What’s a good practice to find and retain great staff? When are the best times in the year to start taking applications? Why should you start looking for people at least four months before you actually need them?
In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about finding and keeping quality clinicians (and handling turnover) with Melissa Schneider.
Podcast Sponsor: Therapy Notes
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Meet Melissa Schneider
Melissa Schneider, LCSW is a double group practice owner and consultant for mega-practice planning and scaling. She opened Resolution Counseling Center in Jersey City, NJ in 2019 and now has a staff of 60+ therapists across 3 offices. In 2023, she launched her second practice Cultivate Therapy, a specialty practice connecting her strongest therapists with the clients they most love to serve.
The first thing that seems hard about hiring is that sometimes you’re just not getting a lot of applicants, right? We felt like it was almost a rare event to have the right person apply, come for an interview, seem decent in the interview, send their references … And we realized over time that because, as therapists … The pool of candidates is small and specific. (Melissa Schneider)
Hiring within the therapeutic field is more time-consuming than in other sectors of business because it can take a long time for people to become qualified, and then it can be additionally difficult to find people who are both qualified and a good fit for the practice.
Therefore, it’s better to hire clinicians sooner rather than later.
We start recruiting about four months ahead of when we think we’ll need the person to start a job. (Melissa Schneider)
Melissa and her team also compiled a list of potential candidates and got someone on her team to recruit them on LinkedIn and send them a connection-based email.
When hiring, her team does;
Two interviews
Follows a clear script
Undergo scenarios and ask them to make treatment plans
They only hire people who do very well and seem like good fits for the company
Offering benefits and encouraging retention
Initially, Melissa only offered health insurance to her clinicians when she first opened the private practice doors.
At the end of their first year, they started offering a week of PTO, and adding 401Ks as the months went by.
We were really just trying to think about what engages people, and what kind of benefits … [Make] you feel like you’re working toward something? … We instituted a profit share, so twice a year people get back a growing percentage of their earnings from the prior six months, and that gives people a reason to get to the end of the next six month period. (Melissa Schneider)
Additionally, Melissa and her team do their best to properly train their managers since the managers have an important role in maintaining staff satisfaction and retention.
They also provide offers and opportunities for their internal staff to level up and become more involved within the practice, allowing them to continually engage, improve, and take interest and ownership in the business if they want to.
New staff acquisition throughout the year
Regarding staff turnover and new hires, generally Melissa and her team;
Don’t hire new staff over January
Start interviewing new staff over April, May, and June since graduates have recently come onto the job market
They hire over the off-season since many of these clinicians are great and are looking for better job opportunities
Plan for at least one resignation per month
Keep your chin up regarding turnover because it can be challenging
For me, turnover has been the hardest thing to deal with emotionally speaking and moral-wise … It’s one of the only things that’s happened business-wise that’s made me think, “Is it time to sell?” … It [can be] very hard. (Melissa Schneider)
Melissa’s advice to private practitioners
When hiring and keeping great staff, Melissa wants you to know that there are people out there who will help you grow a rewarding workplace.
Sponsors Mentioned in this episode:
Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time, and try TherapyNotes.
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 who are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.
