Why Are Therapists Going Broke? (And How Can We Fix It)

A startling amount of therapists have been stuck in a cycle of being broke, and trying to keep their practice afloat, because of one glaring problem; too many of us don’t know how to run a business, and often even feel guilty for trying to make money. Here’s why we must shed the “Vow of Poverty” for our sake and our client’s sake.

---

Are you a broke therapist? Are you a therapist who is so stressed out you spend all of your non-therapy hours worrying about how you’re going to get clients and pay your bills? Because if you answered ‘yes’ to either or both of those questions, this video is for you.

You should not be financially struggling as a therapist, and I want to tell you exactly why. To get the advanced degrees that it takes to do this work, often costs tens of thousands of dollars, often into the six figures. We cannot afford to be broke.

A good friend of mine who happens to be the legendary psychotherapist and lecturer and author Bill O’Hanlon, we used to often talk about how sometimes therapists act as though they’ve taken a vow of poverty, as if it’s somehow wrong to make money as a clinician, when it’s actually mandatory.

You have to make money as a clinician. I want to tell you two reasons why.

Number one, we know through research that you are not the best version of you clinically that you can be, while you’re stressing about money. When you’re stressed and worried, you’re not creative. You’re not thinking clearly. You’re not in a flow state. You’re not able to connect with your clients. You’re overly worried about whether this client’s going to schedule or not.

That’s not why you went to graduate school. You went to graduate school to help people heal. You went to graduate school because being a helper was in your heart. You went to graduate school because you really want to make a difference in the lives of the people that you see.

But so often that got neglected while in grad school, you didn’t learn how to do business. You didn’t learn how to run a business. You didn’t learn how to operate a business efficiently or successfully. You didn’t learn how to market your practice. So when you get out of school, the default is fear, anxiety, and financial stress.

More therapy practices close than should because we don’t know what we’re doing. So you have an obligation to figure out how to run a business clinically because that’s going to make you the best version of yourself possible, the best clinical version you could possibly be.

And I think the second thing is, you have every right to repay your student loan debts. You have every right to repay all of the debts and struggles you had to deal with to get the degrees in the first place.
I think therapists don’t take these things seriously seriously enough.

Now look, there’s tons of resources online for you to learn how to do that, for you to learn how to get clients. For you to learn how to build your practice. For you to learn how to run a business. I have some. Go visit my website. I will share some with you.

But I want to encourage all of you to take the business part of your work seriously. I want you guys to understand that you have a clinical obligation to focus on that aspect of your practice. If you don’t do it, you are letting yourself down clinically, which has a negative impact on the work you do with your clients.

So do what you need to do. Go find resources online, visit my website. Check out what I got. But I just want you guys to understand, you don’t have to be broke and you don’t have to be stressed. There’s another way.