Lisa R. Savage, LCSW, Built A 50+ Clinician Practice and Added Measurement-Based Care | PoP 631

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A photo of Lisa R. Savage is captured. Lisa R. Savage, LCSW, is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Child Development and the Delaware Center for Counseling & Wellness. Lisa R. Savage is featured on Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.

What is the practice-growing power behind niching down into your topic? How do you manage a large group practice with ease? Are you considering adding measurement-based care to your practice?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Lisa R. Savage, LCSW, who Built A 50+ Clinician Practice and Added Measurement-Based Care.

Podcast Sponsor: Simplified SEO

An image of Simplified SEO Consulting is captured as the sponsor on the Practice of the Practice podcast, a therapist podcast. Simplified SEO Consulting will help improve your private practice rankings and get you to the top of search engines.You want to be a successful private practice owner. In order to do that, you need more of the right clients calling. You’ve tried different marketing strategies but it just doesn’t make a difference. More specifically, you’ve invested the time and money into a beautiful website but are getting discouraged because nobody’s making it to the site. You’ve tried to make changes here so it’ll show up more in search results and there but it hasn’t made a big difference yet. You need a proven system to get your website to the top of Google and help it stay there.

The team at Simplified SEO Consulting can help. I know Jessica personally and have watched her train many of my consulting clients who rave about her training methods. If you’re wanting to learn how to optimize your own website (or if you’re ready to outsource), I cannot recommend highly enough that you go to SimplifiedSEOConsulting.com/Joe and check out everything they have to offer! You can even use the code “Joe” to get 25% off any of their online courses.

Meet Lisa Savage, LCSW

A photo of Lisa Savage is captured. Lisa is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder and CEO of the Center for Child Development. Lisa is featured on Practice of the Practice, a therapist podcast.

Lisa R. Savage, LCSW, is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Child Development and the Delaware Center for Counseling & Wellness, which provide community-based services for children and their families, as well as an active member of Clinicians of Color.

In addition to providing individual, family, and couples counseling services to those in need, CCD has partnered with over 90 Delaware public, private, vocational, and charter schools across the state to provide in-school services to Delaware’s students.

Visit the Center for Child Development website. Phone them at 302.292.1334

Connect with Clinicians of Color on Facebook and Instagram.

Email Lisa at [email protected] or  [email protected]

FREEBIE: Check out Blueprint for Health for the first month free.

In This Podcast

  • Create your niche and grow your expertise
  • Managing a large group practice
  • Measurement-based care
  • Lisa’s advice to private practitioners

Create your niche and grow your expertise

That’s how I grew my practice, really zeroing in on being [within my niche] … that was probably one of the best business decisions I have ever made because it helped me scale my practice to a point that I never even imagined. (Lisa Savage)

By working around your niche, expanding your expertise, and becoming known in your area as the expert on the topic that you work on is a surefire way to skyrocket your business because:

  • It compounds over time
  • Increase credibility
  • Solidifies trust

Some therapists are nervous to get involved within their niche to avoid turning clients away. However, becoming known for something specific that you are an expert in is what draws clients to you.

Once you become known for something and doing it well then of course people are ringing your doorbell and wanting to access services for themselves. (Lisa Savage)

Managing a large group practice

Delegate:

For the sake of your well-being and the growth of your group practice, you need to delegate out. It benefits you as well as your staff and the practice itself.

Create a team comprised of people that you trust and who share similar passions about the practice. Work towards a collaborative environment where all the moving parts are taken care of by people who know the practice well.

I could not effectively run my practice doing it all. I created positions for people who … had been with me for a very long time … I created this collaborative model of management with my leadership team where we discuss issues, growth, goals. It’s very collaborative. (Lisa Savage)

Collaborate with your team:

Once you have built your dream team of honest, hard-working, and passionate people, collaborate with them.

Invite their opinions, let them share their concerns and ideas, celebrate their successes, encourage them to take responsibility, and give them agency by allowing them to handle their roles.

