A New Year a New You…Probably Not Unless You Do These Three Things | PoP 424

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A New Year a New You...Probably Not Unless You Do These Three Things | PoP 424

What new year resolutions can you make for 2020? How can you start the new year off for ultimate success? What are some changes you can implement?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about new year resolutions that will ensure 2020 is a game-changer for you and your business.

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In This Podcast

Summary

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about new year resolutions that will ensure 2020 is a game-changer for you and your business.

Only do what you can do

When you first start your private practice, you’re so busy because you take on everything yourself. You need to realize that your hourly is so important. Start delegating what you can’t do and outsource with virtual assistants. Be fierce about your scheduling and set fierce boundaries. Optimize every minute you are working and slow down when you’re not.

Have a reality goal and a risk goal

A reality goal might be automating one of your processes, or adding clinicians to your practice. It’s a small, manageable step in the right direction.

A risk goal is something that could be a total waste of time, but if it isn’t, it’s a game-changer to levelling up. This could be starting a podcast or building an e-course for your clients. It’s moving you in the right direction but it is a risk to put yourself out there.

Level up in an area you have no business in

Push your risk goal even further. This could be doing a lot more speaking or starting a conference. Perhaps that means reaching out to Forbes and asking to write for them. You never know what’s going to happen. Maybe that means becoming a consultant in a specialised area that you know. Find an angle that you’re good with.

Get the money first when you have a new idea and then figure it out later. Simply put, that means to raise your hand first, then figure it out later. It will help you grow at a faster rate.

 

