94: Passive Income for Therapists: Is it A Myth?
Updated March 2024
Passive income is income earned without having to work.
I think many passive income marketing claims are just that: marketing claims.
Is passive income possible for therapists? Yes, it's possible(ish), but nothing is passive about writing a book, creating a course, or releasing a line of merchandise. It takes a lot of energy, effort, and, dare I say it, grit to get something that may eventually be passive-adjacent off the ground.
My personal opinion is that if a psychotherapist wants to create something "passive," the best way to do it is by first having a thriving private practice.
Why?
Because having a thriving private practice with consistent referrals means the therapist already has the critical variables in place to launch something additional or supplemental. They already have:
A referral system that is calling in aligned clients (e.g., a blog, podcast, or social media account)
An audience, be it within the community, state, or niche
A thriving set of systems and software that allows them to take care of the back-end of their business or the non-clinical side of their business
It also means that if something were to happen to the passive offer, they'd still have the ability to generate a sustainable living from their private practice.
At the time of this podcast and corresponding post, I have some passive income, some active income, and some leveraged income. So let's start at the top with passive income.
Investing for Self-Employed
My number one way to generate truly passive income? Investing. Investing as a self-employed therapist is my favorite way to create passive income, as it’s the only true way to earn money without exchanging your labor for it.
I invest primarily within my retirement accounts. Retirement accounts for those who are traditionally employed in the U.S. are tax-advantaged accounts with names like ROTH IRA, IRA, 401k, 403B. Retirement accounts for self-employed folks like therapists in private practice are tax-advantaged accounts with names like SEP, Solo 401k, and an IRA or ROTH IRA.
I invest in plain old low-cost index funds, bond funds, and REITs within those accounts. Looking at the S&P 500 from 2001 to 2020, the average stock market return for the last 20 years is 7.45%. I just completed the Invested Development investing course by Amanda Holden and cannot recommend it highly enough.
If that feels scary, my next favorite, though definitely less lucrative, way to generate passive income is through a high yield savings account (HYSA) or interest checking account. A high-yield savings account usually has a few parameters to get the higher interest rate, such as a limit on how many transfers you can make or a minimum account balance, but it's worth it! I have a personal HYSA through Ally bank, earning 0.5%, and I have an American Express business checking account that pays interest, earning 1.1%.
Active Income for Therapists
For therapists, active income is earned money from labor, energy, or effort you directly participated in. When we think of income for therapists, most of us automatically have examples of active income pop into our minds. Examples of active income for therapists are:
1:1 Therapy. Providing psychotherapy in a traditional hourly-rate model. I’d include family therapy and couples therapy here as well.
Group therapy. Often run in a time-limited capacity geared toward a group of people with a shared experience, diagnosis, or identity
Public Speaking. Speaking on a therapy or therapy-adjacent topic. I love providing public speaking on money mindset and how clinicians can incorporate money into their therapeutic work.
Workshops, retreats, or live courses. Hosting and running a workshop, retreat, or live course.
Offering supervision. Providing supervision for professionals in your field who are in their limited licensure and need supervised hours for their license.
Corporate or non-profit consulting. Offering corporate or non-profit consulting services. For therapists, some examples of this could be training folks on communication skills, DEI training, or mental wellness.
Teaching classes to help therapists pass their exams. Helping master’s level or undergraduate level students pass their exams or boards for licensure.
Tutoring counseling, psychology, or social work students.
Passive Income for Therapists
Let's call passive income for therapists what it really is: leveraged income. Leveraged income is often packaged to therapists as "passive," but it couldn't be further from the truth. Leveraged income ideas for therapists include:
E-courses. A course that is taught and hosted online. Generally, e-courses are pre-recorded and can be watched or consumed at the student's pace.
Books. A book covering the therapist's interest, specialty, or niche. Books can be self-published or traditionally published and the author can earn a price per book sold or if traditionally published and advance and commission per book sold.
Workbook. A workbook is a more interactive version of a therapist's interest, specialty, or niche. Workbooks can be self-published or traditionally published and the author can earn a price per book sold or if traditionally published and advance and commission per book sold.
