STP 35 | Scaling Your Therapy Practice with Passive Income
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James Marland: today we're gonna, we're gonna talk about is passive income a lie? Everybody wants passive income. How do I do the most with doing the least or make the most with doing the least? And if you even type in passive income, In your Facebook feed or online, you get all these ads for people.
James Marland: Like, I can give you, you know, this, this tip and this trick and this list and follow my plan. It's worth $10,000, but I'll give it to you for 29 95. Oh man. Uh, because I do a lot of research on that.
David Hall: That's all my, a lot of funnels look like that. A lot of sales funnels.
James Marland: I see. So anyways, we're gonna talk about that, but before we get into the main topic of the show, we're gonna talk about a tool tip or tech of the week.
James Marland: I'll go first this time.
Yeah.
David Hall: You start James. Yeah.
James Marland: Uh, I am trying out this new. Program, uh, that is, it looks, it's free right now for me. It's called Fathom, f a t h o M, and it's an add-on for my Zoom recording where I can take highlights of the show or anything that I'm recording. Click a button and it, it, it.
James Marland: Highlights what I'm talking about. I can type a, type a note and then I can use that. What I use it now for podcasting is I can use it for quotes, I can use it for clips, for social media. I can just use it when I rewrite the show notes like, oh, these were the three important things we talked about. But you can assign any, you can make anything a highlight.
James Marland: So, uh, if you're doing a team meeting and somebody. Is delegated a task. Mm-hmm. I ha I click the delegation button, it records the delegation, and then I can send this, this meeting recap to the whole team. They don't have to listen to the 90 minute meeting because what are meetings they're, they're basically to get to the action points, you want action from your meeting, who does what, and delegation who does what by when.
James Marland: Mm-hmm. And so I can. Clip those, put 'em in a document, send it to the people, have it as a recording for all time, but you don't have to listen to the meeting. You just listen to the, the important things. And it gives a summary and a transcription. Um, and, and I know there's a business plan for it, but right now I'm just using the free version and it works really well.
James Marland: I've been impressed with like the, the transcription and the, the ease of use. So if you're, if you're struggling for a, like how do I, how do I record my meetings? 'cause they're all Zoom and how do I get them to people? And then how do I record the important points? Uh, fathom is something you should check out 'cause it, it is, uh, it been, um, I, I think it's sped up my note taking,
David Hall: so Sure.
David Hall: No, that, and that's for me, that's something I always look for. So I have a question on that, James. So, yeah, when we do our podcast editing and a lot of things in DSS script, yes. So does it record when we're recording these things on Zoom, is it recording into DS script or are you putting into DS after?
No,
James Marland: it's recording.
James Marland: It's recording to the, so I, I actually record it two ways. I record it to the local drive. Yeah. My hard drive, because I think that gives me a cleaner mm-hmm. Recording for podcasting. Because, no, even though I have like really good internet, occasionally, you know, you get dropouts or
David Hall: just your guests may not.
David Hall: And that's the thing too, if you, yeah, yeah. So you could do both is
James Marland: the point those, yeah, I'm doing both right now. So I will have clips that I can share that are in the cloud, and I will also have my, my, my, my slightly better, just my slightly better local recording that I can. Download and just move over to the, the D script program.
David Hall: So yeah, that, so that's my, yeah, so you can do two recordings. One you can edit in D script that gets a higher audio quality does the studio. Mm-hmm. Because that's the thing for those who are impressed with our sound, which you should be, uh, that's the DS script. Program that creates the, it's the studio Magic, I think is the, the button for it.
David Hall: That studio sound. It's called Studio Sound. I like, I like to refer to it as magic. Well, it's magic. It's magic. And then, uh, it's, but then, but then also you could do the fathom version that allows you to have more notes and extractables and things like that, so. Mm-hmm. You know, that's, that's great. So here's my tip.
David Hall: If you're doing anything or you have a website, whether you have a local private practice, you are, you have a blog, whatever you have to. And, and it's rare that our tips are that emphatic, but you have to, in my opinion, have a C R M. You may be asking what's a C R M C R M stands for?
David Hall: Contact management, uh,
James Marland: customer relationship
David Hall: management.
David Hall: Yeah. Relationship. I knew it was we, we knew that. We knew that. We knew. Well, it's a problem. I mean, if you're a therapist, you're acronyms that you don't know what they stand for. So customer relationship, but it's, it's email management.
