14. How to Start Consulting as a Social Worker with Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW

Taylor (00:00)
Hello everyone, welcome back to the Social Work 12th podcast. I'm Taylor and I'm usually here with my co-host Faith and clearly she's not here. guess if you're watching this on YouTube, you can tell that she's not here. ⁓
This episode will be released in July, but we're recording in May and she's on maternity leave. She just had a baby and all things are good with her and baby and hubby. So this is going to be my first episode recording solo, lots of firsts here today. So first episode without Faith. I'll probably be recording multiple without her. ⁓ And then...
This is our first guess where I've seen them on Instagram.
They're amazing. I didn't need to talk with her before, like, because I just knew, like, it was gonna be a great conversation. ⁓ So that's fun. This is, you're hearing the first time that we are talking to each other. So I have Christina here to talk with us about consulting, which really excited about, I know nothing about consulting. And I think as social workers,
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (00:58)
you
Taylor (01:18)
you know, as we're progressing through our kind of professional journey, I think that's something that's a word or a possibility that comes, you know, that we hear about. But it's like, how do we actually do that? What does that look like? ⁓ So, yeah, excited to talk to Christina more about that. So if you want to introduce yourself and tell everyone who you are.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (01:43)
I'm so excited to be here. So hello, I am Christina Broderick-Royse. I go by Chrissy if you like. I'm a licensed social worker in the state of New Jersey and I am the founder and CEO of Intention Elevation, where we work with folks to grow and lead with more intention, whether that's in their lives, in their communities, in their work, or in their business. That's the short end. We're going to get into all of the other things later.
Taylor (02:10)
Yeah, yeah, totally. So what do you do like right now? I know I've seen on LinkedIn that you have, you're into multiple things. So like what working stuff are you doing currently?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (02:24)
Currently.
working on. So we have a leadership and life skills certification program that we sell to education organizations and programs and so we have some clients in that. So actually will ⁓ hire other facilitators, other licensed mental professionals to help me out with that. So actually a facilitator down in Virginia, she just got started. It's going to be five sessions working with students who are doing a summer program that prepares them for research and doctoral
potentially doctoral programs. And so what they hired us to do is over the course of the five sessions, just work with the students on just how their emotional well-being is, how they can be more intentional in such a rigorous program when it comes to taking care of themselves, how to better communicate with like certain folks. And so I have someone down there doing that. We're starting up a similar one here in New Jersey, ⁓ also working with social workers ⁓ who are looking for some consulting help on their own business to get some strategy and structure in place.
So
I have a call after that with a social worker who just got booked for training and she wants some help with that. And so those are a few of the things we have working right now.
Taylor (03:30)
Cool.
Mm-hmm. That's awesome. So how long have you had intention elevation? That is the consulting business, correct?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (03:42)
Yeah, so there's been a few iterations. So I technically started in 2018. I didn't file paperwork until 2019. And so that first iteration of my company was called Ignite EDU. It's where I just thought I'd be working solely within the education space. And then as time went on, I started getting a little bit more interest outside of education and the name didn't fit. And so I created a Broderick and Company Consulting. And then it just felt really confusing having like two entities and also as a business
Taylor (03:45)
Okay.
Okay.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (04:12)
owner if you have two LLCs everything needs to be separate like your finances your everything so right now it is actually technically the legal name is still broader company consulting intentional evasion is our DBA so we're doing business as intentional evasion so that's like the forward-facing name for everything people don't water can company consulting until we're signing some contracts yes yeah so 2019 that's when I started and then things have just evolved over the years
Taylor (04:18)
Right.
Yeah.
Right, right, that makes sense.
Okay. What is, you know, that first, I don't know, just like light bulb or interest that you had in consulting, like what were you doing? And then like, yeah, how, how did that beginning start?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (04:58)
So
I always have credit where credit's due. I give credit to my friend. So after my master's program, my first job was working in higher ed. I always knew, even though I did a clinical program, I knew I didn't want to do clinical work. And so I went into working in higher ed. I was working with a federally funded program, a trio program that supports first generation and low income college students. And so through that, we had to do some advising and host workshops and all this kind of stuff.
My title is a program coordinator. And it was my friend who was like, you she saw my frustration with the system, if you will, where I'd want to say like, you know, we're gonna run a summer bridge program. Like, hey, like we should do a session on mental health. And they're like, no. I like, hey, would you like talk to parents about like how they support their students in their mental health? And they were like, no, it's too stigma, it's too taboo. Like we're not doing that.
⁓ Yet I'm like literally watching students fall apart, right? I talk about this in my talk that I did. ⁓ Where I students who would like run away from me to throw up in trash cans because they weren't sleeping. I had students who dropped out or took a leave of absence because they developed an alcohol use disorder. I had like, and I'm like, why are we?
Taylor (05:56)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (06:12)
not considering the mental health of our students, we're just shipping them out to the counseling centers, which I'm not going to. And so was having a lot of the side conversations and it was my friend, my colleague turned friend who was just like, I think you should do something on your own. She comes from a family of entrepreneurs and she was like, you know, there's something about you. There's a presence to you. People are drawn to you when you're speaking. You know, I'd done some like workshops and stuff for the university. And so she tapped me and she was like, of the one that like plugged it for me. I was like, you can do this. Like there's another way that you can help people without
Taylor (06:37)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (06:41)
having to be in these traditional structures. And so I first got started thinking I was gonna do education and wellness coaching for families. And so that was my first target. And then it wasn't until I joined a business development program, that's when I understood the B2B model of like, hey, if you actually work with organizations, you can still work with your target audience, but get paid more.
Taylor (07:02)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (07:09)
I was just through a mixture of ⁓ taking ⁓ the leap, I would say, to just get started on my own, and then realizing I needed some additional education, training. And that's what kind of opened up my eyes, like, ⁓ I'm doing this the wrong way. I should take it this path. And then that's kind of what kind of got me going. Does that make sense?
Taylor (07:22)
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
Can you explain ⁓ for people who aren't sure about the B2B and a little bit more details about that?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (07:40)
And so B2B
is a business to business, meaning that as an entrepreneur, my own business is working with a larger business, right? And so I was not necessarily aware if I would be working with, I don't know, social work to wealth, right? Like, cause we get...
Taylor (07:53)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (07:54)
your smaller entrepreneurial business, it wouldn't count as a B2B, it's more of a larger corporation. Versus a B2C, which is business to consumer, where people are directly paying me for my services. So that's what ends up being a lot more of my work with social workers, or folks who want some additional education and training while I'm speaking. They log in, they put in their credit card, that's more of a B2C. Versus the B2B, which is education institutions I work with, some Fortune 500 companies that I've worked with, some nonprofits that I worked with.
Taylor (07:57)
Right. Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (08:24)
those are the B2Bs that I do.
