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[WHITNEY OWENS]: This is the Practice of the Practice podcast, episode number 554.
Welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. This is Whitney Owens, doing a podcast take over. I’m one of the consultants with Practice of the Practice and doing a special series on leveling up in your practice and offering rough consulting to our Group Practice Boss members. For those of you that haven’t heard of what Group Practice Boss is, it’s our membership community for those that are established group practice owners, where we do live webinars and trainings, to be able to grow our practices and make more money and work less. So today I have a special guest on the show. I have Gennifer Morley. She runs a group practice in Boulder, Colorado specializing in anxiety of all ages. With years of experience in research, Gen has created an approach to counseling that effectively combines evidence-based therapies with a down to earth approachability that gets results. She is a mom, a wife, and an athlete who enjoys a good laugh. Gen, thanks for taking the time to be on the show today.
[GENNIFER MORLEY]: Yes. Thanks Whitney. I’m psyched to be here. It’s such a fun thing to do and also a really great resource. Lucky me.
[WHITNEY]: Oh, well, glad to be able to do it. Yes, before we got on, we were talking about how crazy the weather has been. I’m sitting in Savannah and it’s 81 there. How’s the weather there, Gen?
[GENNIFER]: We got two feet of snow yesterday and it’s 32 degrees and the streets are covered in black ice.
[WHITNEY]: Oh, the world we live in.
[GENNIFER]: Yes.
[WHITNEY]: All right. So Gen, why don’t you first talk a little bit about your practice, the setup a little bit, like how many clinicians, what’s their status, how does your practice kind of run to give people an idea and then we can kind of jump into your question for today.
[GENNIFER]: Sure. So currently I have 1099 contractors. I have three, 1099 contractors onboard right now. I’m looking, actually I have a potential of new hire this week, which is really exciting, but because of COVID myself and one other clinician are the only people who have seen people in person this year. So the other two are all online. My practice has grown very quickly I think partly because of COVID and I think also partly because of Practice of the Practice and Group Practice Boss. So I am really excited and also catching up to myself often.
[WHITNEY]: Yes, that’s great. And you so much is your work that you’ve put into it too.
[GENNIFER]: Thanks.
[WHITNEY]: Like you’re always very involved in the events that we’re doing and those that get involved tend to be the ones that’s practices grow faster. So what’s your question here for today?
[GENNIFER]: Okay. So I have my other woman who sees people in person, although I don’t know that that would be relevant so much, but she was seeing a 16 year old and one of the parents decided that they didn’t want her to come anymore because of some complicated dynamics. The child really wanted to keep coming and in Colorado that’s a state law that they can keep coming. And so there was some attempt to kind of smooth that over and keep the parent in, but that ended up getting negative reviews. The parent posted negative reviews on North Boulder Counseling, which is my counseling platforms on Google and Yelp and Facebook and a couple other, a bunch of other places and also for this clinician on everywhere that I think that the person could find them.
So I’m in this position where this person is a 1099 contractor. I don’t know how much I’m supposed to manage my brand versus their reputation and how much that also, they have their own liability insurance. I feel like even chiming in, pulls me into liability that I maybe don’t want and then I have a whole other question which we’ll do in a minute about just in terms of SEO and stuff about how to manage something, if you can’t get it down. So there’s sort of two pieces that are 1099 contractor and their reputation, and then negative reviews on social media.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. I was hearing those good questions. So the 1099 question first. When someone is hired at our practice, even though they’re a contractor, they still represent our work. I mean, to someone outside of, it’s North Boulder Counseling, right?
[GENNIFER]: Yes, right.
[WHITNEY]: To someone outside of North Boulder, no one knows that this person’s a 1099 and has their own LLC and typically a certain business, so whoever you hire is going to be a representation of you, which is why you want to be super clear in your hiring process. So I think in that respect, I would try to protect their reputation as much as possible because it is the reputation of your practice.
[GENNIFER]: Right. Yes.
