The Wealth Identity Shift Therapists Need Stop Undercharging

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. Baby just went off to swim lessons. I hopped on the computer because I want to talk to you guys today about money, money, money, money, money, money, honey. That's what we're talking about today. Don't skip this episode. It's not some fluffy manifestation episode. I'm going to give you tangibles, practicals, how you can rewire subconsciously your money mindset. And what I'm going to teach you today has absolutely changed the trajectory of my whole entire life. And I do believe that it's going to do the same for you. Okay, so stick with me. I went from making $18 an hour as a therapist with a master's degree to now crossing $5 freaking million in sales. Like, I haven't just made $1 million once, I have made it over and over and over again. And that is because I have rewired subconsciously My relationship with money. I can tell you with complete certainty that the strategy, the business side, that was only a part of it. The bigger shift for me really was my relationship with money. Let's just dive straight into it. Let's talk about your brain running on an old software, because what's actually happening when you feel stuck around money. When you're dreaming about money, when you think it's out of your league, it's out of your reach, you're worrying about it at night, you're craving it, but you think it's possible for other people but not for you. Somehow, some way, you feel stagnant, stuck around money. Maybe you have some negative connotations around what you even think about money. So let me give you the clinical explanation for why that's happening, and then the real-life one. Tony Robbins has this quote that I love, and he says the biggest thing keeping people from being wealthy is their brain. And I just couldn't agree more because money occurs in numbers, right? Numbers are infinite, and holy cow, to master something that is infinite is really hard. So it always leaves us with this feeling of we don't have enough. We're always longing for more. There's this ever elusive quote unquote enough that Keeps us grasping for more and more, right? Can you feel that? Are you tracking? So here's the thing. Most of your money beliefs that you have now, they were not formed as an adult. They were absolutely absorbed in childhood. You were watching how your parents talked about money, how they moved when bills came in, the energy in the house. You were absorbing the energy in the room when bills came in. You were picking up on whether money felt safe or it felt stressful in your home. You've been running on this programming ever since, and oftentimes it is completely subconscious. It is like your brain is running on an old software and you cannot create new experiences from a past paradigm. You just can't. So your internal operating system, it needs updating. It's old. It's old software. You cannot create a new income from an old belief system. So I want you to actually sit with this and ask yourself, and maybe journal about it: What is your relationship with money like? If money were a person in your life, are you close? Do you avoid each other? Do you fight? Do you smile when you think about it? How do you feel when you buy something at the store? When you pay your bills? When you check your bank account, when you spend money on yourself, do you feel relief? Do you feel resentment? Do you feel guilt? Like, what is your relationship with money? And what about people who have money? What do you think about them? Because all of these attitudes are a direct window into what I call your money story. And if you're not happy with how money is showing up in your life or how it's not showing up in your life, I want you to get curious rather than critical. It's not a character flaw. It is a sign that you're meant for more money if you're craving it, if you're desiring it. All it is is just your operating system needs a reboot. It needs an update. And the good news is you can update it just like you can update your phone overnight. Okay? You can't update your money system overnight, but you can update it. It does take work. But that's the first thing I need you to realize is get really real with yourself. What is your relationship with money? Have you actually taken a look at it? What is your attitude towards money? What is your attitude towards people who have money? And let's start there with identifying so that we can then work on upgrading. I wrote myself a letter to money and I was bawling. In tears, it was one of the most healing things that I did. But that was the start of identifying what my relationship was with money. I said, dear money, and I just went on a riff and I talked about how I felt about money, why I wanted more money, why I felt guilty buying things, etc. And again, a lot of it tied back to my childhood. I wrote the whole money letter inside my book Therapreneur. So if you're interested in actually hearing my letter and getting an example, then you can find that in the money mindset chapter inside of Therapreneur. Now let's go a little bit deeper. Okay? Because if you're a therapist, you're a healer, which you probably are, as you're listening to this, you're a wellness professional. You're not just dealing with generic money blocks that everyone else has. Yes, we have those. Okay. But we also have a specific layered money block on top of that. Profession-wide conditioning, if you will, or brainwashing as I call it, around money. And it runs really deep. We were trained literally to put our clients' needs first, always. We were in programs where the message, spoken or unspoken, was doing this work is a calling, which I do believe it is. Not everybody gets this calling, and people who have callings, They're just supposed to heal and don't charge premium rates. Callings don't market themselves. Callings certainly don't build seven-figure businesses, and it's all a load of BS. I don't use brainwashed lightly, but I believe that we were taught that somehow making money is bad. Somehow wanting to make money means. We're not a good helper. We're trying to capitalize on people's pains. There could be nothing further from the truth. It's like this either or that it has to be. You either care about people or you care about making a profit, but not both. Gosh, you