Taylor (08:26)
Yeah, awesome. Thank you for
explaining that. So in terms of consulting, kind of a broad term, how do you define that and what have you seen that, how does that look for a social worker?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (08:42)
And so consulting is just like in the regular time, right? It's just you are a subject matter expert in some area and people need a solution to a problem, right? That's just consulting. You're the expert in this thing. You have advice, you have services, and you're helping to solve this problem.
Taylor (09:01)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (09:06)
And so if you think about it in that way, essentially, as social workers, right, we know that we are ridiculously skilled and talented. We have a million certifications, licenses.
Taylor (09:16)
A million.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (09:17)
all of the things, right? And
we know that people need our services. So the consulting is just you providing those services to those entities at like the basic level, right? But then I think what's also beautiful about us as social workers is that we are bringing in an additional lens, right? We're bringing in an ethical lens. We're bringing in a systems lens. We're bringing in a human behavior lens. And so even today, right? Earlier I was working with doing a one-on-one
consulting with a social worker. And yes, we're thinking through like the strategy and structure, but I'm also like, we got to talk about you and your wellness, right? Like it's bringing a different lens to the conversation. So when I work with institutions, it's not so much about always the strategy and like the tactical logistical things. It's also like, well, how do we bring in who you are as people into the strategic conversations, right? And so for social workers, can be,
Taylor (10:13)
Mmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (10:17)
⁓ you doing program development. It could be doing assessments. It could be doing different trainings. All of that can fit under the consulting lens where you are expert with the advice and the services and you're helping to solve the specific problem that they have.
Taylor (10:28)
Yeah. ⁓
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it can, I feel like the relationship with that organization, it can last either maybe one day because you're going in doing a one day training or you know, like you said, you're doing program development and that would take, I don't know how many months, but there's just a lot there that people can do, which is really interesting.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (10:51)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and that's think the beauty of it as...
entrepreneur is that it's your decision right and so you can decide of like I don't like doing things that are super long-term I just want to come in and get this thing done cool let's structure a service that way where you are doing a one-time training or service ⁓ or you want to do something that's that's deeper and that was something I had to restructure in my own services maybe about a year and a half ago which is I ended up creating that certification program etc that was like you know in order to really get get get to the
Taylor (11:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (11:30)
potatoes anymore time and so I restructured my services to be over a longer period of time and so it can be something that is more short-term, can be something that's long-term, something in the middle, there's some flexibility and I think that's the really cool part about it as the entrepreneur and the leader of the work.
Taylor (11:40)
Mm-hmm.
Can you give us some examples of some things that you've done or have done, maybe some of your favorite projects?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (11:55)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. And so because of the nature of this podcast, what I'm also gonna do is, ⁓ if I can remember them all, I think there's a lot. But some of the funner ones, or some of the bigger ones, is attach the dollars to it. Because I know I've always needed when people just talk very high level. And the ones I was like in this mastermind that I paid stupid amounts of money for.
Taylor (12:14)
huh.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (12:20)
And we're all sitting there and everyone's like, yeah, I just got like a really big contract. I just hit a great month. I'm like, can we talk numbers and what is? Like when you're saying this, like, you know, okay, so if I reflect back. ⁓
Taylor (12:27)
Like, what are we getting paid?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (12:38)
actually, I can start with what I have now. For example, earlier I named that we have someone down in Virginia, right, doing some services. So that contract is $7,500 for those five sessions, right? And then I pay my facilitator a piece of that. And then I obviously, my company keeps the rest. ⁓ we've been paid
Taylor (12:59)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (13:02)
$15,000 to design curriculum. And so there was a group out in Pennsylvania and they had a facilitator there. They were wanting to lead like a ⁓ student led professional development.
I guess there's a lot of racial trauma happening by staff towards students. And so they paid me $15,000 to develop curriculum that helps the students, one, understand more information about mental health, but also so they can create and design a PD to lead for the staff. ⁓
Taylor (13:35)
⁓ I'm
curious about that one. So how long did that take you?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (13:41)
Um, like August to December was like a semester. And so they would, so I had like the training materials up front. They would go and do stuff. Then the facilitator is like, Hey, they have questions on this. Hey, can we edit this? Right. And so I, so we did that. We co-created and I adjusted throughout the semester. And then by the end, by like, I think was early, November, early December is when I went down there to actually see them. I've never seen any of these students.
Taylor (13:46)
Okay.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (14:07)
And they're like, oh my God, you're the girl of all the videos. And I was like, yeah, that's great. Because I wanted to see the PD. was really proud of them. So yeah, it was really cool. was a group of high school students, and all the staff came into the room, and they led this whole PD session around racial trauma. Thanks. Thanks. so that's one. One thing that we also have is we do an online course. And so back in pandemic time, 2020, 2021,
Taylor (14:10)
Hehehehehe
Yeah, I love that. Cool.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (14:34)
I've created an online course around proactive mental health, like strategies and skills and things like that. And so we've had a district pay $23,000 for that, where every student, freshman student who got enrolled got access to that course. But over time, that course itself has done us over $100,000 just from that course alone. yeah. Yeah, we go.
Taylor (14:58)
Wow. So is that a, I have more questions. Is
that course, it's like a self-paced, are there multiple modules? Like tell us, yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (15:09)
So it is
eight modules, 46 lessons. goes through, there's like a workbook that they get. It goes through things like mindset, resiliency, stress management, self-care, mindfulness, support. We talk about therapy, what's it like going to therapy? What's a therapy session like? How do you know? How do you talk to a parent? That kind of stuff. So what we do is that we bundle it. So.
Very, very rarely do we sell at this point just the course, right? It's because you think of like, how do you upsell, right? Increase the average contract value, your ACV is okay, the course exists, but how do we really enrich what they're learning? And so that's where the additional sessions start to come in, right? And so for example, if last semester we had someone pay us, it was $11,000 for access to the course, four sessions and a staff training for $11,000.
Taylor (15:40)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (16:06)
And so instead of it, you know, and that's part of the discussion of the value, right? That being able to say, hey, we can enrich this course by having, you know, these live sessions, you know, hey, you work directly with the students, you guys should learn some stuff too. So we build in a training component as well.
Taylor (16:11)
Right.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah. What I love about that consulting piece, you know, don't know, model specifically with the course is that you've already done the work, which sounds like it was a lot of work. ⁓ and so now you have it packaged up nicely. Maybe you make some updates, maybe you don't need to. ⁓ and that's just kind of like serving you and your business for however long you need it, which is awesome.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (16:41)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it makes things a lot easier when you're able to do that. So I do need to update it. Actually, right now, I was just talking to a sales call. They're interested, and I was like, I was able, I think, to upsell them just because I didn't need to update. I haven't updated it in a few years. And I'm I feel comfortable at this point selling it. I'm like, like my modules, you know, that stuff. But yeah, it's done close to 100,000 from just that course alone.
