In this solo episode of the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast, host Carly Hill delivers a hard‑charging, motivational talk aimed at therapists and coaches who feel stuck in endless busywork that doesn’t generate revenue. She begins by diagnosing why many practitioners end the week exhausted yet without new clients or sales, explaining that the problem isn’t laziness but misdirected effort. Hill walks listeners through a two‑week time‑audit she ran with her own team to surface non‑revenue‑producing tasks (website tweaks, logo redesigns, endless content planning, etc.) and argues that such “busywork” is a form of avoidance that feels productive but protects them from the uncomfortable conversations that actually bring money. She then outlines the three non‑negotiable revenue‑generating activities: visibility (consistent, strategic posting and live content with clear calls‑to‑action), conversations (daily outreach, follow‑ups, replying to leads), and invitations (making offers, free trainings, calls, or resources). Hill introduces a new “Cash Blitz Call” – a 35‑minute co‑working sprint where participants simultaneously send DMs, texts, emails, and voice notes to a pre‑prepared list, creating accountability, momentum, and volume‑driven sales. She reinforces the importance of follow‑up, treating each outreach as a seed that needs watering. Throughout, she shares personal anecdotes (rejecting a redesign of her own website, focusing on conversations) and promotes her upcoming “Therapist to Coach Startup School” (May 11‑15) and a sponsor, TherapyNotes, highlighting its AI‑driven features. The episode ends with a call to action for listeners to carve out a focused hour for revenue‑generating work, find a buddy or accountability partner, and share their results with her.
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Hello. Welcome back to the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Carly Hill. Today's episode might sting a little. I said that last episode too, but I'm bringing the heat. I'm bringing the tough love. I'm bringing the honesty just like I always do. So today we're going to talk about busywork, specifically why so many coaches and therapists end their week feeling completely exhausted, like they worked so freaking hard and yet nothing actually moved the needle forward in their business. No new clients, no conversations, no revenue. And the reason that it stings is because it's not a laziness problem. You're not lazy. You wouldn't be an entrepreneur if you were lazy. You're one of the most hardworking people I know. The problem is your efforts going to the wrong place. So today we're going to name the busywork traps that are quietly keeping you broke. Talk about the revenue generating activities, what you actually need to be doing to move the needle forward in your business. And I'm also gonna talk about something that's brand new that I've recently added to my clients that you can actually start implementing in your business today, this week, this month. Let's get into it. Let's think about what happened last week in your business. What did you actually spend your time on? And if you don't know this, I would encourage you to do a time audit. I just recently across my whole company did a time audit, a 2-week time audit where everybody had to jot down exactly what they were doing every single working hour, what projects they were working on for the past 2 weeks. Now, this wasn't for me to micromanage. The intention of this, and I was very clear with my team, was for me to see where they're wasting time, where I can help them be more efficient, where we could possibly infuse AI to help them be more efficient, where we need to create better SOPs, where we need to possibly delegate or delete. You need to know what you actually spent your time on first and foremost. And once you do know that, was it tweaking your website? Was it redesigning your logo? Was it perfecting your Canva graphics? Was it researching another course? Was it scrolling? Was it reorganizing your Notion boards or hanging out, clicking around in ClickUp, rewriting your bio for the fourth time, or spending way too long on a social media caption? I'm not judging. You. I've done every single one of these things, and here's what I know to be true from being in this industry for many years and working with hundreds of coaches and therapists. Busy work feels productive. It feels like you're really busy and you're doing a lot of things and you're doing all of the things and you're confused why all of the things aren't actually producing sales. Busy work doesn't pay. You can spend 8 hours on your branding and make $0. In fact, you will spend 8 hours on your branding and make $0. You can spend one focused hour having real conversations with real people, extending an invitation and booking consult calls and making sales. That's the difference. So this is not an exaggeration. This is the difference between busy work and revenue generating activities. I call it money making activities. I have a list, a very long laundry list of money making activities that my clients follow to make money. They're revenue-generating activities, and that's what entrepreneurs need to focus on first. The reason why we fall into busy work in the first place— because it's not random, it's work for a reason— there's a really specific reason that we're falling into the busy work. And once you can understand that, you can't unsee it. Busy work feels safe. Fixing your website doesn't require you to put yourself out there and have a conversation. Taking another certification doesn't doesn't require you to have a vulnerable conversation. Reorganizing your content calendar or spending way too much time on your caption doesn't require you to actually extend an invitation, make an offer, and risk rejection. So busy work is the entrepreneurial version of avoidance. It looks like productivity, it feels like productivity, which is why it's really tricky. But at the end of the day, it is protecting you from the one thing that actually makes you money. Being seen, starting conversations, making invitations. I talk a lot about this in my book Therapreneur, and I'm going to say it here too. We have so much power and intelligence as entrepreneurs that we do not harness because we pile it into our nonsense task admin, perfecting, tweaking, researching, and it's going to quietly burn you out, not because you're doing it too much, but because you're going to do the wrong things, like all of this busywork. You're not going to make money in your