Using Supervision to Support Both Income and Energy

Kayla Das [00:00:00]: 

Sometimes we’re feeling burnt out in, you know, therapy and having that diversity. Different types of clients, obviously therapists are different types of clients that now even though you’re supporting people with maybe really heavy stuff, there’s a little bit of a distance there that you can help them from the outside with some of those issues that if that showed up for you, you might be seeking clinical supervision for 

Linzy Bonham  [00:00:32]: 

welcome to Money Skills for Therapists, the podcast that helps therapists and health practitioners in private practice go from money confusion and shame to calm clarity and confidence with their finances. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by numbers or avoided looking at your business money, you’re in the right place. I’m Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of Money Skills for Therapists. Before we jump in, I want to remind you of something really important. Most of us highly skilled and competent therapists and health practitioners were never taught about money. Not in grad school, not in supervision, not anywhere. And yet here we are running businesses that need to take care of us while we’re busy taking care of others. It is a lot of pressure. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:01:12]: 

So if part of you feels anxious about money avoidant or like a bit of a hot mess financially, I want you to know that you are not alone and I am here to help you. Through my free live workshops each month, I teach practical financial skills to help you feel more grounded, calm and confident with your private practice money. You can see what’s coming up and save your spot to join live or register for the replay@moneyskillsfortherapist.com workshops. Let’s get started. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:01:38]: 

Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today’s guest is Kayla Das. Kayla is a social worker, a business coach and the host of the Designer Practice podcast and and your Clinical Supervisors Coach podcast. Today, Kayla and I talk about clinical supervision as a way to add revenue to your private practice. So many of us have expertise and skills that we might take for granted at this point and doing therapy work day in and day out, you know, sitting in the hard with your clients is pretty exhausting. So Kayla today talks about the opportunity that many of us have that maybe we have not tapped into yet of providing clinical supervision or clinical consultation. She talks about the financial benefits of this ways to make it more scalable too, so that you’re making more money per hour than you would if you were just seeing somebody one to one. She also talks about how to get found by potential supervisees or consultees if you decide you want to add this income stream to your practice and start sharing Your expertise with other therapists who, believe me, would love to work with you. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:02:44]: 

Here is my conversation with Kayla Das. So, Kayla, welcome to the podcast. 

Kayla Das [00:02:56]: 

Thank you so much, Linzy, for having me. I’m so excited for today’s topic. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:03:00]: 

Yeah, me too. Me too. So before we dig into it, tell the folks who are listening a little bit more about about you and your relationship with clinical supervision. 

Kayla Das [00:03:09]: 

Yeah. So I am a social worker by trade. I’m in Edmonton, Alberta. And although I’m not a clinical supervisor myself, as many social workers and therapists you know, I have my own story of looking for clinical supervisors. And with that I gained a passion into what is now my business coaching practice in to help clinical supervisors and therapists connect with each other. But in saying that, I also, as a business coach, love to talk about the financial impacts of both passive income, earned income, alternate income, all of those types of income and clinical supervision. Vision is such a great way to one, give back to your community, teach new therapists skills in therapy and also make money along the way. And that’s what I love about it. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:04:02]: 

Yes. Yeah, I’m hearing diversity that you’re supporting your therapists in diversifying what they offer, which I think is so valuable for us because sometimes as therapists, I think we think that we’re one trick ponies. 

Kayla Das [00:04:18]: 

Right? 

Linzy Bonham  [00:04:18]: 

Right. We’re like, this is what we do, you know, we sit and we have a session and we talk about hard things and we use all our tools and our skills and like that’s what we do. And we use that muscle so much over and over and over again. But there’s other things that we can also offer in our businesses. So let’s talk about the financial side then of offering clinical supervision specifically. Like, how do you see adding clinical supervision, you know, having a positive financial impact for therapists? What does it look like? 

Kayla Das [00:04:46]: 

Absolutely. Well, first of all, it’s an additional income stream. So like you mentioned, although we’re providing therapy in our practices, we can add additional income streams to help support our business, to help, you know, with our caseload. So it’s an additional income stream into your practice and it can also help with some of those lulls that we see in therapy practices as well. Of course, if you are able to have some clinical supervisees, then you can fill some those spaces that maybe during the summer or during Christmas, things like that, where, you know, your caseload is just, you know, kind of depleting a little bit because people are taking some time off. In addition, it’s really impactful for individuals who love to either teach, give advice, or even guidance to others. Of course, not everyone is going to want to put clinical supervision into the practice, but that’s just like any business or like any alternate income stream that we incorporate into our businesses. And if you love to teach and give advice and guide others, this is perfect for you. 