Taylor (17:05)
huh.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (17:16)
⁓ so we've also done, there's an organization, what they do is they lead conversations around like DEI through storytelling. And so they would work with me to, ⁓ create these sessions. So they would work at companies like Google, General Mills, like these larger companies. ⁓ and they would watch like a film and they would have me kind of create like a panel type of questionnaire thing.
from this movie all around like mental health. So whether it was on like veterans in mental health or women in mental health, whoever it was, right? And so they paid me like 14 grand to be able to do that. ⁓ And so, yeah, we've done a variety of things like that training series for folks. I once collaborated with another mental health ⁓ entrepreneur and we did like a tour together where we would just do like speaking to students and like staff and that we did like.
23,000 from. And then we do keynotes and speaking engagements. And so all of these kind of like fall under the realm. And most often than not, there's some kind of funnel, right? So that I'm able to upsell folks into additional services for like longevity purposes.
Taylor (18:23)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Would you say that most of like as a for you, your income, your salary, does most of it come from your business? ⁓
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (18:41)
versus.
Taylor (18:42)
versus like, I know that I saw that you do a little adjunct stuff, maybe, you know, like.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (18:49)
Yeah, like, so I've been full time in my business since 2020. So my like full time job is a school social worker. And then in 2020, height of the pandemic, quit my quit that and went full time. So I've been doing this full time. I adjunct, depending on what courses are available here in there. But if anyone knows anything about adjuncting, first of all, you've heard some numbers, right? Like, I get paid adjuncting like 2000 for the semester.
Taylor (18:53)
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (19:17)
It's going towards paying down debt or something.
Taylor (19:20)
Okay,
okay, got it. I'm not familiar with the with that salary either. Okay, interesting.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (19:24)
Yeah, so
it's very, I'm teaching at a community college, so it's like super duper low. That's about it. So I adjunct, but then it's all in my business. So if anything, it's more so between my B2B and B2C. B2B is about 80-ish percent of our revenue. And then the B2C is about 20-ish percent from there. So that's like the work we've done with like master classes. When I used to run the social entrepreneurship incubator.
Taylor (19:29)
Okay.
Gotcha.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (19:53)
I do VIP intensives, which are really popular. I do one-to-one consulting with social workers. So the B2C in the whole grand scheme of things has done around 70,000. But overall, the business has done, over the course of the year, is around 600,000 so far.
Taylor (20:11)
Mm hmm.
Wow. Awesome. What let's get into talking about social workers who are interested and the beginnings of starting consulting. How do do it? Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (20:29)
because that's always I am in a few different like social like Facebook groups. It's always the first question. I don't know how to start. ⁓
Taylor (20:36)
Yeah. Yes. And
you know what? I saw you share a Facebook live once, or maybe it was Instagram live, about this. And I was like, I need to get her on the podcast. Anyways. Yes. A lot of people want to know. And it's so ambiguous.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (20:43)
Yeah.
It
is it is but it isn't I think I think what happens is a lot of us overthink it and Is that we think it has to be like all of these things set up in place before I can like Open for business, right? Is that actually you can get started before even having an official business thing before having an LLC before having a business bank account and and so it really starts off with
One, what is it that I want to do? Because we can very, very easily get caught up in doing things we don't want to do, just because we know how to do it. Right? Like, I fell in that trap where someone's like, oh, like, you want someone to create like a resource down? I like, I'll do it. And I was like, I hate doing this stuff. Like, why do I do this? And so what do you actually want to do? But what's most important, what is needed in the market? Like, what is n-
Taylor (21:26)
Great.
You
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (21:43)
because you also don't want to become like one of many, many, many,
And so a mixture of what do you want to do? Right? What are you really good at? What are you really passionate about? What do you want to do? What is the market looking for? So where's the gap that exists in order to find that it's just questions talking to people, right? Going on Facebook. What are people's complaining about? What are people commenting about? Right? What are your friends talk at brunch? What do we all need? And then you have to find what's called your UVP, your unique value proposition. Why you? Why you?
Taylor (22:04)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (22:18)
And so an easiest way to start there is with your network, right? Meaning that it might be, you wanna say, I know what, I went into consulting, I want to help nonprofits to develop youth programs, right? Because I've been doing it for so long, I'm so great at it, da da da, I have data, know, your resume is off the charts, cool. You know what, let me just go back to Boys and Girls Club I used to work at. My boss still works there, she loved me. Hey, do you guys need help revamping your youth program?
Taylor (22:36)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm, I love it. ⁓
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (22:48)
Boom. That's all it is. Cause they're probably
like, my God, I remember you. You were so great. Come on, are short staff. can definitely use them. You know what I'm saying? And you don't need all this. You don't have to, they can fill out the W nine as yourself, right? Which is like the form that they are hiring somebody outside of their business or organization. You just fill it out as yourself. You put in your social security number, you assign it, they pay you.
Taylor (22:57)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (23:12)
I would just recommend if you don't have your business bank account yet, just have a separate checking account within your TD, whatever bank you have, just make a separate one so that money can go in there because you don't want to commingle funds. But that's it. That's all you need to do is get started. You don't need a website, you don't need a logo, get out of Canvas, stop making stuff. you talk to people. What do you want to do, right? And seeing if there is that need that's
Taylor (23:34)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. I love that. Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (23:39)
we do. think it's an
issue that I've seen with, and I don't, I guess it's a little bit of a skewed view, but it's an issue that I do see with a lot of women, a lot of women of color, is that we think we need to have all of the things perfect first before we love. And it's just so wrong. It's taking us so long. And what happens is, then you go to some conference that your job's sending you to, they got Billy and Bob up on the stage and Rebecca talking about believing you're
Taylor (23:55)
we really do before we launch.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (24:09)
and they have no type of credentials, they have no training, they just are really good at marketing and selling. And so they're getting paid $20,000 and you're sitting there like, I could have done this in my sleep. But you're too good. Playing around in the camera.
Taylor (24:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (24:26)
And the colors,
we trying to get a brand shoe. ⁓ my goodness, when I first got started, I remember I took my bar stool from the kitchen with a couple of books in a shoe box and I propped, this is before like everyone got into like tripods, propped my phone up and put that, I sat in front of some plants and just took some pictures. That was my headshot for two years.
Taylor (24:52)
Yeah,
yeah, it can be that simple. And I think from your, it sounds like from your experience, people who need your services and are willing to pay for your expertise don't really care about that stuff because it's about you.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (25:10)
And especially when you're starting with your network. They already know you, they already like you, they already trust you. They don't need to see all of the things. They just need to, they just need you to be able to show up and make sure you do a great job. That's gonna be it.
