In the video below, the topic of the day is salary positions versus hourly positions for clinical and educational professionals.
I know a lot of the readers are SLPs. We might have some other types of therapists and teachers, some school administrators, of other related professionals.
To learn more, watch the video below:
Video Transcript:
Good morning everybody, it’s Dr. Karen. I am super excited to be with you this morning. So the topic of the day is salary positions versus hourly positions for clinical and educational professionals. I know a lot of the people in this group are SLPs. We might have some other types of therapists and teachers, some school administrators, of other related professionals.
But really the point of this talk today is just to talk a little bit about the pros and cons of the different options we have as far as its work and really when we have a full time job, just the other options that we have as far as earning money on the side, for a couple of different reasons.
So a lot of us might want to do this just to be able to earn money on the side. Maybe stay in our current position and just have something else, have some additional sources of income. And then some of us might want to be doing something on the side in order to set ourselves up to do something else for that next step.
So there are a lot of different reasons why people pursue side incomes. But regardless, we want to be able to consider the options and just think about the different models that we have available to us.
So today I’m going to talk about the two most common that are seen today for the majority of our field, which is some physicians that are salaried, where you get a set salary for the year or whatever that time period is, or until you get a raise versus hourly positions.
And then I will mention a little bit at the end, some other options. Obviously in this group, I do talk about being able to start a business and also just some other different business models there. But I wanted to just talk about the mindset behind salaried versus hourly positions because obviously you can’t completely get away from it.
It is the world that we live in. However, it’s just we want to, we want to just have the right mindset when we’re going through and just thinking about our options. So let’s start with salary positions first. This is one that I am, I’d say I probably have the most experience with in my professional life.
I was a school SLP for 14 years, so throughout that entire time I had a salary position. I also took on some adjunct work, and during that time period I would get a specific dollar amount or specific salary for that particular course that I was teaching.
And then when I was interviewing after that, when I was looking at different positions after I got my doctorate, I was looking for school administration and I was looking for higher ed as well. And so those would have been salaried positions as well. So let’s talk a little bit about the pros and cons.
So obviously the thing for me that was the hardest when I did decide to walk away from that, and when I first started thinking about walking away from that is that there were a lot of good things about that model that provided a lot of security for me.
So for example, when you have a salary position, obviously the biggest, one of the biggest benefits is that you know exactly what you’re going to make. I remember when I was, let’s see.
Back in 2011 when I was going through my divorce, I was sitting down with my brother in law and we were going through my budget and figuring out like, “How much do I need in my emergency fund?” and “How much do I need here?”
“How much do I need here?” and he made the point of saying that, a lot of people say you need, I mean, I’ve, I’ve heard so many different things for emergency funds. I’ve heard some people say, six to eight months of expenses. I know people who are even more conservative that say that you should have 12 months salary.
So there’s a lot of different things, but, I think I had at that time, maybe about three to six months in my savings. Where if I lost my job, I could get by for a good three to six months before things were to get really tight. So, and again, that was living expenses, not income. And so my brother in law made a point to me, you know what?
Like you’re in a position where you’ve got a salary and you’ve got a contract for the next year. So as long as you don’t do anything stupid, you know, don’t do anything that’s gonna make you lose your job or anything like that.
If you are in one of those positions where you pretty much know you’re going to get re-signed, you know what you’re going to make. So he said, you know what? That formula where certain people, if they’ve got a business, if they’ve got a position where they work on commission, if they have a position where they work hourly, but they don’t always know how many hours they’re going to get, they don’t know what their income is.
Whereas if you have a salaried position, you know what you’re going to make so you can budget. So he’s like, well. I guess if you’re going to go and use that formula of, you know, six to 12 months income, it’s probably okay for you for now to be on that lower end. That was just his opinion. Other people might fight me on that, but he said, you know what, you, you have that security, you know exactly what you’re going to be making for the next six to 12 months.
So unless there’s some major life emergency, you’re probably gonna know that you’re going to be okay. Obviously you never know what’s going to happen, but, so that was the biggest thing is that it’s, there’s comfort in knowing what you’re going to make and then obviously, benefits and pension and those things, which it’s debatable whether or not those pensions are as secure as we initially thought they were.
But based on the information that I have about my state right now there are, there are things that you, you know, that you’re going to get when you have that kind of a contract. Now, let’s talk about the downside of salary positions. So I like to say, and I use this analogy a lot when I talk about the idea of building a business, is that it’s kind of like living with your parents versus moving out and living on your own.
When you live with your parents, a lot of this stuff is taken care of. You know you’re going to have a roof over your head depending on the arrangement that you have. Let’s just say living with your parents when you’re a kid for, for this particular analogy, cause obviously moving in when you’re 40 is a lot different.