Paid podcast or a Patreon. Having podcast listeners pay to access premium content through a paid private podcast or via a Patreon.
Paid blog or a Substack. Having blog readers pay to access premium content through a paid private blog or via a Substack.
Branded merchandise. A therapist could create a branded journal, planner, mugs, clothing, or stress-relief gear and sell it for additional income.
Paid membership for your niche. Creating a membership community where members pay monthly for additional content, access to you, and connection with one another.
Affiliate marketing income. Receiving a commission per good, product, or service sold when selling on behalf of another business. In the podcast, I share that I'm an affiliate for several companies and people and that a key for me being a successful affiliate is not only believing in the work I promote but being a raving client as well. I gave the example of Heard Accounting, which I hired to do my monthly bookkeeping, quarterly tax estimates, and file my annual taxes. Personally, I would never join a mental health affiliate program that profited off of the exploitation of therapists. These types of affiliate programs are ones that promote therapists acting as “gig workers” and treating their profession as a side hustle.
Subletting your therapy office. Leasing your office to another person on days you won't be using the office. Many therapists will sublease their office to other folks on nights or weekends to help offset the cost of rent or to generate additional revenue.
Sponsors or paid advertisements for blogs, social media posts, podcasts, or YouTube channel. If you have a popular blog, social media account, podcast, or Youtube channel, you can reach out to aligned brands and ask them to sponsor your work or be paid advertisers. This works best when you believe in the product or service they provide, and it's aligned with your audience. I gave the example of approaching a foam roller company that I use to sponsor my work and use the angle that many therapists carry stress in their bodies and are sitting all day and could use a good foam roller (this was a fictional example! I don't have any foam roller sponsors for my blog or podcast!). I'm usually my own sponsor of the Mind Money Balance podcast. I often share about workshops I'm hosting, events I'm speaking at, or group coaching programs I'm leading on the podcast.
Sell your creations. For art and music therapists, sell your art or music. Sell prints, original artwork, records, or recordings of your guided meditations.
Keys to Passive Income For Therapists
To have successfully leveraged income or multiple streams of income as a therapist, you need to have an audience. You have to have people outside of your family members and friends willing to purchase your leveraged offer. This generally means having regular content creation that warms people up to the idea of buying from you. For me, that's my email list, podcast and accompanying blog, and Instagram. I also nurture my audience and grow my audience by guesting on others' podcasts, writing guest blog posts, and public speaking engagements. Without an audience who knows and likes a therapist's work, it's nearly impossible to sell a leveraged offer successfully.
The other key to successfully leveraged income is making sure that not only do you have an audience that wants to buy, but that what you are delivering is FIRE! Too many times I see people get caught up in growing an audience and selling that they forget to deliver a product, good, or service that people will rave about. Delivering on what you sell is the best form of marketing.
Multiple Streams of Income for Therapists
I think it's great to have multiple streams of income for therapists. My personal preference will be to get your private practice in a sustainable place then leverage your strengths and interests to generate supplementary revenue streams.
If you want to learn more on when it’s time to add a supplemental leveraged stream, check out my course “Stages of Growth” to ensure you’ve build a solid foundation before you spread yourself too thin. I’ve also got a suite of mini courses for therapists that can help in your private practice journey.
Learn More About Investing
Earlier when I spoke about investing, I briefly mentioned that I had completed a course about investing. Let me tell you, friend… how much I LOVE learning about investing from Amanda Holden. She’s got puns for days which makes learning about investing MUCH more palatable. The course consists of 15 videos and you'll gain an intimate, working knowledge of investing and the tools necessary to build wealth. You will walk away from this course with your own simple, effective, and personalized investment plan—like me!
If this sounds like something up your alley, click here to purchase the course!
