If you’ve typed myofunctional therapist salary into Google, I have to tell you a secret, and you’re going to want to stop multitasking for this one. There is no salary in this business. There just isn’t. What you have is a company, and a company’s number comes from what it needs to produce, not from what somebody else is charging down the street. So I recorded this one to show you how to back into your own number, and why your hours decide the answer before your rate ever does.

Here’s why I’m saying it now. We research what you’re typing out there in the interwebs, and there are a bazillion versions of the same question. What do myofunctional therapists make? What is a myofunctional therapist’s salary? Can myofunctional therapy replace my dental hygiene salary? If you want the income side of the conversation, I covered it in how much you can make as a myofunctional therapist, and pricing in how to price your services without undercharging. This one is about salary, and the math behind it.

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This article is based on The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ podcast, Episode 97: What a Myofunctional Therapist Actually Makes, and the Math Nobody Shows You. You can listen to the podcast here.

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There Is No Myofunctional Therapist Salary, Because You’re Building a Company

Let me say that again slowly for the ones who think the money you earn is the money that lands in your pocket. You are building a company, and a company is not a paycheck. The money coming in is not wages.

Your revenue has to cover business expenses and taxes. It has to cover software, equipment, insurance, education, and professional support. It has to cover any team or contractors you bring on, and your benefits, your retirement, and your unpaid time off. Now, you shouldn’t have a ton of that, but you’re going to have some of it. And who pays you when you’re off work because your kiddo broke her arm? You do.

After all of that, the business also has to pay you. So the useful question isn’t what other therapists make. It’s what your business needs to produce, and everything else points back to that.

There Is No Going Rate for Myofunctional Therapy

If you’ve been around me for any amount of time, you know this is a hill I will die on. There is no mayor of Myo Town handing out the official myofunctional therapy pricing guide.

Whatever somebody else charges, whether she’s your trainer or another therapist, that price comes from her expenses, her capacity, her delivery model, her goals, her life, her mortgage, her own money drama, and her own possibility ceiling. So why would you let her tell you what you’re allowed to charge?

I taught a boot camp recently where some of the therapists told me they were very happy with a few thousand dollars a month. I loved hearing that. And I have to tell you that some companies need a lot more than that, and mine is one of them. I’m not replacing a paycheck, I’m building a company. I pay my own retirement, my own PTO, my own sick leave, and my own FMLA. I give myself raises, I pay my own bonuses, and I pay for my own continuing education and personal development.

Think about your boss for a second, if you’re still practicing hygiene. Does he only get to break even? Is his practice something that barely turns a little profit? No, he’s building a business, he’s making a profit, and he’s building his golden parachute. You get to build yours too.

The Myo Math: Five Steps to Your Own Number

Instead of asking what everybody else is charging, I want you to work through five steps. Inside The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™, you’d be shocked at the work that goes into landing on a price, because nobody should just pick a number and hope it holds up. Done correctly, the math tells you whether you can build a sustainable business on it.

Step 1: What You Need or Want This Business to Produce

Nobody gets to decide this for you. For my company, I want my business to fund the life I enjoy and pay for all the expenses for my husband and me. He’s building his own company, but I want mine to cover everything, because then I don’t have to worry about it.

Step 2: What the Business Has to Pay For

Now that you know what you want it to produce, what does it have to pay for? Put an actual number on that list from the section above.

Step 3: How Much Capacity You Realistically Have

This is where your hours live. How many weeks a year do you want to work, how many days a week do you want to see clients, and how many hours sit behind one client?

I’m planning my next year right now, so these are live decisions for me. I like to work three weeks and take a week off, and sometimes four weeks on if the podcast schedule calls for it. I offer ten hours a week of client-facing time, and that’s it. If I need more hours, my prices need to come up. When demand rises and I can’t squeeze people in, I raise my prices, because I don’t want to work with every client. I want to work with my ideal client, who is a premium client, and I would rather work with one of those than five at a fraction of the price.

