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Looking over some of my 2021 Reflections

Making more money and seeing that I can trust myself with it 🌺:

• Expense creep vs. thoughtful spending and being in a position to be more generous.
• Embracing being the breadwinner
• Letting go of judgement around making a greater amount of money than my partner.
• Knowing that I am making ethical choices with my money, that my clients are making ethical choices, including that we're not trying to pay others as little as possible.

I appreciate Kelly Diels and Rachel Rodgers for their influences on my thinking about money this year.

Raising my prices over 2021💰:

• Realizing what I should charge in order to keep my programs small and running at the highest levels.
• Realizing that the individuals best suited for my programs are serious about planning to make at least 10x the amount they're investing, and clear that they're going to get results.
• Realizing there's a story to a price and that if your pricing is telling a story that doesn't make sense, it is going to feel misaligned. The story I was telling myself, "that therapists won't pay for an expensive program," was not making sense.

I was influenced directly by Tiffany McLain and Jacquette Timmons who both specialize in money and pricing.

Not being a therapist for a full year:

• Learning that running ONE business works really well for me.
• Switching from being a therapist to coaching therapists allows me to see more clearly how therapists can get in our own way in business.
• Still missing and loving my therapy clients.
• Feeling like I'll always be a therapist.

Adding things to my programs:

I have two programs: Create Your Program (CYP) , to help expand beyond private practice, and Rebel Therapist Mastermind, for people who have already completed CYP and want to level up their businesses beyond private practice.

This year I have added several new features to each of these programs. In CYP I have added:

• A session with Layla Pomper, a systems expert, who can assist in the organization of business flow in terms of systems and tech.
• Guest teachers who are attorneys:Elizabeth Potts Weinstein and Brandy Matthews who come in and talk about the legal side of business offering guidance to program participants.
• Introvert Office Hours, inspired by Paula Pant, meaning that participants can submit questions at any time, and then I create one recording that answers all of those questions.
• Extra live Q&A calls, which also allow for people to get even more questions answered.
• FAQs to each section of CYP
• Mindset pieces that tend to come up along the process.
• More support around pricing and messaging.

In Mastermind I have added:

• Virtual Retreats, where over a period of two days we get some significant work done together. In one retreat we focus on creating remarkable content. In the other retreat we focus on ethical and effective selling.
• A session with Layla Pomper, for next level systems questions.

Participating in deeply meaningful things that aren't part of my business🫀:

• The Free Joy Experience, a program focused on racial healing and liberation through ancestral accountability and expanding white consciousness and imagination, created by EbonyJanice Moore and Thea Monyee.
• Listening to Adoptees, a podcast I co-create with my co-host Katelyn Dixon.
• Sending my adult child to college 🎓and releasing him into the world, a huge transition full of a combination of emotions including grief, joy, love, and pride.
• Buying a rental property in Kalamazoo, Michigan as a long term investment with the help of Paula Pant. More to come as I discover more!

Improving my coaching:

• Leaning into how to make decisions rather than what to do, inspired by Paula Pant.
• Finding a sweet spot between taking responsibility for my participants' success vs. knowing people have what they need to succeed.
• Having a positive obsession with the quality of the programs and my coaching, while not obsessing over how participants utilize my coaching in their business.
• Being on a whole lot of podcasts, with the help of Podcast Ally! 🎧I might scale this back a little next year, only because I need to decide on the BEST use of my energy ⚡

Hiring:

• This is something I didn't want to do by default. I wanted to hire an employee who would be a real team member, invested in the work of Rebel Therapist, and not just a contractor.
• Identifying that I was looking for a unicorn🦄 with particular skills.
• I won't talk about this person yet because they are still onboarding, but this is very exciting, and they're doing great! ☺️

I am grateful to Tara McCullin, Thea Monyee, and Podge Thomas for their help and inspiration in my hiring process to find an employee that aligns with Rebel Therapist.

Managing my hours ⏰:

• Noticing that my hours crept up to 30-38 hours a week.
• I want to work 20-25 hours, so as my hours crept up, it became more clear that it was time to hire someone.

Changing the structure of Rebel Therapist Podcast 🎧:

• Deciding to alternate between guest and solo episodes and stepping into my own thought leadership more.
• Inviting guests who can teach you things you need to learn.

My birthday is coming up! 🥳

• I'm gonna be 50 at the end of this month. I don't know what that means except that I am often the oldest person in many spaces with online entrepreneurs.
• I've noticed that I have some internalized ageist narratives, in that I have a fear of becoming irrelevant, and yet I am learning all the time that I am a better coach now than I've ever been.
• In order to fight ageism, I've decided I won't take seeming younger than 50 as a compliment or seeming to be 50 or older as an insult, looking at people like Frances McDormand as my aging role models.
• Turning 50 is fucking great and exciting! 🎉

What I'm looking at for 2022:

• Get the team of Rebel Therapist and our programs even more clear, nurtured, and totally solid. Focusing this year on staying the path and strengthening our foundation 💪.
• Feature our participants more on podcast episodes!Having Rebel Therapist participants on the niching episode generated such positive feedback allowed me to see how helpful hearing about their work was for both listeners and participants.
• Dig in, write, create, and experiment more with new ideas💡.
• Be more clear about our radical stances , taking the chance to say it first publicly.
• Spend time with progressive entrepreneurs who are also at multiple 6 figures of revenue and committed to running businesses that contribute to liberation.
• 💸 Make more revenue in 2022 than in 2021. Why? So that I can show YOU how to make more money and because it's fun!
• Make space for my own healing more regularly.
• Go on my sabbatical this summer ☀️☺️😎

All right, so those are my 2021 reflections! I would love to hear about yours and what any of this brings up for you.