Some links included in this article are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
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Per usual, I put up a poll on Instagram and had a couple of ideas for today's podcast and today's theme won by a landslide. So I'm going to be talking about passive income. And don't worry, I will give lots of caveats as we get into it. And just so you know, before we shift gears and really get into it, if you are on my email list, you saw last week that I hinted that I'm having a bit of a business identity crisis, and I'll share more about it in the coming weeks. Just know that moving forward, starting in April of 2022, since it's the middle of March, right now, each month of the podcast will have a theme. So until we get to April, they're just going to be some kind of fun grab bag style podcast. So that's why today we're going to be talking about passive income for therapists.
Let's start out with a definition. Passive income is income earned without having to work. And I don't want to be a Debbie Downer here. But I do think a lot of passive income marketing claims are just that: marketing claims. I think that it has been really sold to us boldly and brazenly as of late that all you have to do is like write a book or sell a t-shirt or create an E-course and throw up a landing page, and all of a sudden, you're going to be swimming in money and never have to work again. And I just think that it is grossly simplified in the online space, how to generate passive income. So I would say it's passive income for therapists isn't a myth, but it definitely is not as easy as it has been touted. So I think it's possible ish. But I want to be really clear that there's nothing passive about putting your time and energy and effort into writing a book, creating a course, or releasing merchandise, okay, it takes a ton of energy, effort, and I hate to say it, but like grit and hustle to get something that might eventually be passive, adjacent off the ground. And also, like you need an audience to sell it to, it's great to have you know, 10 to 30 people in your orbit purchase those things from you. But you really have to be able to grow an audience and nurture an audience in order to make that money. Really regenerative. So my personal opinion is if you are a psychotherapist, and you are really interested in creating something passive, the very best way to do that is by first having a thriving, profitable private practice. Why do I say that? Because having a profitable practice means you have consistent referrals coming in, which means you already have a lot of the key variables in place to launch something that will generate additional income. If you already have a profitable practice, then that means you have recognizability. So you've got a niche and people know you whether it's people within your community, people within your state, or people across state lines in your niche. People who have profitable practices already know how to speak about their work, so others understand it, right, they are getting referrals beyond just a therapists directory or just beyond one really overzealous primary care provider. They know how to talk about themselves and are comfortable talking about their work in a way that is generating new clients. And in order to have a profitable practice, they also have to be managing the back end of their business. So not just being a really good clinician, but understanding the ins and outs of their practice. They've got software that works for them, they have systems that work for them, they are paying their taxes on time, they're paying themselves on time. So just by default, before you think about adding in multiple streams of income, I first and foremost think you need to really dial in the strength of your practice. And then once it's full or once you're starting to generate a waitlist that can be your cue that it can be time to expand beyond the clinical space or beyond, beyond the couch, if you will. And I also think that having a sustained Private Practice means that if something were to happen to this "passive offer," the clinician would still have the ability to generate sustainable living from their practice, I really think about it. Like, I use a waterfall metaphor a lot. But I always think about filling up one bucket with this waterfall and then when you have overflow, then doing other things, because otherwise what happens is you can spread your energy too thin, and put some of your effort into creating a profitable practice, some of your effort into creating an e book, some of your effort into creating a podcast, and you're splitting your energy instead of first having something that's working really, really well. And then when you have that going, taking that overflow of a financial energy or of people who are interested in working with you and turning it in to something else. So that's kind of the strong caveat out of the way, I also want to talk about this idea of how we use the language, passive income. Because passive income if I haven't made it clear yet, it's like--it exists, but it does not exist in the way that people make you think that it exists. The way that people talk about passive income is like just selling an eBook, and then it will sell itself and you'll make all this money while you sleep. I really think those are more like leveraged offers or leveraged income, because you're leveraging your labor, your energy, your expertise in creating something in the hopes that somebody will purchase those things. And eventually, it will become income that doesn't require your active energy. So I think there really are three types of income that I'm going to be talking about today. Passive income, which is earning money without working, active income, which is exchanging your time, energy labor directly for income, and leveraged income, which is where you put in work up front. And eventually, some of that income later, will be less active.
