Billable Hours and Other Poems

Billable Hours and Other Poems

At some point I stopped thinking of my work primarily as weeks full of “billable hours.” (Actually, I never really thought of them that way, but it seemed like a good way to start this piece…)

I get it, though. From one point of view, the “billable hour” is how we make our living, pay the bills, afford travel or a new guitar, or whatever.

And we ask each other “What if clients are late?”, or “What if clients cancel with less than 24 hours notice?”, or “Do you know for sure that you got paid for every session you did last month?”

The reality is that for me to work in this business, my answers to those three questions have to be as follows: “Then they’re late”, “Then I don’t see them, but they don’t get charged”, and “Not really, but I hope so.”

I text a lot, checking in with clients about important life events, or if I find something I think they would find helpful. I call mine a “High Touch Brand”, though that was not strategic or intentional on the front end. It just kind of evolved. It was just how I liked to work, I guess you’d say. Colleagues occasionally comment “But you don’t get paid for that time…?” (The occasional unspoken vibe that I may be a dumbass was/is not lost on me…)

But my response is “Depends how you look at it.”

I find that if I think of my work in terms of “Relationships” rather than billable hours, I feel better, and I can more easily give myself permission to not to get too worked up about the 3 questions up above. If texting or sending a voice memo a few times a month or even during a difficult week is part of that relationship, then it is. If I go over the hour, I go over the hour.

I help a bunch of people every month, my billers bill them and their insurance companies, I get a bunch of money, and it’s all good. I trust the billers are tracking the hours. Do I know that? No. What would it cost ME to track MY BILLERS? Way more than I am interested in paying. They do send me reports. I trust them.

I am 70 years old, and have worked most of my life working for organizations, mostly universities, as a W-2 Guy with full bennies. At this stage of my life I can afford to be more laissez faire about these matters, and if that sounds privileged, well it is, but a privilege earned by working for 50 years for other people first, so…

(And I did not go the road of kids and grandkids, so there’s that too…I’m not trying to leave generational wealth or anything like that, which many of my colleagues are…)

When I hear younger therapists, or single-parent therapists, or therapists whose budgets are really tight (student loans?), saying that they want to make sure EVERY dollar owed them gets collected, because that’s how it HAS to be to make it month to month—I GET IT !!!!. I really do. (I’ve been on food stamps and unemployment more than once, and been you would not even believe how deep in credit card debt fewer than 20 years ago.) I would chase that money down too. (Actually, I would hire somebody to do it, because I suck at it.)

But for those of us for whom things are NOT all that tight, we have options as to how we look at things.

Not sure why I am writing this. Maybe to say “There are different ways of being in this business, and if you find one that feels better for you, and you are satisfied with the living it allows you, don’t worry about how the other guy is doing it.”

There are almost always many right answers. I know and have worked with a lot of people who often think there is only one, and you gotta find it, or you’re in trouble. I thank DeWitt Jones for teaching me otherwise in the loveliest of fashions. Look him up.