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Setting Up Your Private Practice To Live The Life You Want With Jena Castro-Casbon

Setting Up Private Practice With Jena Castro Casbon

“At some point, you have to start to say, ‘Okay, is this my path? Is this what I want for myself and my life? Or do I want to do something else? Do I want to be in control of my professional, personal, and financial life?’ And I think that is the best thing to do. And to me, private practice is the way to be able to do that.”

~Jena Castro-Casbon

Meet Jena Castro-Casbon

Jena Castro-Casbon, MS CCC-SLP is the founder of The Independent Clinician, a private-practice consultant who has helped 10,000+ speech-language pathologists and occupational therapists start, grow and scale successful private practices through her Start and Grow Your Private Practice Programs.

In This Episode…

Have you been wanting the financial and personal freedom that private practice would allow you but are unsure about how to get started? Jena Castro-Casbon helps Speech Language Pathologists and Occupational Therapists learn how to build up their private practices so that they can have fulfilling careers while also avoiding burnout. Linzy and Jena dig into the common mistakes that people make when setting up their private practices, and Jena shares some simple ways to avoid those pitfalls.

Do not miss this practical and illuminating conversation between Linzy and Jena! It is beneficial not only to those taking the first steps into setting up a practice but also to everyone who is looking for ways to strengthen the business they’ve already built.

Books mentioned in episode:
Rachel Rodgers’ We Should All Be Millionaires
Jen Sincero’s You Are a Badass at Making Money

Want to Connect with Jena Castro-Casbon?

You can find Jena on Instagram @independentclinician and on The Private Practice Success Stories Podcast.

Get Jena’s free Private Practice Roadmap: www.startyourprivatepractice.com/freebie

Join Jena’s free Facebook group: SLP & OT Private Practice Beginners Group

And check out her website: www.independentclinician.com 

Want to work with Linzy?

Free Money Momentum Challenge

Do you find yourself avoiding your private practice finances? Do you have no idea where to even begin? 

 I’m hosting a FREE live 4-day challenge, the Money Momentum Challenge, from June 20th to 23rd, 2023!

During our four days together, you’ll get my support and guidance to step out of avoidance, take real action, and create ease and flow around your private practice finances, so you don’t need to avoid them!

And as a bonus, it only takes 5 minutes a day. And there’s a 500-dollar prize for one lucky therapist or health practitioner who completes the challenge. You in?

I can’t wait to see you inside! Sign up for the FREE Money Momentum Challenge here: http://join.moneymomentumchallenge.com/

Episode Transcript

Jena [00:00:02] And so at some point, you kind of have to start to say, like, okay, is this my path? Is this what I want for myself in my life or do I want to do something else? Do I want to be in control of my professional, personal and financial life? And, I mean, I think that’s the best thing to do, right. And to me, private practice is the way to be able to do that. 

Linzy [00:00:28] Welcome to the Money Skills For Therapists podcast, where we answer this question, How can therapists and health practitioners go from money, shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills For Therapists. Hello and welcome back to today’s podcast. So today’s episode is with Jena Casbon-Castro. Jena is a speech language pathologist by training. She’s the founder of the independent clinician and she’s a private practice consultant who’s helped more than 10,000 speech language pathologists and occupational therapists start, grow and scale their private practices. I am so honored to have Jena on today. She’s somebody who I really admire in the online teaching space, and I think you’re going to get a taste for why that is today in our conversation where we get into really stepping out and making your own thing, the power of that. And I think as you’re listening to the episode, you’ll hear just the spark that Jena has for that and we talk about that, about that spark and drive of following what excites you and making what you really want, whether that’s a private practice or a course or some other kind of online offer for the people that you love to serve. We get into a conversation of why women should make more money and the good things that happen when skilled, caring women have more money to share with the people around them and taking responsibility and really connecting with your power in private practice. And she talks about this very key point that nobody is coming to save us. It’s all us. And so we are the ones who have to make private practices that work. Here’s my conversation with Jena. 

Linzy [00:02:23] All right, Jena, welcome to the podcast. 

Jena [00:02:26] Thank you so much for having me here, Linzy. 

Linzy [00:02:28] I am so excited to have you here. We were just talking off mic about how we get to talk, like we send voice messages sometimes and we’ve been in groups together, but I don’t think we’ve ever had like just an us, like one on one conversation. So it’s a real treat for me to be able to have this conversation with you. 

