In last year's cohort of EVOLVE, the group coaching and mastermind that I offer once a year, we spent an entire month talking about nothing other than our relationship to money and its impact on our practice.
Students later told me that this was one of the most powerful segments of their journey through the program - and I wasn't surprised.
Understanding your personal money story is critical to your success in every way. So, today I want to share some of what they experienced with you.
In this episode, I’m going to walk you through a series of questions to guide you as you reflect on your relationship to money.
We'll explore what you’ve learned over time, what beliefs may have been created as a result, and how this might be impacting your success today. But to make the most of this episode, you have to engage with it.
What do I mean by that?
I mean stop the audio after each question. Spend some time with your journal and your thoughts, your memories and your observations. You'll learn so much more from this if you actually implement what I suggest here.
And then, let's rewrite those old stories for something better - something MUCH better.
Give it a listen...
~Wendy
xoxo
P.S. HEADS UP, Y'ALL: If the deeper work that this kind of reflection brings appeals to you, or if you just find yourself struck by how much there is to learn as you grow your own Ideal Practice, consider joining us in this year's EVOLVE mastermind. Doors open for a few more days only.
>>>>>. Get all the details at www.WendyPittsReeves.com/evolve. 📣📣📣
_______________
If you enjoyed this episode,
you might also like:
Wendy Pitts Reeves, LCSW
Host, Ideal Practice
Private Practice Coach and Mentor
www.WendyPittsReeves.com
Wendy@WendyPittsReeves.com
In last year's cohort of EVOLVE, the group coaching and mastermind that I offer once a year, we spent an entire month talking about nothing other than our relationship to money and its impact on our practice.
Students later told me that this was one of the most powerful segments of their journey through the program - and I wasn't surprised.
Understanding your personal money story is critical to your success in every way. So, today I want to share some of what they experienced with you.
In this episode, I’m going to walk you through a series of questions to guide you as you reflect on your relationship to money.
We'll explore what you’ve learned over time, what beliefs may have been created as a result, and how this might be impacting your success today. But to make the most of this episode, you have to engage with it.
What do I mean by that?
I mean stop the audio after each question. Spend some time with your journal and your thoughts, your memories and your observations. You'll learn so much more from this if you actually implement what I suggest here.
And then, let's rewrite those old stories for something better - something MUCH better.
Give it a listen...
~Wendy
xoxo
P.S. HEADS UP, Y'ALL: If the deeper work that this kind of reflection brings appeals to you, or if you just find yourself struck by how much there is to learn as you grow your own Ideal Practice, consider joining us in this year's EVOLVE mastermind. Doors open for a few more days only.
>>>>>. Get all the details at www.WendyPittsReeves.com/evolve. 📣📣📣
_______________
If you enjoyed this episode,
you might also like:
Wendy Pitts Reeves, LCSW
Host, Ideal Practice
Private Practice Coach and Mentor
www.WendyPittsReeves.com
Wendy@WendyPittsReeves.com
You're listening to Ideal Practice, episode number 92. When you have balance and flow in each area of what I call the seven pillars of an ideal practice, you'll find depth, creativity, this delicious sense of overall satisfaction with a well run fun to run private practice. But along the way to that sense of flow and balance, you will be challenged in ways that will surprise you sometime. Today I want to explore one of the areas that has been especially powerful with my students in Evolve, the group coaching and mastermind that I offer once a year. Let's talk about pillar five payment and profit Triggery words, if ever there were some, but that's what I wanna talk about today. So stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and, with over two decades of experience in the private practice world, I've built my six figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way. This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit centered, but people forward. This is the ideal practice podcast. Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of ideal practice how you doing today, what's going on in your world? Y'all, I'm so glad that you are here. I am your host, wendy Pitts, reeves and I love hanging out with you here each week. I'm kind of excited you will hear that in my voice because we're heading into spring and so my whole little weather weenie self is beginning to get a little happy. And it's funny how you know, as I began to feel that energy in the air, how much better I feel about just the sense of overall momentum and forward growth. I can see progress happening just oh my gosh. Just two days ago at my many of you know, I've been working with my folks and dealing with all the some of the things that go along with having older parents, and I moved my mother into a lovely little place here in my town and she's got this adorable little place that backs up to a creek, literally right in the middle of town, which has just been such a treat to discover, to find. And when I was at her place a few days ago and popped out on her back porch for a minute, there was a whole big, happy cluster of brand new thriving, just raising their little heads for the whole world to see a bunch of daffodils that were blooming wild among the rocks down by the creek, and I just can't tell you how happy that makes me. This is really funny, but that gives me a flashback. Back in college, in my undergrad years, I used to keep a picture of dinosaurs where did that come from? A picture of daffodils cut out of a magazine, taped to the wall above my desk in the middle of winter Just remind me, this spring was around the corner. I just love those little babies. They're so happy, so happy, like little batches of sunshine sticking through the woods there. So that was just lovely. Anyway, I hope you are doing great and that your week is off to a good start.
