Dr. Morgan Oaks Wants You To Build Your Ideal Practice | PoP 454

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Can you have a thriving practice and still pursue other passions? What tools can you use to build your ideal practice? How can you simplify your goals in order to reduce the fear of going for them?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Dr. Morgan Oaks about ways to build your ideal practice and his Synergy of Success system.

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Meet Dr. Morgan Oaks

TedX Speaker and Host of the Intuitive Wisdom for Modern Transformation Podcast, Dr. Morgan Oaks is a gifted visionary who shares the best of what he’s learned as a doctor, transformational speaker, high-performance coach, shamanic practitioner, and a voracious student of life!

Dr. Morgan inspires audiences and clients to develop and trust their intuition for deeper clarity, integrate their life wisdom, and to cultivate the courage to live a life of inspired action. His goal is to take people from where they are, to where their body, mind, and soul are calling them to be!

Visit Dr. Morgan Oaks’ website, and connect with him on InstagramFacebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 

In This Podcast

Summary

  • Setting up a practice in a way that allows you to go after other passions
  • Leveling up
  • Dr. Oaks’ podcast
  • Synergy of Success
  • Practical examples of how Dr. Oaks’ system has been implemented
  • Advice for frazzled practitioners

Setting up a practice in a way that allows you to go after other passions

It’s not how much money you make, it’s how much you keep.

  • Think about a bigger, more holistic approach.
  • Limit practice days Eg. Dr. Oaks’ practice is only open two days a week.
  • Avoid overhead costs like high priced employees and expensive equipment where possible.
  • Keep systems really simple. Keep things patient-centric.
  • Try to find better ways to get more patients through the door, ways that do not take away from your practice time.

Leveling up

Get really clear on YOUR message, get clear on YOUR platform, on what you’re wanting to deliver to people.

Dr. Oaks has added speaking, coaching, and other things beyond his chiropractic work. This has made him realize a mistake that a lot of people make which is trying to add too much new material. Make sure that you are very clear about your message and what you want to deliver to people. If you can get that clear and develop it so that you can continue to use it, you will get known for your thing.

Dr. Oaks’ podcast

Podcasting is a great way to connect with influencers and develop connections. The podcast has been good for his business, not great. It doesn’t necessarily feed directly into his speaking or high-performance coaching but it does bring all of the benefits that a podcast can bring. If you want to do a podcast, Dr. Oak suggests trying to focus on the parts that you’re passionate about. If you’re not passionate about them then outsource them.

Synergy of Success

How do we get really good at listening? And then once we have the clarity from that listening, how do we get really good at powerfully stepping into whatever that might be?

  • Clarity – Get the clarity of what you want in your lives, your practices, your health, and your families.
  • Courage – Once you have your clarity pieces you need the courage to take action.
  • Inspired Action – Everybody’s hustling and taking action but it may not be inspired action.

Practical examples of how Dr. Oaks’ system has been implemented

  • Gathered clarity pieces.
  • Found mentors.
  • Discovered a new business model.
  • Gathered data points, help, and support which raised courage levels.
  • Took inspired action by diving out and into it.
  • He had a good support system to keep moving forward.

Advice for frazzled practitioners

This is your life! Create the practice that makes the most sense for you. You know, don’t base it on what anybody else is doing or feeling like you need to change something. You’re really setting up and creating your own life.

  • Be present for the person in front of you.
  • Have a ritual/system/process to leave home at home when you’re at the office, and to leave the office at the office when at home.
  • Breathing exercises – Have one that helps you slow things down and one that helps you speed things up.

Download this free video training to learn six simple strategies that’ll take your life from where it is, to where you have always imagined it could be, and schedule a free call with Dr. Morgan.

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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.

Thanks For Listening!