Taylor (25:14)
True.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that. ⁓ So, you know, maybe once people are starting to get their groove with maybe getting a contract or two, or maybe they're still kind of struggling, you start with a network, but what else, I don't know, other recommendations do you have for like marketing or finding contracts? Like how do you, I guess two questions.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (25:26)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Taylor (25:51)
recommendations
for people, then also how are contracts coming to you? What have you seen?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (25:56)
Mm-hmm.
So...
The hard part that gets a lot of folks tripped up, and I still say even I find myself in this bubble, right, is we do have to show up. Showing up can look different, right? I don't mean just like making quotes on Instagram. It is, well, where are the people who would purchase my services? Are they at certain conferences? So maybe you're applying to be a speaker at the conference. Are they... ⁓
Taylor (26:20)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (26:28)
the networking events in the community, at the chamber or at some place like you, where can you show up consistently? Is it on LinkedIn? Right? That's I think what gets people tripped up is that like we're not putting ourselves out there so people even know that we do the thing and that we can people, right? So once you kind of get some get some things going, um, wait, sorry, what's the second question? Oh, how do you get content? Like how do you
Taylor (26:34)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Right.
You, yeah, how do you,
how have contracts come to you?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (26:57)
So a big one I still do is ⁓ conferences. And so I will go to conferences, I apply to speak. ⁓ So they might do a call for proposals. And so you create whatever the name of your title thing is, your abstract, sometimes I don't even have an abstract, just like what are the session objectives, right? And you apply. So in order to know though what conferences to go to, you gotta start with, well, again, who do I want to serve? Who are the people? Where do they go?
Where do their jobs send them? Where is their PD money going? Where are they showing up and getting professional development, right? That is where you would want to apply. So I didn't talk to folks. like, I haven't talked to my friends. One of the ones I just went to, which was new, it was a friend's friend. I was going through my LinkedIn contacts and I was like, let me just try to DM some people. And I was like, hey, I haven't talked to you in while. Like, what's up? We hopped on a little virtual coffee chat and she told me about this new conference. And I was like, I've never heard of it. And she's like, I think you would love it. I applied.
They said yes, and it was a phenomenal time. got like 50 leads from that conference. so, yes ma'am. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. It doesn't necessarily mean that I got like 50 new contracts, right? But yeah, it is the ability to get in front of a larger group of people, especially if when they are like national conferences, right? Cause now you're gonna get them all over.
Taylor (27:59)
50, five zero. Wow, that's a lot.
You're like, that's nothing. ⁓ just going through my day, Fitney Leeds.
Totally, but still.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (28:24)
the country. And so conferences are a very good way to be able to do that. And being able to speak at them, if you can. Another layer, and this is if you, this is a little bit more financial investment is to be a vendor. So sometimes a conference will allow you to be a vendor. And so I've gone and I set up my table and all the things, right? I have a myriad of pictures of how this has changed over the years where it literally just started with like,
little like if my little my little papers and I would take this I got my house like a little box I just like turn it sideways and like take to my like fake logo on the side of it I did some like jolly rancher on the table call it a day and now I've evolved to like a tablecloth and all that kind of stuff but the benefit is that you know not everyone's gonna come to your session so now you have the opportunity to get people who are walking by you shake hands all of that and what you want to do in those instances is you want to have something of value even after your session that gets their email
Taylor (29:14)
Yeah?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (29:23)
Right, because that's, can tell you, so I got these 50 leads, well, I have to nurture them. I can't just say like, okay, well, reach out if you want. I get your emails, so I offer them a free resource guide that was based off of what I was talking about. And now I can nurture those, right? And now the calls get set up. So conferences are really good one, one way to get contracts. Still a lot of it's my network. So one of the ones that I have done, let me see, I was just trying to write this down earlier. They've paid me.
Taylor (29:36)
you
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (29:51)
Almost 20 grand is an organization my best friend works in, where I used to also kind of work, right? So I've got a lot of old employers, almost every old employer, past employers hired me. Whether in some people I was even an intern for when I was doing a master's program. After, yeah, I just go back and then it's like, yeah, come do a training. Yeah, come do a workshop, right?
Taylor (29:58)
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
love that. And
that's the piece that you were saying of like, we have to step out of our comfort zone and talk about ourselves a little bit, what we can offer, which I know people struggle with, same, but yeah, we gotta push ourselves.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (30:25)
Mm-hmm.
And what's interesting is like we, what I've noticed, I've worked with over 200 entrepreneurs, right? And we want the strangers to pay us, or we're trying to get the strangers attractions, showing up on Instagram, posting all these things, da da da, but we're so afraid to go into our phone book. Like we're so afraid to ask people who know us. And so we're taking the hard way, and we don't have to.
Taylor (30:52)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (30:59)
You know, and I tried, I'm like, I remember I ⁓ someone from college, you were loose friends in college, but I was like literally combing through my entire phone book, started at A, went through every single person, looking them up, where do you work, what do you do, where you at, saw this one person, he's still on my phone, I'm not gonna say his name, but still on my phone like, Dash LaSalle, which is where I went to school, like I don't even have his last name still on my phone.
Taylor (30:59)
Right.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (31:24)
And I was like, hey, I see you work at this place. Like, it's been a while. How are you? Da da da. And so he was like, oh my God, we love this. Like, we don't have anyone talking about this stuff at our school. So it started off with a virtual workshop for like $300. Then the next year turned into a $10,000 contract. I hadn't talked to that man in eight years, nine years. And so it's just like, it's in our phone book where we're so afraid to talk to people that we know. We'd rather just try to like,
Taylor (31:35)
Mmm.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (31:54)
host about things and be on social media and then we're at the things are taking longer, right? And so in the business where we talk about having either a hot, warm, a cold lead and your cold leads are people who have no idea who you are, right? It just takes longer to convert those people because again, they don't know you. So before they fork over some dollars, they gotta get warmed up. But people who already know and trust you,
Taylor (31:56)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (32:19)
they're your warm leads or your hot leads who mean that they're already like interested in your services, it's a faster yes. It's a faster way to conversion. And so when it comes down to like being able to get the contracts, a lot of mine still to this day are people, I brought friends, jobs, people, places I used to work, and then referrals. They refer me to other people. And so I still do some like cold campaigns and all that, but time and time again, it's coming from the conferences I go to, I speak at.
Taylor (32:26)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (32:48)
people are re-signing on referrals or just my own.
Taylor (32:53)
Mm-hmm. How many conferences are you going to a year approximately?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (32:58)
⁓ this year I only had the two when I was at like the slow down because physical ailments, ⁓ but at the height of things I was doing maybe four to five. And some of them were like, it was a mixture. Some of them might've been like, I was keynoting a conference, right? So I was getting paid to be there, ⁓ which was helpful. ⁓ sometimes they're varied depending on what
Taylor (33:03)
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (33:24)
of my business I'm tackling. So I went to few social work conferences to talk about the work I do for social workers in business, or they are like education focused conferences for my folks in like the education world. But yeah, about like four to five. But even so, there is, which is always available to everybody, is you have a chamber of commerce right in your town. And so the chamber of commerce is your town and within your state ⁓ is all about connecting businesses, right?
