I'm so excited to bring you today's episode of the Money Sessions.
This is following the conversation I had with Sarayu Murai last week.
If you haven't listened to that episode, you're going to wanna listen to it to reference this one.
Something that came up that felt very powerful and important to come back to and address is the importance of putting yourself in the room with the people who have the resources.
And the readiness to pay you for your life first fee week after week, month after month, year after year.
By the way, my name is Tiffany McLean.
You're listening to the Money sessions where we have honest, real conversations about what it means to have a practice where we put your life first as licensed mental health clinicians.
What does it mean to have a private practice where you're not sacrificing, martyring, putting all your needs and desires and wants aside.
For the purpose of what?
What?
fear, colleagues coming after us, worry that we're bad people, right?
All of these stories we have.
So last week, we talked about Sarayu's, work following, we put, well I, I run a program called Lean In McBank and we have particular, marketing strategies to build demand, to identify and bring in.
, clients who are ready and eager to pay you your life first fee, be that $200 cash, be that $300 be that $400 per session.
And one of the challenges Sarayu faced and has really mastered and has grown as a result of.
Is putting herself in the rooms where people who have the resources to pay are.
So I want to take a moment for you to think about.
, this question, and you can grab a pen.
If you're driving, don't grab a pen.
I want you to think about.
, what comes up for me, you can ask yourself, what comes up for me when I imagine putting myself in spaces with people who have the resources to pay my life first fee?
A number that maybe I'm not even paying my own therapist.
A number that none of my current caseload, I, I don't even think they could pay it.
A number that I, I can't even barely imagine bringing in.
Let's say that number I'm gonna send, make it up as $300 per session.
When you imagine being in a room filled with people who can pay you easefully.
Eagerly, without batting an eye, even in this economy, $300 per session, what feelings come up?
What thoughts come up?
Take a moment.
Because this is a podcast format, we can't take too many moments, but here's some things I imagine.
I imagine you have feelings of being an impostor.
what am I gonna say?
What am I even doing in this space?
What if these people ask me a question?
What, what, how do I justify being here, right?
What am I doing here?
How do I, if I'm here, what am I doing, right?
Those questions come up.
, envy, which often comes out in anger or, or, contempt.
Oh, these people, right?
they're, they're rich, they're greedy, they're bad, right?
All these things.
And also I want that.
I don't deserve to be here in security.
I don't deserve to be in this space.
fear, what if I make a mistake?
What if I look stupid?
Shame at the under all of this is deep shame.
How did I get this far in my life?
I'm with these other professionals who, who have, I have the same amount of education or even more than some of these people.
I truly care about the work I'm doing.
I've worked really hard to get to the point where I have a full private practice.
I'm actually doing the work I love and I, and I am not even putting money into my retirement.
Deep shame.
What if they knew?
These are the things that come up when we put these, put ourselves in these spaces often.
Especially for therapists, social workers, folks, if you're listening to the Bunny sessions, you probably grew up in a working-class environment.
You're probably a woman or a minority from some marginalized group, or even grew up, you know, like I said, working class.
And so when you're in these spaces, a lot of insecurity, a lot of shame, a lot of envy comes up, a lot of stories such that it almost feels impossible.
If something goes wrong in these spaces, if you put your foot in your mouth, if you say the wrong thing, if someone looks at you a particular way, if they know.
If they, if they discover, if they see you for what you are, right?
This is the feeling.
It's almost like you can't recover.
And so what do we do?
Unconsciously, protectively, proactively, we therapists keep ourselves out of these spaces.
We keep ourselves out of the spaces.
Where there are people who could actually pay easefully our, our life first fee.
, instead, we surround ourselves.
We, we network with other therapists who are struggling and scraggling and are, you know, have a financial scarcity, are not putting money into their retirement.
We set ourselves up for failure by, calling, doing things like, I'm marketing by calling doctors' offices.
Nobody's ever gonna call you back.
