STP 127 Building Income Stability In Your Therapy Practice
===
[00:00:03] Chris McDonald: I'm always looking for working less, but still making an income. Right. have more time off flexibility in the scheduling. 'cause right now I take Mondays for podcasting and, and working on courses or other projects I have. I would also like to just have therapy. A few days a week with less clients and, and I think that can be a goal to work towards too, if you can find other ways to, to earn income through courses or other ways to scale.
[00:00:33] I think that that's possible.
[00:00:34]
[00:00:37]
[00:01:10] James Marland: Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is your host, James Marland. This is the show where we empower mission-driven leaders to launch life-changing online courses. Today I am extremely happy to have a previous student on the line, but also a friend and a fellow podcaster, Chris McDonald, and she is a licensed therapist from North Carolina.
[00:01:35] She's, involved with a podcast, yoga in the therapy room, and she has a course Trauma Informed Basics for therapists. Right? Is that the name of the course that I all Chris, welcome to the show.
[00:01:47] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Hey, thanks for having me. So glad to be here.
[00:01:50] James Marland: So, tell us a little bit about what you do and then we'll get into our topic of, building stability without the hustle,
[00:01:57] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Yeah, so, I'm a mental health [00:02:00] therapist. I own a private practice in Raleigh, North Carolina called Path to Hope Counseling.
[00:02:04] I'm also a yogi and I have the podcast yoga in the therapy room. I also have my course, which is something I.
[00:02:12] use to help therapists to. Integrate yoga into clinical sessions ethically and safely, and it's really about finding other ways to enhance the therapy sessions and bringing more holistic practices.
[00:02:28] James Marland: So how did you get started doing this? Get in the yoga, and bringing it into the therapy room.
[00:02:35] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: It is been a process. It hasn't been like all one day I woke up and thought, Hey, I should bring yoga. So it was part of my own journey. Personally, professionally, I'm a yogi, so I bring yoga practices in my personal life daily. And I had started about 13 years ago, just going to yoga regularly. And when I first rented space for my private practice, I met someone who said [00:03:00] that she knows yoga and teaches clients yoga and gives them homework.
[00:03:05] I was like, Ooh, how do I do that? So I found out my first training in 2015 about cherry yoga and being able to bring that in with clients. But there was a problem because it was like, Hey, here's some practices, but. I'm not gonna show you how to do this or when to do this in a session, and I'm not gonna talk about ethics.
[00:03:24] I was like, so I was kind of like starting a little bit and a little hesitant, like, what is the best way to do this? And then I got more training. But what I found is that traditional therapy has its limits. Many clients hit what's called the CBT wall, the cognitive behavioral therapy. For those that don't know what that is, it's just using a, a lot of work on your unhelpful thoughts and being able to reframe them.
[00:03:48] That can only go so far, and especially with trauma. Trauma is stored in the body, so we have to bring the body into session. So I've really turned more into a somatic therapist overall and [00:04:00] really make the body part of the session, and that's where I found the most healing is when we can bring body, mind, spirit into a session that leads to better results.
[00:04:10] James Marland: Yeah. We're not just
[00:04:11] the mind, the
[00:04:12] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Oh gosh. It's such a difference.
[00:04:15] James Marland: Awesome. our topic today is building stability without the hustle. And what your yoga for therapist course does for you. what type of pressures are therapists under to hustle, like getting clients in the caseload?
[00:04:29] Can you just talk about your experience with that?
[00:04:32] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: It's not always easy. I love being in private practice. It's the best decision I ever did. I used to have a W2 job as a school counselor, so I went from regular paycheck. Knowing what you're gonna get, when you're gonna get paid to a lot of uncertainty.
[00:04:48] one thing that people may not know is as therapists, our caseloads may be stable at times. But it's also a fluid business, meaning that clients come and go. We may have some [00:05:00] long-term base clients, but. We never know when people are gonna leave. And as we're recording this, we're in the summer season so we lose a lot more clients.
