[WHITNEY OWENS]
Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m your host Whitney Owens recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner, and private practice consultant. Each week through personal story or amazing interviews, I will help you learn how to start, grow and scale your practice from a faith-based perspective. I will show you how to have an awesome faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake. You too can have a successful practice, make lots of money, and be true to yourself.

Hello friends, and welcome back to the Faith in Practice podcast. You’re listening to episode 136 with my good friend, Anna Saviano today. Before we get into the interview, I want to share with you about a special opportunity. If you are a group practice owner who has at least two other clinicians in your practice and then yourself, so maybe three of you, I want to invite you to join Group Practice Boss. This is a community that we have for group practice owners, to talk all about things related to running a group practice. Every single month, we touch on different topics such as how to protect your practice, how to give benefits to your employees, how to manage your time and all that good stuff.

If you’re interested in joining that community, head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss, and you can get involved. We are running a very special deal for today. It ends at the end of today, and that is for $129 a month for a whole year of membership each month, $129 a month to join Group Practice Boss. Want to make sure I said all that right? Our regular price is $149 a month. Then if you listen to this episode later, you’re still interested in joining that community you can still join and you can go to practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss.

All right. So I want to tell you about my friend, Ann. Anna and I met in Kansas City, not Kansas City, Killin’It Camp boy, but she’s in Kansas city. We met at Killin’It Camp 2019 and I remember so clearly, I was a newbie to all this consulting stuff, but trying to pretend like I actually knew what I was doing. We were sitting on the sofa together and she’s talking about her practice and her clinician or an intern, I guess at the time that she had brought on. I was like, oh, so you’ve started a group practice? She was like, oh, I guess I have started a group practice. Then after that, she reached out to me and we did some consulting together and she started her group practice and has grown that over the years. Like I said, she’s based out of Kansas City. She also does EMDR and DBT. Her practice is called Heartland Therapy Connection and I’m going to let her share a little bit more about herself. So welcome to the show today, Anna.
[ANNA SAVIANO]
Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
[WHITNEY]
Cool. Why don’t you share your story about starting your group practice and then take us through that process and where you’re at now?
[ANNA]
Sure. My memory is pretty much the same as yours, except for the, it was more of a question like, do you want to do that? I was like, I want to do that. I’m not sure, but it was the best coolest thing I’ve done in a long time. I have loved the work I’ve gotten to do and the team that I’ve built. It’s just been really, really fun. I was in private practice for probably about eight years prior and was working just by myself and in a group, but not with anybody like under or officially with me. It’s just been, it’s been really fun. I love being a leader and I love supervision and the clinical team aspect that we’ve put together and really providing the place for people to work in a really great place and also tons of community service that I couldn’t do when I was just a solo practice person also. So being able to diversify what we offer. So it’s been great.
[WHITNEY]
I think before we started recording, we were talking about what we were going to say today. We were discussing finances and one of the things you had said is the revenue has tripled in the past two years and quadrupled —
[ANNA]
Quadrupled.
[WHITNEY]
Oh, there we go, quadrupled, I’ll take it. So being able to start the group practice you’re able to pay yourself more, you’re able to help your employees, you’re able to give them experience and training, able to help more people in your community you’re doing such good work and I’ve loved watching you along the way. So can you share a little bit about your current dynamic with your group practice, like what are your therapists like? Are you in an office space? What work you’re doing?
[ANNA]
Sure. Yes, so all the fully licensed therapists are EMDR trained and so we provide trauma treatment to all ages. Some people love working with kids and some people do not. We have two interns right now and four clinicians we’ve just onboarded our fourth. So that’s exciting. I also love doing intern work, so we have another intern starting in the summer and we’ll have people, obviously they only stay for two semesters. We’re pretty active with UMKC, the local university where our counseling program is out of. So we do some community, mental health awareness, events, and activities, mostly just fun stuff with them.

I’m also pretty involved with a program, Warriors Ascent that does vets and first responders and does work with those folks. So that’s also a little bit of a special area for me. We have an office suite with four offices and then we have like a, it’s all very miniature. We have a kitchen and a reception area and a lobby. Then we also have a group room that’s in the same building, but upstairs. So we just started doing group therapy in February and one of my clinicians, I co-facilitate therapy group, so it’s all been super fun.
[WHITNEY]
Can you tell me a little about it?
