Real Money, Real Experts

Building a Collaborative Practice Model with Nathan Astle

• AFCPE® • Season 4 • Episode 24

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This week we welcome financial therapist, Nathan Astle, to the show. Nate is the founder of the Financial Therapy Clinical Institute, which is a collaborative practice that includes financial counselors, therapists, and planners working together to meet the needs of their clients. 

On this episode, Nate shares what inspired this unique practice model, the roles that each practitioner plays in the practice, the fee structure they've adopted to ensure the practice is profitable but also affordable to clients, and how they are using research to measure emotional, financial, and relational change.

Nate is a humble trailblazer with a heart for helping people. His practice is unique, but his hope is that more financial professionals will follow. Trust us, it's an episode you don't want to miss.

Show Notes:
1:14 How Nathan got involved in financial therapy... by accident!
3:02 His biggest influences
4:18 Mental health and finances
10:51 Client testimony around financial anxiety
15:01 How Nathan got started on the business side
19:59 Nathan's final 2 cents

Show Note Links:

Financial Therapy Clerical Institute website

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Real Money Real Experts, a podcast where leading financial counseling and coaching experts share their stories, their challenges, and their advice for helping people manage money in the real world. I'm your host, Rachel De Leon , executive Director of the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education for A-F-C-P-E.

Speaker 2:

And I'm your co-host, Dr. Mary Bell Carlson , an accredited financial counselor or AFC and the President of Financial Behavior Keynote Group. Every episode we're taking a deep dive in the topics that personal finance professionals care about, helping clients, building community, and your professional growth. Nate Astel is the founder of Financial Therapy Clinic Institute, a collaborative financial therapy practice. He's a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified financial therapist. He specializes in couples emotions, money and financial trauma. As a board member of the Financial Therapy Association, he has been featured in numerous outlets like C-N-B-C-U-S-A today, TD Ameritrade and Money Geek . Welcome, Nate. We're so glad to have you. Yeah,

Speaker 3:

Thanks for having meam. Happy to be here. One

Speaker 1:

Of the reasons I was really excited to bring you on the show was to discuss ways we can build a more integrated financial services space. You are a member of A-F-C-P-E and also a financial therapist and you're doing some work in this space right now. And so I'm curious, how did you get involved in financial therapy

Speaker 3:

By Happy accident? Just like most of us, <laugh> <laugh> , I was getting my master's degree in couples in family therapy. That's kind of my home base is, you know, working with couples on a lot of issues. And I was honestly just looking for a job and so I, I got hired on as a peer financial counselor for Kansas State University and kind of during my master's when I got exposed to financial therapy at Kansas State , uh, it's , it's really just right place at the right time. And during that process, realized how deep financial therapy really is, how deep our money stories are, how deep our money experiences generally. I mean it's, I remember in some of my earlier classes in the financial therapy program, them talking about the need for collaboration to have therapists and, and AFCs and CFPs and working together. And uh , that kind of became a dream of mine very early. And this year the Financial Therapy Clinical Institute finally launched and it's kind of a dream come true, as silly as that sounds like. So I work with an AFC and ACFP Certified Financial Planner , uh, and provide collaborative care for people's financial situation . It's, it's been really neat and I , I could talk about it all day, so you might have to re

Speaker 2:

<laugh> reign you in . Hey, well Nate , I actually want to ask you something 'cause you have been influenced by many great minds in this profession and specifically in financial therapy. So has there been someone, or maybe a couple of people that have really influenced your work and been an inspiration to you?