[WHITNEY]: And now we know that you can’t tell this person how to do their job because they’re a contractor, but I think you can meet with them and help process their experience if they’re willing to meet with you, which I would think they’re working at your practice because they admire you, they think the world of you. I mean, if they wanted to, they could have just started their own practice. So I would use that to your advantage to say, “Hey, I saw this review that was put up. Would you like to talk about this?”
[GENNIFER]: Yes. Okay. I got lucky in this particular situation, just so you know, it’s clear, we’re less, we’re maybe like a week out from it. So we’ve done a little bit of fudging through, but there’s still a lot to do. And also going forward, I really, I was broadsided by this. I was like, “Oh gosh, I never saw this coming,” which, it feels a little silly now. But so the person was willing to have a conversation, but then there I am sitting in the conversation saying, “What should I say and what should I not say?”
[WHITNEY]: Well, welcome to being a business owner and getting negative reviews. Like you’ve now come to us. Okay. So you sat, did you already sit down with your contractor?
[GENNIFER]: So she came to me and I actually, she told me because I think there was a bit of like an abrupt fallout and I’m not sure how, but that within an hour she was like, “There’s a negative review.” And she told me, and then I think she went Googling and found them all. So she’s actually the one who told me and she said, “Oh my gosh, how do we make this right?” I mean, she felt horrible. She was like, “Oh my God, this is your reputation.” And she was backstepping her steps and trying to figure out what she could have done different, but she was also really clear like, “Oh my God, I really impacted you and North Boulder Counseling and even the other clinicians, because now everybody in the practice has a little shadow on them from this.” It’s not massive, but it’s something, she’s impacted everyone. So, I mean, she’s awesome. I generally hire awesome clinicians, but it’s still this position of like, okay. What I want to do is like, do this and do this and do this and this.
[WHITNEY]: Well, I definitely think it says a lot that she came to you. She thinks highly of you, that she would come and tell you this immediately, instead of you trying to find it later, or maybe hoping you’re never going to find it.
[GENNIFER]: Oh God.
[WHITNEY]: I would comfort her, like, “This happens to all of us, all of us.” So practice group practice, you’re eventually going to get a negative review. And in our world of mental health, people are dealing with mental health issues more so, you’re going to get a negative view. Just like doctor’s offices, just the healthcare field in general, it gets negative reviews. So maybe create a plan with her and maybe let her even guide it as to how are we going to deal with this issue. What are the things you’ve already done for the child and the mom and how you want to move forward with it? Would be what, I’d have a conversation with her about. And I think the other important thing to consider is the clinical part of making sure that you don’t have a client whose mother or parent or guardian is talking negative of the experience of therapy and like detrimental to the experience of the client. Because if you get in a situation like that, the client’s not going to benefit at all and probably would be better served somewhere else.
[GENNIFER]: So yes, that all sounds, we kind of worked, some of that did happen, so that’s great. She also, so one of the questions, I don’t know if you know this, because I think it’s kind of a legal question, but you’ve been around the block. Maybe you have an idea. So she consulted her own lawyer and her own supervisor. I said, “This is what I think. It’s legal and I really want North Boulder Counseling to have the reputation that we keep parents in the circle. We integrate the whole family and we always try and have as much as the system intact as we can.” Even if some pieces are a little more loose than other, and mom’s maybe having a touch and go online once a month or at least, even if she’s just saying nothing, she’s not like overtly opposed. So we’ve brought everybody in enough that there’s not like blocks in the system.
And honestly I’ve done this many years. I’ve worked with families and I’ve never had a parent I couldn’t bring it in. And I’m sure you can appreciate, like there were some parents that were not easy to bring it. So I am sitting here wondering mom has sent a couple emails to me and I’ve responded very minimally respectfully in like, just like one sentence, you know, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” So she’s sort of circumventing my clinician and I’m in a position where I think I could build that rapport with mom, but I don’t know, that feels like I should just hands off the whole thing.
[WHITNEY]: Let’s go back to that clinical issue that mom might be trying to do like a triangle or —
[GENNIFER]: Yes, triangulation. Yes.