Kayla Das [00:05:49]: 

In addition, over time, once you establish your skills as a clinical supervisor, there are so many additional possibilities that you can do with your clinical supervision competency. You could create online courses about clinical supervision. You can have workshops about specific topics in clinical supervision that always show up for you. You could write books about clinical supervision. And I mean, these are all things you could do as a therapist as well. But now you’re building that competency and that ability to be able to do additional things like that. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:06:23]: 

Yeah, because what I’m also thinking about as you’re talking, it is. It is that different way to make money right. Within your business. Like, if I think about my own relationship with clients, clinical consultation, I used to give consultation. I wasn’t a certified supervisor, but I gave consultation to colleagues and peers, other therapists that I knew. For me, at least, I know that that work also felt a lot lighter. It feels different to support other folks with their cases than to work directly with a client. And so I’m also thinking about how it’s energetically strategic to add supervision because you’ve got this other stream of income coming in, but you also get to kind of use different parts of yourself. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:07:03]: 

And I always found it to be a break in my schedule. Personally, when I gave consultation, I was like, oh, I get to see this person that I like and help them with things that are hard for them and make their life easier and better. And I get to talk about doing the work instead of doing the work. So I’m curious, like with you, with your therapist that you support with supervision, do you notice that for them, like, how do you see this income stream kind of fitting into or changing the way that they do the work that they do? 

Kayla Das [00:07:29]: 

Yeah, well, as a, as a business coach, like I said, I’m not a clinical supervisor myself, but I work with a lot of clinical supervisors who are looking to expand their practice or therapists who want to go into clinical supervision. And absolutely, sometimes we’re feeling burnt out in therapy and having that diversity, different types of clients, obviously therapists are different types of clients that now, even though you’re supporting people with maybe really heavy stuff, there’s a little bit of a distance there that you can help them from the outside. With some of those issues that if that showed up for you, you might be seeking clinical supervision for. So it’s again, it’s a really great way, like you mentioned, to be able to build your skills, build your caseload, but also kind of shift gears a little bit as well. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:08:24]: 

Yeah. Which we need because we can only do so much, I think, of the really hard and heavy before it starts to impact us on multiple levels. So what are some of the modifications that can be made on the traditional one to one? Because I can still see how you could fill your caseload to the brink with a mix of clients and supervisees and there’s going to be a limit there. Are there modifications that you suggest to make clinical supervision like that much more profitable for folks in private practice? 

Kayla Das [00:08:55]: 

Absolutely. And this is where I love talking about passive income. And actually I’m writing a book currently on passive income, so I absolutely love it. And even though clinical supervision isn’t passive in the sense that, you know, you need to physically be there, there is are ways that you can make more money, help more people. And even if you want to charge less than you would for one to one sessions and make more. So what many clinical supervisors will do is either have dyadic, triadic or group supervision models where they can work with multiple people at a given time. So a dyadic is really good if someone, you know, maybe there’s two people who know each other and they kind of, you know, want to work together. Similar with triadic, although it kind of gets into that group model. 

Kayla Das [00:09:45]: 

And then group might be, you know, up to eight people at a time. Many regulatory bodies will say that no more than eight, because you still want to be able to provide that adequate supervision to people. But I want to give you an example. Let’s say you hypothetically charge 150 per session for one to one therapy. But then you have a dyadic supervision supervision and you charge $100 each. You’ve just made an additional $50 on top. If you had a group and say there was four people in that group, now you’ve made an additional 250 at the same time. So this is where you can start thinking about how can I use my time, support more people? And if you want to even charge less, Because I know for many therapists and clinical supervisors, it’s, you know, I still want to be affordable, I still want to be able to support people. 

Kayla Das [00:10:38]: 

This way you’re making a profit, but you’re still following that mission and that goal that you have for yourself. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:10:45]: 

Absolutely, yeah. And the pricing piece, you know, is an interesting point and question as well. And this is something I’ve sometimes seen my students needing to make decisions about in their practices of what, what you charge for like a dyad or a group. So I’m hearing, I’m hearing you talking about charging a bit less than you would charge for one on one, but not a huge amount less. Right. Like you’re not saying if I have two people, I charge them half of a clinical hour and make the same. I’m hearing a scalable income opportunity here where you know, you’re charging a portion but you’re not making it, so you still just make your same clinical hour. And sometimes I see therapists almost struggle with that a little bit. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:11:23]: 

Do you ever have your therapist that you work with have objections or concerns about how much they should be charging for a dyad or a triad or a group? 