The rules might be a little different, but when you’re a kid, you’re, most of the time your parents are taking care of all of these things for you. However, you have to go by their rules. You can’t just come and go as you please. You might not have control over what’s for dinner and when you can come home and who you can go places with .
You have to abide by their rules because they are providing those things for you. Same thing with an employer. They’re taking care of you. They’re taking care of your insurance, your pension. You know what your salary is going to be assuming that you’re doing a good job.
So you have those things versus if you go out on your own.
You now have this freedom. You can decide when you’re, where you’re going to go, when you’re going to do what you’re going to do. When you have, when you are self employed, like this last hour, you normally, if I had a job, I would have to be working while I chose to make soup for dinner at 10 o’clock in the morning because I have that freedom because I’m self employed.
I know that I have to obviously make up for that later and get all of my work done. I have to be disciplined, but I had the freedom to do that and make that decision because I create my own schedule. Now, obviously there are things when you’re self employed or when you’re in a different situation that is not salaried, where, yeah, you have some freedom.
But on the other end, you can’t, you have to take care of all of those things. You have to figure out, where, how you’re going to get your insurance. You have to figure out how am I going to make money this month? What’s my plan? All of those things. And if you could do those things, it’s amazing. But it’s again, just something that you have to think about.
I would say that if you use the growing era, moving out of your parents’ house analogy, it’s like.
Of course we want to do that. Of course, we want to be responsible for paying our bills and our houses and have that freedom, but it is just a different way of looking at things. I will say that regardless of the situation, there is always a downside and an upside to every situation.
It’s just a matter of figuring out what downside and upside matters the most to you. Because being a salaried employee is not for everyone. Being self employed is not for everyone. Some people can go fluidly between those two things. Some people are either just one or the other and you might not know which one you are.
It might be a matter of exploring those different options. But the thing is, is that you just want to be aware of those things because sometimes in life we might stay in a situation that is not something that is fulfilling to us or maybe not aligned with our values. And because of that, we are, we might be staying there for reasons because of the upsides that maybe don’t matter to us.
For example, if you are in a position that’s salaried, maybe you’re staying there for the security, but maybe excitement and freedom are values that you hold higher than security. So in that situation, it might not be the best situation, best, option for you to stay in this secure position.
Maybe it’s better for you to put yourself in a situation, obviously do what you need to do to take care of things and make sure that you’re making a responsible decision, but maybe this other thing is a better option for you. Another note on salary positions, and this is if you work in the school systems, lot of other positions are like this as well.
I’ll use schools for example, because I know that a lot of people in this group might have at least at least be in the schools or have experienced with the schools, is that you get that salary.
But let’s say that you have to work 12 hour days for however much time, or you decide to come in over the summer and get ready for the school year, you don’t necessarily get paid for that extra time.
Let’s say that you get more students on your caseload. Well, you don’t get paid extra for those students or you let’s say we have one person who is getting paid this over here and this other person that’s getting paid the same.
One person is hustling and really working hard and staying extra. This other person isn’t. Well that year they might earn the same thing. And you don’t necessarily always see those benefits or rewards. You would hope that karma would work things out and that this person over here, that’s not working very hard in this other person over here would be rewarded.
But we don’t always see those things right away. And the way that it worked out for me was that yes, I was choosing to develop myself in work, work hard, do all of the things that I needed to do to really develop my skills. And now I’ve put myself in a position where I can run a successful business because of the way that I handled that salary position when I had it.
And if I would’ve chose to go the leadership route and continued to be in the school systems, that is another opportunity that I also could’ve had. So again, yes, sometimes it does have some of those benefits, but you don’t always see them right away.
And just because there’s that potential doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily aware of it.
So that is one of those other additional cons of being in a salary position is that you don’t always see the fruits of your efforts and get rewarded when you get that additional work dumped on your plate. So that salary positions, just some of those things to think about if you are exploring different options or pursuing different options on the side.
So let’s move on and talk a little bit about hourly position. So let’s compare. I talked about salary versus being self employed, but let’s talk a little bit about, Hourly versus Salary. So let’s say that you have, and this is, I was in this situation at one point where I had my school position. I was paid a set salary.
I had an adjunct position that I would periodically do throughout the years where I had a set of mouths that I was getting paid per course that I taught. And then I also worked PRN where I was getting paid hourly. So obviously for the hourly position. The difference was that if I worked more, if I picked up more patients and I worked more hours, I made more money.