[WHITNEY]: So I would just redirect mom back to the clinician, especially because this clinician practices separate from you because she has her own business. It’s her client, her situation, not yours. So I would just, “Yes, mom, thank you. I’m going to bring so-and-so into this conversation or I’m going to put you back on her,” and just forward it to her so that she can see that the clinicians involved in the conversation and that you’re not going to have this private conversation with mother who’s pissed at the therapist, who’s probably trying to get you mad at her.
[GENNIFER]: Yes. She’s telling on her. She’s like, “Oh, you’re her boss. I’m going to tell on her.”
[WHITNEY]: Yes. It sounds like you need to, say it to the mom, “Sounds like you need to talk to this clinician about this, not to me.”
[GENNIFER]: Okay.
[WHITNEY]: Right. Poor child and what they’re going through. I do think this, and you kind of mentioned systems earlier, this is a really good time to look at your system for working with kids and specifically working with those that are their own guardians, but also have parents very involved. So this can be for a 17, 18 year old in Colorado, but it can also be for areas in other States, a 19, 20, 21 year old, because a lot of them still have parents paying for their therapy. And so, how do you handle those situations, I mean, I would suggest if possible to get the ROI in advance when therapy starts.
[GENNIFER]: So she did it. In this particular situation that all of the releases were signed and then the parent was like, “Never mind, I take it back.” I mean, we already have the contract, but she’s saying I no longer give permission.
[WHITNEY]: I was thinking that the client had to sign the ROI.
[GENNIFER]: Oh, I see what you’re saying.
[WHITNEY]: [crosstalk the guardian, right?
[GENNIFER]: Yes, you are right.
[WHITNEY]: So [crosstalk].
[GENNIFER]: Yes. I don’t know, we’ll I’m going to look at that. Thanks Whitney. That’s a good one to look at.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. That’s always a fine line and we deal with that here. We work with a lot of college students, so a similar situation here. It’s 18 to be an adult, but then we have a 19 year old coming in and parents are paying for treatment ad then they’re seeing things that we’re not seeing. So trying to get that ROI at the very beginning, as opposed to later sometimes can help in the process.
[GENNIFER]: Yes, that’s helpful. Thank you.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. So let’s talk about how to handle reviews. Okay. So with Google Business, you can get so much good SEO from Google. Business. So if y’all are listening to this and you haven’t maximized Google My Business, you definitely need to. When you get a negative review or any kind of review, actually it’s really important you respond within 24 hours. Google Business needs to see that you are a good business owner and that you care for the people that you see and that you respond quickly to things. It’s the same kind of idea that we want to blog every single week that shows Google that we’re on it. You want to have a service page for everything you offer. You’re showing Google I’m good at all these things and when you respond to a review, “Hey, I pay attention to my people and I care and I respond within 24 hours.” So even if it wasn’t a good review, you definitely need to respond to it. I think a great way to respond is without emotion. You cannot identify that they’re a client. You can’t say anything that they didn’t already say in the review. So speak directly to the concern that was brought up in the review if you can. And then as an extra bonus, whichever way you can, put in SEO words like keywords. So that’s nice.
[GENNIFER]: Whitney, oh my gosh. Bring it home. I love that. It’s juicing that lemon, isn’t it?
[WHITNEY]: But you might not be able to do that.
[GENNIFER]: Oh, I think I could at least get one or two in there.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. I will say we had this happen at my practice, not terribly long ago and we all just had to laugh about it because it was so stressful. The clinician, I have a W2, the clinician came straight to me and was like, “Oh my gosh, this happened and this review went everywhere, like Facebook, all that stuff. So the Google My Business, I must’ve gone back and forth with my clinician and my assistant, like seven times making sure I wasn’t violating HIPAA with my response, but I responded directly to the concern and basically said, this is the law in the state of Georgia. This is why our practice responded in this way. And because in the review it said, this was the negative way that this practice responded, they’re not ethical, don’t go to them, and so then I just laid out what the law was and said, “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We would never want a practice to be unethical. So it’s good that you pay attention, but I do want to respond that this is actually what the insurance laws say in our state.”
