Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses

77 Diversifying Your Income Stream: Why You Should Try a Side Hustle

• Dr. Kate Walker Ph.D., LPC/LMFT Supervisor • Season 3 • Episode 77

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Navigating the financial and ethical tightrope of side hustles in the counseling field can be as complex as the human mind itself. This episode peels back the layers on the reality that many counselors face as 1099 independent contractors, where the pressure of financial instability can cloud clinical judgment and ultimately impact the quality of care provided to clients. We don't just talk about the stress of juggling multiple income streams, though. Our discussion opens up a toolkit of strategies, from the support of partners to alternate jobs, that can help solopreneurs balance their books and preserve the sanctity of their practice.

Embrace the courage to tread uncharted career paths with us, as we also spotlight the importance of professional growth that resonates with personal fulfillment. You'll hear an inspiring story of a counselor who kneads her passion for baking into her therapeutic approach, illustrating that diversifying interests can lead to innovative and fulfilling career avenues. Let's challenge the norms of career progression and explore the ethical pursuit of side hustles that not only provide financial security but also enrich the lives of counselors and clients alike. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or a novice in the field of counseling, this episode promises insights into maintaining integrity while building a multifaceted career.

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.

Speaker 1:

The ethics of side hustles gets kind of dicey, because I take a pretty strong stance on this, like you could tell from the title. You know the ethics of side hustle hustles and why you need one. Fight me, right? I don't want you to fight me. I want you to consider, though.

Speaker 1:

Here's my premise. I want you to consider the idea that if you don't have another source of income and you are a solopreneur, you are your own boss, you own your own private practice, or, let's say, you're a 1099 employee at is another way of saying you are a solopreneur. That is your business. You're just plugging it in to someone else's practice. When all you have is that income, then you are creating stress in your life. So that's my premise, and then we can talk about all the problems that stress can bring, and I'm going to talk a little bit, teeny tiny bit, about 1099 and W-2, but there's another great podcast episode in training on that and I'll be sure to put the link out there when this goes live and if you're watching me on a replay, awesome, go you.

Speaker 1:

If you're listening to me on the podcast, again awesome Go you. Because you're trying to learn something while you're doing something that's probably pretty boring, like walking on a treadmill or driving kids to baseball practice. So let's dive into it. When I say side hustle, I'm being very broad here, so I'm thinking in terms of not just having a second job, I'm going to even include a supportive partner's income, so anything that can provide you with working capital, that money you need to pay the mortgage, keep the lights on, get new tires when you need them. I'm also including things like substitute teaching or working as a barista. I'm not necessarily talking about outside the therapy room, public speaking or creating an online course or starting a podcast. That's not for everybody and that's okay. I'm talking about any job that could complement your income, even if it's completely different from counseling, and I'm including W-2 employment. So W-2 employment versus 1099 employment Well, when you're a 1099, you are considered an independent contractor.

Speaker 1:

That means you've got your own equipment, you do your own thing, you know how to do the thing and nobody's got to tell you how to do the thing. That's not the IRS definition. Again, you're going to want to look that up on your own. Number one thing, though you don't have taxes taken out. You've got to do that on your own, and nobody's saving for your retirement. When you're a 1099 contractor, you're responsible for that as a W-2,. Well, yeah, your boss is taking out your taxes and, if I believe don't quote me on this they have to take out money for retirement. So that piece of that, the day-to-day keeping the lights on your retirement, what happens when you get to the place where you can't work anymore and you have to have someone taking care of you or helping take care of you, and, of course, those all-important bennies. You gotta have benefits, because chances are good you're going to get sick, you're going to need help somewhere along the way, and if you're a 1099 or solopreneur, you can. I mean, it's hard right, because you've got to take care of all of that.

Speaker 1:

Now, problem number one anxiety goes up. Cognition goes down, right, when you're stressed about those things, your anxiety goes up. I mean, how do I know this? Well, I just got finished texting one of my adult kids and they always I mean not always adult kids are adult kids right In their 20s. Everybody gets to be in their 20s. But you can struggle finding a job with good benefits that pays enough money, that helps keep those lights on. And, oh my gosh, mom, I'm not feeling good, I've got a fever. What should I do? Well, if they don't have benefits, then they've got to go to the urgent care. So, as solopreneurs, we can be in that same boat, which is not pleasant. That's problem number one.

Speaker 1:

It causes a lot of anxiety, and when our anxiety is up, our ability to decide, our ability to plan, our ability to make good decisions goes down. How do we know that? Well, we're mental health professionals. How do we know that? Well, we're mental health professionals, we understand the role anxiety plays in our client's life and in our own life.