Jena [00:02:43] Well, thank you so much for having me. And I look forward to, you know, having you ask me a bunch of questions and getting to know your audience, too. 

Linzy [00:02:49] Yeah. To give context for folks who are listening. So a lot of my audience, Jena, are mental health therapists, but we also have folks in the audience who are acupuncturists, SLPs, OTs, massage therapists, coaches. And some of them might not know who you are yet because you specifically serve SLPs, so speech language pathologists and OTs, occupational therapists. So just to give folks who are listening context, Jena is a rock star in the SLP and OT space. She has a course that I was saying to her off mic, I think of her as the Allison Puryear of SLPs. So in our space in mental health therapy, I feel like Allison Puryear is the one who teaches most of us how to start our private practices if we’ve started in the last five years. And I think that that’s very much who you are in the SLP space. Would that be accurate? 

Jena [00:03:36] Yeah, it’s accurate. You know, I started this company a long time ago. I’ve been doing this for a long time now. I started in 2008. My own practice, I actually start in 2006. And if I could tell that story super quick? 

Linzy [00:03:49] Yeah. 

Jena [00:03:49] So I’m a speech pathologist and I got my dream job at a rehabilitation hospital working with people that had strokes and brain injuries, and I absolutely loved it for about a year and a half. At that point, I started to feel stuck and I started to feel like I was spending so much time on documentation, so much time in meetings, I wasn’t able to give the kind of care to the clients that I wanted to. And I was starting to feel burned out, only like a year and a half into the field. And so I had some coworkers who, they had their own private practices, which I did not know, and they said, Hey, Jena, why don’t you start your own private practice? And I looked at them like they were crazy and I said, I’m 26. How could I start a private practice? And they’re like, Well, we started our own practices when we were in our twenties, so like you should too. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea that was an option. So basically they really, they mentored me, they helped me get set up and they said, you know, the next time someone asks if you treat private clients, you should say yes. And so, well, that’s what happened, right? I said yes the next time. And it felt so good not only to have that like control over the client care, like I felt so good about it. And I was also making the income that I was, you know, wanting to be making, right? Having been able to set my own rate and people not bat an eye out. It was so awesome. Right? So in that first year of just seeing three or four visits a week after work and on the weekends, I was able to make $24,000 in that first year on the side. And again, I was 26, right? I had student loans, I had a wedding coming up. And that kind of money was a total game changer. So, and it felt so freeing, right? Because I got like, you know, air quotes, good job at a good hospital, but the pay actually wasn’t that good. And so to be able to make that extra income was absolutely like, unreal. And it kind of got me hooked on this idea of earning more than other people thought I could or that other people were willing to pay me. Right. 

Linzy [00:05:50] And I love that you had those supportive coworkers. Like, I feel like there’s that whole thing of, you know, you’re the sum of the five people you spend the most time with or whatever. And just the influence that people have around us. And I think so many therapists and practitioners, when they do work at like, agencies or hospitals, it can become such a demoralizing environment where the people around you are like, burnt out because they’ve been there longer than you. And you actually get the opposite message so often where it’s like, well, this is how it is. And like I came up in social work and that is the social work way. Where you’re just like, Well, that’s it. You go home at night, you drink wine, don’t forget your wine. There’s a lot of jokes about wine in social work, which is like, uh oh, like red flag, right? But what I’m hearing is you actually had these folks who almost like showed you the escape hatch. Who were like, hey, there’s also this other way that you can, like, either make more money now, but it also ultimately is how you got out of an environment that sounds like it would have probably worn you down quite a lot over time. 

