Joe Sanok 00:00:00 Are you looking for a way to make a real difference in mental health? Thank you. Life is here to help. They are a nonprofit dedicated to making evidence based mental health therapies accessible to those who need it most. I thank you life. They provide financial assistance for ketamine assisted psychotherapy, helping individuals struggling with treatment resistant depression, anxiety and PTSD. Their mission is to eliminate financial barriers to these life changing treatments and ensure everyone has the opportunity to heal. And the results speak for themselves. Their data shows that the average beneficiary experiences a 55% reduction in symptoms, which is on par with the broader ketamine research that we see. If you’re in private practice or own a business and want to learn more about how you can help your local community, connect with them today. Thank you. Life. Org or email them at partnerships at. Thank you life org again that’s thank you life. Org or email them partnerships at. Thank you life. Org. Thank you. Life healing through accessibility. This is the practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sarna, accession number 1039. Joe Sanok 00:01:27 Welcome, welcome, welcome. So glad that you are here today. So many familiar names, that have been hanging out all week. we are going to get started in just a second here. Hope your day is going great. I would love for you before we dive in, if you could put in an operation in your practice that you feel slightly confused by, it doesn’t mean that you’re the worst at. It doesn’t mean that it’s terrible. But is there an operation in your practice? You’re like, I just wish I was a little better at that. I know for me, just the flow of progress notes was always, you know, to to stay on top of those. I hated them so much. So, And what is it? go ahead and put in the chat. If there’s an operation that you’re just not fully confident with. Oh, we got some billing. Getting numbers into QuickBooks, progress notes, numbers into QuickBooks that should be automated, that you have your bank in your, your credit card should be spitting that in. Joe Sanok 00:02:28 Or maybe it’s organizing the numbers when they’re in QuickBooks. So progress notes. Yeah. We’re gonna we’re going to talk about a lot of that. So if at the end there’s still operations that you haven’t heard me talk about that you’re like, I need a little more on that. we’re going to dig in. We’re going to talk about some processes, some operations. You know, your numbers help you make decisions. you know, oftentimes people that are drawn to the counseling world, they lead with their hearts. that’s what we want out of therapists. We want to be able to lead with our hearts, to be people that want to help the world, but numbers help us make better decisions. And that’s going to be what we’re talking about today is some of those numbers, some of those operations that really can help you get to that next level. So when I ask you what three numbers do you need to make monthly decisions? And if you know numbers that you actually use on a regular basis to make monthly decisions, drop that in the chat. Joe Sanok 00:03:22 Maybe this is a new question for you and that’s totally fine. But you know, are there numbers that you look at that on a monthly basis. You make decisions based on what those numbers are. So I know for us, you know, some of those numbers are profit and loss, total members in our communities, things like that. Well, I’m Joe Santokh and I’m the founder of practice of the practice, which I started in 2012. Started the podcast in 2013. It’s been the number one podcast for counselors and private practice since then because we were the first one. So from day one, we’re the number one podcast, but we’ve continued to put out 3 to 4 episodes a week. We are going to be having episode 1000 on June 4th. We have a bunch of really special things. One thing we’re asking is our audience to just share. What are some things that you’ve learned over the years from the podcast? Is there an episode that you just loved? You can leave us a voicemail over at practice of the practice. Joe Sanok 00:04:16 Com forward slash voicemail. If you want to share something that has stood out to you over the years and potentially be on that thousandth episode. I have a book coming out in May, on work life balance. It’s through Harvard Business Review. It’s going to be in airports and bookstores all over the place. I also am a speaker with Simon Sinek, who is a top business leader. He wrote the book Start With Why, actually was able to get a consulting gig with McDonald’s through him. So I’m going to be doing some consulting this summer, with McDonald’s, owners. So pretty cool stuff that I’m getting to do outside of that kind of counseling consulting. But that’s still primarily what I do, where I help people start growing, scale their private practices, and also go after those big ideas that go beyond the practice. We have a team of five consultants and a team of ten in South Africa that help with all the back end support of a practice. I’m also a dad and we spend lots of time outside and playing board games and doing all sorts of things. Joe Sanok 00:05:11 So some things we’re going to be covering today are some of the basic operations that you need to master. We’re going to have lots of time for Q&A at the end. and so we’re going to be, talking about some of those operations you need to master, as well. we’re going to be talking pay per click. We’re going to be talking directories, marketing, networking, money issues. A lot of those are just basic operations that we need to think through. As the owner of a counseling practice, whether we are just getting going at the very beginning or we have a mega group practice, these are things that we want to have operationally just clicking along. Now, this is something that I had shared when I was presenting to group practice launch last week. And this is an operational flow that to me is so important for you to master. So as we’re as we’re talking here, what we’re looking at is first we want to decide on the need for niche time and other trends. So what that means is your front desk is getting phone calls, whether they’re a virtual assistant in person, no matter how they are. Joe Sanok 00:06:15 that there are specialties that people are calling in for. So maybe you do couples, but you might be getting, someone that’s post-divorce and that’s not