Craving a satisfying and profitable counseling career? Squashing financial fears and understanding profit doesn't have to be a nerve-wracking task. As mental health professionals, you need a guide you through the labyrinth of business finance. It's time to face those daunting money issues head-on and learn how to make your counseling practice thrive.
I'll lift the veil on the scary money mistakes that haunt many business owners. From neglecting to set funds aside for taxes to playing fast and loose with cash flow, I'll knock down these financial ghouls one by one. Delve into the concept of Profit First by Mike Mechelovitz, a game-changing philosophy that emphasizes paying yourself first. I'll also take a peek at the importance of categorizing and tracking expenses, understanding tax write-offs, and keeping track of mileage. In our quest to find quality training courses that won't consume all your time or money, we're leaving no stone unturned. Let's embark on this journey to financial understanding and freedom together.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
Craving a satisfying and profitable counseling career? Squashing financial fears and understanding profit doesn't have to be a nerve-wracking task. As mental health professionals, you need a guide you through the labyrinth of business finance. It's time to face those daunting money issues head-on and learn how to make your counseling practice thrive.
I'll lift the veil on the scary money mistakes that haunt many business owners. From neglecting to set funds aside for taxes to playing fast and loose with cash flow, I'll knock down these financial ghouls one by one. Delve into the concept of Profit First by Mike Mechelovitz, a game-changing philosophy that emphasizes paying yourself first. I'll also take a peek at the importance of categorizing and tracking expenses, understanding tax write-offs, and keeping track of mileage. In our quest to find quality training courses that won't consume all your time or money, we're leaving no stone unturned. Let's embark on this journey to financial understanding and freedom together.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
You have to understand profit as a business owner and if you don't, you may be underpaying yourself or not paying yourself at all. Hi, I'm Dr Kate Walker. I'm a marriage and family therapist, practice owner and professor of counselor education, who took a passion for training the next generation of mental health providers and turned it into a multi six figure business that designs the courses that teach mental health providers how to be clinical supervisors, teaching graduate students and seasoned counselors. I learned about the fears Fears about failing quitting toxic work environments where you're seeing 80 clients a week. Fears about starting a private practice running out of money, getting in trouble by the licensing board, the IRS, you name it. I created the Texas counselors creating badass businesses community so mental health providers like you could have a step by step guide and learn actionable steps to achieve the security, freedom and satisfaction of a counseling career you'll love. Look, you had the dream to become a mental health professional. You got the degree, you took the exams, you put in the time. Whatever your business is a private practice. Maybe you want to sell courses, like I do. You're adding clinical supervision. You want to write a book or get paid to speak? Whatever it is, you are too important to your community to lose, to getting in trouble, giving up, going broke and burning out. Are you ready to break through those fears once and for all? I thought so. Let's get to work. ["the Texas Counselors"]. Welcome to Texas Counselors creating badass businesses where it's all about working smarter, not harder. And here's your host, dr Kate Walker, who rather eats take out food than cook.
Speaker 1:Happy November. It's finally chilly in Texas. At last I can cuddle my hot chai, oat milk lattes without sending myself into a full-on hot flash. I've got big news about the only online 40-hour LPC LMFT supervisor course in Texas. We have officially graduated more new supervisors to be than any other course in Texas 236 graduates in 2023 alone, and the number just keeps climbing. We all know that counselors need quality continuing education courses full of great information that will help them build their career, protect their license, grow a practice and stay out of trouble. And bonus points at the course is not boring and outdated, but the real barrier to finishing a course that could lead to your supervisor designation. Well, sometimes it's cold hard cash.
Speaker 1:Let me make it easy for you. I host the only online 40-hour LPC LMFT supervisor training that can lead to the supervisor designation in Texas and in the month of November we're accepting applications for the December Practice Grant Giveaway. I'm looking for counselor badasses just like you who share my mission to fill the gaps in access to affordable mental health services in rural and underserved Texas. Applications will be reviewed by a panel and will announce grant winners in December. You, my bad ass, are too important to your community to not take the supervisor training because you didn't have the cash to make it happen. Fill out the application today for the 2023 Practice Grant Giveaway. It's easy. Just go to katewalkertrainingcom forward slash grant. That's katewalkertrainingcom forward slash G-R-A-N-T.