Speaker 3:

This is where I get to name drop all , all the people <laugh> . I mean , I think one of my first influences was Dr. Megan McCoy. She is, and I think she was on the podcast here a little bit ago. So yeah, Megan , Megan is great. The kind of founders or some of the founders in the financial therapy space, Sonya Lutter , Christie Archuleta, Rick Kaler , all of those people did work, you know, 10 or 15 years ago that hugely impacted how I grew in the profession. Um , and you know, there's, there's a lot of people in the marriage and family therapy space that probably don't know anything about financial therapy but still impact how I view the world. You know, there Sue Johnson as a , the creator of Emotionally Focused therapy and she, a lot of the work I do with money with clients as using a lot of her techniques and skills. So there's a whole lot of people and it's very good company to be in. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

And I ask that question because I think sometimes when you're in the space it seems like well everybody knows that person, right? But there's a lot that don't. And so I think it could be influential to others to read their work or to know a little bit more about what they do. And I think when we had the privilege of working with such great minds, like you had mentioned, it's nice to hear who they are because sometimes people only see it second or third hand , right? And so it's nice to see uh , who's really influenced the influencers along the way. One of the other things we wanna ask you about is, we know that finances affect mental health and mental health affects finances. The two are very interconnected. Can you tell us more about how those two are interconnected?

Speaker 3:

I do think it's something that most of us kind of inherently understand just by personal experience. They have a cyclical relationship, right? One does directly and indirectly affects the other. You know, a small example, I, during times of more financial stress, I am more likely to struggle with my depression or anxiety or just not feel like my best self when things are rough financially. And it's the same thing where if I'm having a really difficult time with my mental health challenges , um, I'm probably a lot less resourced to do things like follow my budget very closely or make sure that I'm, you know, checking all the boxes that I need to the or or also very much more likely to at least personally react to that stress through impulse buying and impulse shopping are when something is outta whack, we often try and find a financial solution to an emotional problem. And that, that happens all the time. And I guarantee you , you ask people on the street and they can come up with personal examples in their lives. Nine times out of 10 they , it kind of surprises, not surprises is the wrong word, annoys me that we don't talk about it more <laugh> because you can't have one without the other. They are linked by nature of what they are.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And they , I agree. And I'm curious too, I think that kind of circles back to the value that you're building within your own practice and your own business model having different facets or pieces of the financial continuum all under one roof. And so tell us a little bit more about your model. It's something that I know within this space we've talked about a lot as an ideal and I feel like you're really a trailblazer in starting to build a practice that looks like this, that has therapy, that has counseling and that has planning in one. I

Speaker 3:

Appreciate that and I don't wanna be the only trailblazer on honestly this, my biggest hope was starting this uh , practice and using this model is that it gets copied by people smarter than me. <laugh> <laugh> . I am, I am really proud of what we've done so far this year, but there's so many ways we can do better. Generally how it works is the financial therapist in this case me works on the psychological, emotional and relational aspects of money. We're talking about the big feelings. We're talking about, you know , past experiences we're talking about, you know, our money scripts or our beliefs around money, where we got them. How some of our intergenerational money stories, you know, you can probably think of vanilla therapy as idea of what financial therapy can look like just around money. The AFCs , we tend to tend to focus a lot more on what I would call daily money management behaviors. So they're doing things like helping a client budget or helping them set some financial goals, getting a basic debt management plan. Really the AFCs are trying to build accountability systems into the client's lives, but also education and skill building. The AFCs do a lot more numbers than the financial therapists. And then of course the financial planners are doing more of the long-term , you know, retirement planning or saving up for kids college, that kind of thing. But the financial planning that we do is very targeted. We're not doing comprehensive plans, we're not selling any products. I kind of liken it to a toe dipping experience. There's so many people that need financial planning but have no idea what it's like, don't know where to start. They don't have the minimum investible assets that's unfortunately so many planners require. And so we're like, okay, we're gonna give you a taste of what this can look like. We are gonna come up with some financial plans, but this isn't supposed to be, you know, an AUM model where we're managing their investments. We're just trying to help it feel safe enough so that they can maybe go back to a financial planner in the future if they need. So that's generally three areas. How it works is, you know, they have a consultation call, we see if they're a good fit for us, of course. And then usually the first two months or so, the financial therapists and the AFC are meeting with them about every other week or perhaps once a month. I don't love doing once a month. It's hard to get momentum going, but the goal of the first few months is stabilization. Can we get you to the point where you are able to regulate your emotions around money enough so that you can engage with them. You know , a lot of clients come in with severe financial anxiety, severe financial trauma, and they also need to make decisions like soon <laugh> where they have to do something but they're also paralyzed because of some mental health aspect or you know, something. And so I'm working with them on regulation skills and doing some mindfulness things and we're working on just basic coping skills we can use. And then we use those when they're meeting with the AFC and the AF C's gonna help them make some money choices. But the AFC can be like, okay, I can see that you're getting a little dysregulated, a little escalated. Let's let's take a real quick five minute breathing break. We're gonna come back to this. Just wanna remind you to use some skills that Nate taught you in your session. And it's , it's just, it's neat. Like there's so many opportunities where we can, we're really support each other if you're okay, I , Kyle wanted to share a story of a client. Yes, please do. She had significant financial anxiety. She also had to make decisions. Um, and she would, one of her maybe symptoms of that financial anxiety was pretty extreme avoidance. And she also could get to the point of having panic attacks, which is not what we're trying to do. We're not trying to cause harm. So we had actually a joint session where me and the financial counselor were there and I would, we started the session off with a , uh, what we call a sensory activity. We had her name five things that she saw, four colors, three sounds , she could hear two smells or tastes and one texture she can touch. It's called the grounding activity. It's how we kind of connect to our present and then we're like, alright , these are the goals and we know that some things need to happen. So that's where the AF C's gonna come in and ask you questions and get numbers on paper. Right? Um, and then she started, you could visibly see her dysregulation. Her body language was very uncomfortable. She started to, you know, breathe fast and was like, oh my gosh, okay, this is just so scary. And I'm like, okay, hang on, hang on. I know that we're, the feelings are really big. That's totally valid. We can work through these feelings more in therapy, but first we're going to try and get information. We're trying to just collecting information right now. And so I, like, I as a therapist was able to come in and kind of bring her back down a little and we ended up having an extremely productive session. It's not like the feelings immediately go away, but it honestly don't think that could have happened if we didn't have that collaborative model. So anyway, there's, there's so much room for growth. There's so much room for better services, honestly. Um , so my hope is that more people see this as a viable model and it is , um, the, the business runs, you know, and it's really cool what we can do when we work together.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and what a great experience for the client too because I think so often clients are working with different professionals in different manners and to be able to integrate that for them too , so they can see the connections between emotions and money and behaviors and not have that sort of disjointed experience. You as both a, FC, the financial therapist, the planner, can help them make a lot of those connections. And

Speaker 3:

That's the hope is not only that as professionals, we see our overlapping fields. You know, we , we have the same goal, but also we can provide clients that same experience of like, we are all, we're all on your team and we might do some different things, but in the end, our , our goal is that you've experienced your money differently and feel better <laugh> . You know, so that's, that's my hope. Um, one thing that's been very valuable is the , the barriers I hear to this kind of model is cost. It's, it's not cheap to pay for three types of professionals. So what we do is we do a sliding fee scale. Everyone pays the same for each professional. Like no one's getting paid more than the other and it's based on their household income. It's, it's not a perfect system, but it's at least trying to meet the needs of where people are at while making sure that we are still can make a living. And we aren't having our own financial challenges as well. It's something to keep in mind is there are ways that we can make this doable for people without totally overcharging or , um, you know, making it so that our, our services are actually more expensive than what they can afford.

Speaker 1:

Nate, I really appreciate you sharing that part of your business too. I think a lot of private practitioners and counseling, therapy planning are , you know, I think we're all trying to figure out what that model looks like, especially as you expand the clients you serve and in order to be accessible to more people. You know, I think figuring out that fee structure can be can be complicated. And I think the more that we talk about that within our community, the more we can help each other figure out the best model that works. One other question. When you think about a collaborative model, there's sort of three types. One is a business model like you've built where everyone you know, is sort of under the same business umbrella. Some people are lifelong learners and they're, they're getting designations across all financial counseling, financial therapy, financial planning, although we find that even those who do that usually have an area that they prefer to specialize in. And then obviously building a referral network. But I'm curious how you've connected with your two business partners, you know, for others who are thinking about doing something like this. How did you get started?

