Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive

168 The Supervision Side Hustle: How to Add Income Without Burning Out

• Dr. Kate Walker Ph.D., LPC/LMFT Supervisor

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Most therapists think supervision is something they’ll do later—after they feel more confident, have more time, or somehow feel “ready.” In this episode, I’m breaking down why that mindset keeps so many supervisors stuck, underpaid, or holding onto their credentials without ever using it.

I walk you through how to add supervision as a side hustle in a way that actually makes sense for your schedule, your income goals, and your license. We talk about common myths—like believing more supervisees automatically means more money—and what really matters if you want supervision to support your practice instead of draining it.

If you’ve ever wondered how to price supervision, structure your schedule, market to the right people, or avoid difficult supervisee situations before they start, this episode gives you a clear, practical framework to get moving with confidence.

In this episode, I cover:

  • How to structure individual, triadic, and group supervision so you don’t give away your highest-value client hours
  • Why “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t work for supervision—and what marketing actually does work
  • The biggest myths about difficult supervisees, volume-based income, and being “ready,” and how to protect your license while you grow

If you’re holding onto your supervisor credential “just in case,” or you want supervision to become a sustainable income stream instead of a stressor, this episode will help you build it intentionally—from the very start.

For supervisors who want clearer expectations, better boundaries, and fewer headaches down the line, the Supervisor Checklist gives you a practical starting point for contracts, structure, and decision-making.

And if you want ongoing CE credit, leadership support, and real-world training you can actually apply, the Step It Up Membership is where this work deepens over time. 

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_01:

The problem isn't the number of supervisors we have. It's the number of supervisors who do it once or twice and then never supervise again. But they want to maintain that S just in case they decide to start supervising again. And that may be you. That may be you listening to this or watching this right now.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Bandice Therapists, Building Practices Lum. And here's your host, Dr. Kate Lumber.

SPEAKER_01:

