Show Notes

Welcome back to The Designer Practice Podcast, and I’m your host, Kayla Das.

Today in honor of my new book, the Passive Practice, we are going to discuss the power of passive income and how one passive income stream can free up your time in your practice. And while many therapists wonder, one, what passive income is, and two, is it ethical to have in our practice? I’m going to break down what passive income is and what it isn’t, as well as how it can transform your practice schedule, and bringing in more revenue into your practice without sacrificing your time.

Now for many therapists, this might be a brand-new concept. What is passive income? And I want to start off with explaining what it is and then what it isn’t.

So many of us are very familiar with what’s called earned income, and what that is when you receive a specific amount of money in exchange for working a set amount of time.

So when we think of our one-to-one services, or when we work as an employee in an agency. We know how much we’re going to work, and we also know we’re going to get a specific amount of money for that specific task or hour that we’ve worked.

We also receive our income on a pretty consistent basis. It’s predictable. We know when it’s going to come in. If we work with a client, we’re going to get our money in exchange. If we work for an agency, it might not be immediately, but within a week, two weeks, depending on when your pay is, you’re going to receive your paycheck. This is the typical earning structure in our society, which is called earned income.

Passive income on the other hand is when you receive income, that does not depend on the number of hours you work. In fact, in some cases when your passive income stream is established, you can actually earn money while you sleep.

But I think this is where people get caught up. There is a catch when it comes to passive income and, actually, this catch is why most people don’t incorporate passive income into their practice. It’s not actually passive in the beginning and even long term, it’s not completely passive.

And let me explain.

When we think of passive income, it takes a lot of work upfront to create passive income. And when I say a lot of work, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s work that’s very strenuous, but you’re going to be putting effort into building whatever passive income stream you’re building without making any money.

And let me give you an example.

I’ll use my book The Passive Practice as an example. Writing a book is considered a passive income stream. When you’re writing the book, when you’re publishing the book, when you’re going through all the steps, until you actually get the book out in the world, you’re putting a lot of effort into creating that book, but you don’t make any money until the book is actually out in the world.

So when we think of the passive practice as an example, I actually had been sitting on a manuscript up until last year for two years before I picked it up and, finished the book. In addition, I finished writing the book in July of 2025. But then there’s the publishing process, the editing, book formatting, creating your book cover. Which means that there’s still a time in between when I was finished writing the book and when the book actually got out in the world and during this time I made $0. In fact, I put a lot of money into the book from the editing process, the publishing process. I even had a book coach helping me, so I put a lot of money in and I didn’t receive a lot of money out.

But now that the book is out in the world, I can start making that revenue from the book. While I might make a second edition sometime in the future, it’s never something that I have to create from scratch ever again.

And with that, I could be making sales while I sleep. While I’m talking about it right now, maybe you’re looking up the passive practice on Amazon and considering purchasing this book, and this is what we’re talking about when we think about passive income.

The other side of it is even when it’s created, you still need to talk about it. You still need to write about it. You still need to share the fact that your passive income stream is out in the world. Otherwise, no one is going to know. As I’m talking about this book today, I am essentially marketing it to the world and sharing it with the world.

And this is where, even though it’s passive and I could, make a hundred or a thousand or whatever sales from talking about it in this one podcast episode. I still need to talk about it. So it’s not a hundred percent passive. It’s not something that you just, you know, create and just hope somebody will ever come to.

So when we think of the word passive, it is a misnomer. So it’s important to acknowledge that even though it’s called passive income, what makes it passive income is it does not depend on your availability and which is a concept we’re going to talk about in a minute, is it breaks through the income glass ceiling.

And essentially what the income glass ceiling is. It is a limited amount of money that you can make through earned income. In the case of where one’s individual capacity, such as the maximum number of hours that you can work a specific day or a specific week, and the access to revenue generating activity such as employment stability or client referrals gives you a maximum amount of money you can make each week.

So let me give an example. If you’re a therapist working in a private practice with a maximum number of 15 available time slots per week, and maybe you charge $150 per session, you can only make a maximum amount of money of $2,250 per week providing that one, you do not try to add any additional time slots into your calendar and that all 15 available time slots are filled by clients. They don’t cancel. You have them filled. You have clients coming in. So the $2,250 per week is your income glass ceiling.

