What this guide is
This guide goes with my episode on giving yourself a pay rise in private practice, and it walks through the five ideas that take you from money arriving in drips and drabs to a weekly wage you can plan around. Choose any section below, or work through them in order.
Need more clients coming through the door?
If your fee is right and your money systems are in place but you want more income, the 90 Day Sprint gives you the action steps for your private practice so the volume is there to fund your pay rise.
Money coming in is a response
It reflects how you see yourself, what the market says about your offers and how you steward your finances.
- I spent years winging it with no money put aside for tax, and I took a bag of paper receipts to my accountant once a year, thinking that was how everybody ran a business.
- My view is that systems and strategies are responsible for about 20% of your success, and the other 70 to 80% comes from your values, mindset, beliefs, personality, experiences and environment.
- If you build a course on anxiety and nobody signs up, the market is saying no, and the cause could be your messaging, your landing page or your marketing strategy rather than the quality of the course.
- Even if you only run one-to-one sessions across WorkCover, TAC and private clients, the money coming in is still a response to how you steward your financial structures.
- Stewarding means leading, like captaining the ship or driving the car, and most of the time I see it either absent or reactive.
The money coming into my business is a response to how I see myself, what the market says about my offers and how I steward my financial structures.
Lead the money before the bill arrives
Reactive decisions keep you under a thermostat, and leading the money lifts it.
Surplus weeks get spent and short weeks get scrambled back up, so every week settles at the same number.
- For the longest time I did not even have a separate business account, so every dollar landed in my personal account and I spent it as it arrived.
- When a bill arrives and you scramble to find the money, you are deciding from a reactive place, and that keeps you broke or stuck under a glass ceiling.
- Picture a thermostat set at $500 a week: in a week heading for $650 you will find a way to spend the extra $150, and in a short week you will find a way to pull it back up to $500.
- When you lead the money you anticipate the bill, the money has already been set aside, and paying it is a non-event with no emotional dysregulation.
- You will not feel like doing a cartwheel when you pay the phone bill, because what you feel is an absence of fear and an absence of anxiety.
When I lead the money, the bill is expected, the money is already set aside and there is no drama.
Pay yourself a weekly wage
Separate accounts and one scheduled payment bring structure to income that arrives at random times.
- Money turns up at random times from NDIS, WorkCover and private clients, so all of it goes into your business account and your personal account stays separate.
- Set up a direct debit or scheduled payment with your bank for the amount your business can sustain, whether that is $500 a week, $1,000 a week or $5,000 a week, so something lands regularly.
- The money for tax, GST and business expenses keeps accumulating in your business account, which means what lands in your personal account is yours to spend however you like.
- With Hnry, every time a client pays an invoice I get a little payslip showing the GST, tax and Medicare put aside and my net, so I know I am good without putting anything aside myself.
I separate my business and personal accounts and pay myself a scheduled weekly wage, so what lands in my personal account is mine to spend.
Know your take-home per session
Rough Australian figures after tax, Medicare, bookkeeping fees, business expenses and super.
- I used to see a $200 session fee and think that $200 was mine, and it never occurred to me to ask what my share of it was.
- I looked at the fees of 30 different practices on Psychology Today and ran rough figures covering income tax, Medicare, bookkeeping fees, business expenses and super.
- On those numbers an $80 session takes home about $37, $100 about $46, $120 about $55, $150 about $69 and $200 about $92, give or take a buck.
- I am not an accountant or a financial advisor, so treat these as ballpark figures that help you see what you are working with.
- Pull your reports together, make yourself a simple spreadsheet and look at what the business made over a quarter, such as July to the end of September, because knowing your numbers makes the biggest difference the most quickly.
Only part of my session fee reaches my pocket, so I work out my take-home per session before I decide anything else.
Work out how many sessions fund your life
Add 10%, do the maths and protect the result with your cancellation fee.
$1,000 ÷ $55 is around 19 sessions a week. If 6 cancel and you do not charge, that is about $330 donated back.
- Add up everything that funds your life, including your mortgage, groceries, vet bills, school fees and petrol, then add 10% because there are probably things you have forgotten.
- Divide that by your take-home per session and you know how many sessions you need, so if you need $1,000 and take home $55, that is around 19 clients every single week.
- If funding your life also means building a savings account or a cushion account, add that in and run the maths again.
- If you book 19 clients, 6 cancel and you feel bad charging the cancellation fee, you have donated about $330 back to clients that you cannot afford to give.
- If your fee is right and your systems are in place but you want more income, you probably need more bodies through the door, which is a marketing job for the 90 Day Sprint.
I add 10% to what my life costs, divide by my take-home per session and charge my cancellation fee so every booked session pays.