[JOE SANOK] A new year, a new you, yeah, how about a new year, a new private practice? If you’re ready to start a private practice this year, or maybe you just got one going and you’re thinking, did I do it right, how do I do it right, how do I leave this full-time job, I have a 28-step checklist just for you to walk you through the initial steps of starting a practice. Just head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/new. Again, that’s practiceofthepractice.com/new. This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 838. I am Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. It’s a new year and you’re probably thinking about all sorts of new things and coming up with new goals and maybe things that you’re just statistically going to fail within a month on. But also, hopefully we have some goals that are realistic and we’ve set some visions. That last podcast episode that we did about quarter by quarter planning to reach your goals, hopefully you’ve taken that seriously and you’re thinking through exactly what you’re going to get done this year. I remember when I was at the LPCs of Northern Michigan meetings, the Licensed Professional Counselors of Northern Michigan, and this would’ve been really quickly after I started my private practice, so we’re talking like 2012 and it’s all these Licensed Professional Counselors. I was working full-time at the community college and I got to know this guy Nick, who was around my age, I think he was the vice president at the time of the LPCs of Northern Michigan. He had a private practice also. We’re chatting and he’s like, “Hey are you on Psychology Today? I got three new referrals this week from there.” I was like, “I don’t even know what that is.” We all know now that that’s a directory site. I signed up and in the first week, I think I got two or three referrals because there was hardly anybody that was really on that locally. I think there was maybe 10 clinicians. Now it’s pages and pages of clinicians. So today I’m really excited that we’re going to be talking about directory sites. We’re going to be talking about a new directory site. We’re going to be talking with Dr. Amy Parks, who has been on the show before, was a consulting client. I just love all the creativity and energy she brings. She has started The Clinical Supervision Directory. We’re going to be talking about that. We’re going to be talking about all sorts of other things. Dr. Parks, or Amy, as I call you, welcome to the Practice of Practice Podcast. [DR. AMY PARKS] Thanks so much, Joe. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I think the last time, well no, I’m sure the last time I talked I had my doctorate already, but I have known you since way before doctoral level status, so I think that that’s really exciting. I love that we’re OG friends in real life and virtually I think, so, yeah. Hopefully my future self is exercise, leaving the gym, so yeah, in January, that’s the plan for sure. [JOE] That’s great. You know what I love about the way that you approach things is that you always have the thing that you’re solidifying and doing well and is maybe making the money, but then you’re an innovator like through and through. You’re coming up with new ideas and figuring out what’s going to work, what’s not going to work. I feel like that’s just what we need in the field, is we need people that will disrupt more and will think differently and innovate. I want to just start with tell people that don’t know you what’s your bread and butter. I know that brain research was a big thing for you and even in my own parenting, something you said to me years ago, I remember sitting on my couch at my old office while we were talking for your consulting and you were talking about how kids can only keep track of a certain number of things. When they’re growing, oftentimes they say, drop the ball on behavior, drop the ball on sleep. For me as a parent to just be like, oh, I still remember Amy teaching me that, and my kids are acting crazy, their brains must be growing. Take us through like, like who have you been and then we can talk about what you’ve created recently. [DR. AMY PARKS] Absolutely. I guess a lot of different iterations of life, but all sort of pointing towards, I guess a future, same trajectory. So I am a child and adolescent psychologist. I have a group practice thanks to you. Actually, I wouldn’t have a group practice if it weren’t for you, but I have a group practice. We have 15 clinicians, Joe in Northern Virginia, right outside of DC. I have two offices and we specialize in children and teens. That’s always been my area of specialty. I started out in schools as a school psychologist and a school counselor an d so that’s what I do the majority of the time, is run the practice. I work with some families and lots and lots of parents. My approach is definitely a neuroscience sort of brain-based approach, which has always been my background. So I definitely approach things with the brain and mind always and want to teach people how their own brain works. That’s always been my specialty and area of expertise and my love as I’m a brain enthusiast. I always have been, so for sure, there’s no doubt about that. But I am also a professional troublemaker. There’s no, that is definitely my claim to fame, I guess, and I’m not going to, I’m definitely not going to stop. This idea of The Clinical