Andrew Burdette 00:00:00  The grow a Group practice podcast is part of the practice of the Practice Network, a network of podcasts to help you grow, manage and promote your business and yourself. To hear the other podcasts like The Practice of the Practice Podcast, go to practice at the practice.com backslash network. You're listening to the grow a Group Practice podcast, a podcast focused on helping people start, grow, and scale a group practice. Each week you'll hear topics that are relevant to group practice owners. I'm Andrew Burdette, a practice owner, and I love to hear from people, their stories, and real life experiences. Let's get started. Hello and thanks again for tuning in to another episode of the Grove Group Practice Podcast. Today I'm here with Craig Allsop, who is the founder of Live Beyond Counseling in Texas and also marketing consultant to therapists. So welcome to the show.

Craig Alsup 00:00:59  Hey, I appreciate it man. I am excited to be here and excited to chat a little bit about annual and year end review stuff.

Andrew Burdette 00:01:08  Sounds good. So how did you.

Andrew Burdette 00:01:10  You own a group? you also do marketing. So how did you end up at this point in your career?

Craig Alsup 00:01:16  Yeah, very unexpected actually. I was a therapist working in private practice for a whole bunch of years before that was, working in a community mental health agency, doing crisis counseling, and, I stepped out of school into the crisis counseling world, as so many of us do. going from, you know, such an insulated place in school to the the toughest, clients sometimes and the toughest things to deal with. And, kind of got got over that and, stepped into the private practice world, for about ten years and, kind of cut my teeth on, seeing, kids, teenagers and stuff like that, and, then, 20, 15, I quit counseling, quit, seeing clients in person. I started, doing a little coaching. I started working for a non-profit organization helping kids around the world. And, about 2018, decided to launch our practice here in Texas. launched it as a group practice with no group, without me seeing clients.

Craig Alsup 00:02:35  But I hired one therapist, and then as soon as she got full, I hired another one. And, we built up now to ten therapists. we've got two admin assistants that are working, throughout the week, and then a team of marketing folks in the Philippines that help us out a little bit. I kind of work on the practice and not in the practice anymore. but, yeah, that's kind of how it how it started just wanting to help people in our community because we were helping people around the world. And then we kind of looked, looked around us and said, hey, we could we can make a difference here as well. so launched the practice beginning of 2018. and it has been growing since then, mostly growing, few few points where we've kind of leveled off, but, doing well. And then beyond that, started to just give therapists free information on a bunch of different Facebook groups and, answer questions when people had a marketing question or a systems question just started saying, hey, I can help.

Craig Alsup 00:03:43  What's up? and, before long, somebody asked me, hey, can you do the SEO on my website? And I said, well, yeah, I can. and I said, it's going to take me a little while. so I need to charge you. And she said, yeah, I was expecting to pay you. And I said, oh, oh, like, I can get paid for this. And, and so that started, me down the road of becoming a marketing consultant, helping with systems and SEO, Google business optimization, all those things. And, it was kind of by accident, really just helping some people out for free, and leaned into that a little bit and made a little side side business off of it. So that was about, 2019, I guess.

Andrew Burdette 00:04:31  Got it. So the I can relate to the doing what you're already going to do thing and then getting volunteered to get paid for it kind of thing. That's kind of how I ended up doing practice of the practice stuff as one of their community members.

Andrew Burdette 00:04:42  And then they were like, well, you're kind of an expert in these certain areas, and we have a change in our consulting staff. Would you like to come join our team? I was like, that sounds pretty cool. And here we are a couple years later. So there you go. it's cool how things work out. So you might be the first person I've talked to you that started a group without having even a therapist to work in the group, including yourself. And so, it's that very much the idea. If you build it, they will come. And clearly that worked out because you're still doing it five, six years later. So how did you. I'm guessing like you probably just created the business and the brand and then started actually filling in the back end about having stuff to staff the business. Does that sound right?

Craig Alsup 00:05:23  Yeah, exactly. Basically first step was creating the business from the government side of things. and then built a website. it, you know, the website has changed and grown a lot since then.

Craig Alsup 00:05:35  but, started out with those two things and then jumped on to Google and Google Maps and all that stuff. went out and leased a space, one office space in, like, a big building full of different suites and, then started interviewing therapists and, so it was it was a big it was a big risk. You know, it was a bit of a like, okay, we've we've got a space, we've got a website. I've put all this time into it. Now I actually need to get a therapist and start getting some clients. And yeah, thankfully it worked out well. Within the first few months we had hired another therapist. you know, within the first six months we had hired like 3 or 4 therapists. So. Yeah.

