May 5, 2025 • 19 mins
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In this episode of The Money Sessions, Tiffany tackles a phrase she’s heard time and time again: “I don’t want to only work with rich people.”
If you’ve ever felt conflicted about charging premium fees while staying true to your values, this conversation is for you.
Tiffany dismantles the myth that high-fee therapy is only for the elite—and shows how therapists can build sustainable businesses that allow them to give back without burning out.
This is the dose of truth and clarity therapists need in a world that too often confuses martyrdom with generosity.
In this episode, Tiffany shares:
Why most therapists can’t afford to offer low-fee therapy—and why that’s not a moral failing;
The real privilege required to do “cheap therapy” without sacrificing your wellbeing;
How financially secure therapists are actually more generous with their time, energy, and presence;
The wide variety of people—not just the wealthy—who find ways to pay premium fees for therapy;
Why it’s not your job to figure out how clients afford you.
Resources Mentioned:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
I do not just want to work with rich people.
Oh, you've heard it.
I've certainly heard it, You know, as somebody who advocates for therapists, particularly women, particularly people of color, particularly folks from the LGBTQ community, just folks from marginalized backgrounds.
(00:25):
And usually that means in some way.
, you've been marginalized financially, because of the class you are in.
Because of the category that you're in.
, by the way, you could be a, a cis white dude and have been marginalized.
Welcome to limb.
Welcome to working with me.
(00:48):
I advocate for therapists too.
Charge premium fees in their private practice in their business, and while people do not come at me.
I don't know why.
Why don't people come at me?: I mean, certainly people who don't know me well might leave some comments saying like, how dare you?
Or this is unethical.
I don't, I pay, I pay no attention to that.
I've helped too many thousands and tens of thousands of therapists.
(01:14):
Who I care about, who I can relate to, have a little more.
Self advocacy, have a little more confidence, make more money and actually be able to give back generously.
I've helped too many people to even notice when folks who don't know me have something to say about the work I do.
(01:35):
That being said, this refrain, I don't wanna work with just rich rich people.
How do we think about that, Tiffany?
I wanted to say something about that today.
It may be controversial.
You're not surprised.
You're not surprised by that.
By the way, if you don't know who I am, my name is Tiffany McLean.
I am the founder of Lean In Make Bank, and I, like I said, advocate for therapists to charge premium fees cash pay in their practice and to build their practice from a foundation of premium fees cash.
(02:06):
That's what I do.
If you don't wanna do that, that's OK.
If you do wanna do that, I'm the person to talk to, feel free to email me.
Hey at LeanI makebank with the word action, and I'll tell you how you can work with me and my team.
So this idea, I don't wanna only work with rich people.
Well, I have some I have some news for you.
(02:28):
If you have a private practice and you're a therapist and you want to have a business that is sustainable, that actually runs, that actually does what a business is supposed to do by definition, which is make money for you.
You, you have to work with people who have the resources and the desire to pay you for your services.
You need to be paid enough to take care of the business, finances.
(02:51):
And then you need more than enough left over to take care of yourself, your family, your retirement, your health benefits, your spouse, your life, your desires, anything you need now or may need.
In order to take care of yourself financially, your business has to cover that.
(03:12):
That's the point of having a business.
If you don't want to do that, if you don't want to work with people who have the resources to pay, you don't have to do it.
You may be somebody who has the privilege of.
The luxury to work with people who can't afford you or don't want to pay for your services.
You can work in an agency.
You can work in a school setting, you can work in a government setting, you can work with insurance panels and provide care for people who do not have the resources to pay or simply don't want to pay for therapy.
(03:45):
Look, if you have the privilege to do that, I love that.
I love.
That you have that privilege.
I want everyone to have the financial stability to be able to, I mean, if you want to, if you don't want to, then I don't want this for you, right?
But if you wanna give back as a therapist, as a social worker, and you have the financial stability, maybe you have a wealthy partner, maybe you come from a family of generational wealth, and you can do that without burning out, without taking out of the mouths of your children, without losing out on your retirement or your own safety net, without.
(04:19):
, you know, and you can, you can work for an agency, you can work for insurance panels, and you still have the time, energy, freedom to go on vacation to show up presently with your kids.
If you have the, the ability to do that, yes, and the desire to do that, yes, I want that for you.