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Podcast Transcription
Joe Sanok 00:00:00 Hey there, practice of the practice community. Are you ready to take your private practice to the next level? Then mark your calendars for September 16th through 19th, 2024, because Level Up week is back and bigger than ever. Insert rocket emoji here. Join us for four days of live webinars, interactive panels, and exclusive resources tailored just for counselors, therapists and private practice owners. Whether you’re looking to fill your caseload, hire your first clinician or scale your group practice, we’ve got you covered. This is your chance to level up while others give up. Don’t miss out on this game changing event. Register now at practice of the practice. Com forward slash level up and get ready to transform your practice. Remember September 16th through 19th level up week your ticket to practice success. Register today and let’s level up together. Practice of the practice.com. Forward slash. Level up. This is the practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sarna, accession number 1066. I’m Joe Santa, your host, and welcome to the practice of the Practice Podcast, where we help you build a thriving private practice you absolutely love. Joe Sanok 00:01:25 And we’re going to be doing that live with you September 16th through 19th, 2024. When we’re putting on Level Up Week, we’re going to have 16 live webinars that you can come to and you can ask questions. You can come to some of our panels. We’ll be interviewing people while having having presentations and everything. From that moment, you think to yourself, I want to start a private practice all the way through scaling a mega practice. We have something for everyone during that week. Make sure you sign up over at practice of the practice.com/level up. Now we have been doing a series. This is the third part from this series where we’ve been talking with Melissa Schneider in the first one. Two days ago in episode 164, we talked about the zip code of your private practice, why that matters. How do I do competitor analysis? Analysis? how to look at other people and say, okay, is this a good area? And even how to test out that without spending a dime? so walk through all of that. Joe Sanok 00:02:22 You’re going to want to listen to that episode. In the last episode, in episode 1065, Melissa and I talked all about, Will you be taking insurance? Like, will that help you scale your private practice? What do you need to think through? And then what are all those kind of different cogs and wheels and nuts and bolts that need to work together, beyond your own time? so that was an awesome episode yesterday. And today we’re digging into how do you find and keep quality clinicians? this is something that right now in this market is really important to be thinking about. we’re seeing a major shift in a lot of ways with our consulting, in regards to finding new people, keeping people. it’s interesting, you know, ten years ago or so, when I had mental wellness counseling, I could, you know, just basically put into a Facebook group. Hey, mental wellness counseling is hiring, and we would get 5 or 10 applications. You know, people were working for $15 an hour at the crisis line, you know, at two in the morning. Joe Sanok 00:03:19 so people were really looking, to get out of a lot of those types of situations, or where they were being hired. And so things have shifted in a lot of ways where we got to be competitive. We’ve got to, you know, kind of raise our game. We’re going to be talking about that with Melissa Schneider. Melissa has a practice with 60 clinicians. This next month. She’s going to be hiring ten more people into the practice. They do thousands upon thousands of sessions every single month. Melissa, welcome to the practice of the Practice podcast. Melissa Schneider 00:03:46 Thank you Joe, I’m so excited to be here. Joe Sanok 00:03:49 Yeah, I mean, every time I say how many clinicians you have, I’m just like, dang, that is insane. I mean, that’s just so incredible. and I’m sure as you’ve kind of shown in the previous two episodes that numbers and data and your words nerding out on some of this stuff really helps you guide the conversation, which I think is so important to do. you know, even just how yesterday when we talked about insurance, you were talking about how so many people decide not to take insurance just because they don’t they don’t know how to do it. Joe Sanok 00:04:16 It seems confusing rather than looking at the numbers. So I have no doubt that some of this is going to be numbers driven today as well. So welcome back to the show. Melissa Schneider 00:04:25 Thank you so much. Yeah. Excited to talk about how to get and keep some great staff. Joe Sanok 00:04:31 Yeah. Well let’s start with when were you doing a poor job at getting or keeping staff on your team? Melissa Schneider 00:04:38 Oh, man. in so many seasons. So we, we started like, formally tracking turnover, I think, in the second year of the business. we just felt like we were hemorrhaging our staff, you know? So in the first, like, 18 months, nobody left. Like we