The Accessible Private Pay Toolkit
A THERAPY IS A BUSINESS TOOLKITGo private pay without losing the people you got into this work for.
You don't have to choose between a practice that pays you and one that's there for people who can't pay full fee. And you don't have to work it out alone. The calculator runs your real numbers so your pricing never drops below what you need, and the scripts hand you the words for every money conversation you've been dreading.
Everything you need, done for you.
Instant Access · Calculator + WorkbookYou already know which version is yours
Maybe you're on insurance panels you've outgrown, watching reimbursements shrink while your caseload stays full, landing at midnight on the same conclusion as last year: private pay is the only way this becomes sustainable. But, every time you get close, the same thought stops you cold. What about the people who can't pay? What about the clients you already love, the ones you'd lose the second you raised your fee? So you stay. Underpaid, fully booked, telling yourself you'll deal with it in the fall.
You already made the leap, and you did the values part the only way you knew how. You said yes. To the client who asked for a break, then the next one, then the one after that. No cap, no floor, no rule. So now you're carrying eight reduced-fee clients against a handful paying full fee, you're not sure how it tipped that way, and you feel something you don't love admitting when those sessions land on your calendar. Resentment. Because that is what giving from depletion gets you.
Here's the one nobody says out loud. You've got a client on your lowest rate who just got back from a week in Cabo. You set that rate to protect people who genuinely couldn't afford care, you're pretty sure this isn't that, and you've said exactly nothing, because bringing it up feels worse than eating the loss. So you eat it. Month after month.
Underneath all three is the same thing. You were handed a value, be accessible, and never handed a structure to deliver it. So accessibility became something you give away one guilty exception at a time, until the practice that was supposed to serve everyone is the one running on fumes.
You've been piecing this together with half a map
The mindset folks hand you a feeling. "Charge your worth, feel the fear and do it anyway, here's a worksheet on abundance," and you close the tab still not knowing what to actually charge. The numbers folks hand you a spreadsheet, which becomes useless the second the figure it spits out makes your stomach drop and you talk yourself down to something safer. Nobody hands you both at once. And almost nobody handing out either one still sees clients, so they've never sat across from someone terrified of the bill the way you have. You've been doing this alone, with half a map.
Not anymore.
The calculator and the scripts
Two things take the two scariest parts off your plate.
First, the calculator. You feed it what your life and your practice actually cost, and it builds your pricing so you never drop below what you need to earn for the year. For a sliding scale, it works out how many people at each tier and at what price to keep you above your floor. For reduced-fee spots, you decide how generous to be, the rate and the hours, and it tells you the standard fee that generosity requires to stay survivable. Try to set a number that sinks you, and it shows you in dollars exactly what that choice costs. It will not let you betray your own sustainability. It will not let you fail.
(And, group practice owners, don't worry. I've built a special calculator tab just for you.)
Second, the scripts. Because a number is only worth something once you can say it out loud, and that is something most therapists dread. So you get the words for the exact moments you've been avoiding:
- The new client asking what you charge.
- Helping someone choose their tier without it getting weird.
- The client whose tier stopped matching the life they're actually living.
- The person who needs to move up and off a reduced-fee spot.
- The day you tell your current caseload the structure is changing.
Thirteen of them across both methods, written out, ready to make your own. You walk in knowing what to say instead of improvising through the fear.
The calculator settles the number. The scripts settle the words. And for the first time, you're not deciding either one alone in a moment of panic.
You're allowed to thrive
Here's the part the guilt drowns out: being paid enough to keep your doors open is how you keep showing up to care at all. The most accessible therapist in your town is the one whose practice is still standing in ten years. A sliding scale built on real numbers lets you stay generous without going broke to do it.
And if a formal scale turns out not to be your path, the workbook hands you a whole list of other ways to live your values, because there's no single right way to be a generous therapist. This is your practice. You get to choose how you give.
Calculator and workbook, together
They're a package because they do two different jobs, and neither works as well alone.
Real costs in, your prices out, with a floor it won't let you fall below, on either method, for the whole year.
The words for every money conversation across both methods, including the cringey ones nobody warns you about.
The Green Bottle three-tier sliding scale and Reduced-Fee Spots, with a chooser so you build the right one for your practice.
The tier descriptors and reduced-fee criteria your clients read, plus how to tune them to your own fee range.
You're Allowed to Thrive, The Number Is a Fact, When the Number Stings, other ways to live your values, and where you land on the scale.
Publishing your pricing (three levels, including without posting numbers), paperwork language (policy, fee agreement, superbills and HSA/FSA), the legal and ethical guardrails (Good Faith Estimate and the rest), and the implementation checklist.
Run a group practice? The calculator can set your scale off gross revenue per clinician, so you can put one accessible structure across your whole team.
A quick word before you decide
I'm a therapist who still sees clients, running EMDR intensives every week because I love the work. I'm also a financial therapist who knows money runs deep. I was so broke in my youth that I lived off of $1 burritos from Taco Bell after I watched my parents earn millions and lose all of it to patterns nobody ever helped them look at. I did my money work so that I can hold both truths: I deserve a thriving wage and I want to keep working with people who need help. I built this inside my own practice, on my own clients, before I sold a single copy. And my clients thanked me for it. Fifty-plus hours went into building this toolkit, and there's nothing else like it on the market.
— Jessica
Who it's for, and who it isn't
This is for you if
This isn't for you if
Here's the deal
Let me be direct with you. I should charge more for this, and I'd tell a client to charge well above it for less. But this is the door into my work, and I'd rather it reach the people who've spent years undercharging themselves than sit behind a price that keeps them out. Consider it your first lesson in giving from abundance instead of depletion. (I can price it here because my own practice holds. So can yours.)
The real questions
Is this just another coach's product?
$47 feels too cheap to be any good.
I'm not private pay yet. Too early?
Do I have to post my prices online?
Is a sliding scale even legal? What about the Good Faith Estimate?
I tried a sliding scale before and it was a mess.
You can keep telling yourself you'll fix it later.
Or, you can spend twenty minutes with the calculator tonight and walk into next week with numbers that actually work, the words for the conversations you've been dreading, and a practice built to still be here in ten years. If this is you, this is the door.
Get the Accessible Private Pay Toolkit — $47