Speaker 1:Hey, everybody, we're going to talk about scary money stories today, so everybody, just brace yourself. Actually, we just got finished doing all the supervisor things. That it's not over. Don't forget. We have a webinar for the supervisor Curious. So even Step it Up members will need to click to join that. You'll need to look for an email. I'm sure it'll be out there soon. If you're on the email list, you'll get a link and if you're already a supervisor, forward that to somebody you know because Step it Upers, you guys have an affiliate link. So if you know somebody who's kind of on the fence about taking the training and they use your affiliate link, you get paid. Like you get 10% if they actually click the button.
Speaker 1:And this is a great month to buy the 40-hour training, because I am throwing in the two-hour rules review that we did last month. That's not even going to be sold to the public, it goes to you guys, step it Upers, and it's going to be included with the 40-hour course because that's the right thing to do. Right, because if I'm going to claim to have the 40-hour course that it's the most up-to-date, it needs to include the most recent rules. So today is all about scary stories about money, and I was thinking about this and it's like, okay, what's the point of telling people a scary story about money if I'm not going to give them a solution? So of course, I'm going to give you ways to mitigate the risk, and all month long when I give you whether it's a scary story, let's see a scary story about networking and marketing, a scary story from the licensing board complaints things people did that were just way wonky and then scary stories about supervision. I'm always going to give you ways to fix it and to make sure that you're doing it right, all right.
Speaker 1:So the first scary story about taxes is actually one that I share about myself. If you've heard me talk before, you've heard me talk about the first year I was in business and I don't just mean you know the little practice that I had above the bar in Conroe, texas. That was so cute and it didn't have any heat and we had to bring in a heater and I had all my kids toys in there because that's you know how all we could afford to work with the kids and things like that. Yeah, I didn't really turn a profit then, so it was not that big of a deal. When I restarted my practice in 2007, after I finished the doc program, after I finished recovering from breast cancer, after my husband got back from Iraq, yeah, I restarted the practice as a cheap balance and it did really really well the first year.
Speaker 1:And so I go, you know, toodling into my accountant. I'm going to pay my taxes just like I always have. I've always had a paycheck right. I've always had a W2. And so at tax time, I just wait for those handy dandy little slips to come in the mail and pay what I pay, or, hopefully, cross fingers, like my kids do. I wait and just hope that I have a refund, right, because I like to make the IRS my bank. Not a good idea, but that's another scary story. So my first year in business, I just had zero idea that I was supposed to be the one setting aside the cash. I am my own 1099, right, I'm an independent contractor.
Speaker 1:Well, in my family of origin we weren't business owners. My father worked for a big company called Dow Chemical. My mom stayed home and took care of us, so we just didn't have this history of any sort of entrepreneur business owners in my family. So I went into my accountant and he said congratulations, kate, you did fabulous. I'm so proud of you. He's kind of like a dad figure, right, he's about the same age as my dad and I don't even know if I brought Dave with me. So he goes congratulations, you did a great job. Just write me a check for $10,000 and I will get this filed today. And I was like what you want? What you want $10,000? Like I didn't know what $10,000 in a single location even looked like Like I'd never seen that much money, had that much money. Looked at those numbers in my bank account, I couldn't fathom writing someone a check that would be any good for $10,000.
Speaker 1:So what I had to do was and here's the solution for those of you who may be in the same boat going what way? What? And it's really common. I mean, this is something where you may be doing just a little private practice on the side. You're just doing some cash-based private practice and you don't think anything of it, and at the end of the year you find out you've bumped your family into a higher tax bracket. You didn't mean to, but that's what happens when you're good at what you do and your community grows to depend on you.