So I there was a little bit of a different mindset shift there where there was a little bit more of an incentive for me to take on more patients, especially because I was working part time. I would actually make more because I would spend more time there. However, what happens sometimes when people are in those hourly positions, and I saw this with the people that work at that particular, it was a company that staff, skilled nursing facilities.
I had the reason that I got called in a lot was because there were a lot of fulltime employees there that they would realize that they had these patients that they had to see and their patients had X amount of hours per therapy for whatever that billing period was. And, I had a girl who, she would always call me in a panic on like Wednesday or Thursday.
And she would say like, I need you to come in and see some of my patients cause they need to get their sessions in and I’m going to go over my hours, I’m going to go over 40 hours. And the company did not want her to go into overtime. And so it was kind of, it was kind of crappy for her because she would have been willing to work over time, and she would have been willing to put in that extra work.
But the company didn’t want her to, cause they didn’t want to pay her time and a half or double time or whatever, whatever she would’ve been paid. So they had me come in as the fill in person to see this patient. So that means they were getting therapy from this other person and then they’d get a random fill in person.
And yes, I did my best, but it would have been a lot better for those patients to see their regular therapist. Then have a situation where, they could see the same person all the time and have that continuity.
And unfortunately, that did happen a lot in that particular facility just because you know, again, they couldn’t always keep track of when that was going to happen and then on top of that, so yes, it was kind of a, I mean, it was nice that I got to work those hours, but I didn’t always feel very good about it because I knew that I was kind of just this fill in person that was hopping in because that person had gone over their hours just because they’d gotten slammed with the bells that weekend.
You know, I knew that it wasn’t her slacking off and not getting her work done. I knew she was hustling and, it wasn’t the best for the patients. And so that didn’t necessarily feel good. The other thing that happens with those hourly positions, if you are in a therapy position, is that a lot of times if you have a productivity requirements, you will get a slap on the wrist.
If you go below, and then sometimes what people end up doing is they’ll see their patients and then they’ll clock out and then they’ll still be working afterwards cause they don’t want to go over their productivity whatever their productivity, 90%, 80%, whatever it is for that facility. So they’ll end up working and not getting credit for the hours that they worked.
Even though it’s, we all know that it’s really hard sometimes. You end up kind of rushing during that hourly period. So really the main thing with some of those hourly positions is that that issue of productivity is that, there is, yes, we do get incentivized for working more, for taking on more patients, for working more hours, but then there’s always that pressure to be billable during that time because the company might not want you to you have a certain number of hours that are not billable, even though that might be something that you need to do for your job.
Maybe you need to walk around and talk to the nurse and the doctor or whoever figure out the lay of the land in that facility so that you actually know what you’re doing when you’re seeing your patients. So that’s kind of a con at the same time.
The other thing with hourly positions, and this is not necessarily always true, but sometimes when we are in certain situations with hourly positions, it’s almost like if you think about it, if you are, and I, this is kind of an example that happens sometimes with, with businesses and things like that, is that if you think about it, you want in a way, hourly positions kind of incentivize us, for taking longer to get a particular job done.
Now obviously, if you’re seeing patients that doesn’t apply, but in certain situations, let’s say that you’re applying for some hourly position outside SLP or whatever, and you have to get a certain job done within a number of hours.
Well, if you do it efficiently and you work less time, well then you don’t get paid as much, but you should be rewarded for doing something more efficiently. So in a way, it’s a little bit backwards, but you know, there are, again, we do have to be aware of the world that we’re living in and how things work.
And the reality is that there are salaried and hourly positions that are out there and it isn’t always a bad thing. I will say that when you think about how we’re incentivized for both positions, I think deep down what most people really want, most people really want to do a good job. They don’t want to go to work and slack off and be that person in the salaried position that’s slacking off because they know they get their salary or be that person in the hourly position that is lollygagging because they want more hours.
They want the job to take longer because they’ll get paid more.
Most people won’t do that because I think deep down, most of us really want to do, want to have meaning and want to feel fulfilled in our work and want to do a good job. Most people don’t do that, but it is something that we want to be aware of when we think psychologically what’s going on when we are in either of these positions.
So those are the pros and cons. Obviously we’ve got a bunch of different options for you if you are wanting to add side income. Now, I pursued both of those, very often throughout the early years, but obviously I’m doing something very different now. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about just seeing things a little bit differently and just some different options.
Now, yes, you could gain some experience teaching, working in another setting, doing some type of salaried or hourly work as an SLP, as a teacher, or whatever, whatever your position is. Again, I’m using SLP a lot because that’s a lot of the people in this group are SLPs right now, but there are different ways that you can earn money.
So for example, what I’ve talked about a lot so far is earning money through selling online courses. So this is obviously a little bit different from the model of hourly and salaried. So just to give you an idea of how of what’s possible and how this can work differently for you.