your specialty. You might be getting, requests for a play therapist for, for kids whose parents are in therapy, you might be getting all sorts of calls or emails or contacts about a niche that you don’t yet cover. There might be times of the week people are asking for, or there might be, just like other trends. So we want to focus on that. And this is a repeatable process that goes over and over and over the group practice boss repeatable process. So step two is we want to start creating a waitlist or scheduling for a new clinician. So we want to start to think through, okay. You know, even if you’re a solo practice, maybe you keep track of those people and you say, you know, maybe over the next six months I’m going to hire somebody, or maybe in the next one month I’m going to bring out a ten, 99 or W2. Joe Sanok 00:07:10 So to create a wait list and say, you know, we’re in the process of of hiring someone with that specialty that can help kids on the weekend and in the evenings. would you like to be on that wait list? in case you don’t find someone before then, then we’re going to post and hire for that clinician. we’re going to be doing it specific where we’re asking for the niche that we’re noticing in step one, the time and the other trends. So there may be specialty areas that keep showing up over and over and over. We want to make sure we’re hiring for that specific area. Then step four is we’re going to onboard that new clinician. We’re going to add them to the website. We’re going to add all the operational things, get them connected to the EHR. get them you know, in a lot of different ways on social media, get their headshots so that they’re really launching. And from day one, ideally, we want to have at least 1 to 3 intakes on day one. Joe Sanok 00:08:03 Either of people that were on that waitlist have been calling or, maybe people that are transferred from you. You might be seeing a couple. Maybe one of those individuals needs to have some individual work as well. and then when that person or the practice is 60% full, we want to repeat that process. So at its most simple, we are talking about how do people find out about your practice. So that’s the marketing networking all of that. And then what happens next. Sometimes we get all worked up over oh my gosh this is so complicated. I don’t know what to do. all these different things. but when it comes down to it, it’s how do people find out that you exist? And then what happens now? Of course, there’s a lot of back end operational things where, you know, like, we want to make sure that our QuickBooks is up to date. We want to make sure that our progress notes are up to date, the ongoing maintenance of a practice. But it’s most simple. Joe Sanok 00:08:51 It’s how do we find out that you exist and then what happens next? And this repeatable process, if you keep up with this, it’s going to naturally tell you when to scale, when to hire, when to move forward. Right. So that’s big picture. We’re going to drill into some of the individual areas. So pay per click essentials for therapists. So when we’re talking pay per click we’re talking about Google ads TikTok ads. If it’s not banned within the next month, Instagram meta. all those different things that are pay per click. So you’re reaching the right clients, not just strollers. And if you master pay per click to get therapy seekers who need you most, we want to master pay per click to get therapy seekers who need you most. We want the right people, not just any people reaching out to you. So a few things about pay per click. just yesterday. Amber was that yesterday? Man, it all blurs together. I think it was yesterday. Amber, our, Amber Rose, who’s been managing our pay per click advertising, did a whole session on this talking about how, you know, if you are sick of networking, you’re sick of marketing, you’re sick of doing all these things. Joe Sanok 00:09:58 Pay per click can be a great way to get your ideal clients in there. It’s people that are already searching for therapists. So it could be that they’re googling, you know, therapist in my area. Or it could just be that based on their demographics, that Facebook or Instagram is putting these ads in front of them. So depending on the practice, we’re seeing that it’s anywhere from 2 to $10 per click, depending on your specialty. Now, if you’re in, say, addictions, sometimes it’s more expensive because a lot of the residential facilities, they’re bidding a lot higher because they know if someone comes into their program, they’re making, you know, 50 to $100,000, whereas in the counseling practice, you know, your lifetime value might be a couple thousand. So as we look at pay per click advertising and we want to start small, start with a small budget and target specific keywords. Maybe work on setting up your, meta, you know, advertising and do some posts and then boost those posts, create some audiences so that you can start to say, okay, let’s, let’s really look at what has worked there. Joe Sanok 00:11:01 we want to think through who do we best serve? So you may have certain financial demographics. You may say people whose status has changed in regards to the relationship in the last 90 days. we may say, if there’s been certain types of life events that have occurred, they might follow certain things. So, you know, do they follow, certain business leaders or thought leaders or self-help gurus that you’re like, hey, if someone loves Tony Robbins, that’s my kind of person that would want to be in therapy. Okay. Or maybe they’re not. do you like people? They like essential oils. Or do you like people that don’t like what? What’s your ideal client? So thinking through that business avatar, thinking through that ideal client. And what are their buying habits? Where do they get information? What do they think about. We want to start with those sorts of things, and then we want to monitor and adjust those campaigns based on performance. So we don’t just throw all this money out there. Joe Sanok 00:11:53 Maybe at the beginning you’re doing that, but you want to then see, okay, how is this working? And so if someone clicks on an ad, for them to schedule an intake appointment or for them to schedule an inquiry call with your intake coordinator, how are we tracking that at that point? are we having that, contact us form somehow labeled differently so that we know that they came through an ad? how do we know if Facebook’s working or