were a new practice. We were a small team. It felt very intimate. We had, like, a pandemic, you know, four months into opening Resolution Counseling Center, the pandemic struck. So we were all just kind of huddled up in North Jersey in our living rooms, and kind of meeting each other. And then as the world started to open up and people had been with us longer, you know, they were getting their full license or they wanted something else. Melissa Schneider 00:05:14 I think we lost three people in like August of 2021. And I remember thinking like, oh, no, like, how am I going to run a practice if I lose a third of my people every year? Because I think we had a staff of, you know, maybe 11 or something at that point. So the maybe a year or so later, we had another just big departure of staff. you know, the the world was literally opening again. It was 20, 22. and we were asking staff who’d been working at home for a year or more to come back to the office. many had been hired during the pandemic. They’d never come in. And so there was just some kind of understandable. you know, just responses to that, right? I didn’t realize my commute would be so long. My life has changed since then. I moved during the pandemic, you know, and we also had a lot of new managers and teams. And as we’ve learned, like everyone’s first cohort, they’re really learning how to interview and hire, you know, you make a lot more mistakes in your first or second round than you do in your 12th. Melissa Schneider 00:06:13 And so we were kind of just feeling the effects of all of those things. So we really, you know, calmly panicked as the leadership team and really sat down to figure out how can we change everything we’re doing, like interview better, choose better, hire better, train better, support better, engage our staff long term, have benefits that keep them here. And so we really, like, retooled the whole thing. We got turnover down to 20% in our third year. Which or fourth year, I mean, which was last year. We’re feeling great about that. and then this year it’s been up taking a little bit again, you know, we have a lot of staff who’ve been with us a few years. They’re finishing their, you know, their hours. They’re getting the full license. Some are moving, some are getting married. and so we’ve kind of just been realizing as a team that, you know, it helps us all tremendously to just know that, you know, 20% turnover is normal, right? So if you have a staff of 60 or 70, that means one person a month, you know, from somewhere, from some site, from some team will probably resign every year. Melissa Schneider 00:07:13 We end up having to let maybe one person go, you know, just not following clinical policies, you know, whatever it might be. Right? So you have to kind of add that in, and so we’re just always thinking about how to engage staff and kind of already talking about next year, you know, what do our employees want? We’ve surveyed them. We’re kind of doing cost analyses on the next round of benefits we could add in. so we’re really just looking at the whole picture, you know, bringing in great people, making sure they have what they need, and trying to do all the parts in between. Well. Joe Sanok 00:07:44 Yeah. I love how you talk about the first cohort of hiring that, you know, the owners still kind of figuring out how to do it. that kind of helps just normalize it, because I think that a lot of times people can have this kind of first cohort of hiring their first year or two or wherever it starts to really grow. They’re like, oh my gosh, like, we have to hire some people and they hire 5 or 10 people. Joe Sanok 00:08:06 and they put all this time and energy into them. They’re, you know, having more money come into the practice than they ever thought that they could generate. You know, especially a lot of us were taught in grad school. Oh, we’re not in it for the money. And and you’re like, Holy cow, we’re bringing in all this money. And then, you know, a third of those people leave and you’re like, oh my gosh, there’s just a lot of a third of my revenue overnight or in one month or whatever. The period of time is that people quit. and then you said another thing you said that I really liked is that you kind of retooled with your team and how we could change everything. and kind of went back to, like, what do people want? Now, did you use any data or metrics or surveys or things like that to figure out what could keep people there longer, or like what was your process of like retooling everything? Melissa Schneider 00:08:51 Yeah. So I would say we we went to our staff to kind of find out what we did badly or well and kind of the, you know, kind of in their early experience at RCC or even their later experience at RCC. Melissa Schneider 00:09:06 And then within our hiring team, you know, kind of our, our site directors, we really went back through, just interviewing, like how we had chosen people who hadn’t worked out and we were really able to identify a lot of improvements. so maybe I’ll kind of start on the, like, recruiting and hiring side of the puzzle, and then we can come back to like retention once you’ve