Speaker 1:So I had to file an extension. An extension just means that you have until October 15th, I believe, to get your taxes filed, but that doesn't mean that the clock stops on what you owe. How do you know what you owe? Well, you Google and what I usually tell people to do, and there's a YouTube video out there about that, and there may even be a training still in your step it up profile on how to find your tax bracket Super easy. Just Google tax bracket in the year and you'll see a bunch of websites pop up. The IRS will pop up, obviously, but there are actually some better websites that really explain how our graduated tax system works. So you'll be able to see whether you're filing as a solo person, if you're married, filing jointly, married filing separately, all of those categories and you can determine roughly about how much to set aside in every single paycheck.
Speaker 1:Now that's you business owner, right? I'm also talking to you if you are working for someone as a 1099 contractor, if you're W2, don't worry about it. Your employer's going to set all that money aside for you and at the end of the year maybe you'll get a refund, maybe you won't, maybe it'll end and that's all good. But a big, scary mistake you can make is to own your business, own your practice, or to be a 1099 contractor for someone and not set aside money for taxes, and it's going to be probably 10% 20% of every dollar you bring in. That's just a good rule of thumb. Set aside 20%. If you don't need all of that, great, put it towards your retirement account, but never, ever spend everything that you make. You're always going to want to set aside money for taxes because nobody's going to do that for you as a business owner.
Speaker 1:The second really, really scary money mistake is not understanding profit. Are you making a profit? Now there's a book that I'm just getting into and I'm probably really late to the game, but it's called Profit First by Mike Mechelovitz, and I hope I'm saying that. He wrote my other favorite book, the Pumpkin Plan. Love that book. That book totally changed how I do business. But Profit First is a great concept because what it talks about is being mindful that you deserve to get paid. You shouldn't live to work.
Speaker 1:So, for example, if you are a group practice owner and you notice that everybody's getting paid, the bills are getting paid but you're not, you're not getting paid. Maybe you have a supportive partner, maybe you have an additional stream of income, you're teaching, you're doing something outside the practice room that's bringing in income, but you don't take a salary, you don't draw a check. That's a problem, because if your business isn't paying you, then why are you doing it? I mean, yes, it's wonderful to give back to the community, yes, all of those things, but you're going to burn out and I've seen this in so many different industries.
Speaker 1:I have a good friend who owned a pizza restaurant in Maine and we would look at her P&L and it was rare that she turned a profit each month. I mean, it was just a tough, tough business. And then COVID hit and some other things happened. But when you look and you just see, okay, you're running those numbers and you're breaking even, breaking even, breaking even but you're not. And there are two ways that you can pay yourself.
Speaker 1:If you are an LLC and you're not incorporated as an S-corp, you can do something called an owner draw and that just means you're pulling money out of your profit. You made a profit, you made $100 profit. Well, take $50 of that. That is your owner draw. If you're an S-corp, if you're incorporated in a different way and you're drawing a paycheck wonderful, then it's going to be the same thing every month, every two weeks, because you are a W-2 employee, now You're going to be taking out your taxes and all of those things that go with it. So, sitting down with an accountant or a bookkeeper or a business coach, someone who can really help you under stand.
Speaker 1:Because, honestly, what a big mistake that a lot of practice owners make is. They want to grow, they want to add therapists, they want to add all of these things because the community needs them and everybody hates waiting lists. We don't want to make people wait, but then they get overextended and they're literally hooting out in expenses, rent, office supplies, electronic record management systems, all of those things, staff, hipaa, training they're putting out as much as they're bringing in. I noticed this and here's another me example when I had my group practice and I had seven offices and I actually had two companies I had a nonprofit and a for-profit lots and lots of people, lots and lots of moving parts. It was pretty freaking impressive to see the amount of money that was going out, the amount of money that was coming in and I was like, wow, I'm pretty successful. Look at all of this money moving around.
Speaker 1:Well, when it came down to it, when I dropped everything and became a solo prenuer, a solo practitioner, I made more money. I had more profit as a solo practice owner because I didn't know how to read those numbers. I didn't understand that with all of that money moving around, I was just making things complicated. I didn't know how to draw salary correctly, I didn't know how to draw money correctly. I thought I was doing it right, I thought I was doing a great job. But it was so funny because when I did that first year after the big practice and I was doing my taxes and I'm like, holy moly, I'm literally making a little bit more not a lot more than I was making when I was the big group practice owner.