Supervision Directory came out of that. [JOE] I want to go back to your private practice. How much are you involved with that because a lot of folks that I consult with or that are in Audience Building Academy or things like that are launching something outside of their practice or going more national with something they struggle, but maybe are trying to figure out like, how much time should I be putting into my group practice? It makes some money or makes the majority of the money for me. Maybe they’re known as they are more the brand than necessarily the actual practice. So how did you sort through that so that when you added things to your plate, like this new directory, you weren’t just, I guess having more added to your plate, that it could feel exciting and you could step into that creativity and not let down your group of practice? [DR. AMY] Yeah, so it’s crazy timely that you’re asking me this question because I really got to a tipping point in mid-November where I essentially was sitting on the couch in my own home office and I said to myself that if I don’t clone myself, something has to drop and it’s either going to be my family, which is an option, the business, the practice or the directory. But something has to go because I can’t do all three anymore. It wasn’t just, I can’t, I’m tired, I need a nap. It was, I literally can no longer continue this anymore. It’s just not possible. So that’s a very timely question that you’re asking me. What ended up happening was I did clone myself. I worked pretty hard to bring on a clinical director who is essentially a clone of me and I was able, or will be able, the proof will be in the pudding, but I will be able to step into more of an executive role where I’m just doing a lot more overseeing, but I’m not doing supervision directly all the time. I’m not seeing clients directly all the time. I’m not doing all of the in-house stuff all the time. I’m doing more visionary work rather than being in the business. That has just been critical because if you don’t figure out how to delegate you will get sucked into all of those deeper roles, especially the bigger you get. And plus I’m at a point where, I mean, we’ve been a practice, I’ve been a group practice for 12 years now and I’ve been in the field for 30 years, so I’m not necessarily going to retire anytime soon, but I’m at a point in my career where I need to be bringing people up in the career. I need to be training leaders and supervisors and people. I need to be, I can’t just own the whole ship. I need to be bringing people into the field and helping them into leadership in the field and helping them see sort of what their futures can look like in private practice or in group practice or whatever area of our field that they’re in. That’s part of my generativity. I mean, I have to do that. I feel an obligation to do that, put it that way. [JOE] I think that’s such a good point to think through because so many people create this amazing practice, whether it’s a solo practice or group, and it’s so reliant on them that they’re backed into a corner where they can’t really hand it off. It’s just hard for them to step back. Back in October, early November, a lot of people know that I dealt with this crazy salmonella thing that I got down in, I think Killin’It Camp in Mexico and was hospitalized a couple times, had emergency surgery. But in that process I had to genuinely just stop working for two weeks. I could field a couple texts a day, but I had to just sleep. It really made our team step back and say, oh my gosh, like, what happens if Joe dies? What happens if Joe can’t work? Like what’s our plan? It made me think through like, of course I want to be the face of Practice of the Practice. A lot of the reason that people get involved is because of my influence or my connection. But then also to say we have amazing products and consultants and communities that are really run without me in a lot of ways. So it felt good during that time to be able to step back and realize, wow, we’re still doing most of Practice of the Practice without Joe while also saying, yeah, there is some planning that needs to be done to really say like, how do we solidify that plan? Because what happens if some of these people leave? We don’t want that knowledge to just leave with them. So what would you say is your next maybe six to 12 months in regards to really stepping back and training that clinical director? Then I want to spend the second half of the interview really diving into your directory. [DR. AMY] Well, I will say that, you’re absolutely right in terms of, I mean, I certainly don’t want to function as if I’m going to die and certainly Killin’It Camp never was meant to be killing Joe but — [JOE] I know. It was so funny. Everyone’s like, maybe we need to rename this thing. [DR. AMY] I think it might be in the, I think that might be in the cards for you. But and so certainly now none of us want to function like that, but we have seen in our field, a couple very high profile, very popular systems where the owner did pass away and a couple quite suddenly that we know of and how people manage that is very tricky and trying to figure that out. So I definitely am working towards taking the ego out of it and so that’s part of why my practice isn’t named after me because I don’t want that situation to be where it’s all me. I’ve spent plenty of time