Should You Just Do "More" Therapy?
Should you just stick with therapy?
When considering starting your own side hustle, this question may have crossed your mind before.
This is your reminder that you can be a great clinician while also being a great...
✔️ Group facilitator
✔️ Course creator
✔️ Membership site owner
...or any of the other side hustle options you’ve thought to explore.
While you can completely transition into your side hustle, it isn’t required. You CAN continue in the therapy room while growing and maintaining an online income stream.
Tune in to the latest podcast episode if you’re still figuring out if stepping outside of the therapy room is right for you.
CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!
Show Notes:
Hey, risers. Welcome to Empathy Rising.
So the first thing that I wanna address is, would getting licensed in multiple states, would building a group practice be easier than starting a side hustle? Like would it just be easier to do? Is it the path of least resistance? I think the short answer there is, yeah, yeah, absolutely right. You'd essentially take what you do on a daily basis and open it up to a wider market. Now you don't only serve people in Arizona. You serve people in New Mexico and Texas, and California and Colorado and all those other places too, right? So you are opening yourself up to a wider market. You also don't have to define a different role for yourself. You are a therapist and you are doing more therapy, and so you don't have to redefine what that is for you and you don't have to act or behave differently, um, to make sure that your license is protected. Other things that you don't have to do is you don't have to learn a new way of marketing. Um, much of what you would do for your current state would probably transfer over to a different zip code. If you're trying to go to like a really dense area or a saturated area with clinicians, there may be some shifts that you need to make or some changes. But for the most part, I think marketing a therapy practice is marketing a therapy practice. Um, You also wouldn't need to learn new tech or build funnels and you wouldn't need to learn sales strategies. Most of the time when people are looking for, a therapist, they already know they're looking for a therapist.
They don't need to be converted or sold. Um, it's really, they're just like, okay, do I wanna work with you in this capacity? So you're more selling yourself than you are selling therapy. So, Doing this, doing more of the same is by far the path of least resistance, right? You just need to do more of what you already do.
Now I wanna examine this in how it would actually help you grow, right? So those three categories we talked about, monetary growth, impact, growth, and personal growth. Let's take a look at those. So, Monetary growth is possible here, right? If you work in Montana or you work in Nebraska, or you work in, I'm just kind of picking, you know, less lesser populated states.
Uh, you've probably got an, an hourly rate somewhere in like the mid-hundreds. Right, and getting licensed in states like California or New York City or New York is the state, obviously. Um, with higher costs of living or even going for certain cities like Miami or Seattle, um, those would definitely help you grow financially because you could probably charge, um, In some cases, you might be able to double your rate.
Like if you're at one 30, you may be able to charge something like two 60 or more in those particular marketplaces. Right? So I do think there's a chance for monetary growth, double your hourly rate. That's more money than you're currently making, so absolutely that is a chance to grow your revenue. When we get to impact growth, I think this one is a little trickier, right?
I would argue that. Getting licensed in multiple states doesn't actually grow your impact. I think instead it diversifies your impact because you can't all of a sudden help a hundred people unless you're going to give a hundred hours of your week to therapy. You can help people diff in different places.
You can help, um, if you've got like a really. Interesting niche. Like, let's say you have an LGBT niche, um, and in Montana, you're like the go-to person because there's, there's less people there. But then you wanna break into the San Francisco market, the New York market, where there's much bigger need for LGBTQ services, but there's also more competition and you get to charge a higher rate, right?
You're not necessarily having. A bigger impact, but you are spreading your impact so it, it diversifies. It doesn't necessarily grow. You can help different people in different places, but you alone cannot help more people. Unless you take on more hours to do it, unless you open up extra time, you're not going to serve more people.
Now, a group practice is different. Of course. If you're hiring clinicians underneath you, then they can see more people and then you've got a question. Is that impactful? Certainly, it's impactful on the community for sure, or the states for sure, because there is more services available. But do you tie that back to the work that you're doing? Do you tie that back to your personal impact or is it the impact of your company? So those are just things to consider, but if it's just you solo practice, I don't think your impact grows. I think your impact changes. So personal growth, if you're sticking with more therapy, I think anytime you venture into entrepreneurship or anytime you make changes to your business model, you're going to grow personally, right?
Being your own boss, uh, it challenges you in some of. The worst ways, but also some of the best ways, right? So figuring out a new marketplace, setting your rate for a new market, um, seeing if you do need to network differently or write your Psychology Today profile differently or whatever. If you do need to do things different for these new markets, that's going to grow and that's going to challenge you for sure.
The question is, how do you want to grow? Just like with, you know, a local group practice. You can begin taking on new clinicians in these new states, and you can grow into a great manager. You can grow into a great logistics person. You can grow into a great admin person. And this type of growth, this, this, expanding your therapy practice will certainly help you grow personally.
The question is, is that the type of growth. That you are actually looking for? I think that there is growth potential in all three categories, right? Simply by getting licensed in multiple states or, or adding clinicians. I. There's definitely growth in all three of these categories, but I think we need to be fair, and I think we need to look at some of the drawbacks, so we need to look at it from both sides.
