How to Make Money From Your Knowledge & Expertise as a Therapist (And Actually Feel Good About It)

Have you ever had that thought — can I really charge for this? Like, why would someone pay money for this from me? Is it really something people will want?

If you have, you are absolutely not alone. And the reason that thought feels so sticky isn't random - it's deeply embedded in the systems and training that shaped us as therapists. In this episode, we're naming it, getting curious about it, and doing the real work of figuring out where it came from. Because that's the work before the work AND it matters more than any strategy I could give you.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why so many therapists feel genuinely icky about charging for their expertise — and why that feeling makes complete sense given how we were trained
• How the systems we've worked in have wired us to separate the helping from the money — and what that looks like in our everyday situations.
• Why imposter syndrome hits so differently in the therapy profession, and how our evidence-based training can actually keep us stuck in a loop of tweaking and never launching
• The reframe that has shifted everything for me and why it's not about becoming greedy, it's about sustainability
• Why burnt out, underpaid therapists don't help more people…and what financial stability actually makes possible
• The practical exercise you NEED to do this week on your money beliefs— and why the this matters the most if you want to grow

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Charging for your expertise is not at odds with your values — it's what keeps you in the profession long enough to actually change lives.
• The work before the work is the mindset work — you can have the best digital product in the world sitting in a folder, but if your nervous system is still wired to give it away for free, it stays there.
• Really good therapists making really good money do really good things with it — financial stability means capacity for complex clients, supervision, growth, and staying in love with this work.

RESOURCES + LINKS:

• Listen to last week's episode (Ep. 68 68. Exactly Where to Start With Passive Income as a Therapist (And Why You're Already Closer Than You Think) - we chatted about it in this one!
• Find Mia: @miapoko
• Email: hello@thefreedomtherapist.com.au

CALL TO ACTION:

If this one stirred something up for you — good. That means it landed. I'd love to know what belief came up for you when you did the exercise, so slide into my DMs over on Instagram at @miapoko or shoot me an email at hello@thefreedomtherapist.com.au. And if you're loving this series, please screenshot this episode and share it on your stories, or leave us a review — it genuinely helps this podcast reach more therapists who need to hear exactly this. See ya next week. xx

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Connect with Mia:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/miapoko and https://www.instagram.com/ot_inspire_therapy/

Get the Complete Personal Brand Kit for Therapists for just $47! https://thefreedomtherapist.com.au/kit

Join the Waitlist for The Freedom Therapist Club: https://www.thefreedomtherapist.com.au/club