If you just call a doctor's office randomly, the chances of you getting called back are pretty, let's give you 1% to be a little kind.
They're not calling. : You back.
Those methods are not effective.
If they are effective, good for you, keep doing it.
But you're listening to this podcast because they are not effective.
So you're putting yourself in places where you're not actually gonna have to be face to face with a professional who's making really good money and putting money into their retirement and gaining traction financially in the adult world.
You're finding all kinds of ways to keep yourself out.
Is this wrong?
Are you bad?
No, just generally, you're not, obviously you're not bad for this, not obvious, right?
You might have, we have feelings.
is it wrong?
Universally, all it, it, it is, if your goal is to actually bring in people who can pay your life first fee, then this is not the right action to take.
This is not a moral judgment.
This is not a character judgment.
It's just reality.
If you want to bring in people who can easifully pay your life first fee.
You need to be in the spaces with people who can pay your life first fee.
You need to be in those communities.
You need to be having conversations with these folks.
You need to be engaged and participating.
And so often therapists are with other therapists who are struggling to bring in their, their fees.
Other therapists who are talking about, oh, this economy is so bad, how could we?
Other therapists who are saying, you know, I'm just in it to help people.
I don't really care about the money in some way or another, having a $300 fee is bad.
That's protective, and it's not serving your future self.
It's serving the self, the current self who is in a practice that's unsustainable for whatever reason.
What you're currently doing is not sustainable and it doesn't actually feel good.
, overall, there might be parts that are pleasing, of course, there are parts that are working, but overall it's not actually what you want.
So the actions you're doing when you're keeping yourself out of the communities with people who can easefully pay your fee, it's not in service of your dream, your vision, the person who's listening to this podcast right now.
With a desire for something else.
When, here's another question for you.
I want you to think about a time when you have been in a very uncomfortable situation in service of growth.
In service of growth and you ultimately were able to get to the other side even though it was uncomfortable, even though it was mortifying or brought up shame, brought up fear, brought up envy, brought up feelings of imposter syndrome, you got to the other side.
Think about it, a time in your life when that was true for you, and I know it is cause you're a licensed therapist in private practice.
I'm trying to call one up myself actually, even as I'm, even as I'm talking to you, I'm trying to think about one.
, I actually had a situation just yesterday where I was, I, I work at my, I serve on the Quaker Life Committee at my son's school, and I'm with all of these people who in my mind are, you know, a faculty at this private school, board members, parents who have the money to pay a tuition that's in my mind astronomical.
We're on a sliding scale tuition.
One day I hope not to be.
One day I hope to be paying full fee, but I'm gonna take it while I, while I can.
, and I'm with these people and I, there's still some part of me that's like, it's only my 2nd meeting and they've been in on this board for 6 years, a lot of them, and, and I had to be like they had to get special approval to have me in.
there are, there's one other person of color and all the rest of the folks seem white as far as I can tell.
and here I am with my tattoos, biracial, fluorescent earrings, on a sliding scale, whatever that is, like a, like a tuition assistance family.
, And they were proposing, there was an idea they were, they were going to propose and I offered up, oh, here's, here's an idea, and it wasn't taken up initially.
It got taken up later, Whew, but it wasn't initially and I had a tiny pang of like, OK, being in the room, right?
so it's not even like you've had it once and it goes away.
I'm still gonna go in that room and I'm still gonna speak up and I'm, I'm gonna be a part of this community.
I know you've had this too.
So as you think about this experience for you, what allowed you to push past?
, as you think about this moment where you've struggled, I want to ask what allowed you to push past?
What allowed you to keep moving forward even in the face of shame, envy, insecurity, struggle?
And I can say one of the things I have found, in my own life, certainly, and also while teaching our therapists in the Lean In Make Bake Academy, what allows them to do the, do the unimaginable thing.
Leave all insurance panels and charge $300 per session.