Google’s working, if we’re doing both of those at the same time? Doing good a B testing, running it against itself? How are we making sure we do that? And if you don’t know how to do that, make sure you’re hiring an IT professional to help with some of that coding. It would take them like 15 minutes to put some of that into a lot of it, to be able to track it. All right. So we’re looking at what’s working. We’re adjusting campaigns based on performance and then we’re repeating it. You know, if you find that, you know, for 2 or $3 per click, you can get enough people, then that’s really helpful. Joe Sanok 00:12:47 I’m going to actually show you, this calculator that we’ve put together. it’s the when to hire calculator. I wasn’t going to do that right now, but I, actually think that it would be really applicable to what we’re talking about. let me just share this again, and we’re going to be turning this into a much prettier calculator for all of our members. but even just thinking about, you know, say, you know, that for every 100 clicks, you know, you get, say, 15% of those. So 15 news, you could do 100 clicks per week. So maybe you’re, let’s see, 100 bucks a week or 100 clicks a week times. Even if it was expensive, 300 bucks a week. Okay. What would that then do if we did that over time? So we’re talking 1200 a month on pay per click, get 15 new inquiries, say they schedule an intake 75% of the time. So we’re highly qualified people, people that are really, you know, into therapy that we’ve really zoomed in on it. Joe Sanok 00:13:41 And 75% of those people show up. See, the average total sessions that a client complete completes 25, so they come weekly for half a year. You’re charging 175 per session. And for your clinicians, they’re full when they’re at 25 or you’re full when they’re at 25. And then say the percentage profit, usually it’s somewhere between 15 and 30%. For most owners. Then that should take about three weeks. So then we would know that, you know, spending that initial $300 a week. So $900 over three weeks should get that person full based on these numbers. So then total profit once full $963 per week. And then we know that that person, when they come for that period of time, it’s going to, you know, be able to be a lifetime value about $900. So so does that make sense to spend $900 to get one new person? yeah. You’re getting you’re feeling this person up. And so lifetime value, you’re trading that $900 for 4375. And we can start to look at total sessions forecasted week by week when we’re doing this. Joe Sanok 00:14:45 So as we start to run some of these numbers, what we want to be doing is we want to be thinking through, okay, if I put in X number of dollars per week into a pay per click advertising, what do I need to have happen? So even just saying, okay, I know that my average lifetime value of a client is two grand and you know about, you know, 60% of that goes to, goes to all of my clinicians, it goes to the support staff, it goes to rent. And, you know, I’m taking home 30, 40% running those numbers to really understand, you know, what do I need to see happen in this campaign to make this trading nickels for quarters or trading dimes for dollars. Next we want to look make sure we have the operations of directories down. So we don’t want to be this hidden gem. We want to maximize directory listings to shine a light on your practice. You know, so frequently people say, well, is it worth it to join Psychology Today? You know, or to tell a wellness hub or online counseling.com any of these, you know, directories that are out there. Joe Sanok 00:15:40 typically, you know, if you look at, say, the 29 bucks a month or whichever plan you select with each of them On average, you need to get one client every three years from that directory in order to make it worth it. So to me, it’s worth it to have directory profiles for every single one of your clinicians, to have one for yourself, to have one for the whole clinic so that you can be ranking, you know, in general on what we hear is about 3 to 5% of the time, you’re ranking on that first page on Psychology Today because they rotate through things like Tele Wellness Hub give you free CTV ads as part of your membership, meaning that on Hulu and on Amazon. And, you know, if you have the Netflix, lower priced plan that now has commercials, you can highly target people and say, okay, I’m looking for single parent homes that are in this zip code that make this much money, and that value these sorts of things. You can highly specialize these commercials to people. Joe Sanok 00:16:37 And so a lot of these directors now are offering extra marketing types of things as part of it. Now when we’re talking operations, which is the point of this one, we don’t want you as the owner doing all of this. And so making sure that we’re creating those systems to manage it without you being sucked into it, to have the operational flow of, okay, how do we manage all of these directories? How do we make sure that we understand the data that’s coming in, what’s working, and having the right person at that front desk and the right person? Is your executive assistant or your data analytics person, understanding that whole user flow. So we want to make sure that we optimize your profiles with accurate information, professional photos I mean, if you go on Psychology Today, half the photos look like they’re just, you know, old Facebook photos where they’ve crapped out their partner. So having professional photos is a practice. Not having them all have the same background, but have the same photographer, you know, take people’s photos in different spots. Joe Sanok 00:17:32 You know, even looking at a lot of our branding for Level Up week, we had a lot of photos of me that were done in different poses, different, you know, sitting at a computer, getting excited about different things, all sorts of things that we can use rather than the same headshot over and over. sometimes you can use client testimonials. You never, with the ethics want to be asking clients for that. But there’s lots of ways when you’re doing surveys or things like that that you can say, can we use your statement without coercion in some of our marketing? So making sure that you’re doing that in an ethical way, talking to your attorney about that and incorporating that in when appropriate. We want to look at your niche in regards to your directory, so your profile will stand out