[JOE SANOK] This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 780. I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to another Ask Joe. This is where you get to ask me questions and I answer them. If you want to fill out a question form, over at practiceofthepractice.com/askjoe, that’s where you can put it in and you give us permission to say or not say your name. You put your question in there a little bit about the details. We have tons of questions coming up over the coming weeks. We’re now doing four episodes a week, if you didn’t catch that where we’re doing three interviews and one Ask Joe for the most part. Sometimes I get more content than I know what to do with in regards to interviews. So we have left behind some of the Ask Joe’s based on that. Actually, in September going to have a whole lot of just regular question and answer types of discussions but just a whole lot of fun that we’re having over here at Practice of the Practice as we do tons and tons of episodes. We got some new sponsors coming on. We’ve got some old sponsors that are continuing helping people through the membership community. Really excited, we got some things coming up, especially September 12th kicks off level up week, which is just going to be awesome. We have so many different interviews and discussions and webinars about every phase of practice. If you’re looking to level up by growing a practice by just like getting it started, you’re like, “Hey, I want to do this as a side gig,” that’s what I did when I was working at the community college and doing, when I was a foster care supervisor, just a side gig counseling practice, we have webinars about that. If you have a thriving solo practice and you’re thinking, when should I add a clinician to my private practice, we have some Q&As and some trainings that week all around that. If you have a growing group practice, we have trainings around that. Then also, if you’re looking at leveling up to go beyond your practice, so to build an audience, to be able to sell an e-course, start a podcast, do a membership community, we have trainings on that. In fact, Nancy, who is my writing coach who helped me do the book proposal for Thursday is the New Friday, she’s going to be coming. We have Dana Carretta-Stein who we just heard on episodes 775 is going to be doing more training on how to use Instagram and specifically using reels. We’re finding some really amazing people to help out during Level Up Week. Make sure that you register for that over at practiceofthepractice.com/levelup. Today I’m going to be answering a question that I have received, man, like five or 10 times and I just figured I’m going to just do it all at once. That’s when should I add a clinician to my private practice? I first want to start with my story. That doesn’t mean that it’s your story, it needs to be the story but at least it gives you a framework of one way of thinking about adding clinicians to your practice. So I started my counseling practice, it would’ve been back in 2006. I started it, really that’s when I filed the LLC for Mental Wellness Counseling. But that’s because I was a 1099 contractor working with somebody else and my accountant friend said, “Hey, set up an LLC. You’re a 1099.” I filed it then really, it started in 2009 when I moved back to Traverse City, Michigan. At the time there was no panels that were open for insurance so I just was a private pay practice because I wanted to make money and pay off student loans and was just really doing it on the side. For a couple years I just was doing a couple nights a week doing like three sessions each time, so six or seven sessions a week charging $100 to $125 per session. That was a lot of extra money for my family at the time to be able to help pay off student loans, to be able to do a lot of different things. Then I was doing, I was an LLPC supervisor. In Michigan you have Limited Licensed Professional Counselor and this guy Steve, he was my first LLPC supervisee and we would meet for his supervision and go over things. He said he really wanted to do some side gig work. At the time I was still working at the community college and so I talked to an attorney, I got a 1099 contract set up, which you can actually get that contract. It’s been updated since then over at practiceofthepractice.com/paperwork. But I got a contract. He was at 1099, really just saw it as sort of office sharing plus promotion, plus him being on the website. Then I had another intern and supervisee, Tara. Tara actually came up to me while she was in grad school when I was speaking one of the classes and said, “Someday I want to work at Mental Wellness Counseling,” and she’s just a wonderful person. So assigned to her, so the three of us were sharing this one office suite, then at another 1099 and I still had my full-time job [THERAPY NOTES] Is managing your practice stressing you out? Try Therapy Notes. It makes notes, billing, scheduling, and tele-health a whole lot easier. Check it out and you will quickly see why it’s the highest rated EHR on Trustpilot with over 1000 verified customer views and an average customer rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. You’ll notice the difference from the first day you sign up for a trial. They offer live phone support seven days a week so when you have questions, you can quickly reach out to someone who can help. You are never wasting your time looking for answers. If you’re coming from another EHR, they make the transition really easy. Therapy Notes will import your clients’ demographic data free of charge during your trial so you can get going right away. Use the promo code [JOE], J-O-E to get the first three free