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Podcast Transcription

[JOE]: This is the Practice of The Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 454.
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.
Well, I sure hope you are staying safe out there. This is a wild time that we live in and the work of therapists, counselors, coaches, psychologists, MFTs, social workers, clinicians in general, it’s just so important right now. And we were doing our best to support you. We actually, coming up on the 12th, have a free webinar that’s all about online counseling. We’re going to have Clay Cockrell on, you can head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/100kwebinar you’ll see all the webinars we have coming up, we’re trying to do at least one free webinar a month to help you continue to grow and just get to that next level as much as you can. But, you know, it’s been a big month for Practice of the Practice. In April, we launched Podcast Launch School, and we had over 72 people sign up to learn how to do podcasts through our new e-course and it was awesome. We had 400 people register for the free webinar. It really was something that we were we were hoping to launch big but we weren’t really sure how it was gonna go. You know, you talk to people, you get people saying, “Yeah, that sounds awesome”. And then in June, we’re going to be working with a whole bunch of affiliates that are going to be promoting the Podcast Launch School course. And then we’ll be opening that back up to all of you. So, if you want to be on that early bird list for the next round of launches for our Podcast Launch School, if a podcast might be in your bones, head over to podcastlaunchschool.com and get on that waitlist. And we’ll be releasing that after we work with our affiliates. So pretty exciting news there.
Also, Harper Collins signed me as an author and so I’m in the middle of writing a book right now. The working title, and that can always change in the publishing world, is “Thursday is the New Friday”. And I’m going to be talking about how slowing down can help you speed up, maybe talking about setting boundaries and some good work habits and things that are going to really help you have more meaning in your life, but also to kind of get that business to the next level. So really excited about that. I’ll be sharing tons more in the future. My manuscript is due October 1 and probably spring 2021 is when we’re talking about that releasing, but we have still have to meet with the marketing team and media team. And it’s just it’s bonkers, it’s a whole new world and I’ve learned so much. I’m actually working with Nancy, my writing coach, who I’ve worked with for almost a year on this proposal. And just the proposal, it took almost a year. She and I are talking about how we can train you on how to do proposals for books that are kind of traditionally published books, because getting a lot more questions as people build their podcasts like, “what next?”, “How do I keep leveling up?” So continuing to build stuff that goes beyond just your practice, but we have Whitney and Alison, who are still doing tons around on private practice resources too. And so they’ve got webinars that are going on all the time, also, so much going on here.