significantly. If just your first sentence is about who you help instead of who you are, who you help instead of who you are. Because most directory profiles start with I’m Joe, I went to Western Michigan University. Joe Sanok 00:18:24 I have a master’s degree in counseling psychology and community counseling. And then that’s the first line that people see that doesn’t tell me anything. If I’m a client looking to work with Joe, whereas I help angry teenagers that are really frustrating their parents to learn life skills to launch into adulthood. If I’m looking for a therapist that can help teenagers launch into adulthood because I’m really concerned about my kid, that’s going to stand out way differently than I’m Joe Stanek. I went to Western Michigan University. All right. And then the impact of directory listings and local search and client acquisition, making sure that we understand that when we have these multi-pronged approaches, when there’s trends that shift, we’ve kind of mitigated the risk. So even just you think about at the time of this recording time of this webinar yesterday, the House of Representatives in the US voted to ban TikTok. Do we know if it’ll go through the Senate and then the president will sign it off? Who knows? But it started a conversation where if you invest in certain directories, you invest in a certain social media, you invest in certain SEO. Joe Sanok 00:19:27 Things can shift in the market. And so if we diversify how people are finding us, that allows us to change our focus based on what’s happening in the world, say TikTok does get banned and that was your primary lead source. Well, that’s going to be a big hit to your business compared to if you’re starting to notice trends that are shifting and move those ad dollars to different spots. so doing that content marketing where you’re really connecting. And to me, I’m a big fan of experimenting. So if you are, say, a couples therapist and to say, okay, for three months, I’m just going to do a live YouTube presentation, I’m going to do one presentation together per week, and I’m going to go live on YouTube, you know, three times a week, four times a week, doing that exact same presentation. I recently heard about the the Blue’s Clues marketing effect. And so Blue’s Clues is this like kids TV show that was really popular in the 90s? back then, Sesame Street had a brand new show every single day. Joe Sanok 00:20:24 I think they still do, aimed at, you know, toddlers, kids that are at home before they are, you know, school age. And Nickelodeon wanted to kind of get into that market, but their budget was such that they really could only afford doing one show per week. So they made the show Blue’s Clues, and it came out on Monday, and they played the same episode all week long. But they saw that these kids then started to kind of memorize words faster, memorize spelling and colors. And it was like this repetitive learning. And recently I’ve been hearing a lot of people using that as a great analogy for when you find things that work, do it over and over. And so, you know, when I look at the most registrations here, you know, with this week, so, you know, when you find something that works, doing that over and over instead of feeling like you always have to start from scratch. So this week, one thing we’ve noticed is when we do things on marketing, we tend to have the most registrations. Joe Sanok 00:21:22 in the past that wasn’t always the case. There was some times when passive income had the most people. So there’s something happening right now where people aren’t feeling like they are as full as they want to be in their practices, whether that’s solo or group. So in thinking forward and think about the next quarter, how would I apply? The very thing I’m talking about is we probably want to do more on just marketing, like to to make sure that we’re doing more of that. Maybe we should do some YouTube lives. Maybe we should do Facebook lives more often where we’re just talking about these things and just get it out there. So building that social media presence, building that brand awareness versus just trying to get clients, in marketing, we want to understand that know like you can trust how people do business. They got us that 50 years ago. So the idea that people go from, I don’t know who you are to I know who you are is the first step. They need to first know that you exist. Joe Sanok 00:22:12 Now that can happen through a friend recommending you. I just had a friend text me that’s in a different state and said, do you know any therapists in the state that can help with these issues I’m dealing with? You know, I want to become a better person. And so I texted a friend that I have in that state that is aligned in how, you know, we think about the world. And I said, you know, my friend just asked me this question, do you know a good therapist there that can can help my friend? So that’s, you know, whoever that friend recommends this down there. I’m going to then pass on to my other friend. So that’s. Now they know who that is, then they’re going to probably go to their website. They’re going to read about them, look at their social media blueprint and footprint out there and their digital footprint, say, okay, I like that person. Yeah, they’re talking about the kind of stuff I want to work on and then trust, you know, has that person done a schooling? Maybe they do an inquiry call, get their intake and then say, yeah, this is awesome. Joe Sanok 00:22:58 So our clients are going through that repeatable process over and over. Now we want to create engaging content that educates and resonates with your target audience. So thinking through when you’re making things, are you trying to educate? Are you trying to normalize? Are you trying to entertain? Are you trying to, build something that people can use practically? And having that strong online presence through consistent branding is going to help you rank higher. It’s going to have more social proof. And also then people have something to point to, to look at before they ever talk to you. Uphill is an AI powered platform designed specifically for therapists like us. Now I know what you might be thinking. AI and therapy. How does that work? Let me tell you, uphill is a lifesaver when it comes to streamlining your administrative tasks. As therapists, we all know how crucial it is to save time whenever we can. After all, our clients deserve our undivided