[GENNIFER]: Yes, that’s great. So I replied, the only one I replied to, so just follow up, the parent had done some situation where they said, “If you do this, then I’ll blah, blah.” I won’t get to all the details, but eventually they took down, at least the Google review, which to me was the really cash cow, but there was still some other ones up. So I replied to those and said, “Oh my gosh, I’m really excited. I’m really thankful that you let us know that you’re upset. We never want people to be upset. We cannot discuss patient issues in a public forum like this so please private message me. I’d love to discuss this more with you or we’ll, whatever, something like that.” I don’t remember verbatim, but it’s really hard not to feel like I don’t want to discuss anything on a public forum, even though this person took it and just kind of smeared it into a public forum. So I’m being, our practice is being slandered in this sort of public way, but I also am like, I’m not going to do that. This is like you and your child’s privacy. Like, Ooh. And it’s also someone talking about a third party that they don’t really legally have the right to have a third party about, which is appalling as a parent, partly but also sort of the law. So yes, I think what you’re saying sounds great. I’m just saying how, processing how tricky this is.
[WHITNEY]: It’s so tricky.
[GENNIFER]: Yes.
[WHITNEY]: It’s so tricky. I wouldn’t even offer to speak to her privately. I think I would just respond whatever public thing she said, respond publicly so that people can see that you’re responding to that thing. And this is someone you don’t want to engage with, obviously.
[GENNIFER]: Right. So here’s a piece, we’re like just fishing through the muck if it’s, well, one thing I wanted to know, I was just thinking when you said, “Oh, we had this happened dah, dah, dah.” This is one of the huge pieces of why it was so helpful. Like I’m going to just be a little cheese. I’m sorry, I love being part of groups because doing this alone feels so, it’s like an echo chamber. And so you said, “Oh, this happened to me,” and I just felt my nervous system go, “Oh, okay. This is a normal part of being a group practice owner.” So for me, I’ve been in solo practice for a long time. I’ve never had anything like this happen. And so it just is really helpful to be like, “Okay, this is just part of the deal.”
[WHITNEY]: It is part of the deal. I’m glad that provided you comfort.
[GENNIFER]: Yes.
[WHITNEY]: This also speaks to the importance of getting reviews. Like when we got that negative review, I had enough five-star reviews that it made me like a 4.8. So it was hardly anything. It’s really important that you work on getting those reviews for your practice so that you don’t tank when you get a negative one, because you’re going to get negative ones.
[GENNIFER]: Right. So do, are you willing to speak to that? So far, I’ll tell you what I’ve done, which is I’ve had colleagues and other maybe not colleagues in this field, but other small business owners and just people I know saying, “Hey, you want to swap reviews? Of course not pretending to be clients or anything just saying, “Gen is awesome. She’s got great energy. She’s really thoughtful or intuitive or whatever.” Just saying positive things to give me five star reviews specifically. Or, “I know she works really hard to hire her clinicians.” Just things people know about me and then five stars. So this negative review got me to 4.1 only because I think I only have like eight reviews on Google but I was just thinking from actually inside the Group Practice Boss.
This was not through you the leaders, but through some of the chatting I did with people was to ask the clinicians, if they could get three to five of their friends to just do that similar review for them on Google. So then if we get, let’s say four a piece, now we’re up to like 25 reviews where. And I’ll tell you Whitney, I live in a really, Boulder has a lot of clinicians and I have almost the top reviews. I think there’s one person that has 12. Like almost no one has Google reviews because who’s going to go on and review their therapist? So I think the bar’s kind of low. We don’t need that many to blow everyone else out of the water.
[WHITNEY]: It sounds like you’re already doing a lot of things right there. And with your clinicians, it’s good because the people that write their reviews will mention their names instead of yours. So what sometimes happens is yes, it’s Gen, Gen, Gen, and then everyone wants to see you and you see everybody else.
[GENNIFER]: Right .Oh, that’s a great way to frame it for them too, in terms of getting them motivated to get them written so that people will ask for you when they see the reviews. Thanks Whitney.