Well, today we have Dr. Morgan Oaks, I’m gonna tell you about Dr. Oaks in just a second. So without any further ado, I give you Dr. Oaks.
Today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Dr. Morgan Oaks. He’s a TEDx speaker and host of the intuitive wisdom for modern transformation podcast. Dr. Morgan Oaks is a gifted visionary who shares the best of what he’s learned as a doctor, transformational speaker, high performance coach, shamanic practitioner, and a voracious student of life. Voracious, voracious. I’m gonna say that word, right someday. Welcome to the show. Morgan.
[MORGAN]: Hey, Joe. Good morning. It’s really great to be here.
[JOE]: Yeah, I’m really glad to have you here. You know, as we were talking before, we got rolling, hearing about you working two days a week and making over 100 grand through your chiropractic office. Sometimes people think we just have to talk to private practitioners that are in the counseling space, but I love hearing how people in different industries do it. Why don’t we start there? You kind of were saying that you wanted to from the get go set up your practice in a way that allowed you to go after other passions. How did you do that? Let’s start with your practice setup.
[MORGAN]: Yeah, you know, and it’s interesting, I guess to actually tell that story, we’ll take another step backwards and this is a little vulnerable, but I, you know, I got out of chiropractic school, I knew that I wanted to work for myself, so I could really do things in the way that I thought were best for the patients, which I think a lot of us you know, have that poll and I opened things the way that I thought I was supposed to. I had the nice big office, I had X-Ray equipment in my office, I had all this overhead and I built this monster that I was always trying to keep up with. And to be honest, it didn’t go well you know, I was open for four years and then I finally burnt out and closed and you know a year later that actually tied into a bankruptcy. So my first steps into small into practice just weren’t great. So when I was at
[JOE]: Step number one, really screw things up.
[MORGAN]: Yeah, you know, create something you’re always running to keep up with when you’re in the growth phase and learning phase. So the first time out of the gate didn’t go well and it, it was really tough on me. And it was really the first thing in life I attempted that my natural ambition and effort and skill sets just didn’t, they weren’t enough. You know, I received coaching and I did all these great things. But when it was time to set up my second practice, I’d moved up to Seattle, Washington and I actually thought I was going to work for somebody else. I found out they were committing insurance fraud, they were doing just some not great things. And I’m like, okay, I need to set up my own practice again. The second time around, I really thought about the bigger, more holistic picture of my life and I knew I didn’t want my practice to be running every single moment. So what I ended up creating was a practice that was two days a week. And I do long days I’m in there, you know, 12 or 13 hours every Tuesday or Thursday, but I also knew that I wanted to move into speaking, I ended up getting certified as a high performance coach. You know, I also have a podcast. So I had these other dreams and aspirations. So I was really conscious in how I set things up. I refer out for X-rays, I don’t do my own billing, I refer out for it because I didn’t want a high priced employee that I was paying, like, every step of the way, has been around keeping the system’s really simple, keeping things where it was patient centric, and then holding space for the rest of my life. So I can live all my passions, and I wasn’t, you know, that my practice would still feel like a blessing instead of a curse.
[JOE]: Oh, that’s so awesome. There’s one thing we say frequently and I don’t remember if I stole it from someone or not, but it’s “do what you do best and outsource the rest”. And that idea of, you know, why are you learning to do billing or training somebody that you know, if they leave in six months, you’re back to square one and to outsource the billing or outsource the phone calls. It’s amazing how much more efficient you can be when you start doing that. What are the things within that model that maybe you’re still adjusting or still wanting to change? Or do you feel like it’s pretty locked down in regards to the flow for right now.
[MORGAN]: Things are pretty solid in the flow. And I would say I really love that saying actually another thing that I got from it was the guy that was doing construction on my chiropractic office installing the X-ray equipment like 20 years ago. He’s like, “it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much you keep”. And so that was a big takeaway for me as well because, you know, especially chiropractic offices, you know, I hear about people at you know, three quarter million dollars a year before they make a single penny to take home. And it’s a lot to keep up with and so I, I really wanted low overhead as well was another focus. And so, you know, things for me in my practice right now. Really pretty stable, really good, nice flow, things work well. The thing that I’m wanting to add in this year is a just a better way to raise the number of new patients that are coming in the door. You know, something that doesn’t require me to be at a networking meeting every week for three hours or, you know, but something that can really be in flow and just always making sure that that the new the new faces are coming into the office.
[JOE]: Yeah, no, I think that’s really important to lock that down. And you’re right, you got to evaluate and what’s been working and if that’s what you want to keep doing, especially if you’re at a three hour networking meeting weekly, and I know a lot of people are involved with like BNI and things like that. But yeah, it can be helpful at the front end, but then to say that three hours a week, is that really giving me the ROI on my time?