David Hall: So Constant Contact, MailChimp, AWeber, active campaign. All these ones you, you may have heard of. There's certain ones that have been around for longer, like constant contact. A lot of them are free to start with. I use ConvertKit. Um, and ConvertKit starts out with a free plan. You don't have access to all the features, but the features I'm about to describe.
David Hall: Are all free. And so if you're interested in that, uh, you could check out my link at Psych Maven or at, uh, ConvertKit dot psych maven.com. We'll take you to our specific link for that. But I, I use it for the things that we do in the organization. I work with Psych Maven and we have a large contact list of several thousand people, but I'm not going to even talk about that.
David Hall: I'm gonna talk about what I have for my counseling website, which I have a free plan I use for my website, Haven Counseling Center. And all it is, is, is you go to the website, And I have a con, common question I get is for resources that may not be internal to our counseling practice and I do a lot of our referral management for the practice 'cause we, we don't have a reception person.
David Hall: And so a lot of that is stuff that I do. And so sometimes people will inquire in the practice and they want somebody who may not have an opening in a specialty. They may be looking for somebody to see a young child. And we don't have any of our. Children, therapists with an opening or they need somebody who will take a certain insurance that we don't do, or they're wanting medication management or, um, inpatient or residential addiction treatment, any number of things that people may reach out to you for that I don't personally do or our practice doesn't.
David Hall: So what I ended up doing was I created a P D F Guide of resources of referrals that I often give. It's a downloadable, and I have it connected to my. Uh, to my c r m. And so if you go to our website, which is haven counseling center.com, you'll see one of the things on the main page is, it's called the, the Knoxville Mental Health and Counseling Guide.
David Hall: And it's a download and if you click on it, people, it's just a simple opt-in form. People put in their email and they'll do some check boxes based on like, If that gives us some information to kind of know who they are and like, are you looking at this for your own use? Are you a another therapist or healthcare professional that's looking for referral basis?
David Hall: And this is just something slowly collecting email addresses. We get about four to five email opt-ins a week. I've, I've had it going for just a about two years. Right now I think we've got like 500, 600 email contacts in it. But these, the benefit of having this is whenever we're doing something as a counseling center, this gives me a direct way to reach out to people.
David Hall: And so whenever we hire a new therapist or somebody all of a sudden is starting a new group or there's openings, that's one of the main things I do is I'll send out an email. I'll say like, you know, email will be immediate openings, new trauma-based therapist with Haven Counseling Center, and it always leads to inquiries.
David Hall: And it's, it doesn't cost me anything, like I'm, this is a free plan I'm using for ConvertKit in this, but to be able to, I, I look at this and I've only been using this in this way for my counseling center for this point less than two years. And it's just kind of slowly collecting things over time. If I had had this going for the entire time I had a counseling center, I'd probably have, you know, 12, 1500 contacts at this point.
David Hall: And how valuable would that be to my business when we hire a new therapist or we starting a new group or someone's leading a retreat? Well, yeah, that's one
James Marland: of the big things when you hire a new therapist, fill in their schedule is often. The the main, because I work with virtual assistants, that was what they would always ask us, like, did you fill the schedule?
James Marland: Did you fill the schedule? Did you fill the schedule? But you're kind of dependent on who's calling. Yeah. So what you're doing, It's still in the, you know, you have a, a, a resource of people who might be open to, to joining a new
David Hall: group or, yeah, because these are, are people that were interested in the topic of local mental health resources.
David Hall: And it's also just, I tried to make it a good guide and if no one interacts beyond, if all I, the other thing that's did for me was a time saver because when people would reach out and, you know, ask for referrals. What's on this guide is stuff I would give them typically, and now I can just send people a link and be like, Hey, if you go to this link, you can get this free guide.
David Hall: And I just find it's a direct way because I've done Facebook ads for my counseling center before and that I think is helpful, but it's less precise. I'm just kind of throwing things out into the ether of the internet, and this is. These are identifiable people that have expressed interest in what we do, whether they're referral partners, people looking for their own services, whatever it is.
David Hall: And it's been, but, and, but this is, again, I wanna highlight it. This is free. So there's absolutely no reason not to do something like this if you're a, a local counselor or if you do anything related to mental health. And if you have anything of value that you could give away for free that people would want to opt in for.
David Hall: That could then help you build a contact list. 'cause contact lists are the most invaluable thing in scaling a business. Mm-hmm. It is. You can have the best product in the world and somebody that puts on online courses. I have people all the time come to me with something they think is just a dynamite course idea.
David Hall: And sometimes it is. The problem is who's gonna buy it? People have this idea. It's sort of, I've, uh, I've seen this for people in fiction writing. They have this idea for a book and they have this and, you know, idea that I can, I can write this amazing story and people are just gonna buy it. And that's not generally true.