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Freedom Therapist Podcast, your safe space to learn and unlearn all the things about scaling your business without losing yourself in the process. I'm your host, Mia Poklapovic, a previously burnt-out mental health occupational therapist and business owner who found her way to fall back in love with business and life all over again. Because success doesn't have to come at the cost of your freedom. You're going to get so much chat, a lot of energy, and of course, a little bit of chaos because it comes with the territory. I can't wait. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Freedom Therapist Podcast. I'm your host, Mia, and I am so excited to be in your ears this week. So last week, I know we talked about all the resources that are sitting in your folders. We went through the income stream audit and it was such a valuable episode. If you haven't listened to it already, please, please go back and listen to it as well. But I really hope that you've had a chance to sit with that this week because I know today we are gonna go a little bit deeper. And I want to talk about something that comes up for so many of us when we start thinking about packaging our expertise and selling it. And it is this thing, this feeling that's really uncomfortable, that can be a little bit gross that comes up when we think about charging for what we know. And I think it's really important to speak to this today because when we name it, we can be really curious about it, we can see if it's really serving us, we can change our mindset on it, we can do all of these cool things, but we really have to get really clear on what's coming up for us first. So I want to know, have you ever had that thought like, oh, can I really charge for this? You know, will people pay money for this? Why would people want to buy this from me? Or I'm just doing my job, you know, this is just an extension of what I do. Is it wrong to make a profit from this as well? And firstly, I want to say if you have, you are absolutely not alone. Pretty sure I've had all of those thoughts and more as well. And almost every single therapist I've worked with, interacted with, know has had thoughts like this as well. And what I really want us to know, and what probably so many of you will also feel comes really true for us, that feeling doesn't come from nowhere. And it's this narrative in our space that I know so many of us are aware of. Because when we think about our training, we think about the values that have been really instilled into us from the beginning of our careers. We all go into this profession because we want to help people full stop. That is the whole thing. And the systems we're trained in, the communities, health centers, the hospitals, the schools, all of the different places, it's all reinforced over and over again that helping people lose the job then and that people reaching their goals is the reward, which is the reward. Let's not take that away. That is a huge reward. But there's never any mention of the reward of the job coming with a price tag for the helping as well. We are often and so often we have been like really predisposed in this space. And I'd love to hear like if you feel like this is different or challenge me in any which way, you know where to find me on Insta. But we have often been taught to separate the clinical from the money from the profit section completely. Like the money, the money is also often handled by somebody else completely, right? So it's like a billing department, NDAS, Medicare, like it's not as obvious as like when you go to the shop and you literally pay for it then and there and you get your receipt. It is getting better now. Like, let's be real, it is getting better now. But you usually, especially for so many of us, when we're working for somebody else, we just showed up and we helped. And that is the beautiful thing about our profession so genuinely. But it has also created this deeply embedded belief and narrative that our knowledge, our expertise, the actual incredible information and value that lives in our brain should be freely given. And when we try and step into a space where we're maybe packaging that knowledge up, where we are potentially saying, actually, this does have a price tag, our whole nervous system goes, hang on, that doesn't feel right, that doesn't feel me, that feels a little bit icky. And then on top of that, we add imposter syndrome, which by the way is absolutely rampant in the therapy profession because we have so many insightful human beings who are so aware of ourselves that like I feel like we're so ready to be like, oh yeah, that's imposter syndrome, but it does not mean that it does not exist. Because we have been trained to be evidence-based, to defer to research, to acknowledge our scope, and as always, to make sure what we're saying is clinically sound and backed up, which is incredible. That is what makes us brilliant clinicians. But it also means when we put something out into the world, say a resource, an ebook, a digital product, a workshop, we immediately go, is this good enough? Is this right? What if someone thinks I don't know enough? What if someone with more experience or more credentials looks at this and judges me? And we look at it through this negative bias that our brains are wired to do. We're wired to find the gaps and then fill them and fix them and facilitate change and do all of these things. But when it comes to putting our own digital products out into the world, this is a loop that our brain can stay in. And so we sit on it, we tweak it, we tell ourselves it's not ready yet. And meanwhile, it just stays in the folder. So I really wanted to give you a reframe today. And this is one that has shifted so many things for me over the years, and I've seen it shift so many things for the therapists that I work with. And I want us to sit with today, when really good therapists make really good money, they do really good things with it. That is basically the whole point. Because when you earn well, when you have financial stability, when you're not scrambling, when you're not burning out trying to see 45 clients a week just to cover your rent and make sure you've got some expenses, you become a way better therapist. You stay in this profession longer. You have capacity to take on that complex client who might need your services. You are able to say yes to potentially some of that not profit work