[MORGAN]: Yeah, and for me, I find a lot of the, a lot of the BNI meetings that are occurring close to me, that makes sense, they’re happening on Tuesday and Thursday. And so, you know, when my time with patients is so limited, then there’s a lost, you know, dollar amount that’s occurring every day that I’m at that meeting, and it just, it was just too much a few years ago, so I stepped away and yeah. So a really wonderful tool to grow and at a certain point, it didn’t make sense for my practice.
[JOE]: Yeah. At what point did you start adding, we often call on this podcast, your big ideas. And so we’ve got your practice and then your big ideas. Obviously, I didn’t come up with the term big ideas. But when you started adding in speaking and coaching and things beyond the chiropractic work, talk about that process of trying some new things, leveling up in that way, how that’s helped you beyond just kind of the practice work.
[MORGAN]: Yeah, well, let’s highlight mistakes so that people don’t have to make them themselves.
[JOE]: Thank you, right.
[MORGAN}: Yeah. So what, when I was actually, I was, I was a mechanical engineer before I was a chiropractor, and I was at my mechanical engineering internship and I started going and watching stand-up comedians. It’s like every Tuesday night at 7pm with this new group of friends, and I really fell in love with that. I was like, “Oh, I would love to do that someday”. So it wasn’t until chiropractic school, years and years later that I was like,” you know what? I’m gonna step in and start doing stand-up comedy”. So I start doing stand-up comedy and I knew that every time I did it, I would have the same group of friends in the audience. So every show I did was completely different. And that’s the mistake I want to highlight. Because what’s true about stand-up comedians, what’s true about speakers and people with platforms, they have their core message that they keep delivering over and over again. So they really refine it, they know what it is, and they can take their message and they can meet the group that they’re speaking to where they’re at and, and really blend those into a message that serves everybody. And so when I first started speaking, I basically was taking any opportunity I could and every time I took an opportunity, I created something new to deliver to them. And it killed me it was just too much time. So for people that are wanting to do more speaking that are wanting to get out in public, I would say get really clear on your message. Get clear on your platform on what you’re wanting to deliver people get that clean and develop it so that you can just continue to use it so that there’s not a huge amount of time at the beginning of every talk, that you just get really well known for, you know, your one thing, and then you can you can have that apply to each of the groups that you’re actually speaking to. So that’s, that’s something that I didn’t do properly in the beginning and I finally have tuned in and it’s making things much easier.
[JOE]: And at what point did you launch the podcast?
[MORGAN]: The podcast was about a year and a half ago. And that really great experience. And I know you’ve talked about this on your podcast, it’s just such a great way to connect with these amazing influencers to ask them the questions you would never get the opportunity to ask them and develop those connections and it I would say so far, it’s been good for my business. That hasn’t been great. You know, you and I actually met at the New Media Summit through Steve Olsen, late last year, and one of his takeaways is having essentially everything in your business funnel or everything you’re speaking about really feeding into each other. And my, my podcast doesn’t necessarily feed directly into my, my speaking or my high performance coaching work that I do. And so it’s a little bit adjunct to that, but it’s also brought all the benefits that a podcast definitely can bring.
[JOE]: Yeah, and I think that’s a challenge a lot of podcasters have, where they try to figure out “do I want this podcast to fuel my established business?” And so often, you know, that’s a counseling practice. Or, “do I want to kind of start a whole new either coaching membership, community ecommerce business, you know, speaking business”, and so, for most podcasters kind of defining that can be a challenge because your regular business is already kind of clicking along and do you want to use it that way or to go the other direction?
[MORGAN]: Yeah, yeah. And I think another thing to share and it goes back to your previous question. About like what’s coming next for me, I think it’s, you know, something that I’ve really liked in, in practice and in business is seeing the things that I maybe I need to do in the beginning, but also doing goal setting to know when I can step away from them. And for me in the beginning with my podcast, I was doing the audio I was trying to do all of it because sometimes there’s a price point on getting those things you know, paid you know, paid to do directly for you that that just felt like too much in the beginning. And for me finding you know, affordable ways to outsource the audio clean up, finding affordable ways to have you know, new screen art for every show or episode. Yeah, just that made things a lot easier for me. So I wasn’t getting overwhelmed with the technology, and really getting to a point where I could do the part I was passionate about which was connecting with my actual guests.
[JOE]: Yeah, I remember the moment when I realized I should stop doing the screen art for each episode, because I’m a naturally artistic person, I’ve always loved art and creativity and design and so to do a podcast and you know, just do the final edit on it, and then spend the next hour designing, you know, this little kind of art that’s going to go with it and doing the show notes. It was such a game changer when I could just show up and start doing the actual episodes. We started kicking out more episodes, our numbers went up. You know, there’s times that I look at some of the art and I say, “Oh, I wouldn’t have done it that way”, but that’s part of giving up that control is to say that, “yes, I wouldn’t have done it that way, but do I want to spend two or three hours a week doing all of this artistic stuff when I can outsource that at a much reduced rate for my consulting?”
