(Video) Let’s Talk Overcoming Marketing Investment Fear ft. Tiffany McLain
Money is a challenging topic, especially within communities of helpers. With all the internal and external shames and fears going on, what comes up for therapists when the time comes to invest money into their marketing?
If you feel a bit stuck in investing into your marketing, this video session is for you.
Today’s guest is Tiffany McLain who is the founder of heytiffany.com where she helps private practice therapists stick to their full fee, stop drowning in anxiety, and earn more while working less. Tiffany is also a therapist in private practice and a columnist for SFWeekly, Psyched In San Francisco, and Psych Central Pro.
Today, Tiffany shares insights on:
- What are some of the money shames and fears that come up for therapists in private practice?
- And more specifically the money fears that come up when it comes to investing into marketing services and assets.
- The shifts that need to happen for therapists to be able to invest in marketing comfortably
- Some cool success stories of therapists that have made the leap into investing in their marketing.
- And one thing that you can do right now to take a step towards overcoming your fear in investing in your marketing and yourself?
Watch the video here and find session notes and links following the video:
Session Notes + Links
What are some of the money shames and fears that come up for therapists in private practice?
There are tons of money shames and fears that come up. Here are 3 that are common and come up often for therapists:
- Sense of guilt. Many therapists feel guilt over having money or expressing the desire to have money especially among therapists where there’s a culture of supporting the helping side and shaming the money side.
- Identifying with the poverty mindset and being the underdog. Many therapists come from a life of situations where they feel helpless or out of control so they become therapists to help and support other people in ways that they weren’t supported. Being in business can actually be empowering but it means you have to let go of the idea of being helpless and out of control. There may be a process of mourning over letting that go of that identity.
- A scarcity mindset from outright terror about our future. Many therapists don’t know where their money is going to come from tomorrow. Or, even if we have a steady client stream or we’re doing ok, we still have a fear of “oh it could run out!” or, “suddenly I could be up shit creek without a paddle.” There is a terror there about holding onto our money and fears that we might not have any more so we better just keep all we can.
Money has to do with our fundamental security and we don’t know if we can actually trust other people to be giving us good information or whether there’s someone else we have to be skeptical of. There is a lot of confusion around this issue.
And when we do try to reach out for help and support, other people also have their own money stuff which may keep them from being able to really be there for us.
What Types of Fears Come Up When it Comes to Investing Into Marketing Services and Assets?
If you grew up with a lower income, lower SES, or in poverty, one of the messages we receive and internalize is that not having money is humble and good and really fighting for the better thing and the people who have money are scammers and crooks. It’s like “that’s the man and they are going to take from us”
So part of what we have inside is that other people are out to get us. So it’s scarcity mindset of we don’t know where money is going to come from and this is a zero-sum-game mentality where there are a limited number of resources.
So if we invest in something it means someone else is gaining and we’re losing. We have fears around:
- Are other people really going to help us? Or are they just trying to steal from us? Or scam us?
- Are they going to help are are they just money greedy?
- Are you going to pay them and they’ll leave or do a bad job?
One of the results of this type of thinking is therapists will do this bargain shopping type of thing. Which is interesting because as therapists a lot of us struggle with our own value and charging our own fees so when we can’t own our value we actually end up being the person on the other side who is looking to have people negotiate their prices down or get the cheapest thing. But by asking for the cheapest thing, we often don’t get quality.
“We’re reinforcing our own value being low by accepting low fees and then we’re looking for other people to kinda not hold their value as well so this stuff goes round and round.”
As therapists we often didn’t grow up with education around money or learning about investment so a lot of us also don’t trust our ability to decipher who are actually going to do good work. And if we take this little bit of money and invest it, it’s an investment in our business but in some ways it’s also an investment in ourselves.
If we don’t trust ourselves to make good decisions if we don’t trust the idea that we can take this little thing and through our own efforts create more out of it then it’s really hard to take our money and put it somewhere. So we actually just hold onto it and keep it tight which doesn’t allow for growth personally or professionally.
Help! So What Are The Shifts That Need To Happen To Overcome These Fears?
Keep going to therapy, for one. Also notice if you’re not paying your therapists full fee and if not.
