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Welcome back to Ask Allison. Here's today's question. I meant to raise my rate for January 1st, but kept procrastinating on telling my clients and feel stuck at my old fee. Can you break down how to tell my clients I'm raising my fee like I'm five so I have fewer excuses to put it off? Yes, I would love to. And first, I would like to thank TherapyNotes for sponsoring Ask Allison. I've talked about them for years. I know their features by heart. But here's what truly sets them apart. They genuinely care about your experience. It's not just about troubleshooting. They actively implement user suggested features like therapy search, secure messaging, clinical outcome tracking, and their AI notes feature. Therapy fuel. Everyone at TherapyNotes believes in the product and wants you to love it too. Plus, they're independently owned, which means no venture capital and no pressure to prioritize investors over their customers. This independence allows them to keep their prices fair, to focus on innovation and prioritize customer experience. With over 100,000 therapists already on board, they've proven you don't have to compromise success for quality. If you're ready to see for yourself, try TherapyNotes free for two months with the code abundantherapynotes.com okay, let's make it simple enough that your brain cannot escape, procrastinate, overthink, or catastrophize its way out of this again. Because it absolutely will if you give it an inch. And you didn't do anything wrong. You just did the therapist thing, where you panic about a perfectly normal business decision and then accidentally avoid it for three weeks or six months or however long. So we are moving forward today. Step one. I want you to realize that you didn't miss your window. You just moved your timeline. January 1st is not the only date on the calendar. It just feels like a deadline because it's so clean and simple. But it's not. Your new fee date is simply six weeks from whenever you tell your clients. So if you tell them Today, it could be six weeks from today. You didn't blow anything. You didn't lose your chance. You just. You start now. Step two, you're going to tell them in session, but I know some of you are going to try to avoid that. So I want us to be honest. Your instinct is going to be to keep pushing this off because it feels awkward. So yes, the ideal situation is telling them in session first. But if you find yourself forgetting with quotation marks, in session again and again, and you know who you are, then you need to have a backup plan which is to send an email first. Why? Because when you put it in writing and now all of a sudden you're accountable to bring it up in session. There's no wiggling out of it. There's no like, oh gosh, time's up, I guess I'll do it next week. So if you send an email, you have to talk about it and your future self will thank you. Step three, here's exactly what you say so your brain can't over complicate it. Here's your in session script. Say it just like this. I want to let you know that my fee will be increasing to whatever number starting a date six weeks from now. I'm going to send you a new financial agreement and a good faith estimate to sign. Please feel free to bring any questions you have to today's session or next time. You don't have to send it the same day, but that's like a way that you can do it. It's short, it's clear, it doesn't apologize profusely, it doesn't give a 10 minute monologue about inflation or your dog's vet bills or the state of the world. If you just say that verbatim, you're good to go. Step four, you're going to follow up immediately with a written notice and documents. So after you tell them, your email says, as discussed in session, my fee is going to increase to this number as of this date attached to your updated financial agreement and good faith estimate. Let me know if you have questions so that clearly can be sent through your ehr. So you're going to attach or send the financial agreement, your good faith agreement. Anytime your financial agreements change, these documents need to be updated. We follow the rules. We are adults and professionals. We're also very tired, but we are still compliant. STEP 5. Do not assume that your clients cannot handle the increase. This is such a big one. Therapists love predicting which clients are going to be upset or unable to afford it. And we Write these whole fictional economic backstories for our clients based on what little information we actually have from them. Sometimes just based on if they sigh before they, you know, enter their credit card information the first time. Like we just make stuff up. So stop doing that. You do not know their finances. You do not know their priorities. You do not know what they will or won't invest in. Clients need to tell you if the new fee doesn't work for them, it is not your job to pre decide on their behalf. So step six, before you have any of these conversations or send any emails or any of that. So before you're telling clients, I want you to be clear on who you're open to, giving a reduced meaning your current fee to. This is where a