I had one year when I was really, I was doing everything like I was doing PRN or no, I hadn’t. I just finally stopped doing PRN, but I was doing adjunct work. I was doing a little bit of private practice and I was doing, working full time at the school and also selling courses online.
Now it did take me some time to get my course figured out and figure out how to set up my blog and my website and things like that.
But, back in 2017 and I believe I shared this earlier, I was teaching three different adjunct courses. and for that when I was teaching adjunct, I think I made $8,000 that year teaching adjunct. And then for my online course, I made 25, with, yes, I was at the time putting a lot of work into both things.
So I was very scattered in that respect. But the thing was, is that I could have chosen to put more, even more work into the adjunct work, and I never would have made, I would not have made any more money. But if I put more work into my online course that I was selling, that I actually saw that return.
And the great part about that is that yes, the money is great. Obviously that allows you to do a lot of different things, allows you to have certain freedom in your life, but it’s also that additional money, that meant that I was helping more people. That meant that more people were signing up for my program versus, when I was teaching for the university, it was kind of like, these people are signed up.
This is what you’re getting paid, regardless of how many people are in this program. And if more people sign up, it’s great. You get to help more people, but you don’t necessarily see that reflected in the income that you make. So I see that additional income as just a reflection of the number of people that I was able to help with that program.
Now, obviously when you, if you have dabbled it all in, you know, obviously, like I haven’t in the online marketing world where they show you how to do things, where they show you how to create online programs. They will point out to you that if you get things set up in advance. So for example, my courses written all, it’s all, it’s on the website.
Some of my marketing materials are all set up and I’ve got people coming in. I don’t have to keep, I do have to keep doing certain things to keep getting people in the door, but I don’t have to keep rewriting that all the time. Except for the times that I need to do updates with, which isn’t, you know, which isn’t every month, just every, every year or two.
The thing is, is that I could in theory, go to bed at night and then wake up and have three more people join my course and earn money while I sleep. That’s the example that is given a lot in some of my entrepreneurial groups, and they call it passive income. I would say that that’s not necessarily always the best term to use.
People say, “Oh, passive income. You can earn money while you sleep or earn money while you drink margaritas on the beach and…” well, I mean, that’s not exactly how it works, but it, what it does do is leverage your time. So that means that if I do a better job, I’ve got this core set up and it really hits a pin point and solves an important problem for people.
Number one, I have the freedom to put what I know is needed in that course, not what’s predetermined by a curriculum, by someone I’m working for. I have the freedom to work on it as long as I want, when I want. And if I do a better job at it, then more people are gonna are going to join. And then if I do additional things, if I do additional work and I get more people in, then that’s going to result in me seeing tangible benefits, which isn’t always the case with those hourly or salary positions.
So yes, you do see some benefit, but it’s not the same. You don’t always see it. You don’t always have control over it. So for example, you could do a really good job in a salary position, and maybe you have a boss that just isn’t somebody who understands what you’re doing. You might not see the benefits.
You might be doing a really good job at an hourly position and people, you might be getting a slap on the wrist for productivity or going over your hourly limit and going into overtime. And you could be doing really good things for your patients. Whereas if you are the one running the business obviously, you’re going to be the one to see those benefits because you’re the one that’s driving and you’re the one that’s running the show.
So it’s a very different mindset shift.
Again, living with your parents versus a living on your own. Pros and cons of both. But the key is deciding of all of these options.
Which things are important to you because there are always upsides and downsides, but you’ve got to decide which ones are most aligned with your values. And just because you choose one doesn’t mean you have to abandon all the other ones. Just because I am in a position where I am not salary or hourly did or doesn’t mean that I am never open to anything like that again in the future, should an opportunity present itself.
It’s just that I’m not dependent on those models.
So it’s really all about being aware of what your options are and having those options. It’s not about like, you know, doesn’t mean that you have to only pick one and hang your hat on that for the rest of your life.
Some people choose that if that’s what resonates with them, but you don’t necessarily have to do that. So, okay, I see some questions in the comments. Okay. So Amber is asking, “What platform do I use for my courses?”
So, okay, so, and then Sarah is asking, “What entrepreneur groups you’re in that I have found valuable?”
Okay. So I can, let me, let me think about the entrepreneur groups because there are a bunch, there are so many out there. Let me post some links.
What I have found to be best for entrepreneur groups is that I like to have a good idea of what the specific strategy is that I need to work on.
And who’s really good at that particular strategy. So for example, I am in a group, the one that I’m in is paid, but I believe there’s a free group that is by Tyler McCall, and he does Instagram marketing. So that one’s really good. I believe he does have a free group that he uses to promote his paid group that he where you can go in there and interact with people.