[WHITNEY]: That’s right. And make it as easy as possible. You know, our world, we want, we don’t have a lot of time on our hands. So I would take the link and email it out and all they have to do is, someone has to do is click on it. It’ll take them about three minutes to write a review.
[GENNIFER]: Yes.
[WHITNEY]: Make sure you respond to all of them within 24 hours.
[GENNIFER]: Oh, right. Can I have my assistant do that?
[WHITNEY]: Yes.
[GENNIFER]: This is all the winning.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. I actually have a marketing director at my practice. She’s part-time and she manages all my Google Business. So on the Faith in Practice podcast I did a whole episode on how to utilize Google My Business. It was like in December, 2020, and then I just sent her the episode and she did everything that he said to do and it helped so much. That was a Craig Alsup. He’s great. So I encourage you if you, your assistant just send her that podcast episode or other information that you get on how to utilize Google My Business. Let them do everything.
[GENNIFER]: Oh, that’s genius. I love it. Sometimes I’m sitting here thinking about what should I have her do? What should I ever do? I mean, there’s a lot of like just scurrying kind of things, but literally taking, giving, taking her time and using it to level up really directly sounds great.
[WHITNEY]: Oh yes. And then we’ll take those Google reviews and put them on our social media, like make a little Canva image and write the review so that people just see them coming up on Instagram. Oh, Google Review.
[GENNIFER]: Yes. Oh my goodness. And I’m glad I have someone else to do that because I don’t want to do that.
[WHITNEY]: That’s right. It becomes a lot. And having someone else to manage your Google My Business helps. So like the other thing with Google My Business is anytime you have a blog post that you put on your own website, you can go to the website that you can create through Google My Business and post those as well, which will, the more you do on your Google My Business, the faster you’re going to pop up when someone just puts counseling in and all those businesses show up.
[GENNIFER]: Oh my goodness. So honestly, I sort of knew about Google My Business, but I didn’t know this much. So I’m going to look up the Craig Alsup podcast, because we have all these blogs. So I could just get my admin person to transfer them over to Google My Business and look at that. Wait, that’s free SEO.
[WHITNEY]: That’s right.
[GENNIFER]: I mean sort of free. I pay her, but I didn’t pay her enough to compensate for that much SEO. That’s great.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. That will definitely help. So any other thoughts, questions about your situation you feel like that helped?
[GENNIFER]: I think it was super helpful. I think the biggest, I mean, of course you gave me all this rich information, but one of the biggest things is just, I don’t have to do it alone.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. You don’t. So could you talk for just a minute or two about Group Practice Boss, kind of, what do you enjoy about it? How do you find it helpful for your business?
[GENNIFER]: I’d love to. So I, can I add in Practice of the Practice? Is that allowed?
[WHITNEY]: Yes, this is the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[GENNIFER]: Okay, so I started out in Practice of the Practice. I will just tell you, you know, Joe’s energy is just, so it’s like, he’s like a flame in the world, and we’re all moth. It’s just amazing. I don’t mean that to sound creepy. He’s just a great guy, and so I was like, this sounds really great. So I joined that and I realized, I wouldn’t even want to pay the money for that. I was like, “Oh gosh, it’s money for this thing.” And I realized I was not investing at all in the thing that I wanted most of my life. I was trying to do it all by myself and without putting any, I was like, sort of working hard, but it wasn’t investing anything in it. And it was like, something happened as soon as I did that and brought all these people around me and all this resources around me and I was willing to like put down a chip, say, “Yes, I really want it this much.”
It just boosted everything so quickly. And within, I think, six to eight months of Practice of the Practice, I filled my practice myself, which I’d been years trying to do and then I was ready to hire clinicians, which to me was just like, “Oh gosh, I don’t know. So then I did Group Practice Boss, and I still have my accountability partner from Practice of the Practice. She’s in group practice boss with me. So that’s amazing. I texted her all about this and she texted me back about the thing about her office. The thing about this for me is one, I just, there’s no one else in my world who gets this.