David Hall: That's not how the publishing world generally works. Uh,
James Marland: yeah. The best, the best course in the world with zero students is gonna make $0 is
David Hall: make zero. You can have the most brilliant it. Ultimately these things happen because, Because you'll hear stories of fiction writers that will build momentum, but oftentimes if you listen to their story, there was somebody in the the pipeline that got ahold of their material and really took ownership, and I'm gonna move this forward, but you gave 'em the most brilliant book in the world.
David Hall: If you don't have an audience, no one caress. And then on the opposite side of that, you have someone like James Clear, who. James Marlin and I have talked about, uh, of Atomic Habits. Atomic Habits, yeah. Which is a great book and I've, I've enjoyed the book. However, he put out the book after he had been doing an a blog, an email newsletter that had like something like 200,000 subscribers.
David Hall: At that point, he had a contact list and at that point, if you have 200,000 subscribers, it doesn't matter who you are, you can get a book deal. Any publisher would be, will be if you, if you could show an active contact list of that many people that you can directly speak to. You don't have to, you can have the dumbest book idea.
David Hall: A publisher will probably give you an idea if you've got an engaged audience. Well, that's,
James Marland: that's why, and I don't know if you do this in your course, what your, your profitable mental health course thing, but I I, the second step for us, once you have your idea is start building that list.
David Hall: It's for me. Like, it, it, you, we have like idea and audience and then it goes into marketing.
David Hall: Yeah, and that's the thing I talk about. Like, and there are other things in that course I teach, like I've, 'cause I've done marketing otherwise I've done direct mailings in the past. You know, there, there are ways in collaboration, affiliate stuff I'm really big into. But ultimately for me it's all down to, at this point, particularly with an online product, getting a, an email contact.
David Hall: And I don't want us be spamming people. This isn't. You want a consensual email contact. This isn't, you know, don't scrub list online and just load them into your crm. Like, most CRMs will say, did you get permission to email this person? That's important. That's very important, both of the ethics of it, but also it's the quality of person.
David Hall: Uh, yeah. I want people to hear from me if I'm gonna email if you do
James Marland: it wrong, like get, just grab bulk lists, you get on a spam list and then the, uh, the ISPs. The email providers don't prioritize your mail or your mail gets sent to junk or spam. Yeah, it is. So you just can't do that the, the way this is hugely important.
James Marland: Yeah. The way you're talking about providing a resource for somebody that they actually wanna read and then sending them information that they actually wanna have is, is beneficial to you and it's beneficial to them. Like you're, you're doing something of value to them and they appreciate it and they're gonna listen to you.
James Marland: Better. So
David Hall: make that email list anything into, yeah, I want it to be value. I want it to be in, and ultimately, if you wanna scale in what you're doing without providing value, I have no help for you. Like I, I, I don't, I don't want you to succeed if your goal is to make more money without adding value. Yeah.
David Hall: Hate to be that blunt, but it goes, and so this is the segue to what James and I had kind of set as our topic today about, 'cause I'm talking about, I've been able to grow a lot of my businesses through, you know, and I will say, um, what the example I gave just in growing the email list for my counseling center is something that people would call a passive process.
David Hall: 'cause I'm not, this is an automatic thing that's happening. But it leads into the question of this email of, of this, this, uh, uh, email podcast episode, which is, yeah.
James Marland: So is passive income a lie? I guess that kind of leads to an introductory question, like what are the different, what's the difference between passive income and other types of income?
James Marland: Yeah. Or what are the ways to make that income? Do you wanna give us a little definition? Sure.
David Hall: I'll, I'll, I'll impact what it is in my world. 'cause I think, you know, I'm kind of the avatar. Audience. Sure. We try to think and so I'll, I'll, there are things that I'll, I do that are much more directly active income and there are things that people would qualify as passive income.
David Hall: But I'm, I have, I have some issues with that phrase and we're gonna get into that. So the most clear things that I do for active income is, um, psychotherapy, supervision, consulting. And those are hourly paid things that I do where if you meet with me, if you're, if, if you have a counseling appointment with me, a psychotherapy appointment with me, that is a paid service and it's paid for time.
David Hall: So it's a 45 minute block of time and it's X amount of dollars. That is an active income sort of thing to do. I get paid for that by being there, by being present, by providing that, it's providing supervision is a similar sorts of thing for me, and I don't do a lot of one-on-one consulting, but I do some, um, where people will, will, but basically they're buying time for me.