got the people, if that makes sense. Joe Sanok 00:09:30 Yeah. That sounds great. Melissa Schneider 00:09:31 Yeah. Okay. So the first thing that seems hard about hiring is that sometimes you’re just not getting a lot of applicants. Right. We felt like it was kind of almost a rare event, you know, to have the right person apply, come for an interview, seem decent in the interview, like send their references. Want to come back? and we realized over time it’s because as therapists, we have to hire licensed professionals, which means that the pool of candidates is small and it’s like specific, right? You know, people can’t join until the next crop of people finish grad school and apply and wait six months for our board to take their time. Melissa Schneider 00:10:15 and so it’s it’s completely different than any other kind of industry where you could just hire like, a capable person. Right? So if we ever have an admin team opening, a billing manager, opening, you know, anything like that, we put up an ad for two days on, indeed. Sort of like hunker down as the, you know, assault occurs and then we turn the ad off and read our 100 resumes and, like, set up a few interviews, with therapy jobs, It’s not like that at all. And we are like a stone’s throw from New York City. Jersey City has 300,000 people in it. Our other towns, Bloomfield, Millburn, new Jersey, like decent populations, you know, on the train lines like it’s a major metro area. And we might get like 2 or 3 applicants a week. one won’t even have a license. One will live an hour and a half away. One, like, wants to work part time, you know. And that was that week, right? And then you wait for the next week. Melissa Schneider 00:11:07 So it we start recruiting about four months ahead of when we think we’ll need the person to start the job. and so it was just helpful for us to realize like, wow, we can actually go online to our licensing board, and look up how many lives are in Jersey city, how many LLCs are in Jersey city, you know, the 2 or 3 towns next to that town. Like, you have to think about people, you know, commutes, driving into the office, that kind of thing. So we at one point realized, like, there are only like 3000 people that we could hire. Like total. That is the entire pool of candidates, right? Which may sound like a large number, but when you think of every hospital, every school, every jail, every like online BetterHelp service, people who are home with kids who are part time, who have their own practice like you, whittle that down. You probably have 3% of the workforce looking for a job at any given time who are like, serious and ready to take a job. Melissa Schneider 00:12:03 And then they have to want your job, they have to want the hours, the pay, etc. so it’s just extremely difficult to make a match. And so once we had that lens, we started feeling less bad about ourselves and we started being like, okay, let’s get real. What are people doing on? Indeed, if I’m like searching for therapy jobs in my town, who’s coming up? And we were like, oh my, look at what BetterHelp is offering. Look at what Thrive Works is offering. They’re claiming they’re going to pay 90 grand to an LLC, and then you read the fine print and realize that’s not right. You know, they’re offering signing bonuses. They’re putting this in the job title, you know? So we just sort of figured out what our competitors were doing, started writing better ads. The other thing that really, really helped is we pulled up a list of everyone we could hire, and we had one of our one of our team members who likes technology. Things just get on LinkedIn and like, stock them, you know, send them be like, hey, you know, I’m a therapist in town. Melissa Schneider 00:12:59 We’re hiring. Here’s our job ad, you know, and she would like, spend four hours, like tracking people down on LinkedIn and messaging them. And then we might get like five applicants from that. So that felt like fruitful, you know, that we were literally able to let the people in town know because we had a list of them. Not every state licensing board does it that way, but I found that many. Do you know that you can instead of looking up a person, you can just look up a license in a town and it will tell you who’s there. so we’ve done all of those things. You know, we’ve tried to connect with grad schools, alumni, career offices, that kind of thing. to really kind of get the word to the right people. And then we added in a second interview. So we used to just do one interview. So now we do two. They have a very clear script. The person that does the first one like writes up their notes and gives it to the second person. Melissa Schneider 00:13:46 We do like scenarios. We ask people to make a treatment plan. We make sure that at least one of the interviews is in person, and we only hire people that we all agree are like a ten out of ten. And so it just it slows it down. You’re not bringing in as many people, but we feel like we’re bringing in people who are like a good fit for the company. Joe Sanok 00:14:06 Now as you started to think through that, were there things that you started to add in like