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Meet Joe Sanok

private practice consultant

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

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Podcast Transcription

 [JOE]: Between writing notes, filing insurance claims, and scheduling with clients, it can be hard to stay organized. That’s why I recommend Therapy Notes. Their easy to use platform lets you manage your practice securely and efficiently. Visit therapynotes.com to get two months free today. Just use promo code [JOE], that’s [J O E] when you sign up for a free trial over at therapynotes.com.
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 424. Welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I’m Joe Sanok, your host. A new year, a new you, probably not unless you do these three things. So I hope you are excited about this episode. It’s another solo show. This is going live in late 2019 as we prepare for a new decade. You know, I think back to the year 1999 when it flipped to 2000 with the whole Y2K worry. And I was a Navy pier with some friends of mine and there were just thousands and thousands of people. We were just so just smashed in there, and, I had to go to the bathroom. And so my friend went with me, actually my friend Todd, the same guy I got chased by the wild rhino with in Nepal, and I remember I had to like push my way to get into the bathroom and my friend, he couldn’t get to like any of the urinals or like the stalls and he just stormed out of the bathroom and he goes, “I guess I’m not going to the bathroom in this millennium.”
It just was like the funniest thing. Like he wasn’t going to get to pee in that in 1999. It has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re talking about today, but to me it’s just dang entertaining. Sometimes you just got to share random stories. Well, all of you Killin’It Campers, you probably got the emails that on December 30th and 31st you get very first access to the Killin”It Camp tickets, to the volunteer tickets, and the founders tickets. Those of you that were part of the founding Killin’It Camp in 2019, we have the dates for the 2021, October 4th through seventh. We’re doing it out in Rocky Mountain National Park, right on the edge of it. Last year while we were unloading things, a herd of 30 or so elk, took over the parking lot. We had to wait while we unloaded things.
We had goat yoga, we had an open bar Monday and Tuesday night. We had so many killer speakers. We know it’s going to be an awesome event. And so those of you that are not founding members, make sure that you are on the Killin’It Camp early bird list. That’s over a killingitcamp.com. Killin’It. Drop the G of ‘killing’. It’s so funny because every time my voice to text auto corrects to ‘Killin’It Camp’ and, not that great. Anyway, so killingitcamp.com, if you want to be on that list. We are releasing for all of our Killin’It Campers. Also, if you miss those early bird tickets for the volunteer spots and the founders tickets on Valentine’s day, February 14th, we’re going to open up tickets to you that day also. So look at your emails if you came to Killin’It Camp in 2019.
The rest of you will be launching those dates in March, for early bird and it’s awesome. It’s super cheap. I have to, let me bounce over. Do I even have it still up? I don’t remember the exact prices we have. Let me just tell you, let’s bounce back in to Google. Alright. So let me, just to let you know. So this year, so we’re doing kind of a ticket and then you can get your lodging through the YMCA on the Rockies on your own. And we’re just passing on the price that they charged us. And so it’s actually cheaper if you end up like having two couples for a room or if you have four people. We want to give you the option to have an even cheaper ticket because we want this to be super reasonable.
So, our volunteer tickets are going to be 295 for this conference and that’s going to include all of the sessions, all of the goat yoga, the open bar, all of that. You just have to do a five hour spot. So if there’s tickets left over after our founders get first access, then, we only have 50 of those volunteer spots. The founders get a $350 early birds. It’s a mere 395. Then regular tickets, so early birds are going to go on sale and it looks like April 6th is when the early bird starts and the volunteer tickets go on sale in March. And then the regular tickets, those go on sale in June. June 18th is when that kicks over. So, it’s going to be awesome, but you can get all your food and lodging for 58 bucks a night, though, if you quadruple occupancy. If you single occupancy, the best rooms are 134.99 and that includes your food.
So, we have an awesome connection with the YMCA at the Rockies. These are hotel style rooms; just amazing. In a couple of weeks here, the Slow Down School tickets are going to go on sale for just a short time. They’re going to be, instead of the regular $3,900, they’re going to be for $2,500. So an insane deal. You know, it costs us more than a thousand dollars just to put this on per person. And so, it’s a week-long event, from July. It’s the last, look at me with all my stuff not in order as I start recording. Let me bounce over to this calendar. So on July 26, that’s a Sunday, you fly into Traverse City and, you fly out on Saturday, August 1st.
This event is unlike any other, and actually next month in our podcast, I’m interviewing a bunch of the Slow Down Schoolers and they’re talking about some very practical content. It’s not just trying to sell Slow Down School, but the level that they’ve been able to level up, I mean double and tripling their income, getting to multi six figures, building 20 grand a month in passive income after coming to Slow Down School. It’s just insane to see kind of what people do when they really focus in. So next month we’re going to be spotlighting a bunch of our Slow Down Schoolers, but I just want to walk through kind of what Slow Down School is because it’s kind of hard to explain. So Slow Down School, the idea is that for us to really make big steps forward, we have to slow down to spark innovation.