taking myself out of commission in terms of being the person that people call for services. That’s really not so much of an issue, but really making sure that my systems in, we have a system called the Way Book, our systems in our Way Book are so clear that I’m really operationally insignificant, that except for sort of visionary work and the clinical needs of the day-to-day demands of our clients, there should be no operational questions. Every time some operational question comes down, we add it to the Way Book. So there should be no questions. [JOE] I just want to underline in bold verbally that idea of being operationally insignificant, that the owner, the visionary, the person that wants to go after these big things, the idea of the operational side, like you shouldn’t be walking people through the step-by-step that are being repeated. I just love that word. I’m going to send a WhatsApp to Sam in South Africa right now and be like, “I want to be operationally insignificant,” because I love that so much. Go ahead. [DR. AMY] Well, I will say though, it’s frustrating right now for our team because we’ve actually, so a few things are sort of on the hush hush and then we’re going to sort of do a big launch push of this new Way Book. So it’s been frustrating because I keep sort of directing them to our director of operations directing them, well that’s not something you ask me. You ask him, you need to ask him, you need to go back and ask him. It’s like being a parent. I mean, it’s very much like being a parent actually, because I’ll have a clinician who will send me a message and then they’ll send him the same message and try to get two different answers. Or not try, but wonder are there two different answers that are going to come out? We have to go back channel and say, “Hey, did you hear from this person? What did you say? What’s the answer?” Then I have to defer and say, “You answer it.” So it becomes sort of a strategy of just making sure that everyone is doing what, you know I have to give it all away. We were in a staff meeting last night, we have these admin meetings and we have to have them in the evening and he said when this clinical director is here will she be able to see everything in simple practice, like all the money, everything we earn, all the, I said, well, she has to. How is she going to be able to determine our metrics? Like, how is she going to be able to know who’s bringing in what? Yes she has to see everything. He says, okay, I just wanted to be sure. I agree, but just want to be sure. I mean, yeah, you have to like take it all off baby and you have to be, have no ego around that. You just have to say, here it is and then be willing to have the hard conversations around maybe what you need to do differently to support going forward. [JOE] So as you’ve eased out of the clinical work, when did you have the idea for the directory and take us through taking an idea, actually creating it, marketing it because at many of those steps people will sometimes get ahead of themselves and they’ll put so much time and money into something that they haven’t validated or they’ll spend too much time being paralyzed by perfection and just not get anything done. So walk us through that initial startup phase of the directory. What was the pain you saw? How did you test it? How did you launch it? What was terrible about that process?? [DR. AMY] Yeah, so there were, it’s really, probably should be a really good book, but it’s really interesting. So in 2020, so during the pandemic when we were all sort of laying around and drinking too much and doing silly things, and maybe I was a little bored, but also not, just thinking about sort of my legacy I think to some extent, but also sort of looking and noticing what was happening in the marketplace and still doing supervision and clinical work. But virtually I started to really wonder how, and I also teach at two universities, I teach the professional courses, so I see students go from graduate school to licensure. I see that sort of gap where they go and they have this period of time where they have to find supervision. I had heard, and we’ve all heard for years, stories of how difficult it is to find supervision or how they, people struggle with locating a supervisor when they’re looking for one. I had just in 2020 and I think 2019 had heard just over and over stories, like started to hear horror stories of people losing their hours because their supervisor got fired or ghosted them, especially in 2020 as people started disappearing from their offices, just having difficulty finding supervision. That they had to go to a friend of, a friend of a friend to find a supervisor after grad school because they went from university in Maryland to Ohio where their parents lived and they couldn’t find anyone. Friend of a friend of a friend is to how you find a good restaurant. That’s not how you find the person that’s going to guide your professional career. I thought, well surely our associations, surely the ACA or NASW or AAMFT or CAL, these four, the four biggies, surely they’ve solved this because every state in the country is mandated to train and certify supervisors, but they’re not mandated to tell you who they are. They’re just mandated to train them, or certify them rather. So not even mandated to train them, they’re just mandated to authorize them. I was like, surely they’ve