Andrew Burdette 00:06:20  Oh, cool. So as you've grown that one of the things that we're going to talk about as kind of urine review type things, how did you, you know, coming from, I guess, the nonprofit world and having previously been a therapist in other places, like how did that background translate into setting up metrics and knowing kind of where you want it to be and milestones and markers about business and knowing it's actually working in a functional way?

Craig Alsup 00:06:44  Yeah, honestly, in the first year or two, it was more sort of flying by the seat of my pants, kind of like, okay, let's see what happens.

Craig Alsup 00:06:52  And if it grows, it grows. And if not, okay. Right. Because I had another source of income. So it wasn't like I was counting on this as much. but so it was just testing things, right? and then after about two years, it was like, okay, we got to start actually setting some goals. We have to start really looking forward a little bit, really looking at office space and seeing like, how many offices do we really need? you know, in what areas can we grow? what stuff can we shift off to some admins? it really came about, you know, a little bit organically. as far as, like, when we needed to add things, we did. but, I have always been a fan of sort of looking back on goals and seeing what we've accomplished and then kind of moving forward. And, I just started to incorporate that into the practice more and more. after about two years in and really have, over time, just built out the different things I'm looking at.

Craig Alsup 00:08:00  you know, I'm looking at, expenses. I'm looking at, revenue. I'm looking at actual profit after after expenses. you know the basics, right? But then I'm looking at, which marketing things seemed to work the best. You know, what's the ROI on my different marketing things? What can I cut? What do I need to double down on? Maybe, if something's working, how much money and resources can I push towards it to see sort of where the top is of that thing? you know, what systems do I have? Which ones are needed? as we've grown, as a practice, we've had to build out sort of administrative systems where it's there are, there are things we say and things we don't say to clients. Right. There are ways that I want my admin assistance to answer the phone and respond to certain questions. and, you know, they've, they've, I'm sure made it their own over time. But, starting out with them, how do we get them trained up to where they can answer a question the same way I would, how how are we using, the metrics of our practice to actually influence what we're doing on a day to day basis? what information am I pushing to my therapist? You know, I mean, all those questions begin to come up, and over time, we've just, you know, sort of built out a way to answer a lot of that anyway.

Andrew Burdette 00:09:33  Yeah. I'm just thinking of, like, I'm in the process of going, let's see this here. I went from one other full time person and a quarter time person to now I've added two full time people. I have a third one I want to bring on the hurricane kind of disrupted things. This is like November of 2024 and I'm based in Asheville. So for listeners out there for context where like six, seven weeks post Helene and that's been a huge disruption for for lots of things here. So but, you know, goals wise, like I'm already ahead of where I really wanted to be. I just wanted to add two full time people. So the fact I have bonus people this year is really nice. but it comes with that consequence of like, now I'm having a kind of centralized systems and coming up with that. And so having to educate people on, hey, this is actually if I was answering the phone or dealing with this, this is what I would say. And we should kind of set a practice wide standard and just kind of codify things in those other types of things, like, you know, I'm sure some of what you have coached on people is like, here's rates and here's our policy around sliding scale.

Andrew Burdette 00:10:31  And you know what our intake flow looks like and what to expect.

Craig Alsup 00:10:35  Yeah.

Andrew Burdette 00:10:36  What are some other things that you've kind of coached into your team about how to respond?

Craig Alsup 00:10:41  Yeah, exactly. If you're not careful, in growing a practice, sometimes your, your rate of growth can get ahead of your systems. Right. You're and that I think happens to most of us probably if we're honest, you know, that we, we, you know, snatch up that therapist. That is just great. You know, that we we meet and we go, oh, man. Yeah, I need to hire them. Right? And then we're like, oh, what do we do with them? Like, do we have office space? You know, like what what what direction do we need to go with the practice now that I'm a little bit ahead of my wheels? Right. so the things that, you know, the things that I tend to coach people on and consult and work with, practice owners on, are, you know, marketing, you know, what types of different things can you do to grow your practice, whether it's Google business or search engine optimization? a lot of people ask me about blogging, which, you know, maybe, if it if it expands, the reach of your website if, if you begin to see some fruit in it and if you're going to do it frequently enough that, that it, it actually pays off.

Craig Alsup 00:11:57  social media stuff, you know, all the different business things that we are marketing, things that we do to sort of grow out, we, talk a lot about, systems. And when people do what you did and what I did, you know, when you sort of get ahead of yourself. then you have to back up and go, okay, I can't always be available to answer the phone, and so or emails even become, you know, difficult to respond to, at times. And so, you start to look at administrative systems and those, do's and don'ts and what you want somebody to say. And that can be a little bit overwhelming, for a practice owner, for somebody who probably never went into this thinking, I want to be a big business owner, right? most therapists don't. And, and then they get a little bit down the road and they go, oh, shoot. Yeah. Like I own a business now. and so walking people through, what are, you know, what are the things that you need to know to get to know your practice? You need to you need to know your average.