months totally free to try it out, no strings attached. Remember telehealth is included with every subscription free. Make 2022, the best year yet with Therapy Notes. Again, use promo code [JOE] to get three months totally free. [JOE] For me, the leading answer to when should I add a clinician to my private practice was when you want to. I didn’t need to have a certain number of clients coming in, especially because it was a percentage-based reimbursement so I didn’t really have a whole lot of liability. It’s putting the person on the website, promoting them, helping get professional headshots, all that sort of stuff. But as a 1099, they’re a business within the business. Now, if you have a W2 that’s going to be a little bit different and you want to look at your state as to whether you want to do W2s, but in the same sense, I would say if you are 60% full as a solo practitioner, that’s when you really want to start to look at adding clinicians if you want to. Some people know, I don’t ever want to add clinicians to my practice. Okay, that’s great. That’s your practice. You do what you want. But if you do want to add them, I’d say if you’re 60% full, that’s a time to really start to evaluate, because it’s going to take time. That first person’s always the hardest to find, the hardest to figure out what you want. You want to make sure from the beginning you have a good deal for yourself, but also one that’s fair to them and it’s going to take a little bit of walkthrough with your accountant, with your attorney, with marketing, with onboarding, all those things. But it’s really not terribly hard if you know the steps to do from other people that have done it. That’s, so you do those steps. Another few things to think about is do you have calls coming in for particular areas that you don’t serve? So say you are a Gottman certified therapist and you know you’re doing good couples work, you really focusing on couples, but you don’t prefer to work with people when they’re getting a divorce or you don’t prefer to work with kids or you don’t prefer to work with people that are in transition fighting themselves after a divorce. Maybe those are just areas that you’re just not interested in. You may naturally get those phone calls though. You may have couples that they do divorce and maybe one of them doesn’t want to see you anymore. They want to see somebody else. Now you can refer out or you could have a clinician working for you. That’s where having a W2 or a 1099 working in your practice can be a really great way to keep those clients inside your practice, making sure that those folks are a good fit, making sure that the therapists are good quality therapists. But to start to look at, okay, are there other areas of opportunity here? Another way to look at it is what’s the need in your community? I remember I once had lunch with an attorney as just sort of a networking lunch, and she was talking about how so many of her clients had to drive to Grand Rapids, which was two hours away for custody assessments. If there’s just a good clinical psychologist that was doing custody evaluations, that that would be such a great service to the community. So my next hire what do you think it was? It was someone that would do custody evaluations that fit within what Mental Wellness Counseling was offering, but it also was an opportunity to expand in a different way than maybe I would’ve in other arenas. So to be able to look at are there needs in the community that align with you? So it could be, hey, there’s not many people that have a holistic approach. There’s not many people that have this approach to therapy. There’s not many EMDR certified therapists, so maybe you partner with someone that’s going to help you in the area. So when you think about adding clinicians to your practice there’s so many different things to consider. So thinking about your own, how much time you want to put into it, about how comfortable you are with being the face of the practice, how much you want to be able to expand and grow. Do you want to set up systems that if you have 10 more people joining, that you’re set to do that? That’s where you’re really coming along, other people that are doing that, it can be so, you can make it so much easier on yourself. That’s where during a Level Up Week and even right now, we have our early bird sale for Group Practice Launch. Group Practice Launch is a six-month program that takes you from having no clinicians to hiring your first one. You can read more over at practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticelaunch. There’ll be videos that you watch and then every single week there is a meeting with our consultants, with myself and our other consultants where you’re getting your questions answered about your group practice, adding a person, thinking like a group practice owner. So by the end of that six months, you will be a group practice boss and you’ll be able to really start leveling up. That’s available right now, that early bird over at practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticelaunch. That’s a great way to come alongside a whole bunch of people that are thinking about group practice and are wanting to get to that next level. Also, we could not do this show without our sponsors. Our sponsors help really us be able to do such creative and innovative shows here. Therapy Notes is our sponsors today. They are the leading electronic health records out there. Use promo code Joe at checkout to get some free months and they’ll also help you transition from your current EHR. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye. [JOE] Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.