So what happens is if you fly in on Sunday, we pick you up from the airport in a big yellow school bus, we hang out on the bus ride there, we have a kickoff on that Sunday night and we have, you’ve got your own room, you have a roommate. And if you don’t want a roommate, then you can pay just a little bit extra for that. We have an executive chef that comes in that has partnerships with local farmers. They even have signs that say where their carrots and their beats came from, they grow their own kale. We had a lady that, she was doing the keto diet. She stayed in ketosis all week. And we also had a vegan that was there and said it was some of the best vegan food she’s ever had. And so everything in between that awesome food, it’s right on the beaches of Northern Michigan. So you leave where we stay, you walk over this beautiful river and then it’s probably a hundred feet until you’re at the beach.
So, every single night we go and we watch the sunset go down. Lake Michigan looks like an ocean. Most people who’ve never seen Lake Michigan are just blown away because it’s enormous. You can’t see Wisconsin. We have campfires there, right on the beach, we hang out for a couple of days. So Monday and Tuesday we go for hikes, I bring in yoga teachers and massage therapists so you can genuinely relax. You just turn off your phone, take some pictures with your phone, but that’s it, and we just turn off our brains for a couple of days. Then Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning, we run full tilt towards your practice and full tilt towards your big ideas. We do these 20-minute sprints that just really help you to focus in on what you need to do, and then we come together, then we get small groups, we have some teachings. I mean, the amount of leveling up that happens in this one week is just insane.
Then on Friday, we land the week by celebrating, by going, last year, and I’m not sure if we’re going to do all of this this year, but we probably will do most of it. So we went to Grocer’s Daughter Chocolates, that handmakes chocolates, and we did a chocolate tasting. Then we went to Cherry Republic and we did wine tasting there, cherry wine tasting. They had tons of kind of cherry hors d’oeuvres, Northern Michigan’s known for its cherries. Then we went down to fish town, which is this fishing community that’s just super cool. I kind of walked around there and then came back to the Leelanau School and then kind of did a wrap up that we do on that Friday night. Then Saturday, early morning you fly out. So it’s amazing time. For people coming back for alumni, it’s $1,900, for people during this short window in January it’s going to be 2,500 and then the full price tickets are 3,900. But that’s all inclusive.
That includes all the drinks, all the food, everything. So we’ve got some amazing events coming up. We are not planning on doing this in 2021. So if you’ve been on the fence for Slow Down School, I’m telling you now is the time to sign up. So make sure that you’re on that email, over at slowdownschool.com. You will get all of the updates, all of the early bird tickets, all of the dates. So make sure you’re over there. I jump on the phone call with every single person. So even if you purchase your ticket then we still jump on a phone call to make sure you’re a fit and if you’re not a fit, then we just refund the money. And so we want to make sure we talk with you and that you feel really good about taking a week off in the summer to come hang out with us and to go deep and to get a lot done.
So that’s what’s coming up. Some crazy exciting things, we’ve got some more podcasts that are going to be coming out next year, we’re launching eight new podcasts as part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network. We’re going to be telling you about that over at practiceofthepractice.com/network. I don’t know if that landing page at the time of this is live yet, but, we’ve eight podcasts we’re supporting to launch next year. So we are doing our best to truly disrupt the private practice world and to rock it out with you.
Well, today we’re talking about these three things. That was like the longest introduction ever, but a lot of important things that I want to make sure you don’t miss. So the three things that we’re going to hit on is only do what you can do, second, have a reality goal and a risk goal, and third, level up in an area that you have no business leveling out. So first I want to talk about only do what you can do. This is the essential kind of switch in people’s brains that has to happen. When you first start a private practice, you’re bootstrapping it, you’re doing everything yourself, but really quickly, you need to make sure that you are only doing what you can do because your hourly is so important. If it’s not generating new leads, new clients, new people or seeing clients, you shouldn’t be doing it. So first and foremost, you want to outsource almost everything; your phones. So Move Forward Virtual Assistants is something that Alison pigeon, one of our consultants started. It’s an amazing virtual assistant company. Let them know I sent you, we get a small affiliate fee for that, but check them out. Get people to answer your phones, get people to do your scheduling.