What, what allows them to do the unimaginable thing?
And I'm gonna say there are two things that must be present in order for these folks to do it.
There's more, but these are vital aspects.
One is a container, a container.
I think about my kids, And how when they're deregulated, when they're doing something hard, like I literally provide a physical container for them, like literally, when I go over, get down on their level, take a deep breath and just hold them.
Their whole body gets back into regulation.
And it's like they can take on the world, right?
No matter what state they're they're in, when they have a feeling of emotional and physical containment.
They can come back to baseline and keep moving forward.
So that's one thing that must be present for you.
In order to be in the spaces where you are pushing yourself to be in the room with people who feel intimidating.
, who feel scary, who feel like they're better than you or beyond you for whatever reason.
Having a place where you know afterwards, before and after there's a container for you to go in and say I did the thing.
Have room for the feelings, emotional attunement, presence, sometimes physical attunement and presence, even if that's just through eye contact or tone of voice.
To get back to baseline, the container, the containment.
That is one thing we do like no other.
The second thing is the clear strategic steps.
What am I doing, right?
When you are trying to do something new, you need to know what's the context, what's the, what's it gonna feel like?
What's gonna come afterwards?
What is gonna happen that I'm, I'm scared of that is really gonna happen?
And I know it ahead of time, I can anticipate this thing is gonna happen.
I'm gonna go in and so when it happens, what am I gonna do, right?
The step by step, here's what I'm doing, here's why.
So when I'm in the spaces with folks who can pay me $300 weekly, with ease and spaciousness.
Without even questioning it.
What am I, what's my strategy?
What am I doing?
How do I do it in a way that's aligned with my values and who I am?
What do I do when I fuck up?
Put my foot in my mouth.
When you have a step by step script, strategy, idea, you understand the context, you can go in.
And you have clarity about here's what I'm doing in there.
And then afterwards, you have the space to have the touch point for regulation.
And you have the clear strategic processing afterwards.
OK, what worked, what didn't, what are we gonna do next time?
The ability to have that allows you to actually move away from, maybe the folks you've typically been with who are in a paradigm of scarcity, deprivation, the economy is destroying you, right?
You're, nobody can pay me.
You're moving out of that circle into a world where people will, can and will pay you easefully.
When you have the clear step by step system and a container for emotion regulation that allows you to move forward.
And here's why this is important.
Here's why I'm talking about this today.
So you thought I was talking about it so you'd understand how to bring in your life first feed client, but it's actually bigger than that.
So the conversation with Surayu, which we touched on this wrapped around to the importance.
This is where I'm gonna be on a platform for this whole year.
The importance of fucking being in the room where it happens.
Being in the room where you can have an impact on the thought leaders, the people with the resources, the people who are, are impacting and shaping our culture.
For too long, licensed mental health therapists, we've kept ourselves out of the room.
Well, let's, let's hearken to Hamilton, the room where it happens.
We have kept ourselves out of the room where it happens.
And that, my friend has been doing a huge disservice to our culture.
It's been doing a huge disservice to our field, and do you know how I know?
Because there's now a sign when I'm driving my kids to school that says, here's your AI therapist.
This is your AI therapist.
You know who's making those decisions?
People with money.
People in power, people who have literally no idea what the true work of therapy is, but they know how to create a model and they know how to market.
And if you are not in those rooms, having a conversation, sharing in a thoughtful, persuasive, strategic, heartfelt, visceral way, making an argument to impact and influence these leaders.
You are gonna be replaced by AI.
That is just a fact.
If you're spending your time with day in and day out with therapists who are struggling, scarcity-minded, talking about how things are so hard and I can barely keep up with anything, and I have no money, culture is gonna move on, move on from what we do as therapists, what we do as professionals.
You're gonna be left behind and you're not, you're gonna be on a race to the bottom financially.
If you wanna make an impact, it is not by lowering your fees.
