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Critical Questions: Will You Continue Seeing Clients? | GP 297

  • 1099 vs W2, caseload, CEO, full caseload, Grow a Group, hiring staff, management, staff hiring

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Will you continue seeing clients while you grow your practice and become more of the boss? If you do, how can you avoid burnout? If you don’t, how can you optimize your time in the best way possible?

In this podcast episode, Brandon Shurn offers you the final critical question: “Will you continue seeing clients?”

Podcast Sponsor: Headway

A photo of the podcast sponsor, Headway, is captured. Headway Sponsors the Practice of the Practice podcast.

I want to thank Headway for sponsoring this episode. If you run a group practice, you know that accepting insurance can be overwhelming. Between credentialing, billing, and payroll, the admin side can easily take over your week. Headway was built to help you handle this — and they’re the only platform designed specifically for in-network group practices.

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They work with therapy, psychiatric, and hybrid groups — and there are no subscription fees. Just the support you need to run your practice with ease.

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In This Podcast

  • Series recap 
  • Yes, with a full caseload 
  • Yes, but with a smaller caseload
  • No, I will be the CEO only 
  • Questions to ask yourself 

Series recap 

This is the final episode in the Critical Questions Series that Brandon Shurn discussed.

  • Part one was about who you would recruit into your practice 
  • Part two was about what you would need to consider, being insurance-based or private pay 
  • In part three, we discussed whether you should hire 1099 independent contractors or W-2 employees 
  • In part four, the recruitment avenues that are available to you for hiring your staff were explored 

In this podcast and the last section, we tie everything together in asking: Will you continue to see clients as you grow your practice? 

Yes, with a full caseload

So, if you say, “Yes, I’m going to continue with a full caseload”, that means that you are going to have less time to work on the business. You will be working more hours. You set yourself up to experience burnout. (Brandon Shurn)

If you continue seeing a full caseload of clients while running the entire private practice, whether with or without managing other clinicians, you will still run the risk of experiencing or getting into a state of burnout. 

Yes, but with a smaller caseload

Perhaps you will continue seeing clients while you run the practice, but you will only see clients over one or two days. 

This means that you give yourself a break between sessions with clients and running the business, but you would still be asking a large amount of work and effort from yourself to give the best you can to both clients and the practice. 

However you structure it, what it does is it allows you to make more of a transition into the CEO mindset. Meaning, you have more time to work on the business versus working in the business. (Brandon Shurn) 

You do have some benefits to this approach: you model self-care to your clinicians by not pushing yourself to the limit on all fronts. You show them that you can continue being active as a therapist by not having a full caseload while running the business. 

No, I will be the CEO only

Absolutely, you can optimize that CEO mindset. You optimize the amount of time that you have to work on the business. What tends to happen, especially if you are a supervisor, meaning you have interns or provisionally licensed counselors or clinicians, now that you begin to become removed from the work. (Brandon Shurn) 

By not having a client caseload, you can dedicate almost all of your time to working on the business, but by no longer seeing clients, you can end up getting out of touch with what’s happening in the field. 

If you no longer want to perform clinical work yourself, this is a manageable consequence. You will dedicate yourself to running the practice as best you can and trust your clinicians to continue offering great clinical services to your clients. 

Questions to ask yourself 

  • Do I have other sources of revenue? 
  • Is my lifestyle contingent upon getting an income from the practice by having a full caseload? 
  • Do I want to stop seeing clients? Or do I want to become more of the boss? 

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    Meet Prof. Brandon Shurn

    Brandon Shurn, Ph.D., LCPC, LMHC, AFC®, NCC, is a licensed clinical professional counselor and the founder of EmPower Me Holistic Counseling, a fully virtual Maryland-based practice.

    Brandon Shurn, Ph.D., LCPC, LMHC, AFC®, NCC, is a licensed clinical professional counselor and the founder of EmPower Me Holistic Counseling, a fully virtual Maryland-based practice. He’s also a full-time professor in Seattle University’s online Clinical Mental Health Counseling program. With extensive experience launching and directing university training clinics, Brandon now focuses on helping therapists design and grow impactful, sustainable practices.

    Outside of his work, he enjoys fitness, yoga, Wing Chun, golf, reading, and spending time with his family and dogs. Visit Empower Me Counseling, and connect with Brandon on Instagram and LinkedIn. Email him at: [email protected]

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