Speaker 1:I decided I actually had something else I was gonna talk about, but I got to thinking about what some of the surprises were that came out of my first year of teaching Evolve. Evolve is the group coaching and mastermind program that I offer once a year, where we dive deeper into each one of the seven pillars over the course of several months and everyone has lots of time to grow, support, implement, explore, just learn all kinds of different things, not just about the strategy side of running a practice, but about what goes on in our heads and in our hearts and who we are and what we bring to the table as practice owners, and as I was thinking about that, I thought you know what I really wanna dive into. One of the things that was, I think, probably surprised them in that how we think about money, not just in a literal, practical sense, but our relationship to money, understanding our own money story Turned out to be one of the things that struck the biggest chord among my students last year, and I felt like it might be helpful to share some of this with you guys, and what I really wanna do today is I'm just gonna talk you through some of the things that we explore inside Evolve, so that you can do this on your own, because learning to see the impact of our money stories, wanting to recognize the origin of our relationship to money, is the first step to being able to rewrite those stories when we need to. Okay, and I would be really surprised if you were not someone who needs to do this, because literally every single person I have ever coached has needed some version of this somewhere along the way. So what I want to do is I just want to pose a series of questions that will help you to reflect on your own experience with this. Okay, I want you to think about how what you have learned throughout your life might be impacting your practice today, both consciously and unconsciously. And I'm going to walk you through a few of those questions and share some of the things that typically come up when I start to do this kind of work with people and just see if you can relate to any of this. Okay, and then I'm going to ask yourself what could change if you let yourself write a new money story Y'all. How you do anything is how you do everything. So the way you think and feel, consciously and unconsciously, about this subject will impact the success of your practice. It will impact the effectiveness you bring to your clinical work. It will affect your overall sense of joy and pride and ease as a practice owner. So this stuff really does matter, but it is tricky. It is so tricky. So I've got two or three things I want to talk through here.
Speaker 1:Let's start with the first kind of first thing I want to explore, and that is if I were to ask you to tell me a story about how money was handled when you were growing up in your family of origin, and whatever your, your origin story is, what would you tell me? Here's what I want to know how was money managed? How was it discussed or experienced in the household you grew up in? What were you told that money is like? What did people actually, what did people around you and what are the adults around you say about what money even is? What were you told this is important. What were you told about people who have money and about people who don't? Why do you, I wonder, why do I need money and my income is not shared? Why do I need a cart? Really, think about this. In fact, if you want to pause this podcast and go spend a few minutes like really kind of what I'm gonna talk you through today, you could think of each of these as journal prompts. Yeah, for real, what was your experience related to money when you grew up? How was it managed? How did people talk about it? What did it feel like? What were you told that money is? And, especially, I really like to hear what were you told? What did people in your household say about folks who had money and those who didn't? I'll tell you some of the things that came up for me when I was answering these questions for myself.
Speaker 1:One of the clearest memories that I have is that we were comfortably middle-class folks. I'm not gonna share like a sad story because I don't have a sad story. I have nothing to complain about about the way I grew up my folks were. They weren't like licensed professionals, but they had good jobs and they did just fine. I found out when I as an adult that they never made actually as much money as I thought they did. My dad was a really good money manager, but it was all kind of mysterious to me. What I know now is that they took a little and did a lot with it, but I did not know that growing up.
