this time.
M: Sometimes I go a little mama bear on my students, which is not my job at all, and something like I work on, but I'm like, I remember you're like, "I wanna do this free thing". The first thing I was like "let's charge for instead" and you came back and you're like, "But I see this as a way to grow my list".
I was "Okay I hear you and I think it's great. However, I want you to be aware of the time commitment you're giving for free and that kind of stuff" because I've been there where I'm just like giving every way thing away for free and not monetizing.
And so again, it's not my responsibility to watch over your time, but it's just things that I wanna pass on in terms of here's where I've had a misstep or here's where I've done things that looking back, wish I'd done it differently. But in this case, it worked out really well in terms of these two free workshops.
It was something that you felt was A) within your wheelhouse to create, and B) was worth it for you to add a little bit of a time commitment. Personally, this is something that I share with you guys, and I don't say that you need to follow in my footsteps at all, but I'm never gonna shy away from more touch.
I do not mind pouring more into something as a time investment. It's just my personality, the way I like to serve. It seemed to really work out for you in terms of these workshops. Then this Facebook group, we were chatting before we recorded, and we don't know exactly why it took off, but it took off.
There are a few really key things that you did with the Facebook group. You optimized the Facebook group to still get people coming into the email list which is really important because people in a Facebook group can be a big vanity metric.
It looks like we have a bunch of people who are following us or whatever, but the fact that we know it is on a social media platform, it's not as reliable or predictable as our email list.
You made that decision really smart and it was a key choice. And the other thing that I think is such a talent of yours, and maybe this is because of your like investment background, but you know how to read a market.
Not only a financial market, but you know how to read a market in terms of what people are asking questions for, where there's maybe a worry or you're seeing this trend and because you're impact driven and you have this heart of service, you know that you can't address that trend and you can address that concern.
You did that in two really key ways as well. You might be very well aware of this or you might not have thought about it, but I really like to reflect that back to you as it might have felt like just a natural decision, but it was very intelligent, smart, effective decision that paid off for your audience growth, which is cool.
K: Thank you. I really appreciate you saying that, and that is an interesting way to look at it. I really just thought of it like I do think it stems back to that initial intention that I had to share this information with people because before I like learned any of this, I had no idea how to think about investing, think about a recession.
If I would've heard those words too before I learned what I've learned so far, I think I would've been really afraid. And so just seeing that people were afraid of it, they were talking about it. Facebook really does seem like a market where a lot of therapists are.
I tried Instagram and I'm just not doing it, but I found that there are more therapists on Facebook. I think it is just like pivoting and seeing, "Okay what are people talking about?" So I appreciate you mentioning that.
M: Out of the 1400 or so do you know how many are on your waitlist?
K: Yeah. Right now because it's grown so much, even just like the people coming in from the Facebook group so far on my waitlist, I have 50 people. The numbers would be, they're off, like you said, because I went rogue in terms of different ways people came in through my email list. But right now we've got 50 and I think it would be amazing. Half of 'em decided they wanted to join.
M: Wouldn't that be lovely? Let's chat about that a little bit. You said initially you wanted to start with a group program, but then you made the choice to do a membership and they're two sides of the same coin. The content in a group program and the content and membership site can be the exact same.
What changes are the way it's delivered in terms of one is a volume-based offer with a lower price and one is a premium offer with a higher price and lower volume. I know you went back and forth on that decision. Can you talk us through why you ultimately decided on membership?
K: Yeah. I definitely want to have more than one offer under the second business umbrella of Invested Therapist. I decided that I wanted my first offer to be something that was accessible to as many people who wanted to join as possible. Just because there certainly are some therapists who have this information, but there are a lot of people who don't.
I thought, "Okay, if I can just make this something that, you said, is volume-based, we can get as many people in, and then eventually there will be higher touch programs" still deciding what that looks like but I think my initial goal was just, this feels right for this particular first offer for me.
M: Yeah. Yeah. Then you have this hotbed of leads to go into the membership site and say, "Hey, I'm gonna run an eight-week thing, who wants it?"
Then sales can be really easy at that point because it turns into just an invitation, you might not even ever have to launch a group program. You only launch your membership site and then the group programs fill up just naturally, right? There are lots of cool things that you can do.
Speaking of which, that brings us to Phase Three, which is Launch Phase, which is right where you are right now. How's that?