that really matters to you. You can invest in supervision, in training, in your team, in your own growth, and you can build the kind of practice or business that actually changes people's lives for a really long time. Therapists who are burnt out, exhausted, underpaid do not help more people. They often end up leaving the profession. They might stop being able to show up fully for the clients who need them the most. And they're gonna fall out of love with this work pretty fast as well. And this is not also, I want to be really clear on this. This is not about becoming some kind of greedy person who's just trying to squeeze money out of vulnerable people. I know that I don't even have to say that because I know that you guys are not like this at all. That is not what we are doing here. Not about that. It's not becoming the most greediest person in the world. What we are doing here is building financial stability, financial sustainability, and financial freedom so that you can keep doing the work that you love for the people who need your services for a really long time. Your expertise has value. The thing that took you years and years of clinical experience and clinical training and evidence-based practice and all of those learnings that you've done, it has so much value. And you are allowed to package it up and sell it full stop. Now, here's the strategy that I want you to do this week. Here's the practical part because we know this podcast always has a little bit of a practical element. We love things that are going to shift how we show up, how we work, how we change our business, how we change our lives. And this one is a little bit uncomfortable this week, but I really promise it's worth it. I want you to write down every single belief you have about money and selling in your business. Anything about money, maybe it's like, you know, I have to work X amount of hours to make this much money. I can't be salesy, I can't do that, whatever it is. Like all the beliefs, all the thoughts, everything that's ever come into your brain about money and selling in your business. If you're feeling a little bit stuck, put yourself in a position as if you were going to sell to somebody and think about what comes up there. But write them all down, get them all out, even the ones that feel embarrassing, actually, especially the ones that feel embarrassing. Things like it feels wrong to profit from helping people. I don't want to seem that I only care about the money. My clients can't afford to pay me more. I'm not experienced enough to be selling things, people will judge me, people will think less of me, people will start to talk about me. Write it all down. And then next to each one of those, once you have written them down, I want you to write where did this come from? Was it your training? Was it something that you've absorbed from the systems we've worked in? Is it a story someone else put on you a long time ago? We know, we know how therapy works, we know how we're re-refra- stop. And I know we know how therapy works, we know how we're reframing the narrative and doing all those cool things. But I really want you to do this. I want you to either pause this podcast and actually do it, do it while you're listening. But I really want you to do this because I want you to tell me where each of these stories have come from. Because when you can see where a belief has come from, you can start to decide whether it actually belongs to you, whether it's actually true, whether it's actually serving you, or whether it is just costing you. Because this is the work before the work and it matters so much. When we can get really clear on our beliefs around money, on our beliefs around selling, it is then we can let go of what is no longer serving us and we can call in those higher beliefs. Because in order to make really good money in this space, because in order to make really good money in this space, we need to have a regulated nervous system. We need to have some really healthy money beliefs and mindsets about money. And we need to be able to back ourselves. And in order to back ourselves, that means we need to challenge some of that negative bias that's going on in our brains, some of those negative stories that aren't serving us. But we also need to start to embody the human who is running the business that we want to be in, who is making the money that we want to be in. So this week I want you to get really clear on those beliefs. Think about the ones that are serving you, ask yourself where they came from and rewrite and rewire the ones that are no longer serving you. I know it can feel like such a simple task sometimes, but every time I have grown my business, this task has served me so, so much. So, so much. Like I can't even tell you. Because when we can see where something has come from, we can start to understand it, we can start to let it go if it doesn't serve us, and we can call in and embody what is going to serve us in this season. We're gonna talk a lot more about this next week. We're gonna talk especially about like what actually makes a therapy resource or a digital product worth buying. We're gonna get deeper into some of these mindsets because I know that so many of you are so keen to figure out a way to share that beautiful expertise, that knowledge, that amazing experience that you have with the world, because you just can feel the pull of like how much people need your service and how much your community needs your service. So we're gonna keep going deeper into this next week because I believe that if you have anything worth sharing, you should absolutely be sharing it. And that is what we're gonna work through together. I really hope you enjoyed today's episode. I hope that you are loving this deep dive we're doing in this series at the moment. If you are, let me know on Instagram. You know where to find me at Miapoco at M-I-A-P-O-K-O. And if you're loving it, if you want something different, please DM me. Please let me know. And if you really enjoyed this episode, if you ever enjoy any of our episodes, it would mean the absolute world to me if you would screenshot it, share it on your stories, leave us a review. It honestly helps this podcast to grow so much. And I cannot believe how much we have grown in the last year. Like it is absolutely wild. Um, but I am just so excited to keep growing this because I know how much this community means to all of us as therapists as well. I will see you next week.