[MORGAN]: Yeah. And it’s, you know, I think, you know, an hour, let’s say on the art an hour if you’re passionate about it probably fills you up, even if it’s maybe not your best use of time. For me it was taking an hour and it wasn’t my passion, it was just a task, so it felt like it took two hours of energy and motivation and, you know, resourcefulness to actually step into it. So, yeah, me stepping away from that quickly was a good thing. And honestly, I found somebody on Fiverr, I send off my stuff, they do what they need to do, I pay them $7. And, you know, $7 an hour feels like a good working wage to save me.
[JOE]: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, and many of you know that we have Podcast Launch School, which is our e-course around starting a podcast. And we’re also starting Done for You services. We are launching eight podcasts probably by the time this goes live, all eight will have launched. So you can see those podcasts and listen to them over at practiceofthepractice.com/network where we’ll have links to those and we also have the Done for You, if you’re interested in starting a podcast reach out to me we’ll have a conversation about that. Now you have this Synergy of Success model, and I’d love to spend some time just digging into some of that content. Because you’ve interviewed you know, high influencers, people that are doing really big things and your own work, take us through that model and kind of help us see how that can help us in private practice or even going after our big ideas.
[MORGAN]: Yeah, absolutely. So the Synergy of Success. It’s interesting, the framework developed over years and years and years and I finally got into the title just late last year. And so it was really around clarity, courage and inspired action. And if we want to get even more simple, it was just about how do we get really good at listening? And then once we have the clarity from that listening, how do we get really good at powerfully stepping into whatever that might be? And it was, you know, what I’ve found is, especially in the US, right? We’re such a, just a go do it society, Nike Just Do It. There’s a lot of action, we’re hustling, right, we’re doing the Gary V, thing everybody’s hustling and taking action and doing all these things, but it may not be inspired action. And so, I think, you know, for a lot of us, starting with that piece of “how do we get clarity about what we want in our lives and our practices for our health for our families”, you know, get all those clarity pieces. And then sometimes when people have those clarity pieces, what they’re lacking, actually is courage to take action. You know, because most people and I have them on my show, anybody that really has this amazing story to share. They’ve got a place where they had to do something courageous. They left a career, they left a relationship, they, they made a big move across the country or around the world. You know, there’s always this jumping off point that needs to happen. And then once people are into inspired action, how do they, how do they keep going? How do we, you know, keep our edge sharp? How do we not burn out? How do we how do we keep moving forward because most of life, unlike you running from the rhino in your TEDx, which I love that story, most of life is not a sprint, right most of life is it’s a marathon. It’s the long haul so it’s kind of a combination of all of those things in helping people self-identify. Are they needing more clarity? Are they needing more courage? Or are they needing support around inspired action? And then realizing that it’s a process that you continue moving through. There’s no, there’s no end point, you know, it’s just something you keep repeating as you keep evolving and growing and moving forward.
[JOE]: Yeah, so, give us maybe some practical examples of how you have implemented this, or maybe how some of your coaching clients or other people you’ve worked with have implemented this.
[MORGAN]: Hmmm. Great question. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever heard that question before. So let’s, yeah, let’s get a specific. So, okay, here’s a good one. So, I moved to Seattle. I think I’m only gonna be here for a year and I was I was a little beat up after my, you know, quote, unquote, failed first practice. So I move out here, I’m like, “Oh, I’m just going to work for somebody else”. So I accept this job the first week. The dude’s like yelling at people, cutting salaries, I find out they’re committing insurance fraud. So, I realized it’s time to start my own practice. So I got clarity about it, but it was a big step. Like I didn’t feel comfortable going back there. I wasn’t exactly sure how I would do things different so I could be successful this time. So I continued gathering all those clarity pieces that I need. I found mentors, I discovered a new business model, I actually reopened as a concierge practice, you know, so it was a flat fee like a gym, people pay that, they came in as much as they wanted or needed to. That way I didn’t have to accept insurance. I just made everything very simple. So I got the clarity that I needed to move out. I gathered those like data points and help and support. So it helped raise my level of courage that I could actually be successful. And then the inspired action piece was diving out and stepping into it, and I think just continuing my exercise practices to keep my energy up. I stayed in my spiritual growth practices, I continued eating good food, I continued talking with support groups around a concierge type practice to hear what they were doing. So then I got in all those support pieces so that, you know, after I dove into this, this new, you know, the world of entrepreneurship again, that I had support to keep moving me forward.
[JOE]: Yeah. And it’s like when you outline it that way, it feels like each step was the natural next step. And it’s like, “well, of course he would do that”. But the reality is many you know, people starting a private practice, don’t do that. They don’t go through those steps. They don’t take the time, even though they’re very logical steps. What do you think gets in the way of people walking through this type of synergy of success.