benefits that weren’t maybe a part of the original offer or conversation? Melissa Schneider 00:14:16 Definitely. So we started with almost no benefits. though we had health insurance. So that was pretty significant, you know. So the first month we opened the door, we had health insurance. And I don’t think I think we had like sick time, you know, so there was no like paid vacation and there was no any other kind of benefit. I don’t even think we paid people to come to supervision meetings back then. You know, we were just kind of like. Melissa Schneider 00:14:41 We were like, trying to break out of the 1099 mold that we’d all come from, but we were just used to doing it that way. Right. So then by the end of the first year, we offered like starting with a week of PTO. By the end of the second year, people could accrue two weeks of PTO. From the start, we started giving our managers three weeks to start and adding a fourth week. We added a 401 K at the end of, you know, kind of for the year of 2023. and we were really just trying to think about like what engages people, like what kind of benefits aren’t just you get it in your paycheck, but that you feel like you’re working towards something, you know. So our 401 K vests over a two year period, we instituted a profit share so that twice a year, people get back a growing percentage of their earnings from the prior six months. And so that kind of gives people a reason to like, get to the end of the next six month period? You know, deal with the problem with their manager asked to change their schedule instead of just leaving? and we really try to make sure that managers are trained and know how to be checking in. Melissa Schneider 00:15:45 Like, how are you doing? How overwhelmed are you feeling? Do you feel like you have what you need to do the job? and the other big thing, as far as staff retention, is really thinking about just having clear professional tracks, right? So not everyone wants to be a full time therapist for the rest of their lives. In fact, most people seem not to want to do that. And so kind of having something on the horizon where they know, okay, maybe next year I could be a team manager, I could be a junior supervisor. Eventually I’ll get my full license and put in my time to be a, you know, state approved supervisor. I could, you know, join our operations team. I could do something else. So just trying to think about how to make sure there’s a path for, like, our most talented people so that they are, like, continually engaged and interested in what they’re doing at work. Joe Sanok 00:16:40 As a therapist, I can tell you from experience that having the right EHR is an absolute lifeline. Joe Sanok 00:16:47 I recommend using therapy notes. They make billing, scheduling, note taking, telehealth, and e-prescribing incredibly easy. Best of all, they offer live telephone support. It’s available seven days a week. You don’t have to take my word for it. Do your own research and see for yourself. Therapy notes is the number one highest rated EHR system available today, with a 4.9 out of five stars on Trustpilot. Com and on Google, all you have to do is click the link below or type promo code Joe on their website over at Therapy notes.com and receive a special two month trial. Absolutely free. Again, that’s therapy notes.com and use promo code Joe Kojo on the website. If you’re coming from another EHR, therapy notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost, so you can get started right away. Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time and try therapy notes. Just use promo code Joe at checkout. Now, did you work with HR professionals to bring that together in a tourney or like what? I guess who? My question is, who did you work with to set that all up correctly so that you were following employment law and all of that stuff? Melissa Schneider 00:18:00 Yeah. Melissa Schneider 00:18:00 So we we primarily partnered with gusto to actually like, you know, as our like sort of broker for different benefits and to deliver them seamlessly. And certainly an employment lawyer, when we had questions like, can we do it this way? Are we allowed to have this kind of rule? Like, how should we offer these certain benefits? You know, so they kind of helped us write up the things that were important about that. we didn’t have an HR partner until the end of last year and we haven’t loved them, so I won’t say which service we chose. Now, we’re probably going to change providers this fall to have a little more of a personal feel where it’s like, email Kimberly, she’ll help you and answer all your questions instead of it being like a platform. Joe Sanok 00:18:41 Okay. and gusto is one of our sponsors. So that’s great to hear that you had to have a positive experience with them there, who we use also. Melissa Schneider 00:18:50 yeah. It’s been great. Honestly. They’re like our best back end vendor. Melissa Schneider 00:18:53 Everyone loves the happy pig. They answer. Joe Sanok 00:18:56 You know. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Joe Sanok 00:18:59 gusto.com/joe. I think you get three months for free. Six months for free. Something like that. So, Yeah, totally free sponsor plug for them. cool. So. So when you think about so a lot of that’s kind of retaining people and some of it’s attracting people because if you have a good workplace environment, like how things shifted, maybe in the last year or so, like, are there things that, you know, maybe used to work that don’t work as much anymore or things that people can think about in regards to attracting new people and retaining the people they already have. Melissa Schneider 00:19:30 Yeah. So I would say a shift that we really noticed and maybe we’re just starting to come out of is that, so a lot of our hires are having their first private practice job, or they might even be a recent grad who’s trying to get their 3000 hours of supervised time. And so we’re, you know, we’re very up for starting with people that need training. Melissa Schneider 00:19:52 we believe in making specialists, not finding them, because they’re hard to find. But I would say we really felt like we could tell the people who’d been to grad school during the pandemic, you know, they hadn’t seen clients in person. They hadn’t retained their classes in the same way. they just seemed like far less prepared than the people who had come through grad school in person. I think that’s, you know, we’re kind of now starting to meet, cohorts again who went through grad school entirely in person. And so that felt to me like we just really needed to do so much more training than we’d done before, you know? So we’ve really broken down the onboarding process to be like, we’re going to demo an intake, then we’ll role play one, you’re going to do it and we’re going to demo making a treatment plan with a client. We’ll show you then you’ll do one. You know, we just really changed our mindset to thinking like we need to see that people have the skills, before assuming that they have them. Melissa Schneider 00:20:47 And so that’s been just a big shift in kind of thinking about, like, I don’t want to come to a staff person eight months later with stuff that they’re not doing well, you know, it creates tension. They feel badly about themselves. So we really wanted to make sure we gave them every opportunity to learn it. Well, in the beginning, while they were still in that kind of like eager sponge learning curve mode. and so that’s something we’ve really tried to change it just thinking about, like, what do we need to see them do before they graduate from like weekly meetings with their manager? So we’ve made like checklists and just really beefed up that whole training process with employee engagement in mind, right? That we don’t want to have a problem leader that really is our fault because we didn’t train them. Joe Sanok 00:21:29 Yeah. Yeah. No. I guess you know, when I think about kind of having a good rhythm for me, like you said, you know next month you guys are hiring ten people. Joe Sanok 00:21:39 What is that annual acquisition of new staff look like and what does. Let’s start there. So when you look at new staff coming in, are there seasons or patterns that kind of, you know, that August of every year you want to be at a certain point or like, are there certain ways you’re thinking about the rhythm of the year when you’re hiring? Melissa Schneider 00:22:02 Yeah, that’s a good question. So we I would say we have rolling, recruiting and hiring, you know, pretty much all the time. We don’t want to launch new people in January because then people are booking appointments in December and getting the wrong cost estimates. And so we’ve just gone away from that entirely. We’re like, they can’t start until the second week of February, you know? So that’s like one just we have kind of a moratorium on new hires in January. other than that, though, I would say we tend to find that you can get a lot of applicants in that like April, May, June, July time period, because a lot of people just graduated. Melissa Schneider 00:22:37 but in our state, it can take six months to get a license. So it’s a little tricky because you might have a lot more people to interview and offer letters to give, but you don’t know when they can start. and so they often end up getting that license somewhere in late July or August. And then they can start with us usually like five weeks later to build their caseload. so we have like the opportunity to really like catch up on turnover or unexpected staff resignations, that kind of thing, kind of in that fall time. But we find that we’ve actually gotten some of our best people in like the off season, like November, January, April, because those are people who’ve already been in the field. Maybe they were out of practice for a year or two. It wasn’t a good fit. And they’re looking to switch jobs. So instead of it being like earlier in their career, they’re more like midway through or close to the end of that supervised time, or might even have their full license, and they just don’t want to work in their living room anymore. Melissa Schneider 00:23:29 And they want colleagues in a beautiful office. And just like the energy of a of an in-person practice. So there’s kind of that combo. We