[00:05:10] There's more no shows. It's harder to get referrals. People are on vacation, there's graduations. There's a lot going on in the summer, and I feel like the sun is shining and people are happier, so they may not be as committed to therapy. Not everybody, but I find a general trend that it's much more difficult in the summer, so we do have those times that it can be more challenging or like holiday times at Christmas time can be harder to maintain a full caseload.
[00:05:37] So to me that means for us as therapists, we have to hustle a little more. Okay, well, I'm losing three more clients next month. What do I need to do? I need to get out there, networking. I need to market more. And in addition to the clients we're already seeing with a full schedule, it can be a lot to manage caseloads.
[00:05:57] James Marland: I was thinking about [00:06:00] all the pressure there is to keep a caseload and keep it going.
[00:06:04] and you're talking about, the having a paycheck. you can plan and you're not worried a paycheck is good unless it's trapping you from what you really wanna
[00:06:16] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Yeah,
[00:06:17] James Marland: but there is
[00:06:18] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: That can happen too.
[00:06:18] James Marland: there's a stability, there's a stability there. And when you're working for yourself and you're, you're the marketer or you are the, the person who schedules. Like you, you, there's there. Okay. What I'm trying to say is there's many ways to solve this problem.
[00:06:34] one way to build some more inconsistencies to hire people, right? You could hire
[00:06:37] people. Then they, now there's two people working, but then there's, that's a different, you know, there's different problems with that.
[00:06:46] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: I've tried that. I've done that.
[00:06:47] James. It's not for me.
[00:06:49] James Marland: now you tried a way to build stability is,
[00:06:52] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349:
[00:06:52] James Marland: Is, building the course.
[00:06:54] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Yes.
[00:06:54] James Marland: So what was attractive about the course over the other avenues? Like [00:07:00] hiring people or doing, writing a book or teaching a college
[00:07:04] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Ben, I've written two books.
[00:07:05] James Marland: written two books.
[00:07:06] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: that as well.
[00:07:08] James Marland: So, what about the course was attractive to you for scaling and growing your business and
[00:07:12] giving you some stability in your income?
[00:07:16] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Well, I've always wanted to create a course, I have a degree in education actually. So I, as I worked in the school system, I've always loved teaching. So we used to have to go into classrooms and do guidance and do different lessons, and that, to me, that was always fun and interactive, and especially when we're talking about things related to psychology and coping skills.
[00:07:36] I get real excited with that stuff. And I thought this would be amazing to be able to teach therapists how to do what I do. And how I came to that conclusion was with my podcast. It used to be the Holistic Counseling podcast, and I had rebranded last September to yoga in the therapy room because. The number one question I got from listeners was, how do I bring [00:08:00] yoga into sessions?
[00:08:01] Because I would have different focus groups. I would get questions from people in my Facebook group bringing yoga in the therapy room, or just online. People might listen to an episode and say, how do you do that? What is that like? So I was like, you know what? Let me take the pain points from my listeners and be able to put that into a course to help them get started so they can help their clients, and as well as helping themselves too.
[00:08:25] 'cause one of the benefits of bringing yoga in the therapy room. Is that you get the benefit of the yoga practice. And I found this last week I had, it was like three o'clock and I, that's my tired time. I get real tired and just drained and I had this client come and I was like, oh my gosh, I gotta. Pep myself up to get through this session, but we, I brought in some yoga and I just gotta tell you, James, I was just like, I felt so good after
[00:08:51] So we get the benefit. 'cause yoga can be energizing, but it can also be grounding. So if we're having our own difficult day too, we're doing it with them. [00:09:00] This practice is with them, we're doing it together. So we're helping them to connect to their bodies, but in the process, we get the benefit of self-care.
[00:09:09] James Marland: Yeah, that's neat because then you can, look for, like, I can imagine there might be some cases as you get tired or you're anticipating something that might not be desirable, but if you can incorporate something that you also love to do in the session.
[00:09:28] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Absolutely.