attention and energy. That’s where uphill comes in. It transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes our therapy sessions, helping us write those detailed progress notes up to 90% faster. Joe Sanok 00:24:11 Can you imagine saving 6 to 10 hours per week? That’s precious time that we can use to see more clients or simply recharge our own batteries. Just a few minutes after you finish the session, you get a pre drafted editable progress note, complete with session summary and breakdown of all the topics that were covered. It also provides session analytics that help you measure speech based metrics like talking ratio, speech, cadence, sentiment, and tenths. Also, it’s 100% HIPAA compliant, making it secure for both therapists and clients. The best part? It’s available for all EHRs with their browser extension. So if you’re ready to experience the game changing power of AI in your therapy practice, head on over to Uphill Diogo and let I write your therapy notes for you. That’s uphill. Myojo. Next. Operationally, we want to look at networking and building strong networking connections to build a thriving practice as you network to expand your reach and grow. All right. So a few things we want to think about in regards to the operations of networking is again, you aren’t doing all this to have an executive assistant that goes through, and we’re going to talk through. Joe Sanok 00:25:29 How do you manage all these types of projects when you’re looking at the operations of your business? But to say, you know, I want to have a list of 100 people that I can network with. I want you to reach out to to those people. And then I want you to schedule either virtual coffee dates or in-person connections where I go to their office to go up for coffee or whatever it is that you do. and then you want to look at those numbers. So for every 100 emails we send cold out to people that are yoga teachers, other therapists, pastors, anyone that would be connected to your ideal client for 100 emails. How many replies do we get? Do we get 25? Do we get 95? Then of those replies, how many turn into actual good referral meetings? And then from those referral meetings, how many turn into good referrals that are actually referring people? So then if we know, okay, I need to get five more clients. That means I need to get one more quality networking person. Joe Sanok 00:26:28 That means I need to do 20 meetings. That means I need to do 100 emails. That may not be worth it for you to pay someone to do all that. Whereas if you know that there’s other ways to do it quicker, maybe that networking is worth it. Also attending local events, professional associations, actually engaging in online communities, reaching out to those in and out of your niche are great operations we want to master as we’re building those relationships. Next, we want to look at financial management basics. Your business shouldn’t be a financial headache. We want to master the financial side of your practice for peace of mind. We want to have those operations down. So a few things we want to think about is having just some of those key financial management practices for for you are looking at your profit, looking at your loss, like how much is it that you are spending, how much are you keeping for every dollar that comes in, how much goes into your family’s pocket? We want to be talking to your accountant about all sorts of tax implications. Joe Sanok 00:27:22 Should you be putting money more money into a health savings account? Should your business be doing a matching plan for your retirement? Should you be doing a 529 account for your kids? should we be looking at, tax optimization strategies by, you know, employing your partner, things like that, that are ways that you can talk to your accountant, do it legally, but to optimize your tax situation. we want to set a budget so that we have an idea of where we’re spending. What what are things that are set budgets. So your rent that’s not going to go up and down based on how many clients come in. your EHRs are pretty set unless you add clinicians. whereas maybe your front desk staff, maybe that goes up and down based on your needs, your staff salary or your how much the staff are getting paid. That may go up and down based on how many people they’re seeing. So looking at those sorts of things, tracking those expenses and saving for your taxes, paying your quarterly taxes, making sure that you’re doing all those things that a good accountant recommends. Joe Sanok 00:28:18 If you didn’t watch the accounting webinar with heard, make sure you watch that recording when that comes out. Because we walk through all the different things for tax day and what you need to prep. Also linking your QuickBooks with your bank and credit card and setting up those automations or having a good bookkeeper do that. Oftentimes when you are at probably three Clintons or more, or if you’re just looking to work less, it is so worth the 400 to $600 a month that you pay for a bookkeeper because they’re going through every single item. They’re setting up those automations, and then they’re finding those outliers to say, okay, what was this for? In any given month with practice and practice, and we have thousands of transactions, a month of money coming in, money going out. I probably spend five minutes a month thinking about my QuickBooks, and that’s because my bookkeeper goes through. And then at the end of the month, they send through probably 20 transactions. We haven’t set up our Jen, my assistant who’s in here and is she needs a better title than assistant. Joe Sanok 00:29:17 I think we were brainstorming when she’s the glue of practice, the practice she is what keeps us all connected and doing what needs to happen. and Jen, maybe we did already come up with your new title. if we did put that in the chat. but. Oh, wait, I see a chat came through. Oh, I just see the heart from her. but she’s the glue, you know, and she knows over time. She didn’t know this right away because she was new. And then it’s like I had to train her on. Okay, here’s where we can look for certain things. So, like, what is this transaction? She knows these types. She can report out. Then the bookkeeper learns. Okay, we don’t need to ask about that. That’s always going to be, you know, consulting expenses or things like that. So then, you know, there’s five, maybe ten things a month that I have to talk through and send back to the