So let's start at the top with truly passive income. And that my friends, is investing. I know, investing as a self-employed therapist is my very favorite way to generate passive income, because it's the only time where I'm actually putting my money somewhere and not working. I'm not exchanging my labor, my time, my expertise to generate more money. I personally invest mostly within my retirement accounts, I am based in the US so some of these terms will differ if you are outside of the US. But in the US, retirement accounts for traditionally employed are tax-advantaged accounts with names like a 401k or 403B, and you can have a personal account like an IRA, an individual retirement account or a Roth IRA. And then retirement accounts for self-employed folks like therapists and private practice are going to be accounts with names like SEP (Simplified Employee Pension), it's a terrible name, solo 401k. And then, of course, an IRA or Roth IRA. Within those retirement accounts, I invest in plain old low-cost index funds, bond funds, and REITs--that's a real estate investment trust. When you look at the S&p 500 over the past 20 years, the average stock market return is 7.45%. It goes up, it goes down, it can be a rocky ride when you are looking at it daily, weekly, monthly, but on average, over the course of time, investing in the stock market has historically been a great way to generate passive income. I'm not an investment expert, I strongly recommend checking out Amanda Holden's course Invested Development, I just finished it up and I can't stop talking about it. I will link to it in the in the show notes. But that's my absolute favorite way to generate passive income because I'm truly not working for it. And if that feels really scary, I get it. My next favorite, though definitely less lucrative way to generate passive income is through a high yield savings account or an interest-paying checking account. A high yield savings account usually has a few more parameters than a plain vanilla savings account, but it gives you more interest. So usually there will be a minimum account balance you have to maintain or they only let you do six or eight transfers a month, but it often ends up being worth it, I have a personal high yield savings account through Ally Bank at the time of this recording, it's earning half a percent Whew. Which is better than point 1%, which is what a lot of other places are offering. And then for my business, I have an American Express business checking account that pays interest in it at the time of this recording is paying 1.1%. So those to me are truly passive ways to generate income is through investing in a high yield savings account. If you're listening to this, and you're like, really Lindsay that is not shiny, or sparkly or exciting. I know. I know, it's not I'm I'm not here to, like pull the wool over your eyes, I'm here to be like really transparent about generating income, and creating multiple income streams. So that's passive income. That's the first way you can generate income as a therapist.
Active income for therapists are ways that we traditionally think about work. And of course, there are things like one on one therapy, I would also include couples therapy and family therapy in that bucket and group therapy. So where you are exchanging 45 to 90 minutes of your time, for an hourly rate, and I've talked about that ad nauseam look, you can look at old episodes, or you can look at my blog for information on how to set rates and what to charge and how many clients you should see. So that is a way to generate active income. Other ways are through group therapy, public speaking--I think public speaking is a great way for therapists to generate more active income outside of their private practice, hosting things like workshops, retreats, or live courses are other great ways to generate active income. In my dream of dreams, I would love to host like a three day, five day, seven day retreat, that's like a mix of teaching and learning and movement and sleeping and eating, but we live in pandemic time. So right now that retreats just gonna be living in my mind's eye. Other ways to generate income for therapists, active income, offering supervision, if you have your full licensure, you can provide supervision for one-on-one or in a group, that's a great way to generate some more income. Consulting is also another great way to think about expanding beyond the therapy room. So back in the olden days, I used to provide information to corporations, healthcare organizations, on helping to just understand the difference between like stress and anxiety or the difference between sadness and depression for corporations for schools, so that they could help identify, Hey, is my employee? Is my student, is my colleague having like normal stress? Or do they need some extra help? And how can I provide them with extra help? Like, how can I connect them to a professional, so I used to do that. And I loved doing that and being able to speak, you know, through the lens of psychoeducation. Without a bunch of jargon to different corporations, we just don't think about how many skills we have as mental health professionals that so many other people are hungry for. And we have the ability to translate research jargon and technical jargon into very approachable language, because that's what we do with our clients all the time. So pinching yourself to corporations, schools, churches, those can be great options as well. I also think a creative way to