The first one is that reciprocity and endorsement are getting better. They're getting better, but they're still not 100%. So are you willing to take extra exams and sometimes in the worst cases, extra courses, like extra master's courses or whatever, to be able to practice in that chosen state? So that is something you may come up against.
Even if you get straight across transfer or straight across endorsement or arrest property or whatever, now you're paying 300 bucks to get your license renewed in one state, 300 in another, 300 in another. You're licensed in five states, and now you've got $1,500 of renewals, right? If your hourly rate has doubled, Perhaps the math works on that, but is that expense actually worth breaking into that market, or would you rather just go deeper into the market you already serve?
So these are all questions to ask. I think also we have to take a look at regulation, right? Many regulations are uniform by license type. Right. But there's definitely things you're going to need to keep track of state by state. So things like renewal periods, does your state renew every two years? D or does your license renew every two years?
Every one year, every three, every five is that standard across all of the states that you're li getting licensed in. The other thing to think about is C C E U requirements. Um, they're all gonna require an ethics course, I'm sure, but some are gonna maybe need this many hours. Some are gonna need a different number of hours, some are going to need it, it to be in really strict and regimented categories.
Others are kind of like more of a free for all. So, That's just another thing that you'll need to keep track of also are, do different states have regulations on telehealth? Do different states have regulations on, um, lots of stuff, right? So when you, you don't only have to keep track of that for your home state, but any other state that you branch out to, you're going to have to think about.
And then what are the labor laws in each of those states? What is it? Like to employ people in those states. I think there's some things that are gonna be standardized for 10 99 employees versus, um, W2 employees, contractors, verse W2 employees. But certain states might have like this weird monkey wrench type of thing, and that's something that even if you're going the group practice route, do you want to keep track of that?
Do you want to understand what's okay in California? Might not be okay in Florida and vice. Versa. So it's just a lot to think, um, and to keep track of. Do you still, the, the next question is, do you still wanna be trading time for money? Because regardless of a higher hourly rate in some of these markets, even double your hourly rate, you're still going to be tied to a chair.
You're still going to be paid by the hour, and that's why this impact doesn't really. Grow the, unless you want to give more time to it, right? You're still doing one-on-one work. You're in a new market, you're with different, um, people with maybe diverse needs, and that's cool. Um, So that could be really interesting and inspiring for you, but you're still trading your time.
Then another thing to think about is time zones. This is something that I work, I work with in online business, right? What time zone are people located in? And if somebody, if you're on the West Coast and somebody's on the East coast and they only have an early morning spot, are you going to get up at four in the morning, five in the morning to give them therapy?
So this may or may not be of interest to you, so we need to start. Peeling back all of this. So let's talk about this then in the online business realm, the bi, the realm outside of therapy, because there's pros and cons here too as well.
Hey, risers. The number one stuck point I hear over and over again from clinicians as to why they haven't started their side hustle is that they don't have time. They want that lighter lifestyle, the financial and location freedom that comes from an online income stream, but they can't seem to figure out how to carve out space in their schedules to make it happen, which makes sense because the reason they're craving the lightness that a Sky Hustle offers is that their caseloads are over fulled.
And overwhelming. But the thing I want you to know is that it is possible to have a more intentional schedule. One that honors the things that are most important to you, like your relationships, self-care, and family time, but also accounts for the time you need to support your practice and leaves a little space for something you really can find the time to evolve beyond the couch without sacrificing all the things at that most.
And I wanna show you how in my new mini-course side hustle schedule, I'm sharing a. And easy five-step system that teaches you to shift your priorities so that you can feel less stressed and actually do the things that you want to do. You can craft a values-based schedule that moves your side hustle forward.
Grab the full system now for only $47 at marissalawton.com/schedule.
So from a monetary STA standpoint, what is the biggest difference Is an online income stream is a scalable. Income stream. There are offers like digital courses or digital products, eBooks, recorded trainings, those types of things that require zero time for you to deliver. Now, that doesn't mean you don't have to market them, you still have to market them, but when they sell, they sell and they're done, and you don't do anything else for them.
So you've created the asset once and it serves you over and over and over again. We can look at this equation as no time output equals money. Okay? No time output equals money. There are also programs that do require time, like membership programs, uh, membership sites, and group programs, but. Their curriculums make them standardized to deliver.
So while you give time, the time is defined and stays the same, even if your sales increase, right? So if you have a membership site, four things you do throughout the month, you do a certain thing on week one, a certain thing on week two, a certain thing on week three and four, and so on, that is the same output.
Whether you have 10 members, a hundred members, a thousand members, or 10,000 members, so in this case it's same output, more money, same output, more money. This is completely different than therapy because the only way to get more money is to give more output. More output. So scalable income, regardless of the program type.
Your side hustle sets you up for more financial freedom because the amount of money that comes in is unlimited and more time freedom because that limitless income. Can be done with no time output or a capped time output. So you still do get a better trade-off for your time when it comes to how much money you can make if you create a program that does require you to invest time.
You don't have to trade one for the other like you do with therapy. So Impact has the same notion, right? Not only is your income scalable, but your impact is scalable as well. Trading your time doesn't limit the number of people that you can help. There are certain programs where you might find that you want it to have a very intimate feel.
