The Human in the Helper: I felt like my life had been thrown in a blender

Michelle is known in her community for helping colleagues become CE providers because she believes in what they have to share, she recognizes the freedom course creation brings, and she wants colleagues to have additional income streams. She is also known for her fun glasses and for being a breast cancer survivor. “I was diagnosed in January 2020.” Michelle describes a moment in her life that was sheer terror as she waited for official results. She recalls the experience as being told there was something abnormal and that they were pretty sure what it was, but required two weeks to formally confirm. “I would rather go back to chemo than relive those two weeks of hell.”

Michelle wasn’t sleeping. She felt dissociated. Her heart rate stayed high, even when trying to sleep. Her daughter kept waking up in the middle of the night worried and finding reasons to engage her mom to make sure she was okay. Michelle struggled with what to tell her clients. “I feel bad for the clients in that waiting period, I showed up the best I could.” It’s understandable that Michelle had a hard time being present as she waited for the game plan for fighting her cancer, which ended up being a very aggressive type of breast cancer with the worst prognosis. “I notified my clients about needing two weeks off to address my medical care.”

Once she had her plan, which included chemo, surgery, and radiation, Michelle focused on referring out her newest clients and her acute clients to other providers. “It was hard to make those calls while also trying to take care of myself.” Michelle kept clients she’d had longer on her caseload, who also had more rapport for this next season of her life. Then she experienced the pandemic shutdown. “It was sort of a blessing to move to working from home. I had lost my hair, I was wearing a wig.” She moved everyone to online and tried to keep up with her medical appointments.

Another challenge Michelle faced was maintaining boundaries around her cancer treatment with clients who were worried. “I let them know there was going to be a boundary and set the timer for five minutes. They could ask me anything they wanted regarding my cancer and treatment, but once the timer was up, it was back to being focused on them.” Michelle reports this worked well for clients. Some only wanted to know that she was okay, while others had more detailed questions to ask. She navigated this dynamic with her clients through ten months of treatment.

Michelle is in good health now, and has had time to reflect on her process. “I wish there was more support in our community for things like this.” She described wanting a way to notify a trusted colleague when awful things happen, someone who could make the calls and outreach the clients when their therapist has to pause or regroup. Michelle felt this need again when she got the call at the end of a client session that her father had died. “How do we let people know when life things happen? We worry about client abandonment. We worry about liability.” Until a tool that supports this communication is created, Michelle has some other ideas for colleagues. “Be gentle with colleagues online. We don’t know the whole story as to why they didn’t show up, why they didn’t call back. They could be going through something.” She hopes that mental health professionals can support connection and community with one another, two things that feel so important when coming back from crises that happen in our lives. We couldn’t agree more.

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

Exploring Secondary Income versus Passive Income in Private Practice

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Many mental health professionals are exploring additional income streams. Whether it comes from a place of wanting more freedom, supporting burnout prevention, or a desire to have greater flexibility than seeing 20-25 client per week, diversifying income is an important consideration in a successful, balanced private practice.

So let’s talk about passive income versus secondary income. Passive income is something that once launched, makes you money without much effort. Things like:

Book sales

Digital downloads

Online courses

Digital workbooks

An App

Secondary income is a bigger bucket of possibilities, but they also take time to build, effort to maintain, and require time allotted to produce regularly, meaning a more significant shift in your client schedule to avoid feeling overextended. Things like:

Professional training and workshops

Professional speaking

Podcasting

Radio show

Online merchandise or swag*

Retreats

Hosting conferences

Group practice

Video series

Group therapy

Intensives

Supervision

Consultation

Online memberships*

Teaching/Being a Professor

*Depending on how they are built, these could become more passive

Why should we talk about both passive and secondary income streams? As someone with 16 current income streams, the differences and options within private practice matter! For colleagues who connect with me in consultation on this piece, they want to work less so they are seeking passive income streams. Which is great, I’m all about it! And perhaps they are surprised to hear that it can take 4-5 years to see the passive income really flowing well, where additional effort or time isn’t required to maintain them. So then we start to look at secondary income streams together to make a faster, satisfying shift in their money story, with momentum towards a passive income stream in the near future. The ability to bring in additional income is an important skill in business, and thus a skill to master in private practice as well.

Want to know one question (of many) that I ask colleagues in these types of consults?

What’s one pain point for your clients that you already address?

Pain point being defined as an area of hardship, difficulty, or discomfort. Seeking a solution. Is the thing you do (exercise, skill, tool, technique) replicable and scalable to a larger platform for increased reach and income? Let’s talk about it in a consultation!

Both passive and secondary income have a place in the equation of private practice success. Honestly, my favorite type of consultation these days is helping colleagues identify their interests and passions and turn them into possibilities that generate new income. What’s holding you back from dreaming about these possibilities? Maybe you have ideas but aren’t sure how to implement them. With so many colleagues creating amazing things, you are closer than ever to finding your additional income stream(s). Reach out to one of us that speaks to what you are dreaming about. Before you know it, you’ll be one of the professionals showing others that diversified income is possible and maybe even necessary to avoid burnout in our field.

Three Things to Consider When Creating a Course for Others

Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash

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!

Essentials for Course Creation

As you explore a possible secondary income stream of offering courses and course creation, perhaps you are feeling overwhelmed by what you might need to create professional content people would want to purchase. Thankfully, you don’t need a whole elaborate set-up to create quality content, instead consider a few items that make a big difference in delivering a course you can feel proud to launch within your community!