K: Oh my gosh, it's a lot. Yeah. Like you mentioned to us, there are two phases of the program of Side Hustle that are more kind of work-intensive, and this is one of them.
While it is a lot to do in terms of like carving out time and making a to-do list and saying this is what I wanna get ready, what I really appreciate that you've shared with us, and so it's just giving me a different way to think about it is that what we create during this launch is something we can then reuse when we launch.
Again, making maybe a few tweaks here and there to make it relevant for the next time we launch. But I look at it like, "okay this is a work-intensive time for me, but I'm creating assets for this business that I can continue to use", which is the whole point of having the second business in this way.
We spend this time doing more of the work than maybe I think I'll be at, two, three years from now, it probably will be less time intensive, but it's worth it when you have the vision and hopefully it pays off.
M: Yeah. I really love that you brought that up because we talk about this in some of the Side Hustle calls, but digital assets or assets for an online business are different than assets for brick and mortar business.
It was a while ago in, over the summer, June or July or whatever, but I was talking about how I just got to chatting with somebody at the gym and they own this concrete business and they have $10 million or whatever, it's probably more liabilities because I don't know their business, but they're probably not all paid off.
They're probably all financed or at least some of them are. But we think of assets to be like, a cement truck this like that, like these physical things that cost money. For an online business, our assets are all digital and they don't cost us money. They cost us time. They cost time to build.
It's a time investment, but then you have those assets and they're free and clear and they're yours and you don't owe anybody for them. I think that's one of the things that makes it so different. It is a time investment, but then it's all there and available for you to use again and again.
K: Totally. I totally agree. I think it's like that often it's a bit of a misnomer of passive income, right? A lot of people think, "Oh, I don't have to put in any time to earn this money". Eventually, for example, I just had a sale of the trip wire that I created which is really exciting.
It's always exciting, like getting those emails. While it's passive in the sense that I just got that sale and I didn't have to do anything for that particular hour that it came in or whatever, I spent the time upfront creating it.
I think it's just, it's a different way of balancing your energy, your time, putting in the work so that later on the work just looks different and there might be time freedom.
M: Yeah. We also talk about resources at this point of the course too, because you may want to bring money into the game by hiring somebody to take some of these tasks off of your hands and stuff. Then it becomes more passive for you, but you're not only investing time, but then you're investing money, right?
It's all a trade-off, but each student has their own unique circumstances, just like each student has their own unique set of strengths. I see that as part of my work. Guiding you toward what is best for you and your marketing plan. Your launch plan ends up looking very different than every other student there.
A lot of you are doing challenges this round, which we usually have like half challenges, half webinars, but we're even more challenge heavy this round, which is cool. I think it's interesting and fun, but just because a lot of you are doing challenges, every single challenge is different, it's just really cool to see.
I've said before, even if all, every student came in and they were like, "I wanna make a course for new moms and how to sleep better" by the time the program was done, those programs would be extremely different from each other. It's fun to see it all develop.
K: Absolutely. I just think that it highlights that there really is space for everyone in just entrepreneurship in general. Even if someone had come in with the exact same idea as me, the same kind of passion for it, or the same interest in sharing this information and a new way of thinking about money we would have different personalities, we'd have different styles and different strengths like you're talking about.
I do think there's space. If people are just saying, "I really have this idea" or "I'm really motivated", like you said, by money or by time freedom. I just really do think there's space for everybody.
M: One choice you also made is you're launching one week off of schedule, which we have some students who are like, "Oh, I'm gonna wait till January or whatever, because their programs are longer" or they think it's better after the holidays.
Why did you choose...this is a selfish question for me. Why'd you choose one week and what's that knowing that you can design it how it's best for you?
K: Totally. Yeah. I wanna say this was maybe a month or two ago you and I were talking and I was in a really, just life had been really busy for me during that period of time.
I was off a little bit in terms of the emails that I was sending to my email list and we just talked about how one thing I could do - I could really hustle and try to make this work and it, that's a decision a person can make and still be in that same time period or just adjust.
Life came up, it got busy. I was like, "Okay, I'm just gonna be a week off of people who are launching in real time" and yeah it works.
I think that's what's really helpful about Side Hustle. It's cool to see that, yes, we have some people launching in real-time, but a lot of people are not, they're launching at a time that works for them.
M: Again, selfish question: Has that thrown you off for due dates with Kristen and Shana or have you been able to keep with those?