plan for at least one resignation a month. We expect about 14 over the year. We have a staff of 70, including our admin team and just all the support people and the leadership team. And so if we want to grow, let’s say we have 6 or 7 openings. You know, this team is still has room for two. This person still has room for one. We like this year we our goal was like hire 19 to grow by seven. And so you have to kind of think about it that way. Instead of being like surprised that you’re losing people. Joe Sanok 00:24:06 Yeah. Well talk a little bit more about turnover. I mean, I know for a lot of people, like I said earlier in the show, that can feel like an emotional hit. But I love how you’re saying we got to hire 17 to grow by this amount. We know that we’re going to lose a person a month or so. Joe Sanok 00:24:20 how how now do you think about turnover compared to how you used to think about it? Joe Sanok 00:24:25 Yeah. Melissa Schneider 00:24:25 Oh, man. So I would say turnover is for me has been the hardest thing to deal with. just emotionally speaking and sort of, you know, morale wise. it’s like one of the only things that’s happened business wise that’s made me think, like, is it time to sell? Should I throw in the towel? I could be writing novels, you know, that kind of thing. it’s it’s very hard. especially, like, you know, just the. I think the thing that has hit the hardest is, like, someone where you didn’t even know there was a problem. Right? And then they’re leaving and trying to give two weeks notice and seeming upset, and you’re like, we were here the whole time. We would have loved to help resolve whatever the thing was. you know, whereas on the flip side, like some people do an excellent job about giving notice, you know, they’re moving to a different part of the industry. Melissa Schneider 00:25:12 You know, you don’t feel like you’ve sort of failed them as an employer, you know? And so those, those kinds of resignations are just easier to celebrate in a genuine way. Joe Sanok 00:25:23 Yeah. We talked about in our membership communities, whether that’s next level practice, group practice launch or group practice boss like a positive leave or a negative leave. Like we don’t we don’t ever want someone to leave any of our membership communities saying like that wasn’t worth it. Like that. I didn’t get what I thought I signed up for. and we want to obviously evaluate if was it a fit thing, like in regards to someone joining, or did we articulate it in a way that didn’t match their expectations, or did you know, did some staff drop the ball? versus, you know, if someone grows a group practice, they’re like, hey, I just want to go run this for a while. having a certain percentage of negative leaves being like, well, it’s bound to happen. and we want to learn from it and get better. Joe Sanok 00:26:05 but that just say, you know, someone that leaves positively like, that’s a good thing. If someone says, wow, you trained me so fast. I grew my practice really quickly. I’m completely, completely full. I want to go just run my practice for a while. It’s like, awesome. We’ll be here. Let us know, you know, when you’re done. So do you have a certain like percentage that you think through of if someone leaves kind of on negative terms or positive terms, or is it just sort of like it’s bound to happen? We don’t really kind of track that number. Melissa Schneider 00:26:30 Yeah. So we, we I would say we take a very, a strong learning perspective on every single person who leaves, you know, so we we certainly have an exit interview toward the end with someone they didn’t work with, you know, so just someone where hopefully they’ll feel comfortable telling them kind of what the deal was. and we, we all sit down and, like, read the transcript of that, you know, we highlight things that we can learn better for next time. Melissa Schneider 00:26:57 so there’s that piece of it. And then we also survey our employees every summer. We call it our Employee Pulse survey. It’s completely anonymous. There’s no way to track who it’s coming from or where. And we really ask them, you know, to tell us, like, what are the best things about working here? What are the hardest things? You know, how happy are you with your caseload? How happy are you with your manager? Do you feel that the company wants you to grow professionally? Do you feel like there’s opportunity for you or your accomplishments? Acknowledge, you know, all that sort of stuff, right? Do you like your office space? How’s your commute? And so we really try to sit down and solve things that we can solve. And we learn a lot. You know, I would say happily, many people in their exit. Interviewer. Like, I loved working here and I had a wonderful supervisor, a great manager, etc.. you know, I wasn’t looking for a job. Melissa Schneider 00:27:45 A recruiter contacted me and like, the health insurance was better or the schedule was better or the pay was better. and so I decided to move, you know, kind of if they’re moving to, like, an analogous competitor type of thing. once in a while, people are like, I felt too much pressure from my manager