Speaker 3:

And we're actually up to five business partners now, so it's growing, which is great. So in my mind, find people that you like and that you trust. You know, I started this with Victoria Warren, AFC, and Kaylin Dillon who is a financial planner. And I just, I like their work. I like how they think. I do think it's important that if you are gonna be part of a treatment team to help people, you don't want to give conflicting messages. So that's why it's important to have a , a group of people that you like and trust and that you generally think the same way. And two, it is important to have regular team meetings. So you can talk about, you know, John doe's progress, John doe's needs, and how can we as a team be supporting John Doe better? So for us, what that looks like is we have a weekly meeting to talk about client needs. We also, we share our client notes with each other. So we have a electronic health system , it's called Simple Practice. It's really commonly used in for therapy practices. And before each session we go through and we look at, all right , what if I'm an AFC, what did Nate work on last time? And I'm, I'm not expected to be an expert on everything. I can't, it's not realistic quite honestly, but I can at least know , okay, Nate said that John Doe had , um, a conflict with his partner about some overspending and we're gonna check on his budget. My plan was to check on his budget this coming week. I'm gonna make sure that when we get to that line item that caused the conflict, that I'm aware of what's going on. I have tools in my back pocket if John Doe starts to get, have some feelings and we, I can even make a special plan with John Doe about that line item that can benefit his therapeutic work as well. So collaboration requires communication. Yeah. And there , there are people that all the designations and I think it's a great thing to have a big knowledge base. I don't think it's realistic to be able to help everyone with everything <laugh> . Um , and quite honestly, I think we can dilute our help if we are trying to be too many things at once. Um, so where to start? Whether you do a collaborative practice like mine, whether you just have a referral network wherever you do , um, I think just start meeting people. Start meeting people that aren't like you that do different things. Uh , you know, you can, you can just search for therapists in your area and getting to know them. Start building a referral network that way and get to know financial planners and wherever you are. Uh , that's a huge start is just, I think it's a huge start for good business practice 'cause you can get referrals that way. But two is goes towards a more unanimous push in all of our fields to help people with their money that isn't so territorial about, well I do this and you do this. Like, okay, we're all trying to help people. Let's, let's get along together. <laugh>

Speaker 2:

For sure. And I think that's one of the things is I see all your partners is they work all over the country. And so it's kind of neat too to see that collaboration. And I love the fact that you can now work in a very virtual environment and be able to help people, quite honestly anywhere in the world.

Speaker 3:

My hope is that this type of model becomes more of the norm. It's, I don't expect everyone to do this, but I can't be the only one doing this. <laugh> . Absolutely. There's such a need and yeah, there's, there's a lot of good opportunity out there

Speaker 2:

And it's such a holistic model that it really takes care of the client at the end of the day. Nate, at the end of each interview we like to ask our guests to share their 2 cents. If you had one piece of advice to leave with our listeners, what would it be?

Speaker 3:

My favorite thing to say is shame is the enemy of change. The difference between guilt and shame is guilt is when we do something that's against our values, it makes us feel bad, but it motivates us to do better. You know, I, that is an uncomfortable emotion, but it isn't bad. It doesn't, it doesn't. Harmful shame is when we see ourselves as the problem and we internalize that bad behavior as something wrong with us. Shame is inherently demotivating. It, it stops us from trying to do something different because I don't view myself as valuable enough to change. So this is important I think for listeners as practitioners and as when working with clients, we don't beat ourselves up. We beat ourselves down. So we need to be so compassionate and non-judgmental when we work with people and with ourselves. Um, it doesn't do any favors. It actually actively harms and we can do so much good if we are trying to build shame free practices and shame free financial counseling though shame is the enemy of change and we need to be actively shame-free if we're going to help people and ourselves make a different choice.