Let me do some research on that, Sarah, and look at the ones that are, that are the best or that are, cause there’s a little, let me filter some of those out for you and do a post later on. Sarah. Amber, the platform that I use right now is Kajabi. I love it. I used to use a WordPress site and just use a plugin.
The plugin that I used was Wishlist member and it came with a course that I took. I did not like it. I don’t even know if that plugin is available anymore. So what that is is that there’s, you have your website and then there are these little tools that you can download that will allow you to do different things on your website.
Like for example, on my little contact form on my website, that’s a contact form plugin that I downloaded. It’s almost, it’s kind of like when you download an app to your phone, like you’ve got your phone and the software on there, and your main program. But then you can download these little tools that’ll help you do additional things.
So that’s one option. You can use the app. The good thing about what Wishlist member was that it was cheaper when I was first starting out. So the first time I launched language therapy advanced, I use the WordPress site with a plugin. And that just allowed me to have certain content that was protected that people had to sign in to access.
I didn’t like it cause it was kind of clunky. It didn’t look very nice. And their tech support was, they were all programmers and I felt like I was, they were speaking a foreign language half the time and I didn’t know what they meant. It worked for the time being, but as soon as I knew I had a proven concept, I upgraded and started using Kajabi, which is more expensive, but it offers a lot of different things.
There are other things that Kajabi does besides host courses. They email provider, they have email software, they have pages to have people sign up for your newsletter. They have checkout pages for you to have someone make a purchase. They even have webinars and a blog feature. So there’s a lot of different things with Kajabi.
You don’t necessarily have to start with something like that, but that is what I use now, and I absolutely love it. It looks a lot nicer. It’s really user friendly. I don’t have a programming background at all, but I’ve been able to go in there and look at their tutorials and figure out how to set up my courses.
Another one that’s a little bit cheaper. Let’s see, there’s a couple others out there. Teachable is a little bit cheaper. It’s just courses, but it’s a little bit more affordable if you are just starting out and you just want a dedicated course platform. There’s another one called Thinkific. I don’t know a lot about that one.
I have not used Thinkific or Teachable, but I have been in courses hosted on both of those and they’ve been fine. I know people who use Teachable and they’re pretty happy with it. So those are two options for you. So I do recommend it, and what I have done, with that type of thing is I’ve stayed pretty scrappy at the beginning when I was testing and then upgraded when I knew I had a proven concept.
So, so yeah, and I can talk a little bit more about those particular tools in a later talk. So yeah. What I’m going to do is that I am, again, the main topic of the day obviously was just, again, pros and cons and different mindset shifts you want to have when you are pursuing different things to do on the side to build your career as an SLP.
Whether it be salaried hourly positions or pursuing some venture that doesn’t follow either of those models that follows more of a passive income or a leveraged time, or where you can do a lot of work up front and then maybe you’re earning money while you’re doing other things because you’ve had things set up a certain way.
Obviously with anything like that, nothing is 100% passive. There’s always, there are always times when you’ve got to be doing some maintenance, managing people, managing software and things like that.
But it is a different model. And the risk reward is a little bit different. So I’m curious if you have any other questions about, again, really the purpose of this group is about building those side income streams with the focus being on creating online courses. So let me know what additional questions you have about courses.
And I will share later today. I’m going to do some research cause I thought I’m a member of like a million Facebook groups. And so a lot of them, a lot of them, SLP, a lot of them entrepreneurial groups. So let me go through and sift through the ones that I, in most often or that I think, some of them were useful for me at a time, but then I moved on to doing something else, so I’m not as active in them.
So I will share the ones that I, at least at one point, found very useful. So keep your eyes open for that post. I’ll be sharing that later on today or sometime later this week regarding Sarah’s question. One that comes to the top of my head is Tyler McCall‘s program, and he is, if you want to learn how to build your Instagram following and market your business using Instagram.
So he’s kind of the, the go-to Instagram guy who does it a little bit. The focus that he has a little is a little bit different than everybody else. I like him because he told me that I don’t need to be like. you know, those people taking beach selfies or like workout selfies. He’s like, nah, your brand is different.
You don’t have to do that. I was like, thank you. so I really, I really appreciated that. All right, well, I’m gonna wrap up for today. Thank you so much for your questions. Thank you so much for everybody who signed on today, and let me know what your questions are about building side income streams, particularly when it comes to coming up with ideas and building online courses.
So let me know what your questions are. Feel free to post separate threads in the group and post questions under this thread as well. All right, everybody, thanks so much for signing in and I will see you in the group.
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