Craig Alsup 00:13:10  You know, your revenue per month. You need to, have an idea of what that looks like if you have year over year, you know, basis to, to be able to compare, what what does it look like this year compared to last year? And what's the, you know, what's the growth percentage? And then, you know, do you expect that to continue to grow? Do you expect it to flatten? I'm guessing yours has grown significantly since you've added this many new therapists. Right. but then, you know, if they're not full yet, what does it look like when they get full? Right. prophet, prophet tends to shrink as your practice grows. You know, as far as percentage wise. but, you know, because you take on additional expenses with offices and things like that, but then, like, what are your, you know, one therapist may cause you to have to get a, another office space. but that one therapist doesn't use the office space, you know, for all the hours that are possible during the week.

Craig Alsup 00:14:15  And so the one therapist may really mess up your profit percentage for a minute. you know, a little bit, at least. but then when you hire the next therapist, it's like, oh, okay. Then boom, your profit percentage goes back up, right? Because you can they can split the office space, hopefully. you know, things like, how much do you want to work in your practice? How much do you want to work on your practice? I talk with tons of therapy practice owners who, you know, especially those that are just getting started. And, you know, I'm asking them questions like, how many clients do you see per week? Okay, how many clients do you want to see per week? Right. So they're like, well, I see, you know, eight clients per week currently I want to see 25 per week, right. and you know, maybe that's maybe that's a comfortable point for them. And maybe they get to 25 and then wish they were back at about 15.

Craig Alsup 00:15:13  but, you know, then I started asking them questions. Okay. Like, what are you doing with the extra, you know, 17 hours per week that you're currently not seeing clients? And most of them don't have a really good answer for that. most of them are like, well, Yeah. well, I do a little bit, you know, I post on social media and I update my website, you know, or something like that, and I'm like, okay, so what do you do with the other 16 hours, per week. Right? Right. and so helping, therapy practice owners look at actually what is your, what's the time you want to spend working in or on your practice? And then in the beginning, frontloading a whole bunch of that marketing stuff, getting out in the community, getting known those kind of things so that, you don't have to do as much of that, as you go along, as you get the ball rolling and get some referral sources and stuff like that.

Craig Alsup 00:16:13  but really using your time wisely because we, you know, we tend to time manage, only when we're forced to sometimes and, you know, so hopefully I can be a little bit of a wake up, to some people to say, okay, like, how are you really spending your time and what could you be doing to grow your practice so that you start to balance, you know, you start to be able to back off of the time working in your practice and instead work on your practice so that you see the kind of growth that you've seen and, and that I've seen in my practice.

Andrew Burdette 00:16:46  Yeah. This year. just an email thing. That was one of the things this year I was like, I feel like I'm drowning in email. So, downloaded classify, which is free. You can kind of break down all kinds of different tasks, assign it to different projects. So, I mean, I work with practice of the practice as well as run my own business. And so, you know, went through just kind of did some basic setup and was like starting to track for the summer.

Andrew Burdette 00:17:08  I was like, okay, yeah, six, seven hours a week of emails. Not something I'm willing to do. Like that's just not good. so how can we get rid of that? Like, what can I offload to somebody? What can I just automate? I will say it's been interesting trying to navigate like a calendar system for online booking because there's a couple things that seem really simple about it that make it really complicated. And to listeners out there, if you run a group, just get acuity, simplify your life, be done with it and set up a compliant. Just spend your 60 some bucks a month or whatever and be done. And that will cut out half your email because it's probably related to when can we meet up and talk about whatever. So, I'm a big systems person for automating things. So there's the system. So the actual here's your car, here's your bus, whatever. And then there's the process of driving it. And both of those are equally relevant. And if anything the process is more important.

Andrew Burdette 00:17:57  Because if you don't enjoy driving your car, you're not going to drive your car. And the stuff in your practice should feel good to drive. And if it's if it's really uncomfortable, you're still never going to get done what you need to get done.

Craig Alsup 00:18:10  Yeah, exactly. I actually had another, practice owner, here in Texas, actually, she's in Austin, I believe, Audrey Cho and, she recommended, some folks in the Philippines who had been working for her, who had been doing a bunch of admin tasks, a bunch of marketing type posts, postings and stuff like that for her 2 or 3 businesses that she runs and, and connected with them and was really immediately able to shift off. So much stuff off of my plate. I mean, they go. They go into my email and delete, you know, garbage, junk mail. They unsubscribe me from stupid stuff that, you know, I subscribe to because I want to read that blog article or I want to, you know, I want to get this free.