[ANNA]
Yes, sure. So it’s basically how to externalize the problem of your life or whatever. We’ve spent the first couple weeks writing whatever your story is, listing a whole set of problems and then picking one to focus on. Then we take, it’s pretty interactive, so then they’ll read their stories to each other and you start to pull out the problems and look at it in a different way. We are going to be working tonight on finding the sparkling threads, I think that they’re called where it’s looking at things in a different way and helping our clients who’ve been so committed to this one version of how things went in their family and their childhood and their history, whatever. Then really working toward just a little bit of a tweak to obviously like alleviate whatever suffering comes from the version of the story they’ve been telling.
[WHITNEY]
God, love that. That’s good.
[ANNA]
Yes. It’s inspired by the Mo if you listen to that radio show. It’s amazing. There’s another episode called mirror and mirror and that’s one that we got the story going. I love podcasts almost as much as my children.
[WHITNEY]
That’s awesome. Well then, we might have to connect a little bit more about what podcasts, I get bored with podcasts, even though I’m on a podcast right now saying that.
[ANNA]
Oh my gosh. I could talk for days about, I mean, how many sentences I start with? I heard this on a podcast. My kids roll their eyes. My clients are like, yes, when do you do anything else? Not necessarily.
[WHITNEY]
All right. So today we’re going to talk about thinking like a CEO or basically thinking like a boss. Like it is, even the other day I was leading a mastermind group and one of the girls was like, I just have to confess I’m thinking like an employee and not a boss. So maybe we could talk a little bit about how did you change your mindset from I’m like the solo practice owner to now I have a group practice? How did you change thinking like a boss instead of thinking like a friend or an employee?
[ANNA]
Well, I probably never thought like an employee, because I haven’t had like a real job in my mostly whole adult life, but I listen to, well, I’ve been participating in Group Practice Boss and some other Practice of the Practice stuff. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts about leadership and about just thinking like a boss and what that’s supposed to look like. I’ve also read some books that I’m probably going to play if I try and think about it now, and really just trying to balance the vision that I have for like my own life and career and what I want to provide for the people that work for me and how to do all that while keeping, like we were saying the finances, keeping it all afloat because I mean, that’s how that work. And consulting, like I talk to people in other industries, other people who own businesses or employee people. I actually have a lot of friends that have businesses and employees that aren’t therapists. So learning from other people who are less inclined probably to be friendly because I am very much like a sure, yes, let’s try it. Let’s do that. Need to notice that that’s my first instinct and not always go with it because that would not be sustainable to say yes to everything that comes my way.
[WHITNEY]
So thinking like a boss sometimes is about figuring out what’s best for the company, letting some things go taking on different ideas, how do you make decisions surrounding what are the best decisions or directions for the practice when you have like good opportunities in front of you?
[ANNA]
I have a lead clinician and a clinical care coordinator, so two other people that are on the leadership side of things. So we talk about that what’s in alignment? There was like if somebody applies and their credentials are maybe not necessarily totally in line with things, being able to recognize that and say no, or say maybe later, but not jump at it just because there is an opportunity. We have a lot of conversations about how fast we want to grow and what are the pros and cons of that and what does it look like space wise? We don’t want people to feel squeezed out or unintended to because we’re growing too fast because I have been in work scenarios that grew too fast and that was, it was really bad for the team vibe. What I want is to be an excellent place to work where you can make money and have your life be how you want it to be. So keeping that focus has been part of it. Like I said, consulting with people, talking to the people on my team and then also lots of other people
[WHITNEY]
So I’m hearing you say that being a group practice center, sometimes having that boss mindset is about having people around you that are helping you, but maybe even being a little vulnerable with your team, asking them their opinion. Not that we’re going to just do what they say, but there’s something important about going to them getting their perspective instead of just moving forward on our own. I think a lot of bosses miss that. I hear a lot of people feel like, oh, I have to keep it together or I can’t be vulnerable. I can’t let my team know what I’m thinking about and figuring out, but it sounds like you invite them into that process.
[ANNA]
Yes, for sure. I mean, early on in the days of running payroll, I messed something up and didn’t do it. Well, I just messed something up and then nobody got paid until like, just get paid on Friday. It was going to come in on Monday and I went around and told everybody and was like, if you need anything in the meantime like I just straight messed it up. One of, some of the feedback that I got was how appreciated it was that I apologized and owned messing up. So really trying to keep in mind that that was not a liability for me, as much as humanity and the vulnerability and then people being able to come around to me and say, I got some personal stuff going on, this or that whatever. I need something time off or a little bit of space or whatever. So I’ve certainly tried to be very approachable in that way and I think so far it’s gone well.