David Hall: They're buying time for me to sit with them, whether in person or on a video call. And active income is very, It can't be very lucrative. My hourly rate for my things is, is fairly expensive at this point. Um, you know, my, uh, my psychotherapy rate is, you know, 1 72 per session right now. And my consulting rate, I, I do it on a case by case basis, but I think I price, I think I'm at like two 80 an hour right now for my consulting rate.
David Hall: So when I'm doing consult, I mean, that's a. It's not that it's not income producing, but I'm di I, there's a direct correlation between my time spend and money I'm making. And so by its nature, it is not a passive income process. That's one side of what I do. Now, what are the things that are more, and I'm, I'm doing air quotes for those who aren't seeing it passive.
David Hall: Because again, I think it's qualified. Well, I'm a, I'm a group practice owner, and so I have therapists that work for me that will provide psychotherapy services like I do, and a proportion of that revenue that's brought in goes to me as, as part of my business revenue. And we pay expenses and things like that out of that.
David Hall: But ideally, at the end of the month, we are paying less in expenses than we. We have brought in for revenue and the difference between the two is profit. So ideally, and, and that is more, again, I'm avoiding the P word, the past, it, it's, it is less active for me because I'm not the one, I can go on vacation and, and therapists that work for me are still seeing clients and that money is going to my bank account and that is still having an effect of things.
David Hall: I have, uh, courses that I both coordinate and manage with other people. And ones that I teach myself, and I'll give an example of even how this works, right? Like James and I, we recorded an episode this morning. We took a break and I checked my email in between the break before we jumped back on the recording and I realized, I sold a course, I sold a, you know, a a a, a course that sales price, multiple hundreds of dollars.
David Hall: And that is money. That was through an affiliate. That means the person who facilitated the sale, they get a commission, they get a proportion of that course sale, and then their credit card fees and sales tax and things like that come out, and then the rest goes into my bank account. Now that happened.
David Hall: That sale happened when James and I were recording our first episode this morning. So in that sense, people would look at like, oh, that's passive income. So those are the things, those are the two kind of categories in my life. Of things I do that, that fit into different things.
James Marland: So that, that kind of like, let's, let's talk about the title.
James Marland: Is Passive Income a Lie because you're trying to avoid the P word, the passive income. Yeah. So is it a
David Hall: lie? Kind of. And here's the thing. It depends. It depends. It depends. That's the therapist answer. It depends. Here's the thing I, it, it's how we talk about stuff and, and, and how they're honest. Actors in the field that talk about passive, passive income that I think are spot on with it.
David Hall: Big shout out to Pat Flynn of the Passive Income. That's his brand. His smart passive income, smart passive income, his blog, his Smart Passive Income podcast. I love what Pat Flynn has to offer into the world. And he's using the P word and I have, I have no criticism there because it's ultimately what people are looking for.
David Hall: I think it depends what people mean by passive, and I'll give two different examples. Um, James and I, you know, James in his brand course creation studios, you know, part of what he's doing is helping, um, creative types, a lot of 'em in the mental health space, find ways to monetize their expertise, their knowledge into things like online courses, memberships, things, you know, that that is what James does.
David Hall: James and I were talking pre-recording about, you know, what's the dynamic for people. 'cause oftentimes people will approach and they have this idea of kind of this automatic process of like, I can just, here's this thing I do, or a thing I know about and I can just make money offline. Right. Without having to do anything.
David Hall: And that's what people, some people approach. That's what the passive income is where I can, I can just kind of throw something out there. The internet will just give me money for it. That would be nice. That would that,
James Marland: yeah. Well I think that's the hook though, that gets people, you know, if you believe that.
James Marland: Oh yeah,
David Hall: it is. And when I kind of approach people with things, I wanna be clear, like that's not the case. Like the internet is not interested in just giving you money just because. Yeah. Um, so, Then, then question, well, what is it? And I guess, here's the phrasing I like, uh, better than passive income. I believe very much in invested income.
David Hall: I have to work for it. Now, the proportion of the work can be different in that sense. It kind of works like a lever and pulley sort of thing that, you know, if you're, if you're doing a pulley system, the amount of force that it takes to lift something is changes. Versus straight lifting something. And that's the, there's a sense of scaling that can happen.
David Hall: That you can create a machine that can cr do things more faster, more efficiently than you could do without the machine. You're
James Marland: putting in effort, but the outcome is greater than what you,
David Hall: yeah. So there's absolutely ways to leverage Yeah. Things and leverage things in a compounding way that it, that you're putting, you're having less input for greater output.