generate active income is teaching classes or tutoring. So if you are, I'm a social worker. So I'll use myself as an example. Like, let's say, I am a social worker, may did a really good job at passing by Social Work exam or passing my boards. I could throw up an ad somewhere and offer to take social work students or people who are in their limited licensure, and tutor them on how to pass that exam. You could also just think about tutoring beyond just that exam. And think about providing tutoring in counseling psychology or social work courses, particularly if you live in a university area. Those are great ways to think about therapy or I'm sorry to think about income beyond one on one therapy, but they are definitely active. And the final category is what people say is passive but again, we're gonna really talk about it straightforward and say it's leveraged income. So again, this is It's usually packaged to you as passive, but it really could not be further from the truth. There's nothing passive about the things I'm going to talk to you about. But I would say it's potentially leveraged income. So e-courses if you are, maybe a, like a somatic therapist and you do a lot of work around helping clients get in tune with their bodies, maybe you can't provide somatic therapy in an e-course. But maybe you could provide like, a three-parter on somatics, tips on how to get in touch with your mind and body, and a few like coping skills. So definitely staying within the realm of psycho Ed, but definitely something adjacent to your work. Another kind of theme for an e-course could be if you do parent management, behavior training, or if you're trained in everyday parenting, any sort of those like parenting interventions, you could turn some of those things into an e-course, by again, divorcing yourself from the clinical and diagnostic and thinking more about like the coaching aspects. The last few episodes, I focused on coaching, so you can listen to those for some good differentiators. But that's an idea. Books could be considered leverage income, whether it's an e-book, whether it is traditionally published, you pitch it to a publisher and get it published in the world, or whether you publish it a hardcopy. Books, I think books can be a fun, not fun. Maybe they're fun. I will tell you when I wrote my book, was it fun? I don't know.It was a lot of effort. I could tell you that but and I was really thankful and proud of myself when I was done. But I wouldn't necessarily say it was the most fun way I've spent my time. Anyway, books can be a great way to solidify yourself as an expert to get your information out into the world, especially for people who can't afford to work with you. Or again, going back to the top of this episode. If you have a full practice and you're ready to expand beyond, it can be a great way to get people to have some sort of help adjacent information in their hands or on their e-reader. Right. But I personally don't think books are the best way to make a ton of money. Like let's say you sell 100 books, and you're getting you know, 10 bucks a pop. That's great. But that's not going to be enough for you to retire. Personally, I earned like $1.10 per book, if because it's traditionally published. So that's when people ask me, where should I buy it. I'm like, just buy it from your local bookstore. My cut is the same. I got an advance for my book, which was great. But I'm definitely not retiring off of my book, but you should still buy it. It is good. Even though it sounds like I'm like whining over right now. Which the next thing is a workbook. So my book technically is a workbook. It's very activity-based. It's very, you can't see me because I'm recording but I'm like touching my fingertips to my thumbs like it's very tangible. There are quick takeaways, you can kind of play around with how you want to use the financial anxiety solution. So you could also do a workbook. If you are more of an experiential therapist or teacher that can be a great way. Getting paid for your content, getting paid for a podcast or for a blog, I think a cool way to get paid via a podcast is to have a Patreon. So let's say for example like I release an episode a week here on Mind Money Balance, but if I wanted to release a bonus episode that was more training based or that was more tangible, or maybe came with like a downloadable workbook, I could have a Patreon set up where you would have to pay a certain fee in order to get access to that. One of my friends who has a podcast, Julia Menez, who has the Geobreeze travel podcast, she has a Patreon setup, so her podcast is free. But if you want to get access to her travel hacking workshops, you have to join her Patreon. So that's kind of like a tiered content structure where some is free and then some was like premium. So Patreon can be great for that. If you love to write, you could also get paid to write your blog by doing a Substack. So some of my friends have email newsletters that go out. And they are like snippets or shorter versions of their essays, but their full essays are on the Substack and it's the same thing where you get some things for free but then you have to pay to access the full range of essays or maybe additional essays. So that's a way to kind of leverage your work for some income. You could do branded merch, I think a lot of therapists like to do things like journals, mugs, stress balls, those could be fun things to do. So you could do branded merch, you could do a membership site, a membership