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Which phase of practice are you currently in? Do you need some helpful steps to easily take you from one phase to the next? What are your goals for your private practice?
In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about leveling up at every phase of practice.
Podcast Sponsor: Heard
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In This Podcast
- Let’s talk about solo practice
- Let’s talk about solo-to-group practice
- Growing beyond group practice
- How to stress-test your group practice
Let’s talk about solo practice
The main goal of a solo practice is to create systems to scale a reliable referral network and an optimized hourly rate.
Joe Sanok
What are you spending your time on that cannot be scaled up? That’s an activity that may have little to no return on your energy investment.
So, change your focus and your energy input. What can you work on that will increase and grow on its own?
For your systems:
- Think through, “Why am I doing this? Why am I starting a counseling practice? Why do I care about this niche?”
- Ask yourself, “Do I want to learn this?”
- Can you outsource the rest?
For your reliable referral network:
[A reliable referral network is when] people are routinely referring to you and they are routinely making sure that your practice stays full. Joe Sanok
- As a goal for solo practice, you want to have five to seven ongoing partnership referrals.
If each partnership refers one client to you that you can convert, you can easily start to project the direction that you want to plot the course of your goals for the practice.
- Do research: see how and with what people need help throughout the year, and build your referral connections accordingly.
- Become an authority figure: position yourself as an expert in your field and your area.
You’re probably the only mental health provider in a room of 100 average Americans that have a master’s degree. So just the day [that] you graduate, you are an expert.
Joe Sanok
For your optimized hourly rate:
- If you’re turning down sessions or losing sessions because you are doing basic admin, you are losing a significant amount of money.
- In your solo practice, or if you don’t have the financial bandwidth to hire an assistant yet, you can look into automated booking systems.
- Raising your rates: don’t wait until you are full to raise your rates.
The only time I see a waitlist as being appropriate is if you have decided for your community that you have to take insurance and there’s no private pay option, so you can’t raise your rates, and you’re maybe optimizing into a group practice and this is the only amount of time you want to work.
Joe Sanok
Joe’s advice: when you are 60% full, you know that you are going to continue to grow. Every year, raise your rates and realign.
Let’s talk about solo-to-group practice
The goal with this is to maximize your internal referrals … to better serve clients with your values, your culture, and your approach.
Joe Sanok
- You have now built a reputation around yourself and your practice, and you can expand that, otherwise, you are limiting the amount of service that you can provide to the people who want to see you, and who you want to work with!
- Hand-pick your superheroes to hire.
- Then, replicate yourself. Find a therapist that is great and works in your niche so that you can continue to serve the same clients while you start to extricate yourself from so many clinical hours to focus on tending to and growing the business.
You are the brand ambassador. That switch on the website saying, “I do this, I do that”, to “We do this, we do that”, is a really important switch.
Joe Sanok
- 1099s or W2s?
- Create systems that are easy to understand that show you exactly what’s going on in your practice at a glance without having to talk to somebody each time you need to assess the process.
- Aggressively remove the hats you have been wearing: when you do something, ask, “Why am I doing this? Can someone else do it, or is it only for me as the owner to do?”
Growing beyond group practice
In a group practice, you are working to create income that is not based on your clinical work. You want to grow and earn an income beyond your clinical work.
- Automate your processes
How do you say things, how do you do things, and how do you approach things? Because we want to really capture your method which oftentimes is just about keeping track of it.
Joe Sanok
- Move into a CEO mentality
- Cut your supervision time and have your team meetings be functional
- Keep track of your numbers
- What will free up time for you to think big?
At this point, you really want to make sure that you have clear boundaries around your time … having those clear boundaries around your personal life is something that at this phase [is] a trap that people fall into because they’re working too hard [or too much].
Joe Sanok
- Hire for growth, not to fill the role
Every year, ask yourself these three questions:
1 – What do you love doing that you want to keep doing?
2 – What is it that you dislike and you wish we could remove?
3 – What is something that you would like to grow into and learn?
Build your audience first because you want followers that know, like, and trust you and will purchase the products that you design specifically for them and their needs. This is how you build great passive income.
How to stress-test your group practice
Do you want to test your systems and see if your team is working well together? Take a month off!
What do you need to prep to do this? How can you prep your clients?
Try to not be available, even for two weeks. Then, have a debrief with your team afterward to see where things fell apart and where they need to be strengthened.
Then you [and your business] will get stronger [because] you’ll realize, “Okay, here are the things that were based on me that really shouldn’t be based on me”.
Joe Sanok
Books mentioned in this episode:
Sponsors mentioned in this episode:
- Heard always has transparent pricing with no hidden fees. Sign up for a free, 15-min consult call today at joinheard.com/partners/joe
- Use promo code ‘JOE’ to get three free months to try out TherapyNotes, no strings attached
Check out these additional resources:
- How to Make the Best Use of Your Time with Alexis Haselberger | POP 826
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Meet Joe Sanok
Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.
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