Are you looking to try to make passive income as a therapist? Are you wondering how much work that would actually entail and if it would be worth it?
If you are weighing the pros and cons of pursuing passive income, I want to take a realistic look at what is involved in generating passive income as a therapist.
And I’m talking about big passive income. Six-figures or more.
Is Passive Income A Myth?
Let me, maybe, burst your bubble.
There is no such thing as completely, 100% passive income. Meaning you do zero work and you just earn income.
There are some things that start to approach passive income. Such as a trust fund that you inherited and has dividends you can live off of. But, you are still earning that income from someone else’s past work.
I found this New York Times article titled, “What’s Passive Income? It’s Not What Influencers Say It Is” quite helpful.
It says, “What people often call “passive income” is income that isn’t dependent on a single paycheck or employer…In some cases, without understanding the difference, people are talking about leveraged income — putting in time and effort in advance to earn recurring profits from selling, say, an online course or an e-book — or additional revenue from a side hustle (that is, more work).”
So, to clear the air, this blog post is really about leveraged income. Meaning you are generating income from previously done work. Rather than work you are currently doing.
My Passive Income Story
I’m always helped by real life examples. So let me share a little bit about where I’m at with my business, Private Practice Skills, and my whole income situation.
I started Private Practice Skills back in July of 2018. Which feels like a thousand years ago! I spent 20-40 hours a week making content for Private Practice Skills, and I didn’t receive my first bit of income until July 2019.
In 2021, which was my third full year of Private Practice Skills, I broke six figures. That year I made around $105,000 of revenue. For 2023, I bumped into the multiple six figure land for my total income between both my therapy practice and Private Practice Skills.
Myth #1: Producing Passive Income Doesn’t Take Much Work
There are two major myths that are often perpetuated about passive income (aka leveraged income) that I’d like to debunk in this article.
On one hand, folks like to talk about how easy it is to make passive income as a therapist. This is just not true.
You have to really put in a lot of work, especially at the beginning when you don’t know if your business is going to take off. And this is usually the time when you don’t have any income coming in from your side hustle at all.
Generally speaking, if you are wanting to generate big numbers of passive income, you’re going to have to work a lot. Especially at the beginning.
This news is probably not super surprising. I think a lot of us can get onboard with the idea that it takes a lot more work to generate passive income than some people seem to communicate.
Myth #2: It’ll Always Be A Hustle
On the other hand, I also hear a lot of folks say that no matter how long you’ve spent, it’s always going to be a grind to keep making money passively.
And, yes, you could continue to work to keep generating a passive income. But, from my personal experience, you can get to a place where you are hardly working.
Currently, I am at a place where I am in maintenance mode. I’m holding steady at the same income that I’ve been making. I am now able to use my time to focus on things that I want to do. Rather than trying to multiply my passive income.
A lot of folks who are pitching courses to people in my position say things like: “I can help you grow your side hustle from six figures to seven figures.” But I don’t need seven figures.
And if you’re like me, most of us would just be happy to just increase our income by 50%. For many that’s enough to go from hoping to have a bit to save each month, to having enough to save, invest and also take a nice vacation.
Failure Is A Part Of Success
The next piece that I’d like to emphasize is that most people who end up having success with passive income go through several “failed” business attempts before they arrive at the one that is successful.
I am no exception. I’ve started a lot of businesses over the years. It might be close to 8 since 2009. The only ones that I’m currently investing in are my therapy practice and Private Practice Skills.
I’m imagining that there are some people who think they are going to have a similar story to mine or someone else in making passive income. But then it doesn’t work out, and they decide that it’s not for them.
The reality is, it might take them several more attempts in order to land on the business that does have success.
It’s Hard In The Beginning
I’d like to look more closely at just how much of a grind it is in those early days when trying to make passive income as a therapist. Before you even see a dime.
I thought it might be helpful to look at some of the analytics of some of my beginning content.
Since the start, I’ve posted one weekly video on YouTube. In time, I also built my own website, where I posted weekly blogs that utilized SEO in order to be found online.
I posted for months and got close to zero views on YouTube. It wasn’t until 4 months into posting that my view count started creeping upwards a bit. Even then, we are talking small numbers. I would get 10-60 views per video.
It wasn’t until the beginning of the pandemic, March 2020, that things really started picking up. At that point I was more than a year and a half into making weekly videos. It was kinda a fluke that I had one video that got way more views than my others. The reason for that spike was the pandemic.
I then started posting in real time how I was making adjustments in my therapy practice due to the pandemic. It turns out that people were searching for that. I just happened to have the content they wanted at the right time.
So luck is also a variable that is really important to acknowledge.
Online Business Isn’t For Everyone
I want to emphasize that starting your own online business is not a great fit for a lot of people.
It’s important to consider if your personality is a good fit for what you are setting out to do. Most likely if you are setting out to do this for the first time you’re going to have to learn how to do a bunch of stuff. Or, you’re going to have to have funds to pay someone to do a bunch of stuff for you.
So practically, for me, that looked like spending many hours watching YouTube videos, reading blogs, trying stuff, breaking my website, messing up editing, etc.
Your personality really has to be a good fit for learning new things and investing heavily into a challenging learning curve. And enjoying that challenge.
I did enjoy those early days. I loved getting home at 7 pm from seeing therapy clients and cracking open my laptop to write a blog post or edit a video. That was fun for me.
The point of this article is not to bash online businesses like mine or to say you shouldn’t pursue it. But, I want to offer more realistic expectations than a lot of what I see represented out there about earning passive income.
If it is a good fit for you, I hope you feel empowered to give it a try!
Tips To Increase Your Income
Are you reading this article because your main motivator is to increase your income and I burst your bubble? Sorry!
For most folks the way to increase their income is to get promoted at their job, change jobs, increase rates for clients, or come off insurance panels.
You may find a video I made that is all about how to build wealth as a therapist helpful.
Takeaways
Hopefully this article brought us all back to planet earth in acknowledging that there is no true way to make passive income as a therapist. Work is involved in making income no matter how you slice it.
I hope this helps you manage your expectations about passive income, and make more informed decisions about what you’d like to do with your career.
If you would like to hear more about my story, take a look at my video titled, “How I Tripled My Salary In Two Years With Passive Income”.
Many of you reading this article are the entrepreneurial type. Check out my video on my ingredients for success as an entrepreneur.
Until next time, from one therapist to another: I wish you well.
-Marie
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
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Photo by Sam Mgrdichian on Unsplash
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