solved this because that’s a big problem. Like these kids, they don’t know what to do. They just graduated from grad school, they’re freaked out when you tell them they need 100 to 200 hours of supervision. They’re like, “What? I need more?” [JOE] Luckily my supervisor during my internship on my last day took me out for coffee and he had printed out the Michigan application for licensure. I was like, “Wait, what? I have to apply for it? I don’t just get it like a diploma?” He’s like, “No, you have to find a supervisor.” I’m like, “Nobody told me that through all of grad school.” [DR. AMY] No, a lot of people, and a lot of grad schools don’t tell you. I mean they’re, I think it’s happening more and more, but a lot. So what ends up happening is we get grad students who are just like laying on their couches because they just don’t, they’re paralyzed, they don’t know what to do and they don’t have anyone to tell them, and they’re not in school anymore so they’re done with that connection. They just are in the sea. Then they have to go on these deep, deep websites that are incredibly complex because they’re in the entire board of health for the entire state of Michigan, not just counseling. They have to dig through tons and tons and tons of material to try to find a list of supervisors, which quite often doesn’t even exist and if it does exist, it often only includes the person’s name and maybe their zip code and maybe an accurate email address. So the barriers to entry to finding a supervisor were so complex so I just thought, well, surely someone has solved this. Well, I looked and looked and looked and looked and looked and looked and looked. I promise you I looked so hard. There are a couple states, individual states, Florida, for example, a couple, somebody, an individual in Texas, Alaska, a couple individual states that have state-based directories for supervisors. The association of play therapists, they have a state, they have a national directory for supervisors, which is sort of mediocre. But anyway, regardless, some states had them, but there was no national directory. I thought, well, what happens when you leave your state and you go to a different state? Like, it’s just so difficult. Joe, I mortgaged my house and I hired a designer of web designer in England who was recommended to me from a colleague and I interviewed, I interviewed a number of them and I finally hired this one. Then I gave them the whole scope of the project of what I wanted to do and we built it all out. So while it was being built out, I hired a — [JOE] Wait, I have to pause you right there. You said you mortgaged your house, so some financial advisors would say like, don’t let your business ideas potentially ruin your personal life. Other people would say, yeah, if you don’t take out some money to really go after big things, how are you going to like increase your money. How did you come to that decision to, because that’s a huge decision you just threw out there and then just kept going, like I want to pause you there and say — [DR. AMY] Well, yeah, it’s two years now. I feel like I’m now sort of so deep in it that it’s just like, it’s just passed. But because I believe in it so much and I know so deeply and strongly that it’s critical to our, to the future of our field that I just, I knew it would work. I’m just, I am so sure. I was so convinced and I continued to be convinced. The evidence is there that I just knew it was a sure thing and I figured, okay, well if it doesn’t work, then I still have my practice and I’ll just eat it and it’ll just be a sad case of a failed venture. But I knew going in what it was going to cost me to launch and I did work with my accountant, well, when I first met with my accountant, I said, “Does this need to be a real thing? Do I need like an LLC or anything like that? Or can I just like do it randomly?” And she’s like, “No, Amy, this is a real business. You actually have to have like a real LLC. Be serious.” And I was like, oh, okay. So it became a real thing and very quickly we actually had to trademark it and we had to do quite a few things quite quickly. Quite quickly we went from, so while it was being built, myself and my, who is now my director of faculty and education, who was my former intern years ago, she lives in California, she and I really did all the research to literally, I know how every single state in the entire country, including DC, how they certify supervisors, how to become a supervisor there, how to become licensed in those states, but not so much that mostly how to find super, how to be a supervisor, who, if they have a list, if they don’t have a list. We know about every state in the entire country so I feel like I’m fairly, I know more probably than ACES, the Association of Counselor Educators and Supervisors about how to be a supervisor in the US. We spent time doing all that, so you asked about like, what’s the legwork? Well, we spent a lot of time doing that legwork, so we would be experts. Then we went from just a team of two to adding on eventually a copywriter, a person who does our graphics, we have a social media team and we have a newsletter. We are doing Facebook lives every week, I mean sorry, LinkedIn lives every week and yeah, it’s a thing. It’s a pretty big thing. [PoP] Are you ready to leave your full-time job for private practice? Maybe you work at community mental