Craig Alsup 00:18:59  Whatever. Right. and so, they, they do a lot of that stuff. They, you know, they create, images and posts. They create little short videos and post for me, to social media, to Google business updates, things like that. yeah. Just they've, they've done a whole bunch of different little, like, tasks, like, okay, develop me a list of potential referral sources that I can reach out to in my community. You know, stuff that would just be like a mindless, like me sitting and googling all day. they've just knocked that out of the park, right? And just create me a little Excel sheet that says, hey, here's, here's all the people. so, yeah, they, they, they do a lot of that kind of stuff. My admin assistants, the other thing that has been cool is that when we hired admin assistants, we thought that, they would answer phones and answer client emails, right. and schedule people. And we were like, oh, that's cool.

Craig Alsup 00:20:04  Like, don't have to do that anymore. And then I started to realize that, you know, I mean, we're pretty busy practice, but we're not getting calls, you know, all day, you know, constantly. Right. And so those admin assistants at first were like, okay, what else can I do? You know, like they were asking because they were bored. And then it's like, okay, well, check paperwork in our EHR and make sure that all the clients do their paperwork on time and reach out to the client and say, hey, get your paperwork in. You know, if they've forgotten, make sure that all the sessions have been paid. You know, stuff where somebody just forgets to click a button to actually submit the payment. make sure that, you know, our offices, office schedules are lined out. my admin assistants go to the offices, every now and then. They work from home, mostly. but they go to the offices every now and then and clean up and make sure everything looks good.

Craig Alsup 00:20:59  And, you know, you know, stuff, that stuff that I was doing before. emails, text calls. I mean, they, they've helped to write some blogs for us. They've posted on social for us a little bit. they've gone to, like, meetings with churches and stuff to talk about our services, you know, and, and, you know, different groups, schools and stuff like that. So, really, you can use you can use admin assistants and, and people like that to really narrow down what you're doing so that it does become more enjoyable for you to just do the things that just you can do. that's been the that's been the coolest thing. in my practice, again, ten therapists, two admin assistants team in the Philippines, and I probably work 1 to 2 hours per week on or in the practice. and not bad.

Andrew Burdette 00:21:56  Yeah, it's not bad at all. one of the things you've talked about a bunch and this kind of ties into this process and system two.

Andrew Burdette 00:22:04  So our practice, we get very few phone calls. So we opted to kind of go with a CRM this year and kind of finally built out an automated thing to where people can go to our website, start filling out a form to work with us, pick a therapist, and then by the end of the form, once they submit it, they get a link to book on that person's calendar for a free consult. So there's literally there's no human interaction needed. And that was the goal. nice. Yeah. It's been really it's been really cool to watch at work because I'll get the occasional email. It's like, hey, new new thing book with so-and-so. And so up. My therapist has a new new client booking in and stuff like that. It's really cool. Works great. the I will say the calendar system in that system doesn't work well. So hence we ended up in acuity, which everybody said we were going to end up with in the first place. so, you know, one extra outside system, but worth it because it drives really well.

Andrew Burdette 00:22:55  since 2018, 2019. So the before times and some people have referred to it for pre-pandemic, like marketing seemed like it worked differently then, partly because most people were looking for in person. And then secondly, just how the world has changed with online presence and what's available. And you and I were even talking ahead of the show about practice names and, like, mine's mindful counseling, which was kind of deliberately picked over keywords as well as just being reflective of like, what I envisioned my practice kind of identity to be. But doing it in hindsight, I would probably pick a different name because five years later, those keywords and the business name aren't as is crucial for SEO ranking as they once were. And so what are some trends you've kind of noticed over the past 5 or 6 years that have really changed with marketing?

Craig Alsup 00:23:44  Yeah, yeah, things changed a lot. pre to post pandemic, right? we saw, even my practice we didn't have online option before. Like we had no video therapy option.

Craig Alsup 00:23:59  of course I'm in Texas. it's a little bit different than the rest of the world, really. It's kind of its own world, honestly, in a lot of ways. but, you know, we didn't even offer, telehealth. And then it was like, oh, man, we have to offer telehealth. So within about a week of the world shutting down, we had to figure out, okay, how do we how do we offer telehealth? Right. now, we've seen that grow and grow till about 30 to 40% of our sessions each week. Are telehealth sessions, even in Texas. you know, and, in Texas is, like I said, Texas is weird because within about a month of the of the world shutting down in 2020, we had people mad at us because we wouldn't see them in person yet. Right. So, and not long after that, we had some of our therapists. We're like, okay, I guess we'll go back to in-person. Right? And we we were doing all the distancing and all the cleaning, all the surfaces and the masks and the special, you know, filters and all this stuff.