Speaker 1:

Now, what can add to that is and hang on, I'm going to let somebody else in from our waiting room. What can add to that is this idea that, as a counselor, if I'm doing good work, I can do great work and somebody's not going to come back. Ok, again, fight me on this. Right, I can do great work and I can piss somebody off and they don't come back, right? So look at that. Catch 22. Right, I can do great work, they're cured. Voila Angels come out. Unicorns are singing. I can do great work, they're cured. Voila Angels come out. Unicorns are singing. I can do great work, they're pissed off. They don't come back for 10 years With that business model. If I'm looking at that client return rate as the metric for am I doing a good job and can I pay my rent this month and can I take money home to make sure my mortgage is paid, anxiety up, cognition down, it's an odd profession that we're in, isn't it? When we can do a really good job and our client maybe doesn't come back.

Speaker 1:

So I talk about this in terms of ethics, because when we're locked down into just seeing a client getting paid, seeing the client getting paid, those clients can start to look like dollar signs. And if we're not theoretically based, if the interventions that are coming out of our mouths, if those interventions are not based on a theory, if they're based on, I can't lose this person, right. I'm down to 20 people this week. I can't go down to 15. I've already had two no-shows this week. I can't lose this person. We've stopped thinking through a theory, haven't we? We're now intervening from our needs versus the client's needs, and that's the problem I'm talking about right, because we're anxious about our mortgage and our tires and all the things, because we aren't sure if we've got enough money to cover all of that, we may not make good clinical decisions, right.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to compare this to like I don't know the surgeon. The surgeon who's going to do your I don't know biopsy next week Okay that I'm making this up the surgeon. If you don't show up for that biopsy, the surgeon is like they're okay, they're going to get paid right, somehow, some way. Their salary will stay the same. Their salary doesn't go up when you show up and go down if you don't show up. Right, because they work for a big corporation or a bigger group and they have things in place to make sure that their take-home salary is not going to go up and down, up and down, up and down, based on who comes, who goes, who shows, who doesn't show, counselors, solopreneurs we don't have that luxury, right.

Speaker 1:

So we've got to do other things, like what I'm going to talk about today, to help ease that line, so that we're not freaking out because we have people. We have months that are slow, or weeks that are slow, or we're worried because we had four people terminate this week and we don't know how we're going to fill those slots right, and you can go listen to other episodes, other trainings, because I do talk about how to make sure your conversion rate, how to make sure that you're talking to potential clients in a way that either makes them your client or a raving fan right, and I'll be sure to put that link into the training. Or if you're on Facebook right now, I'll put it in the Facebook. Or if you're listening to me on a now, I'll put it in the Facebook. Or if you're listening to me on a podcast, I will put that in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

But here's the long and short. If you're worried about money, you're part of. No, let me back up a second. If you are dependent on your client day by day to pay the bills, we call that, or at least I call that, a gig economy. And you guys, if you've heard me teach before, if you followed me on social media, you know one of the things I do is I play music. Well, I don't play music for a living, but I do go out and play music and it's a lot of fun. But I play with folks who depend on that income in order to pay their light bill, pay their mortgage, keep the cable going on their TV.

Speaker 1:

It's not an easy life. It's like your Uber driver or it's like your Grubhub person who brings you food right A gig economy. You only make as much money as you're able to hustle that day. It's tough because you are laying out your bills, you're matching up how many clients or how many gigs you have and if there's a deficit, that end of the month can look really, really dire. It can look super scary. So solutions you know I always like to talk about solutions here and I'm going to go back to what I started at the beginning.

Speaker 1:

A side hustle can include a supportive partner. If you're going to be a solopreneur, if you're going to go into business and you're going to own your practice, and you've had a conversation with your partner and they are on board and they're supportive and they're like you know what I got you? You take 12 months to ramp up your practice. I will cover this bill, I will cover that bill. I mean, imagine that huge sigh of relief. I mean I'm talking about my own story here. There's no way I could have done the things that I've done opening a private practice, starting Kate Walker Training, doing all of these things without a supportive partner to support me with that financial bridge until my business started making money, right, so that supportive partner, if you are like. Well, kate, I don't want to get a job because I've got to keep my schedule open for seeing clients. All right, be a substitute teacher, right? I mean, they'll call you at five in the morning every single day and you just got to say yes or no and they'll keep calling.

Speaker 1:

Something that will help you take care of those three things and there's way more than three, but the three that I'm talking about today the day-to-day keeping your lights on keeping your business running, keeping your mortgage paid, making sure you got money in an emergency account in case you need four new tires. Retirement right, god willing, we're going to get old and we're going to need somebody to take care of us. Yay, and I've got it over here. Your benefits, right. What happens if you get sick? So the ethical component here again isn't just this idea that clients are becoming dollar signs to you, right? Of course you know that's the obvious one, the one I really want you to look inside and be self-aware and really kind of sit with this feeling for a minute is just this idea if your anxiety is up and whose wouldn't be? I mean, let's normalize this, we've all been there is up and whose wouldn't be? I mean, let's normalize this, we've all been there.