K: I've, actually, I've been able to keep with those because (I'm just thinking) for the most part. I think the only thing that I didn't do was the asset for the challenge slides or anything but even still, I'm not even a hundred percent sure.
Still deciding how to deliver that. I'll get the feedback that I'm looking for with the sales emails, with the pitch. It's been so helpful just having those due dates and having them.
M: Yeah, and once you figure out your slides, you can always submit 'em to the group and we can give you feedback too. For those of you guys who are like, "what are they talking about?" Kristen and Shayna are the graphic designer and copywriter in the program.
We have due dates that they review the stuff and then they give it back to you and then you make it live and stuff like that. I was just curious because Kaci’s "I'm one week off", so I was, I just wanted to see how that affected the due dates.
Out of all of the features of the program, so we have the curriculum, we have Kristen and Shana as the support staff, the accountability, the community, what were you most excited about when you bought and what has been your favorite now that you're in the program?
K: Ooh, that's a really good question. Okay. I think what I was most excited about and what tipped me over the edge to buy was the accountability and knowing that it was going to be a fully fleshed-out program.
It's incredible the amount of just the wealth of knowledge that you have here in this program and what's available to us and I still really value that. I think that's incredible.
I love that we get this lifetime access to be like, anything that I've missed that I need to go back, or when I'm doing a group program in the future, or a course or whatever, I can go back and refresh. I would say just the community has really been such an important piece of everything.
If I have questions for people or like just getting that support it's beautiful. It's a really beautiful part of the program that I wasn't not thinking would be there, but you don't know until you meet people.
M: Yeah. The last two days too, there's been some just really deep and some vulnerable and just some questions and concerns and just worries. Then the way, like I said, that we've all just, and I've been trying to stay out of it like, as just an observer, but to watch you guys just like swoop in and be like, "I love you".
Basically, love bombing each other of support and just validation and stuff. It's just, it's really been cool to see it.
K: It is so cool. I remember there was something that I brought to the group a few, maybe a month or two ago, and of course like I'm not expecting anyone to instantly respond, but the instant kind of response of like people being there and wanting to just, just it's such a compassionate, collaborative group.
M: It's really incredible. It is. Tell us about the Invested Therapist. Run us through if you're running your membership on a framework, what you plan to deliver for us, and what the outcome's gonna be of being a member.
K: Yeah, definitely. This first offer that I have is called the Financial Self-Care Membership. The way I'm doing a mix of the two different ways to approach a membership group in the sense that before people even join I'm creating something where it's a financial foundation.
When people first join and are given access to the membership there are gonna be lessons that are already in there about debt, about saving and investing, intentional, living with money just because I think it's really important to have that foundation.
Every single month there will be a new lesson that will be delivered in the course room specific to these, under that umbrella that I mentioned of debt saving, investing for retirement and other financial goals.
Money mindset, really intentional living with money I'm truly so excited to just get started with it and just have it be live, and so people will get this they'll get a lesson that's specific to the group every single month. I'm really interested to see, I've got a lot of ideas for what I wanna deliver, but I also really wanna be responsive to what people want.
I'm very open to "Okay, I have these ideas, but that could change" as the community shares what their needs are, we're also gonna have office hours every month where people can stop by, ask questions about the lesson or about really anything coming up for them. Share resources.
I also have decided to create something I'm calling a money accountability date, where I'm gonna have people... it's just a time every month. People can show up on Zoom, they can keep their cameras off if they want to, and we can co-work.
It can be silent co-working, but then people, if they have questions I think it could be really helpful for people who are neurodiverse and really benefit from body doubling. Just having another person there of, "Okay, I've got this accountability".
M: And also me who's like anxious-avoidant, I haven't checked that account for three months. I have no idea what's going on in there.
K: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Just having that money date built-in and then having community behind you so you can ask questions. I'll always be there. Then having action steps for the lesson for that month.
I'm also really excited because I've started just thinking of more kind of creative ideas for what to include. There will be guest interviews and like from a whole different, from the financial space, from the therapist space, from business, even just like under that umbrella of living intentionally.
I'm thinking about people who may not be specifically related to money, but who have really interesting ideas and books and just like sharing a collaboration there. I'm just so excited.