But for people who are like me, you did not grow up with financial abundance you do not have the privilege or luxury of generational wealth.
(04:45):
The reason you are in business for yourself is to create it for yourself, for your family, for the generations to come if you so choose.
If you want to just give all that money away when at your, at the, the, the incident of your death at 98 years old, I love it.
You can be like Melinda Gates, right?
(05:07):
Give that shit away.
Do whatever you want.
But the purpose of going into business for yourself is to have financial freedom and time freedom, emotional presence, psychic bandwidth.
There are those who say, what?
So you're just gonna be selfish and greedy?
What about giving back?
Are you saying you, you're just gonna go into business and never give back, you're gonna become the, the man, you're gonna become someone who doesn't care about others?
(05:35):
Wow, what do you even think you are?
I didn't go into this business to make money.
I think that question is disingenuous.
I think the question setting up that binary, oh, so if you go into business, you're not gonna ever give back.
You're only gonna serve rich people forever.
, I think it's disingenuous.
Obviously, that's not the case.
If you are a therapist, if you're somebody who, who, who spent 2 to 7 years in graduate school to learn how to help people as your profession, by the way, You went to grad school to become a professional, like a lawyer becomes a professional, goes to grad school, a doctor becomes a professional to make money, a lawyer becomes a professional to make money.
(06:16):
You chose this as your profession, which you chose to become a therapist as your way to make a financial living.
Anybody who chose to make their lives work and their financial stability depending on helping people, you care about helping people and you're gonna do it no matter what.
But you don't need to do it in your business.
There are seasons of life.
If you do not have generational wealth, if you do not have a a wealthy spouse or a wealthy family.
(06:40):
Then you have to do that for yourself as an adult, as a functioning member of society you need financial security you need financial stability, and guess what, you have the means to do it because you have the privilege every single one of us had the privilege of going to grad school and getting licensed if you are listening to this, use that privilege to do what it's supposed to do, which is help you have financial stability and then financial abundance.
(07:06):
After that, if you wanna use your financial resources, your, your, your presence of mind, your time to give back, do it, it's an order of operations.
First, take care of yourself.
Take care of your family, make sure you're set up when somebody gets cancer, when a spouse dies unexpectedly, if a divorce happens and we weren't anticipating it, you need to be financially secure in the event of life's inevitable lifing.
(07:36):
This is a season of life where you're making a business that works.
You're making a business that takes care of you.
That's your job.
After that, give generously.
I, I sometimes joke, you know, therapists are like I, I.
I take on a sliding scale because I want to give back.
I'm like, how generous are you as a human being in the world when you're seeing 35 people a week, you have 72 people on your case load, you don't even know when you went to the bathroom last.
(08:01):
You ate some Cheetos, the the the the the the orange stuff is still on your face.
I suspect you're not a particularly generous person.
You know who I see who is generous?
Therapists who are charging $300 per session.
They see 12 clients a week.
They're able to take care of themselves, their family, they don't have debt anymore.
They're putting money in their retirement, their healthcare is taken care of.
(08:25):
And they still have 20 extra hours in their week that would be working hours typically for most people.
Those folks are fucking generous.
I also want to take a moment to talk about rich people.
I don't only want to work with rich people.
I like to think about the the clients who pay for therapy, who also, by the way, have the privilege of paying $300 per week for therapy without relying on their insurance, in-network insurance.
(08:57):
Those folks are not just rich.
, There are a variety of ways people pay for therapy.
I actually talked to earlier this year, 2025 at the time of this recording.
I talked to a whole bunch of students who'd worked with us in the Lean In Make Big Academy.
By the way, if this sounds wonderful to you, you're like, holy smokes, wait, 250 per session, 15 people a week?
(09:22):
sign me up.
You can email me, he at lean in makebank.com with the word action.
We are gonna know what you mean.
We will tell you how you can work with us and we will tell you if we think you're a good fit to work with us.
I have no idea what I was just talking about.
Here's the point.
(09:48):
When we talk about the people who can afford to pay $300 per week for therapy, we're not only talking about rich people.
By the way, rich people are lovely.
There are all kinds of rich people.
If you are, earning $300 per session, seeing 15 people a week, you can probably afford to pay a therapist $300 per session.