Speaker 1:

Nate, thank you so much for coming on our show today and for sharing this time with us. Can you tell our listeners where they can connect with you? Yeah,

Speaker 3:

So I'm pretty active on LinkedIn search for Nathan Astel . My business again is the Financial Therapy Clinical Institute, where we have our collaborative clinic. We also do research and have started providing trainings for financial therapists, financial counselors and financial planners on this model and how they can get some more hands-on training on what does this look like. We try and provide sessions and role plays and handouts. So that's a place that this something that you're interested in. But I am an open book reach out and happy to meet with you. Yeah,

Speaker 1:

And it's interesting that you mentioned research too, 'cause I was thinking this whole model, I think there's so much that can be learned from it and I'm curious if there's any thoughts around that too. How to measure change and impact when they're working collaboratively.

Speaker 3:

So this has always been, I wanted this to be research informed, not only in the interventions, but also I wanna show that it works. And so if, if you guys are on the website, if you go under trainings down below it , it has our research board and they are really smart people and we've created a survey that measures emotional, financial and relational change. And we, we are a running test . So at the time of intake, they take the survey, when they exit treatment, they take the survey and three months after they exit treatment, they take the survey and we can, we have longitudinal clinical data that is showing that actually, yeah, they're getting better. And it's really exciting. So my, my hope is to publish this and make this kind of data set accessible to academics. That's awesome. Thanks so much y'all.

Speaker 1:

Talk to you later Mary, I'm so glad Nate could come on the show today. I think what he's building is really intriguing to me, and I know we've talked about it on a few different episodes. Not necessarily the same business model, but idea of financial counseling, financial planning, and in this case also financial therapy all under one roof. And I love that his business model is research based and research focused because I think he's not only looking at how this works for him and the practice that he's building and for his clients, but how others might be able to learn from it as well. And so I'm really interested to learn more in the coming years as this evolves and start to continue these types of conversations as we head to A-F-C-P-E symposium when this airs, it'll be the week of and really excited. I think it's a perfect opportunity for professionals that are working in all of these areas to really come together and to start to have some of these conversations. There are a lot of people that are pursuing private practice and I always think we can be stronger together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's an exciting time to see all of these changes and really these innovative thoughts. And I think that's what Nate really has done is become very innovative in how to encapsulate this unique combination of professionals. The other thing I really liked about it is he's always constantly thinking, how do we make this affordable for the client? And I thought that was of a unique interest that he's not just saying, Hey, you need to hire a financial planner. Let me refer you to a financial counselor all the rest when I'm done. But it's really this integrated model makes it affordable and also profitable, right? For everybody along the way. So from a business owner perspective where you're still running a business, but at the same time you're able to serve the client in the best way possible. So I thought that was really a unique niche and I'm excited to see what other things come. You know, I heard him say a couple of times, I can't be the only one running this and, and whether it's his model that you duplicate or maybe you've got a different spinoff or a different way you wanna do it. But I really am excited about the innovation in this space and I think it's really ripe for unique setups like Nate's and like others that we haven't even thought of yet. And so that's what's exciting to me is seeing the future of the profession, especially in this direct to consumer opportunity of how do you really help clients at the end of the day and make it profitable as a business owner that you can stay in business while also doing the thing you love, whether as a coach, as a counselor, as a therapist, as a planner, and maybe as Nate did all integrated into one. So this is exciting for me and I, I appreciate Nate and him taking the first steps to create something like this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. And I take it one step further too to our listeners. If you're doing something like this, if you've started a practice that's integrated in some way, shape, or form, we wanna hear about it. So please, you know, visit our website, send me an email, you know , we wanna continue to have these conversations. We learn from one another. And so I think this is the place that we, we start this and we start to really encourage a more integrated field.