Taylor (33:37)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (33:53)
to each other. And so they usually have some kind of networking event. They may have subgroups of like a woman in business, entrepreneur group, going to those places will really help you expand your network tenfold. I'm speaking on a panel for the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce coming up in a few weeks, right? So now I'm going access to the entire state, right? And showed up, had a networking event. I went, I shook some hands, I sent some follow-up emails. I continued to follow up with people. And then here we are.
Taylor (34:11)
Wow. ⁓
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (34:21)
And so it's just, you gotta show up. You gotta show up and meet people that I think a lot of us are afraid to do, which is weird as social workers. Like we are trained to work with people and we're like, we don't want that.
Taylor (34:21)
⁓
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah, definitely. In terms of pricing our services and, you know, the struggles that we have with asking for money, talking about money, all the things, ⁓ talk to us a little bit about just your
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (34:39)
Okay.
Hmm, any more?
Taylor (34:55)
recommendations for people, for feeling comfortable with charging, whatever, and how do you price your services too?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (35:01)
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so when I have done these like trainings for social workers a few times, I talk about how a lot of us tend to under price because we are making assumptions about what people can afford. So a lot of times we haven't even asked people and ask the right people. I'm not talking about like you make a service and you ask like your mom, she's not your target. She'd be like, girl, now you're discouraged. You gotta talk to the right people.
Right? And so we make assumptions about what people can and can't afford. And that's usually rooted in our own self-limiting beliefs as social workers, because we sometimes have a hard time fathoming how much we can get paid for stuff. Like, when I tell people, like, oh yeah, I've gotten paid to speak $5,000 for one hour, people are like, what? I could never. Why? Right? But we have this limiting belief. So we underprice our services because of that. And so one, it's like being able to do our own money mindset.
Taylor (35:45)
100%.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (36:03)
And I told you I had the amazing Eva on before. ⁓ talking about what is the money story? What is it that we are holding onto, that we are now projecting onto our services and our business? The second piece is, which is why I was glad I got the tech early, to switch to B2B. Majority of us want to serve communities in need. We want to continue to work with communities that don't have resources, are underfunded themselves, what have you.
Taylor (36:03)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (36:32)
Well, yeah, those people themselves do not have the money, but the organizations will have the money. And so, and sort of trying to go and work with moms and fathers and you know, where do they work? Where do they hang out? Where are they going and spending time? Can they pay you? And so that's how I still, I would say at this point, it's almost 100%, but it's a little bit like a 99. I'm still working with...
Taylor (36:39)
Mmm.
Interesting.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (37:02)
first generation communities, low income communities, like people that serve those communities, but they have budgets to pay to bring me in to do the work. And so it's also reframing how we are going about the services. And then the last piece again around the mindset is we get very wrapped up in that like we're selling ourselves and it's not, it's the service, right? And so if we think this community,
Taylor (37:12)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (37:33)
needs help, they need to have better strategies to combat burnout, for example, right? And I have sat in all of these things and I have this solution. No one is talking about X. Well, now you're doing a disservice to that community by not selling that, by you keeping yourself back, right? And so we have to think about that. It's the service, it's not us. So even if they say no, because you will get some no's, that's just the reality of it.
Taylor (37:50)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (38:02)
That's also a good pricing to figure out like your sweet spot of pricing. You want to get some yeses obviously, but you also want to get some nos. That is how you start to find your sweet spot. There's no magic formula. I hate people like here's this magic thing and da da da. It's going to be different. You need to know your market, right? But to find that sweet spot, you want to get a good amount of yeses, but you're also going to get some nos. And it's not no to Christina. It's no to Christina's service. And my little asterisk is right now.
Taylor (38:10)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (38:31)
I'm gonna start back. I'm gonna try to move in next summer. I'm gonna try you again in two months, right? It's a no right now. And so it's not something that we take personally. And so I think that's also why that we struggle is that we think it's like, can't, it's your business. It's the value. And so when we can start to charge and price from a values perspective, what is the value to this client? What is the transformation for them, right?
That makes it easier. So I don't just talk, for example, when I'm doing work with education, my education folks about the service. I'm like, well, we know that you want to increase your retention. You want to increase your graduation rates. That's invaluable. You want to be able to do that. We can't keep missing this piece of the conversation, right? And that's how they can understand why it's impactful. Another piece is that we don't charge by the hour. Never charge by the hour. So it's not like, oh, a one hour workshop is that, because then people get real funny style.
real quick. They're like, if an hour is $2,500, can we do like 45 minutes? No. We price by the project. We price by the service, right?
Taylor (39:30)
Ooh, how so?
by
the project or service.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (39:46)
We
do not price by hourly.
Taylor (39:49)
So when you're communicating, you're saying,
I'm offering this service, this training, it's this much, and it would be for this long.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (39:55)
Yes,
yep, that's exactly what it is. I let them know what it is, right? Because they're also what you're not, when you end up pricing by hour, what you're not factoring into is all of the other pieces to it, right? The prep work, the admin work, all of the, I was gonna say the years you're bringing into it, right? I'm priced by the service. And then also you price.
Taylor (39:59)
Hmm
your experience all the time. Yeah. Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (40:22)
by format, is it in person or virtual? Because it shouldn't be the same price. If I got to get in my car and drive somewhere, now I can no longer be here working in my business, it's a different time. You got to your phone cost somewhere. And so those are some things that I bring to the conversation when it's around pricing. And then depending on whatever the service is, we might get a little creative in some ways. But yeah, so it really just starts off with
Taylor (40:35)
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (40:50)
our own mindset around it, right? How do we not price out of fear, out of guilt or like carrying our own assumptions into it. But also do so ethically. I just thought about this as a little asterisk here is if you're just super new to this, not necessarily new to your experience, maybe you haven't worked with an organization in this capacity before, I don't think it's ethical to be like, it's $10,000.
Taylor (41:19)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (41:20)
Like you're still, are, you yourself are still trialing things out. And so you do want to bring relevance into this. And so when people have always asked, well, how much free should I do versus not free and whatever, it is your business. You need to make, as in business owner, you need to make that decision for yourself. Right. We, though, we get caught too long in doing things for free because we, again, we're waiting for perfection. But if you truly feel like, Hey, this is going to be an invaluable experience.