Speaker 1:

If you're a solopreneur and it's either a new practice or you've been doing it a while and it's a slow season and you're feeling that tightness in your stomach because, oh my gosh, how am I going to make this work? I've got two weeks left. I've got one week left. I've got three weeks or three days left in this month and I still don't have my mortgage paid. Right, you want to be sure, with your client you're always making good clinical decisions, that what's coming out of your mouth is based on a theory.

Speaker 1:

And when anxiety goes up, either because of money or you're sick and you can't go to the doctor, cognition goes down, your ability to make great decisions. I know a lot of folks who try to solve this problem by having as many clients as possible. Right, they're going to see 20 clients a week, 40 clients a week. They're building that caseload so high that when they go home they're not able to put all of the stories away. And so, even though and you can't see me I'm going to make air quotes, even though they have time off.

Speaker 1:

It's not time off up here and I'm pointing at my head, right. It's not time off when you're trying to relax, when you're trying to be with your significant other, when you're trying to be relaxed and with your friends and enjoy yourself. So it's almost like we ride a wave or a roller coaster, right. We are up, up up with anxiety when we're with our clients and we're focused and we're working. Then we go down, down down. We're trying to relax, we're trying to relax, Then we go up, up up. It's hard to maintain that up and down, up and down.

Speaker 1:

So a side hustle, I mean anything like I mentioned before, anything that can complement that gig economy that so many of us solopreneurs fall into. Any kind of a side hustle can help, even if it's something as simple as substitute teaching. So I'm keeping this one short today because I talk about this one a lot and I want to invite folks to talk about this. It's not an easy subject to talk about because I think there's a lot of pressure in our sort of practice world. Okay, you got to build that practice. It's going to take six months to three years to build your client load. Then you'll take insurance until you're just cash-based. Once you're cash-based, then you're going to have to be smooth sailing from then, and it's not, I mean, being an entrepreneur. It's funny.

Speaker 1:

I had a friend and he sent me a meme and it was a guy riding a lion and he said being an entrepreneur is like riding a lion, like you just go. Oh, my goodness. That's not what he said. Actually it was an expletive in there. But I'm riding a lion, right, it's thrilling, but it's scary and it's up and it's down. That makes for remember my premise anxiety goes up, even good anxiety, even having a great month, right, your body doesn't care if it's good or bad, your body just experiences it as stress, as anxiety. You stress good stress or distress, bad stress, right.

Speaker 1:

And so to make sure we are operating at our optimal level and we're delivering services to our clients that are absolutely in line with our theoretical orientation and what they're requesting absolutely in line with our theoretical orientation and what they're requesting we have to make sure we are taking care of ourself. And we've talked about that under self-care, right? I'm just filing it under a different heading here. It's not really self-care. But so many people when I talk about adding a side hustle, they think, oh no, that's more work. You're just asking me to do more, more, more, and that's not what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to be real clear about that today. This is not to put more on your plate, like I mean, that's up to you. But we know clients who do this too. Right, they'll clear off a little room in their schedule and then they'll add something right on top of it and they'll come back in and they'll say I don't know what's wrong, I'm still feeling stressed and you're like, wait a minute, you were supposed to create room in your schedule. You didn't. So that's the same with us. We're looking in the mirror. If we're able to create space and add a side hustle, that's a little bit closer to a W-2.

Speaker 1:

Remember what a W-2 does. A W-2 position takes care of your taxes, takes care of your retirement, or is a supportive partner or is something like substitute teaching, which I don't know about you, but in my world substitute teaching is pretty doggone reliable. They'll keep calling if you keep answering. So keep that in mind as you're thinking about adding a side hustle. It's to remove some of the stress you already have. So I'm going to close it with that. If you're on the call, I'm going to hit pause and answer questions. And remember you don't have to ask questions about, um, what I just talked about. You can ask questions about anything, and I see I didn't hit record, so all right. Well, I'll just grab it off of facebook later. So, what questions do you guys have? And I'll have facebook open over here too so I can grab those just a sidebar comment.

