Show Notes

Welcome back everyone to The Designer Practice Podcast. I’m your host, Kayla Das. And in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about my absolute favorite topic, passive income streams.

I’m going to share with you 15 possible passive income streams for your therapy or coaching practice. And I’m going to talk a little bit in detail on how you can integrate some of these into your practice if they are something that aligns with your vision or mission.

Why Add Passive Income?

As you’ve probably heard me talk about before, passive income in my opinion, is really the key to obtaining autonomy, flexibility, financial, and time freedom in our private practices. And it’s because it can help us step away from constantly hitting what I call the income glass ceiling. And the income glass ceiling is essentially, when we continue to hit a specific income bracket or a specific income range based on the work that we do.

So, when we think of the income glass ceiling, when we’re providing one-to-one services, we can only make a max amount of money based on the hour or 50- minutes or whatever the specific timeframe that you provide for your practice is. Whereas passive income is where we can make an unspecified amount of money with an unspecified amount of time.

And if you’re interested in learning more about kind of the background of passive income and the income glass ceiling, you can always go back to episode three of the Designer Practice Podcast. So, you can go to kayladas.com/episode3 where I talk about passive income and how it can grow your practice.

So, in today’s episode, like I said, I’m going to share with you 15 passive income streams, but I do have them in categories.

So, the first category that I’m going to talk about is groups.

Category #1: Groups

When we think of groups, I often get the question is groups passive income? And I guess it really depends on how you look at it, but I look at it as, yes it is.

Even though with groups you physically have to be available and you have to be there. You can avoid the income glass ceiling because you can essentially have as many participants in your groups as you want, or that is viable.

So, depending on what the group is, you can have 10 people, you can have 20 people, you can have a hundred people. So really you can get more income by providing groups then say you could doing one-to-one sessions because the hour that you spend in the one-to-one session has a maximum amount of money, whereas you can have multiple people paying for whatever your group is and that can help you increase your income.

And what I love about groups too is they often are more affordable, more accessible to certain people as well. So you can actually decrease your price from what your one-to-ones typically would be, and you can still make more money.

1. Offering a Therapy Groups

So, the first group is a therapy group.

If you’re a therapist, you can provide group therapy, you can have a certain amount of clients, whatever fits the space that you’re in or that fits your specific approach. But you can create a therapy group.

2. Offering a Clinical Supervision Group

Maybe you’re a therapist who has a background in clinical supervision.

Clinical supervision is really great, especially now. Something that I’ve noticed, there is a shortage of clinical supervisors, at least from what I’ve seen here in Canada.

Finding a clinical supervisor, is important. But providing one-to-one clinical supervision often fills up a therapist caseload. And when we think of that caseload, often therapists love the act of therapy. So, if you want to create a clinical supervision group, you can really fit this shortage of clinical supervision. You can make more income and you can also help train other therapists. This can really be helpful and especially when we think of private practice where a lot of therapists end up paying for clinical supervision upfront, providing group clinical supervision, very similar to what I mentioned with therapy is your rate can be less, but you can still make more.

3. Teaching a Group Mastermind, Webinar or Training Program

Another is group mastermind, webinars, or even training programs. Maybe you have a specific specialty or area of practice. You can create a group or a training program that can help educate others.

Maybe it’s just a webinar that you share with people. This is another great way of serving multiple people but only showing up for a specific amount of time.

4. Offering a Monthly Membership Experience

Finally with groups, a membership experience.

So often membership experiences are usually a monthly basis, although of course anyone can charge on a biweekly basis, a quarterly basis, whatever works for you in your practice. But what differs between a membership experience than say the other type of groups is that a membership experience, you pay per month, for instance. So, what people have access to is a specific community or group of people and this membership experience at any time that they can cancel. There’s no requirement for them to stay into this program or this community.

Category #2: Selling Products

Now we’re going to go into selling products, and this could be digital products or physical products, so depending on you, your vision and what you offer in your practice.

5. Selling Physical Products

A physical product could be essential oils, it could be a book, really it could be anything.

Then there are digital courses. So, we’re getting into digital products now. So, I am going to break down digital products into digital courses and digital templates.

6. Creating & Selling Digital Courses

Digital courses are when we create a course, just like university and someone created a PowerPoint and taught you something. A digital course is very similar, where you share your knowledge about a specific area or topic but what you do is you pre-record it and then you sell it over and over.

So, I have a digital course teaching people how to write their Psychology Today profiles. So, if someone were to buy my course, I’ve already had that recorded, I’ve already worked through that. So basically, when people buy it, they pay a certain amount of money, they get access to the course, they learn the strategies, and then they apply those strategies. But once you pre-record a course, you have the ability to sell it over and over.