Taylor (41:23)
Right.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (41:50)
Um, I maybe can get a, I'm going to ask for three referrals from this. I'm going to record this so I can get some visual proof that I know how to do this. You should get something like Denzel says, I'm leaving here with something. Like if you're not getting paid, you're going to get something out of it. Right. But don't stay there too long. If you are doing things for free, um, get referrals out of it, get testimonials out of it, get video out of it. Like you should be getting things out of this. But even if you, even if you
Taylor (42:18)
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (42:20)
start off with like a speaking engagement or training. Maybe you do it for $500. That's just a starting point. It can always grow. I once, when I first started doing this like online course that I was selling, I once, I think I was on a phone call and I told them it was 150. This is before I was, I don't structure it this way. Before I was doing it by student, also a terrible idea, but it was like 150 per student. And they were like, oh, that's it?
Taylor (42:29)
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (42:49)
I had a call two hours later, it went up to 250. You can always change it. It's your business. Do whatever the heck you want to do, right?
Taylor (42:58)
like you're
saying you went back to them and you were like, actually, no, it's two 50.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (43:03)
⁓
I I honored that price that person but the next phone call from another organization, I raised the price. Yeah. And so we get everyone's like, why don't you charge up? And people hate that I say this, but it's true. Pick a number. It's just a starting point, especially it can always grow. The next person you charge more, the next person after that you can charge more. Then when you get settled in, you don't want to keep charging every person more. You do get into a place where you do raise your rates by a certain percentage every year. ⁓
Taylor (43:06)
gotcha. I see. I see. ⁓
Yeah, it's just a starting point. And yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (43:32)
getting started out, it's pick a number. Pick a number that scares you. I say pick a number that scares you, but you can stay confident with your chest.
Taylor (43:34)
Yeah.
Ooh.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (43:42)
You know what saying? They're like, um,
it's gonna be $3,000. I know. I need you to say it.
Taylor (43:46)
No, lower.
Yeah. And I think what you're saying of, know, just getting in there, getting that experience, providing the service. But also I think that pre the pre-service experience of talking with the people, talking about your what you're going to charge and just the logistics stuff to you, I think is also just as important potentially as providing the service.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (43:57)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And
don't be afraid to ask them what their budget is. Like I've told folks who are like, well, I'm like, you want to ask them or I just assume they didn't tell me a number. So I assume they don't have a budget. I'm like, why? Ask. That's what we're money. On my Calendly form, actually, to book a discovery call. That's one of the questions. What is your budget? And it says our services start at $3,000. What is your budget? Right.
Taylor (44:27)
We need to talk about money. We need to talk about money.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (44:42)
And so that's helpful. People know this is not stuff we were doing for free. Do you work for free? No, so I'm not working for free. Right? And so it's that perspective around it. And that's your mind brain. Like our counterparts are charging crazy amounts of money for.
Taylor (44:46)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
When you say
counterparts, people who are not social workers?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (45:04)
not social workers, maybe like our white males that are, they're charging crazy amounts for stuff without the qualifications. And I think that's one of the things that like, that's why I love doing this work with social workers. I'm like, we are so skilled. how many more degrees do we need? My goodness. And I'm just like, I get it if you, but sometimes we're like, I don't feel qualified enough. I'm like,
Taylor (45:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, we are.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (45:34)
Go look at the Beckys and the Bobbies and that, I'm telling you, we just want to put our work out there for our communities. They need us, they need our brilliance, right? And grow that confidence. And the only way to get better is you have to do it. That you have to do it. Like we can't keep running from it. So that's why I say, start with your home girl. Hey, did your job hire people to come in and do this? Can I come in and do this thing?
Taylor (45:38)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And grow that confidence.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (46:00)
Right, start with the people who you already know. It's a lot easier than trying to sell to a stranger. Build up and then I asked him, hey, how much did you charge these? How much did you guys pay this company? And they were like, girl, I don't know, I'm gonna find out for you. Thank you. Right, so now I'm doing market research. How much are my competitors getting paid to do certain things, right? And so you always wanna be iterating. That's also part of this work is that you wanna be getting feedback. You wanna be understanding things so that you continue to iterate and.
Taylor (46:05)
Right.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What does the negotiating look like? you, like, do people try to negotiate with you? Businesses? Do you do that with them? Like, what are those conversations like?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (46:41)
Yeah, not so much anymore, to be honest. Because for where my business is in order to continue to have certain profit margins, there's not really much I can change. And so the only thing it might be is like, if they have a much lower budget, it's just, well, if I can't offer the service at that level, I might just like refer them to someplace else. Like, so when some person wanted me to do a training, and I think their budget was, $300. I was like, so like, just, there's nothing I can do for
Taylor (46:44)
Okay.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (47:11)
So even our online course, which is already done and that just that starts at $3,000. So there's not so it just depends on like how low that they're if they're trying to go. You know, maybe it's OK, I can't do in person, but I can do it in virtually. OK, I can't do three sessions, but I can do one session, right? It just depends on where you're at. it's OK to walk away. It's like it's you don't need to be for everybody like that is OK. It's OK that they can afford you.
Taylor (47:17)
Mm-hmm.
Gotcha.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (47:41)
That's fine. I actually
Taylor (47:41)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (47:42)
was up in a conference in Albany and I don't remember this person. He remembers me from a conference three years ago and he was like, I, he's like, I still, he's like, you don't know I do this. He's like, but I still put your name in rooms. He's like, cause we can't afford you, but other people can. So he's like, I just saw other people about you. I was like, thank you. I appreciate it. Unfortunately, we just don't have the budget.
Taylor (48:02)
Aww, that's nice.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (48:07)
⁓ Or sometimes I work with them to get creative. And so I might say, can you partner with another organization or can you do this, right, to help kind of cover the cost? But sometimes it's just, unfortunately, this doesn't work out. Let us know when we're funding and then we can talk.
Taylor (48:20)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, gotta stick with your guns, because like you said, got profit margins and you got bills to pay and people to pay and all those things. How many employees do you have?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (48:26)
Yeah.
Right now it's just back down to me. No, well, I have my contractors, like social work contractors, and so I tap them. There's six of those, and they're around the country. And so I tap into them just as projects come up. I'm also trying to face myself out of a lot of that work. So even I have one coming up here in New Jersey, I just still have somebody else doing it. I was like, I just, I don't want to do those anymore. I'm like shifting in the way that I am as the owner of the company.
Taylor (48:36)
Okay. Okay. Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (49:01)
in terms of what I am making myself available for. And then I just outsource for some of that stuff.
Taylor (49:07)
Yeah, tell us more about that and your decision to move that direction.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (49:14)
It has been, for lack of better term, awakening of like, there's stuff that I truly enjoy and I just haven't been able to make space to do it because I'm just so bogged down in the client work. And so I'm like, well, if I remove myself from it, then I have more opportunity to do the things that I want to do. So for example, one of the things I'm pitching for two of my education clients is to facilitate a retreat for them.