I can go out of the country for a couple of weeks at a time and know that everything is going to be okay because my team is on the same page as I am. They get the vision. (Lisa Savage)

Have a shared vision:

Instill a shared vision in the group practice that every staff member is interested in and wants to work towards.

A shared vision encourages sincere teamwork, a healthy dose of optimism, and a drive to do good work.  This cultivates a culture that everyone on board wants to be a part of.

Measurement-based care

Blueprint provides:

  • Information on how many people need to reimburse you and how much you will get in reimbursement
  • Information about the CPT code and removes the guesswork
  • A platform for suggestions
  • Assessments in different languages, depending on what your clients need
  • Access to divorced parents to see the same account for their child

Lisa’s advice to private practitioners

Being a private practice owner is much easier when you are coachable and open to learning from other people. It is okay to pay somebody to help you figure out something difficult or how to grow.

If you can get people in your practice who share your vision, you are building loyalty in your business. Invest in the people that work for you and show them that you value their contribution.

Useful Links mentioned in this episode:

Check out these additional resources:

Meet Joe Sanok

A photo of Joe Sanok is displayed. Joe, private practice consultant, offers helpful advice for group practice owners to grow their private practice. His therapist podcast, Practice of the Practice, offers this advice.

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.

Thanks For Listening!

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Podcast Transcription

[JOE SANOK]
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 631.

Well, I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast, where we are all things private practice, whether you’re starting, growing or scaling your private practice. We have been covering these issues since 2012, over 600 episodes behind us. And if you haven’t picked up your copy of Thursday is the New Friday that just launched last month on track to be a New York Times bestselling book, it’s been crazy, but I’ve been on the Smart Passive Income podcast, EO Fire, the One Thing podcast, Bloomberg News, CNBC, Good Morning, Washington, DC, all these crazy events that I’ve been able to be a part of – and over 200 podcast interviews with just regular old podcasters.

It’s awesome to just see the kind of work that people are doing in the world where they’re taking their interests, their passions, and they’re just growing and exploding those. One thing that we’re offering this week is Next Level Practice. As you have heard, Next Level Practice is open. It’s our last cohort of 2021. It just opened yesterday. You can read more over at practiceofthepractice.com/invite. These cohorts are usually 50 to 100 people that are in that very startup phase of starting their practice. So from that moment, you think to yourself I think I might want to start a practice, maybe you’re in grad school or working at a nonprofit, or maybe you’re 1099 at someone else’s practice and you say it’s time for me to jump, to start my own business.

From that moment, all the way till you make your first hire for your private practice when you’re adding those clinicians, that’s when Next Level Practices for you. We have over 30 e-courses in there. We bring in experts like Julie Schwartz Gottman. We brought in Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Laurie Gottlieb, Jamie Masters from The Eventual Millionaire, so all sorts of really high caliber people that you get full access to when we’re doing our Q&A’s with them, small groups and groups that are called What’s Working. So tons of things. Make sure you dive in over at practiceofthepractice.com/invite to that.