site where you are available for office hours, or Q&A, or maybe you teach on something, or maybe you have just a great database of friends, and really bright people who want to bring to your world you can do paid membership. Affiliate marketing income. So this is how a lot of people say that they monetize a blog or a podcast or YouTube channel is through affiliate marketing. So affiliate marketing is where you sell somebody else's product or service. And you get a flat fee, or a percentage of whatever it is that you sell. I'm an affiliate for a few companies or organizations whose work I absolutely adore. And I'm only an affiliate for things and people who I regularly use their products, goods or services, right. I'm not like getting a food subscription box and becoming an affiliate for them if I don't regularly order for them and eat from them and love them. Right. So for me, affiliate marketing is great if and when you are truly a fan of what it is that you are being an affiliate for. So I think it's really easy for me to say, for example, I work with Heard Accounting, I've been using them for the second time now to file my taxes and do my annual taxes and do my monthly bookkeeping and quarterly bookkeeping, check-ins, I think their service is fantastic and I talk about it all the time and I recommend it all the time. And I'm an affiliate for them. But I'm an affiliate for them because I love what they provide, I would not be an affiliate for somebody who I was like, I mean, they're fine. But like I don't really get jazzed about it, right. Like I get really jazzed about saying, like, I can really take my foot off the gas with like bookkeeping and stuff and just take a look at it when needed and talk to a real human when needed and make sure that you know, the IRS isn't coming after me for taxes. So with affiliate marketing, the way that it works for me personally, is that I will have affiliate links directly tied to, I'm using Heard as this example, when they have come on the podcast, then I will have an affiliate link there. So if somebody wants to work with Heard, they can click through that link and get on to Heard Accounting. And if they decide to work with them, then I get some money. I think that is a great way again, if you're actually using that thing, otherwise, it can just be really noisy and distracting and not a great use of your time or energy. And affiliate marketing. I really think some people make it their full-time job. I have heard I don't know personally, I've heard a few creators who are like, that's all they do. They're basically just really fantastic salespeople, and they partner with some of these bigger brands or celebrities, and they just like hock their wares. And good for them. You know, you can make a full-time job off of selling other people's things. And if that feels good to you, more power to you. And in order for affiliate marketing to work, you have to have an audience. I could not be a successful affiliate for brands and services and providers that I love if I didn't have people who care what I had to say about it right. So that's my thought on affiliate marketing. Subletting your therapy office. That is pretty that's pretty darn close to passive. Okay, I'll give you that. But I would technically say it's still leveraged income. Because if your subletter doesn't pay or cancels their lease, you're still on the hook for that lease. So that's why I would call it leveraged income, getting sponsors or having paid advertisements for your blogs, social media posts, podcast, or YouTube channel. Again, this is kind of like affiliate marketing except for it's, it's more you're paid upfront. So for example, I'm the one who sponsors the Mind Money Balance podcast, that's why you'll hear me sometimes say, Hey, join this paid workshop or hire me as your coach, or bring me into your organization. So I can do some public speaking for you, plug. I can do those things. But let's say you know, what am I looking at right now I'm looking at a foam roller. Let's say I really loved this foam rolling company. I could reach out to them and say, Hey, do you want to sponsor my podcast, I have a lot of therapists who sit at their desk and who could use a foam roller. And they would say Sure thing, we're gonna give you $500. And you have to talk about us four times over the next month, that is how you could get a sponsor or paid advertisement for some of the work that you are doing. Again, in order to get a sponsorship or paid advertisement, you have to have proof, right? You have to say I have 10,000 people a month coming to my blog, or I have 1000 downloads per episode or I have, you have to have proof that when they pay you for your advertisement, that you have people who are willing to listen or consume that work otherwise, like there's no point of them paying for you because they're also running a business. And they need to make sure that if they're giving you money in exchange for an advertisement that somebody will see or hear said advertisement. And the last kind of leveraged income idea I have for therapists, especially for art and music therapists, sell your art, sell your music, you could sell prints you could sell you know CDs are like kind of passe. Do people make CDs? Records, people make records still, those are cool. But you could sell your prints, you could sell your music. If you're a meditation or yoga adjacent, you could sell a bunch of recordings of a bunch of different guided imagery meditation, so that can be really cool.
