2019 Year in Review as the first Financial Therapist
2019 was A YEAR. With a 7-month-old certificate in financial social work, I told myself that 2019 was going to be the year of EXPERIMENTing. As a Virgo and Enneagram 8, letting go and trying alllll the things was a challenge, to say the least. I tried YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter as mediums of talking about the work I was doing, growing a following, and getting new eyes on my practice. I pitched myself to podcast hosts. I said, "yes," to guest-writing blog posts. I stood (or sat, rather) alongside Erin Lowry, author of the Broke Millennial book series in Detroit as a panelist. Here is my year in review of Mind Money Balance. As Kai Rysdall would say, let's do the numbers.
THIRTEEN I was a guest on thirteen different podcasts throughout 2019. I spoke about how I became a financial therapist, what it was like to write a book, why you have to talk about money in your relationship, the importance of representation in personal finance, and more. I loved all of them, to be fair, but two highlights were being on Farnoosh Torabi's So Money as a guest co-host and owning my growth on Rebel Therapist as I shared how I was going to scale my first offer in 2020. You can see all the podcasts, blog posts, and article features here.
EIGHT HUNDRED FIFTY-SEVEN The number of therapy appointments I had this year. Given I took off about four weeks (two weeks in Europe, a week on a female entrepreneur retreat, and holidays!) that breaks down to nearly eighteen therapy appointments per week. When you factor in that starting in July, I crammed my clinical days down from five to four, that is a heck of a lot of busy days with back-to-back clients. 2019 was all about pivoting to financial therapy. I had numerous clients that were carry-overs with specific stressors or diagnoses outside of financial anxiety. I anticipate this number of appointments will drop in 2020, but the balance of traditional therapy to financial therapy will shift.
ONE book deal. This is the one that continues to blow my mind. I had no intention of writing a book, but the book quite literally came to me. The acquisitions editor at Ulysses Press reached out to me as they were looking for an expert to write a book on financial anxiety. Ready for something very woo-woo? I did a magic ritual the day before receiving the book deal. Yup. I practiced sigil magic, and the very next day, an email landed in my inbox from the acquisitions editor at Ulysses Press. Sigil magic, if you are interested, is what I describe as a combination of manifesting something very specific by using an affirmation in the present tense. You can learn more about it with the magic of YouTube.
FOUR workshops hosted. One was in-person at the top of the year, and three were online workshops. Empowered and Abundant was the name of the in-person workshop I co-hosted with two beautiful souls. The other souls contributed the gifts of physical movement and embodiment (yoga) and subconscious healing (breathwork). In the workshop, the three of us helped participants identify problematic beliefs or patterns around money and equipped them with tools to feel empowered and abundant in their financial lives. I learned I LOVE being able to offer advice and guidance from a place of educating. In therapy, I have to sit back more, and I enjoy being able to strategically go through a curriculum in the way that hosting workshops allows. I imagine I'll do more educating in 2020.
TWO THOUSAND SEVEN-HUNDRED SIXTEEN Instagram followers. Vanity metrics are not everything, and at the same time, I'm proud of this number. I didn't use a service to grow my numbers. I didn't use tactics like follow/unfollow. I put in the time (my husband will probably argue too much time, he's not wrong) in connecting with folks on this platform, answering DMs, commenting on others' posts. Instagram was hands-down the best way that I connected with others in the fields of personal finance, therapy, and the intersection of the two.
What I didn't love about 2019 were the evenings I spent on the couch on my laptop working on YouTube outlines, editing videos, replying to comments on Instagram, crafting pitch emails, etc. These numbers are a reflection of time and energy, to be sure, but they don't reflect how they removed me from parts of my life. My dearest friend and I almost didn't see each other (this would be the first time since we met at age 14 that we would have gone a calendar year without seeing each other face-to-face). I missed out on birthday parties, showers, and gatherings because I had to finish chapters of my book. I had fewer walks with my sweet pup than I'd have liked. My office door was shut more days than not, which means my connections with colleagues was limited. The number of times I exercised with intention, I can count on one hand.
I don't mind being busy.
And while I'm thankful for the results I had in 2019, I've had time to evaluate the above numbers and get a sense of where my time and energy is best spent.
With that, the word of 2020 is CERTAINTY. Certainty feels better for me, but I know if I'd chose certainty in 2019, my growth wouldn't have been as explosive. While I'm excited to "get back" to a word that aligns with me, I also won't be taking certainty without humility. I will continue to accept what works, what doesn't, and allow myself room to grow.
How was your 2019? What numbers do you use to evaluate a year?