Jena [00:06:41] Definitely. Right. So I owe a lot to mentorship, right? Like having – if they hadn’t have mentored me early on, none of this probably would have happened. And I’ll come back to that later because mentorship is something that continues to be a part of my role in the programs that I do. But basically what happened is, you know, I started my own practice, I started seeing, you know, I started with like three or four clients. I worked up to about 12, like again on the side of this job, that was a crazy time, but whatever, it was fine. And at some point my friends from, you know, grad school and other places started asking me, like, Jena, how are you doing this? Like, What are you doing? And so I started to tell them and then I was like, you know, there’s really no information for speech language pathologists about how to start private practices. Like I could probably figure out how to put some information up on the internet that people could download and that I could charge for. And so that’s what I did. So like, you know, nights and weekends, this is before I had kids, I would – that’s what I did. I would, you know, play around on the Internet and figure out how to take what I was doing in my own private practice and teach other people how to do it step by step. Because, again, there just – there literally wasn’t any information and people were hungry, like people wanted that information. And that was also really interesting to me because it was like another source of income, right? So then I had like, until I left my job at the hospital, but like for a while I had like the hospital money, the private practice money and the independent clinicians, the name of my company, I had the money from that. And that was really cool and I really felt like I was fulfilled in terms of like, I would – I had patients, that I was working with, that I loved, they loved me. I was doing my best work. And then I was also able to serve my – the therapists who were purchasing my products and starting their own practices. And so that really got me to think about like, not only the income, which was admittedly very cool, but also the impact. And then at some point a couple of years later, I made the decision to make my practice a lot smaller and then eventually, actually basically close it so that I could grow the independent clinician and teach infinitely more people how to start their own practices, because then they would have their own clients. And so, like, I could serve exponentially more people through teaching people how to start their own private practices than I could at my own practice. And so, that’s been a really cool journey for me. 

Linzy [00:09:08] It’s a very cool journey and I relate a lot to your journey. I feel like I could, like change out some words and a very similar story and something that I notice about you and I always see about you Jena, is like you have such spark, right? In terms of just like seizing an opportunity, and being like, well, I could put something on the internet, I could do that. Right. And I think sometimes I think for folks listening to the podcast, it’s like you might have something that you know you have a unique passion and gift about or something that everybody asks you about, right? Like that’s always a clue is like, what do other people around you ask you about? Or they’re, like struggling and you’re like, Oh no, it’s like this way, right? Like you’ve got a solution that you figured out which other people, it just doesn’t come naturally to them. I think for a lot of folks listening, you might already know what that thing is for yourself, right? And whether that’s something that’s part of your field already in the work that you do or whether it’s something different. You know, we all have these kind of unique gifts and I love Jenna that you just go for yours because I think so often we can spend five or ten years contemplating, well, I could do this thing, but like, I’m busy with clients or like I’m tired and those things are true, you are tired and busy with client. But what I’m hearing from you and what I see in you is like, the possibilities that happen when you just go for it and build that thing, even if it’s like a push. And for a little bit it might feel hard. The possibility and the increased impact that that opens up for you kind of on the other side of that creation journey. 

Jena [00:10:27] Yeah, I mean, I believe that clinicians and therapists, no matter what your background are, are truly the best people. Right? Like we’re the best, most giving, you know, kind, smart people. Right? And we need help, right? A lot of us are really, you know, drowning in our professions, completely burned out, not appreciated. And no one’s coming to save you, right? Like if you work harder at work, right? Because all of us work really hard at work. What happens is, is that the boss notices that you’re working hard and they’re probably going to give you more work. 

Linzy [00:10:58] Right, that’s your reward. 

Jena [00:11:00] That’s your reward. And I see that happen time and again to like the nicest people, right. And so at some point, you kind of have to start to say, like, okay, is this my path? Is this what I want for myself in my life or do I want to do something else? Do I want to be in control of my professional, personal and financial life? And I mean, I think that’s the best thing to do, right. And to me, private practice is the way to be able to do that. Right? So that’s why I’m so passionate about helping in particular, speech language pathologist and occupational therapists start their own practices so that they can create a life that they absolutely love for themselves, for their families, and to be able to give the level of care that they want to be able to do and that they’re truly incapable of doing in a traditional setting just because of all those limitations. 

Linzy [00:11:51] Yes, absolutely. I think those traditional settings, they’re structured to like, maximize efficiency or maximize profit for somebody else. They’re not actually structured to let you be at your best, as a therapist. Right. And really have your gift shine or have creative ways of serving your clients, you know, that work with your specific gifts. Those things are not really available to us when we’re in those other people’s environments, basically. And something that makes me think of Jena, is like I remember when I stepped out of agency work, I started in the violence against women sector, which is a particularly toxic sector because everybody is very traumatized. And a lot of times folks have come from violence or abuse backgrounds. So they also, you know, there’s a reason you’re drawn to certain work. And so lots of dysfunction and lots of toxicity, lots of like, bullying between staff that happens in that sector as a whole, I would say and definitely where I was. And something that I thought about when I stepped out into private practice is I remember thinking like, I get to set the culture, this is mine now, right? Like I set the norm in the culture, even if it’s in this room that I sit in by myself until somebody comes in, I give them a session, I set the norms, I set the tone. I get to create, you know, the environment and a culture in this space. And I think that’s very powerful. You know, in addition to all of the pieces you’re talking about, like getting paid well, building your life to look out well, your actual experience of work can be very different when you consciously build it and when you actually tap into the power that you have to make it what you actually want it to be when you’re in private practice. 