Does that make you a rich person?
Maybe.
(10:09):
So be it.
You're gonna be a kind, generous, thoughtful, caring, politically active, rich person.
, earlier this year, I was talking to therapists who we've worked with, who are now charging premium fees, have small case loads, and I'm like, who's paying?
Who are these people who are paying 200+ per session?
They are actors, lawyers, doctors, unemployed people, students, physical therapists, nurses, people from the, the therapist I talked to, the premium fee therapist I talked to had clients from every profession you can imagine, a mechanic.
(10:48):
OK, so the next question is how are they affording to pay 200 or 250 or beyond for therapy?
And the answer may surprise you.
It wasn't about how much money they made.
Of course you have to make money enough to pay.
Of course some of them have wealthy families.
Of course some of them have PPO insurance, which means they pay $300 and get reimbursed 220 per session, right?
(11:10):
So they're only paying maybe 80 per session.
Excellent.: What an amazing resource.
What amazing access to wealth if they come from generational wealth.
But there are other ways people paid too, for example, dual income households where there are no children.
If you have kids you often are thinking, oh my God, it's so hard to make ends meet for folks.
Some folks who have dual incomes and they have no children, they have much more disposable income than people who are supporting 235 children.
(11:39):
Some people chose to live with roommates so that they could pay for therapy because therapy was so valuable to them.
If you work a corporate job making $100,000 a year and you live with 5 roommates, guess what?
You have the resources to pay for therapy.
Are you rich?
You are certainly not.
Are you someone who values the work of therapy with a particular provider who has set themselves apart?
(12:00):
By the way, we help you do that in limb.
People who have set themselves apart from the therapy mill crowd, yeah, then you can afford therapy.
There are all kinds of ways people pay for therapy beyond simply being rich.
Some people, this is gonna surprise you, have dipped into their children's 529 plans or have dipped into their own retirement.
(12:22):
You might talk to clients who don't even consider some of their financial resources.
By the way, if you're a therapist, you're probably like retirement, how is that even possible?
If you're like many Americans who have been working since the.
22 in corporate America, they have massive retirements just letting you know lawyers, doctors, people in tech, people who work for Kaiser.
(12:45):
Anybody who's worked for a system, worked for a corporation of any kind likely has retirement.
Your clients might not think about retirement as a source of income or a source of money they can use to pay for therapy.
Maybe we don't even ask, right?
But sometimes clients just voluntarily pull out of those sources because the immediate issue is so important.
(13:06):
That they wanna use their future earnings to support a current crisis.
For example, if you have a couple who's on the verge of divorce, it might be important enough for them to solve this problem now in order to save a much bigger emotional and financial headache when they're 75 and looking to retire.
Maybe they're like, hey, you know what, we might not even be able to be together at 75, so let's solve this problem now, right?
(13:32):
People have all kinds of ways to pay for the thing they value.
It's not our job to figure that out.
It's our job to be crystal clear about what our life first fee is.
Most therapists have a fear first fee.
You set your fee based on fear, who can pay this?
Who can't pay this?
What can I pay?
Oh, nobody can ever pay me $250 so let me make my fee $175.
(13:55):
0, I made my fee $175.
I didn't get a phone call this week.
I'm gonna make my fee $125.
That's a fee your first fee.
We teach our students, our therapists we work with, to set a life first fee and then set clear boundaries around that.
It's not our job to figure out how people are gonna pay.
It's our job to find the people who understand the value of what we do and to communicate that value such that people will pay.
(14:17):
If you want to know how to do that, you know what to do.
Hey, at leanandigBank.com.
And Just write the word action.
We'll talk to you about whether you're a good fit to work with us and how to do that.
Whether you decide to work with us or not, I wanna just get just just stop stop this malarkey around.
I don't wanna only work with rich people because it's a distraction.
(14:39):
It's a distraction from the reality that it is a privilege to do cheap therapy.
It's fucking true.: you know who can do cheap therapy?
Better help because they're at scale.
They have a whole corporate entity.
With a lot of money and investments and backing, by the way, to be able to pay a therapist $35 an hour while that company is making, I don't know, billions, providing cheap therapy at scale is a privilege and it makes a lot of people at the top money.