Speaker 1:One of my clearest memories as a kid was something that was kind of a joke, but not really, and that was that a lot of times on a Saturday my dad would be tucked away in his home office paying bills and my mom would say don't bother your dad, he's paying bills. Just a real simple little statement Don't bother your dad, he's paying bills. Today you know, leave him alone. But the message behind that was don't bother your dad, he's paying bills. And you know what that means. It means he's gonna be a little cranky. It might be best to give him a little space. Hint, hint. And what I got from that was that paying bills was a negative experience and that there was tension and irritation just around that activity. So I didn't really understand what all that meant. I just knew it was something not very good and it made my dad kind of grumpy. Well, that may not seem like such a big deal as a kid, but how does that influence me today when I wanna sit down and pay bills? Do I look forward to it with joy as or as just a matter of fact? You know, part of running a business? I don't know. It's something I have to think about.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I remember that was so strong. I've got two or three things here that really come to mind for me about this. One is that in my family we did talk about things Like we. Around the dinner table we would often discuss what was going on in the news or what we were learning about the world, and I'm a person of opinions. I was at some point a dramatic teenage girl and I didn't have any trouble saying what I thought, and my parents, to their credit, did not mind that, like they honored that and we were encouraged to discuss what we thought about things, but money was loaded.
Speaker 1:For me from the beginning, money was loaded. I have a social worker heart. I have always been even I can remember even as young as, like second and third grade sort of pulling for the underdog in my class. I was the one that would befriend the kids that nobody else wanted to be friends with you. I bet you money. A lot of you can relate to that. So I always have had this sense of hyper-awareness of those who struggle, those who don't have as much, those who life is hard for right. I mean, there's a reason why I was drawn to the work that I do. So money was a conversation, often at the dinner table. And think about what I just told you that what I know now is that my folks actually did not make that much but they did well with what they had. So in my child's view, we didn't suffer. I know now that there was tension and there was struggle behind the scenes, but we never saw that and my folks figured things out and things got better over the years because they learned how to do things. But I remember in particular at dinner one night, what was it that triggered this? Oh, I know what it was, and boy, this is revealing. Yikes, this is really revealing.
Speaker 1:I was in high school and I went to a pretty a big public high school in my town. It was fine, perfectly good school, but my dad had gotten a new car and it was a little bit fancier car than we'd had before. And I was mortified when I honestly don't remember how or why this happened, because I rarely rode the bus, I usually walked. I didn't live very far from the school, so I actually don't remember how or why this happened, but there was some I guess it was probably band practice actually after school but there were times, for whatever reason that I don't remember, when one or the other of my folks would have to drive me to school and drop me off and we were in this car. That was a little bit fancier car, a little bit nicer car, and I was embarrassed by it that I am the total. I was the total opposite of, you know, the kids who you got to wear the right jeans, have the right label on your clothes. I was totally the opposite of that. In fact, even if I could have bought things like that, I wouldn't have Because I was such a counterculture person.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, this is turning into a little bit more of a reveal than I meant it to be, but anyway, I remember one at dinner one night I was kind of complaining about my dad buying this fancy new car and we got into a little bit of a tiff about the importance of money. And my dad, in a moment of frustration with me which was rare, but there was in a moment of frustration he said to me honey, one of these days you're going to realize that money is what makes the world go round. And I too, this day, can remember the sense of righteous indignation that I had in that moment and I I totally bit back. I said it is not. There are so many more important things than money. That's just not true. I was so mad. Well, my mom, somewhere sometime after that, said to me one day. She said money doesn't matter unless you don't have it. She said that because she grew up quite poor and knows from first hand experience how important it actually is to pay attention to these things. Yeah Well, all of that y'all goes into my approach to and my relationship to money.
Speaker 1:What were some of the things that were said about money in your house? Do you remember certain phrases or arguments or just comments that somebody made, and they don't have to be negative. These aren't even actually necessarily negative. Actually, my folks were just trying to teach me something that it took me a really long time to learn. What were some of the things that were said healthy or unhealthy, positive or negative, fun to hear, not fun to hear whatever in your family and what were some of the beliefs that might have been created for you as a result? When you heard the adults in your household talking about money, or when they shared certain things with you or said certain things with you, what were the beliefs that might have been created for you?