Craig Alsup 00:25:06  And we're like, we don't know if any of this is actually working, but we'll do it all. we'll just do everything right. and so that's what we did. but, things changing in the marketing world has been, has been interesting because all of a sudden we're having a market for, all these telehealth terms. we're having to, try to reach those people that are just searching for online, which, before the pandemic, I only advertised to about a 6 to 8 mile radius from our from our office. that was that was the bread and butter. I was like, okay, I'm in Fort Worth. There's a million people around us will be fine, right? And then all of a sudden it was telehealth and we started getting people reach out from Houston and Amarillo and all over the state, and we're going, okay, I guess, yeah, we can see you. you know, but, that was sort of, you know, accidental, almost. But then we turned it into, okay, we got to create an online therapy page on the website.

Craig Alsup 00:26:09  we got to talk about online therapy and that option throughout the website. you've got to, again, have the systems in place to where we have a good telehealth, you know, method. Right. So we do it through simple practice. at first it was a little sketchy, but it's gotten better and better, and I think it works really well now. with simple practice, I think they figured out how to grow, along with the rest of us after the pandemic, started. And then, you know, marketing stuff beyond that, Google business. Right? yeah. There have been tons of changes with what all you can put into Google business. so now you can put all your list, all your services, you can describe all your services, you can add events, you can add, you know, so I'll do an event listing every time I hire a new therapist, like, hey, welcome to the team. You know, this is this is a new therapist. you can do updates.

Craig Alsup 00:27:14  You can, you can really target, areas around you by saying, hey, this is where all we work, right? Or the people that we serve. so a lot that you could do there, with the website again, it just becomes, it has seemed like, our area at least has just flooded with therapists. since since the pandemic began. it's. Man, they're coming out of the woodwork. And so, we have to work a little bit harder, right? or a little bit smarter, at least, to try to capture eyeballs than we did pre-pandemic, I think. we've got a the other thing that happened was, a lot of practices around here and around the country that I talk with, really had really had an influx of clients, that came sort of off of that sort of Covid boost that, that a lot of people saw. and then it was like, what do we do with them all? How do we hire fast enough? You know, do we have office space? Do we have everything lined out, all the systems.

Craig Alsup 00:28:23  So we had to sort of get up to speed quick. But, on the back end of that now A little bit distance off of, you know, when Covid, hit. and as it's sort of leveling back out, I think a lot of industries are having to look at where they were spending money before, how, you know, because in some ways you can get a little loose with it at that time is like, okay, let's get another office, let's hire more therapists, you know? And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, it's a little more difficult maybe to get, clients right now, than it has been. And so, it's really just starting to pay attention to all of the, different marketing things in a more sort of coordinated way. same thing with social, pre-pandemic, I was like, nah, social is not even a big deal. Like I'm not getting any clients off of social. Now, I talk to therapists and all their clients come off of social media posts and boosted posts and ads that they're doing on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and, you know, and you go, okay, all right.

Craig Alsup 00:29:36  You know, I think, I think TikTok hit at exactly the right time, right. people were had a lot of time on their hands and then TikTok and it just exploded. Right. So there are therapists that I talk with that they're like, all I do is make TikTok videos, you know, and get all my clients. I'm like, wow, amazing that they like to be on video that much. to me.

Andrew Burdette 00:30:03  Yeah, I came from a production background or post-production background. So being in front of a microphone instead of the guy on the other end of the wire from the microphone is still a new thing for me. yeah. It's Ashley is a very saturated therapist area, like very, very, very saturated. And it's been I kind of like you like it seems like every week there's like 3 to 5 new therapists that's like, hey, I'm either returning to the work or new to the area, and that's great. There's just I mean, at some point everybody here is going to be a therapist or an acupuncturist or a massage therapist, and that's kind of how Ashland's going to go.

Andrew Burdette 00:30:39  and, and talking to different people around the country to like, different areas, have different marketing personalities. As far as what people respond to you to, I think, I've definitely seen the trend of, yeah, I mean, 2020, 2021, even 2022, if you had an online directory presence really on any platform, that was probably enough to keep you relatively full once you were kind of getting close to full. And, you know, last year all that seemed to like drop off. And here it seems like a lot of what works the best. And it's the old school, you know, like what kind of relationships do you have to other providers. That's really like the gold standard still, for finding, you know, other therapists or clients for their therapists and feeling caseloads and stuff. the online presence works well enough, but I don't know very few people here, at least locally, that are doing the online route. Even the group practices are primarily like fed by their relationships to like other local people in the community rather than I can't think of a group owner I know that's currently doing any kind of active paid ads or doing a whole lot social media wise for their practice.

