HHW Therapists 52 - I Charge $1500 for My Intensives. You Shouldn't Copy That Number.

The pattern I see on lots of calls that I have with therapists, especially inside my Therapy Intensive Academy and probably a ton of the Facebook group threads that I've seen back when I was in Facebook groups.

I really hate them.

I find that to be one of the most toxic places on the internet, so I don't do it a lot.

But a lot of people will ask questions around like, "Hey, what are you all charging for a half-day intensive?" And like 40 comments can roll in with people saying $900, $1,200, $1,800, $2,500.

People start comparing their number to the numbers in the thread.

And depending on where they land, they either feel a little smug like, "Ooh, look at me, I'm doing actually pretty good," or they feel really anxious like, "Fuck, I must be doing something wrong." That comparison then can start to feel a little bit productive, right? It starts to feel like research.

But watch what it actually does to you.

If your rate is lower than the thread and you start to wonder if you're undervaluing yourself and you just raise your rate without really knowing why.

You're like, "I don't know.

Other people charge that, so maybe I can too." Then, you know, that's when we start to get a little bit too into our head and a lot into our anxious part of our brain when we just raise a number because some other stranger on the internet changes more, right? Like if your rate is higher, maybe you get a little defensive.

You get a little like, "Well, let me justify this," and you start building your pricing page around proving you deserve the number instead of around what your client actually gets.

Either way, the number starts to become the whole conversation, right? It's your rate, my rate, her caseload, his income goal.

It's all just numbers stacked against other numbers.

And again, totally understand the pull.

Numbers are concrete.

They don't require you to sit with anything uncomfortable.

The, "I charge $1,500 for my therapy intensives," and again, that's my starting package.

That is a fact you can say out loud in a group, right? Okay, this is what I'm doing.

But communicating why you're doing what you're doing, why you're charging what you're charging, that is much harder to say Concretely and concisely.

Right? But typically, it's something like this: I'm trying to build a life where I don't feel trapped by my own calendar.

Right? That is 99% of the therapists that I've talked to.

1% of them-- I mean, everyone cares about providing their clients with better quality clinical care, but a lot of us feel trapped in our own calendar, and that's where these therapy intensives look like a really good option of what to incorporate into our schedule.

So we again, we default to the easy question: What's your rate? What's your caseload? What's your income goal for the year? We treat practice building like it's kind of a math problem when a huge amount of it is actually an identity problem that is wearing the spreadsheet as a little bit of a disguise.

And what I want you to notice about that comparison trap specifically is that it's keeping you focused on someone else's practice instead of your own life.

So many people are like, "Well, Amanda, I was looking at your website, and I kinda stole this framework from your website," and I'm just like, "You, you just...