Speaker 3:

um, I'm glad I hopped in me because this is very enlightening, very affirming um, because, in transparency, I can have a lot of um guilt feelings about thinking about adding something else on to supplement when those times get tight. And I did come from the education background, having taught and been a school counselor, and in my mind thinking about subbing has felt like, well, I'd be going backwards.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I want to validate you. You know, and I think that we I probably even am a part of this. So I think we put so much pressure on our, especially new practitioners who are leaping out into the private practice like, okay, you just got to go for it, you just got to lift that other foot up, burn the bridge behind you, and that's the only way it's going to work, and I think that's just not right. I just don't think any other profession does it that way. You know, I mean, even if you were going into real estate and you were going to do real estate for a living, right, I mean you would keep something on the side to pay your bills.

Speaker 3:

And I told you with cousins, because that was the next comment I was going to make. A friend of mine actually does real estate and she does pretty well, but she substitutes on occasion from time to time. So yeah interesting.

Speaker 1:

There's no shame in supplementing, you know either with another gig, right, like if you're an Uber driver just something so that you can breathe a sigh of relief at the end of the month instead of holding your breath, you know, and waiting for the other shoe to drop if you have another client that gets better right and doesn't show up again. No, I love that.

Speaker 3:

Oh, light bulb moment. Yes, prn psychiatric facilities, that's almost a perfect gig.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because they call and you know, even if you have to say no, they're going to call again. Right, if you're on their list, they're going to keep you on that list. I mean, one of the things that I talk about, of course, is become a supervisor, because as a supervisor, I think a lot of us we hit that five-year mark and we're getting kind of bored with counseling or we're thinking is that all there is, or what's the next level up, and I don't really want to go back to school, I just want to do more for my community. So there's that piece of it too. You know, to look around the counseling field and see okay, what else within the field? Can I be a site supervisor? Can I be a clinical supervisor? Can I open up or be part of a group practice? Can I be a CE coordinator? Right, there are lots of things within the field of counseling that we could do. That could add at least to enrich our brain a little bit.

Speaker 2:

There we go. I just wanted to share with you. I have been noticed lately a lot of my supervisees or new folks on the field, right, that I feel that they still baby therapists. Right, they're seeing the supervision as a you know another way to make revenue and things like that, and I don't believe that it's always a good idea. It's not for everybody. Being supervisor, being a leader in general in any facility or any place that you work, is not for everybody.

Speaker 2:

I really believe that sometimes one of the biggest assets that we have a therapist is, like, how diverse we are. I have not met a counselor that doesn't have a hidden talent somewhere, right, either, seeing they do something artistic. They do flowers, they do gardening, but they do something that is that artistic part. So sometimes I tell my people, like, why you don't explore that? Why you don't do something on the side that is not constantly mental health related, to see how that goes right? Um, I have been seeing some of my associates that they ended up baking cookies or things like that and they do really, really well and that fit their purpose, right, because I have been in moments in my career that I don't realize, or I do realize that I need a break, but I'm not taking that break because maybe adult life happened and you need to take bills and things like that, until you are in session and said like, oh, I should not have said that or oh, you know, that was really harsh, right, I should not be that insensitive, right?

Speaker 2:

I could wait until they finish their sentence. I don't have to reply to everything that my client is saying. So I think that we all need to encourage each other just to explore different things. I mean, life is happening and it continues happening. But I think that it has been a trend in people just immediately when they reach the five years, they assume that they can become supervisors, and for me, that thought process is kind of dangerous at times for me, that thought process is kind of dangerous at times.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and to dovetail off of that, I see people who will get a supervisee and then they don't do it again, which is okay. You know that is. You know, if you dip your toe in and you're like, okay, that was not for me, that yes, good job you. And you still impacted, you still doubled your impact on the world, right, because you took that supervisee on, but to not continue, and maybe that's really kind of what I'm saying today. You know, it's sort of like when we get that kid in counseling kid, let's say they're 28, and they paid, you know, $10,000 for a degree. You know $10,000 for a degree. It's not 10,000, is it? It's 100,000. And then they recognize, oh, I don't really like this. What do I do now? And we try to help them. You know you can do whatever you want, right? We call that sunk costs and I think so many of us in counseling. We get to a place where we're like but I wanted this, how come I still feel like I need something else? It's okay, that's normal to want to continue to grow and evolve and I love that idea of doing something completely outside of the counseling room. You know it's and it's something we talk about a lot, but I think there's a lot of pressure to stay in on it. All right, I want to grab this chat.

Speaker 1:

I saw a post on Facebook where a counselor is also a pastry chef. Yes, she's hosting a grief and cake workshop where she teaches how to decorate a heart cake. Oh my gosh, while discussing grief. I love that. That's wonderful, and attendees get to keep their cake. Okay, business idea. So if you're listening to this, you just got your business idea for the day. I love that. Everybody has to have something where they can decompress a little bit. Yeah, and make money, all right. Anything else, you guys, these, I love these.