[WHITNEY]
I think that’s really important and it creates your culture. It’s a culture where we encourage one another, we talk to each other, we lift each other up we help one another and it all starts with us as the boss being willing to do the same thing and be vulnerable with them. Then they buy into the practice more and into the relationship with us more because we are choosing to not act like we have it all together. Let me tell you, I’m so tired of acting like I have it all together.
[ANNA]
I mean, I couldn’t fake it if I tried. So I’ve got to lean into that one.
[WHITNEY]
What are some other things as a group practice owner mindset wise that you’ve had to change as your practice has grown and you’ve had to be more like a CEO?
[ANNA]
We were on a call, this was a while back, probably a Group Practice Boss call talking about Enneagram and boss stuff. I think it was, I was on the phone, I think it was with the whole group. I think you asked, like, what have you learned about being a one and being a boss or something like that because I’m Enneagram one. One of the things is in that culture building, recognizing that my way is not the only way and that other people could have good ideas about how to do things and that it doesn’t all have to be my way or the highway. As a one, I feel like my ideas are the best than all of that. But having some, I’ve gotten way more space around taking in more information instead of just like my instinct is to decide and then just move forward. So slowing things down and really assessing the whole landscape, not just doing the first thing I think of.
[WHITNEY]
So I’m also hearing some self-awareness here, like thinking like a boss is about your own work, your own self-awareness. I think that every first of all, of course I think every person should do the Enneagram and I’m crazy about it, but yes. I also think that group practice centers, all therapists, especially group practice centers need to be in therapy because that’s where we gain a lot of our insight. We start to see mistakes we’re making, what do we doing wrong along the way? Enneagram helps with that too.
[ANNA]
Yes, for sure. I mean, yes I do. I do my own therapy I do a lot of, I try for a lot of that self awareness introspection work.
[WHITNEY]
I always say when I’m hiring people, I can teach clinical skills. I can’t teach character. I can’t teach self-awareness like you just have to have it or you don’t. You work at it or you don’t. So what are some things you’ve had to change about your time in where you’re putting your work time as a group practice owner instead of being solo?
[ANNA]
I mean, caseload, for sure, just like direct client hours. When I was just myself and even when I had my first employee, I mean, I saw, I don’t know, 25 clients a week or whatever. It was hard to move that down and really an ideal week would probably be like 12 or 14 clients more. What happens is like 16 or 18, maybe it depends. So I’m working on putting blocks in my calendar a few weeks out. Like I just was doing this this week, actually putting blocks in my calendar for the end of April to then not let those get booked at, because I don’t have a ton of recurring clients. They schedule as we go. So really trying to pay attention to how much direct client care I have so that I have hours in the day that I want to work that are not just for clients. That’s the biggest
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[WHITNEY]
How many hours a week would you say you typically work?
[ANNA]
25, 28.
[WHITNEY]
And then you’re spending enough time seeing clients, it sounds like.
[ANNA]
Yes, probably. I say that because like, I don’t consider it working because I pick my kids up from school. So I’m done at three, but I certainly don’t, I’m not totally like off Slack or off email for the rest of the day. So there’s maybe like a little bit of time here and there, but client like at work time, it’s three school days and one long day and then Friday. It is not consistent.
[WHITNEY]
Yes, I understand. I feel like a lot of people ask about that in consulting, people wanting to know, oh, how many people do you have and how many hours do you work and how many clients do you see? I think there is some numbers that we can put to that but I also think it’s more of a preference. Like I think some group practice owners really love the clinical work and they want to spend more time doing it. So maybe they farm out more of the admin or more the administrative responsibilities and then other people would rather see less clients and more manage the practice. It’s all just figuring out what your perfect balance is, but you are correct in this. As our practice grows, we decrease our client load so that we do offer that space and ability to work on our practice because you’re the only one, you’re the owner, you’re the one that can do it. When you were talking about blocking out your schedule, what are some of the things that you’re blocking your schedule out to do?