(15:07):
Most therapists can't provide cheap therapy, and still have lives that are generous, that are rewarding and rewarded, that allow them to show up fully and passionate, passionately for their kids, for themselves.
If you are seeing 30 people a week on insurance and you're able to do all of that, I suspect, I, I, I'll actually say this not to you, for those listening, if you see a therapist who's working for an agency and they're filled with joy.
(15:32):
And they seem easeful or they're seeing 30 clients a week and it seems easeful and they seem present and they seem aware and they're really good parents and they're just like going to the gym.
I suspect.
They have financial backing from another source, a wealthy spouse.
, generational family wealth.
This picture is not what it seems.
(15:55):
If you find an example of that that's not true, email me.
Hey At Lena McBin.com, tell me about it.
I, I, I'm gonna doubt you and until you show me the case for the rest of us who are like, I'm seeing 30 people a week and I'm burnt out, the problem is me.
No, it is not.: The problem is not you.
I'm seeing 30 people a week and I'm still having a hard time paying my bills.
The problem is me, the problem is not you.
(16:18):
The problem is that's impossible.
Nobody can be going on vacations.
refreshed, easeful, enlivened.
Nobody can do that.
, when you're seeing 30 people a week and making a $75 copay, it's just not, just not the way the world works.
It's not happening.
The people who look like they're doing that have something else going on financially that, you just aren't aware of.
(16:43):
If you are in business, which if you are in private practice, you're in business, you need to make money, which means you need to work with people who are resourced.
If you don't wanna do that.
, don't be in business.
Go do something else, work for someone else, If you're in a business and you're stressed out and broke and taxed, I'm gonna argue that's not really a a business or not a successful business doesn't make sense.
(17:13):
If you wanna serve people who can't pay you or just don't wanna pay you, go do make your life easy, go do it somewhere else where you're not having to be responsible for all the other aspects of the business admin, marketing, paperwork, blah.
Let someone else take care of that for you, no shame.
No shame, but let's not go into business and say I don't wanna work with the people who can actually pay me to run my business.
(17:35):
You got it?
If you want more of this kind of thinking, if you want more, join us in Lean In make Bank Academy.
This is what we talk about this is what we think about these are the kind of conversations we are having, you know what to do.
Hey at LeanI makebank.com, just type the word action we'll tell you how you can work with us.
Share this with a friend.
I know your mind is blown.
(17:57):
Or you're pissed.
You're like, fuck you, Tiffany.
All right.
OK, maybe your kid just learned the F word, What can I say?
What can I say?
OK.
All right.: That's my, that's my soapbox for the, for the week, folks.
You're welcome.
I do not just want to work with rich people.
Oh, you've heard it.
I've certainly heard it, You know, as somebody who advocates for therapists, particularly women, particularly people of color, particularly folks from the LGBTQ community, just folks from marginalized backgrounds.
(00:25):
And usually that means in some way.
, you've been marginalized financially, because of the class you are in.
Because of the category that you're in.
, by the way, you could be a, a cis white dude and have been marginalized.
Welcome to limb.
Welcome to working with me.
(00:48):
I advocate for therapists too.
Charge premium fees in their private practice in their business, and while people do not come at me.
I don't know why.
Why don't people come at me?: I mean, certainly people who don't know me well might leave some comments saying like, how dare you?
Or this is unethical.
I don't, I pay, I pay no attention to that.
I've helped too many thousands and tens of thousands of therapists.
(01:14):
Who I care about, who I can relate to, have a little more.
Self advocacy, have a little more confidence, make more money and actually be able to give back generously.
I've helped too many people to even notice when folks who don't know me have something to say about the work I do.
(01:35):
That being said, this refrain, I don't wanna work with just rich rich people.
How do we think about that, Tiffany?
I wanted to say something about that today.
It may be controversial.
You're not surprised.
You're not surprised by that.
By the way, if you don't know who I am, my name is Tiffany McLean.
I am the founder of Lean In Make Bank, and I, like I said, advocate for therapists to charge premium fees cash pay in their practice and to build their practice from a foundation of premium fees cash.
(02:06):
That's what I do.
If you don't wanna do that, that's OK.
If you do wanna do that, I'm the person to talk to, feel free to email me.
Hey at LeanI makebank with the word action, and I'll tell you how you can work with me and my team.