bookkeeper. And then from there, business executive. Joe Sanok 00:30:04 That’s what we should call our Brittany. Okay. yeah. And then we want to make sure that we’re separating the those business expenses from, from your personal finances. Make sure that you have an LLC or an S Corp, or depending on your state. Some states don’t like LLCs, making sure that you really have that business account. And all of that is itemized around bookkeeping and record keeping. There’s a few things to stay organized and compliant. We want to streamline that bookkeeping for smoother sailing. So you need to make sure that you have accurate record keeping. If you’re ever in an audit, you want to be able to prove that, prove that those were expenses, things like that. And I see some questions are coming in. Awesome. feel free to put those in. We’re going to take questions in just a little bit here. you want to use accounting software to streamline bookkeeping like QuickBooks or heard, and then, you know, having clear financial records for tax prep, you know, we’re in that phase right now. Joe Sanok 00:30:57 And so my accountant sends through all these things they need, you upload the stuff whenever it comes to me. I just save it in a folder because it’s it’s never centralized. You get an email that says, here’s your 1099 K and here’s your this and that, and here’s your HSA and all those things. And I just save each of those in a folder that says For Kevin. And then I have a folder within that that says uploaded 2023. So everything that I’ve already uploaded into the system, I then put into that folder within the folder, and then anything new that goes in that folder I know still needs to get uploaded. So figuring out that basic flow, when we look at client retention strategies, we want to keep your calendar full and discover different ways for happy, loyal clients. So we want to make sure that we foster those long term connections with our clients so that we’re providing more value than the typical practice. So implementing a regular client communication plan. So is that that after session three, someone gets automatically texted or emailed a survey? how are we checking in with them in regards to how it’s going? It can be newsletters. Joe Sanok 00:32:01 Here’s fun mental wellness things in the community that once a month your assistant puts together and you scan and send out to just add extra value. the sandwich approach is where we think about if counseling is in the middle before counseling, what are things that we could offer, whether they’re free or paid. So if someone’s not ready for counseling or it could prep them for counseling, or if they have to be on a waitlist, they can get in. Are there things that we can offer them? Can we offer them, say, a five part e-course on parenting before they start doing counseling around parenting? Then what do we have after counseling? Do we have a support group for parents? Do we have an e-course for couples? Do we have check ins every six months? Do we have retreats or intensives? So thinking through what’s before counseling and what’s after counseling are great opportunities to expand not just your influence and your income, but also your client connections. And when we think about time management, we want to first know our sprint type. Joe Sanok 00:32:54 So your sprint type is how you sprint when you’re doing things. I talk extensively about this in Thursday is the new Friday. So knowing are you a person that needs to work on one thing for four hours and you just sprint, or do you need to break it up into. I’m going to work on one thing for 20 minutes, another thing for 20 minutes. Not multitasking, but making sure that we understand how we sprint. And then do we sprint where we have it regularly every week, where it’s in our calendars, or maybe the first Monday of the month? Or do we need to have more of a retreat approach where we go away for a couple of days and just dig into the practice? When you know your sprint type, you can get more done at University of Illinois, there was a study. Vigilance. Decrement. Vigilance. Pay attention to something. Decrement meaning breaking down over time. Before this study, people thought, you know, you do something really tough, like 14 webinars in a week. Joe Sanok 00:33:45 you’re just going to be spent, and there’s no way to bounce back. You just have to go to sleep, come back the next day. So there’s decrement of your vigilance. Now, they wanted to see if that was true. So they did this study where they brought college students and they gave them a really like simple four digit number, like three, four, one, two. And every they look at a computer for an hour and they put all these different four digit numbers up over time. And when that number came up three, four, one, two you had to hit a button. So super boring. Just for an hour. You’re looking at these numbers. They saw there was vigilance decrement. The way that they paid attention at the beginning was much better than how they paid attention at the end. Now they wanted to see if that was true, if they disrupted it at the one third mark and the two third mark. So they gave them a one minute break at the one third mark and a one minute break at the two third mark. Joe Sanok 00:34:30 They found that one minute break was enough to completely eliminate vigilance decrement, meaning at the end they were paying attention just as well as they were at the beginning. So little things like that using neuropsychology and this neuro research can help us get more done. Even changing how your office is based on the work you’re doing can be super effective. So while I was writing Thursday is the New Friday, I wrote 80,000 words, writing one day a week from April of 2020 until September 3rd of 2020. So 80,000 words in just, you know, a handful of months. So what I did is I changed the lighting in here. I brought in a different chair that I used only for my writing. I had a playlist that was my writing playlist. Those mornings I didn’t check my email, texts, the news, nothing. My brain was clean and ready going into it. I knew what liquids I needed, so I had my coffee, I had my smoothie. I had my healthy breakfast so that I could make sure that I got the most out of my morning. Joe Sanok 00:35:29 I also ended each week with whiteboarding out what the next week was going to be like. So okay, I just finished chapter seven. Chapter eight. Let’s take everything that’s in Trello, put it up on