business, and then you're going to go down this mindset spiral of, I'm not cut out for this. This is too hard. This is just for other people. It's taking too long. And none of that is the truth. The reality is you just need to shift what actions you're doing in the time that you already have. What are you working on when you're avoiding the things that actually scare you? The thing that you're avoiding, that's almost always the revenue-generating activities. The money-making activities. So what are those, Carly? What actually moves the needle forward? I think a lot of people genuinely don't know the difference, and they've been told that marketing means content, so they focus more on content, and content is just the beginning. I talked about this in my two-part episode on marketing, and I talked about the diagnosis of why you're not getting any clients, and then part two was exactly how to get clients. And I talked a lot about how content is just the beginning. So busy work for you can look like redesigning your website, tweaking your logo, taking another certification, overthinking your niche for the 6 billionth time, consuming more courses without implementing, scheduling posts, but they don't have any call to action. It's not actually leading them down the journey, or you're stuck in planning your launch and replanning your launch, and then life happens, and then you push your launch and then you never actually launch. So revenue-generating activities, money-making activities looks like sending a DM to a warm lead, following up with people who have previously expressed interest and then they went quiet, hopping on a discovery call, making an offer out loud, whether that be in a social media post, in your stories, or you're picking up the phone and you're straight up texting somebody. Possibly it's you scheduling a live. And just showing up and going live and extending invitations after you teach XYZ gold nuggets. What it really comes down to is starting genuine conversations every single day. And you do need to have clear call to actions. All that means is a clear invitation that drives somebody towards the next step. Sending a personal email, going live. Going live is one of the best things that you can do. So the people who are creating cash quickly They're not doing more. They're doing fewer things and they're doing it with intention. Y'all, I can't tell you how many years I had the ugliest website. My graphic designer begged me to redo my branding, to redo my website. I've been tempted with other certifications. Guess what I said? I said, I don't care. No thank you. Not right now. One day I'll get to it. You know why? Because I was focusing on having conversations and making sales. I've identified the handful activities that actually move somebody through a client journey, and I do those things relentlessly. My team does those things relentlessly. If it doesn't put somebody on a call or if it doesn't start a conversation, it's not a revenue-generating activity. So I want you to audit your week right now. Take a mental scan and do a time audit. What percentage of your business What percentage of those hours were spent on things that could directly lead to a paying client? And if that number is low, and for most people starting out it is, that's your answer. And that's a beautiful answer because now you know where the gap lies. Now you know what you need to focus on. Back when I was a full-time therapist, there was nothing I dreaded more than facing a giant stack of paperwork by the end of the day. If you feel the same way, you're going to want to check out TherapyNotes. It's a complete practice management system with everything you need to manage patient records, schedule appointments, meet with patients remotely, create rich documentation, bill insurance right at your fingertips. My favorite part is their new AI tool TherapyFuel, and it can also simplify client histories, document client communications, streamline insurance entry, and there's still more to come. It's no wonder TherapyNotes is the leading behavioral health EHR. Find out yourself why thousands of therapists nationwide love it. Visit therapynotes.com and use code Carly to try it for free. There's really 3 categories of activities that are going to move your business forward. The first is visibility. You gotta show up consistently where your ideal clients can find you. You do need to go live, you do need to post, you do need to have clear call to actions, you do need to show up in your stories. There's been no better time in the world than now to make money on social media. And now we're not just talking about content for the sake of content and posting and praying. We're talking about strategic, intentional content following proven copywriting frameworks that are meant to convert. So we're not posting and praying, we're following a proven marketing plan so that when we post, we move client along in the client journey, and that client journey leads them towards a conversation. And that brings me to the second non-negotiable, which is conversations. Every single day. You should be initiating, you should be responding, you should be following up, you should be replying to people, you should be reaching back out to old leads. It's non-negotiable. It's not optional. This is part of your job. And conversations equal conversions. And I will say it till I'm black and blue in the face. I will say this like a broken record because it is the truth and because people hear this and they still don't do it. You got to have the conversations. Because that's going to lead you to invitations. This is the third non-negotiable. Some point in your conversation, you will need to extend an offer, whether that offer is a free training, whether it is an opportunity for them to get your XYZ free resource, to book a call with you, to read your book, to listen to a very specific podcast episode. Whatever the case is, you're inviting them to do something. And if you never make an invitation, you're never going to make a sale. So this is what it comes down to. First, visibility, then you gotta have a conversation, and then you have to extend an invitation, and everything else is secondary. You need to focus on getting clients and retaining clients. That's how your business is gonna make money. That's it. Getting clients and retaining clients. Guess what? Therapist to Coach Startup School is back. If you have been sitting on the fence, this is your sign. We're spending 5 days together making sure you know exactly what you need to do to successfully