7. Creating & Selling Digital Templates

Digital templates, which I also sell in my business, is a little different. So digital courses is something that you’re teaching someone, whereas a digital template is that you’re giving someone a template that they can use to help them in some way.

So let me give you an example. One of my digital templates is a psychotherapy bundle. So, the psychotherapy bundle has client consent forms, has client intake forms, therapy note templates. So basically, you are providing something to someone that can help make their lives a little easier.

When it comes to digital courses and digital templates, when people say they sell digital products or they sell digital courses, really what they mean is that they’re selling a license for use. So, when you sell a template or you sell a course to someone, they aren’t essentially buying the course, like they can’t take that template or they can’t take that course and start using it wherever they want, putting it on their website or, sharing it with their friends, like the content with their friends.

But what they’re doing is they’re buying a license for use in whatever capacity you provide that. Of course, my digital templates are for business use. So, when people buy my psychotherapy bundle, they have permission to use it within their business. It’s important to know that when we say selling a digital course or template, it doesn’t mean you’re selling the course to someone, you’re selling a license for use to someone.

8. Writing & Selling Books, E-Books or Workbooks

Next is books, e-books or workbooks. When you create a book, an e-book or a workbook, you can then sell this over and over, whether it’s on Amazon, whether it’s on Barnes and Noble. Really anywhere that you want to sell your book, you can sell your book.

And what I love, and this is something that not a lot of people really think about, but I want to put this out in the world. If you’re starting to create digital templates and your goal is to create a workbook, at some point. You can create digital templates or digital therapy templates for clients or just to sell, wherever you want to sell them. And eventually as you start building up your template shop, you can then start creating a workbook because one of the things that prevent people from say, writing a book or creating a workbook is the overwhelm, right? Wanting to be at step one and trying to get to step a hundred.

But what you can do is you can create templates, list them on Etsy, list them on your website. I mean, really wherever you want to list them. And you can even give them free to existing clients, as homework and things like that. But as you build it up, then you’re building your workbook simultaneously.

And then also if you have a template shop, you make money while you’re building your workbook. So, I think that’s a really great way to move towards those dreams, if that is your dream.

9. Selling a Monthly Subscription Service

So finally, with selling products is selling a monthly subscription service.

Now, this differs a little bit from the membership experience that we’ve talked about in the group section because a subscription service is a product to something. So, someone is paying a monthly fee to receive access to a product or a bunch of products that they are paying a monthly fee for.

So, the difference between a subscription fee and a membership fee is a membership is access to a group or community, although it might have some physical or digital products connected to it. For the most part, it’s the community that people are paying for. But when it comes to subscriptions, basically what they have access to is products. So again, whether it’s physical, whether it’s digital, they’re just having access to a specific product or group of products on a monthly basis.

Category #3: Monetizing Free Content

So, the next category is monetizing free content.

And honestly, I don’t think we do this enough. I think out of all of them, this is my favorite. It’s the one that I use the most is providing value to people but monetizing it so you can get money and you might be thinking right now you’re like, okay, this sounds great, but like, how do I that?

So, there’s four ways that you can monetize your free content.

10. Write and Monetize a Blog

You can essentially monetize a blog. So, start a blog on your website.

11. Start and Monetize a Podcast

Start a podcast, monetize your podcast.

12. Start and Monetize a Video Blog

Start a video blog whether it’s on YouTube or on your website.

13. Monetize Your Social Media Platforms

You can even monetize some social media platforms and social media posts.

Now, I’m not an expert in the social media monetization piece, but I know it’s possible. I have not personally monetized my social media platforms well. But when it comes to blogging and podcasting, I do monetize my free content. So, for anyone who’s probably been following me for a while, I’ve been blogging for about two years prior to starting this podcast.

This podcast is very new, but I’ve been blogging for several years. And through my blogs, I monetize them. I have ads on them when people land on my blog. I get paid for it. I have affiliates, I have sponsorships, and then of course I even sell my own products, right? Whether it’s my digital templates, my digital courses, or even just my one-to-one services in my blogs.

So, this is how we monetize free content. And going back to my podcast, and if you’ve been listening to my podcast, you’ve probably heard some of my ads. And my ads help monetize my podcast so that I can continue to give you free content. But what I love about providing free content, and this is probably the core of my business, is I believe when you give true value to people, they want to give back. They want to purchase something from you, whether it’s you directly or whether it’s through an ad or–

Even when we think of blogging, adding ads to my website. You don’t have to buy anything, but I get paid for you to land on my website. So, all of this is really great because you can continue to give all that free content, you build trust with your ideal clients when they land on your website, you’re helping people, and you’re making money.