Speaker 1:I already said, for example, that I learned that paying bills was like the stressful, difficult tension that I had. I learned that I had to be careful about some kind of activity. I also learned that money was a tool and really kind of a good thing, but it was a bit of a mystery to me. I think I mentioned to you the other day I'm a four fact finder on the Colby's. I don't dig into the details about things, so I never really understood the mechanics of money. I just knew it was kind of a thing that could work if you knew how to work it.
Speaker 1:I also learned that there's this sort of a sense that you can never let your guard down, that there's never really quite enough and you always kind of have to be alert and careful. There's nothing wrong with any of that, and yet I guarantee it that there are ways that that has influenced me in private practice. Well, some of the things that I have heard from my students are that money was evil, that it was dirty, that you have to wash your hands after you touch it. I had folks say that they had learned that people who have money are privileged and you're not them, so don't be thinking you're ever going to have that. I've had people saying, uh, if you want more, that means that you're not grateful for what you've got. How dare you? That means that you're not a good person, like it's bad to want more. What's wrong with you? So many different things, so subtle. I've learned some people say that it wasn't about the money. You shouldn't care about money. It's about the impact, and I want you to be careful as you're listening to this.
Speaker 1:A lot of these things are not either or kind of things they a lot of. Sometimes they're both and and sometimes it. Sometimes they are outright wrong. Sometimes they're just wrong and harmful. Sometimes they're not wrong at all. They're just presented in a way that feels like an either or when it isn't. So back to you.
Speaker 1:What were some of the things you heard about money growing up? What did you learn from that and what beliefs might you be carrying around as a result? I encourage you to spend a few minutes thinking about that. Maybe write it down, ponder that, reflect on that. The second thing I want to ask you to think about is your professional money story. Your professional money story. Not just where you come from, not what you grew up in, but your professional money story.
Speaker 1:What were you taught about money during your professional training? Whether you went to a graduate program and are licensed in a profession like I am, as a clinical social worker, or whether it was, you know the International Education as a life coach, or you've gone through extra training as an Eden Energy Specialist or as a Ray Key practitioner, whatever the training was you went through, what were you taught about money as part of your training? What did you hear from mentors and teachers? What do you hear today from friends and colleagues, from your peers in your field? I can tell you for myself, I didn't hear anything from any of my mentors about salary, about private practice, about payment none of it Like we. Just it was never talked about. It was purely clinical in pretty much every arena I can think of. There was a little bit about how to get a job, but even that was never about what you should expect to get paid or what you should expect to earn over a lifetime or much less what we can do to enhance the field and raise salaries across the board for everybody. I heard nothing. So, again, money was a bit of a mystery.
Speaker 1:I did feel judgment sometime from audiences and I have seen a lot of comments online in reaction either to what I say or to things that I'm seeing in other places, that when people talk about making good money as a healer in private practice, I see plenty of that online. I will say, like one of the things that was kind of another reveal for me when I was the family therapy director at a really great residential treatment center that did such good work with these kids and I was hiring staff the first time I hired a guy, a great social worker, really good therapist. When I said I've forgotten how I couched it. But you know the question about kind of what are you looking to get paid? What are you expecting, what are you looking for as a salary in this position? He quoted a rate that was higher than I was making as the director of the department. I had such mixed feelings about that y'all. This too is really revealing and such a great lesson.
Speaker 1:My first reaction was insulted. I was insulted like who do you think you are? Buddy, and I had hired at that point a handful of female therapists. He was the first guy that I hired, and I can remember sort of being a slightly indignant Like I don't know who you think you are, but that's more than I make. I mean, I didn't say that out loud, of course, but that's what I thought. And at the same time I also thought, gosh, what is it like to ask for that kind of money? So there was a part of me that resented him and was offended, and another part of me that admired him and was slightly joked up, and that was when I was a little bit more angry at him and was slightly jealous that he had the guts to say that.
Speaker 1:That became a bit of a theme that I found replayed over and over in my early career, where men asked for more, women didn't. Now this won't be a surprise to you, because this has been well documented in research, in particular, in terms of salaries. The same attitude carries over to private practice in terms of our rates or our payment policies, how we expect to get paid, when we expect to get paid, what the rules are around that. I see the same thing there, but I have never forgotten how I both sort of admired him and was slightly offended by him at the same time. Isn't that crazy? But I also think it's informative. And when you find yourself being offended by or resenting someone else around something related to money and how they are running their practice, I invent you to be curious about that, about your own reaction to that, because my reaction to that said something about where the work was that I needed to do. Right, of course, it did Well. The same thing.