Well, I am so excited about our guest. Lisa Savage is an LCSW and as the founder in chief executive of author of the Center for Child Development and the Delaware Center for Counseling and Wellness, which provide community based services for children and their families, as well as an active member of the Clinicians of Color. Lisa, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[LISA R. SAVAGE]
Thank you, Joe. It’s a pleasure to be with you. I was thinking, as you were doing your intro, I was thinking Joe and I are Facebook friends, but I never see him on Facebook. And I don’t know why, because you’re so busy doing everything else.
[JOE]
At the end of the day, I pretty much go on Facebook to serve Next Level Practice. Then at the end of the day, I want to hang out with my daughters.
[LISA]
Of course, of course. Understandable.
[JOE]
Got a couple things going on. So Lisa, I’m so excited to hear about your practice. Just take us through your journey of when did you start your private practice? We’d love to ask some questions about those early stages and then hear how it’s grown over the years.
[LISA]
So I love talking about my practice, because I feel like it’s kind of unique in how we serve the clients that we do. So I started my practice years ago. I didn’t formally start it full time until 2007. So in 2007 I opened the doors and launched into it fulltime by myself. It started out, Joe, I was asked by a school district in Delaware, where my practice is to provide mental health services in middle schools. I loved it. I started providing mental health services in four middle schools and then in the next year they expanded it to elementary schools. Then that’s when I hired my very first associate in 2008. In that time since I hired my very first person, who’s still with me, I’ve grown to having over 50 clinicians now and hiring.
[JOE]
Wait, pause. I’m like, what? 50?
[LISA]
Five zero, correct.
[JOE]
Whoa.
[LISA]
Yes, it’s a large practice. Never, ever envisioned having a practice this size. But I think as a business owner, one of the things that I realized is that I had to grow to meet the demands. There weren’t that a lot of child therapists in Delaware at the point where I started my practice. So one of the things that I like to talk to people about is really creating your niche and your expertise. So I decided that my practice was going to be entirely school-based mental health. That’s how I grew my practice. It was really zeroing in, on being school-based mental health experts and taking our services to children and families in the school community. That was probably the best business decision, one of the best business decisions that I’ve made, because it really helped me to scale my practice to a point that I never even imagined.
[JOE]
So did you have a building in addition to the school or was it completely going into the schools?
[LISA]
So I had literally a 433 square foot office at the time that I started out in practice. So it was a little tiny office because it was really more like a base. I mean, we do see, at the time I was still seeing clients in the office as well, but I knew that a lot of what I was going to be doing was going to be in the community, in the schools. Now we have 5,000 square foot office that we haven’t used in 19 months. We had just moved into that space. We were only in there for like a few months and then everything —
[JOE]
Just burning money.
[LISA]
Exactly. Yes, because I’m still writing that check each month, but so we see people in the office, now virtually of course, but in the state of Delaware, we are known for school-based mental health. So if someone says I want to get my kid connected to mental health services, they know that they’re going to be calling this Center for Child Development because that’s what we do. That’s what we’re known for. As therapists, I think sometimes we become afraid of nicheing down, but it helped me to grow, but we also see quite a few adults as well in our practice. So once you become known for doing something and doing it well then of course, people are ringing your doorbell and wanting to access services for themselves. So we have a very diversified population of people that we serve.
[JOE]
I often say that people don’t assume that a generalist can be a specialist, but they do assume a specialist can be a generalist. That if you’re really good at one thing they’re going to broaden that. I’m interested in just some of the basic kind of logistics and systems. So how does it work when a school wants to refer a child? So do they then contact the parent? Does the parent contact them? How does insurance work? Is the school paying? Is the parents insurance paying? How is all the just like billing and all of that? How’s that flow?
[LISA]
Great questions. So we have established what feels like at this point, a really seamless process to getting kids connected. In the beginning there were some glitches, but until we figured out this is how our system is going to work and implemented that system to a point now where it just works really well, and even if we bring our new school partners, we’re able to say to them, this is how things work. So schools can refer their students, but the parent has to complete the consent. 99.9% of the time the parent completes a consent for services. It’s very, very rare that a parent says, no, I’m not going to access mental health services.

So we have a point person in the school. Typically it’s a school counselor, but it can be a dean. It can be an admin. That person is the person who connects with the parents and says, “Hey, we have this additional support in school. Here’s the consent.” Parents complete it, it comes back to our office. Another thing that we did recently too, was we put everything online. So we have our consent online. They go immediately to our office manager who then verifies a health insurance. Once she knows that that child has coverage, it goes to the therapist and that therapist is told we can get started. So we do bill insurance companies obviously.
[JOE]
Do you have an in-house biller or do you use an external organization to do that?
[LISA]
We have an in-house biller. So we actually have three in-house billers who manage all the financial part, because it’s a lot of moving pieces, obviously. So in the beginning we were not collecting co-pays from families, so way back in 2007, 2008. Then I realized we were leaving a lot of money on the table and that we should be collecting co-pays for a lot of reasons. So we mandate that parents who have commercial insurance have a credit card authorization file. Again, we don’t receive any pushback from parents. They completely get it. But 60% of the population that we serve have medical assistance.

