Thirteen Thoughts For the Next Generation of Financial Therapists

As a financial therapy supervisor, I have the honor of getting to know some of the leaders in the financial therapy field, as well as the up-and-coming folks who are carrying the torch to make financial therapy more accessible for various populations around the world. In every monthly group supervision meeting, we start with a check-in question. In April, I posed “what would you tell the next generation of financial therapists?” Here is what these wonderful financial therapist professionals had to share:

1. Do your own work - I couldn’t agree more! How can we ask clients to do emotional heavy lifts with money if we haven’t looked at our own edges too?

2. Find community - where do you find community? Is it through FTA, the upcoming conference, financial therapy supervision, networking events, coffee chats, or something else?

3. Specialize or niche down - Even though the field is still relatively small, it’s helpful to niche down to make it easier for your ideal client to find you, not to mention having colleagues happily refer to you because they know exactly who you serve!

4. Don’t rely on this full-time -This piece of advice doesn’t surprise me because of the variability of financial therapy clients. Unlike mental health clients, financial therapy clients typically are with us for a shorter time span due to factors like out-of-pocket cost, budgeting, and accessibility. Having other income streams sounds like a solid idea to account for busy and slow seasons as a financial therapist.

5. Be comfortable with not having a clear structure - As someone who is happy to speak to peers about financial therapy, this feels like sound advice. The financial therapy community has only been around since 2008, and oftentimes, collectively, we feel like we are building the plane as it’s flying.

6. Know your role/lane -understanding your scope or role is important, especially as we have financial therapists coming from two different home disciplines of mental health and financial planning. Knowing your bumpers and building a solid referral network can help clients connect with the right professionals should they need something you cannot provide within your role with them.

7. Find a mentor - I personally love this one! Did you know you can connect with many financial therapists at the annual conference or through the FTA’s directory to see about fit?

8. Be comfortable with taking your own path to get here - Another solid validation that there is no one way to become a financial therapist. It’s why Ed Coambs and I had the pleasure of interviewing 20 financial therapist leaders in our book Becoming a Financial Therapist to help our community see the variety to how they arrived in this space.

9. Be comfortable with no one knows what they are doing - Similar to #5, a common discomfort is not having a clearly defined framework. Is it permission to take your place at the table? Absolutely! For creatives and trailblazers, this can also serve as an invitation to help shape the field!

10. Keep your day job - similar to #4 above, there are very few financial therapists who do financial therapy full time. So having other income streams or employment could be necessary for financial peace of mind.

11. Excavate your bias -aligned with #1, staying curious about your own biases is critical to helping clients of diverse backgrounds. What work can you engage in to uncover your biases and explore them further?

12. Never judge - the financial therapist who shared this advice went on to explain that judgement in the space of financial therapy and people’s choices or behaviors with money can actually cause more harm. Embrace curiosity rather than judgement to better understand why clients “do what they do” with their money.

13. Be compassionate - I imagine this recommendation applies both to self as a financial therapist as well as the clients you serve. Money remains emotional for many, so compassion is welcome when doing this hard and meaningful work.

What advice did you need to hear most from the list above as you consider your own path within the financial therapy space? What advice would you share from your lived experience? Come say hi at the upcoming conference in Austin, I’d love to hear your story!

Five Books that have Shaped my Mental Health Leadership Identity

Books give us the gift of language to our own experiences, which serves to support our self-of-therapist development. I truly believe we are never done growing and we are ever-evolving, so it was meaningful to reflect on the books I most identify with as a professor, supervisor, and consultant to therapists and counseling students. As a passionate mental health leader, here are books that have had a profound impact on how I show up with the therapists (and clients) I serve.

Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky (2009). An oldie but a goodie, this book was one I discovered only after I was in professional burnout for two years. I remember wishing someone had introduced this book to me in graduate school. Written compassionately, I felt so seen and hopeful that burnout recovery was possible.