Jena [00:13:17] Yes, 1,000% to all of that. 

Linzy [00:13:20] So I’m curious, Jena, from your perspective, you’ve worked with literally thousands of speech language pathologists and OTs. And I’m curious from your perspective, what are some of the biggest financial mistakes you’ve seen people making in private practice? 

Jena [00:13:33] Yeah. So to me, one of the most obvious ones is undervaluing your services and just not charging enough, particularly, you know, people who go to the private pay room who are able to set their own rate, right. I think people have a lot of hesitations because they feel guilty about charging people, right, because they’ve decided that maybe people can’t afford it, that it’s a hardship that, you know, X, Y and Z reason the people are really putting on, like that’s not necessarily true. Right? So I think that, you know, because of that, people tend to devalue and, you know, undercharge their services. And then the other thing that happens is that people also don’t raise their rates for a long time, right. So not only are people starting off by under charging, again because of that feeling bad, they also are very slow to increase their rates. I literally saw a Facebook post and Linzy, I think that I sent this to you. 

Linzy [00:14:26] You shared it with me, yeah. 

Jena [00:14:27] But this woman was like, you know, after ten years, I’m going to raise my rates by $5 an hour. And I was like, what? Like after ten years? To me, the main reason why I teach my students to increase their prices is if they have more value to offer, right? So if you have more credentials, you have done more trainings, you’ve done more certifications or you’re offering more to your clients, right? Then you’re completely justified in raising your rates, right? You can also do it just because you want to, right? You’re the boss. If you want to increase your rates because of inflation or whatever else, you can totally do that too. But I also tell people like the way to communicate it often is to talk about the increased value and whatnot. But nonetheless, this woman, after ten years, surely she has improved her skills. You know, she’s gotten better as a therapist, she’s offered more. To only increase by $5 an hour, like I wanted to scream. I was like, Oh my God, this is so sad to me. But also like, this is my mission. Like, this is why my work is not done, because I can’t have people out there who are doing this, right. To themselves, right? They’re doing it to themselves. 

Linzy [00:15:37] So something I noticed about that post when you shared it with me is, this is my mental health, you know, my therapist, mind. There was also so much emotion and intensity in this. Like it was like – and I can’t remember the exact wording now, but it was her like really spelling out like that, I really didn’t want to do this, but I have to do it. Like there was so much emotion and intensity packed into it, that it was kind of, like felt like a bit like a punch in the, in the gut to read it. It was like, whoa, this is so intense for $5 fee raise. And over ten years, just with inflation alone, she’s making much less money now, than she was when she started out ten years ago. Right. And I just saw in the paper today that in Canada, at least, inflation has hit 6%. The Bank of Canada just made an announcement today because they’re trying to offset that, everything’s gone up by 6%. So if you’re not raising your rate kind of incrementally over time, you’re actually starting to make less money and your life’s getting more expensive. But you’re actually making the same that you were making three years ago or five years ago. Right. And these are kind of like harsh financial realities that sometimes are hard to stomach because we don’t want to have to raise our rates. 

Jena [00:16:37] Well, right. But that’s also like why people go into private practice, right? Because the flipside of that is when you’re working for someone else as an employee, they are deciding how much to pay you. Right. And they’re deciding if you get a raise, either a market adjustment raise or like a merit raise or, you know, whatever the types of things are, right. You’re kind of waiting for someone else to decide, are you worthy of that? Is that in the budget? It’s completely out of your control, right? When you have your own business, you’re in charge of how much like, of setting that fee rate, right? And so like, take the opportunity to actually do that. 