health or at a nonprofit, or you’re at 1099 or a W2 at a private practice already. Is this the year that you start a solo practice? Or maybe you already started a solo practice, but you are really not sure if you’re doing it right. I want to give you something totally free to help you out on your journey. I have a 28-step checklist to make sure that you start a solo practice correctly. It’s totally free, it’s a download, I just get your email and send you other tips that are going to help you be able to grow your solo practice. You’re going to get weekly emails that help you to start your practice correctly. If that sounds good to you, head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/new to grab that 28-step checklist. Again, that’s practiceofthepractice.com/new and you can grab that 28-step checklist. [JOE SANOK] Now there, so, I mean, there’s two primary fields of thought when it comes to startups. One is you put in tons of money, time, energy on the front end, and you don’t really tell too many people about it, so people don’t steal your idea but that’s a little bit more of a gamble. Then the other side is to really validate a product, get early buyers before you invest too much in it. Oftentimes, you then maybe have a slower launch, you don’t have as much capital to work with. It sounds like you took the first version of like, I know this is what’s needed, let’s just do it. Is that true first, and second, if so were there ways that you validated it or was it just like, I know this is going to work, I’m going to run full tilt, whether or not we have an audience yet? [DR. AMY] Well, I did validate it in that we did start before I actually hired the firm that did the build the website. I was talking to, I probably talked to 150 people about the idea, but not exactly, specifically because I didn’t want to necessarily have people, there wasn’t anyone that was going to do it. I mean, if they hadn’t done it yet, I was like at the, I was of the mindset to tell you the truth that please someone do it so I don’t have to. Because I really felt like this is so critical to our marketplace that I can’t believe no one had done it. But I did talk to probably about 150 people, university professors, internship supervisors, clinical supervisors in the field. I just talked to so many people and what we had was we had a landing page that people could just go to and say, this sounds like a cool idea. Let me know when you launch. We did that starting in probably January of 2020. Then in July of, no, no, I’m sorry, take it back, July, mid-July of 2020, I guess, or mid-summer of 2020, we started the landing page. But 2021, July, 2021 is when we launched. So we were validating and getting people’s buy-in for probably a good six months solid. We knew when we were ready to launch, we had people from every state having, knowing about it. Now do we still need more? Absolutely, 1000 million percent. But we knew people at least were seeing the need and getting what we were trying to share. [JOE] What did you learn in that launch process? Are there things that you’re really glad that you did in having that six months or so of people waiting for it to launch? Are there things that you’re like, oh, we should have done this differently? Any lessons learned or things you’re glad you did during that time? [DR. AMY] Well, I think I wish I had brainstormed more objections then because the objections we get now are probably, would’ve been the same then. So I would’ve probably, I probably would’ve been a little more humble back then. I was pretty much like, yeah, everyone needs to do this and just trust me. But now I understand where people’s objections come from and I have a much more solid reason for people to be in the directory and to join. I think I would’ve, I wish I had gotten a little bit more, or spend some time early getting buy-in from, or talking to our associations on a state and national level instead of now what I’m doing, which is going back in and saying, look at what we’ve done. That being said, though, I’m not sure if it would’ve changed the outcome, but hindsight’s 2020, like, I wish that I could have had more, I wish I had more support in the beginning because now it’s, now everyone’s like, oh yeah, this is a great idea. Well, yeah, it was, it is a great idea. Could you have not done it yourselves or something? But I mean, again, hindsight’s 2020. Launch wise, I don’t think, I mean, I think that we had a fun launch and we had a lot of people, we did what we called a legacy club. So everybody that joined in the first year is part of our legacy club. They are our first members in the directory and they get like all kinds of special perks and a special discount and we send them special gifts and they were people that really believed. That was a very, that was, I think having people, even if it’s just your sister or some people that you just are really close friends with, having people believe in you regardless is probably, was probably the best part. [JOE] Yeah I think when you have a vision for something, and it hasn’t come to fruition, you know like for the very first Killin’It Camp, I’m thinking we named them founders and that at every future Killin’It Camp they would have that on their name tag that they were at the very first one because we didn’t know how it would go. We thought it was going to be great. We had 130 people come to