Kayla Das [00:11:33]: 

Absolutely. And I think this really goes back to what your values and your vision is for your practice. Your clinical supervision, and this goes back even with, with therapy or clinical supervision is that if your purpose is to provide, you know, accessible, affordable types of services. Right. I often have therapists who are my clients come to me wanting to provide, you know, sliding scales or pro bono services. And you can incorporate that your business, if that’s a part of your mission. However, there needs to be kind of a formula or a strategy to be able to implement that. However, if you’re not someone that that’s your goal. 

Kayla Das [00:12:13]: 

And I’m going to be honest, that was never my goal, that I never provided sliding scale or pro bono in my, in my practice. And I think that that’s really important to be clear about what feels right for you. Not due to the fear of, you know, will I make money or other people’s expectations on what I should do in my practice or clinical supervision, but what do I really want to do? So that’s going to determine on how much you want to charge. Now there are some people who may say for groups you should be charging the same as you would for a one to one, and that might work too. Right. However, it’s also to consider the clients too is if I could have one to one support or group support, why would I pay the same amount? In addition, it also depends on the client’s desires. Maybe people want to be in group that’s more valuable to them than one to one, so that that price may actually be worth it. So we need to start thinking about what is good for this particular service. 

Kayla Das [00:13:23]: 

And it’s not always this clear cut answer of I should charge this or I should charge that or this person here is charging this. I need to follow the same. It’s about one, knowing your expenses. Two, it’s about knowing your income. Three, and it’s also important to determine what your purpose is in your practice because that’s going to dictate everything that you do. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:13:48]: 

Absolutely. Yeah. There’s no one size fits all solution for pricing or what. Yeah. What your fee should be in relation to what. Something I do think about though too, Kayla, that I think can be hard for therapists to wrap their minds around is when you are offering supervision, you are also moving into that B2B space, that business to business. And I think that we think a lot about accessibility with clients and folks who are on a fixed limited income and we think about pricing with that and then we think about our consultees or supervisees from that same lens. But the work that you’re doing with them actually allows them to make money. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:14:25]: 

If I think about the consultants that I worked with during my clinical career, I would go to them knowing that this consult with this person is going to me to support this client that I’m totally stuck with for six or eight more sessions. 

Kayla Das [00:14:37]: 

Right. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:14:37]: 

Like six or eight more sessions. If we look at that $150 fee, that’s a lot of money. Right. So even if I’m paying them higher than a normal clinical fee, that is a direct investment that I’m making in my business as a therapist that’s going to allow me to do work that I actually would not be able to do without that support. So just highlighting, I think it’s easy to forget just how valuable our expertise is and how valuable the consultation or supervision you provide is, but can actually allow the folks that you’re supporting to make thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars being able to continue to support clients that otherwise they would hit a dead end and they would lose that client. 

Kayla Das [00:15:16]: 

Absolutely. And you just hit the nail on the head. It’s now we’re going into business to business, not necessarily client to client. And although therapists starting off in private practice, when we think of therapists going into private practice, although they may not necessarily have, you know, a lot of money to to work with, it can be used as a business expense on most, for most businesses. It also, like you mentioned, it’s a part of that retention strategy on how can I retain my clients in the long term so that it’s an investment into my business. Right. Like thinking of clinical supervision, it’s not just an ethical requirement. It is a investment into your practice and into your business. 

Kayla Das [00:16:02]: 

And I think that’s really important to consider too. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:16:05]: 

So important, if I think about some of the different consultants that I worked with during my time, there are certain people that I can think of who my work with them allowed me to work with half a dozen or a dozen clients I otherwise would have not had the skills to work with. Right. Like if I think about the specialized work that I started doing and I remember, you know, this is going back, I don’t know, 10, 12 years ago now, doing consultation by phone with, you know, somebody in Rochester, New York. You know, I’m up in Guelph, Ontario. But I found her and she was extremely specialized in, you know, dissociation and parts work. Like before, ifs really blew up and became a thing. We were doing a different kind of parts work. And that consultation I got from her was gold. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:16:44]: 

Right. Like it it. I built my practice off of the skills that I learned from her. So yeah, the value to, you know, when the fit is right, of course, is immense for, for the people receiving consultation. 