So, if you’re thinking about adding blogging, podcasting, video blogs, or monetizing your social media platforms, what I do is I come from the perspective, “How can I help you?” Because if I came here and provided absolutely no value, are you going to come back and listen to this podcast or read my blogs or search me on social media? The answer is no.

So, what I love about free content is providing true value, but then of course, monetizing it so that you can get income into your practice.

Category #4: Hiring

Okay, so now we’re going to move on to hiring.

This one can be quite scary for many therapists. But really, you’re only one therapist in your private practice. And of course, when we’re hiring, we’re starting making more of a group practice kind of feel to it. And as your practice gets busier, your schedule starts filling up. So, hiring other therapists, whether it be contractors or employees, can really help you grow your practice and bring in more income.

14. Start with Hiring Contractors

Many therapists worry about hiring someone in their private practice because they worry that they’re not going to be able to provide sustainable referrals. That’s why I like the concept of hiring contractors. And now I’m not talking about a contractor, as hiring an employee as a contract, that’s different.

But hiring a contractor essentially means that you’re hiring another company, which is typically a private practice owner to do a specific task as long as that task exists.

So, when we as therapists hire other private practice owners to do therapy or whatever service it is we provide in our business, essentially, we are hiring them as a company. So, under their private practice for them to do a task for us.

And why I love this is because as long as your contract clearly identifies what the work expectations are between you, your practice, and then of course the contractor, there is a clear understanding that if work ebbs and flows, that you as the private practice owner or the group practice owner, isn’t required to always have work available. And this is why contractors have different expectations than employees.

So, when we think of an employee, we’re thinking of someone that we are hiring in our business who is working for us. Whereas when we hire a contractor, we are hiring a business to do a specific task to help us in our business. And that’s why many contractors have private practices and often have multiple other contracts simultaneously. So, I love, especially when you’re starting off, having a contractor, and seeing how that goes, but really clearly identifying in your contract that it’s as work exists.

Yeah, when we think of hiring, this is where we really see the big growth. Especially we think of therapy practices, whether it’s massage therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychotherapy, regardless of whatever therapy you provide, as you start building your business, you’re also able to serve more clients, which means you’re going to have more income coming in than you as an individual can do.

Category #5: Rental Income

So, this is the final one, renting out any unused office space that you have.

15. Rent Out Unused Office Space

So maybe you have an office space that you work in maybe 40 hours a week during the weekdays, nine to five, and your office remains empty on evenings and weekends. You might be able to recuperate rental income by renting your office space out to another professional.

One of the biggest things that actually prevent many therapists from starting a private practice is the worry of being held to a full-time lease, and maybe not even needing that lease. So, you could rent out part-time or even casually say, by the hour, to one or multiple therapists or professionals, doesn’t necessarily need to be a therapist, so that you can recoup rental income and also providing a colleague the opportunity to start and even grow their private practice in the meantime.

Now it’s important to really understand, do you own the space? Are you leasing the space? Are you allowed to sublease the space? So, there’s some considerations to think about when you are renting out your space or subleasing your space. But, if you look into some of these things, you may be able to recoup some rental income.

Recap

So that is our 15 passive income streams for therapy and coaching practices. So, I’m going to review them again.

1. Group therapy programs,

2. Group clinical supervision,

3. Group mastermind, webinars or training programs,

4. Monthly membership experiences,

5. Selling physical products,

6. Selling digital courses,

7. Selling digital templates,

8. Selling books, e-books, or a workbook,

9. Monthly subscription services,

10. Blogging,

11. Podcasting,

12. Creating a video blog,

13. Monetizing your social media platforms where possible,

14. Hiring other professionals in your business,

15. And finally renting out unused office space.

I just want to also share a freebie that I have if you’re thinking, “Oh, which passive income stream will work best for me in my private practice?”

I have a free quiz. It’s called the Passive Income Personality Quiz, so you can check it out at kayladas.com/passive-income-quiz. You can also scroll down to the show notes and check it out there as well. And when you take the quiz, you’ll receive personalized results on which passive income stream that’s best fits your personality and private practice.

All right. Thank you everyone for listening to today’s podcast.

I hope that it provided value for you. On your way out, if you haven’t already, I would love if you subscribe to this podcast on your favourite podcasting platform.

And I’ll see you next time. Bye, you for now.

Credits & Disclaimers

Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay

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