[ANNA]
I just also got more specific with that because forever I just had like admin hours or something like that. I have blocked it out for networking and connecting. There are about a hundred therapists within a hundred feet of our office. So there’s tons of people to be in the loop with and so having a space for that, checking my email because that is the ban of my existence is email. So putting it in my calendar so I’m not doing it in between things and then missing stuff or forgetting things or whatever. I did put one or two hours in for visioning, thinking, thinking about what I was saying about employees and I don’t know, just thinking about the direction of everything and what we want and what we don’t want. Then I think like an admin for looking at numbers and that stuff an hour for that. So I’m trying to get more specific with what I’m aiming to get done in those chunks of time, because that’s been a struggle. If I have time, how am I supposed to allocate it?
[WHITNEY]
I like that. I do, I try to do the same thing, like marking on my calendar. Like the other day I had to do, I just brought on another clinical supervisor. So this is my second ability to do supervision. So the first person, it was like, oh, well, we talked about it. So we knew what the parameters were, the rules, the pay, how many hours you work, all that. But then it was like, oh, I’m bringing on a second person. I probably need to make a policy, write this out. That’s like, I hate doing that stuff.
[ANNA]
I love doing that stuff.
[WHITNEY]
So like put it on my schedule and sat down. I actually basically did a sprint because I have to do a sprint if I’m going to get something done and I have to, I listen to music while I’m doing it just to get in the zone, close my door, 20 minutes, boom, I’m going to focus on this and got it done. But yes, I had to put on my schedule, create that supervision paperwork, or run the numbers for March or whatever the case may be. So I like that you’re doing that. The intentionality is really important. Another thing about being a group practice owner, it’s setting the intentionality, setting the time and then also looking at the numbers and not being scared to look at them. I think some people are just like, oh, how to manage numbers. I don’t want to deal with it. That’s so important because that’s how everybody gets paid.
[ANNA]
It has been a long slow road on having numbers be right. I’m not afraid of looking at them now but I am about to start with, Green Oak actually in April. So I’m really looking forward to like some official guidance, like the questions of how much can I pay people and how much do people need to work and those higher level questions that I can’t just make up answers to.
[WHITNEY]
Yes, definitely. Well, cool. Is there anything else about being a group practice owner or thinking like a boss that we didn’t touch on today that you think is important to mention?
[ANNA]
I mean, I certainly don’t have it mastered, so I’m sure there’s plenty of things that we didn’t mention, but not necessarily. I think the self-awareness and slowing down for me has been the biggest deal, because it feels like we could grow fast and I want to do that really mindfully so that we don’t have it backfire basically and starting things slower.
[WHITNEY]
That’s good. Well I just want to like point out that you’ve worked super hard and you have two kids that you’re raising and you’re doing a great job with that. A lot of people that do consulting with me are similar, like, okay, I need to make more money. I need to have a lifestyle that I can be with my kids and you were able to do that. So now you have that rolling so you can enjoy your kids and you can enjoy your lifestyle. I had another person I did consulting with who wanted to start a group practice just so that she could be more available to her family. It ended up after she started the group practice, her mother got really ill. Actually I’m thinking about another person who had the same story. The mother got really ill, but they were so fortunate. They were like, okay, I can step away from seeing clients, still make an income while I take care of my mother. It’s so great to have a group practice that we can take care of the things that need to be taken care of.
[ANNA]
I mean, I’ve thought about that too. My parents are very geographically close and my kids are close with them and I have one sister who lives out of state. So if health things start to happen with them, because they’re not that young, having some flexibility just to do that for them and for my kids or whatever, to be able to move about the world like that.
[WHITNEY]
So important. So you are in Group Practice Boss. In fact, I’m pretty sure you joined soon as we started Group Practice Boss if I remember correctly.
[ANNA]
I think I did.
[WHITNEY]
So can you talk a little bit about what is the setup like and why do you continue to be a part of it?
[ANNA]
Because it’s great and an invaluable resource for quick questions about whatever, anything, W2 versus 1099, or does anybody have a policy on PTO or how do you handle when somebody leaves or any of those kinds of questions? It’s just been, and like people posting things that I didn’t think about and still gain from because I hadn’t gotten there yet or whatever. So I feel like I have probably avoided some tragic things happening in my business because I hear about other people’s struggle and it’s like mental note on what not to do or how to avoid that or whatever. The support, I mean, I like on the side did a pretty quick consultation in the height of a emergent situation that I was dealing with another boss about some offboarding stuff. That was, I mean, I don’t even know what I would’ve done if I had been navigating that without some resources and support. Also just like, it’s fun it’s fun to hear what people are doing. It’s fun to hear what’s going on in other parts of the country. I think that’s been one of the coolest things.