it, which was awesome. That was amazing. It was mind-blowing. But then to be like, how do I, and even as you say this, I’m thinking, man, I should have once or twice a year like a meetup for those Killin’It Camp founders virtually, or if I’m traveling somewhere, just finding ways to honor the fact that they went out on a limb for something that was just an idea and then they came to it. So I love that idea of having some sort of way of honoring the people that bought into what your dream was to create from the very beginning. [DR. AMY] Yeah, they get a, they have a badge on their directory site and then we try to really feature them as legacy club members throughout the year and we do different things to feature them as well. But that’s, everything’s a work in progress. I think the other lesson here is that I wish I could say, yeah, so here it is and it just runs by itself. That is absolutely a joke. There is absolutely nothing that runs by itself, absolutely nothing. Now, maybe one day that will be the case, but right now everything is a work in progress. I’m constantly tweaking little things and talking to people about this and thinking about this thing and doing that thing. It’s a constant, and right now it’s fun. So until, I guess it’s not fun, then that’s okay. [JOE] Now, when you think about what major need the directory addresses, what are the problems that supervisors are dealing with, like people that are listening that are already trained as a supervisor, what would they get out of joining the directory? What’s the goal of how it helps them? [DR. AMY] So there are a couple pain points here and the, and the advantage to the supervisor and the supervisor is the one that pays for their directory listing. All the supervision seekers, all the people that are looking for supervision, they’re free to go in the directory and look. But supervisors that pay for their listing, there are a couple different pain points that make it really important to be a part of the directory. One of them is what we talked about already, which is how difficult it is for supervision seekers, mostly grad, recent grad students to find supervision because of how difficult it is at the state level to locate supervisors, locate a list, locate any detail about supervisors. For example, if you look at the list in Virginia all you’re going to get is a name, an email address, and a zip code. You don’t know if I speak Spanish or if I speak English. You don’t know where specifically my office is, is it in an office building, is it a house in Old Town, Alexandria. Do I honor or am I an LGBTQ ally? Do I have any specialties? For example, do I work in maternal health or do I work with children? Do I have EMDR certification? Anything, they don’t, you don’t know anything about me. You don’t in fact even know for sure if I’m going to reply to your email. So being in the directory for supervisors is an opportunity for them to be able to share anything that they want because they create their own listing and there’s a map to their office and a photo of them, et cetera, about themselves to supervision seekers who can then find and select supervisors that meet their specific needs rather than just shot in a dark, going down a list, picking someone based on their zip code, or because their name looks like it starts with an A. So that’s a big advantage for both supervisors and supervision seekers alignment, because you’re going to be working with someone 100, 200 hours. You want to meet their needs and you want your work to align with them professionally so that you can help them grow as a clinician. That’s, I think, the main one. That was, that’s the main reason why it was created is because we needed to provide more information. But other directories provide that. The Psychology Today’s of the world may in fact provide that. However, what they don’t do, what no other directory does is allows a supervision seeker to go in and put in any state in the country at one URL, to put in any state in the country and find supervisors in that state from just one URL. It’s very simple. You put in clinicalsupervisiondirectory.com, and then you put in what state you want, and it’ll bring up whatever supervisors are in that directory. So for the supervision, for the supervisor, again, it’s an opportunity to say, here I am, I’m available, and here’s the information about me. It’s like Tinder for supervision except for there’s no dating. Like we’re not allowed to do that. But it’s a great, it’s a way to match. Then you can, you email this potential supervisor straight through our portal and it tells you as a supervisor, Joe has reached out to you through The Clinical Supervision Directory to connect about supervision. So you know that you’ve gotten a connection through the supervision directory, and then that’s it. Then you take it from there. You can charge whatever you want, you can provide supervision for free, you can advertise whatever. But here’s the other thing that’s really cool too, is that we’ve created backlinks in the site. So if you list your, when you list your website in your profile, we backlink to that and so your website comes up higher in SEO because we’ve backlink to that. Then we ask you to backlink, we give you a badge to put on your site to backlink to us, so that raises both of our SEO. So it not only helps you become easier to find in general on Google, but