Andrew Burdette 00:31:46  I know, I know, some of them are doing it like say as a coach, but not necessarily like to draw in clinical clients and stuff if.

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Andrew Burdette 00:32:49  For people out there kind of struggling with marketing or trying to evaluate what they need to do, and looking at this past year of like, hey, did this work or not? Any recommendations on how to like assess that data and then maybe come up with an alternative that you think might be something that would pay off?

Craig Alsup 00:33:07  Yeah.

Craig Alsup 00:33:08  I do want to mention, since you brought up, like, Psychology Today, what we found and what, several therapists that I've worked with have found is that, doing using Psychology Today to influence and inform your, local community outreach, is very interesting thing. so getting on Psychology Today and looking for those therapists who say that they are full, not currently accepting clients. And, you know, sometimes it's that person's like in the process of shutting down their practice. Right? And they're going to need to shift off a bunch of people, sometimes, you know, they're moving or whatever. Right? or retiring. sometimes it's that they're just full and they can't take any more calls, but they don't want to turn off their psychology today, because it's been the thing that fills them up for a long time. And so, we always sort of put a focus on how do we reach out to people strategically, who are showing full or showing not accepting new clients, who are in the same niche as us and, using that to our advantage.

Craig Alsup 00:34:15  Right. we know something about you, right? And then we can help you to offload some of these clients that are calling in and, you know, keeping you busy. so, those kind of things also looking at like, if you are a practice that sees couples and then you find all the practices that don't see couples in your area, right, that just see individuals and reach out to them. Or if you're a practice that sees, teenagers and you reach out to all the couples, right? And they may, you know, couples therapists and they may have, you know, teens that they don't see, but that they could shift off to you, that kind of thing. So as far as looking at, marketing, I always, you know, go back to, looking at your Google business. give some really good insights, especially for those practices that are focused on grabbing people locally. if you've got in-person services and you don't have a Google business optimized to the fullest, you really need to look at that, because it's probably the number one way to get clients outside of, you know, people, you know, referring a client to you.

Craig Alsup 00:35:31  it's probably the number one way to get new clients in a local community area. that's out there right now. and that's just a matter of, claiming your profile. making sure your business name, your phone number, your address, all that stuff matches up with what's on your website. that's adding services in describing those, adding updates every so often, adding a whole bunch of photos of your therapists, of yourself, of your, your office spaces, those kind of things and really just sort of keeping all of that updated. And, realistically, it's a thing that you can set it and forget it, and then it gives you good insights. It gives you, you know, how many people are calling directly through Google, how many people are doing directions to your business? One of the cool things that we started doing was, sending a text to clients that, has a Google Maps link, in it so that they can click, go to our Google business and follow it straight to us, which gives Google a signal that we are actually a real business and that we are a place that people come to.

Craig Alsup 00:36:41  And, so it helps us to, to get seen more. the other things that Google, will tell you is just, you know, a little bit about, like what, what keywords people are searching. You know, what, what things people are finding you for once you get into the insights of it. so that's really good. I really, Google Analytics, I have a love hate relationship with. It's a little bit analytical for me. and, but, you know, that's a good one to look at, just to kind of get an idea of where people are coming from, at least online. I like Google Search Console, and some of the insights there to be able to look at what people are searching for, where they're landing on my website, how long they're staying. some of that information, and then it's, you know, there's a manual aspect to it, right? Like, how many calls are you getting per week? how many clients are actually scheduling from the calls that you get are from the emails that you get.

Craig Alsup 00:37:44  I'm sure there's a way for you to tell, you know, maybe how many people, get into your form on the website and then back out. you know, maybe, how many people schedule and then never show up. you know, all of those numbers and some of that is stuff that your EHR will tell you. You know, it's like how many people know show or late cancel. and then you can go, okay, like, as a practice, we're heading in the right direction or we're heading in the wrong direction. And you can set some, some goals around like, okay, what can we do to better retain clients. What can we do to help make sure that people do not, that they don't know? Show a late cancel. One of the things that we've done is get our admin assistants to check paperwork, and if they check paperwork and follow up with somebody before the session, we've noticed that that helps the person to actually get there. it helps them to actually make it to that first session.

Craig Alsup 00:38:42  Right? and so little things like that, that cost a little bit of time, a little bit of money, but, can grow the practice a lot. we've noticed that if we set recurring, sessions for a client, then it automatically increases, magically increases our retention rate. turns out if you put it on somebody's schedule, they're more likely to follow through. and that's for their good, you know? right. If they're, if they're saying that they need therapy, then we should do everything we can to make sure that we keep them in therapy for as long as they need therapy to get what they want out of it. that's our duty. I talked to a lot of therapists. Who. This is a bandwagon thing for me. I talked to a lot of therapy practice owners who are really scared to, like, give people that nudge towards therapy. They don't want to, like, sell their services. They don't want to follow up with people that go to them. They don't want to send those, you know, you know, emails every so often to touch base.