It is not by staying on insurance panels that are cutting your rates, taking advantage of you, making a lot of money, profiting off of your overwhelmed and burnt out, your expertise.
That's not how you give back.
How you give back is by having agency.
And, and the practice of building the muscle around having agency starts in your business, in your private practice.
If you are somebody who is currently overworked, all the things, right?
Seeing 30 people a week and, and too much or seeing 20 people a week and I wish I was seeing fewer or I'm only seeing 5 and I wanna see more.
The first step to having true impact is to change your situation in your business.
It's a symbol, my friend, and guess what happens?
We just talked to, I think this episode is gonna come out soon.
Sarah Raider, Sarah, who is in our program right now in 4 months of joining our program.
Fucking phenomenal.
His wife, fucking knocking it out of the park, has almost doubled her income, just about doubled her revenue while seeing the same amount of clients.
In 4 months, she came in when she was having a conversation with me to see if she'd be a good fit and said, I just wanna buy a house.
If I could just buy, she has now bought her house.
4 months, she doubled her income, working the same amount of hours and she and her husband have just bought their first house.
What the fuck, right?
Talk about agency and you know what that's given her the confidence to do?
Anything, right?
When you have agency in your life, you can do anything.
And you can have an impact.
Once you have agency and understanding, oh I can impact my own situation, then you can truly go out and have an impact in your clinical work with your clients.
You can go out in the wider culture, the wider society, be impacting the people who have the resources to make a difference, and you will be one of those people.
This is why it's vital that you're in the room.
Yes, the feelings are gonna come up.
Yes, it's, it feels safer and like more comfortable to be sticking around with all the people struggling over here.
That's not who you are.
You're somebody who wants to be agentic.
You're somebody who wants to be able to say, you know what, I want to charge $300 per session.
I don't know how to do it yet, but I'm gonna get the tools.
I'm gonna get the support and I'm gonna do it.
That's who you are, so I can write, so I can take vacation time, so I can literally just show up and look my kid in the eye and be present.
Provide a container for them to move forward.
That's who you are.
You need to be in the room where it happens.
And let me tell you one more thing to wrap this up.
When you're somebody who, who has put a stake in the ground and said, I'm, I'm gonna charge my life first fee.
Tiffany's gonna help me do it.
The Lean In Make Bank community, they're gonna help me do it.
And you book your first life first fee client, your first session.
you have a sense of agency, you see the impact, you can have an impact in the world.
Guess what's happening right now?
2026, in a world of AI where nobody, humans are being replaced.
our humanity doesn't matter cause a robot could do it just as well.
, you, you, your clients are gonna be desperate for a sense of agency and the fact that their humanity matters, that they have an impact.
They can impact each other in the world.
We can have impact on each other, that humanity matters.
When you embody that, when you live it out, when you take the risk to join, when you take the risk to have agency, charge that life first fee, earn it, people are gonna be drawn to you.
It's like a magnet.
Your Life first Feed clients want to experience agency, they want to know they have an impact, and when you're out there living as such.
They're going to be drawn to you It's just what's gonna happen.
If you are somebody who is ready, and I know you are, you can just send me an email, Tiffany at lean in make bank and say, Rome.
I just wanna be in the fucking room.
And I, I'm gonna tell you, whoever you are, whatever you bring to the table, whatever you bring, I have people who tell me, Tiffany, I have ADHD can I still do this?
Hey, I'm neurodivergent.
Can I still do this? : Tiffany, I, I really have struggled.
Tiffany, I have, I have a financial scarcity.
It's really hard for me to pay for things.
Tiffany, I'm, I'm LGBTQ and I wanna work with queer clients.
Can I still earn this?
Tiffany, I'm black and I, whoever you are, whatever you come in with, I see that as a gift.
I see that as a gift.
And I will show you how to use it as a gift to bring in your next Life First Feed client.
Send me an email, Tiffany@leaninmakebank.com and say room.
And I'll take it from there.