Moving from ALERT to Acceptance: Helping Clinicians Heal from Client Suicide (2024). My own book, this was the hardest one to write out of the 11 (soon to be 12!!) published books out in the world. It was the book I needed in 2021 when my client died by suicide. I continue to lean into the abundant compassion and zero judgement woven throughout the content and although it’s life altering to be a clinician survivor, this work has helped me serve and build communities for other clinician survivors, which has brought another rich layer of meaning and purpose to the work I do.

For the Love of Therapy by Nicole Arzt and Jeremy Arzt (2024). This book celebrates authenticity in the therapeutic relationship which is a cornerstone of what I teach students in their clinical mental health education. A heartfelt, fast read, I love how the authors speak to the inevitability of rupture and the beauty of repair—the very thing students are most afraid of when they start working with their clients. 

The Art of Money by Bari Tessler (2016). Engaging this book in my own money healing prior to becoming a Certified Financial Therapist was crucial prior to engaging other clinicians in the same emotional and vulnerable process. I love how Bari invites folks to slow down and notice what’s going on with their body when it comes to money, and I happily recommend this book to therapists coming into financial therapy work with me as a starting place of curiosity around the money beliefs and behaviors we each hold.

The Resilient Therapist by Ashley Charbonneau and Khara Croswaite Brindle (coming Fall 2026!). Another book I was seeking personally and professionally after several significant career traumas over the last sixteen years, this book is meant to support the healing process for clinicians to find resilience after career-altering events within our field. It is an invitation to feel seen in experiences of client violence, client sudden death, client suicide, professional betrayal, grievance, and subpoena (what we call Adverse Psychological Events) and feel validated for what you carry, alongside discovering the strength to continue forward.

What books have had a significant impact on how you show up in this field? I’d love to know!

Three Things to Consider When Creating a Course for Others

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As mental health professionals, it’s not uncommon to be asked to create a course for others based on your specialties, interests, or populations you serve. It could be a health company wanting a training on suicide assessment, or an HR firm looking for a workshop on burnout prevention. It may be a school wanting strategies for addressing self-harm in teens, or a church community looking for grief and loss resources from a professional within their community. Or perhaps you’ve been outreached by a continued education company that is looking for fresh faces to create quality trainings they can add to their subscription library for current members. Regardless of the audience, here are a couple things to explore before embarking on the journey of creating courses for others.

1.     Have a Contract

Any company or organization serious about working with you to provide a course should have a formal contract outlining the parameters. It’s not enough to have a verbal or email exchange, it’s about having something in writing that gives expectations on things like:

a.     Length of the final training

b.     Deadline for training materials

c.     Format of training being webinar, modules, video, audio, etc.

d.     CE components like learning objectives, references, and quiz questions if required

e.     Intellectual property clarification including that they aren’t hindering you from making similar content for others if you desire to do so

2.     Know the Numbers

In addition to a contract outlining various expectations of you as the creator, it should also house some very important numbers for you to consider before saying yes to the project.

a.     Proposed payment for the completed training (lump sum vs. hourly)

b.     Royalties for the completed training if applicable (percentage earned on the course purchase price)

c.     Affiliate link if applicable and percentage earned off each sale

d.     Timeframe (in months, quarters, or years) for royalties to be earned, and how often they are paid out

3.     Check Boundaries on Your Time

Based on the contract and numbers above, the next step is to compare the creation opportunity to the value of your time. Although most organizations are going to offer a lump sum for course creation over your hourly rate, how do the numbers break down? For example, if they are asking for a 2 hour course for $300, how does that compare to your private pay rate? Does that factor in additional hours of preparation, recording, formatting, and editing content if applicable? Just because the finished product is two hours doesn’t mean it’s going to take you two hours to create it, so sitting in that possibility is important before agreeing to start the course.

So now that you’ve explored the details of your course collaboration, are you ready to sign the contract? Are you feeling overwhelmed or like the timing is off? It’s important to be honest with yourself on all aspects of this endeavor. If you find yourself interested in the project but are not feeling quite confident, maybe there is something that needs to be ironed out before you can give an enthusiastic ‘yes!’ If the company has a restricted budget where they can’t increase your payment, try to negotiate. Here are some ideas of what to ask for:

A.    A longer payout for royalties, such as 3-5 years instead of 2 years

B.    A copy of the recording(s) to use in your own practice or consultation business

C.     Your contact information listed on their site(s) with a backlink to your website to increase your SEO

D.    A copy of their logo to use in your own marketing as a course creator

Each of these suggestions can increase the value of course creation to a busy professional. The process of creating something that expands reach to more people can be exhilarating and rewarding, not to mention it adds credibility to your professional brand. It can also serve as a lead magnet where folks may want to continue to work with you in some capacity, so I hope you’ll take this opportunity to explore course creation as a secondary income stream in your growing private practice!