Craig Alsup 00:39:52  They don't want to do all of those things. But then they're calling me saying, hey, I'm having trouble getting and keeping clients, right. it's a lot easier to keep a client than to get a new one. And so sending out emails every so often to touch base. just maybe it's a one line email that just says, hey, I just wanted to see I just, you know, wanted to check in and see how you were doing. right? something super basic. That's not like I'm begging you to come back and get therapy and give me some money. Instead, it's. Hey, I want to check in and see how you're doing because we've developed this, like, therapist client relationship. And it would be weird for you to not to reach out to them, you know, is how I see it. setting those recurring sessions, charging no show in late cancel fees, like having an actual process to do that. we looked at your before last, versus last year, and I had to sort of, like, get on to my therapist a little bit and say like, hey, let me point this out to you that, you know, in 2022, 65% of the time, we charged the no show in late cancel fees.

Craig Alsup 00:41:11  And in 2023, we only did that 50% of the time, and that equals $20,000 or something. I mean, it was like it was crazy, right? I don't know exactly the numbers, but it was like, for some reason, we just decided to let people slide a whole lot more. And, and, you know, and sometimes you just gotta like wake up to that. Right? So look at those kind of things and see how you're doing compared to how you've done. And then look at how do you want to do in making sure that you value your time so that no shows should almost always be, you know, charged if it's in your policies to charge them? And I would say it needs to be, you know, should almost always be charged because it's like you need to value your time. They need to value your time, like cancels. Maybe, you know, maybe you have a little more flexibility with that. but really, it's just a system of looking at like, how do we grow our client numbers? I mean, there's there's only so many ways that you grow a business.

Craig Alsup 00:42:14  you grow a business by increasing the number of clients that you have, you grow a business by increasing the retention rate. you grow business by decreasing the expenses, because, you know, you grow your profit at least, you grow business by increasing the transaction size. So if you can, one of the things that we do is we have, longer sessions that we offer, people for marriage counseling. so you can do 45, 50 minutes, or you can do an hour, an hour and a half, or we have a marriage counseling intensive that you can do over the course of 2 or 3 days. That is a significant amount more expensive, on an hourly rate, because it takes a lot out of the therapist to do it. and then you can increase purchase frequency. And that's kind of that retention thing. It's like, how do you, you know, get people in the number of times they need to be in and it being our duty to do that, is a thing that a lot of therapists, I think struggle with, is, that duty to provide the person exactly what you say you'll provide them.

Craig Alsup 00:43:29  and sometimes it helps to nudge them along and, like, encourage them into that, not encouraging them to do sessions beyond what they need, but encouraging them to do exactly the amount of sessions they need.

Andrew Burdette 00:43:42  I think just to add to that last point, setting expectations around, you're probably not going to get over your childhood trauma in three sessions and setting some reasonable expectations about. It's a process. This isn't just an off the box, off the shelf like box of tissues or whatever. It's not a product. It's a service and a process. And trying to educate potential clients on this is an investment. This is you know, it's exactly think of me like your personal trainer at the gym. If you just hire me, you're never going to see any results. You have to put some effort in things in on your own and show up.

Andrew Burdette 00:44:17  So yeah.

Craig Alsup 00:44:18  I really, yeah, I love that that that talking point. because it, it is, so important to set those expectations for clients. And so we try to do that in multiple areas.

Craig Alsup 00:44:30  on the website. Right. We're trying to set the expectation that, hey, most of our clients need to come see us at least 8 to 10 times, and then some need more than that. you know, we set those expectations right up front on the website, you know, on, you know, each page of the website. then our admins are told to set those expectations. Our therapists are setting those expectations and really just having something measurable, like having, the client, you know, check in, each time and give you some sort of measurable number that you can say, hey, well, last time you said you were a three and now you're a five, that's, you know, must have been a better week. How's that going? Gives the client some sense of hope and some sense of that. There is a process to this whole thing. You're not just coming in and chatting for a little while and then going on your business.

Andrew Burdette 00:45:23  So for listeners out there, what are your key takeaways for thinking about one year into the next, or even maybe like one quarter into the next in terms of looking at metrics and then deciding what to do about them?

Craig Alsup 00:45:34  Yeah.