David Hall: That is absolutely possible. So
how
James Marland: does a therapist do that? Like with their knowledge? Because a lot of therapists have expert knowledge, expert skills. They're really good at like helping people, and often they're really good at helping people in a specific way. Anxiety, depression. Yeah, narcissism. Like something they're, they're good at a specialty.
James Marland: So how do you leverage that knowledge You're. Uh, because the, let's say the, the one-to-one, like you meeting one person at one time, that's the heavy
David Hall: work. It's still Yeah. That's not a very leveraged time. That's just lifting it straight up versus Yeah. That's like, yeah.
James Marland: So what do you do?
David Hall: Well, I, let's talk about expectation setting first, because I think that's the first thing.
David Hall: Let's, let's cover that and let's get back to, let's say that like it's gonna be work. And if you expect it's gonna be work, everything else gets a lot easier. You, if you're gonna make a pulley system that's gonna take work to create the pulley system, sure, the, the outcome will be, it will make it easier to lift things, um, if you create an irrigation system for your garden.
David Hall: That's gonna take work to do. Now the end result may be you don't have to spend as much time watering afterwards, but it will take work. And sometimes it'll take more work upfront, but that's why I like the term invested because you're investing in a certain point in the idea that it will give you return.
David Hall: So I, I gave the example of selling this course. I didn't do anything in that moment to sell that course, but I did lots of things beforehand. For one, I created the course that the person bought, which was, you know, tens of dozens of hours. Just to even create the course, to write the material, to teach it, to record it, to edit it.
David Hall: And there was years of experience and knowledge that went into making that course. And this particular sale happened from a webinar I did about a week ago. Now that webinar, I taught it, and that was a live thing. Now, this person, I'm guessing, based on the timing of their sale, watch the replay of the webinar.
David Hall: Now that's a pulley just work too, which was Yeah, but that's less, and that's, you know, so expect work. You know, I, I give this example that I like, um, a comedian Kevin Hart in one of his standup specials. It's showing his kind of pre-performance ritual. And he is with several of his friends backstage who are part of his kind of, uh, uh, organization and.
David Hall: He's in a, it's kind of like a pre-game thing, like an athlete before going out to, to play a game and they're in a huddle and Kevin Hart's in the middle and he is doing this call and response with his guys that are around him. And he is saying, everyone wants to be famous. And their response is, but no one wants to put the work in.
David Hall: And he's saying, everyone wants to be famous, but no one wants to put the work in. Mm-hmm. And my, my adaptation is that everyone wants passive income. I've never met anybody that doesn't want passive income. Everyone want passive income. You gotta be prepared to do the work. Yeah, that's the first hurdle.
David Hall: That's the mindset past that. It's thinking of what makes the most sense to leverage. 'cause certain people can leverage certain things better, what makes the most sense to what you have to offer. Hiring other therapists is a different leveraging process than, say, create an online membership for an online course.
David Hall: You may ask the question, which is better, and I'll give you the therapist answer. It depends. It depends. I, as a group practice owner, the amount of money that is generated from having a group practice is significantly more than the amount of money that's generated in my online courses significantly. But the expense and time is very different.
David Hall: Most of the, I, a much higher portion of the money I generate as a group practice owner goes to expenses, goes to paying therapists, goes to paying, you know, building utilities, goes to paying mortgage, goes to paying like, and so the profit margin for that is smaller as, as a proportion of the income. It also takes different skillset.
David Hall: Managing people and managing technology is different and I don't feel graded either, I'll be honest in certain bits, but they're pros and like giving instructions to a person. It has a thinking mind that can, that is intuitive, that can be self-directive is very different than when I'm creating an email funnel because I have to write out every step and upfront.
David Hall: Definitely that's gonna take me a lot more work. Now, the email funnel, um, you know, what works when it's working, what works about that is different than, you know. I don't have to attend to the email, I don't have to attend to my personal relationship with my email funnel. Mm-hmm. The same way I do for people that work for me.
David Hall: So it's deciding on what is the, the thing that makes the most sense for you. There are things I've done in the past, I've shared in previous episodes, I, I had a psychiatry practice, a medical practice, and my goal for that was to scale up an income, but that was not fun for me. In the end, that was not a good fit for my personality.
David Hall: That was not a good fit for my expertise. That was not a good. Passive income investment online courses, I know a lot more about and I've, I know much more about the management and the creation and the execution I feel, and so that feels like a better thing for me. So how it's thinking, it's thinking of the what for, well, think of your why first.