Today we're talking about the supervision side hustle, the one most therapists don't think they're ready for, but absolutely are. If you've ever wondered how to turn your hard won clinical experience into real income without doubling your workload, this episode is your blueprint. Quick heads up January's bonus is live. You can grab the paperwork essentials power pack bonus at KateWalkerTraining.com slash bonus. It's perfect if you're updating your 2026 paperwork or realizing your consent packet hasn't been touched since grad school. All right, let's get to work. Hey, I'm Dr. Kate Walker. Welcome to your Step It Up Coaching, and we're going to talk hot seat today and the benefits and how to add supervision as your side hustle. But first, let's get everybody in. So let's talk about adding the supervision as a side hustle. And I figured, you know, you guys, I would get supervisors in here and I would get people who maybe have their S but haven't started supervising yet, who just aren't real clear on how do I get this thing going. So I thought this would be a good month to kind of just get back to the basics of your supervision practice and how to make money, how to make sure you're doing it right, how to make sure you're not burning out, you're getting the right supervisees. So I really just wanted to deconstruct, reconstruct today all the things that you need to know. So if you are a supervisor, you're in the right place. If you're not a supervisor and you're in the step it up membership, don't forget you've got a coupon that never goes bad for$100 off any of the trainings. So if you're not a supervisor yet and you're listening to me on a replay, wonderful. That coupon's always going to be there. So this can help you make that decision about adding supervision as a side hustle because it's not clear cut. And there are a bunch of reasons why. So the time and income potential. So, you know, at the end of the day, you may make less than your hourly rate. And that's just been a tradition, you know, especially in Texas, where we are allowed to charge for supervision if it's not part of our job. So if we work at an agency or a hospital where supervising is part of our job, no, we can't charge for supervision. But we can charge folks. And people always ask me, well, what do I charge? And I send them to the Facebook group, the Texas Supervisor Coalition Facebook page, because you really need to see what others are charging in your region, who are offering it the same modality you want to offer it, right? Live or virtual, who have maybe all inclusive, you know, you can contact me anytime versus no, every time you contact me, I'm going to charge you. So there are a lot of different ways that you can uh charge for supervision, besides what region you lived in, right? Because that's what we used to tell you for counseling. It's like, well, you know what to charge by looking at other people in your area. Well, if you do virtual supervision, that's everywhere. So step it up, members. You guys have access to a course called Clinical Supervision, How Much to Charge. And I highly recommend that if you're wondering how much to charge for supervision, that you watch that short course. I think it's like 30 minutes. It's not a long one, but it talks about things you can add to supervision, like a specialty. Like if you're an RPT supervisor and you can help your supervisee get their RPT certification, that would definitely be something that you could raise your rate. If you're doing private practice mentoring, definitely could raise your rate. So watch that if you're wondering the how much to charge piece. The thing I wanted to add here was the idea of scheduling. So in Texas, our licenses, LPC says only 50% of the total number of hours can be in a group setting. LMFT gives a specific number of hours that can be in a group setting. Social work may be a little bit different. So I know a lot of supervisors make the mistake of thinking, well, I'll just do group, group, group all the time, and I'm going to charge everybody, you know, 50 bucks. And, you know, that'll be a great moneymaker. Well, you can't do that. You have to do either alternating, you know, every other month or somehow every other week. A lot of folks do it different ways. But group is a really good way for you to make extra money in that hour and not give away too many of your client slots, right? So if you have five supervisees, you're gonna give away five client slots at least, you know, once or twice a month as individual supervision. Well, if you did that every single week, that's 20 client slots that you're giving away at a lower rate. Yes, you're selling them, but it's not as much as you would make for your clients. So there are ways you can schedule. For example, you can do triadic supervision where two people come to supervision, it counts as one, it counts as individual. So it's a great way for supervisees to save money and you can get closer to your client rate. Also, you know, be be strict. You know, if you start from the very beginning, from the first time they see your contract, by the way, you need to have a contract and put this in there. This is what I'm expecting. You can have this many of my weeks or days as individualslash triadic, but you must come to group supervision on this day at least once a month so that you're not giving away too many of those client slots. The other, okay, so we talked about triadic, we talked about the 50% rule. So, you know, sit with a calculator, sit down and look at how many, how much you make per hour with a client and how much you could afford to cut in half to do for supervision, but then think about it, okay. No, I could do two supervisees and that could be triadic. I could do three supervisees, I could do four supervisees. The thing, this is, and I want to, I'm gonna get to this with myths, you know, the idea that bigger is better. You know, if I have a lot of supervisees and I can make a lot of money, that's a myth we want to bust because it's not at first. Okay, it's sort of like I'm an attorney and I'm gonna say it depends. But here's the truth of the matter, right? If you're a new supervisor, you're going to grow developmentally just like your supervisees. So if you are a brand new supervisor, you're a level one supervisor. If you have my book, The Clinical Supervision Survival Guide, and you're just trying to get systems in place that work, you're trying to get a schedule in place that works, you're trying to make sure that you're doing everything right. You know, give yourself that first one or two supervisees before you really take off and then start adding more and more. I mean, I have colleagues that have more supervisees than they have clients, and that's the way they've designed their practice, but they've been supervising a long time. So it's all about, you know, just like with clients, how many hours in a week do you have? So I would caution you before you start your supervision journey, don't think in terms of like you would with clients, like more is better. Okay. Start with the idea of how can I adjust my schedule? How can I add a specialization? How can I stand out? And again, you'll learn that in watching that course, clinical supervision, how much to charge. So look at everything else before you look at volume or the number of supervisees you need to have. So the other thing you can do besides having specialties or certifications that you can give your supervisees, is you can be one of the coveted 50% providers, right? One of the folks who can provide continuing education so that people who take your continuing education get to put that in their CE broker account as a 50% course because supervisors are automatically providers of that 50% that our colleagues need in order to renew every year. So that's kind of cool. You can actually be a CE provider. Marketing, let's talk about that. One myth, and you know what? And this is what I found. This is what I found reading the threads, watching the threads on social media. Quick break. If you've been meaning to clean up your paperwork for oh the past six months, here's your easy button for January. This month's free listener bonus is the paperwork power hour pack. And it includes an updated intake packet checklist, a clean 2026 Ready Soap Note template, a social media policy you can drop straight into your client consent paperwork, and a mini onboarding checklist for new employees or contractors, and a mini onboarding checklist for new employees or contractors. It's everything you need to tighten up your systems without spending an entire weekend buried