[00:09:28] James Marland: makes it, you can look forward to doing this.
[00:09:31] Like, I know this is gonna be hard, but I also get to practice some skills.
[00:09:38] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Yeah. And to see clients transform. I had a client, this past week that I saw that was very, very distressed and just very crying, emotionally dysregulated. And I was like, oh man, how am I gonna help her today? And by the end, I invited her to do some yoga practices, and by the end she was smiling.
[00:09:57] And relax. And I asked her, I'm like, [00:10:00] how are you feeling? You know, what can you take away from today? And she's like, I just feel so much more relaxed and settled. So it is just, those are moments I get to witness every day. It's just beautiful. So
[00:10:13] James Marland: So it's really helped you and you wanna teach other people. what does, having a course bring to you and your business,
[00:10:21] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Yeah.
[00:10:22] James Marland: we talked, about, how there are difficult clients, you know, trauma, you see a lot of trauma and, that can be emotionally difficult
[00:10:31] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: It's draining.
[00:10:32]
[00:10:32] James Marland: But you, you said having a course brings, you can still help people, but you have variety in your work. Can you talk about how that variety can help sustain your business?
[00:10:44] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: I've noticed over the years that I get worn out, I've been doing this like 29 years counting my school counselor years and it can wear us down emotionally, physically, spiritually.
[00:10:55] James Marland: Hmm.
[00:10:55] chris_1_06-12-2025_091349: Day in, day out, as we see clients that have these difficult [00:11:00] issues, and sometimes I'm not gonna lie, it's hard not to take some stuff home.
[00:11:03] We have to make that separation. But there are times that I'm just like, oh gosh, I hope that client's okay. And we start to think about that and that can wear you down. But I find too, that can we put energy into something we're passionate about? So. I feel like the course is my passion. Yoga and being able to help therapists is my other passion.
[00:11:24] Putting that together really has like re-energized myself and having the course too brings that stability that I'm able to get an alternative stream of revenue. And so let's say I am having a more difficult month in my private practice. It's not like panic. I'm like, okay, well I still have some other ways to bring some income in.
[00:11:47] Not that it's like a paycheck, not no guarantees with courses of course, but it is just something nice to have that we can feel that commerce sense that more present because we know that, okay, there are other [00:12:00] ways that I bringing in money.
[00:12:02] James Marland: Yeah, the system. The system is, designed to keep you in front of, in the chair or on the computer at a certain time, at a certain date with a certain person, right? There's a lot of things that have to line up
[00:12:17] a course provides some stability because it allows you to get paid even when you're not in the room. the traditional system that therapists are taught is, you know, one hour for one bit of money, you know, one hour for one bag
[00:12:31] Chris McDonald: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:31] James Marland: Can you talk about how that system can lead to instability or, or a stress to hustle?
[00:12:39] Chris McDonald: for sure if you're sick. So I have some chronic illnesses and with my migraines or back issues, there's sometimes I gotta take time off and it's unexpected. I can't always plan for it. So then if I don't work with a private practice, I don't make the money unless I have another stream of revenue.[00:13:00]
[00:13:00] From like my courses or books or something like that. So it is nice to have that kind of stability that 'cause when it's all, it's like all eggs in one basket when you're in private practice, unless you have somebody working for you. so that, that can pose a lot of challenges. Or if you wanna take time off.
[00:13:17] I mean, yeah, technically you can save for that, but it can be challenging to do that as we try to manage finances in private practice with all. Our taxes and all our other expenses it can be hard to make enough to give ourselves that paycheck like you have with a W2 job for paid time off
[00:13:37] James Marland: the stress of, vacation and sick time, or just even wanting to help out a family member. the system doesn't reward you for that.
[00:13:46] Chris McDonald: Absolutely
[00:13:47] James Marland: the system does not respect your flexibility and freedom. And, there's also an earning cap on how much you can charge.
[00:13:55] Chris McDonald: for sure.