Secondly, within that of doing what you only can do is be fierce about your scheduling. Set fierce boundaries. Because what happens when you set fierce boundaries is you drop the ball. So you get used to dropping the ball and that’s good, that’s normal. We want you to drop the ball, we want you to get used to dropping the ball because that shows where you can outsource more. It also shows you what the priorities are. So for me, talking about Killin’It Camp, getting the tickets set up, talking to the people that are in Killin’It Camp’s founder’s group, that’s so important because we had 140 people last year. We’re going to have more than that in this coming year. It’s going to be the private practice conference. And so getting people fired up, getting people connected with each other, getting excited about Killin’It Camp, that’s something I need to be spending my time on.
Going through my email, not so much. That’s why I have Jess. She goes through all my email and stars the things that only I can respond to. Most of it she can respond to or at least put in my calendar for me to take care of. You want to be optimizing every single minute you’re working and genuinely slowing down when you’re not. What often happens is people go home, they’re still thinking about their business, in the evenings they’re working on it. They aren’t genuinely slowing down and spending time with their loved ones or their friends. So you need to optimize every minute you’re working. Just every single minute. So I’m thinking about today, all the things that I got done and that moved the needle forward that weren’t just putting out fires. And that’s why I’m able to do so much; is that I have a team that I’ve slowly developed. I’ve been able to say, “What is the best use of my time?”
You know, I had a cancellation this morning. I was going to meet with Nancy, my book coach, and I had missed a text from her yesterday saying that she didn’t need to meet today. She was going to be working on our book proposal. So I then had two hours I had blacked out that was free, and that’s totally fine because I have a whole bunch of other things. So then I said to myself, “Okay, I really want to work on Killin’It Camp, but first I’m going to get these other things done that I know have to get done first.” So for example, there was some bills that had to get paid, there were some refunds that were within PayPal, things that weren’t fun, but things that only I can do. I mean I could outsource some of those things, but when it comes to money, I really don’t want to have there be any temptation for anyone else. So most of the money stuff I still handle. So then after I’m done, then I did the fun stuff, the Killin’It Camp, and so milking every single minute as much as I can.
All right, so number one was only do what you can do. Number two, have a reality goal and have a risk goal. So what do I mean by reality goal and risk goal? Well, a reality goal is something that it’s going to just start to automate things a little bit more. It’s going to make things just a little bit more professional. So it might be automating one of your processes. So to really figure out where you’re dropping the ball. What are things that you could hand off to somebody else? Maybe it’s adding clinicians to your practice. So that would be a reality goal. “Okay, I’m getting pretty full. I want to be able to keep some of that money internal. I’m going to add a 1099 or a W2. I’m going to watch some of Allison’s live webinars, maybe join the mastermind group,” but that’s a reality goal. It’s a small step in the right direction. It’s not going to be a game changer right away, but over the long haul, it’s really going to help. Maybe it’s going to be that you network with 50 people in 50 days. So these are reality goals that kind of amp up what’s going on already or automate something that’s already going on.
Now a risk goal. These are things that could be a total waste of time. But if they actually take off, well it’s a game changer. It totally levels you up. So it could be starting a podcast. So figuring out how to do that, signing up for our free download over at podcastlaunchschool.com. Maybe it’s building an e-course for your clients, so you’re kind of adding value and that might be something that you sell later on. It could be something around trauma or couples and it’s something new for you. It’s kind of risky because it could be a big waste of time, you might not know how to sell it, but it’s moving you in the right direction to learn these new skills. Maybe it’s trying to find a keynote to reach out to places and to say, “Hey, I’d love to be a keynote speaker.” I just did that today.
Therapy Re-imagined, that conference I’ve heard from so many people, is just amazing. I reached out to them and said, “I’d love to be a keynote at Therapy Re-imagined. You have a great reputation and the people that have spoken there are people that I really respect, but I’ve never spoken there and I would love it.” So I just reached out to them and said, “Hey, here’s who I am, here’s what I would talk about, here’s how I think I could add value,” you know, mentioned the podcast and maybe even having them on or promoting their conference there. So finding something that you can reach out to, and if any of you listeners are connected to the Therapy Re-imagine community, feel free to say, “Hey, Joe Sanok could be a good keynote.”
Alright, so first was only do what you can do, second, have a reality goal and a risk goal, and third is level up in the area you have no business in. This is sort of like a risk goal, but I want it to push it even further because this is what continues to help me grow in a new way. I’m just a regular Joe. I have built skills that maybe other people don’t have but honestly it’s just been one foot in front of the other, continuing to push myself, continuing to stretch into areas that maybe I have no business being, leveling up in an area that you feel like I have no business doing this. So this could be that you do a lot more speaking. Maybe it’s locally, maybe you reach out to your state organization to offer a free conference locally, maybe you start doing more writing for people that you feel like you shouldn’t write for.