expand into coaching. If you're feeling maxed out, maybe you're booked, maybe you have a cap on your income, you're sick of trading dollars for hours, this is for you. You genuinely love being a therapist, but you want more freedom, more flexibility, and more security in your life. Maybe you're already in your coaching business, but you're on this revenue rollercoaster and you can't seem to get consistent clients. I can help with that too. It's all happening May 11th through May 15th. Come spend 5 days with me. I'll be your business coach. We'll meet for about 90 minutes every evening, and you're going to get a full week of intensive business education broken down into digestible bites. You can actually take action on the legal stuff, the ethics of adding coaching, how to create and market a profitable program, how to choose the right audience, how to charge high ticket rates, how to pick a niche that passes what I call the high ticket test. And so much more. Stop talking about it. Let's do the damn thing. Click the link in the show notes, and I can't wait to see you inside. Now, I'm so serious about this, and I see way too often even my own clients, after I even tell them this, doing busy work, that I added a special call to the calendar, and it's called the Cash Blitz Call. And it's not another training, it's not another Q&A call, it's not another thing that my clients are going to sit and passively absorb. It's a co-working session where we make money together and we make money moves and we do money-making activities that actually move the needle forward and make us money. So every one of my clients, they show up with their list of people to reach out to. And we have a focused 35-minute sprint after we set everybody up, we set our intentions, we set our goals, we're reverse engineering and boom, we get to work. We send DMs, we send text messages, we send follow-ups, we get our emails out, we voice note people. We're all doing it at the same damn time and we're holding space together and it works so well. Most business owners know exactly what they need to do. They just don't do it. And life gets in the way and they make the excuses. The DM sits in the draft where it sits in their head. The follow-up never gets sent. Then they think it's too late to send it. You rehearse what you're going to say and then you never say it. So the Cash Blitz call that I'm doing with my clients, it closes the gap. It creates accountability. We're all doing it together. The environment is very energized. We're building momentum. That momentum breeds momentum. The action is unavoidable. Everyone around you is doing the same exact thing and we're focused and we're reaching out to people and we're extending invitations. And guess what? We're making money. That's all it takes. And it is a volume game. The more people you send messages to, the more invitations you can extend, and a percentage of those people will say yes. Guys, it takes like less than 60 seconds to send a message. That's it. So stop overthinking it, start doing it. And then once you see the reward come in, you're going to pick up momentum. It's almost like this addicting thing. Oh my gosh, this is all I have to do. And it is a volume thing. And so you do it and you do it and you rinse and repeat and then you refine the execution of doing it. So each time you do it, you get better at doing it. So remember, fast cash is not going to come from a prettier logo or a prettier website or from a better project management system. Not saying none of that stuff is important, but if you want to make money in your business ASAP, then you need to do a cash blitz yourself and you need to follow up with people. You need to reach out to people. And that starts by having a proper organized list. And that's where a lot of people go wrong too. You're not bothering people. You're planting seeds. Every message you send is a seed. Maybe that response comes in hours and days after you plant them, just like a real seed in a real flower or fruit. It's not always in real time. And just because you don't see the little seed sprouting, that doesn't mean you're going to give up. You just know that it's going to take time. You got to water it. So why would you give up after 1 or 2 follow-ups and wonder why you're not hitting your income goal? We know what the data says, and most sales don't happen in the first conversation or even the second conversation. This is why the fortune is in the follow-up. The people who create consistent revenue are not doing something magical or mysterious. They're just showing up and planting more seeds than anyone else. That's it. So when you hold back the outreach, when you don't send the DMs, when you don't follow up, you're not sending the emails, you're not sending the voice notes, you're not texting, whatever. Your avenue is, doesn't matter, then you're keeping somebody from a solution they genuinely need. And that's messed up. They need you. You'd be doing your people a disservice. So show up, set your goal, hit send, watch what happens. Watch what a cash blitz call can do for you. Do it yourself, even if you're not a client of mine. And the last thing I want to leave you with is you're not behind because you're not working hard enough. You're just likely behind because a significant portion of your effort is going towards activities that feel productive, but they're not money-making activities. They're not directly generating revenue. And so it's a really simple shift. It's not an easy shift, but it is simple. Move your time towards visibility, conversations, and invitations. And if you do those 3 things relentlessly every single day with intention, be relentless about it, especially give yourself a structured environment, have somebody hold space for you, find a buddy. Your life is gonna change. Your business is going to change. Your revenue is going to change. So look at your calendar this week. Carve out one focused hour, not for branding, for reach, for reaching out to people, following up to people. If this episode resonated with you, if you actually did this, please message me. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your results. I want to hear your success. There's nothing more that I want for you than to be happy and successful and have a dream coaching business, a sustainable and a scalable coaching business that brings you freedom and flexibility and security in your life. I want that for you. I'd be honored to help you. I hope this episode did help you. My love is with you. Go hit send. I'll see you in the next episode.