So in Delaware there are two Medicaid health companies and we’re paneled with them. 60% of our kids or more have medical assistance, which of course makes it a little bit easier because you’re not collecting a co-pay or having to seek any type of authorization. But for our commercial clients, we have a credit card on file. It is in their electronic health records. So it’s become a very, very seamless process. Parents understand it, schools understand it. We do have some school contracts where the school is paying for the mental health services. With COVID there have been more funding that has been pushed into schools, so schools get it. But the majority of our services are reimbursed through third party.
[JOE]
Wow. Then, when you think about managing 50 people plus, because then you then have admin, to go from just, I’m starting a practice to this large of a business, I know that for me, I’ve had with Practice of the Practice, we have eight staff in South Africa, we’ve got five sound engineers here in Michigan. We’ve got our consultants. Our team is almost 20 people. So there’s skills I had to develop. There’s also mindsets I had to develop to not just be that kind of frontline counselor or that middle manager mindset. For you personally, what has shifted in you to be the owner, the CEO, when you delegate, how you think about things, big picture, how you don’t get sucked into the minutia of daily things? Take us through some of that stuff.
[LISA]
I think again, another really good decision that I made was, when I started out, typically the therapists that came to work for me were fresh out of grad school, eager to learn, really wanting to work with children. So I’ve been very, very lucky in that most of them have stayed with me through the course of time. So what I did that I think was a really good decision, was I promoted six of them who are now what we call the leadership team. I decided that I could not effectively run my practice doing it all. So I created positions for people who were with me, who have been with me for a very long time. So we have a clinical director, we have a director of staff and, community needs. We have a director of school-based mental health, we have an office manager, we have a director of oh my gosh, I am blanking on Bruce’s title, operations director that we just implemented. I think he’s been with us from us two years.

So I created like this collaborative model of management with my leadership team where we meet twice a week, we discuss issues, we discuss growth, we discuss goals. And it’s very collaborative. People feel comfortable having their input. I value the input of my staff. We’ve put really clear policies in place for our employees. So it’s made my job a lot less stressful than it was when I first began. I was trying to do it all by myself. Now, coincidentally, my sister, my biological sister has worked with me from day one. So she’s part of that leadership team. So she knows me. I know her. I trust her.