Handling the Hate Mail

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You’ve put yourself out there by creating something innovative, passionate, and new. You’ve shut down the naysayers to launch it and are hopeful of its success. It’s a part of you. It’s your baby. Then the hate mail comes in.

It could be a negative comment on your Youtube channel or on your latest blog post. Perhaps it’s a poor review of your book or a google review on your business page. Or maybe it’s a blunt and hostile email landing in your inbox. Wherever it lands, it stings. Like a slap to the face, you aren’t expecting it. It plants a seed of doubt in your mind, causing you to question what you’ve created—or worse—to question your own self-worth.

Unfortunately I speak from experience. As a serial entrepreneur, I know that the more things I put out into the world, the more it increases the risk of folks critiquing me as a person as well as the projects I launch. The first negative review hurts. The first hate mail that attacks one’s character hurts even more. So what can we do about it? How can we cope with the anonymous words that have been weaponized against us? How do we protect ourselves from the folks who want to criticize us from afar? After all, Brene Brown points out that they aren’t in the arena with us, so why do their voices sound so loud? I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I feel compelled to talk about this phenomenon of being cut down by folks cloaked in anonymity, knowing that other creatives and leaders who put themselves out there are experiencing the same thing.

How can we handle the hate mail?

Here are some things that might help:

 1)    Get Some Distance

As the virtual slap to the face hits, it can serve you to physically or emotionally move away from the negativity to get your bearings. Is it worth taking a walk? Distracting yourself with another task? Working off the emotional response with conscious movement? Stepping away from what you are doing to ground yourself?

2)    Seek Support

You don’t have to go through this experience alone. Who can you reach out to that understands what it’s like? Who can offer reassurance, compassion, and kind words in the face of unexpected ugliness? Who can speak to the quality or value of the thing(s) you’ve created? Who believes in your vision?

3)    Reignite Your Passion

The anonymous negativity can cast a shadow on all things that bring you joy if you let it. How can you revisit your vision and return to the passion of your project? Is it healing to talk about it with others who can appreciate your efforts? Can you share it with an audience who would be excited about it? Can you return to the experience of crafting your offering and what made you excited to launch it in the first place?

4)    Reject That Shit

No one wants to hold onto hate mail. What can you do to consciously reject it and send it on it’s way? Is it about cleansing yourself or your space of that negativity? Is it about deleting the email, reporting the post, or setting boundaries on reading comments? Can you visualize repelling the negativity it represents, sending it farther away from you?

5)    Find the Funny

Sometimes the critique isn’t even personal. Maybe they say your creation is boring or that no one cares. Of course the irony is that they read it or watched it or landed on your offering in some way themselves. So how can you find the funny in the painful experience? Is it reading it in a funny voice? Having a witty rebuttal like a celebrity reading hateful reviews on video? If you can’t find the funny in the criticism itself, can you engage in something lighthearted and funny to help you return to your emotional baseline?

6)    Set Social Media Boundaries

There’s a reason folks in the spotlight say they don’t read their reviews. It hurts. What boundaries can you have in place to limit your perusal of comments if it’s more hurtful than helpful?

There is a difference between constructive criticism and hate mail. I choose to believe it says more about them than it does about us. I know that personally, I need to develop a thicker skin against negative remarks in order to continue creating things that I enjoy. To keep the vision and goal of helping others at the forefront of my mind. To continue to operate within my values of integrity, growth, and leadership. Although I wouldn’t wish the experience of hate mail on anyone, I hope that these ideas can prepare you for if and when it happens in your experience as a creative entrepreneur.

The haters are going to hate. Keep going.