Speaker 1:A very, very scary mistake that you can make as a practice owner is just not understanding profit. I'll even go back to the first example. If you don't understand what profit is, you may not understand that you're kicking your family into another tax bracket. Or you may not understand that you didn't make any profit at all and you owe nothing in taxes. So that profit the difference between what goes out and what comes in if it's exactly the same, that we call that breaking even. But if what you're bringing in is more than what's going out, that's where your profit is. And you have to understand profit as a business owner. And if you don't, that can turn into a scary mistake, on the first side because of taxes, but on the other side because you may be underpaying yourself or not paying yourself at all. Hey, badass, I know you don't have time to sit in on another boring, outdated webinar for your counseling continuing education, so I wanted to make sure you know about the best deal going in Texas counselor continuing education Free webinars at Kate Walker Training.
Speaker 1:Best of all, every webinar is presented after 5 pm. It's completely free and every webinar meets the new Texas rule mandating that 50% of CEs come from a designated provider. The free webinars are presented by real people, facilitated by yours truly, and there is always an opportunity for questions and answers. Here's what we have coming up in the next four months. October 25th, I'm presenting a webinar for the supervisor curious, scared of becoming a clinical supervisor? Attend this webinar and help me get you over your fears and out into the field where you can multiply the difference you make in underserved Texas communities. November 30th, dr Lisa Wines will present Bridging the Gap from Grad School to LPC Associate. This is one of our most popular webinars and I invite professors to tune in with your entire classroom of counseling students. December 22nd isn't exactly a webinar, but we are announcing the winners of the 2023 practice grant giveaway. January 25th 2024 will be the exception to our five o'clock rule because our speaker will be the fabulous and knowledgeable Christina Deluna, board administrator for the Texas LPC board. She'll tell us what's new at the board and, of course, answer your questions. Get in on all the fun by going to katewalkertrainingcom forward slash free webinar. That's katewalkertrainingcom forward slash free webinar.
Speaker 1:So another one and this is funny because counseling wasn't my first business. I actually used to teach music lessons, so I've done that. That was my first job. I did that in junior high. I taught piano lessons and I called it creative babysitting. I'd basically go give the parents a 30 minute break, teach their kid a piano lesson, then they could come back and I left. So door to door piano teacher.
Speaker 1:Hello, I've been a lot of things. I've been a basketball referee, I've been a football referee, I've played the bass and circus before. I've had a lot of different jobs, but this one, this kind of putting money or putting a service out there getting paid for it one of the mistakes you can make is getting paid your cash, getting paid your client money, and then go into the grocery store. That's mixing money. You're mixing your client, your business income, with your personal outgo and I don't know how people avoid that now that Venmo has become such a thing and Zell and there's always been PayPal and PayPal was always just back. Granted, it was a while ago. I haven't used it in a while, but it was really, really complicated to tease out all of the fees and to make sure I was getting all the write-offs that I was supposed to have, but with clients just saying, okay, I Venmo'd you the fee, does that money go into your business account? Or do you take that and then go buy gas with it, because that's easy to do, because Venmo will hold it for you and then, or like I'll take the money and I'll go pay my dog walker or the person that takes care of my dog when I go on trips.
Speaker 1:Now, I do not mix personal and client money. But with your Venmo you have to be really, really, really careful that if you've set it up on your business account, that when you do go to buy gas or you do go to buy groceries, that you either don't use Venmo or you somehow log it out of your business checking account and log it into your personal account, or just make Venmo your business account. That's easy, right. Then you sell for personal or your Apple card or whatever else you use to do those quick and easy transactions that aren't related to a debit card, or just do it the old fashioned way have a debit card for your business and a debit card for your personal. Because, like back in the day when we taught lessons, I mean it was really pretty common for you to say, hey, you know, it's just pay me cash, it's all good, pay me cash, cash just goes in your pocket. Nope, I'm going to go buy gas. Oh, here we go, there's gas, right, gas money. Nobody sees it, it's not taxed. Well, okay, yeah, I mean that's one way to do business.