Like an offsite retreat, there's a really gorgeous space here in Jersey, but it's a different kind of retreat than they would do. ⁓ And so I love to host, I love to have like really nice dinners. loved it. So I'm trying to bring that to that space, right? Where I'm like, ⁓ they can pay me as like, it's for them just professional development. But I can curate an experience for them, ⁓ a professional development experience that's different than they're used to. We're not sitting in your conference room down the hall from your desk.
Taylor (49:58)
Mmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (50:11)
And then you're done and you go right back to clicking clacking up the computer. Right. And so I'm trying to bring more into more into how I just generally like to show up and how I want to tackle the market differently. So that's one. Another one is I'm on the back end. We'll see where this is by the time this publishes, but a big issue is with entrepreneurs, mostly like social entrepreneurs of color. Right.
Taylor (50:14)
Yes.
He
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (50:41)
As your question was, how do I get contracts? Well, what if I provided a service to close that opportunity gap? Meaning I help match the organizations with the social entrepreneurs.
Taylor (50:57)
it.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (50:58)
Because
I do that anyways at some points, or I'm like, hey, I don't do this, but I can connect you to this person. I know someone who can do this. Like I'm already doing it, but what if I just did that in a different way? And so not only are we providing the education and training for the social entrepreneurs, right? So that they can firm things up, right? That they can have better foundations, structures, and the that they're doing things. But then also now matching them with folks. Not that it's like there has to be these large companies, there's a whole middle market.
that can use our services, but we are not doing the work or we don't know how to find them or we're going on these network and we're doing all the things, well, how do I just close that gap a bit? So that's something that's also been working.
Taylor (51:39)
That is so cool. I know a lot of people, obviously you know a lot of people would be interested in that or you wouldn't be putting, yeah, wouldn't be putting your energy into that.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (51:39)
you
It was
all the reflection, a lot of talking to people. Even with me thinking about the retreat, I put this on my stories the other day. It was from someone who works at a university. She's seen me present and seen me speak and she's like, you are the perfect person for that. She was like, I would get my university pay to send me to something that you host. She was like, the way that you bring people together. She's like, I never seen you on Zoom, but she's like, being in that room with you, she was in the room three years ago.
She's like, three years ago, I still hold onto that. She's like, there's something about what you create in the rooms that you are in that it would be especially, I know, I was like, thank you. And so it's just the ability for me to evolve the way that I have just been doing this work. But it's getting the feedback from other people and being able to continue to iterate over time and continue to try new things so I can land where I'm at.
Taylor (52:23)
Wow.
Thank you so much.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. How are you keeping it sustainable for you, trying to make it sustainable? think part of what you said, think potentially is contributing to it being sustainable. But as a business owner, entrepreneur, like, how's the work-life balance? What are we doing to manage that?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (53:10)
The point of the season and I've leaned into, I think I understood that there are just seasons where I may need to give a little bit more. And then there are seasons of rest and sometimes those seasons are dictated by me. Sometimes seasons are dictated by the market. Right.
Taylor (53:11)
Mm-hmm
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (53:29)
For example, in that end of year, early year, people aren't buying. Okay, cool, let me use this as an opportunity to slow down, to recalibrate and do that, right? And so I've had to be intentional with that, because I can just keep going and going and going and going going, but I've had to say, how do we start being more intentional in this space? And so I've leaned into knowing that there's different seasons. Sustainability also looked like raising my prices.
because if everything is so cheap, then I need a lot more clients. And then that's going to burn me out. Right? Because again, this is my full-time job. This is how I make money. And so if, for example, if I was only still charging $500 for a workshop, I would do a whole lot of workshops a month to pay my bills. Right? But if I can adjust my services, have more value, and thereby increase my price, ⁓
Taylor (53:57)
Oooooh
Yes. ⁓
Yes.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (54:26)
Well, then I only need one client who's gonna pay me the $11,000 and I'm good, right, for that month. And so that's been really helpful for sustainability is really thinking about, well, what am I providing and at what price point for both myself, sustainability myself and sustainability for my business as well.
Taylor (54:43)
Yeah. And I think that can even go with the, be applicable to working with clients, right? And I think of private practice and people, you know, charging not enough. So they have to see so many clients so that they can, you know, so their business can be sustainable. Y'all it's okay to raise your prices, raise, raise your prices. Maybe just review them. This is your reminder. If you're listening to this, you got your own business review.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (54:53)
Okay.
Yeah.
Taylor (55:13)
Review what you're charging.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (55:13)
And even if
it's just starting small, right? And so say you have a self-pay private practice right now, maybe it's $100 a session. Let's bump it up to 110.
Give it a quarter, give it three months, then everybody comes in, maybe now it's 115, right? Like slowly start to build it if it's too scary to go from like 100 to like 150, that feels too large, just then start small. But we have to get into that practice of saying, I'm going to raise this one, because it is a business, which is why I always like these social work schools need to teach like business, and I'm trying to like create a social work entrepreneurship.
Taylor (55:26)
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (55:51)
like class to teach ⁓ because even as private practice, it's a business. so businesses weren't run by money. Not a business, right? And I don't think anyone is giving therapy as a hobby. And so if we think about it from that lens, I think it's weird because we don't want to come like put pricing to like mental health services.
Taylor (56:03)
Mm-hmm. Period.
Absolutely.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (56:21)
But we all know that we can serve better. This is not like an extreme example, but honestly, think this happens to people. We can serve better as a therapist if our light is on. Can we do therapy in the dark? You gotta pay your bills. We gotta do this, right? And so it's just thinking about it in that way for our own self-preservation, but also we can show up and better serve when we know that our light's not gonna get cut off in the middle of the session.
Taylor (56:32)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Totally agree. And I think this is a, yes, I know, I know we can talk about this for so long. I think this is good segue into our money moment chat, which for people who are not, she just gave me a funny look, which is why I'm laughing. ⁓ For people who are not familiar, her money moment, just talking about.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (56:51)
I have so many.
Do it now, you're gonna start.
Taylor (57:11)
Just money, trying to normalize those conversations in the social work community. So it could be a tip from the week, an insight. It literally could be anything. So, Christina, what do you have for your money moment?
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (57:28)
I have a short one a very long one. So my short one, and they go together, is you really have to, even if you are not a business owner yet, not an entrepreneur yet, you really have to know your dollars. And I say that because I have gotten myself as a business owner. I ran, I started my business running the money piece, how I ran my money personally.