in forms. Grab it at Katewalkertraining.com/slash bonus and give your practice a smart start to the new year. You guys remember that movie? If you build it, they will come. I don't know what the movie was. It was about baseball, right? Back in the 80s. If you think that way about your practice and it's not working, it's not going to work if you think that way about your supervision practice, right? It's not like we have this ability to build it, and then automatically there's this flood of supervisees. All right. Even if there was a huge shortage, that just wouldn't happen. So the first myth is well, I'm just going to be a supervisor, and Kate and everybody else says there's a shortage. So I know those supervisees are going to come. No, there are way too many choices out there because on paper, we have enough supervisors. The problem isn't the number of supervisors we have, it's the number of supervisors who do it once or twice and then never supervise again. But they want to maintain that S just in case they decide to start supervising again. And that may be you. That may be you listening to this or watching this right now. So if you build it, they will come if you market. And you have to market in a little bit different way than you do for clients. Obviously, it's a different customer. So you are going to have to get to know universities. You are going to have to make phone calls to professors and tell them, hey, you know what? I'd love to get on your list of people that you recommend for your students after they graduate. You may decide to give webinars to students, offer to speak to their Chi Sigma IOTA group. I just got an email today from a Chi Sigma IOTA group who asked me to come speak. And that's a great way, if I was still supervising, to get my face in front of these new graduates because they want somebody they can trust, right? They want to come to somebody who knows the rules, who understands a good supervision contract. Maybe you're one of those amazing supervisors who's going to actually hire them, right? They want to make sure that they go to somebody who understands business. And of course, that's you guys. So you are going to have to massage the network. You're going to have to let people know in the right places, not just announcing on Facebook, hey, I'm here. I'm taking people on. The other thing, I mean, also, I mean, that's good. You want to do that. You can join the Kate Walker Training Supervisor Directory. I've got one just for Texas. I know there's some national ones out there, but that's a great way to get your name out there. Also consider taking on practicum interns. Universities everywhere need that, especially the online universities. And if you become part of that pipeline to help graduates or people in graduate courses graduate and then become associates, right? And you do that by offering them a site where they can do their practicum internship. Again, that builds your trust factor. And it's a way for you to interview before you actually have to interview. Which brings me to my next myth, which is I'm not worried about difficult supervisees because I will just interview perfectly. And I, you know my answer to that. I mean, grad students, counselors, us, me, I, we are great conversationalists. Like that's what we're trained to do. And so one of the things to remember is if you have a difficult supervisee, it wasn't because you didn't interview them correctly. All right. There are lots of dynamics in play. And if you take a 40-hour training, it will explain that to you. One of the things we teach in the Kate Walker training, 40-hour training courses or all of our supervisor training courses is the OER triad. We talk about orientation, evaluation, and remediation so that you're confident handling difficult supervisees. Which brings me to my next myth that the world is just full of difficult supervisees. That's not true. Most of the supervisees you're going to encounter are wonderful human beings. They just want to do their calling. They need somebody to help them grow through these developmental stages so that they can become your colleague. So if you're holding on to your S because maybe you had a difficult experience with the supervisee and you don't want that to repeat, then I would point you to the OER triad. And if you didn't take my course, that's okay. I've got a book out there called the Clinical Supervision Survival Guide. It's in there. And I talk about it all the time too. So you can always go to the podcast or the blogs, step it up members. You can go to your trainings where I talk about it. If you are not a supervisor, then take a course that teaches you how to protect your license and manage difficult supervisees ethically and in a way that doesn't negatively impact the relationship. So to set yourself up for success, if you are not a supervisor yet, right? You want to set yourself up for success before you ever get your S or take the training, make sure that you meet the requirements before you take the course. We still have a lot of folks who take our course who didn't understand they didn't meet the experience hours. So there may be an experience hour requirement. I know in Texas for LPC, it is five years. You must be licensed, fully licensed, not associate, fully licensed for five years. For LPC and for LMFT, it's three years or 3,000 hours. So check the requirements before you invest in a supervisor course. Understand exactly what the course entails. Again, in Texas, it's a 40-hour course, which means it has to have 40 hours worth of material, whether that's video or stuff you have to read or assignments you have to turn in. Understand exactly what that time component is. Read articles about business plans. So I'm talking to you supervisors. If you have your S, but you're hanging on to it because you're just not ready to take on your first supervisee and it's making you nervous, you're not exactly how to do the business plan thing. Then read articles about business plans. Put it into Chat GPT, find a business plan that works for you. We have lots of resources in the Step It Up trainings, the replays. Also, you can go to the blog, the podcast where we talk about supervision business plans. One of my favorite business plans is the Anne's Place model. And the Anne's Place model is just you asking your supervisees to give you three direct hours a month in your practice, and they can see clients pro bono, or you can charge clients$20,$40,$60, whatever you want. But in exchange for those three hours, you give them free supervision. So three hours a week, that's 12 hours a month. If you are charging their clients$60, right? So that's$3,6912 times 60, somebody do the math for me. That's more than you're going to make from supervising. So you giving them the opportunity to see clients, but not all, you know, 20 hours a week, right? You don't want to do that for free. We get into tax implications if you're doing that. But if you're asking them to give you three hours a week for four weeks a month in exchange for free supervision while you offer their services to your community at a lower cost, that benefits everybody. So I highly look uh encourage you to look up the Anne's Place model in our list of blogs, our list of podcasts, and for Step It Up members, it's going to be in your one start here module. So, last thing, action item. If you are a Step It Up member and you're not a supervisor, get your$100 coupon. I mean, our 2026 courses are coming out soon. So we're going to update the coupon so you can get that too. And watch the How Much to Charge course. All right, it's a quick course, it's just a video. Clinical supervision, how much to charge. And step it uppers, it's in your profile. So that's what I've got as far as adding supervision as a side hustle. Before you head out, a quick reminder: this month's free bonus for podcast listeners is the paperwork power hour pack. If you want your intake forms, soap notes, and supervision paperwork to stop being the slowest part of your day, this bundle will get you there fast. You can grab it at KateWalker Training.com slash bonus. It's free for January and built to make your practice run smoother without adding more to your plate. Thanks for spending part of your week with me. I'll see you in the next episode. If you loved today's episode, be sure to leave a five star review. It helps. Other badass therapists find the show and build practices that thrive. Big thanks to Ridgely Walker for our original fun facts and podcast intro, and to Carl Guyanella for editing this episode and making us sound amazing. See you next week.