But when it comes to passive income, there really isn’t a income glass ceiling.

For example, in November of 2025 during the Black Friday rush, I promoted a variety of products that I share on my podcast, through my email list, through my social media, through my blogs, through a variety of different methods.

And while it sounds like I did a lot of work, basically I just added ads, scheduled them. It might’ve took me maybe two to three hours maybe four give or take in the whole month of November to create some of these marketing materials.

Between all of the marketing that I have done I made almost $5,000 from about four hours of work, three to four hours of work. And this is what I mean when I talk about the power of passive income. It’s that in a few hours that you do, of course I had to do four hours. It wasn’t completely passive, but I was able to break through any type of income glass ceiling, really. Maybe if I put a little bit of more work, I could have made six, seven, $8,000, but. I made $5,000 and that is really good.

If we think of that example someone who is working for 15 available time slots for $150 per week, the most they can make in one week is $2,250 per week, and I made two weeks worth of income in four hours.

And saying that, I also want to give a highlight that is not the only income I made in November. I still had a variety of different other, whether passive and earned income streams along the way, bringing in additional revenue.

And I also want to mention that. It’s a lot easier to sell during Black Friday in November. So that $5,000 isn’t the amount that I always make through my promotions. I have made a lot less in the past, depending on the month, depending on the product, and depending on how much effort, if at any effort I put in to share my passive income streams. but this is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the power of passive income.

And I know some listeners might be thinking, is this ethical? Is it ethical to make $5,000, in four hours? And there’s a couple caveats here. One. If you are a part of a regulatory body, whatever passive income stream you choose still needs to follow your regulatory body, standards of practice, and of course your code of ethics in general.

While in the business world, there are a variety of different strategies on being able to market and share different income streams or different products, some of those marketing strategies are not always ethical in the therapy world.

So I do want to give a caveat that it’s still important to acknowledge what marketing strategies you still can and should be implementing. But in general, it is ethical to have passive income streams into your practice.

And in fact, I really believe that when we think of our client’s path, when people come to therapy, it is their last resort. They come to a therapist because they tried so many other things before they’ve tried therapy and none of them worked.

So when we think about, is it ethical, the passive income stream into my practice in fact, many of your clients. Are actually already looking for some of these strategies before they even come see you.

Let me bring you through a general client journey. When a client is experiencing some type of issue or situation, usually the first place that they search is free content. Whether it’s they’re on Google looking for different content or answers to questions like blogs, podcasts, social media posts, asking friends, just looking for free content that can help them answer their question or help them create some small win or even big win to the problem that they’re facing. And sometimes clients will be able to find the answer and solve the problem that they’re experiencing through free content, so they will never come see you if they’ve already had whatever issue resolved in the process.

Maybe they’ve tried the free, they might’ve got some great insight, but not enough to help them solve their problem or their issue. So as a result, then they look for the low-cost content. This might be books, eBooks, audio books. It might be communities. It might be small groups, it might be a variety of things to help them solve that problem, but at a lower cost.

If that doesn’t work, then they’ll start searching for more individual support type strategies. So, this is when they might see a therapist. They might come to a therapy group. They might look for high-end masterminds. They may look for high-end groups, high-end communities. Just some way to help them solve their problem or the situation that they’re experiencing in order to solve that problem.

But the reason I bring you through this process is while there are passive income streams that are at the same level as therapy, where, again, a little bit more higher cost, there’s so many options before you even get there that you could be tapping into. You could be serving people for free and make money.

Let’s use this podcast for example. It doesn’t cost you a cent to listen to this podcast every week, but I’m still able to make income through my podcast through monetization efforts.

Similar with blogs, when you are Googling certain content, chances are you’re going to land up on a blog to help you solve a problem or answer a question that you have. The person who created a blog, chances are in some way, shape, or form, has monetized that blog so that they now make income through that. So you get the answer for free, but the person who creates the content gets paid.