that whiteboard so that my brain is mulling it over subconsciously throughout that week, so that when I sat down to write, I could get more done. So using some of these things, like actually using the neuroscience to get more done, we want to make sure that we do that as well. You get more done when you slow down. When you’re slowing down on the front end, it allows you to kill it on the other side. So making sure you’re looking at your weekends not as just recovery from the week before, but in preparation for that next week, we want to prioritize your tasks and set some boundaries. there’s this thing called Parkinson’s Law. So Parkinson was a researcher that looked at kind of how people get things done, and he found that work expands to the time that’s given. So think about in college, if you had a month to write a paper, then it took a month to write that paper. Joe Sanok 00:36:27 If you remembered the night before you cranked it out, it may not have been your best work, but you got it done. Same sort of thing. But the side that isn’t often reported is the natural bloating of organizations. When we create systems and operations, it’s near-impossible to pull that back out of that system. But if we set time where we’re only going to work a certain number of hours a week, we end up working on the very best things that we could be working on. So if you have 20 tasks in a week and you say, I’m going to, I’m not going to work Fridays anymore. Now you can only do 14 or 15, okay. You’re going to do the best 14 or 15. You’re going to focus in on those best things that have the best ROI for you. Then that raises the question, what do we do with those other tasks? Well, we eliminate them. We hand them off to someone else. We automate them. With technology, there’s all sorts of ways that we can do it. Joe Sanok 00:37:12 But then you’re working on the very best thing that you need to be working on. All right. Let’s talk about some of these operations. So in the book, what is the one thing you can do now that will make everything else easier in the book? The one thing. that’s the question they ask. And I want to talk through just a few things around this. So knowing your KPIs, key performance indicators, setting about three of these across the practice, oftentimes one is sales. Sometimes one is the amount of time you’re working. You could have one around marketing or operations. What are the numbers you’re setting. And then how do you set a quarter by quarter plan. So if you want to hit $500,000 in counseling sales this year. Okay, let’s look at where you’re at. So maybe in quarter one, you’re going to really sit down with your accountant or your bookkeeper and say, where are you at? Get an understanding of what clinicians are doing best, maybe which topics or niches tend to be doing best. Joe Sanok 00:38:12 coming up with a plan for hiring and then maybe quarter two, the project is we’re going to be on hiring. So breaking down the projects that support that big KPI and then doing that quarter by quarter. So, for example, one of our big KPIs around operations was to be more efficient with our meetings. And the way back to that was same CEO. She was saying, I’m getting sucked into too many meetings. This is ridiculous. All the emails back and forth. So our KPI is that Sam will be in no more than two meetings per week. And then for any new projects, there are no more than two meetings to launch that new project. And so if we can do that, that means that operationally we’re doing better. So we found what is the thing that’s going to help with that. So at quarter four of last year, her big part one project as part of this was looking at all sorts of different ways that we can keep track of what we’re doing. What are some of those project management systems we were using Trello. Joe Sanok 00:39:08 Is that the best? So she evaluated those and came up with one that we could test starting in January of this year. Then quarter one, she was supposed to be testing it, learning it, and then having just a couple of our key players start to implement it and give feedback on it. And if it worked, if we liked it, then to move on to launching it across the practice or practice the practice. So we ended up landing on asana. She was trained in it. She’s got a bunch of us on board. I’m now using it. I have the app and we’re flowing through. Last week our our meeting only needed to be half an hour because we just checked in real quick, went through the things, the rest was in asana. So that’s something that you can be doing is automating things both in the practice, but then also automating outside of just yourself, making sure that you aren’t the linchpin that keeps this thing going. One thing that I often have my consulting clients do is make a love hate list. Joe Sanok 00:40:03 To make a list of all the things you love and all the things you hate. So what do you love and hate in regards to your practice? Where do you feel filled up and excited? Where do you feel like? I dread doing this and starting to offload as much of that hate list. And then once you’ve done that, looking at that love list and then questioning that and saying, should I be doing that? So for example, I years ago loved when I was making a podcast. I would do the art for it. I would do the show notes. It filled me up, create creatively and make infographics, all these different things. But every single podcast would take about 2.5 hours from the recording and all those other things. So I could only put out like one a week. Now, when I start outsourcing that, when I start having someone do the design and all those other things that artistic side of me got filled through. Now I watercolor paint, I do improv comedy. I fill that up in a different way. Joe Sanok 00:40:53 That creativity that I need that comes just through my hobbies. And now I can do three, 4 or 5, six podcasts a week. You know, if we have the sponsors, we could absolutely do as many podcasts as we need to do. Right now, we’re doing three episodes a week. We’re considering adding a fourth, because it’s automated outside of my own time. So one question I want you to ask yourself is if you had to make all decisions in your practice off of five numbers, what five numbers would you focus on? Would it be intakes? Would it be your overall net revenue? Would it be total sessions? Would it be percentage of filled sessions? So if you have 200 sessions that you could be doing throughout your