So I'm going to recap the leveraged offers just real quick e-courses, books, workbooks paid podcasts using a Patreon paid blog using a Substack, branded merch for your niche or for your brand. paid membership based on whatever niche you inhabit, affiliate marketing income, subletting your therapy office, getting sponsors, or having paid advertisements for your blogs, social media posts, podcast, YouTube channel, and if you're a creative, you could sell your art, your music, your guided meditations.
So I do think it's great for therapists to have multiple streams of income, my personal preference will be to first get your private practice in a place where it's sustainable, then leverage your strengths, leverage your interest to generate additional revenue. For me, my multiple streams of income right now is I'm being pretty transparent. I have one on one therapy, I have a coaching Group a Profitable Practice from the Inside Out, where I help other therapists create profitable practices. I have some live courses coming soon Hint Hint, workshops, you'll see that I do essentially quarterly workshops at a lower income, lower price point. And I have affiliate revenue that I generate through blog posts and my emails. And as I mentioned, I do have a book, but I make like $1 on it. So my friend Lauren, who's an author, coach is probably just like pulling her hair out right now hearing that I'm so sorry, Lauren, but it is what it is.
So is passive income a myth? I don't know. I think it's propped up as being an easy solution. But I think that in order to generate leveraged income, because I think passive income again, does exist, it exists through things like investing in high yield savings accounts. I think leveraged income can be beneficial for therapists. But I think first and foremost, you really have to have a thriving private practice. And once you have that thriving private practice, then you can take some of that additional energy and excitement and pour that into the overflow. And as you pour that energy and excitement overflow into one of these leveraged offers, it may be that it generates enough money. So you can do four days a week of therapy instead of five, or you can take four weeks of vacation instead of three, and then eventually it may grow. So that slice of pie that is occupying in your income is bigger, and then maybe your one-on-one work gets smaller. But I think it's a really, really insincere when people say, just throw up a course and you'll be rich overnight. I don't think that's fair. And I and I don't think it's true either. I heard somebody on a podcast recently who had a successful I don't know if they had a successful membership or a successful course I can't remember exactly what it was. But they said to the host. I'm paraphrasing here because I don't want to like rain on anyone's parade. But they said to the host Yeah, it was so easy for me because I live on Facebook. And I think That was really like my antenna went up because I'm like, I don't want to live on Facebook, I don't want to be on another platform. You know, any time I'm not doing therapy work or walking my dog or cooking a meal or connecting with my partner, I don't want to be there. And you might be saying that as you listen to this podcast about having a podcast, or about having an Instagram account, or about having an email as some of those things that I do leverage to generate some additional money. But I think it's really important that you are honest with yourself. If you think that the best way to generate money is by having a paid Facebook group, but you hate Facebook. I don't think that's a great choice. I just don't, I think that we have to be really sincere and transparent with ourselves about where we want to be where we don't want to be, how do we want to spend that leverage time and energy, and effort knowing that it is a risk, some of that the energy and effort may pay off with leveraged income, but sometimes it doesn't. And I think it's just important to note that my philosophy is that I think that all private practice therapists should be able to have a thriving financial life with just that slice of the pie. And if you want more or different streams of income, you absolutely can and should, but I don't think you need to burn your therapy license to the ground and become like, you know, an e-book aficionado in order to have a good life. I think that a private practice is more than possible to make sustainable and profitable and if you have extra time and energy or you have a creative itch that needs to be scratched them playing around with a leveraged offer can be great.
So that's my two cents, three cents, five cents, however many minutes is on passive income for therapists. I would love to know what you think, do you think passive income for therapists is a myth? Do you have an income stream that I didn't cover that you think I should dive into? Do you think I'm full of hot air? Whatever it is, let me know over on Instagram, screenshot this episode, and tag me @MindMoneyBalance. I would love to know what you think about multiple streams of income for therapists. And with that, I'll see you next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai