Your fee isn't a confidence problem. It's math.
Stop guessing, stop copying the therapist down the street, and stop being told to "charge what you're worth." Start with what you actually need, and let the number fall out of the math.
How we set fees
Work backward from your life, not forward from a guess.
Most fee advice starts in the wrong place. It tells you to survey local rates, or to price by your credentials, or to charge what you're worth, which is not a number and never has been. Let's not even talk about what the VC platforms and insurance companies will pay you. None of that tells you whether the fee will actually sustain you.
We go in the opposite direction. Three questions first, and the fee comes last.
What do you need from this business?
Let's put a pause on the 6-figure talk or some fantasy number. We aren't alking about a bare-minimum survival number either. We want to ask, "what you genuinely need to provide a living for yourself?" That means looking at your expenses, your taxes, your retirement contributions, and your savings. The things most fee calculators omit, which is exactly how therapists end up undersaving for a decade without realizing it.
How many clients can you actually carry well?
Look at the caseload number where you stay balanced and every client still gets equitable care. We don't want the number you can white-knuckle for a season or the one you had at your agency job. Claim the number you can hold while doing good clinical work and still have energy at the end of the day for your life, because a caseload that burns you out shortchanges everyone in it.
How many weeks will you really work?
This is the question business advice skips entirely. A therapist managing a chronic illness may need considerably more time off than a colleague who doesn't. Caregiving, disability, the season of life you're in; all of it is real, and a plan built for someone else's body and schedule will fail in yours.
Answer those three honestly and the fee stops being a mystery. It's what the math requires. And once you know it, you can finally evaluate insurance contracts against something real: can this contract meet the number you actually need, or can't it?
The magic dashboard
We built an Excel dashboard with custom macros that runs all of it for you. Put in your real numbers and it works out what you need to charge, then keeps working as your practice changes.
- Expenses, taxes, retirement contributions, and savings
- The fee your numbers actually require
- Whether an insurance contract can meet it
- How to pay yourself
- Group practice payroll and what to pay your clinicians
- Rates for intensives, groups, speaking, and more
Giving back
You can't pour from an empty practice.
Almost every therapist wants to make care accessible to people who can't afford full fee. That instinct is one of the best things about this profession, and it's also how a lot of good clinicians slowly work themselves into a hole they can't climb out of.
Our position is simple: you give back after you've taken care of yourself, not instead of it. A therapist running on fumes isn't generous, they're depleted, and depleted clinicians don't do their best work for anyone, including the people they discounted their fee for.
Most sliding scale processes are unethical.
That's a hard thing to say out loud, but the problem isn't the intention. It's that most sliding scales have no consistent process behind them: rates get set by who asks, who seems most in need, who negotiates hardest, or who the therapist happens to connect with. Two clients with identical circumstances end up paying different fees for the same care.
If you're going to run a sliding scale, it has to be equitable across every client you see, with a clear process you apply the same way every time. We teach the different ways to structure that. And we're honest that for many practices, you're better off giving back in ways that don't have a fee attached at all.
Because reduced-fee slots aren't the only way to make a difference, and for a lot of therapists they aren't even the best one.
Volunteering
Give your time where it's needed, on terms that don't destabilize the practice that pays your mortgage.
Speaking
Reach a room, or a conference, or a community group. One talk can help more people than a discounted slot ever will.
Teaching
Train other clinicians, supervise, or teach what you know. The impact multiplies through everyone you reach.
The test we use: would you be comfortable if every client knew?
If a client found out what the person before them paid, and why, could you explain it in a way that felt fair to both of them? If not, the process needs work. That's the standard we hold, and it's the one we help you build toward.
Your fee is one piece of the puzzle
The right fee can't fill an empty calendar.
You can run the numbers perfectly and land on exactly the right fee, and it won't matter if nobody's finding you, or if the people who find you can't tell what you do, or if your website never turns a visitor into an inquiry.
That's why your fees and financial model aren't a standalone course here. They're one of eight benchmarks that build on each other, so the practice you've priced is a practice that actually fills.
What Our Clients Have To Say About Setting Fees and Insurance
How it works
Your numbers, read by people who've seen a thousand of them.
Money is the topic therapists are most likely to work out alone and get wrong. You don't have to do that here. You run your real numbers with a tool built for this, and you bring them to coaches who will tell you the truth about what they say.
Run your real numbers
You put your actual expenses, taxes, retirement contributions, and savings into the magic dashboard, along with the caseload you can carry and the weeks you can work. It tells you what you need to charge and not just what feels brave or what your colleague charges. It's about what your life requires.
Includes the magic dashboard, our Excel tool built for this
Decide on your model
With a real number in hand, you can finally evaluate contracts honestly. Can this panel's reimbursement meet what you need? Which ones can, which can't, and what would it take to leave the ones that don't work? We teach you how to get off the panels that were never going to fit.
Coaching on contracts, panels, and the transition off them
Raise your fees without dread
Knowing your number is one thing. Telling existing clients is another, and it's where most therapists stall for years. We walk you through how to do it ethically and clearly, with language that respects the relationship and holds the boundary.
Bring your actual situation to group coaching and office hours
And the money questions nobody else answers
- How to actually pay yourself
- Group practice payroll, and what to pay your clinicians
- Setting rates for intensives, groups, and speaking
- Building an equitable sliding scale, or choosing not to
- Making room for retirement and savings, not just expenses
- Profitability that never comes at the cost of client care
And you get the whole curriculum, not just this piece
Immediate, lifetime access to every lesson, tool, and resource in Business School, all eight benchmarks, plus every future update. Sort out your fees and your model first, then keep going at your own pace when you're ready for the rest.
A full year in the Inner Circle
Because your numbers change. A fee that worked in January may not survive a rent increase, a new hire, or a year where you need more time off than you planned.
Group coaching
Monthly live calls where you bring your real numbers and get direct feedback.
Office hours
Stuck mid-week? Drop in every week and get unstuck.
Quarterly sprints
Four focused weeks a year where the whole community moves together.
Community support
Four spaces for the rest of you: clinical consultation, networking & marketing, neurodivergent support, and co-working.
Meet your coaches
Hi, we're Miranda & Kelly. We talk about money like it's a clinical issue.
We are both licensed therapists who've been coaching private practice owners together since 2010. We co-authored Therapist Burnout and Beyond the Hour Guidebook, co-host the Starting a Private Practice podcast, and with over 15 years in, we've reached more than 100,000 clinicians.
We've sat with therapists who hadn't raised their fee in eight years, who were seeing thirty clients a week to make rent, who had no retirement savings at all and were too embarrassed to say so out loud. None of that is a personal failing. It's what happens when a profession trains you in ethics and clinical skill and tells you almost nothing about money.
And here's what shapes how we teach this: we've been integrating clinical outcomes into the business side since the very beginning. Because we're therapists, we know a fee isn't just a number. It decides how many clients you carry, how present you can be with each one, whether you're still doing this work in ten years, and who can access you at all. The financial decisions are clinical decisions.
The questions everyone asks
Fee and money questions, answered.
How much should a therapist charge?+
There's no universal number, and surveying local rates won't tell you what you need. Work backward from three things: what you genuinely need from the business (expenses, taxes, retirement contributions, savings), the caseload you can carry while every client still gets equitable care, and how many weeks you can realistically work in a year. The fee is whatever that math requires.
How do I raise my fees with existing clients?+
Knowing your number is one thing. Telling people is another. We teach how to do it ethically and clearly, with language that respects the therapeutic relationship while holding the boundary, and members bring their actual situations to coaching so they're not winging the clinical conversation.
Should I take insurance or go private pay?+
It depends entirely on your numbers, and not every therapist has the same options. For some, reimbursement rates make insurance genuinely unworkable; the math doesn't leave enough to care for clients well and stay whole. For others a particular contract works beautifully. Set your required fee first, then evaluate whether any contract can meet it. We also teach how to leave the panels that were never going to fit.
Is sliding scale ethical?+
Most sliding scale processes aren't. Most have no consistent process behind them, so rates get set by who asks, who negotiates hardest, or who you happen to connect with, and two clients in identical circumstances pay different fees for the same care. If you run one, it has to be equitable across every client with a clear process applied the same way every time. For many practices, giving back in ways that don't have a fee attached is the better choice.
How else can I give back if not sliding scale?+
Volunteering, speaking, teaching and supervising, we cover a lot of options in Business School. Our position: you give back after you've taken care of yourself, not instead of it. A depleted clinician can't do their best work for anyone, including the people whose fee they reduced.
What should I pay my group practice clinicians?+
Payroll works backward from the same math as your own fee: what the business needs to sustain itself, what the practice can carry, and what supports genuinely good clinical care. Business School includes group practice payroll in the fee setting work, alongside how to pay yourself as the owner.
How do I set rates for intensives, groups, or speaking?+
The same way you set your session fee: from what you need, what you can sustainably deliver, and what the format actually asks of you. The magic dashboard handles rates for intensives, groups, speaking, and more, alongside your standard session fee.
Why do so many therapists end up with no retirement savings?+
Because most fee advice stops at covering expenses. If retirement contributions and savings were never built into the number you charge, they never happen, and a decade goes by. We build taxes, retirement, and savings into the fee calculation from the start, so the number you charge actually funds the life you're trying to have.
It's time
Find out what your practice actually needs to charge.
The dashboard, the math, and coaches who will look at your real numbers and tell you the truth. You've carried this question alone long enough.
Backed by a 7-day money-back guarantee. Try it, really.
Not sure it's the right fit? Book a free 15-minute call with someone who gets it. No pressure, no pitch.