David Hall: Like what are you trying to accomplish? And if what you're trying to accomplish is you want to be able to leverage up your income potential over time. Because I'll go to my tip at the beginning, talk about email list. I am far the, the main factor of my profitability as a course creator is not how many courses I have or how expensive my courses are.
David Hall: Those are factors, but the main factors is how large is my audience. Because I can have the exact same number of courses, but if I'm getting more and more people on my email list that are interested in these sorts of courses, each course, that's the pulley system there each course becomes much more valuable.
David Hall: Um, and that is a problem I'm willing to work on. I'm willing to solve, but I have to work on my email list, I have to do things, I have to invest time and resources if I'm. You know, if I'm growing it through paid ads, I have to pay the money to those ads and I have to make sure those ads are efficient.
James Marland: Yeah. Peop the, the one thing, the, the challenge here is pe there, the one thing people don't want is to get on another email list. Yeah. Like they, they, they wanna, you know, I trim, I trim so many email lists. Yeah. A week or a month. So what you're doing in your list is giving them value, like you're not just selling them the whole time.
David Hall: No, I can't. I can't And, and I want people to be like, I have people on my email list that have been on my email list for years and have not bought anything. Yeah. And you know what I'm okay with with that? Like, because there are often people that have given me feedback of how much they appreciate value and in what I, I coordinate with other people and myself and psych maven.
David Hall: Is we try to create high value. I, I want people who never buy anything to feel like it's good to be on our email list. 'cause we do free webinars, we put out free continuing education. We recommend people towards podcasts. We do, like, I, I want people to feel value and just to be, and, and I also think about it in the sense of how often I email, I'm on certain email lists that I get.
David Hall: They're, they're constantly, you know, and. Even if I like you, there's a certain point I'm gonna unsubscribe because I you, you're just junking up my inbox 'cause I'm not interested. If I'm not interested in 90% of your emails, I may love you, but I don't wanna be on your email list. Yeah. And so it's really getting that niche down and really thinking about, but anyway, but go back like how do you do it?
David Hall: Think about what's the pulley system you're building, but you're building a pulley system. Building Aach, what's the machine you're building? You're building a machine. What do you want the machine to do? Why do you want the machine for one? And if it's just so you can sit on the beach and never think about it again, that's gonna be a hard machine to build.
David Hall: I, what I love about passive income is I'm able to work in one moment and reap the rewards later. Hmm. So I don't have to work in every moment. That's what I enjoy. I am, but that's also what I expect.
James Marland: I forget. One of the podcast people I listened to, it was probably Graham Cochrane. Like, it's, um, it's like the get rich slow method.
James Marland: Like you're you're putting in the work before. Yeah. The riches come a little later, but nobody, just like the Kevin Hart example is that nobody wants to do the work. Like nobody wants to. Yeah. Wants do the work, build the list, or identify who the customer is that they can help the most, and then provide them value.
James Marland: Uh, before they even buy anything from you and then maintain that relationship. Nobody wants to do that work, but that's actually the work that makes the passive in income machine work,
David Hall: work you need and part of you need to know it. And I'll give a practical example of that. My friend Bill o Hanlon, who he teaches with Psych Maven, he has his own email list that he's been working on for.
David Hall: He started in constant contact. Back when that was like the only option. And he, he was smart. He started building an email list a long time ago. He's, he's got like 40,000 people on his email list. If I just, if, if Bill just gave me his email list, would it be valuable to me? Absolutely. However, I don't have a relationship with his email list like he does.
David Hall: And it would not, that machine would not work well in my hands. As it does in his hands because he can write an email and send it out to his list and like they connect with him 'cause they want to hear from him. They signed up to hear from him. When I'm emailing people, 'cause I'm the one that, you know, uh, if, if, if it's a person, if it's an individual person that sends an email out from Psych Maven, it's, it's me though as an organization, sometimes we send stuff out, but, but I, I'm much more connected with the list in psych Maven.
David Hall: Because I've been a part of the process that it's being built. And so I've, it's, it's been a conversation in that sense. And like if you're, if oftentimes, you know, for therapists looking to create passive income, it's usually involved giving some mental health related service outside of therapy was information product or supporting other people in the industry.
David Hall: But that's gonna be very relationally driven. You can create more spaces and greater capacity and greater leveraging for that relationship space. But you have to think about it in those terms. If you just want an easy button, it's just there. There, there isn't an option for that. There's just no, there are ways to leverage up.