Step 4: How Many Clients You Can Serve Well

I’m building a life-first business, and I want to serve my clients amazingly. That means I need something left in the tank to give them, so there’s a number I know I won’t go beyond.

Here’s the part that surprises people. Once you know what your business needs and what one client pays, the client math is often easier than the fear of it. Divide the number your business needs to produce by what one client pays you, and you have the number of clients. Then check it against your hours, because your hours decide whether you can serve that many well.

That’s where the bottleneck shows up.

The Bottleneck: When You Are the Limit

I was coaching a client on this recently, and she is her own bottleneck. She blocks two hours for an exam, and if your day only has six or seven working hours, once another client lands in it you no longer have that big open block. Even if you work nine to five, you still need lunch, bathroom breaks, a stretch, and time for emails. You have to human.

She was proud that she was booking exams several months out, and I understood that. What she didn’t know to study is how many people land on her booking page and leave because nothing is available soon. I like having something open this week or next. If I have a problem and I want to see a provider, I don’t want to wait until December or January, and your future client doesn’t either.

In my practice, and in the training I do with students, we work to get the exam down to an hour. It takes effort. It takes good organization, and it takes having clients send you information before the exam so you can prepare. When I do an exam, I’m typing the report while I talk with the client, so that hour is the whole thing. We aren’t removing anything important. Remember, you write the exam for the client, and we often hand them far more information than they can absorb. If you already know they need myofunctional therapy, you don’t have to walk them through every single symptom.

Her therapy sessions run an hour, and mine run 30 minutes. So we’re looking at what systems, templates, and organization could give her more client time in her day. That matters, because if you stay the same, you eventually run out of room to grow, and a business that can’t grow is in trouble.

Step 5: What Your Offer Needs to Generate for This to Work

This is the Myo Math part, and it’s what my students work through in detail. Is your offer realistic? Most of you, I can tell you, have prices that are too low, and a lot of that comes from using the hygiene paycheck as your gauge.

I think of a coaching client who was comparing her therapy price to her hourly pay in hygiene. It’s not the same. It’s apples and bowling balls. Charging a session rate that matches what you earned per hour in the op doesn’t account for the company you’re now running.

The Hours Nobody Counts

A salary is your hours times your rate, and that’s exactly why it doesn’t fit here. The hours behind one client are the ones nobody counts. That’s taking notes from the exam, writing the report, sending the offer, and trying to remember every step of your own system because you don’t have a client journey mapped out or standard operating procedures.

Without those, every week feels like Groundhog Day. Oh my gosh, I have to do this, I have to remember to send that. Your capacity becomes the ceiling, and if every client takes three extra hours behind the scenes, something has to give. Otherwise you end up busy and not earning more revenue.

What I Took Off My Plate

Getting those hours back is the point of the AI team I talked about in my top five AI employees. I want to be clear that I don’t use AI for anything clinical, like patient information or clinical planning. I use it for everything around the clinical work.

A chief of staff tells me which tasks matter this week, so I don’t spend brain energy deciding. A content team plans, researches, creates graphics, writes captions, and schedules them. Research tells me what’s being said on Reddit and Instagram. One team member atomizes content ideas for what will land with my audience, and my AI staff gathers my metrics. That’s how I open a client’s file two to five minutes before the appointment, and when I’m done with a client, I’m done. No saving notes for the end of the day, and you do not want to do that.

The same thinking is what we build inside The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™. We set up the departments, sales, client experience, and marketing, because that’s where you get your time back. When your AI team helps create the templates, it becomes rinse and repeat. I showed a student how I do an exam and send the report inside a one-hour slot, and when I showed her my report template, I could see the light turn on. She said, “Oh my gosh, I can completely do that.”

Don’t Let Anyone Tell You What Your Myofunctional Therapist Salary Should Be

Here’s what I want you to take away. I had a student recently whose dentist, who clearly knew nothing about myofunctional therapy, offered to pay her $100 for every client she brought into his office. She’s starting her own business, and he wanted her to bring clients in to sell his services. That’s a terrible deal, and she saw it for what it was. That’s what happens when someone else sets your number.