[00:13:56] James Marland: I mean, even if you're private pay, you're still kind of [00:14:00] tied slightly to the schedule, the fee schedule.
[00:14:03] Because if you go too much higher than that pe you know, it people,
[00:14:07] you're anchored to that fee schedule. And so, you know, you charge a hundred dollars more than that 200, 500. Like, what's the limit there?
[00:14:16] there's a limit.
[00:14:17] Chris McDonald: is a limit.
[00:14:17] James Marland: There's a limit. So a course allows you to charge differently. it also allows you to earn differently. it allows you to earn when you're not in the room and earn, when you're doing other things. what type of freedoms and flexibility are you going for with making a course?
[00:14:39] Chris McDonald: I'm always looking for working less, but still making an income. Right. make, have more time off flexibility in the scheduling. 'cause right now I take Mondays for podcasting and working on courses or other projects I have. but I would also like to just have therapy. A few days a week with [00:15:00] less clients and, and I think that can be a goal to work towards too, if you can find other ways to, to earn income through courses or other ways to scale.
[00:15:11] I think that that's possible.
[00:15:12] James Marland: Yeah, I've heard of therapists who loved therapy, but because of the grind and because of, you know, just the burnout, they do something else. Like they drop out, like my wife works for a virtual assistant company, and every once in a while she'll get somebody with a master's degree. A therapist is just like, I like therapy.
[00:15:30] and I just wanna, stay in the therapy realm, but help out. So do you have a virtual assistant job for me? just to be in the support side of things?
[00:15:39] Chris McDonald: Yeah, I understand that.
[00:15:43] James Marland: so you're,
[00:15:44] Chris McDonald: you're,
[00:15:45] James Marland: talk about your course now, and, you said you have some plans for it coming up. what is your course now and, what are your plans?
[00:15:53] Chris McDonald: Right now it's a digital course, so I spent this spring converting it. I was doing partially a [00:16:00] hybrid where we'd have some work online and then some live. But what I found is.
[00:16:05] I thought it would be easier for therapists. 'cause as you know, we're busy people and many don't have a lot of time for trainings that may be going at their own pace so I'm like, you know what, let's just move this to a. More of a digital course so they can go at their own pace.
[00:16:20] I made shorter videos as well, like you have in your course, which I really appreciated by the way, because I was like, I got five minutes, I can watch part of the course in between a client. So, and it's like that bite-sized pieces so that people can learn a little bit easier. 'cause the beginning of my course is a little heavy with, some neuroscience and polyvagal theory and integrating with that.
[00:16:42] So it is a. It's not as much fun as like the yoga practices, I think, but it can be a lot in the beginning to try to get the foundation before you learn more about sequencing and cues for yoga, for therapists, I designed that specifically for therapists and also the course ends with them [00:17:00] sending a video to me so that I can, see how they're doing with teaching someone else, not a client, but like family member, a friend. but just a short video so that they can have that as their final project. 'cause what I would do before is have them teach someone in the course, in a breakout room to be able to practice these skills. 'cause the only way to learn how to do yoga in the therapy room is to practice. Practice and then practice more.
[00:17:30] 'cause you can't think about it like, oh I wanna do that or talk about it. You have to embody these practice. And that's what my course is all about too, is creating your own personal yoga practice, what that could look like. And I do provide scripts in there too, so that as people get started, they can read the scripts just to get start.
[00:17:49] It's okay to figure out the best way to queue 'cause it's, it's not. Usual therapy with, when we talk about queuing movement [00:18:00] practices and how do we do this safely, how do we do this ethically? So I have a lot of ethics, which is at the beginning of the course. Like I said, it's a little heavier in the beginning.
[00:18:06] 'cause we gotta get in scope of practice, scope of competence, what does that mean? All the ethical guidelines that we have. and by the way, therapists, if you're listening this. Is within your scope of practice. So I just wanna throw that out there 'cause that's the number one thing I hear. But I have a lot of handouts too to help with learning and to further facilitate so that they can be able to really feel more confident to move from uncertainty with bringing yoga practices into confidence and recognizing that this can be a powerful modality for them as well, personally and professionally.