couldn't care about both at the same time. Like BS. Both can exist at the same time. And so when you start raising your rate, or you start moving into coaching, or when you start charging what you're actually worth, or God forbid you claim it in a Facebook group with therapists and you get eaten alive, suddenly you're being called greedy. You're the one getting the side eye in these groups or from your colleagues. And maybe people stop talking to you. Maybe someone tells you you're selling out, or you're exploiting your license, or you're taking advantage of people. I mean, I've heard it all. Okay, I've had clients come to me in tears because another therapist was so rude to them, and I've seen these threads in communities, and it's hurtful, it's isolating, and it really makes me question the programming and the brainwashing in this old belief system that we're all collectively carrying. Every time you charge what you're worth, you're not just making a business decision. You're quite literally rewriting history and transforming lives. Like, that is priceless. You can't put a price tag on that for the work that you're doing. Charging premium rates doesn't make you greedy. In fact, it makes you sustainable and having an actual business that can take care of you and your family so you can help more people. It means you care enough to stay in the field without burning out or throwing the towel in completely. We are well over a million therapists short in this country. We are in a mental health crisis, and we have been. We need you. We cannot pour from an empty cup. We know this. So let's go back to money and bring this full circle, because money is neutral. It's completely neutral. It doesn't care about you. It is just an amplifier. It amplifies who you already are. I was talking to my dad the other day, and he owns the Arborist Company. My brother took it over. But he got this call from this guy who said that he had sawdust all over his $120,000 BMW. He kept repeating it was a $120,000 BMW, sawdust, blah blah blah blah blah. And my dad's like, okay, you know, here's $25, go get your car washed, etc. And the guy was just taking no for an answer, just yap yap yap complaining. And my dad's like, I know you're doing well for yourself, Carly, but like Don't be a dick, essentially, is what he was saying. Like, I hope that you never get to that place where you would be a dick. And I was like, Dad, that guy was who he was long before he came across money. Money just amplified who he was. I, just because I have more money now, am not changing who I am. It is amplifying who I am. I have always been a giver at heart. And having more money allows me to be more generous. So let's process this for a second. When I say money is neutral and it is just an amplifier, if you are a big-hearted healer who wants to make a difference in this world, money gives you more capacity to do that. You are allowed to unapologetically want to make more money and also transform lives at the same time. Give me a freaking amen. Okay, both can be true at the same time, and I had to work myself through this. The first time I posted about my income publicly, I literally threw my phone across the room like I had just texted a high school crush. I had to go to therapy to even expose what I was making and how successful I was because I was subconsciously believing that me sharing my success meant that I was gloating. That having money made me less of a healer somehow. So I had to process that fear. I had to rewrite that belief that sharing my wins was not about ego. It was about giving other people permission to win too, and showing them that this is possible. And I'm telling you this because those identity stories, they run very deep in our bones and we have to address them. They are not permanent. They are just old software, and we can consciously choose to uninstall them. That is the money work that I need you to do. And it starts again with just knowing and realizing what your relationship with money is like and going down the healing journey of undoing some of this brainwashing and childhood money beliefs that we have subconsciously absorbed. It does not have to be our reality. It does not have to be our truth. So there's an old version of you and there's a new version of you waiting. Old me versus new me. This is what I was always saying as I was going through these big money mindset shifts. And this is where we're playing an active part in our money healing journey. Awareness is beautiful, but after you have the awareness, you got to do the work. Awareness doesn't pay the bills. Okay, and I teach all of my clients this, and I tell them, you know, my stories, and I've lived this myself. You cannot out-strategize a broken identity. I don't care how good your marketing is. I don't care how solid your offer is. If there is a crack in your foundation, if you don't believe at your core that you are worthy of wealth, and that it is possible for you, and that it is safe to receive, and and that it is safe to have money and that it is safe and possible that you can actually hold the level of success that you desire, none of it is going to stick. None of it. And what I see over and over again with the therapists I work with, the ones who are hitting $10K months, $50K months, $100K months, it's not always the ones with the most trainings or certifications or even the most viable niches. Or the most polished brands. It's the ones who made a massive identity shift first, kept doing the work, especially the work around their relationship with— ding, ding, ding— money, right? You have to become the version of you who already has it before the money comes in. This is how the brain works. This is science, okay? So here's an exercise. Close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes. I want you to imagine yourself 3 years from now. What does your financial life look like? What are you doing? Where are you living? What does a normal Tuesday morning look like for you? How do you feel about money? Not anxious, not grasping. Just what— like, what is it? How do you feel? Is it free? And what does that free feeling actually look like for you? And now ask yourself, what does that version of me believe about money? What does she think is possible? What does she think about what she charges, what she receives, how