I was in this place with my business where I was like kind of feeling stuck with limb.
Well, this business I'm talking to you about right now.
Feeling stuck, not quite sure what, how to move forward.
I really need some momentum.
I, I, I have this, you know, I'm waiting for this idea to strike.
There are a few decisions I have to make.
, with hiring a team, with, messaging, with what we're offering in our program and how it's looking as we help our therapists charge their life first fees, find new clients who are amazing, who are easefully and eagerly ready to pay those Life First fees, so it's just kind of at the standstill.
For a couple of weeks, kind of thinking, walking around, you know, trying to wait for this inspiration to strike, to, to get this momentum.
For those of you who are in private practice, even if I'm talking about the business here at LMM, I promise this is gonna be so valuable for you.
This is gonna be, this is gonna blow your mind because you are likely in a position where you are, you are like, OK.
I have, you know, clients, but that none of them are paying my life first fee or maybe one is but probably none.
I really wanna take this next step, but I don't know what it is.
It could be SEO, it could be Google Ads, it could be changing the copy on my website.
It could be coming to work with Tiffany at Lean and Make Bank.
There are so many, different choices I can make, so I'm gonna wait for the momentum.
I'm gonna wait for the idea, and it could be weeks or months.
You could be waiting for years.
Maybe you do something here or there, but you just don't know like, you, the energy is gonna strike.
So I'm talking to my own business advisor.
By the way, she said something that blew my mind.
My name's Tiffany McLean.
I am the host of this podcast, The Money Sessions, where we have honest conversations with therapists about money, the way it plays into your business, this exchange of energetic power which is the dollar and how it ties into our attachment, our relationships, our clinical work, the unconscious conversations, the projections, the transference and counter-transference, all the ways this is showing up in your business.
And impacting your bottom line, keeping you, having less financial means than you wish you had and that quite frankly, you deserve for the impact you're making, for the change you're making in people's lives.
So my business advisor is just always coming up with these really thoughtful prompts, these, these, these brilliant messaging, these really cool ideas.
So I said to her, Nicole is her name, Nicole, You know, how do you, how do you find momentum?
How do you get momentum?
Like what's your process to get momentum when you're feeling stuck or you're not moving or you just don't know which way to turn?
Where do you get that?
And she said something that I just, I shared it with our students.
We have a program called the Lean In Make Bake Academy that is phenomenal.
I shared this with my students today and they were all like mind-blown in the chat, and I'm like, oh, I guess I should probably share this with the rest of you who are not yet students.
you get a little taste.
Of what is allowing our students to create, design, and execute on life first fee practices where they're seeing, you know, 15 clients max, booking clients at 300, 400, 500, even 200 or 250 a session for the first time in their lives and feeling like, what, it's possible, right?
We're doing it.
We are doing it.
So I'm talking to them, telling them the story.
Where do you get this momentum?
I asked my, adviser Nicole.
And she says, I don't get momentum.
I create it.
I create the momentum If I had sound effects, if we had a sound engineer for this podcast, this is where I would be putting explosions and bombs.
That were not copyrighted so we wouldn't get sued like the sound effects of the year.
What?
It really shifted how I was thinking.
It brought me into a new paradigm.
We don't get momentum as business owners, as vanguards, as people who are going first in our family of origin, as cycle breakers, as entrepreneurs, as therapists in private practice who are trying to do things differently, breaking molds, stepping outside of old paradigms, challenging the current thinking.
We don't get momentum from outside, we are the momentum creators.
We have to do the energetic work.
We make the decisions and then we take action.
Because we say so from inside of us because nobody's gonna do it for, for us.
Wow. : So first of all, that insight was just like I went from a couple of weeks of like waiting for the momentum to strike, waiting to feel it from outside to saying, oh, starting tomorrow, I'm gonna do X, and then that will help me understand the next X and the next action and the next action and the next action.
Here's an example of how this played out in a way that maybe tracks for you.
I like to work out.
That's not true.
I work out.
I like the, I like the outcome of working out.
I like how I feel.
I like how I fit in my clothes.
it shuts down the constant noise.
I'm not the, the, guru up on a mountaintop who can shut out the, cultural awfulness around body.
I tried it.
I just like the way I've, the way I, can focus on things other than my physical self is by just working out regularly.
So I kinda fell off the wagon, and I was like, yeah, it's chill, like.
And it was fine.
I have a much better internal voice around that these days.
I really am much kinder, especially since having kids and having amazing analysts.
I'm so much kinder around how I talk to myself.
So I was kinda like, yeah, I'll get, I'll get to it when I get to it, you know, I'm working out maybe 2 or 3 days a week instead of more or sometimes, you know, I'm, I'm rushing.
Yeah, I don't work out.
And I think on some level, I was kinda waiting for a momentum to strike from outside.
So yes, I was, it was happening in my business, but it was also happening in terms of my personal life around fitness.
And I know logically like I feel better mentally.
I feel better emotionally.
I feel stronger and just physically better when I'm working out consistently.
And I was kind of waiting for it to happen when it happened.
When she said this, when my, when Nicole said this about we create momentum, I was like, oh, same with my working out, like, oh, it's simply a choice I make and then an action I take.
And it's not gonna happen outside.
There's nothing I'm gonna do, no book I'm gonna read, no music I'm gonna listen to that's gonna make it happen for me.
I have to create the conditions whereby I have the outcome I want, whereby I'm taking the actions I wanna take and I'm looking at the results that come from that.
So I was like, all right, that means I know, I know what I have to do to feel energetically and emotionally and physically enlivened and part of that's working out.
So if I wanna have momentum in my business, one of the ways I do that is also to be having momentum in my personal life.
So I just got up today at 5:5.
and went to the gym. : Did I want to?
No, but I found that if I wait till later, the day encroaches.