There’s something really important about going first. Taking the chance to actually invest in something and appreciate and almost revel in giving your money away to someone else and then working with them to see your opportunities grow.
So in terms of the step-by-step:
- Keep getting your own therapy and work it through
- Aand two: take action! Actually look around for places to invest your money or your time, not for someone else’s vision but for your own vision.
SEO, design, paying a consultant or a coach to help your business strategy, taking the leap to do that you will start to see returns in terms of your own growth. And you’ll also actually value yourself more and be able to charge more premium prices and value your own time.
Success Stories of Therapists That Have Made The Leap Into Investing Into Their Marketing
When one of Tiffany’s professional therapist contacts first heard about Tiffany’s work with money mindset stuff for therapists, she dismissed it, was skeptical, and her thoughts went to thoughts like, “Tiffany is a scammer out to get money”
Whenever we want to blame or attack or go after somebody else Tiffany says, “take that pointy finger and point it back at yourself”
And this professional therapist was someone that could actually take that in and listen. And she started questioning, “Why is my first response to attack or go after this thing and not actually to be curious about it?”
When she started cultivating that mindset, she started thinking about her own identification. She is the daughter of a blue collar worker, she’s someone who is really into social activism and social justice, and by noticing those identifications and also seeing Tiffany, someone who’s similar background, (lower SES, Dad from the projects, also cares about social justice, especially in the African American community) she was able to take these things that she thought she had split apart as opposites and saw that they could exist together.
She joined Tiffany’s first program and now she’s killin it! She got connected with a major tech company talking to potential clients, has increased therapy clients and workshop clients, and she is making it happen,
So that ability to notice anytime you’re being triggered around blaming or shaming someone else as bad, that’s the moment you step back and say wait, what does this have to do with me? And that’s the opportunity for growth.
Personally, Tiffany, What Have You Done To Overcome Money Fears?
Tiffany’s dad came from the projects and a background with lots of violence. Tiffany’s mom came from a farm town in Oregon.
For her dad, he had an experience of “get what you can” and “other people are out there to take advantage of you.” Even though Tiffany was not raised in the same type of violent environment her dad was, she was influenced by this “look out for people who are trying to take advantage of you” kind of mindset.
So whenever Tiffany would see programs offered or potential marketing courses offered, she would say like, “Oh I’ll just do the research on my own. I don’t need that person to help me. I’ll just buckle down, work really hard, and do it myself”
But at some point she realized that if she really wants to be able to help people in this way, she actually had to know what it feels like to invest her hard earned money in someone else and trust that they have something to teach me.
Or trust that if they don’t have something to teach me, she could get out of it and trust her own mind enough to say, “ok let me take this chance and see what happens.”
And that’s how Tiffany started heytiffany.com. She stepped back and took a business course and through investing that money into that program she learned
- People actually are not out there trying to scam you, they are trying to teach you. And in order to teach you they need to have money and resources to make that happen.
- What it means to investing in herself. By investing her time into learning it made her have something better to offer
So the experience is one of taking that leap and having that faith. Saying, “I have to take this leap of faith in order to see what’s on the other side” is when Tiffany experienced this shift around investing for herself.
One Thing You Can Do Right Now To Overcome Your Fear In Investing Into Your Marketing?
All of these money issues tie back into valuing oneself and trusting other people, do something even as small as finding someone who is in the realm of SEO, marketing, or design, and signing up for their email list.
Doing this is like saying, “ok there is someone else that has something to offer me”
For some ideas of who to reach out to, try
There are so many people out there doing really cool things!
You would be surprised how many times therapists, marketing consultants, designers offer even a free consultation and a lot of therapists don’t even take that because they are afraid of what might happen.
So sign up for an email list and take someone up on the offer for a free consultation. The best thing that can happen is you learn tons and maybe you want to work with them. The worst that can happen is you learn tons.
So take that risk to sign up or do a free consult.
Special Offer: Free Consultation With Tiffany
At the end of this video, Tiffany offered the first 5 therapists to reach out to her a free consultation! Email her [email protected] to get in!
Links
Thank You For Watching
Thank you so much for watching! If you would like to get in touch with a comment or feedback, feel free to contact me or tweet me. I would love to hear from you and find out how you’ll be overcoming your money fears around investing into your marketing, your practice, and yourself.