[MORGAN]: So this is something I realized after I had just recently stopped speaking that a lot of times the first step feels too big. The first step feels too big. And we view things as very black or white. Oh, either I, you know, and actually, I’ve just recently got to know a new therapist in my life. And as I’m learning about this person, they worked in the system, I guess, would be the way to say it for quite a while, like, through the states and through the schools and through these different systems where they’re an employee, but they wanted to have their own practice, right. And so, for me, a lot of times, all or nothing, that first step can be too big. And so even in, you know, leaving this horrible job that I was in, I knew that I needed to still, you know, provide, I still needed to pay for my home, I still need to do those things. So the way I bridged that was by making the step smaller and the way that I did that was I found another chiropractic office that wanted somebody to do exams and X-rays two days a week, and I went and talked with them. They were okay with me opening and creating and growing my own practice where, you know, I was probably 15 miles away from them. They knew that I was going to work for them two days a week until my practice got big enough, and then I would drop down to one day a week, and then I would quit. And it helped them bridge because they were needing to hire somebody else, as well, but they didn’t want to hire somebody full time, full time to start. So I looked for a way to make my first courageous step smaller, with the plan to move forward into more of the hundred percent that I was hoping for.
[JOE]: Yeah, I think that’s so important to start with. What can you do? Yeah, there’s a million things that seemed challenging or difficult. But even as we’ve done this Done for You, podcasting, a lot has changed in the world of Apple and iTunes and submitting feeds. Since we you know, first submitted ours back in late 2012, excuse me, or when we’ve done other podcasts in the last few years. So, yeah, that may feel challenging, but just to say to Sam, “All right, I want you to research, read through a bunch of blog posts. Watch some videos about submitting feeds because we’ve got these eight podcasts going live”, want to make sure we get a system down and then just create a checklist. And so rather than worry about what’s the entire launch plan for these eight podcasts and the show notes and all that it’s what’s right in front of us, what’s going to be this month or this next couple weeks, make sure we stay on the same page, and then not freak out about it if we’re unsure of what’s going to happen after that.
[MORGAN]: Yeah, well, and like Tony Robbins says, “it’s usually not a lack of resources, it’s a lack of being resourceful”. And so if we pick a goal that we want, if it’s important enough, we’ll figure it out. You know, we’ll figure out how to get there. And I do believe that podcasting’s such a beautiful platform, it’s so easy to get so many different ideas out there. It does, you know, make you an expert in your industry. It creates all these connections and bridges for you know, whether it’s an existing business or a new business and with the Done for You stuff like you’re doing it just, it makes it so easy. You don’t have to go do the I would say probably closer to the hundreds of hours of research that it would take to track all those things down by yourself. You know, so then it just becomes cool. Here’s somebody has the map, all I have to do is show up and, you know, and kind of bring your ideas, your creativity and those pieces into it. And, and so I just always feel like for anybody that’s wanting something, what would you do if you’re being resourceful? You know, who knows how to get you where you’re wanting to go? And, you know, what’s, you know, sometimes the first baby step is just checking out the website or, you know, that first step, it’s not jumping off of any big commitment or claim.
[JOE]: Yeah, well, I want to shift gears a little bit, because before we started recording, you and I were talking about how many kind of therapists will show up frazzled right before their sessions and that there’s some really kind of clear activities or advice that you can give them around that and of course, I’m really big into slowing down so as to optimize what you’re doing in your practice and to be able to have more time for your family and live the lifestyle you want. So take us through kind of what the typical person might be doing when they’re coming into their practice or they’re frazzled, they’ve got seven clients ahead of them, and what advice or tips would you give them in that situation?
[MORGAN]: Yeah, I’ll bring a few different things and I think, you know, for somebody that’s showing up to be of service, you know, whether you’re a therapist or a chiropractor or a waiter or you know, you’re helping fit people with clothing, like it’s about being really present for the person in front of you. And so for me a couple different things that I bring in, I like to have some type of ritual or ceremony or process or system however you want to label it that feels good, so that we can leave our home at home when we’re at the office, and then on the on the other side of it, really leave the office at the office when we’re at home. And so, you know, everybody has a different version of that. When I show up, I spend about just five minutes before my clients, my patients show up, where I do kind of a meditation or prayer, I’m a shamanic practitioner as well. And so it’s you know, it’s more about bringing in intention and energies and the directions. I’ve worked with nurses that would listen to a specific song as their last song before they got to work. I could, I had been to the hospital that this woman worked out. And so when she walked in through this big foyer, there was this, you know, this set of double doors that you walk through. And, you know, I just had her picture like a waterfall, and she’s walking through this and like cleansing off everything at home and, and kind of leaving it behind her, and then she would do the opposite on her way out. Some people will pick “Okay, what’s my word for the day?”, “Like, how do I really want to show up while I’m at the office today?”, “And what’s that word that