134: What Therapists Were Never Taught About Money With Randall Avery

A Simple Therapy Podcast:

Honest Conversations on Therapy, Mental Health, Healing and Self-Growth.

In this episode of A Simple Therapy Podcast, Sindee Gozansky talks with Randall Avery, CFP and owner of Deasil Wealth Management, about the part of private practice ownership most clinicians were never trained for: money. Randall built his career in corporate financial planning, but it wasn’t until a therapist friend described the impact of her work that he found the “soul” missing from the numbers. His central reframe for the conversation: every practice owner is quietly running two sets of books, business and personal, and most therapists have only ever been taught to ignore both.

Together, they work through what it actually looks like to build financial competence without shame. Randall walks through the natural progression from spreadsheets to QuickBooks to a bookkeeper, breaks down the retirement account ladder (SEP IRA, solo 401K, SIMPLE IRA), and shares his rule of thumb for cash cushions. Underneath the mechanics, Sindee and Randall keep returning to the emotional core: the shame clinicians carry around money, the training that told them profit shouldn’t matter, and how staying “on offense” rather than reactive can quiet a lot of that anxiety before it starts.

00:48 – Meet Randall Avery

03:05 – Finding the “Soul” in Financial Planning

05:30 – Running Two Sets of Books

06:22 – Building Business Equity Through Systems

09:10 – The Belief That Keeps Clinicians Stuck

11:15 – Nobody Cares What You Know Until They Know You Care

14:53 – Know Your Numbers: Budgeting Basics

15:53 – Where Taxes and Reinvestment Fit In

18:01 – From Spreadsheets to QuickBooks to a Bookkeeper

20:08 – SEP IRA, Solo 401K, and SIMPLE IRA Explained

27:25 – Building Your Cash Cushion

28:29 – Taking Care of Employees Financially