Speaker 1:It's not a great way for one. You're hiding money that you probably should declare, but also because you're really not getting a good read on if your business is profitable, if what you're using to market is working, if you really understand the expenses and write offs and all of those things. So if you're serious about your practice, if you're serious about sustainability, then it really, really is important that you set up those separate accounts set up a business account for business things, a personal account for personal things, and y'all. You've got to be careful with things like gasoline, because it's not necessarily a write off just because you're commuting back and forth to work. Now, I'm not an accountant, but I do know you can only write off your vehicle in two distinct ways, and you can Google that. But one of those ways is to keep track of your mileage. Right, keep track of your mileage and then you can write off whatever the going rate is per mile, but just using that business card to pay for gas, that may not be the write off that you think it is Now an excellent thing to do. And a way to avoid this is to have that dedicated Venmo or that dedicated debit card and then at the end of the year you just hit print or download it into your QuickBooks or your favorite accounting system and there is your entire set of expenses for the year. And if you do a little bit of homework, you categorize those suckers and next thing you've got things that are already neat and tidy for your accountant at the end of the year. So you don't have to go back and go through receipts and try to decide now. If getting my nails was for a conference, is that a write off? And if I got my hair done so that I could look good for that presentation, do I get to write it off? Do all of that now. Do all of that now. Do your homework, talk to your accountant. Make sure that you're doing it right, okay.
Speaker 1:So the scary stories about money most of these involve not thinking ahead of time and being impulsive in the moment, and I'll own that. I'm literally looking into a camera right now at Kate Walker. Kate Walker, you can be a little impulsive sometimes with the spending, so, taking a minute making sure that you're using the business debit card for items related to business, you can tie those things to your business card. If there are things subscriptions that come out every month, like the learning management system I use for my courses, I make sure that's tied to a credit card that I pay off every month, right, so it just there's never a snag because if that thing goes down, my whole business goes down. So I tie a lot of my expenses to my credit card, but it's because I have disciplined myself to paying it off. Not judging those of you who are carrying a balance. I get it, I've been there. But don't do that if you know yourself and you know that you're not going to be able to pay off that credit card balance every single month. Right, because those monthly bills they'll pile up if you do not pay them off.
Speaker 1:So first one was not setting aside money for taxes. Second scary mistake is not understanding profit and not paying yourself first. And then three was mixing money spending your client income on personal stuff, right, taking the cash that you make from your clients and go into buy stuff that you can't write on. Hey badasses, we can all agree that counselors want a path to a successful counseling career, but that means you have to find quality training. That's not even the real barrier. The real problem is a lot of information can be overwhelming and you, my bad ass, are busy.
Speaker 1:So you're probably asking yourself how can I improve my practice while still caring for people? How do I grow my skill set, become a supervisor, without losing my work-life balance? How do I find quality training that won't cost too much time and money? Bottom line counselors who want a successful counseling career value the goal of growing their skill set and even becoming a supervisor, but at the same time, struggle with finding time to attend quality courses. Counselors can't overcome this barrier because so many times, courses with tempting titles over promise and underperform. Let me ask you something what if there were courses that delivered exactly what they promised, that didn't take a lot of time and didn't break the bank? That's exactly the kind of course we design at Kate Walker Training. I specialize in helping you grow your skill set and career with quality courses on demand, and we have so many to choose from.
Speaker 1:If you're asking yourself, where do I go if I want to sustain my practice and grow my marketing presence? Well, check out the Step it Up membership. What do you do if you're ready to pay it forward and add streams of income? Well, check out the supervisor training, see if you're eligible. If you're looking for an experience that's more hands-on, keep an eye out for open enrollment for badass basics and our exclusive mastermind groups. I'm Dr Kate Walker. Thank you so much for listening to Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses. Thank you to Ridgely Walker for her lovely voiceovers at our introduction, and do me a favor when you get a second, please like, share and subscribe and write us a review. That's really how we get picked up by other RSS feeds and we get this information out to the mental health badasses who need it. Thanks again and keep saving the world with excellent therapy.