I can go out of the country for a couple of weeks at a time and know that everything’s going to be okay because my team is on the same page as I am. They get the vision. I think also an important lesson that I learned, that I think your listeners will want to really hone in on is having a shared vision. So when people are working toward a shared vision or a shared goal, typically that makes them both feet in. That really makes them committed. And I think that my leadership team has that shared vision. So now we’re trying to trickle it down to our employees, everyone, including the admin staff. This is our vision. We stay focused on that. We have it on our wall. We talk about it a lot. I think that cultivates a culture that people want to be a part of.
[JOE]
I’ve heard many times that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I’ve found as I continue to grow my business, grow my influence that it becomes harder and harder to find people that aren’t maybe intimidated by my success or maybe can even relate to it. And like, I still have my regular, everyday friends too, that I’ve always had. So I’m not saying like, I’ve outgrown you. I’m too good for you. It’s not like that. But how do you find peers that you can relate to as like a colleague, because you’re probably not going to have that be staff members that work for you? How do you think about even socialization outside of your business in regards to finding people that push you and help you think differently?
[LISA]
So I mean I’ve created a community like that. I’m a co-founder of Clinicians of Color, which is a large online Facebook group. And I found people in there who were in the same position that I am, owning large practices, trying to manage it, navigate it, and who have some of the shared struggles that I have and shared success. So really being intentional about finding people who get you. And that certainly doesn’t mean, like you said, that you’re not bothered with your other friends. But it was really important for me to have people who understood what my day to day struggles were and for people that I could say, “Hey, I’m really don’t know how to handle a situation like this because those kinds of things always pop up.
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[LISA]
My husband is also self-employed, has been self-employed for a long time too. He understands what it’s like to own a business. So he always says, he’s a numbers guy. I am not a numbers person at all. So having somebody who is a numbers person who can help me look at my profit and loss statement, my balance sheet and make it make sense to me, that’s been helpful to me as well. That was happenstance, of course . So I lucked out in that way, but really being intentional about creating community with people who had some shared goals and some shared visions and struggles as well, who really understand what it’s like to run a practice this big.
[JOE]
Tell us about the pandemic. I mean, if you’re school-based and people were going into schools and known for that, how did you get through the pandemic? What did you have to shift? What did you change? I couldn’t imagine the stress of not only your own self in business, but 50 other people’s livelihoods. How did you handle that? What worked, what didn’t work?
[LISA]
That’s such a great question because when I look back on it, I remember March of last year school shutting down and us thinking, okay, schools will be shut down for a couple of weeks. Once they open back up, we’ll come back to the office and things will go back to “normal.” That didn’t happen. So we quickly knew that we had to pivot. Fortunately, there was Zoom. Fortunately, we were able to pivot and get parents to buy in to virtual mental health services. It was a little bit of the slow process in the beginning because I think parents too were expecting that this pandemic would blow over and we would be back in school. So for the summer of last year, right after we shut down, we did virtual mental health and then in the fall, some schools opened up and then they closed again, but we just kept pushing.

We kept educating parents in schools about the importance of the consistency of the mental health services, particularly because we were operating under a pandemic and there was just so much uncertainty. I was stressed in the beginning. I can’t lie about that. I was stressed, very worried. We didn’t lay anyone off and I was very thankful for that. We didn’t not have to lay anyone off. And then truth be told there were relief funds that came around that we were eligible for. So we took advantage of that. That helped us, believe it or not in the middle of a pandemic to be able to give people raises. So that was nice set. I think that showed our staff they care about us and that’s really important for me to convey that to my people. Because we funneled money back into our staff and we’re continuing to do that because as much stress as I was dealing with, they were dealing with that too, because a lot of them have children that they had to teach.

The other thing that we did that I think helped is that we lowered the expectation for our therapists. So typically in a week we ask our therapists to see 25 clients because our therapists are on salary. So that’s how we afford to be able to pay their salaries. Last year we lowered it because I did not want my employees or me to have that additional stress of, we got to get our numbers up, we got to get our numbers up. So we lowered that. Now that school’s back open and it has been now for over a month we’re starting to feel like there’s some sense of normalcy coming back to the way that we’ve done things. We’re still doing some virtual mental health, but we’re getting to tons and tons of referrals from schools. And our therapists are pretty much back in the school and feeling safe and doing what they’ve always done.
[JOE]
Wow. That’s amazing. Now tell me about, you’ve added some assessments and things as an extra kind of form of revenue. Walk us through that process. I’m sure you kind of investigated it and got out some of the information and data and tell us the results of kind of what’s happened with that.
[LISA]
So I’ve been saying for years, we provide great services and I’ve been saying that and been saying that, and then I’ve got to thinking like how do we really prove that what we’re doing is really great and it’s effective and we’re helping people. So we had started out, my leadership team and I trying to figure out how we could use assessments to prove that we were being effective. And not only prove that we are being effective, but also to help our clients to see how they were getting better or where they were still struggling with. So I asked my clinical director to do some research on software so that did measurement based care. So we started meeting with people, interviewing them, testing out their products.

Then we came across Blueprint. It was almost like magical because when I first had the first conversation with them, I was like, I can’t believe this software does everything that we’ve been looking for. We’ve been struggling with this for a long time. So we went through the demo with them. We met with them, with Matt over there at Blueprint and I was like, guys, I kind of think this is the one. We had another one that we were going back and forth with, but that other company just did not have the capability that Blueprint has. So then I got skeptical. I was like, I don’t think we’re going to get reimbursed. I mean, we’re not going to be able to get reimbursed for this.