to, like, meet a minimum or remain fully booked, and that was stressful. So I’m just going to like a college counseling center or an EAP or just a different place, you know, like a school where they’ll they’ll kind of give me work, but it’s not it’s not. So like based on meeting a target, that kind of thing. and then we’ve also had people just be like, I just realized I don’t want to be a full time therapist. I thought I did. Yeah. you know, there’s, like, hard work. I’m gonna do something different. yeah. So I think we we really want to kind of let our defenses be down, so that we can learn things that are important for the next, you know, next batch. Joe Sanok 00:28:40 It’s so good. Melissa, the last question I ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? Melissa Schneider 00:28:48 I think as far as, getting and keeping great staff, that I would want people to really kind of sit and reflect on, like the joy and energy that comes from their favorite colleagues. And to keep that in mind, you know, sometimes you’re just like, really feel kicked down. you know, morale wise, when you’ve lost staff or someone has left on bad terms. But those people who are going to grow a really rewarding workplace are out there. You can find them and they just make life sweet. And so I think it’s important to, you know, move along and let people go if they’re not the right fit. but not to let them weigh you down. so much. Joe Sanok 00:29:34 So awesome. Well, if you want to work with Melissa on any of these topics, be covered in more. we talked about competitor analysis. Analysis. Joe Sanok 00:29:44 I got to work on the plural of of analysis. if you want to look at AB testing in regards to locations, if you want to talk about insurance and insurance audits and, you know, hiring people, if you want to talk about finding and keeping amazing therapists, turnover, benefits, all those things. She’s not a benefits, professional, but she can talk, you know, and teach you how she thinks through that. one thing that, you know, in these three episodes that I’ve just noticed, Melissa, about you that I really appreciate is just how much you think through from a numbers perspective. I think that’s so important that we don’t just say, hey, I have a hunch that this is going to work. And, you know, there’s times that we want to follow intuition. We want to follow our joy, our curiosity, all that. I don’t want to devalue kind of the artistic side, but there’s also things that we can avoid from a risk perspective that if we just have some numbers, some data and geek out on things a little bit, especially when you do that with a consultant like yourself, it can just save you so much time and money. Joe Sanok 00:30:40 So if you’re interested in working with Melissa, please apply over at practice of the practice.com/apply. I will personally talk with you for 30 minutes about where you’re at, where you’re headed. if you know for sure you want to work with Melissa, I want to know that if you’re unsure as to who you want to work with, we’ll figure that out, too. We have 5 to 10 people a week that I’m doing these calls with, so we don’t have to squeeze you into anything that you don’t need. It’s literally just saying, you know, where would I spend my time and money if I were in your situation? And if I feel like consulting is not the best use of your money, I’m going to tell you that. So again, that’s practice the practice. Com forward slash apply if you want to work with Melissa Melissa thank you so much for being on the practice of the practice podcast. Melissa Schneider 00:31:18 Thanks so much for having me Joe. This was a lot of fun. Joe Sanok 00:31:27 Well, if you want to hang out with me, I’m going to be down at the Mental Health Marketing Conference October 1st through third. Joe Sanok 00:31:33 I’m doing the closing keynote on Thursday. go sign up for your ticket now over at MH marketing. Org. You can get 25% off if you just use promo code Joe at checkout. can’t wait to hang out down there. a bunch of my consulting clients and other folks are going to be meeting up. we’re going to have a great time. So the mental health Marketing conference join me October 1st through third, just south of Nashville down in Franklin, Tennessee. And you know, we could not do this show without our amazing sponsors and therapy notes is our longest sponsor. They have been with us for so long. We have so many people that have worked with them. They are the best EHR that’s out there. If you aren’t using them, you’re missing out on so many amazing features like having integrated billing, having your telehealth integrated so many different things, and a live team you can sign up over at Therapy notes.com. Use promo code Joe at checkout to get a couple months for free. And then they also know that their podcast sponsorship is working as well. Joe Sanok 00:32:27 So again that’s therapy notes.com. Use promo code Joe at checkout. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an awesome 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. 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.
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