she shows up when a potential client says, "I need to think about it," and this is the work. I need you to do this work because your nervous system does not know the difference between future and current reality. Again, that's science. Your nervous system does not know the difference between the present moment. And the future. So you have to start showing up as him or her now. You have to start attracting what she would attract. Everything works through resonance. I did this work, y'all. I was the girl making $18 in community mental health. I wrote myself a check for a million dollars. I kept it on my desk every single day. I did subliminal money mindset recordings. I listened to them before I went to sleep. I listened to them when I was At my desk working, I read books, tons of books, podcasts. I did Reiki sessions. I did subconscious healing sessions. I did therapy. I did journaling. I exercised my way into you know I would do like mountain climbers, like working towards my financial goals. I did anything and everything I could to move the energy up and out and do the subconscious reprogramming, which is why I am now crossing five million dollars in sales. And something started to shift very quickly, not overnight, but when I consistently started doing this work, and this is just part of my identity now. Okay. But when you believe money comes easily to you, you feel excited, you feel curious, you feel grateful, you see opportunities everywhere. Abundance is everywhere. You never run out of ideas. You are just like a money-making machine. You show up to sales conversations differently. You stop convincing, you start guiding. You think, okay, somebody's waking up today ready, eager to pay me. There's 8 billion people in this world. Somebody was ready to pay me yesterday. I am open to all opportunities. This is a different energy than nobody can afford this. Who am I to charge that much? Who's going to listen to me? Is this really good? Every time you catch yourself in an old money belief, and you will, because this is a lifelong journey. Money is infinite. It's hard to master something infinite. I want you to say, okay, that's old me. Yeah, old me used to think that, but new me thinks differently. And then replace that with a belief that actually serves the life that you're building and where you're heading. Old me believed I had a cap on my income. But new me knows that my income is limitless. It is only limited by the size of my belief and what is possible for me. Financial freedom to me is not about a specific number in your bank account. It's more about feeling free around money, whether you have money or whether you don't. It's about never having to obsess over money. It's about using money as a tool to create, to give, to support the people that you love, and to really have options and live a life on your own terms. So when you get there, you start seeing opportunities for growth everywhere. Ideas pop up constantly. Money comes to you often. You become more generous because you know it's just an energy exchange and it's always coming back to you. And hey, it's probably coming back to you tenfold. So let's recap. We covered a lot today. I was just riff, riff, riffing. Let's do some key takeaways and tie this together with a bow. I want to leave you with this: the money mindset work is not separate from the business strategy. It is part of the business strategy. But remember, you can have the best funnel, you can have the most compelling offer, you can have the most consistent content, you can have the prettiest logo and brand colors, and Yada yada. But your upper limit— Gay Hendricks talks about this upper limit, okay? Your upper limit will stop you every single time if you have not yet done and mastered the inner work. And once you start to master and shift and do this inner work, the outer results follow faster than you expect, and you almost can't even keep up with yourself because all the synchronicities are happening. Things are just flowing, you're in alignment. That's what happened to me. That's what happens to my clients. They're like, what? How is this happening so fast? The revenue starts to double and triple in ways that only felt possible in your wildest dreams. It just ignites almost like this avalanche of change. And this is what is possible for you. This is what is available to you. Please use me as proof that this is possible. Use my clients as proof. Go, go read my results page. Hundreds, hundreds of testimonials and case studies of people talking about the money that they make now. And it's not just because of the business strategy that I teach. Yes, that's a part of it. But it's also this rewiring. This is why this conversation is so important that we're having today. And I always say, if you stay around long enough, you will be proof that this is possible. So if you're still listening to this, thank you for being here. I hope you soaked something so deep in, and this episode moved you to shift inside. Maybe it cracked something open a little. Maybe you're recognizing something for the first time. Maybe you're realizing how much your money story has really been running in the background without your permission, just subconsciously. And that recognition alone is the start of something really huge. Okay, so if you're ready to take the next step on your journey, not just shift the mindset, but build the actual business that supports the life that you want, the business and the life, the coaching business of your dreams. Like, this is what I'm here for. This is what I live for. This is what I breathe and teach and preach every single day. This is exactly what we do inside of my mentorship program, the Coach Intensive. We do both. We do the inner work and we do the outer strategy because you absolutely have to do both. So if you want to learn more, you can just check the show notes. There's many different ways to work with me. I would be honored to guide you on this journey. I hope you took away a beautiful gold nugget around your money mindset journey, and more importantly, that you step into action today and you actually go and apply something that you learned today. Because again, this work has absolutely shifted the trajectory of my life And it has the ability to do that for you as well. My love is with you, and I'll see you in the next episode.