Taylor (57:30)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (57:56)
Right?
growing up, I'm from a single parent household, immigrant household. Where it worked is you get money, you spend money, you get money, you spend money. Right? And so you see money in the account and you're like, I can do all of these things, da da da da da. Not really understanding all of the other components to like putting things aside and being more intentional with where the dollars are going, what's going in. And so I then got myself wrapped up in like, ⁓ I just got approved for an Amex Platinum.
no limit credit card. Oh, let me do this. Let me swipe this. Let me do this. I can pay it off. I got this contract coming in, but not actually really looking at the money of it all. Right. And so I actually did a whole YouTube video on this where I talk about as a business, right, which I'm not ashamed because I think business debt is also really normal in the business community. But I'm at about 70 grand in business debt. No, it's about 60 now. I've paying a lot of it off. I'm at 60 grand in business debt. From, because I was just like not looking at this.
Taylor (58:48)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (58:55)
I'm like, this software is this. this is this. this is this. this is this, right? So even today, I love ⁓ Monarch money. Yeah, and so I just set it up for my business, right? I used it my personal life. I like, let me just set up for my business. And it has just become a staple where I'm like, I have to know where every dollar is going. I need to know what subscriptions I have. Where am I overpaying? Do I even still use this thing? Because before, I just was like...
Taylor (59:03)
Love, Monarch.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (59:21)
Okay, like literally I would make $30,000 in a month and be like, where the hell did that go? Before paying myself.
Taylor (59:27)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (59:31)
Even now, like, my business has done over 600 grand and I'm like, I have not paid myself $600,000. So I'm like, where has this gone? And so it for me has just been, I wish when I got started, I from the jump was a lot more conscious around my own money habits personally and not letting that spill into how I ran my business financials because I just.
Taylor (59:57)
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (59:58)
was not
being intentional around it, or I just would see these large sums of money, or like my account would have, we had like 30, 40 grand, and I'm like, my god, I all this money. And then within, you know, whatever it's gone. Cause I'm like, let me hire this person. ⁓ I need this expert. Let me do all these things. And then I blow it off, right? Without being really intentional around it. And so it has just been very rewarding for myself now to like really more empowering to say like, no, I know exactly where this is. I'm logging in, I'm tracking this, I'm saying no to this.
da da da da. People are like, oh we can do this on a payment plan. Nope. Like one of my things is if it was double this, would I still pay for it? And so someone's trying to get me to come to this like retreat. And it's not until like end of next year, but it's like $10,000. And I'm like, she said, we can do a payment plan. I'm like, well if it was 20,000, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. So it's just a way to get myself in check.
Taylor (1:00:46)
Mm-hmm. ⁓
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:00:54)
Right, if this was Inverseware software, they're like, oh, this software is $4 a Okay, well, if it was 80, what I wouldn't, like, no, screw it, I'm not doing it. I had to put some parameters in place because I just was just like, okay, it's all right, right, it's all it's all right. And because what ends up happening is, again, this is my full-time job, I do this day in day out. If there's nothing in the business account, then how do I pay myself? And so.
Taylor (1:01:07)
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:01:18)
And then I got my own stuff to do. And so I was like, we got to readjust this, right? But it took a long time for me to get there. And it's really, you know, rude awakening to be like, hey, you guys are looking at your money differently. Hey, you guys are targeting people more. Hey, like if you have goals and aspirations that are not going to happen if you keep operating the way that you are operating. And so it was a very, very rude awakening, but I needed it for sure.
Taylor (1:01:39)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:01:46)
would have done much differently when I started.
Taylor (1:01:50)
Yeah, and that's a, I don't know, that's just kind of an interesting parallel with our money habits in our personal life and then the money habits in our business. I've never really kind of thought about those two together because we...
Yeah, your whatever habits that you have personally in your money, like those are going to, that is how you're gonna manage your business probably, unless you get like special training or you have some tools that you're using, but yeah, that's really fascinating.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:02:26)
Yeah, and it can be very easy to get wrapped up in it. Especially when you start to get large amounts of money, right? Where you get for 20 grand. It can be very easy to spend that. And be like, oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, Or pay yourself a huge bunch. But then you're like, need my business to keep going, right? Like there's expenses every month. You want to have a good profit margin. And so that's another thing I I unfortunately learned was, you know, when you work with accountants, there are like, have a low profit margin, right? Because then you don't have to pay a lot of taxes.
Taylor (1:02:32)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:02:56)
But as a business, if you then try to get a loan and you don't have a healthy profit margin, they're like, no.
Taylor (1:03:05)
Yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:03:06)
And so where other folks, right, who were and are more financially savvy, right, they can get loans to help support the work that they're doing. Where I'm like, dang, I can't even do that because I was following other people who told me to do this thing and it's not biting me in the ass.
Taylor (1:03:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Interesting. A lot of lessons in entrepreneurship, aren't there? Real quick, are some, what are your like favorite tools that you use in your business? You've mentioned Monarch.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:03:29)
A lot of lessons, I think. A lot of Yes.
like software?
Taylor (1:03:45)
Software tools, yeah.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:03:48)
Definitely Monarch. I use right now for my CRM and just like organization. I use a mixture of Notion and monday.com. Obviously QuickBooks, so I gotta get paid until I invoice my people. And I think those are some of my favorites. Yeah. Nothing crazy.
Taylor (1:04:07)
Okay, awesome. I love it. So
thank you so much for being here. I want you to tell last thing just how can you help social workers like if they were to work with you, like what kind of support are you able to give and all the things that you do.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:04:25)
Yeah,
so ⁓ right now we offer strategy sessions. So folks can just book on the one hour strategy session, which we can get a lot done in an hour. I just did one with a social worker the other day and she was like in tears because of just how clarifying it was. And I loved that. It's just one of my strengths of like, you have all these ideas and like, we just bring it together and help you see that this is possible.
Taylor (1:04:43)
Aww.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:04:51)
We do VIP intensive. So those are four hours, virtually, unless they're like close in like Jersey. So there are four hours where we are doing planning, strategy, direction, mapping, marketing, selling, all of that stuff. So that's four hours. And then we have our one-on-ones. And so that's over a set of three months where we work together one-on-one as they are building their business. then lastly, we have some digital.
So we have like courses, we have one on speaking engagements, so how to land four figure speaking engagements, as well as idea to income, how to take the idea that you have and turn it into a profitable business. And so I'll have a promo code for all these services for your listeners.
Taylor (1:05:38)
Awesome. We will put all those in the show notes and where can people find you, connect with you, all that stuff.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:05:45)
Yeah, so on Instagram, I'm Chrissy.Broderick, C-H-R-I-S-S-I-E, and on LinkedIn, Christina Broderick Roy's LSW. ⁓
Taylor (1:05:54)
Awesome. This was amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone for listening and being here and just as the podcast is growing, it's been really fun to see, ⁓ you know, where everyone's listening from. So really appreciate you tuning in and I'm going to do the corny thing and say, please write us on Spotify or Apple so that people can find us. all right.
Christina Broderick-Royes, LSW (1:06:21)
Thanks
Taylor (1:06:24)
We will chat in two weeks. Thanks everyone.