Kayla Das [00:16:56]: 

Absolutely. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:16:58]: 

So for people who are listening, who are like, interesting, I know stuff and things. I could help therapists with the skills that I’ve acquired. I could do some supervision and I’m adding consultation here as well because I think that that’s kind of like it’s the non official but also still very important cousin of supervision. What are some ways that you can attract supervisees or consultees? How do you market and find the people who would love to work with you and to access your expert, you know, to help them in their clinical work? 

Kayla Das [00:17:30]: 

All right, so the first way that you can market your clinical supervision is ensuring that it’s on your website. Right. You can have it a special page on your website and if you SEO optimize or search engine optimize it, you may be able to be found on Google. Right. Even if you not found on Google, if people are searching, they may be searching other therapists or therapy clinics to see if a clinical supervisor is available at that clinic. So that’s a really great way to advertise your practice. Another is social media groups. So like Facebook groups, you could, you know, post in social media groups. 

Kayla Das [00:18:13]: 

In saying that, I will say that sometimes a post will get lost in the process due to the algorithm. So maybe trying to promote some engagement on that post can help improve it being seen. But if you’re in therapist specific Facebook groups, that could be really helpful, especially if you’re in therapist Facebook groups that are in your jurisdiction and areas like that. Because of course there are so many groups that are international and you could just get last or like, you know, people may feel that it’s irrelevant, but if you can be super specific and also highlight your jurisdiction, highlight your specialties, highlight all of those things when you are posting on social media groups as well. Because that’s going to be different than just saying I provide clinical, clinical supervision. Now they actually have a good idea of what you provide and you know, if you’re relevant to them with respect to jurisdiction. The next is some regulatory bodies do have kind of clinical supervision registries. Not all. 

Kayla Das [00:19:16]: 

I will say that if your regulatory body does have a registry, if you’re not automatically put on there, I invite you to ask them to add you to that registry so that you can be found within that that area. What some of the cons though is that regulatory bodies, clinical supervisor registries are often alphabetical. They actually don’t kind of populate. So if you’re like last name is starts with a Z, chances of being found is very low. If you start with an A, chances are you’re going to get a lot of clients. So it’s not really built as to be found. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:19:57]: 

Yeah. 

Kayla Das [00:19:57]: 

And then often a lot of clinical registries for regulatory bodies won’t actually have contact information. They’ll give you your practice number, your name. But then clinical supervisees have to then go and find you and your website. This is why it’s also important to have a webpage on your website. Because if they do find you somewhere else, they’re likely going to want to learn more about you and so forth. So kind of adding them out finally is listing on clinical supervision specific directories. Now I know you have Canadian and American listeners in America there are a few different clinical supervision directories. So I encourage you to kind of check them out. 

Kayla Das [00:20:39]: 

Are they, you know, good for you to list on? Like, do you feel that they’re relevant? However, in Canada, I actually host a Canadian clinical supervision therapist directory which is one of its kind here in Canada. And really I developed it because there is a gap between clinical supervisors be able to market effectively and clinical supervisees being able to find them effectively. Just like a few of those cons I told you along the way. Now it’s good to incorporate all of these into your marketing strategy, not just one or the other. However, the purpose I did this was so that you know, you can highlight your therapeutic modalities, you can highlight your approach to clinical supervision, you can talk about the jurisdictions you can practice in, maybe your registered or licensed across multiple states or provinces. That way you have the ability to kind of list that way. Also, at least here in Canada, we’re ranking pretty high on Google just because there’s. We have no competitors at this time. 

Kayla Das [00:21:41]: 

So the truth is, is we are getting people finding us on Google all the time. So any listings on there are, you know, getting clients along the way because there isn’t any competitors here. That’s something else to consider when you’re considering marketing as well. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:21:54]: 

Yeah. And that, you know, the visibility piece, like marketing is visibility. As therapists, we’re not always the best at being like, hey, I’m good at this thing. It’s not usually how we’re tuned. But something else I was thinking about as you were talking about websites, for instance, and getting found on Google. I’ve also had the experience several times lately where I look up a therapist, say a therapist who’s in my inbox or whose name I see and I’m like, oh, who is that person? Where I look at somebody’s website and I can’t tell where they’re located. So again, for supervision, it’s like if somebody’s looking at your website and they think you look cool, but they have no idea if you’re in Michigan or Florida or British Columbia, then they’re not going to know if they can get supervision from you. So just that really being clear is what I’m hearing from you about really being clear about where you can offer supervision. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:22:40]: 

What’s your style? Who do you supervise? Where do you thrive? In the same way that we would talk to a potential client, like really spell it out. Because otherwise if there’s gaps in the data, like I noticed for myself, if I get to a website and there’s gaps in the data, I’m out of there. 