So this idea, I don't wanna only work with rich people.
Well, I have some I have some news for you.
(02:28):
If you have a private practice and you're a therapist and you want to have a business that is sustainable, that actually runs, that actually does what a business is supposed to do by definition, which is make money for you.
You, you have to work with people who have the resources and the desire to pay you for your services.
You need to be paid enough to take care of the business, finances.
(02:51):
And then you need more than enough left over to take care of yourself, your family, your retirement, your health benefits, your spouse, your life, your desires, anything you need now or may need.
In order to take care of yourself financially, your business has to cover that.
(03:12):
That's the point of having a business.
If you don't want to do that, if you don't want to work with people who have the resources to pay, you don't have to do it.
You may be somebody who has the privilege of.
The luxury to work with people who can't afford you or don't want to pay for your services.
You can work in an agency.
You can work in a school setting, you can work in a government setting, you can work with insurance panels and provide care for people who do not have the resources to pay or simply don't want to pay for therapy.
(03:45):
Look, if you have the privilege to do that, I love that.
I love.
That you have that privilege.
I want everyone to have the financial stability to be able to, I mean, if you want to, if you don't want to, then I don't want this for you, right?
But if you wanna give back as a therapist, as a social worker, and you have the financial stability, maybe you have a wealthy partner, maybe you come from a family of generational wealth, and you can do that without burning out, without taking out of the mouths of your children, without losing out on your retirement or your own safety net, without.
(04:19):
, you know, and you can, you can work for an agency, you can work for insurance panels, and you still have the time, energy, freedom to go on vacation to show up presently with your kids.
If you have the, the ability to do that, yes, and the desire to do that, yes, I want that for you.
But for people who are like me, you did not grow up with financial abundance you do not have the privilege or luxury of generational wealth.
(04:45):
The reason you are in business for yourself is to create it for yourself, for your family, for the generations to come if you so choose.
If you want to just give all that money away when at your, at the, the, the incident of your death at 98 years old, I love it.
You can be like Melinda Gates, right?
(05:07):
Give that shit away.
Do whatever you want.
But the purpose of going into business for yourself is to have financial freedom and time freedom, emotional presence, psychic bandwidth.
There are those who say, what?
So you're just gonna be selfish and greedy?
What about giving back?
Are you saying you, you're just gonna go into business and never give back, you're gonna become the, the man, you're gonna become someone who doesn't care about others?
(05:35):
Wow, what do you even think you are?
I didn't go into this business to make money.
I think that question is disingenuous.
I think the question setting up that binary, oh, so if you go into business, you're not gonna ever give back.
You're only gonna serve rich people forever.
, I think it's disingenuous.
Obviously, that's not the case.
If you are a therapist, if you're somebody who, who, who spent 2 to 7 years in graduate school to learn how to help people as your profession, by the way, You went to grad school to become a professional, like a lawyer becomes a professional, goes to grad school, a doctor becomes a professional to make money, a lawyer becomes a professional to make money.
(06:16):
You chose this as your profession, which you chose to become a therapist as your way to make a financial living.
Anybody who chose to make their lives work and their financial stability depending on helping people, you care about helping people and you're gonna do it no matter what.
But you don't need to do it in your business.
There are seasons of life.
If you do not have generational wealth, if you do not have a a wealthy spouse or a wealthy family.
(06:40):
Then you have to do that for yourself as an adult, as a functioning member of society you need financial security you need financial stability, and guess what, you have the means to do it because you have the privilege every single one of us had the privilege of going to grad school and getting licensed if you are listening to this, use that privilege to do what it's supposed to do, which is help you have financial stability and then financial abundance.
(07:06):
After that, if you wanna use your financial resources, your, your, your presence of mind, your time to give back, do it, it's an order of operations.
First, take care of yourself.
Take care of your family, make sure you're set up when somebody gets cancer, when a spouse dies unexpectedly, if a divorce happens and we weren't anticipating it, you need to be financially secure in the event of life's inevitable lifing.
(07:36):
This is a season of life where you're making a business that works.
You're making a business that takes care of you.
That's your job.
After that, give generously.
I, I sometimes joke, you know, therapists are like I, I.
I take on a sliding scale because I want to give back.