Similar with low-cost options. My book for instance, for all intents and purposes, it’s a low-cost option of helping you incorporate passive income into your practice. Most people would be able to afford to buy the book. They won’t necessarily get that personalized support as they would maybe in a higher level, like a business coaching, or in your case, a therapy aspect. But sometimes people aren’t looking for that personalized support.

Sometimes people want to be able to do it on their own and have that support through a book, a self-help book, an eBook, an audio book, whatever it is. And you could help them solve their problem before they ever need to come see a therapist.

And if they do, eventually decide that they need to come see a therapist and they are in the jurisdiction that you practice. You are going to be the first person they think about when they want to reach out to a therapist. So not only are you making revenue through your passive income, you’re also building trust and building community with your potential clients who then will pay you for your earned income.

And I also want to share that I think it’s super important to continue to keep some type of earned income stream before and even after incorporating passive income. Even to this day, I still do one-to-one business coaching with therapists in my business that would be considered earned income.

I work with a client, I get paid. But I also have so many other passive income streams into my business, bringing in additional revenue so when it comes to a slow month, for instance, like most therapists. Between December 15th to January 15th, every year my business slows down. I even take two weeks off, so I’m not going to see a lot of earned revenue coming in during that time, but I’m still going to see my passive revenue coming in.

So I hope that this makes sense and it shows you the power of passive income. And before we leave, I actually want to share one more example. Now, this was about a year ago, but it’s follows a similar pattern of the previous example I shared with you during my Black Friday sale.

But there was a time that I had sent out two emails to my email list and a few social media posts within a three-day period. I just wanted a little bit of extra cash coming into my pocket, so I said, you know what? I’m going to share a specific product that I believe in that I want to share. And I’m going to send it out to my email list.

With two emails and a few social media posts in a three-day period, I made $1,600 in passive income. It took me about an hour and a half to write and schedule the content that I had, and it made me just as much income as a full-time employee working 40 hours a week at $40 an hour, and I got it in an hour and a half.

So, this is the power of passive income, but what it isn’t is a get rich quick scheme, and I really want to highlight that. I actually joke and say that it’s a slow and steady wins the race kind of strategy because you’re not going to get rich quick.

It is something you need to build. It’s something you need to keep nurturing, and you need to keep sharing with the world. You might not need to share it as often, but you still need to put some efforts to be able to make some money.

Let’s go back to that example. If I did not share those two emails and those few social media posts within that three-day period, I wouldn’t have made that $1,600 and it’s because I still had to share it with the world.

Similar with my book. Those two years that I sat on a half-written manuscript. I could have really had my book out in the world, but I didn’t, and making money. But I sat on it and because I sat on it, I postponed my possibility of getting it out in the world and making revenue.

Now that it’s out in the world, the goal is to continue to bring in passive income while teaching other people how to develop passive income into their practice. So, we still need to build it. We still need to market it. We still need to share it with the world.

And the final strategy, which I actually talk about in my book too, once we market it, maybe something doesn’t fit right or it’s not working right. We also need to be very comfortable with pivoting. Maybe we need to tweak different things. Maybe we need to update different things. Maybe we need to change our email copy. Maybe we need to change up the images. Maybe we need to really listen to our ideal client, listener or reader or whatever, and really thinking about what they want in the world. So that we can continue to create hype around whatever our passive income stream is.

 I hope this episode today really sparks some interest into passive income and to some of the impacts that it can have on your practice while you still continue to work with the clients that you want to work with, but now you have additional revenue coming in as well.

Thank you for tuning into today’s episode and if you are interested in checking out the passive practice and purchasing a copy, it is found on Amazon worldwide. So regardless of where you are, just check out your local Amazon website and look up the passive practice.

Also, if you’re in Canada or the US I will link the Canada and US links down in the show notes. So, feel free to check those out. But as I said, regardless of where you are in the world, just check out your Amazon and type in the passive practice to pick up your copy today.

Thank you everyone, and I look forward to chatting with you next week.

Credits & Disclaimers

Music by Denis Pavlov Music from Pixabay

The Designer Practice Podcast and Evaspare Inc. has an affiliate and/or sponsorship relationship for advertisements in our podcast episodes. We receive commission or monetary compensation, at no extra cost to you, when you use our promotional codes and/or check out advertisement links.