Kayla Das [00:22:53]: 

Right. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:22:53]: 

Like we, we don’t really have the attention span anymore on the Internet to do any more kind of like sleuthing or emailing somebody to say, where are you located? I don’t think anybody’s ever sent an email that says where are you located? It’s like if they can’t tell, then that’s enough friction that they’re, they’re gone. So what I’m, what I’m hearing and taking from you is like really spell it out. Like make yourself findable and really help people understand what you do and who you serve. 

Kayla Das [00:23:14]: 

Absolutely. And what I really love about clinical supervision, as therapists, we love to talk about our therapeutic modalities and when we’re trying to advertise for clients, that’s not always effective because clients have no idea about therapeutic modalities. However, clinical supervisees are looking for specific therapeutic modalities. So you can advertise that you’re EMDR focused or that you come from a trauma informed lens and you’re. I do. A client which is your supervisee is going to understand that. So you can use some of that more clinical language that’s kind of built in that might not be as effective in the therapy world. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:23:50]: 

Yeah, it’s like you can use that first draft bio that you wrote and then you had to totally change it to speak to your clients. That just drops a bunch of jargon and buzzwords and, you know, acronyms that mean nothing to our clients. Your supervisees will actually really appreciate all of those. So that’s a plus right there. Kayla, thank you so much for joining us today. For getting listeners wheels turning on maybe how they could also include supervision as another stream of revenue in their practice as a break from clinical work as a way to use their expertise to make money without having to always be in those hard, emotional places. If folks want to learn more about you and what you do and your directory, where can they find you? 

Kayla Das [00:24:32]: 

You absolutely. So to check out the directory, you can head to Canadian ClinicalSupervision CA Also, if you want to kind of check out me and kind of what I do, I also have a podcast called the Designer Practice Podcast. You can check it out on Kayla Das.com or also on Apple or Spotify as well. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:24:53]: 

Wonderful. And we just recorded for your podcast a couple weeks ago, so. 

Kayla Das [00:24:56]: 

Absolutely. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:24:57]: 

Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Kayla. 

Kayla Das [00:25:00]: 

Thank you so much, Linzy. It was great to be here. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:25:07]: 

I do really love this idea of adding clinical consultation to your practice. That really just sticks out for me. For my conversation with Kayla of something that probably most therapists can do. And yet it doesn’t always occur to us to share the expertise that we’ve accumulated and and to mentor and support other therapists who might be folks looking for supervision, you know, and might need to put in those hours or who might also be colleagues of yours who do similar work and just need that fresh set of eyes on their clinical work. As Kayla said, sometimes we might have somebody come to us with a case that if it was ours, it would be very difficult. We ourself would be going to seek supervision or consultation. But when we are that outside person, when we’re buffered from that client, we are able to see clearly and support that other clinician in ways that would be hard to do, you know, if they were our own client. That is, that is a beauty of a little bit of distance. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:25:59]: 

So I think that, you know, if you have ever considered consultation or supervision, it’s definitely something that is worth exploring as a way to add some more money coming into your practice without adding more clinical work. And if you can add those clinical groups. Like I mentioned, I was part of of a clinical group for years over the phone and I paid enough of that consultant was definitely making more than her hourly rate by quite a bit depending on how many folks made the call. That was a great exchange for me. As somebody receiving consultation, I learned a ton. I was able to do all sorts of great work I wouldn’t have been able to do without her support. And for her as a consultant, she got paid lots of money to share her expertise with a group of people who also learn from each other. It’s a beautiful, beautiful and addition to your business. 

Linzy Bonham  [00:26:41]: 

So you can check out Kayla’s links in the show notes. We’ve put them down there if you want to learn more about that Canadian directory and get further into her world. Thanks so much for joining me today. I’m Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of Money Skills for Therapists. If you’re ready to go from money confusion and fear to feeling clear and empowered, my Free on demand masterclass is the best place to start. You’re going to learn my four step framework to get your priority practice finances really working for you. Register today using the link in the Show Notes or go to moneynutsandbolts.com and click on the link for Courses and then Money Skills for Therapists. I look forward to supporting you.