David Hall: And so it's not that you have to, when we say you have to do work first, first is set the expectation you're gonna have to work. But the second is you're not necessarily gonna have to work as hard for the same result. The, the, the fruit and the, the, that's why I like the term investment. My investments in my passive income, air quote, passive income increase over time.
David Hall: When I put out a new course, what I get from it is significantly more than what it would be when I put out a new course three years ago. That is the fruit of investment, but I still have to do work. And you may have to do less work, you may have to do it less often, but you know, think about having a car.
David Hall: You can have, there are certain cars that are far more reliable than others, and so it's not that all things are equally amount of work. You can get a certain car that's, that's super reliable, but you're still gonna have to put fuel in it, whatever that is. Whether it's an ecar, you know, whether it's hydrogen cells with the diesel fuel, gasoline, you have to fuel it some way.
David Hall: You have to, it has to get maintenance at some point, you know, whether that's often or infrequent. At some point it has to get, you know, whether it's an oil change or transmission fluid or a battery replaced, or you know, tire new tires. Take your pick. You're gonna have to do something. Now, ideally, you may want something that you don't have to have in the shop all the time, which I can get.
David Hall: You know the difference if you have a Toyota Camry, Versus, uh, you know, a 1960s model, Austin Healy Sprite. One is going to be in the shop way more than the other. Now you the Sprite. And it's the Sprite. Just to let you know it's Austin Healy. But like, that may be worth it to you 'cause you love the car and you don't mind being in the shop that much.
David Hall: And your, your income scaling, maybe you're, you're okay for how much work you have to put into it 'cause you love the work. Like, one of the things that I don't do is, um, You know, we talk about James Clear. James Clear made the commitment to post a blog every week. And I've not committed to anything like that because I don't like that style of work.
David Hall: I don't like the constant deadlines and the constant, I'm much more of a batcher. Mm-hmm. Uh, course creation's much more. I'll do that 'cause that's a lot more work than writing a blog post. But I'll do it all at once and then I'll do anything for a while. That's my style. And so you fit, you know, you, you fit something that goes into your style.
David Hall: But, um, so you may be okay. So I'm, I'm more more the Toyota Camry person, but I need to accept, I do have to take it in the shop anyway. I, I
James Marland: am a, I'm a a reliable car person as well. All right.
David Hall: But you shared in a previous episode, James, about like, That you had to learn that your father-in-law gave you the advice of, uh, you buy cheap car.
David Hall: Yeah. Don't buy the cheap, cheapest. Yeah. Yeah. That you were buying the cheapest car and, and it ended up creating more work for you. And sometimes people will do that too. They'll, they'll create the, I I'll, I had somebody who had, um, I was coaching and creating an online course and she was wanting to put out a paid webinar initially, and she, but she wanted to put out this paid webinar to cold traffic.
David Hall: She said, um, how much would you pay for this? And I said, I think you need to do this short thing as a free thing. She got very defensive and she's like, I, I'm done doing free stuff. I don't wanna do one more thing. How much would you pay for it? And I said, nothing. That made her even more. And I said, I'm not gonna pay anything for it.
David Hall: I go, I don't know if it's any good. I don't know if I'm that interested in the topic, and I even have a bit of a relationship with you. If you're asking me if I'm some random person on Facebook that sees your ad, I'm not gonna pay anything for it. Now, I may opt in for something and then the payment of that is my email address, and you can nurture.
David Hall: But I give this as an example because people will, um, you have to be willing to put into the work to really nurture the relationship with somebody if you want them to be a certain sort of customer. And you're gonna have to put in work, just decide. You can decide where and how often, and in what way. And over time that allows you to leverage the pulley system gets much more, uh, leveraged.
David Hall: You can, you can lift a whole lot more with a whole lot less force over time, but you never eliminate the work completely. Right? And you can just decide like, what is it, you know? Do I wanna build a very complicated pulley system? If someone says, I run a really simple pulley system that, that has the maximum amount of weight lift, that's not how pulley work.
David Hall: No. The simpler the system, the the less it can benefit you. If you wanna build a more complex system, you can often decrease your work overtime more. Anyway.
James Marland: Perfect. All right. So, uh, passive income isn't truly passive. It's invested income. Yeah. And you're building the machine
David Hall: to, you're building a machine.
David Hall: It can be more passive. And that's, I think, that's my, my qualifier. It can be, it can't be passive in the sense of an absolute, I've created something passive. You can create something that's more passive than it was before, and over time, it can become progressively more passive. But it's just this idea of how do you reach infinity?
David Hall: You don't, mm-hmm. You can, you can increase, but you never reach it. And so you can, you can have something that's more passive, but nothing is truly, completely passive. But you can build in that direction. Great.