And so just to have a tiny question, I hop on Facebook all the time, Whitney you know, I get on the group and I just say, “Okay, quick question.” And even if I don’t, sometimes I get an amazing answer and sometimes I just get people saying, “I feel. Yes. Yep, yep, yep.” To me, the combination of being part of a system bigger than me, it just feels like it’s feeding my practice in a huge way to have all these people involved and supporting me. And then I get really concrete solutions to problems either I didn’t know, or problems I didn’t know there was such an easy solution to. So there’s a two-part thing. There’s a really concrete information. And then this feeling of being held inside a much larger network, something bigger than me. So I really don’t have any question. My sister just called me about her dream she wants to do and I said, “You need to find people who’ve already done what you want to do, which is Group Practice Boss and normalize having 15 clinicians and then you also need to find people who will be around you, who you can just echo off of and share your problems with. You need to put yourself out there and say, everyone can see me here. I am.”
[WHITNEY]: Yes.
[GENNIFER]: So I want this group for her, is what I’m saying. Yes.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. That’s awesome. And so what I honestly hear you saying is you did it by yourself for a while, and then once you finally put some money down and really joined the community, that’s when your practice exploded.
[GENNIFER]: Oh yes. A hundred percent. There’s no question.
[WHITNEY]: Yes, and for those of you, I’ve kind of known Gen a while, I know you did Next Level Practice for a significant amount of time. That’s our membership community with Practice of the Practice for people starting and growing a solo practice. And then after that, once they have a group practice going, they would go to Group Practice Boss. So it’s like all under the umbrella of Practice of the Practice, but we have all these membership communities. So that way we can hit everyone in their stage of practice growth.
[GENNIFER]: Yes. So I have to tell you, I want to speak to pessimism here because I have a whole thing of like, “Oh, look at all these people like paying money and it’s probably just a hoax or something.” Just like my negativity bias around. Like, it’s like everyone’s paying money to a group. The return on investment for me and you know, Joe started me thinking about return on investment 10 years ago in his podcasts, the return on investment is let’s see, I have quadrupled my income in 12 months, quadrupled, four times. That’s my gross income for my practice.
[WHITNEY]: That’s awesome. Thank you for sharing that. You can’t do it anywhere else.
[GENNIFER]: How can you put like the little bit of money I put every month on, it’s not even one client.
[WHITNEY]: That’s right.
[GENNIFER]: It’s like, less than one client a month, I pay to be part of this group and then I’ve quadrupled my gross income.
[WHITNEY]: That’s awesome. Well, you’ve worked hard, Gen.
[GENNIFER]: Yes. Thank you. Anyway, okay, I feel like I’m not trying to be the poster child, but I’m very happy with what has come of all of this. So thank you.
[WHITNEY]: Well, thanks for sharing the word. I’m glad that you are. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show today and good luck with your reviews moving forward.
[GENNIFER]: Oh, we are going to nail it. Thank you so much.
[WHITNEY]: Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this episode. It means the world to us because you have so many podcasts that you could choose from and you choose to listen to the Practice of the Practice podcast. If you were listening to Gen and thinking, “Gosh, Group Practice Boss sounds awesome,” or maybe you are a group practice owner with more than two clinicians, looking for people to connect with, to help you grow your business, to scale and offer you more time in your schedule and more money, then I want you to go on over to practiceofthepractice.com\grouppracticeboss and join today. We look forward to hanging out with you not only in our Facebook community, but also in our webinars. And you’ll have access to teachable and tons of resources to help you grow your group practice.
[PROMO]: If you don’t absolutely love your website, you’ve got to do an update. Doing an update can be complex. It can be frustrating, but Brighter Vision makes it so easy. Head on over to brightervision.com/Joe and they’ve got a deal that is going to help you be able to maximize the image that you have for yourself, connect with your ideal clients and be able to really make a difference in your community. If you don’t love your website, there’s no reason to keep it. So switch over to a Brighter Vision website today over brightervision.com/Joe.
Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It 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.