[00:18:42] James Marland: Yeah, I always, love, involving, it. Like, the stress, relaxation, clearing the mind, all sorts of, you know, for some people just talking about it, it's not gonna do it.
[00:18:55] Chris McDonald: it's not,
[00:18:55] James Marland: you need some skills with your body to,
[00:18:58] Chris McDonald: Well, you gotta see what it feels [00:19:00] like for you to do these practice. And that's why I also have experientials in there with DBT practice 'cause we can integrate these with counseling theory, and with some, CBT as well. So there are ways to integrate with changing our thoughts to use embodied practices too.
[00:19:19] James Marland: And do you, what's the new thing? You have something new
[00:19:22] Chris McDonald: Yeah, absolutely. So right now I'm in the process of putting a membership together. this is still in the preliminary stages, but what I really wanted to find the whole basis of all this too, is be able to build community for therapists. when I first started integrating yoga and such, I was like. I don't know hardly anybody who does what I do.
[00:19:42] So there's not as many of us out there. So when we get to meet someone who does integrate, we have an immediate bond and connection 'cause we're like-minded in that and really can see the benefits of somatic practice We get very excited when we all get to meet [00:20:00] together and that's why I have my Facebook group too, bring a yoga in the therapy room.
[00:20:03] 'cause people can ask questions in a safe space, supportive community, but I thought it would be better. Facebook's so difficult, as you know with the algorithm. Not everybody sees every post and it's harder to get people to engage. But if we have a membership somewhere else, then I can put some trainings in there.
[00:20:20] What I wanted to do was also, I'm a clinical supervisor. Is be able to offer consultation groups for integrating yoga into therapy sessions. 'cause that might exist somewhere. I don't know where it is, if it does. So I've shared this with a lot of, people have taken the course and others listeners, and they've said that they've been very interested in that.
[00:20:41] Because how do we integrate, right? So I thought this would be a great place to do that through a membership and be able to provide resources, support, but also that community portion too, so they can connect with other people who are also doing the same thing.
[00:20:56] James Marland: Yeah. I find that community piece is super important,[00:21:00]
[00:21:00] Chris McDonald: Yeah, we gotta help each other
[00:21:01] James Marland: For completing it, feel like there's gonna be times when you're not feeling good about it. but that's common. And so if you talk it out in a group, you're much more likely to continue rather than be like, well, I guess this isn't for me.
[00:21:15] Chris McDonald: Yes.
[00:21:15] James Marland: Accountability.
[00:21:16] Chris McDonald: People have, they're often therapists will stand on. It's like standing on the threshold of a cliff, right? Do I jump into this or not? And a lot of 'em stay on the sidelines 'cause they don't have that accountability. But I think that having the membership too can be a place to maybe even find accountability partners in
[00:21:33] James Marland: Well, 'cause this has been wonderful. where can people find you and what do you offer on your webpage?
[00:21:39] Chris McDonald: Yeah. So I invite listeners to go to yoga in the therapy room.com. That's my podcast website. I also have a private practice path to hope counseling. Dot com also, if you're interested in learning that. so I do have some resources available on the yoga, the therapy room and some other prerecorded courses.
[00:21:57] That's something I didn't mention too. So I do have some [00:22:00] available, the Art of Breath work and there's a self-care one for therapists too that's also available for, and you can get continued education credits for those.
[00:22:08] James Marland: All right, well, thanks so much for being on the show.
[00:22:11] Chris McDonald: the show.
[00:22:11] This has been great.
[00:22:12] James Marland: And listeners. if you're looking to build some stability into your practice, maybe find some way to, have less burnout, still help with a little less client hours. One of the ways is to build your own online course.
[00:22:27] Or membership program. And, I have resources on the site for that course creation studio.com. But whatever you do, it's now time to put your mission in motion.