M: You're, the listeners can't see, but you're beaming and you're just radiant when you talk about this. You can see how much you're passionate about this and how excited you are for it. I'm eating it all up cuz I'm like, "yes, I want that. I want that. I want a money date".
K: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm just, I'm really excited for it and just like bringing it to life.
M: What do you want, like the outcome or - it's hard to say an outcome with a membership site because it's ongoing - but what do you want people to take away from being a member of in the financial secure financial self-care?
K: I think the ultimate outcome that I would love for people to take away from it is feeling a sense of security and self-trust in their ability to, whether it's making more money, making intentional decisions about your money, knowing how to invest, knowing how to really vet financial advisors or tax professionals, like knowing who's in your corner because you not only have that knowledge to assess that, but you have the trust in yourself to know how to make those types of decisions.
I just ultimately would love for people to feel that financial security that allows you to show up in the best way that you can professionally because you're good, you're taken care of.
Also personally, because we can make those different lifestyle choices when we've got that foundation really established.
M: Oh, I love that. And where can people go, what's your Facebook group and where, what links should people click on or head to so they can find out more?
K: Totally. They can join the Facebook group. If you just search Facebook it's Financial Self-Care for Therapists, you'll find it, it'll pop up. People can go to my website and get a free investing calculator that I made throughout this program through Side Hustle. It's investedtherapist.co/calculator. It's free and it'll get delivered to you.
People are free to reach out to me. I'd love to connect with anyone who is into this and feels like it would be something that they're looking to learn more about.
M: Yeah. We'll have all those links for you in the show notes, so they'll be really accessible and easy to find.
Kaci, if anybody is on the fence about Side Hustle, wondering if this is their year because maybe they're like you and they wanted to maybe join last year, but then they're like: I don't know. When is it? When's the right time? What advice would you have for them?
K: The advice that I would have for them I think it's really important to ask yourself, "Okay, here's the investment, here's the investment in time, the investment in money", and just be really clear about what that is for you and your life.
The way that I ultimately looked at it was, yes, this is an investment of nine months of my life and of, this price point and if what that means is that I create a second business, I will more than earn back the money that I am paying the time that I am investing to create this program.
My friends are asking me how are you feeling about Investment Therapists? How's it going? Just how are you feeling about creating everything? And what I tell them is it's definitely a time investment and a financial one, and I really trust that this is something that I'm building and we need that… it's... lemme think how to phrase this.
I just think if you want to bring your business to life, then having the accountability, having the program has been invaluable to me and I would be in such a different place if I hadn't joined.
If you're thinking about it and it feels like something you wanna bring into life for yourself, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
M: Thank you. That's so sweet. I'm like, I'm gonna receive that today.
K: Yeah. I hope you do. I really do. You have put so much heart and soul and actual things that we need to know to be able to create this online second business because it is so different from private practice.
I hope you do just know how much you have put into this and that it gives us the opportunity to create what we're trying to create.
M: Awesome. Thank you. Kaci, thank you so much for being here with me today. We'll have all of your links so people can follow up with you.
If you are somebody who knows that private practice, there are some financial ups and downs that come with that, and you want to understand and have a self-trust around your money and as Kaci said earlier, have this stewardship of your money, then Kaci is the person for you to follow along with, I wholeheartedly recommend her as well.
Alright. I was not kidding when I was saying that Kaci was beaming when she was talking about her program. The genuine love that she has for what she is going to be doing inside of her membership and her genuine care for and desire for therapists to have this stable relationship with their money, it's just so clear.
You watch her talk about it and it's just all over her face and it's really cool to be a part of and to see what she has brought to life. Make sure you head on over to her Facebook group, which is extremely active and extremely helpful. You can also go ahead and download the calculator that she shared with us today.
You can start looking at your investments and your retirement planning and all of these things that I avoid and need to pay more attention to. Head on over the links will be in the show notes.
If you are somebody who, like Kaci, has this burning desire to bring something to life and this burning desire to help others Side Hustle could be the thing that helps you do it in a new creative, and fun way to give you some more time freedom and to still earn some money.
If you would like to apply for Side Hustle Support Group, you can do that over at marissalawtton.com/side-hustle. Applications are officially open and we are only taking 30 students this round. Go ahead and get that application in before spots are gone.
I would hate to say, I loved your application, but we're full, so head on over, get started on the process so that we can work together in the new. Alright, guys. I will be back next week and until then, keep on rising.