Speaker 1:When I talked to my students about this, I heard that a lot of you also have never been taught about any of this at all and a lot of you get shamed for wanting more like a self-pay practice. I've seen this too, and many of you have told me this. One of my students talked about the fact that internships, whatever were available, were either free you were expected to work for free or very low pay, and what does that say to you about your professional training and the value of the work that you do? It's super interesting, isn't it? So, again, what have you been taught as a professional, as a skilled, experienced, well-trained therapist, massage therapist, reiki practitioner, physical therapist, chiropractor, whatever it is you do? What have you been taught about money and what beliefs may have been created as a result?
Speaker 1:Again, I'll tell you for me, really, what I learned about all of this. So much is it really made me see how women shorts change themselves? That's really because that was such a. That happened over and over and over and over in different settings, both in jobs and in private practice. I just kept running into that divide over and over, so it taught me a lot about that. I will tell you. One of the things that my students have said was that what they realized is that they had never oh, this broke my heart. This broke my heart, ah, and someone said to me that what this exercise made them realize was that they had never been around anyone who spoke about money in a positive way until this group, until evolve.
Speaker 1:It's a sad thing when you're in your 40s or later before you ever find yourself among peers, colleagues, friends, where people speak positively about your desire for more and encourage you, support you, call you forward into owning that, stepping into that with everything you got. That's a sad thing when it takes that long for that to happen, isn't it? Yeah, well, I encourage you, if you do nothing else after listening to this, to sit down with a pen and paper, sit down with a cup of your favorite beverage, give yourself 20, 30 minutes to sit down and just write about what your origin money story is and what your professional money story is. What have you heard, what have you experienced, what have you observed and what were the beliefs that were created about that? That's all I wanna talk about right now, but I do wanna tell you where to go with this. I'm not gonna leave you hanging with this, because this is the kind of thing that we do in Evolve. Okay, I want you. Where you go with this is once you've got this figured out, then you can start to do something about this.
Speaker 1:And where you go next with this is I want you to and I have a whole structured way of kind of talking you through this, but I'm not gonna take up the time to do this here because that's beyond the scope of this podcast. But I want you to spend some time thinking about the value that you bring to the table and owning your authority. I have talked about that previously on this podcast many times. That's where you would go. Next is like you know what? I've never heard any of this kind of stuff, but here's what I know about myself and the good that I do, and I want you to think about how you would communicate that value, what your clients get out of it when they work with you and where you go with all of that is.
Speaker 1:Then I want you to rewrite your money story. I want you to write a new, healthy money story. I want you to begin to reprogram some of those old beliefs. I want you to fight back against an offhand comment that was made 30 years ago that has stuck with you ever since. I want you to push back against that and recreate your own relationship to money. And then I've got a question for you what will you do differently as a private practice owner, as a healer, as an expert, as a result of this new awareness. I encourage you, give this the time it deserves, because when we talk about this and evolve, it sort of blows everybody's mind how big this is, how important it is and how much it is impacting their success today. But this is when things start to turn around. This. It ain't about strategy that matters we can talk about that but this is when things begin to turn around.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this live when it first comes out, I am still accepting enrollment for this year's cohort of evolve. Reach out to me at wendy at wendypittsrivescom, if you wanna know more, or just go to my website, wendypittsrivescom. Forward slash evolve. Everything you need to know is right there. I think you will like what you see. But don't dilly-dally y'all. This is something that feels right for you and you are hungry for a safe place where it actually is positive, where we actually don't shame each other for wanting more. We celebrate that. Then I encourage you to go look at wendypittsrivescom. Forward slash evolve, and I would love to have you join us. Have a great week, everybody. That's what I've got for you today. I hope it's helpful, I hope it gets you thinking, I hope it serves you well, and with that I will let you go and I will see you next week right here on the Ideal Practice Podcast. Bye now, pf. Yellow postcard On the top of the 표.