I gotta pick up my kids from school before too long.
I get really caught up in in talking to you all podcast or teaching our students or creating the next training that I'm excited about talking to our team, and before long I don't have enough time to get to the gym.
So I'm like, the way I get to the gym is going at 5:15, 2 or 3 days a week, and then I can go at another time the other days if I so choose.
It just was a decision.
Here's why this is so important.
when you are creating something that has never been created before, which every single one of you is doing if you have big dreams, you are trying to create a practice that doesn't exist.
Right? : You're currently in a place where maybe you're seeing 25 people a week, you're making maybe 6 or 8000 monthly, and you actually wanna be living a life where you're seeing 15 clients a week max or having 15 sessions a week max.
You're taking 6 to 8 weeks of vacation, you are earning 18,500 to $200,000 a year, and you have plenty of space and ease and freedom.
To take up space in other ways, create, create in other ways of your life, in other ways, engage in your relationships with your kids or your spouse or yourself in new ways that doesn't currently exist for you.
And in fact, it doesn't exist for most therapists.
We help the therapist in our program create that life, lean into it, understand how to have it, and then get it, but that's really rare still.
I'm changing it. : I've been working on the past 10 years to try to change this trend.
, and we see that it happens over and over again.
And it comes when therapists take action.
What I realized is if I am in an envi in an environment with people who are filled with doubt, filled with anxiety about what's possible, procrastinating, talking about all the terrible political things happening, talking constantly about this news thing or that, struggling with insurance panels or, well, I get excited with that cause I'm like, let me tell you something, right?
But that kind of mindset around like kind of being trapped.
In a box for weeks or months or years.
That, that messes with my head.
It really does even still now.
I have to be so clear.
That I am working with therapists to get to help you get to another place.
, I have to hold a vision in mind with you and for you that you can't quite see yet.
I have to paint a vision for our industry and then take action to lead the charge to get us in a place where we're not reliant on insurance panels, and low reimbursement rates and the big platforms that are constantly trying to use us for their own profit.
We are reshaping an entire culture, a whole professional culture, and we work primarily with women and people of color, folks from marginalized groups.
, queer folks, black folks, BIPAC, folks who grew up with from working-class backgrounds.
We've had systemic injustice, the systems that keep us in place that tell us we are not good enough, that constantly undermine our ability to grow and change.
If I am working to lead the vanguard, to lead the charge for a whole entire industry, you better bet I have to be.
Disciplined and boundaried with my own mind.
Who I let in and out, what kind of stories I let in and out, what kind of conversations I'm having.
Because if I, if I'm getting these, even, not even incredible, not even obviously toxic, but even just little insidious messaging, it's really hard to keep my own mind clear, to be boundaried with my mind.
And in order to have momentum from inside of myself to take action, it requires a disciplined mind, clear boundaries with my own self, my own, what's coming into my mind so that I can step out and continue to create at the, the level of energy that it takes.
This is why I'm telling you this today.
If you are somebody who is like, oh I really want to have a life first fee practice.
I wanna work with clients who are excited and engaged and coming every single week with a no cancellation policy and paying me $300 per session, even in rural Virginia.
Even, I could be in Seattle, I could be in the suburb outside of Chicago.
I could be in the UK, right?
This is what I want.
And you have been waiting for momentum, waiting for an external sign that it's time, waiting for some, some clear indication that, you know, something outside of me is gonna determine it.
I want to encourage you to just don't.
, The first, the way to get there is to simply take action.
I'm gonna invite you. : I know you've been listening to this podcast for months or years.
You've been wanting to come do this work with me and my team, with our community of therapists who are taking action every single day.
And you have been waiting for something outside of you to tell you it's time.
It's never gonna happen.
And sometimes it does, and I'm sorry, like we have people who divorce or they experience an illness.
Something they are realizing suddenly they're near retirement and they're like, I have to change.
Like those things might happen.
And also you can just do it now.
The first step in changing everything about your life is to simply take the first step.
You create the momentum, you make the decision if.
If for many months, years, or even weeks you've been like, I wanna come do this work.
I'm ready to charge life first fees.
I'm ready to go on that journey.
I'm ready to play that game cause you're all, you're gonna, you're playing a game right now.
You're either playing the insurance overwhelmed or even like they're good enough.
I'm playing, my practice is good enough, but you wanna play a different game because of these exact lessons you're gonna learn.
The lessons we talked about.
In our weekly episodes of the money sessions, the lessons you hear the therapists learning as they charge their Life First fees, the lessons you hear me learning as I go from having a Life First fee practice to a scaled business where I'm helping hundreds of therapists, thousands of therapists.
Step into a new mindset and a new strategy around charging life first fees.
It's not gonna just happen to you.
You have to build the momentum, you have to make the choice.
If you wanna be in an environment where you're surrounded by people who are making this choice, thinking in a different way, asking different questions, exploring different opportunities, having access to paradigms they didn't even know, right?
There are so many things you don't even know that you don't know.
Putting yourself in a space with 100 other therapists who have moved beyond where you are and are in a new reality, that alone, outside of our framework that takes you through it step by step, outside of our live calls and office hours with myself, with mentors who have been along with the process, outside of the accountability, simply being in a space with 100 people who have Gone on a journey and know something you don't know.
Joining a community of over 1000 therapists who have gone through this process and now know something you don't know, even without anything else, being with therapists who are, went from charging $150 or $80 or $65 all over the place, even $200 to now charging $300 400 dollars, $500 joining that world, entering that paradigm is going to teach you something you have no idea about now.
So create the momentum.
If you scroll down into this episode show notes, you're gonna find a link to fill out an application to come work with us.
That's the step number one.
Look at the application, fill it out.
That will start building on itself, building on the momentum that you create.
I cannot wait to meet you.