These insurance companies aren’t going to pay us and Blueprint said, “We’re going to show you, we’re going to do all of the upfront work so that you know exactly how much you’re going to be paid if you’re going to be paid.” I was like, okay, I was waiting for them to say, “Lisa, sorry, no companies in Delaware are going to reimburse you for assessments.” That’s not what they said. So we signed on with them. We signed on and we did, I think it was like a 60-day on onboarding and we only used, like, I think we maybe had 10 therapists sign up initially to test it out, work out any kinks. And Joe, I was like, okay, this is not real. When I started seeing the revenue that was being generated from the assessments, I was shocked and scared because I was like
[JOE]
Do you care to share some of those numbers publicly. Only share whatever you want.
[LISA]
Absolutely. I will share. Now I will say, caveat is that average total number of claims that are paid is probably around 70%, but even at that number on a good month, and this is before we went back to school where the bulk of our services are provided, we were bringing in an additional $15,000 revenue. On a bad month, it was like $7,000.
[JOE]
Per month?
[LISA]
Per month. And what I love about Blueprint too, is that they have a spreadsheet, a live, a shared Google spreadsheet. So I can go in at any point, and I literally did that today to check, to see where we were, how many assessments have been built, how many have been paid? What’s the expected total gross and net revenue? And they update the spreadsheet weekly so I can always sign in and get kind of my fingers on the pulse as to how we’re doing. Then they take their fees out, which in my opinion, I would pay them any day of the week to do what they’ve done, helped us to do in terms of generating additional revenue —
[JOE]
How does it actually work? Like, so you sign up and then, walk us through the steps of what Blueprint’s doing, because I feel like I have a general idea and I’ve talked to the people at Blueprint, but would love to just know, like give us the three big picture kind of steps of what Blueprint’s doing for you.
[LISA]
So the biggest things that they’ve done for us is they one, found out who was going to reimburse us and how much they were going to reimburse. The other thing that Blueprint does, which is like, I think the selling point for me was they tell us based on the assessment that a clinician does with the client, this is the CPT code, because there’re various CPT codes. So they tell us this is a CPT code for this. So it takes the guesswork out. My clinicians or myself don’t have to figure out, okay, what CPT code is this? They tell us for every single client. That’s major. That’s a lot. And they give us, they say, okay, you did this assessment on this date.

You need to write your note. They gave us a template for the notes, how to write the note for the assessment and then they track every single claim that we send for the assessment. Then they put it in the spreadsheet and they calculate how much we’re going to earn and how much we end up owing them. So before we get started, me and my operations director talked and met with them a lot to make sure that we understood what was going on the back end. Then after all that happened, we got access to their website, which is, there’s also an app that most of our clients use. Clients were loaded in to the website. And it is HIPAA-compliant. We signed a BAA —
[JOE]
I’m assuming Business Associate agreement, all that.
[LISA]
You got it. Yep, we signed that and then we started slowly trickling it out to our clients. One thing that I really, really like about Blueprint is that they are open to suggestions. So we work a lot with children and adolescents, so we needed some specific assessments. So Dr. Russell DuBois , who is their clinical director sourced those assessments for us. Like we said, “Russell, we need more assessments for, let’s say ADHD, or we need assessments in Spanish because we see a lot of Spanish speaking clients.” So they sourced them for us and they put them in their software and now we have access to them.