Let's say you're running a group program around kind of like a. Just a touchy nature. I think of, um, Amanda who just graduated side hustle and she did, um, faith deconstruction, right? So that's kind of a topic that you want to handle delicately or you want to kind of go there with somebody. Um, Lindsay is another person that I think of and she's doing kind of like a sexual empowerment, like reclaiming your sexual identity kind of program, and that is sensitive in nature.
So there are some programs where you might want to keep them smaller and more intimate, but. What you could do is open another time slot. Yes, that's committing a little bit more time, but we can do the math on that and make sure that it works for you. So if you have eight people and that's the max, then you wouldn't open another group or another time slot for two people.
But if you had another eight people, it would make sense for you to open another time slot. So your impact, even with, um, really intimate programs, your impact can still scale. Your impact can still grow. Trading your time does not limit the number of people you can help. Tens or hundreds of people can buy e-books.
Take your courses, go through rounds of your group program, or subscribe monthly to your membership. Here's where we get a little tricky. Live workshops. Technically, like I host my live workshops on Zoom and I pay for like the $15 a month of Zoom and it allows for a hundred people to come in. Um, I think the most people I've ever had in a Zoom room at one time was like 70 or 80.
Um, so I've never quite gotten to that a hundred, but I can imagine if I had a hundred people at a live workshop or let's say, 150 at a live workshop. I don't know how I would facilitate that. I could do a presentation to 150 people, no problem. But I don't know if I could do a workshop where there's like tangible pieces where you're actually co-creating and working together and stuff.
So, I don't know if I'd want to sell a hundred live ti or a hundred tickets where everyone showed up live, but here's what you can do. You can have one price for the live ticket. Let's call it a hundred bucks, and then you can say, or if you'd like to, if you know you wanna just do the recording or you'd prefer to watch on your own time, the recording alone is 50 bucks.
Just from the natural market, there will be the people who are like, yes, I wanna be there live. I want that a hundred dollar ticket. And then there's the other people who are like, oh, I just want the material. I just wanna go through it all my own time is fine. And they'll buy the replay ticket. And then so you're still scaling that income.
You're not limiting your impact. So both of those are scalable, but you're making it easier for you to deliver live. So that is one place where it can get a little tricky, but we have solutions for that, that don't impact the money side and don't impact the income side. And so here's where I definitely think this last category of personal growth.
This is the place that I think online income, like outshines. Therapy for sure, like pursuing a side hustle versus doing more therapy. Can you grow personally doing more therapy? Sure. But I think that online income and making the shift is where the biggest difference is. This is the place where you get to imagine who you want to be outside of the therapy industry, and if you're my ideal customer, my ideal listener, my ideal student, then that speaks to you.
Right, because the therapist identity, the therapist industry, it carries weight with it, right? Friends are always asking you for advice or somebody finds out that you're a clinician and then they're like, oh, my uncle has bipolar and this and that, and then they're just like, They expect you to just be a different human when they find out that you're a therapist, right?
Also, people making assumptions about you. Oh, they're totally psychoanalyzing me right now. They're totally diagnosing me right now, or whatever, right? So there's these weird, awkward things that come with a therapy identity, and then there's some other stuff, like not being able to share much of what you do with your loved ones, right?
Your spouse, your partner, your best friend, your mom, whoever asking like. What'd you do today? You had a really crazy day or a really heavy day and you, you can't share that. Right? The other thing that happens is you can't share much of yourself inside of your work. Can we self-disclose with a therapeutic nature?
Sure. Are we doing this more and more than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago? Absolutely, but it's not the same. In online income where you can really go there and you can really be completely transparent. Some of my students say it feels like just like taking a weight off where they can fully show up to their work and be fully themselves.
The other thing that's amazing about online income that it sometimes gets some flack for, but I see as the biggest benefit is that it isn't regulated, right? The industry, the therapy industry is heavily regulated. They tell you how you have to act in order to help others, and so I think the biggest value that comes when you're thinking about branching beyond the therapy room is crafting a new identity for yourself that leans into this new calling, right?
Instead of being told how you work and how you function and, and the evidence-based this and the evidence-based that do, I think those are great things I do. But sometimes you want to explore your method. You want to explore what something means to you, and there's potential for that in online income.
Crafting this new identity. It's, it's the idea of making a living that still helps others. It's still helpful, it's still impactful, but it's on your own terms. You're no longer answering to somebody else's rules. You are making your own rules. Any of these growth points maybe. Most important to you, right?
Some people are interested in online income because of the money potential. There's no shame in that. That's absolutely why I started, right? Others are interested in the impact potential, that scalable impact that is no longer reliant on your time to make a difference. Right. And I feel like this is where I'm starting to shift.
And then the other thing is that personal and that lifestyle change, the time freedom, the location freedom, the things we talk about over and over again on this show, those are, that's another layer of motivation. That's another layer of reason to make this shift and to make this change. What a side hustle gives you is the ability to decide for yourself what is the most important to you and what you want your career and your lifestyle to look like.
There's no longer a board or a body regulating what you can do or telling you what's possible. It's up to you.
All right, guys. Keep on rising.