Craig Alsup 00:45:35  First of all, look at them. you know, we can all sort of stick our head in the sand and just sort of get busy working and forget to sort of take a step back and look. Right? So look at some of those finer details. Look at, you know, what's your revenue, what's your profit? How much time are you working in or on the business? What are your expenses? what marketing seems to be working and what seems to be not working? What should you put your, you know, focus towards? double down on the things that are working until you find a point that they like. Level off. Right. if you're spending $500 a month in Google ads and it's going great. Double it and see what happens and then back it down from there if necessary. if you're, you know, getting out in the community and talking to people and that seems to be working great. Maybe pick up an extra meeting or two and see what happens. or get somebody else to go do some of that for you.

Craig Alsup 00:46:33  yeah. Just so looking at, what are your goals, what are the different areas of your practice? And really just making sure that you actually review that stuff? on a, you know, probably a quarterly basis. to really keep, keep sort of your, your thumb on what's going on, keep your finger on the pulse. and then, being willing to change and adapt things. even if it's your baby, you know, even if it's the thing that, like. Oh, but I love doing social media, but then you never see any clients come off of that? Well, you know, don't waste your time back out of it, you know, go, go shift to the thing that's working. so, yeah, I mean, that's the biggest thing is just for people to remember to do it, to take a step back fairly often. Look at how your practice is doing, set some goals for the next, you know, for the next quarter, set some goals for the next year or the next three years and then, see, you know, see what you can do as far as leaning into the things that are working and backing out of the things that are not working.

Craig Alsup 00:47:49  yeah. I mean, I think that's those are the biggest things. What systems could you put in place to make your life easier? I, I listen to a lot of marketing, podcasts. And Joe Polish, he's a marketing consultant. Genius kind of guy. he runs this group called Genius Network, and, he always talks about, elf businesses. Easy, lucrative and fun and, and so that's kind of how I try to run my practice is like, okay, everything that comes up that we could do, right? Because there's a lot of shiny objects. is it easy? Is it fairly simple for us to implement? You know, can we do it? is it lucrative? Like, is it going to actually bring in money to this practice? is it actually something that is going to bring, value to our clients, to the practice, to our therapist? to me, what's it look like? and then is it fun? is it something that we're going to enjoy doing? And, you know, some things, you know, you you just need to back out of because it's like a thing that you're just struggling through and it's, you know, sometimes it's just not worth it.

Craig Alsup 00:49:00  So easy, lucrative and fun. Elf marketing, is kind of how I look at my practice is like, what can we do? What can we do that's easy, lucrative and fun?

Andrew Burdette 00:49:11  Yeah. Is it is it a hobby or is it part of the business? Yeah. Or you know.

Craig Alsup 00:49:16  And it's okay if it's a hobby, right? It's okay if you really love doing TikTok videos, man. Keep doing them. Even if they don't get you clients. Maybe, you know, maybe you're helping somebody out there, right? Just through that. But don't count it as time working in or on your business if it's a hobby.

Andrew Burdette 00:49:33  Yeah, exactly. So if people want to work with you, how can they find you? And we'll have all this link in the show description as well.

Craig Alsup 00:49:40  Yeah, definitely. If anybody wants to work on systems, if anybody wants to work on marketing stuff, wants to talk through, where they're at in their business and where they're going and, you know, pick my brain.

Craig Alsup 00:49:53  And what I've done, I'm pretty much an open book. you can go to, live beyond practice coaching.com. that's the website. you can buy services through that. You can reach out to me through that. you can also just email me at Craig at Live Beyond Counseling. Com so Craig at Live Beyond Counseling. Com or live beyond practice coaching.com and yeah we'd love to. We'd love to talk. We'd love to dig into it with you. This is kind of fun for me. it's it's it's the thing that I just added on to everything else I was doing because I enjoyed doing it. And so, let me let me help you grow your practice.

Andrew Burdette 00:50:37  That's great, because I think for a lot of us other therapists, business owners, this is not a fun area to spend time on. So it's it's always really refreshing to hear somebody that this is your passion and also somebody that understands what it what the therapist world works like because it is kind of weird.

Craig Alsup 00:50:53  Yeah, yeah. You know, there's a lot of people that are outside of the therapist world that do marketing that will tell you to do things that are unethical, that are, you know, not okay.

Craig Alsup 00:51:04  Right. And the therapist world. And then also, yeah, just knowing some of the ins and outs of how clients speak and what clients are asking for and looking for and stuff like that comes from years of experience of working with clients. So yeah.

Andrew Burdette 00:51:19  Well, cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on. This was a lot of really good information, and I hope the listeners out there enjoyed this as much as I did.

Andrew Burdette 00:51:25  So awesome.

Andrew Burdette 00:51:27  Thanks.

Craig Alsup 00:51:27  Appreciate it.

Andrew Burdette 00:51:34  If you love this podcast, please be sure to rate and review. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guest are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or any other professional information. If you want professional, you should find one.