I'm like, how generous are you as a human being in the world when you're seeing 35 people a week, you have 72 people on your case load, you don't even know when you went to the bathroom last.
(08:01):
You ate some Cheetos, the the the the the the orange stuff is still on your face.
I suspect you're not a particularly generous person.
You know who I see who is generous?
Therapists who are charging $300 per session.
They see 12 clients a week.
They're able to take care of themselves, their family, they don't have debt anymore.
They're putting money in their retirement, their healthcare is taken care of.
(08:25):
And they still have 20 extra hours in their week that would be working hours typically for most people.
Those folks are fucking generous.
I also want to take a moment to talk about rich people.
I don't only want to work with rich people.
I like to think about the the clients who pay for therapy, who also, by the way, have the privilege of paying $300 per week for therapy without relying on their insurance, in-network insurance.
(08:57):
Those folks are not just rich.
, There are a variety of ways people pay for therapy.
I actually talked to earlier this year, 2025 at the time of this recording.
I talked to a whole bunch of students who'd worked with us in the Lean In Make Big Academy.
By the way, if this sounds wonderful to you, you're like, holy smokes, wait, 250 per session, 15 people a week?
(09:22):
sign me up.
You can email me, he at lean in makebank.com with the word action.
We are gonna know what you mean.
We will tell you how you can work with us and we will tell you if we think you're a good fit to work with us.
I have no idea what I was just talking about.
Here's the point.
(09:48):
When we talk about the people who can afford to pay $300 per week for therapy, we're not only talking about rich people.
By the way, rich people are lovely.
There are all kinds of rich people.
If you are, earning $300 per session, seeing 15 people a week, you can probably afford to pay a therapist $300 per session.
Does that make you a rich person?
Maybe.
(10:09):
So be it.
You're gonna be a kind, generous, thoughtful, caring, politically active, rich person.
, earlier this year, I was talking to therapists who we've worked with, who are now charging premium fees, have small case loads, and I'm like, who's paying?
Who are these people who are paying 200+ per session?
They are actors, lawyers, doctors, unemployed people, students, physical therapists, nurses, people from the, the therapist I talked to, the premium fee therapist I talked to had clients from every profession you can imagine, a mechanic.
(10:48):
OK, so the next question is how are they affording to pay 200 or 250 or beyond for therapy?
And the answer may surprise you.
It wasn't about how much money they made.
Of course you have to make money enough to pay.
Of course some of them have wealthy families.
Of course some of them have PPO insurance, which means they pay $300 and get reimbursed 220 per session, right?
(11:10):
So they're only paying maybe 80 per session.
Excellent.: What an amazing resource.
What amazing access to wealth if they come from generational wealth.
But there are other ways people paid too, for example, dual income households where there are no children.
If you have kids you often are thinking, oh my God, it's so hard to make ends meet for folks.
Some folks who have dual incomes and they have no children, they have much more disposable income than people who are supporting 235 children.
(11:39):
Some people chose to live with roommates so that they could pay for therapy because therapy was so valuable to them.
If you work a corporate job making $100,000 a year and you live with 5 roommates, guess what?
You have the resources to pay for therapy.
Are you rich?
You are certainly not.
Are you someone who values the work of therapy with a particular provider who has set themselves apart?
(12:00):
By the way, we help you do that in limb.
People who have set themselves apart from the therapy mill crowd, yeah, then you can afford therapy.
There are all kinds of ways people pay for therapy beyond simply being rich.
Some people, this is gonna surprise you, have dipped into their children's 529 plans or have dipped into their own retirement.
(12:22):
You might talk to clients who don't even consider some of their financial resources.
By the way, if you're a therapist, you're probably like retirement, how is that even possible?
If you're like many Americans who have been working since the.
22 in corporate America, they have massive retirements just letting you know lawyers, doctors, people in tech, people who work for Kaiser.
(12:45):
Anybody who's worked for a system, worked for a corporation of any kind likely has retirement.
Your clients might not think about retirement as a source of income or a source of money they can use to pay for therapy.
Maybe we don't even ask, right?
But sometimes clients just voluntarily pull out of those sources because the immediate issue is so important.
(13:06):
That they wanna use their future earnings to support a current crisis.