it can also increase your, the possibility of you hiring more residents or hiring more people to come on board to become part of your team. There are a lot of really great reasons to be in a directory like this, or a directory that thinks about those kinds of things so that you can, it becomes almost to some extent, like an employment engine. [JOE] I just love seeing, especially a therapist who already get it creating these niche directories. I think that it’s so useful directories like yours, or I think about like TeleWellness Hub that Marta started and that’s all wellness professionals and a therapist. So if you say you do Reiki and then you also are a therapist or, like to find that sort of thing, or The Consult List where you can refer clients through a HIPAA compliant list to other people, like these really niched in directory type things. I think it’s going to help very particular problems instead of just the big, like one size fits all approach to therapy and referring and supervision, and it’s just so awesome to see. Amy, the last question I always ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [DR. AMY] I want every private practice practitioner to be remembering what it was like to be in supervision and to be remembering what it was like to start out and how hard it was potentially to get started and to know that we as experienced practitioners can make that experience, make that feeling easier for the next generation of clinicians, and so that we can put more clinicians on the ground to serve our communities. By being a part of the directory, whether you’re looking for supervision seekers or not, whether you’re bringing on supervisors or not, you are an expert in how to become licensed because you are, you are licensed, you know how to do it. So becoming the person who helps people get to that next level is a gift. It’s our, it’s my legacy and I feel like it’s our legacy in order to get people licensed and more people serving our communities. So I just, I ask people to sort of remember that and to think about, yeah, being a part of this means that I am going to serve the greater good in our profession. [JOE] So awesome. Amy, thanks for all the work you do in sharing the backstory of starting a directory. I know you also have a free gift for people that are hanging out with us today. Maybe share a little bit about that and how they can get involved with the directory. [DR. AMY] Yeah, so fantastic. So if, when people want, not if, when people want to join this clinical supervision directory as a supervisor or as an expert in their field they can find out more about that at The clinicalsupervisiondirectory.com or on any of our social channels, which are, have the same name. If they, when they go into the directory and they sign up to be a supervisor, they can put in the code, the discount code [JOE], and they’ll get a discount on their membership, their annual membership with us. That is our way of saying thank you to you of course, and thank you to your listeners and also our way of saying how much we believe in this and how eager we are to fill it up for the next generation of clinicians. [JOE] Well, Amy, thank you so much for being on the show today. [DR. AMY] Thank you, Joe. I really had fun being with you today. [JOE] Yeah, me too. Talk to you soon. [DR. AMY] Okay, terrific. [JOE] I love shows like this where it’s the merging of our clinical skills, the merging of big ideas that address really monumental problems and just to be able to think through just our ability to do things. There’s so many different ways that we can address gigantic problems in the world or even micro problems. So I hope you are leaving today feeling inspired, I hope that your wheels are turning around, whether it’s a directory site or whether it’s just something in the mental health world that frustrates you. We here at Practice of the Practice we are addressing the mental health crisis by helping you have a thriving private practice. That’s what it really comes down to. That’s how we address things in the world but really, like what’s the why is I want you to live a better life. I want you to feel like you’re grounded and that you get to create a business that matches your values and that you can start a group practice and then start a membership community and then grow and level up. There’s something amazing when you really see what you have inside of you. So I’m so appreciative that you spent some time with me and with Amy today. Today we actually have a free gift for our audience. We’re going to be our own sponsor today. So if you’re just starting a practice, if this year you’re like this is the year, or maybe you just started one last year and you got that solo practice, want to make sure you did it right, you can get our 28-step checklist on starting a practice over at practiceofthepractice.com/new, that’s [NEW] and you’re going to get that checklist totally free, and then you’ll be enrolled in our free email course that’s all about starting a practice. So you’ll get a weekly email really keeping you on track and it’s totally free over a practiceofthepr, I can’t even see my own website. It’s been almost 10 years since I, no, over 10 years since I launched this, over at practiceofthepractice.com/new. I’ll say it like a robot so I don’t stumble over my dang words. Thanks so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.