James Marland: That, that's my, that's awesome. And when you're looking at, at scaling, that's important. So what's, uh, let's, let's go to the one thing you want people to remember from the episode.
James Marland: I'll go first. Uh, it's kind of a reiteration like you, you were talking about. Um, Well, uh, before you get value, you gotta give value. So the value circle that Graham Cochrane talks about in his book, you, uh, you give them some sort of value with a lead magnet or some sort of gift, then, then you, they get the value of that item.
James Marland: You, when they purchase your item, if they eventually purchase. They get the value of that product. Mm-hmm. And you also overdeliver, so you give, like, his value circle is like three, three givings to one get like mm-hmm. That's his machine. He called it the value circle. And, um, you just can't throw something at the internet and expect money to fall from heaven.
James Marland: You gotta, you gotta give
David Hall: something first. If it does, it's a fluke. That's the, that's part of it. It's, and because, 'cause someone may be listening to this and like, that's not true. I totally Right, right. Put this out here and it Sure. You can't build around that. Like, and, and that's the thing, if you wanna build something, you can't build something off of happenstance.
David Hall: Yeah. You may benefit from happenstance, but it's hard to really build and plan. So how about
James Marland: your one thing,
David Hall: David? Um, To piggyback real quick on the value thing, it is the, the, the to do the value matters. 'cause I was just looking up, one of the, the most bits of feedback that I really appreciate that I was given from a student of mine who had gone through some free things, had bought one of my main courses and part of the course involved a, a one-on-one consulting.
David Hall: Um, rich Gallagher, um, uh, L M F T, uh, teaches on social anxiety and other things. And this was really cool because he was somebody who had done a lot of teaching his career and, but he was interested in some of the solution I had to offer. Uh, and, but one of the things he said, he goes, I love your free stuff.
David Hall: It's all meat. And he goes, I, I, I tend other free things and it's all fluff. Mm-hmm. And I really was touched by that feedback. 'cause that's one of my goals. I want, I don't want somebody, you know, it, it's sort of like, I hate swag. That's cheap. Like if, if you're, you know, cheap pens, you know, cheap key, whatever stuff that people will do, if it's cheap, if it's don't do it, um, I like good swag and when somebody like has like, it's a good pen, it's a, you know, and I appreciate that they spend a little bit more money or it's something that's actually gonna be useful or, you know, I've got this water bottle, uh, that I got at a conference.
David Hall: It's this glass water bottle that I love. I use it all the time. And, um, if you're, if you're giving physical things, my advice is make it quality. And if you're giving, uh, digital things, make it quality. The fear is, is if I give away something good, then are they gonna buy anything? Yeah. Well, it, the, the truth is, is, is that if, if you go to a restaurant and the appetizer's horrible, I'm not gonna trust that the entrees any good.
David Hall: But if the appetizer's amazing, I've set the expectation that this is a good entree, it's gonna be a good entree. That's what I want people to feel when they do anything free that I put out in the world is, this was good. This has created an expectation for something better in the future. Hmm. Great. So that's just me adding to yours.
David Hall: But my, my, my one thing Yeah. Is it's, it's the pulley system Yeah. Of that you can, you can make it an easier lift for yourself, where you can lift more with less energy, but you've gotta build a pulley system. You can build a better police system, it can get more passive. And so if the question of the episode is, is passive income a lie?
David Hall: It depends what you think. If you think passive income in an absolute sense is achievable, that is a lie. But creating something that is more passive, you know, then what you're currently doing and more passive than itself over time. Absolutely true. You put in the work, you workshop it, you, you. Tune it up over time.
David Hall: You can get some really good, uh, uh, you know, it can get really, uh, uh, smooth throughout where that engine is really well lubricated and it do, it, it, it purs along really, really well. That doesn't mean it's never gonna need oil again, but it, it can run well and that should be the goal. Put in the work.
David Hall: Expect incremental improvements, repeat.
James Marland: Great. All right. Well thanks for joining me, David. Thanks James. Um, this is, uh, James Marland with Dr. David Hall. Thanks for joining us with the Scaling Therapy Practice. We hope you make those small steps that lead to big growth. We'll see you next time.
James Marland: Thank you for listening to the scaling therapy practice I hope you enjoyed the show I want to remind you that the content shared today is for general information and entertainment purposes only It shouldn't be considered as legal or tax advice If you need a professional advice in those areas please consult with a licensed attorney or accountant but thank you so much for listening The scaling therapy practice is part of the psych craft network
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