practice and you’re only at 150 or 75% occupancy, like thinking like a hotel. Now what if we reduce that to just three numbers? Like what if you had to make all your decisions on just three numbers, what would those three numbers be? And then what? One number? If you had to make every decision this month on just one number, what would that number be? Now, if we can get down to here is the most important number. Joe Sanok 00:41:58 And this is something that even practice the practice we could do better. Just say here’s the number that fuels everything. And to really look at is that how many members we have in our community? Is it our gross revenue? Is it how many consulting clients we have? Is it podcast listeners? What’s the one number that really represents everything else? Then? You know, assuming we land on that, we can align the whole team and say, listen, this is the one number that if we boost this, it boosts everything else. So I’m wondering where, where you are in regards to feeling confused as to where to start. You know, if you’re ready to level up, this is level up week. we have communities that are for you for every stage of practice. So if you’re just getting going, next level practices for you, if you’re in solo practice and it’s thriving but you’re not quite ready for group practice, next level practices for you. Group practice launch is for you If you are looking at growing a group practice. Joe Sanok 00:42:49 And then once you’ve added that first person group practice, boss is for you. We’ve helped over 2500 therapists to start their private practices. This is based on 15 years of owning a private practice and then selling it, ten years of consulting that I’ve been doing as well. We have five other consultants that are helping you start, grow and scale your practice. We’ve won nine top therapy awards and our members have collected over $250 million in sales. All right, let’s dig in. Also, if you want to go back and forth in regards to maybe you want a little laser coaching and what to do, you can virtually raise your hand. And then I’ll bring you on camera. We’ll have a little discussion. So I’m going to jump in here. And Jen thanks for putting those codes in there I really appreciate that. first question is do you happen to have the link for online counseling? Yeah, it’s just online counseling.com. Clay Cockrell started that. He sold that a couple of years ago. let me just check to make sure that that’s still active. Joe Sanok 00:43:40 I mean, they bought it for a lot of money. So online counseling.com. Let’s look. Yep. Online counseling.com. Well the online therapy directory. Yes. It’s just online counseling.com. We don’t have any affiliate links or anything like that. yeah. All right. Let’s just look. So we got those things, other questions. We’d love to, just hear from folks if, you know, go ahead and turn your video on. Turn your audio on. if you have questions, we’d love to help you with some of your operations or their operations you’re still confused on or you’re not sure if you’re thinking about it correctly. I answered them all. That’s so affirming for my ego. I appreciate that no questions is a great sign of just an amazing presentation. More about what directories you recommend. Yeah. So I would say first we want to look at for you. Who are you trying to attract? so if you’re just looking for online counseling, online counseling.com, is a great place, for that, online counseling. Joe Sanok 00:44:43 So, yeah, I think they now own online counseling.com. Online therapy. They own a bunch of those. So they I think they own online counseling. Double L for the British, all of that. so let me just look they yeah they redirected to online therapy.com. So that’s the same, same site. but yeah, my favorites right now is psychology today is a go to that you really should be on. Make sure you go to practice of the practice that com for Psychology today to get six months free for anyone that doesn’t already have an email associated with that. So if you have associates that you haven’t signed up, try it out for six months. Give it a whirl. also, I really like what Martha is building over at Tele Wellness Hub. So Tele Wellness Hub is looking at online wellness providers. So not just therapists, but, other people that do things online. They’re the one that has the CTV ad. So that’s over at Tele Wellness Hub. Com they’re a growing platform and like many growing platforms, when you’re one of the first people there, you can stand out in your area right away. Joe Sanok 00:45:40 So even though they have much fewer people searching on there compared to like a Psychology Today, if you’re on there and you’re the only person in that state like that’s going to, you’re going to get everybody. So, why not sign up for that? They also do those those CTV ads, which are really awesome. A lot of the other ones, I like to know owners or have conversations with them. And so the fact that I helped Clay launch online counseling.com and that directory, and I believe, Aaron Carpenter, who’s here, worked on building that website through legendary Lyon. and then, you know, helping Mada grow tele wellness hub and just, she came to slow down school. She’s been a consulting client and then having connections over at Psychology Today. Those are the big ones that I tend to recommend, but there’s always ones popping up that people like. So if there’s one that you like that I didn’t mention, please feel free to drop that off into the chat as well. cool. Looks like, Alicia is joining next level practice. Joe Sanok 00:46:36 Awesome. Good to hear that. well, I don’t see any other questions coming in. thanks so much for hanging out today. Have a great day. And we could not do this show without our amazing sponsors. And our sponsor for today is uphill. Uphill is what I wish I had my practice. It is a game changing experience where it brings the power of AI into your therapy practice, where you can have secure progress, note analysis, analytics and ways that you can do even better and save a ton of time. In fact, up to 6 to 10 hours a week. So you can use AI now to help with your progress notes over at uphill.io/joe and let I write your therapy notes for you. That’s uphill.io forward slash. Joe, thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band silence sexy for that intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. Joe Sanok 00:47:47 It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.