Linzy [00:17:13] And that’s something that I see sometimes is when we have, especially when we have come out of again, like hospitals or agencies, is sometimes we’ve internalized that feeling that as you say, like somebody else is coming. It’s somebody else’s responsibility. And we don’t necessarily fully step into the fact that you are the boss now. You’re the boss, you’re the CEO, you’re the CFO. You’re all of it, right? You’re all of it. And if you’re not taking kind of like a grounded perspective and making grounded decisions from a big picture perspective about what the business needs, what you need as an employee. Right? If you see yourself as an employee of the business, what is your best employee need to be paid to be well and to thrive and keep generating money for the business? Because if you’re living hand-to-mouth, you’re not going to be doing your best work anymore and you’re going to be on the road to burnout and you might actually be at the point where you leave the profession. And I see that happen to people where it’s just, you’re just done because you’ve been overdoing it for so long, right? So if you don’t stop and take that big picture perspective and make those decisions, sometimes even if they’re hard or scary, nobody else is going to do it for you. You know, you’re just kind of inside of like a machine that’s kind of broken. So that was the first thing then Jena, is fees. You see, people struggle with fees. What other mistakes have you noticed private practitioners making about money? 

Jena [00:18:24] Well, a lot of just not thinking about profitability, right. So people kind of not being fully aware of like what are they bringing in? And then also what are they spending? In my space, anyway, a lot of people feel like you can’t have a private practice unless you have like a brick and mortar location, right? So the way that I teach people to start often is like by going into people’s homes or by using community locations or, you know, kind of not taking on that overhead to start so that you can start with a profitable private practice. Yes. Right. And so what I see is that people like go and they they lease spaces that they can not afford. And you know, then it’s so much stress, right? Because like they see that rent, like let’s just even say it’s like $1,000 a month or whatever. And they’re like, okay, I could probably do that. Like that’s, you know, X number of clients. I could probably do that. But then they forget that lik,e you have to furnish the space, right? And there’s like Wi-fi and there’s like a, you know, maybe a cleaning fee and like extra insurance and all this kind of other stuff. So all of a sudden their expenses continue to go up and they’re kind of still thinking like, okay, but, you know, 12 clients a month, let’s say, should cover it. And so a lot of people come to me like in my later programs with just almost no profit, right? So they’re like working for an entire year and they’re say, oh, I only made, you know, actually like $12,000 last year. And I’m like, oh, my gosh, like, we have to fix this right away. And so that’s something that I see happen a lot is that people just don’t realize how much they’re overspending on expenses and overhead and they’re just not bringing in enough to be profitable in the way that they went to private practice to be. 

Linzy [00:20:04] Right, yeah. Because every dollar that you spend in your business is a dollar that can’t come home to you. Right. And so, like, that’s something to take seriously when you are making those kinds of decisions. Because I totally, I see that in myself sometimes even when you do that quick math of like, well, if I do this thing for me, it’s like, okay, it’s only like two students or it’s only four client sessions or whatever. But you forget that, you know, then you have all these other things you’re paying for and then when do the client sessions start that actually pay you? And then some of those client sessions would actually be going towards taxes, if you want to think about it that way. And suddenly it’s like you’re seeing 30 clients a month, but you’re actually only getting cash coming in home from five of those clients. Right. And you’re working hard and getting paid worse than you were getting paid in that hospital or agency that you worked hard to leave. So I completely agree with you. I think obviously I’m a big fan and I think you are too, of like people seeing their numbers, understanding your numbers, and then like making numbers that work. Like you need to make math that maths, right? It needs to work. And like I’m maybe a former board game player, my partner owned a board game cafe for a few years. So for a while that’s what we did is like, before I had kids also, go there after work, play games. We like, met a bunch of geeky game guys. So I learned how to play these intense board games and in board games you build a machine, right? It’s like you get the ability to do one thing and that feeds into this next thing and then that allows this other thing to happen and that gives you the end result and the winning. And I’m starting to think about businesses like that too, or it’s like you’re building a machine, right? Like your fee, combined with your schedule, combined with your expenses, gives you the ultimate result, which is how much do you get paid? Right. And in that machine, also, we want to make sure you’re saving for taxes. So what you’re getting paid is actually your money, not just money that’s actually 30% taxes that you’re going to owe a tax time, but you’ve spent it, right. So, sometimes we’ve built a machine that doesn’t work. And unless you actually stop and look at your numbers, you don’t know that. So you’re working harder, feeding something that is never going to work because the math doesn’t math. 

Jena [00:21:52] I love that. The math doesn’t math. I’m going to use that. That’s a good one. I’ll credit you with that, but that’s a good one. 

Linzy [00:21:57] Oh, you don’t need to credit me, I got it from financial bloggers. So yeah, I think it’s just out there. It belongs to all of us. So I’m curious, Jena, what resources do you recommend when it comes to money mindset? What has really like, hit the spot for you? 