[WHITNEY]
Cool. Going through COVID was, and hopefully we’re getting through it, but that was really interesting different states and what they were doing and who was masked, who wasn’t, what are your protocols? Yes, there are some really, I mean, I feel honored to be leading Group Practice Boss, because there are some really amazing group practice owners. We’ve got some people that are in the earlier stages with just a couple of clinicians. We have people that have 30 person practices. So it’s great. Then everyone gets put into a small group if they want to be with people in a similar phase of their practice. So yes, you can gain experience from those ahead of you, but also like be with people in your same place. That part is really great. You’re in a small group, right?
[ANNA]
Yep. In the purple group. It’s the best group.
[WHITNEY]
I like it. Good. So with Group Practice Boss, just so the audience understands, it is a membership community where you pay monthly fee and you have access to a weekly meeting. We meet on Tuesdays at one o’clock Eastern and every month we tackle some topic related to group practice. So we just did in March, because we’re recording right here, March 31st, we did protecting your practice. Then we brought in a couple of experts to talk about different policies. So it might be health insurance and short-term and long-term disability, things like that. But then we also had someone come talk about how do you insure your building and your assets and how do you ensure that someone’s not going to sue you? If they do sue you you’ve got a policy for that. Liability insurance, we talked about that stuff.

Next month, I’m pretty sure we’re talking about culture building if I remember correctly. We’re having an expert come in that has an online business, that’s Lisa Loveless who had on the podcast ages ago. She is phenomenal on online because culture building with an online practice can be an extra challenge, so she’s going to come. Then I think in May we’re talking about marketing because it’s always good to go back to the marketing conversation. Actually, in June, you don’t know this yet, but I’m going to tell you, in June we’re going to do live working sessions because we feel like even though you’re scheduling out your time, we sometimes find that it’s hard to schedule time to get something done. So we’re going to meet together, work on a specific item and then get back together and talk about that item the whole month of June and then having me and Alison to help with the consult part of that. So that’s going to be something different.
[ANNA]
We did that in January, like a goal setting all day.
[WHITNEY]
It’s similar to that. That was the goal setting. This’ll be just like the one hour meeting and we tackle specific things. So we’re really looking forward to seeing how that goes, but I love it we get feedback from you guys on what topics you want and we integrate those and do our monthly things. Anyway, and then along with those meetings, every week, we do have office hours once a month and then there’s conversation going on in the Facebook group and then everything’s recorded. So even whenever you join Group Practice Boss, you have access to all the courses that we did before that. Or if you miss one, you can listen to it. So there’s a lot of stuff going on and a lot of support.

So if you’re a good practice owner and you’re thinking, gosh, I’d love to have the extra support, we’d love to have you in the group. Like I said, we’re doing a special today for 1 29 a month. So you can go to practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss to have access to that. Anna, it’s been great talking to you. I always love seeing you and you’re doing so great. I’m just really thrilled for you and your practice growth. So I’m going to ask you what I ask everyone on the show, what do you believe every Christian counselor needs to know?
[ANNA]
I think doing the work for yourself around your values, the meaning to create in your own life. A lot of that for me is spirituality based not necessarily like formal religion. So I don’t know if it applies to Christian counselors per se, but any higher power, bigger picture, universe, whatever, figuring that out and putting some space into it. Some attention onto that part of my own life has been how to be more clear on some of that CEO stuff we were talking about at the beginning and of those things. So that’s what I would say everybody needs to know.
[WHITNEY]
Oh, I appreciate you said that. I feel like my business and my faith go hand in hand. So when I’m struggling in one and struggling in the other or doing well in one doing well in the other, so I think that’s really important to remember
[ANNA]
Yes.
[WHITNEY]
Well, cool girl. Well, it’s good to have you on the show. I appreciate you taking the time to be on here and I will see you in Group Practice Boss.
[ANNA]
That sounds great. Thank you for having me.
[WHITNEY]
We want to thank Heard Accounting for sponsoring today’s episode. If you’re interested in using their accounting services beginning at only $149 a month, you can check them out at joinheard.com.

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