The other thing that happened with us as well is that sometimes we’ll have situations where a kid, there’s joint custody, so both parents need access to Blueprint. So they were able to figure out a way so that there could be two separate accounts for one kid, or if there was a teenager who wanted their own account and didn’t want their parents’ email or phone number to that. They were able to help us figure that out as well. So them being open to suggestions and based on the user experience has been like, thank you, this has been wonderful. Thanks guys.
[JOE]
Wow. That, I mean, I can’t wait to continue to learn more. They actually put together a promo code for us where anyone that wants to try it and get your first month for free, all you have to do is go over to bph.link/joe, and you’ll get a free month free. You can take the tour, check it out. They are a new sponsor to the podcast and we wanted to make sure that we could hear Lisa’s story because to me, as we bring sponsors on we do a ton of research. We want to make sure that we’re looking for long-term sponsors that that we can really stand behind. So to hear someone like Lisa share this. So just head on over, if you want to check it out to bph.link/joe, and you can read all about Blueprint.

So Lisa, the last question that I always ask people is if every private practitioner in the world we’re listening right now, what would you want them to know?
[LISA]
So a couple of things, Joe, one that being in private practice is hard and that as a business owner who has a big practice, one of the things that I always say to myself is you still have to be coachable. You still have to be open to learning from other people. And I think that’s just really important. It’s okay to pay somebody to help you either to figure out some difficulties or figure out how to grow. So be coachable, be open to the learning process, because every day I’m learning something new. Being a business owner is challenging. You have to wear two hats. One is a clinician. One is a business owner. I think sometimes people don’t understand that. They think if they hang up their shingle that that’s all that it takes, but there’s definitely a lot of behind the scenes business stuff that you have to aim for.

I’ll also end up with saying that if you can get people in your practice who have that shared vision, you’re going to buy loyalty to people. They’re going to, if they can adapt that vision and know that you’re going to take good care of them, because, most of my revenue and I can say this publicly goes right back into my employees, whether or not it’s through in salaries or it’s through training. I invest in the people who work for me. I value them and I show them that it’s not just with words. And any of them would tell you that. So it’s important to invest. My business model is a little different than other people. I am 100% okay with reinvesting my profits back into my people. I live a comfortable life. I’m not going to lie. My husband and I travel to Europe. We go at least six weeks a year, so we are comfortable. But I also feel like I don’t want people working for me who are struggling and who are poor and who can’t figure out how to pay their own bills. So that’s my advice to anybody who may be listening out there
[JOE]
Such good advice because, I mean, I was wondering how these very first hires are still with you. I mean, that’s exactly it you’ve taken care of them. Such wonderful advice. Lisa, if people want to connect with you, hear more about you especially the Clinicians of Color, how can they get connected to all of the work that you’re doing?
[LISA]
So thank you for allowing me to share that. They can find us on Facebook under Clinicians of Color. We’re on Instagram, Clinicians of Color. Then my email is [email protected]. I respond to every email that comes my way. So if anybody has any questions I’m always open to responding to people.
[JOE]
Oh, that’s so wonderful. Well, we’ll have to have you back on the show to talk specifically about Clinicians of Color. There’s so many big social issues that we could talk about in that arena as well.
[LISA]
Thanks Joe. I appreciate.
[JOE]
We’ll get that scheduled and have you back soon. So Lisa, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[LISA]
Thank you.
[JOE]
Well, go take some action. Lisa went after big things and when she started, I doubt that she ever would’ve expected that she would have 50 clinicians working for her. What an amazing story we heard today and even just hearing how she was leaving money on the table. She’s still coachable. She’s still going after big things. She’s still reinventing herself in so many ways. Take that inspiration and go apply it to your life.

Also we want to thank Simplified SEO Consulting. Jessica has created such an amazing business. It was birthed at Slow Down School, at the event that I was leading and to see her now make more money off of an SEO company than off of her group practice is insane. She is a clinician who just geeks out over SEO and has brought in all sorts of other SEO geeks. So over at simplifiedseoconsulting.com/joe you can reach out to them. You can talk to them about your SEO. We personally use them with Practice of the Practice to keep ranking high in Google for the SEO terms that we want to rank high for. And it’s awesome. Her team coordinates directly with my copywriter. They get certain articles written, they tag it and do all that stuff and I don’t have to even think about it. So simplifiedseoconsulting.com/joe.

Thank you 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. We really like it. 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 publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.