So even being able to reach out to larger magazines, you know, maybe reach out to Forbes, Huffington Most, Money, Entrepreneur. See if they’re accepting new writers. You never know who’s going to say yes and there may be a chance where someone leaves and then you have a chance to jump back into one of those spots and get a permanent writing position with these amazing websites. You never know what’s going to happen with that. You start responding to Help A Reporter Out so that you can get quoted in some big time journals and reach out to those writers and kind of continue to work with them. Maybe it’s starting to consult. Consult with local businesses or finding an angle that you could get one or two consulting gigs.
I actually just did an interview with someone who, they were talking about stress and they said that they’re going to start talking about stress and just kind of being just over the top burnout. And she was talking to all of these like doctors and other folks in her community. And then there was someone that was from an insurance company, like a liability insurance company that was connected in the crowd and they ended up hiring her as a consultant to help with stress and burnout so that it would reduce liability with their insurance clients. How cool is that?
The last part of leveling up in an area you have no business is to get the money first when you have a new idea and then figure it out later. When I was talking to Daniel Pink recently, I was talking with him about before he became a speechwriter for Al Gore. So Daniel pink, amazing business writer, this guy that has just on so much, well, he was working in Washington DC, and it was him and a bunch of other interns, and someone that was from Al Gore’s, I don’t know if it was his campaign or his office, said, “Are any of you speechwriters?” Now, Daniel pink was a writer, but at the time he wasn’t a speechwriter. Nobody raised their hand and he raised his hand and said, “I can write speeches.” And they said, “Okay.”
So, he raised his hand first and then he figured it out later. That is something I see in highly successful people over and over and over. When we launched the Done for You Podcasting, we started out by talking to our highest-end clients and saying, “What is it that you wish that we did more of? If we could help you grow faster, what would that look like?” And over and over, we heard from our masterminders, our one-on-one consulting clients that, “Joe, you know how to do this fricking podcast stuff. We don’t want to learn it. Will you just do it for us?” So then I met with Sam and we talked through. Now, if we had a copywriter that was working with us, if we had sound engineers, like how much time and money would that cost? What would we have to charge? And so that’s how we landed on $18,000, or if you pay over four installments, it’s around 20,000.
And that’s 26 podcast episodes, full launch, full email course, all of the back-end kind of the transcriptions, the show notes, everything. This person can show up and do the podcast and then they get consulting meetings with me as well. And so for them, they value their time. So then we had this kind of basic idea, but before we would just kind of put a ton of time into it and hire a bunch of sound engineers, we wanted to have money in hand. So for people doing pre-consulting calls with me, I started to talk with them about it and said, “Here’s what we’re launching. We haven’t even released it publicly.” And so within two weeks we had four people.
So, I mean we made around 80 grands in that four weeks or in that two or three weeks. So the done for you, okay, we have the money in hand, wow we’re going to figure out our systems, we’re going to do our very best, we’re going to overdeliver, we’re going to add things to it that we didn’t even say we’re in it. So we added like a monthly Q&A with this cohort so that if there’s any problems that we can come together, but then also, you know, texting support, phone support, they’re my number one people. Like I want them to launch really strong. And so we got the money first though before we put a ton of time and energy into it. Then when we had the money I hired four sound engineers. So we now have four sound engineers. We’re now recording in a different platform that’s even better for sound. We’re hoping that Mitchell, who’s editing this right now, he’s going to make it sound better than it used to when I was doing everything. And so if you get the money first and then figure it out later, it helps you grow at a different rate.
So, the three things; only do what you can do, second, have a reality goal and a risk goal, and third level up in an area you have no business leveling up.
You know, we do these podcasts with the help of amazing sponsors like Therapy Notes. Therapy Notes is the sponsor of today’s podcast. Therapynotes.com, use promo code [JOE], for two months for free. They’re continuing to be a sponsor next year. They’re the reason that we can keep doing this. We have sponsors like them and Brighter Vision and Gusto and all sorts of other ones and we just appreciate them so much.
So, when you’re looking for the best electronic health records, head on over to therapynotes.com, use promo code

[JOE] so they know that their podcast dollars are working. And thanks so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing end to your 2019 and here’s to 2020.
Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.