Jena [00:22:12] Yeah. So I think that money mindset is something again that a lot of clinicians struggle with. And so, you know, for me and for those of you listening, you can’t see this. If anyone is seeing this on video. I have a whole bunch of books behind me. I’m like a big business book nerd. And so the two books that I really recommend to clinicians who are struggling with money mindset, struggling with feeling, you know, worthy, feeling like they have the confidence to charge, are “We Should All Be Millionaires”, by Rachel Rodgers. And “You Are a Badass at Making Money”, by Jen Sincero. I think that those books, you know, they’re both written by women and they both really kind of help women see that like you are worthy, right. And that you don’t have to feel guilty about charging for your services, for which you have a master’s degree or a Ph.D. or like extensive schooling and, you know, whatever. And so I think that those two books are the ones that I recommend the most for people who are really struggling with those money mindset issues, right. I’ve got other money mindset books which, you know, I like to read this kind of stuff. But for the general population, I think that both of those authors do a great job of breaking stuff down, having people think about, like their old money stories and whether things are serving them or not, and just creating new beliefs around money. And so, those are the two I recommend. 

Linzy [00:23:32] Yeah. And I love that they’re books by women too, because I think that as women, we get extra money baggage from society, especially when we’re in helping professions like we are, where it’s like, well, helping is good. Like, that’s the reward in itself. And it’s like, that doesn’t allow you to retire or build a house or send your kid to school or have good food to eat, right. Like we do need to make sure that we really value the work that we’re doing, which often, as you say, like we have extensive education to be able to deliver those services. And I always think about how the fact, usually you have extensive education built on natural gifts and skills that most people don’t have, right. Like not everybody would be able to be an SLP or an OT. I can tell you, like I probably would not be very good at those things. Not everybody is able to be a mental health therapist, right? Like I have a friend who’s a paramedic who would see things that I would never recover from if I saw what he saw. He was scared of my job. He’s like, I can’t believe you sit and talk to people about horrible things that have happened, right? Like we all have our unique skills and gifts and then we do a bunch of schooling and it’s valuable and it changes people’s lives in profound ways, right. And we need to be connected to that. So I love that those are two books by women and we’ll put them in the show notes that you can check out, if you’re finding yourself struggling to value what you do or to feel like making money is an okay thing to do, a good thing to do, a way to have impact. I know Rachel Rodgers, that’s one of the things that she talks about, is like we need more women to have more money. When women have money, good things happen. 

Jena [00:24:58] Yeah, that’s completely right. Like the amount of money that I’m now able to, you know, give to a charitable organization or to like to sponsor things, right? Or just even for my own family to be able to put into, you know, kid’s college savings and retirement, to have that extra level of comfort. Like, I have a seven figure business. Like we bring in a lot of revenue, but like I don’t have a very large house. Like I don’t – like I’m not living crazy or anything, right? I just want to be able to have a comfortable life for my family, to be able to put stuff away, to be able to pay my employees well, right. That’s another thing that’s really important to me is to be able to be the boss that I wish that I had had, right. For example, you know, one of my employees is pregnant and she’s, you know, going to be on maternity leave. And I was like, well, I’m going to pay for your maternity leave. Now, for those of you in Canada, like I think ya’ll get pretty nice maternity leaves. In the States, we get nothing. Like there’s literally nothing guaranteed by your employer. And so I was like, Well, I’m just going to pay you during maternity leave and she was floored. And she was like, really? I was like, yes, that’s like the right thing to do. Like more people should do that, right? So in order to do that kind of stuff, like that’s why I want to have a big business. It’s not so that I can have expensive shoes and expensive car and like an overly large house. Like I want to take care of people like my family, my employees and you know, and other people, you know, in the community. So anyway, that’s why I do what I do. 