I’ve had students set their prices higher than mine, and I tell them more power to you, go get them. Just know that if you charge a high price, you’ll hear no more often. I’m fine with that, because I believe in the value of my service and what I bring to the table.

So do your Myo Math and know your numbers. What do you need to earn, what’s feasible, and how can you build something sustainable? If you’re following me, you aren’t trying to have a jobby, you want a life-first business. Your number should be the cheapest your price ever is.

I can’t promise you a number, and neither can anyone else. What a business brings in depends on your market, your offer, your pricing, your effort, and your follow-through. What I can tell you is that you control far more of those pieces as a business owner than you ever will with someone else’s price in your head.

Already Trained and Not Sure What to Charge? This Part Is for You

If you finished your myofunctional therapy training and you’re trained but stuck on what to charge, how many clients that takes, or where the heck clients even come from, you don’t need more clinical content. You need a sequence.

The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ is a twelve-week program for myofunctional therapists already in business. It teaches you to build a modern, AI-powered practice with smarter systems, one department at a time, starting with CEO & Setup, then Marketing, then Sales. If that’s where you are, book your Get Unstuck Call and we’ll talk about where you are, where you’re stuck, and what makes sense for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the average myofunctional therapist salary?

There isn’t a salary to point to, because most myofunctional therapists run their own practice and are paid by what the business brings in after expenses, taxes, software, insurance, and time off. Nobody can promise you a number. For a longer look at the income side, read how much you can make as a myofunctional therapist.

How much do myofunctional therapists make?

It depends on your market, your offer, your pricing, your hours, and your follow-through. That’s why I teach you to back into your own number with the Myo Math instead of guessing from someone else’s price.

Can myofunctional therapy replace a dental hygienist salary?

For some therapists that’s the goal, and for others it’s a smaller business that fits around a life. Either way, start with what you need your business to produce, then check it against your hours and your offer. Nobody can promise replacement income, including me.

How do I price my myofunctional therapy services?

Start with what you need the business to produce, what it has to pay for, your real capacity, and how many clients you can serve well. Then work out what your offer needs to generate. How to price your myofunctional therapy services without undercharging walks through the pricing side step by step.

How many clients do I need as a myofunctional therapist?

Divide the number your business needs to produce by what one client pays you, then check that against the hours you have for exams, sessions, and the work behind the scenes. If the math doesn’t fit your hours, the answer is usually in your systems or your offer, and a Get Unstuck Call is a good place to talk it through.

Keep Listening: Related Episodes

• EP88: How to Price Your Myofunctional Therapy Services Without Undercharging, the pricing side of the conversation, so you don’t undercharge.
• EP84: How Much Can You Actually Make as a Myofunctional Therapist? A Real-World Breakdown, the income conversation and the money story behind it.
• EP93: My Top Five AI Employees and What They Do, the AI team that gives a solo owner her time back.

Do the Math, Then Build the Business Around It

Friend, there is no salary waiting for you in this business, and that’s good news. It means the number is yours to decide, and the work is figuring out what your business needs to produce and building the offer and the hours to match.

If you want help with the math behind your own myofunctional therapist salary, book your Get Unstuck Call. We’ll talk about where you are in your business, where you’re stuck, and what makes sense for you, because you have options.

Xo,

💙 Carmen

About Carmen Ball

Carmen Ball (formerly Carmen Woodland) is a renowned, global myofunctional therapist, business coach, and host of The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ podcast. Over the past decade, she has helped thousands of people in her private myofunctional therapy practice (Impact Myofunctional Therapy – formerly Integrative Myofunctional Therapy) and coached hundreds of trained therapists to build profitable online businesses of their own. She is the creator of The Profitable Myofunctional Therapist™ program and Learn Myofunctional Therapy in 60 Days or Less (LMT60), a clinical training program for dental and health professionals. Carmen’s approach is simple: you already have the skills and the license. Now let’s build the business around them. She works with therapists around the world who are ready to stop spinning their wheels and start building a business they are genuinely bonkers about.