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1.     Light Ring

There is a reason this lands as the number one thing I suggest to colleagues who want to create courses. Having full lighting on your face supports trust in your audience and conveys professionalism. Additionally, people respond best to video content in courses so ensuring they see your face clearly can support participation and full engagement in your content and what you have to share!

2.     Laptop Stand

Looking down isn’t exactly flattering. Wanting to avoid a double-chin in one thing, but cutting off your airway or straining your neck by holding your head in this position for hours a day isn’t recommended either.

3.     Ear Buds or Microphone

Although a stand-alone microphone is the tool of choice for folks who do a lot of interviews or podcasts, the built-in mic of ear buds is sufficient to cutting down outside noise while allowing your voice to come through clearly. Be careful with corded headphones if you talk with your hands or wear collared shirts, the cord can rub against your clothing which would create a sound that is picked up and recorded on the microphone. We know now that people can be forgiving of a grainy picture, but they are much less forgiving of terrible audio.

4.     Video Recording Software

How would you like to record your content? Do you prefer using your phone on a tripod? Or your laptop with Zoom or another meeting software? Either way, you have plenty of inexpensive options for capturing your content before you gear up to do some editing!

Still have questions about creating your online course? Check out our course on creating courses or book a consultation for momentum on your project!

What You Need to Know When Offering CEs to Counselors

I want to offer Continued Education Credits (CEs) to mental health counselors. What are my options?

It’s a question I’ve received more often lately by Colorado professionals. I’ll preface my answer by sharing that each State and designation (LPC, PsyD, LCSW, etc.) is different. Please do the research for your state and designation or consider credentialing at the National level. When approached with this inquiry by the community, I ask the following questions to better understand their goals:

Why Offer CEs as a Professional?

Perhaps you have the goal of creating secondary income streams. Maybe you feel passionately about the content you’ve created. Whatever the reason, CEs allow professionals to enhance their leadership and public speaking skills, not to mention open doors to new opportunities, including paid speaking gigs, podcast interviews to enhance exposure to your brand and services, program partnerships, and project collaboration!

What is Your Content Area?

The first thing to consider is your content. Is your training content specific to mental health competencies like group work, clinical supervision, or a theory or modality? If so, you may be eligible to apply for a national CE provider designation.

If your content is more closely connected to business aspects such as marketing, private practice growth, and secondary income streams, these areas are still valuable to share with the community, but cannot be branded as CE opportunities due to them not meeting the traditional definition of continued education credits.

Do You Want to Offer In-Person or Online Events?

This is a logistics question that will help narrow down your application options. Some organizations are only approved to do live or in-person events. Others have permission to offer webinars and on-demand content. Consider what is most important to you. Do you like the feeling of being in front of others speaking? Would you rather develop an on-demand course people can take at their own pace? Take some time to consider the possibilities before answering the remaining questions below.

What is Your Mental Health Background?

It’s easiest to apply to offer CEs through your own professional affiliation, such as through NBCC (counselors), NASW (social workers), APA (psychologists), NAADAC (addiction professionals), etc. Visit their website to learn more about their application process.

Who is Your Audience?

Is your hope to serve fellow mental health professionals in your state? Or reach further? In Colorado, CEs can be developed for counseling professionals statewide with the following structure in mind:

A. A sign-in sheet recording participants in attendance

B. Provide a certificate of attendance/participation that outlines the following:

            I. Title of Event

II. Contact information for the Faciliator including Name, Credentials, Address, and Phone

            III. Duration of the event in CEs, with one CE equal to one contact hour

            IV. Identifying if the event was live (in-person) or virtual

In other words, Colorado is pretty easy for folks to offer CEs. Other states may not embrace this same structure in having their own rules and parameters of what can be branded as CEs, so be careful to confirm what’s allowed based on where your audience is located. This also becomes important in marketing your course or content accurately.

What’s Your Timeline?

Many people are motivated to develop and launch a CE opportunity in a matter of weeks. That may be possible for Colorado, but for offering CEs in other states and/or at a national level, be prepared for the process to take six months to a year!

For example, to become an Approved Continued Education Provider (ACEP) through the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC)—which means offering CEs for counselors nationwide—the application requires several examples of the workshop or training already being offered, with sign-up sheets and evaluations from participants submitted with your application. This means that for many, test driving your content with a local audience to get the feedback you need to apply is necessary.

What if You Don’t Have the Time or Bandwidth for this Process but Still Want to Offer CEs?

Consider partnering with an established CE provider who has permission to develop coursework with partners in the community. This usually means bigger organizations like community mental health agencies, treatment centers, mental health hospitals, conferences, and training centers.

I’d like to personally give a shout out to the following organizations that provided a professional platform for my workshops before I became an ACEP Provider, who made the process easy to reach fellow clinicians around quality content:

A. Harmony Foundation, Inc.

B. Sandstone Care

C. Continued.com

D. Highlands Behavioral Health

Organizations are always looking for additional speakers or presenters to offer new CE content. By researching organizations in your area that offer CEs, you can pitch your idea to them and work to get on their CE event schedule.

So there you have it! Although there may be some lingering questions about offering CEs, these elements are worth reflecting upon when identifying your ideal path for trainings or workshops offered to the mental health professional community at large. I encourage you to continue to track the requirements in your state and designation for ongoing changes and prepare for the long haul when starting the application process. I can assure you it will be worth the effort if you feel passionately about your content being connected to more professionals!