lot of therapists sabotage themselves. They go into these conversations without clarity, they hear even the hint of a discomfort or they perceive something in their face and they immediately blurt out, okay, well I mean if you can't do that, that's totally fine, I will. We can keep your feed the same. You get all stumbling weird, right? No, you are the boss. This is your practice. So before you tell a single client, take 10 minutes with your caseload and I want you to write down which clients you're truly open heartedly happy to keep at the lower rate. You are not going to resent them over time. If they go on a vacation, you're not going to be like, interesting that you can go to Europe but you can't pay my fee. Like these are people you really want and need not need. You really want to remain accessible to where situations where it feels really aligned to offer what is essentially now a sliding scale spot. I also want you to be clear on which clients you would prefer to refer out if the new fee doesn't work. These are usually clients who aren't a great clinical match anyway. Those people who you see on your on your schedule and you're like, okay, it might be clients whose work is winding down anyway. Maybe you've gone every three weeks or once a month. You're not doing a lot of substantive clinical work. These might be clients who no show late, cancel, resist therapy in different ways, which usually there are some good reasons. If people are having a hard time with therapy. I don't love the word resistant, but you know who I'm talking about. And it might be people that you're like feeling lost with. They are not making the progress that you would like them to be making. It is also okay if you are only alright with everybody going up to Your new fee. Because maybe you did the math and your new fee is literally what you need to pay your bills. To be able to have some self care, to be able to take some time off, to be able to contribute to retirement, to be able to start paying down your student loans. You don't have to keep anybody at the old fee if you have decided that does not work for you. But we are not offering anybody knee jerk discounts without thinking through each and every client. Step 7. If a client truly cannot do the new rate, you have two options. Option A, offer referrals. This is ethical and supportive. It is not abandonment. It is helping them continue care elsewhere where it will be sustainable for them. I want you really to put in time and effort into finding referral sources for them. These are people you have clinically cared for and probably actually cared for. Also. We want to make sure they go to good people. Option B, if you pre decided, is to offer a reduced rate, meaning your current rate. We're not going down. This is not a negotiation. It is not a panic reaction. This is a structured business decision that you made ahead of time. You are not obligated to keep everyone. You are not obligated to adjust for everyone. You are not obligated to do emotional CPR on someone's financial discomfort. You are obligated to respond with care, to offer options and to have boundaries. Step 8. Clients are usually fine. Like most clients say. Like, okay, thanks for letting me know. Some say, can we talk about it? And you'll say, of course, yeah, let's talk about it. What's it bring up for you? A very small number will say they cannot make the new fee work if you've been private pay. If you're going from insurance to private pay, there's going to be a larger number. This is not a failure. It's not a reflection of your worth. It's not a sign that you're going to lose your entire practice. It's just information. It's a transition moment when you're prepared for Step nine. This is how you build a sustainable practice. Raising your rate is normal. It's ethical. It keeps you resourced enough to continue doing this work without burning out or secretly despising your clients. You're giving six weeks notice, written documentation, space in session, clinical clarity, options where needed. You're doing it with kindness and integrity. This is what healthy, boundaried, sustainable private practices look like. You're ready. You can do this. Six weeks from now, you'll be sitting in your car sipping your tea wondering why you didn't do it sooner. This is a real common struggle for our limitless practice therapists who are full, but they need to make some changes in their practice, like a fee increase. They have enough on their plate that this keeps getting pushed off. So in our one on our group calls and our weekly accountability with my limitless people, I help them make the changes they've been putting off. Our February cohort is open right now. Doors are closing very soon though, so message Limitless on Social for more info or you can click the link in the Show Notes. Our free worksheet today is the Business Burnout. Check in because if you're putting this off, you're likely putting off some other challenges or boundaries that you need for your practice. All right, that was a lot. I hope that you're able to take that in and you're able to take some action. Have a great day. If you're ready for a much easier.