For example, if you have a couple who's on the verge of divorce, it might be important enough for them to solve this problem now in order to save a much bigger emotional and financial headache when they're 75 and looking to retire.
Maybe they're like, hey, you know what, we might not even be able to be together at 75, so let's solve this problem now, right?
(13:32):
People have all kinds of ways to pay for the thing they value.
It's not our job to figure that out.
It's our job to be crystal clear about what our life first fee is.
Most therapists have a fear first fee.
You set your fee based on fear, who can pay this?
Who can't pay this?
What can I pay?
Oh, nobody can ever pay me $250 so let me make my fee $175.
(13:55):
0, I made my fee $175.
I didn't get a phone call this week.
I'm gonna make my fee $125.
That's a fee your first fee.
We teach our students, our therapists we work with, to set a life first fee and then set clear boundaries around that.
It's not our job to figure out how people are gonna pay.
It's our job to find the people who understand the value of what we do and to communicate that value such that people will pay.
(14:17):
If you want to know how to do that, you know what to do.
Hey, at leanandigBank.com.
And Just write the word action.
We'll talk to you about whether you're a good fit to work with us and how to do that.
Whether you decide to work with us or not, I wanna just get just just stop stop this malarkey around.
I don't wanna only work with rich people because it's a distraction.
(14:39):
It's a distraction from the reality that it is a privilege to do cheap therapy.
It's fucking true.: you know who can do cheap therapy?
Better help because they're at scale.
They have a whole corporate entity.
With a lot of money and investments and backing, by the way, to be able to pay a therapist $35 an hour while that company is making, I don't know, billions, providing cheap therapy at scale is a privilege and it makes a lot of people at the top money.
(15:07):
Most therapists can't provide cheap therapy, and still have lives that are generous, that are rewarding and rewarded, that allow them to show up fully and passionate, passionately for their kids, for themselves.
If you are seeing 30 people a week on insurance and you're able to do all of that, I suspect, I, I, I'll actually say this not to you, for those listening, if you see a therapist who's working for an agency and they're filled with joy.
(15:32):
And they seem easeful or they're seeing 30 clients a week and it seems easeful and they seem present and they seem aware and they're really good parents and they're just like going to the gym.
I suspect.
They have financial backing from another source, a wealthy spouse.
, generational family wealth.
This picture is not what it seems.
(15:55):
If you find an example of that that's not true, email me.
Hey At Lena McBin.com, tell me about it.
I, I, I'm gonna doubt you and until you show me the case for the rest of us who are like, I'm seeing 30 people a week and I'm burnt out, the problem is me.
No, it is not.: The problem is not you.
I'm seeing 30 people a week and I'm still having a hard time paying my bills.
The problem is me, the problem is not you.
(16:18):
The problem is that's impossible.
Nobody can be going on vacations.
refreshed, easeful, enlivened.
Nobody can do that.
, when you're seeing 30 people a week and making a $75 copay, it's just not, just not the way the world works.
It's not happening.
The people who look like they're doing that have something else going on financially that, you just aren't aware of.
(16:43):
If you are in business, which if you are in private practice, you're in business, you need to make money, which means you need to work with people who are resourced.
If you don't wanna do that.
, don't be in business.
Go do something else, work for someone else, If you're in a business and you're stressed out and broke and taxed, I'm gonna argue that's not really a a business or not a successful business doesn't make sense.
(17:13):
If you wanna serve people who can't pay you or just don't wanna pay you, go do make your life easy, go do it somewhere else where you're not having to be responsible for all the other aspects of the business admin, marketing, paperwork, blah.
Let someone else take care of that for you, no shame.
No shame, but let's not go into business and say I don't wanna work with the people who can actually pay me to run my business.
(17:35):
You got it?
If you want more of this kind of thinking, if you want more, join us in Lean In make Bank Academy.
This is what we talk about this is what we think about these are the kind of conversations we are having, you know what to do.
Hey at LeanI makebank.com, just type the word action we'll tell you how you can work with us.
Share this with a friend.
I know your mind is blown.
(17:57):
Or you're pissed.
You're like, fuck you, Tiffany.
All right.
OK, maybe your kid just learned the F word, What can I say?
What can I say?
OK.
All right.: That's my, that's my soapbox for the, for the week, folks.
You're welcome.
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