Linzy [00:26:25] Yes. And I think that’s really helpful because I think that a lot of us still can have these very simplistic ideas about wealth or if people are making like a good income, that it does become very superficial and it becomes about like handbags and shoes and private jets and yachts. And for many people, it doesn’t. It doesn’t, right. Like they channel that money in intentional ways that make other people’s lives better. And I was reflecting on this just recently because we have family – my partner is from Peru and he has family migrating here from Peru. There are seven of them arriving that are going to be moving into my mother in law’s house. And when I saw this room that this family of five was going to be staying in until they got on their feet, two parents and three kids, I was like, this is not acceptable. We need to make this room way better. And having the money meant that I could like do over the room for them, right? Like I asked questions. Like the questions about the colors that she liked. We were able to, like, make it a completely different space and like, that is really meaningful, right? Like them having a softer landing, arriving in Canada, right. And feeling like they’re being cared for in advance and like having somewhere comfortable to be while they’re like trying to get employed and figuring things out. And like during this massive transition, like that to me is one of the best things that money could buy, right. And that’s what you can do more of when you have more money. I’m getting emotional, but it’s really meaningful, right. And I think that that that is something that we sometimes deceive ourselves about, that it can stop being meaningful when you have more money. But in fact, if you’re intentional, you can just create more good impact when you have more money. 

Jena [00:27:49] Yeah, I think we should all do this right, like I think, I mean, the book, right, We Should all be Millionaires, right? I think we should all be striving toward that, right. To be more comfortable in our own lives and then to also be able to help other people be more comfortable in their lives. Like how, what a great gift, right? To be able to do that, then to be able to provide for, you know, yourself and your family and then for others and through your private practice, right. Or through an online business, right. Like it’s really amazing how creative you can be when it comes to how are you generating that income? Right. But no matter what, like you have to take action. You have to do it, right. One of the quotes that I say all the time is, don’t wait for opportunities, create them. if you’re sitting around waiting to be asked, waiting to be – that to me goes back to kind of that employee mindset of waiting for someone to notice how hard I’m working, waiting for someone to give me a raise or an extra vacation day or something versus being like, No, I’m going to create that. Like if I want a raise, I’m going to, you know, create a new offering, right? Or I’m going to do this or – right. So, or if I want more free time, like if I feel like I need to have Fridays off, well then I’m going to create a schedule that allows me to be able to do that. 

Linzy [00:29:04] Yeah, exactly. 

Jena [00:29:06] For everyone listening, I really want you to kind of think about, you know, what do you want? And like, how are you going to create it intentionally where you are the creator, not someone who is waiting for someone else to make it happen for you. 

Linzy [00:29:20] I love that. So on that note, Jena, if people want to hear more from you. Where is the best place for them to find and follow you? 

Jena [00:29:28] So on Instagram I am @independentclinician. Send me a DM, say hi. Tell me that you heard this podcast online. I’d say that independentclinician.com is the best place to kind of learn more about me and my programs, but Instagram is probably the best place to interact. 

Linzy [00:29:44] Thank you so much, Jena. It’s been such a pleasure talking with you today. 

Jena [00:29:47] Always a pleasure, Linzy. I’m glad that we got this time together. 

Linzy [00:29:50] Yes, me too. 

Linzy [00:30:04] Something that I always appreciate about Jena, whenever I have connected to her or reached out is her spark and energy and drive around what she does, which is help speech language pathologists and OTs build practices. Like you feel, that like passion that she has and I love that that is just on display and just shows and she has such energy around the work that she does. I think that in a way, I think it gives me more permission to also just be excited and take up space and let my passion show about what I love to do. And I think that that’s an inspiration for all of us, where sometimes we have these talents and these gifts and these passions and we kind of keep them quiet and we keep them to ourselves. And by doing that, other people don’t know about them. We can’t have the impact that we want to have when we kind of hide or play small or tell ourselves stories that what we have to offer is not good enough because often what we have to offer is more than good enough. And of course, it’s so uniquely ours in our voice with our values and our gifts. Also, this piece that Jena talked about, about really owning your power in private practice, you know, and connecting to building a practice that actually works for you, that nobody else is going to do that, but you. I think, is also really powerful because I think we can easily internalize that employee mindset even when we’re our own bosses, that somehow it’s going to get better on its own, you know, if we’re not making enough to get paid well, that somehow that’s going to easily work itself out. And often the answers that we do have to make decisions, we have to make moves, we have to zoom out and look at our numbers and understand our situation and then take action based on that information. And as Jena points out, nobody can take that action but us. If you want to hear more from me, you can follow me on Instagram @moneynutsandbolts. We are on there sharing practical and emotional money content all the time. And of course, if you’re enjoying the podcast and enjoying season three, please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. It really helps other therapists who are needing to hear these kinds of conversations, to find me. Thanks for listening today. 

Hi, I'm Linzy

Hi, I'm Linzy

I’m a therapist in private practice, and a the creator of Money Skills for Therapists. I help therapists and health practitioners in private practice feel calm and in control of their finances.

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