I can lean into and then at the end of the day, was I that, you know, that I did I show up in the best way that I could for that. So I think that’s a good first step, and then there’s two other things, sometimes life’s busy, maybe traffic’s frazzled, maybe we struggle getting out the door so we’re a little tighter on the start time than we want to be and when people are frazzled, or when I’m frazzled, one of the things I love doing is just kind of breathing in a square is what I’d call it. And I know it’s got lots of other names. Lots of other people teach this, but I’ll do like a four second breath in, I’ll hold for four seconds at the top, I’ll let my breath out last for about eight seconds. I try to double that, that in, you know, inhale. And then on the bottom, I’ll either hold for four seconds, or some people find that holding on the bottom when they don’t have breath in their lungs, actually makes them more anxious, so sometimes at the bottom, I’ll just hold it for maybe one second and then go back into that inspiration. But I know that that slows down the physiology, it slows down the brain. And honestly, if a person takes on, even 60 seconds to maybe a couple minutes to do that, it just changes and slows everything down. So when I’m feeling frazzled when I’m not going to show up the way that I want, I do that. And literally, I’ve been in relationships where I pull up in the driveway, park my car, and I do that before I actually get out of the car. I’ll do that before clients come in, I do that before podcasts, before coaching clients. So that slows things down. The other thing is, sometimes we need to speed things up, we, we might be tired, maybe we didn’t sleep well. You know, it’s at the end of you know, I really believe that, you know, when I hear therapists talk about like they’ve got seven or eight clients in a day, that’s a really long day in that field. And so, you know, maybe for those last couple clients you’re dragging, you’ve only got a couple minutes between, you know, the person leaving and the next person showing up. And so I’ll do something where I’ll be standing up, I’ll be kind of bouncing up and down on my toes a little bit. So my heels are kind of making a little bit of an impact on the floor. And then I’ll do 10 to 20 big breaths in, you know, in through the nose out through the mouth, or I’ll do in through the nose, out through the nose, but just getting big belly breaths in and I’ll do it faster than I would normally do. Now, this is a high performance coaching principle, this is something that I teach my coaching clients and it comes from Brendon Burchard. But I will do that so I can really raise and elevate my energy. And at the end of like 10 or 20 breaths, like, you know, my skin standing up on the back of my neck and my arms, I’m invigorated, it feels like I can kind of really go after whatever’s in front of me. And so I’ll do that to recharge myself, you know, so a way to put my foot on the brakes through the breathing with squares, a way to put my foot on the accelerator by the, you know, 10 to 20 breaths that are a little more dynamic than we normally do throughout a day.
[JOE]: It’s so awesome. Such great advice. Well, the last question I always ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[MORGAN]: Yeah, this is your life. Create a practice that makes the most sense for you. You know, don’t base it on what anybody else is doing or feeling like you need to chase something. You’re really setting up and creating your own life, so do it in a way that meets you, your personal lifestyles, your healthy lifestyles, the type of clientele that you want, the experience you’re wanting to have with your family and friends outside of your business. And, you know, nothing’s impossible. Whatever it is, there’s, if you ask 1000 different people, you’re gonna probably hear about 1200 different practice styles. So, you know, really get clear about what you’re wanting to build, so that when you actually get there, you’ll have created something that you want to continue living in. You’ve made your own business home.
[JOE]: It’s so awesome. Well, you have a free gift, “Six Keys to Living Your Top Life”, what’s the best way for them to connect with that and to connect with your work?
[MORGAN]: Yeah, absolutely. So if they go to www.drmorganoaks.com, and that’s O A K S. Right at the top there, they’ll find the Six Keys to Living Your Top Life. It’s a 45-minute training video. I’ve had coaching clients have paid me thousands of dollars, that still quote, things that they learned from that free training video, so I think there’s a lot of value there. And for anybody that’s interested, there’s also a way there to do just a 30-minute call with me. It’s complimentary, it’s about, you know, my big goal is to really give people tools so that if I never talked to them, again, they’ve been empowered. And sometimes that’s a book recommendation, a video recommendation, a takeaway, like I shared in the talk today, or, you know, some of them, it makes sense to move forward with coaching. But ultimately, it’s just a way for me to help empower people.
[JOE]: Ah that’s so awesome. And we will put links to all of that in the show notes as well. Dr. Morgan Oaks, thanks so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[MORGAN]: My pleasure, Joe. I love the show and feel really grateful to be here. Thanks.
[JOE]: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. It’s so fun to have you tuning in. Don’t forget to go on over to therapynotes.com use promo code “Joe” to get their special offer to get a couple of months for free and if you’re a Next Level practice member remember you get six-months for free when you sign up for Therapy Notes so all you have to do is just email me after you sign up and then they’ll give you a six-month credit so pretty sweet deal for our next level practice members. If you’re not a Next Level practice member we do have another cohort starting in August and you can get on that list over at practiceofthepractice.com/invite. Thanks so much for letting me into yours and into your brain. Have a great day.
Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music, we really like it.
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