Joe Sanok 00:00:00 You’re someone with a vision for your practice, for your side hustle, and for your personal journey. But when it comes to establishing your path and how to get to where you want to be with your practice, things get a little messy. You’re also someone who’d prefer to go in person instead of to groups and listening to everyone else’s story. To me, it sounds like you could benefit from one on one consulting with our experienced practice of the practice consultants from 595 a month and up. You can work with a consultant that will give you more direction and practical, tried and tested tips matched to you and your goals. For more information, visit practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. Again, that’s practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. This is the practice of the practice podcast with Joe Sam accession number 1098. hope you’re doing great today. welcome to Level Up Week. We are so excited to have you here. we are going to be talking with you today about from empty to Overflowing and, want to just help you grow your private practice and to kind of give you some guidance around that. Joe Sanok 00:01:23 You know, when I first started my counseling practice here in northern Michigan, I remember, applying to be on insurance panels, and those insurance panels were closed. and my very first couple of clients, I went on local radio and, it was, it was something that I did every Tuesday. I’m talking about therapy issues, talking about all sorts of different issues. And it wasn’t working. It was so frustrating because this was a side gig that I started. I was a full time foster care supervisor. I had set time aside, I built the website and it wasn’t working. And I still remember this moment where I was at the ellipses of northern Michigan. and so it was this kind of networking group, this, group where we would share different things, different strategies. but mostly it was just therapists hanging out with therapists. And it was pretty amazing to, to see. And I walked up to this guy, Nick. I had never met him. We started talking. He had a side gig, private practice as well, and he mentioned Psychology Today. Joe Sanok 00:02:21 And I was like, I have never heard of this. So I went and I signed up for it and got in the directory. And in the first week I got two clients. I thought, oh my gosh, like just this one conversation. Being around other people that are doing the work that I’m doing is so valuable to help me grow. And so we’re going to be talking a lot about today about how to go from empty to overflowing. We’re going to be talking about some strategies, some step by step guides of how you can grow your practice. So if you have a private practice that you want to grow, you are in the right place. but first, I don’t want to assume that you know who I am. I’m Joe Cenac, and I’m the founder of practice of the practice. Practice of the practice. We have the largest podcast in the longest podcast with over a thousand episodes all around. How to build a thriving private practice you absolutely love. So we get to help people all the time to grow and scale their practices. Joe Sanok 00:03:13 we get a lot of listeners to it. We’ve been featured in a lot of different places. outside of that, I am a father. I have almost full custody of my two amazing daughters. We have lots of fun being outside. Just yesterday, here we’re in northern Michigan. We spent the day at the beach and then went and got tacos. so it was just a great day. But let’s talk about why you’re here. Some of the common struggles, of private practice is, first, a difficulty attracting clients. And so to really understand, like, like how do clients think, how do clients make buying decisions in regards to, oh, try to let somebody in and scroll right past my slide. and so really just attracting clients to be able to really understand how to get in and how to be able to get help and to work on those things that they’re thinking about. You know, we don’t learn this stuff in grad school. And so there’s operational inefficiencies as well. So operational inefficiencies, like, you know, we don’t know about our EHRs. Joe Sanok 00:04:14 We don’t think about our EHRs or our electronic health records. also client retention. you know, for some of us, we may have, you know, very quick time based therapy, we may not understand how to best if people, you know, come in or want to come in, how do we help them understand the overall lifetime of counseling and the value of having a counselor, even if you don’t see them every single week? we have a lot of challenges around marketing. We just did our 2024 State of Private Practice survey, where we surveyed hundreds of therapists to find out where they at, what are they thinking? And the number one thing that people struggle with far and far beyond, number two and three is marketing, understanding marketing. You know, for me, when I was starting my practice, it felt slimy. I in college had sold vacuum cleaners door to door, through, one of those pyramid scheme things that some of my friends joined and got me roped into, and it felt slimy. Joe Sanok 00:05:08 We were taught how you can sell this $2,000 vacuum cleaner to to people that had no business buying a $2,000 vacuum cleaner entirely on credit, low income, really struggling, showing them how you’re going to make money off of this. And you could start a like carpet washing business. And it just felt like you’re getting people to buy something that they don’t want to buy. And it felt slimy. And so marketing, I had put in that same kind of category. And for a lot of us, we put that in our category where we’re thinking, you know what? marketing feels slimy. We don’t want it to be slimy. When I started my practice, when I started doing more marketing and understanding it, I realized there was people that wanted to have a therapist to refer to. I focused on mostly teens and teen boys that were dealing with anger and opposition, and there weren’t many therapists that were doing that. So I found that people were happy when they found me. They said, oh my gosh, we’ve been looking for, you know, a young male therapist that works with teen boys and, you know, specializes in this area. Joe Sanok 00:06:05 And you know what? Like, we’re really happy to refer to you. So when I realized that marketing really was just about telling people about that, I was out there, that was a really helpful switch. And then the other struggle we often see is balancing that workload, that self-care and understanding how much is too much. Because if you’re in full time private practice, you know it’s only you that says when you should stop working. So we’re going to talk about a lot of these things. So what you’re going to learn today we’re going to talk about client attraction strategies. We’re going to talk about operational excellence tips. So ways that you can have operational excellence. We’re going to talk about growth strategies for sustainable success. And we’re going to talk about some real life success stories. So if you’re ready to dive in we’d love for you in the chat to put where are you from and what’s your phase of practice? So I’m from Traverse City, Michigan. I live here in Northern Michigan. And, you know, maybe I’m starting a practice. Joe Sanok 00:06:54 maybe I have a group practice. so I would love to see where y’all are from. and so to know, just where you’re at and what your phase of practice is. So let’s talk a client attraction marketing a practice. So we want to first start building an effective online presence. And so this is going to be your website your SEO, your social media. you’re going to want to try to be noted and maybe some local newspapers or other things. So if someone searches your name, they don’t just see your LinkedIn. They don’t just see, you know, some pictures of you from college. we want to see that your counseling that that comes up first. So, welcome from Miami and Wisconsin and Baltimore, Maryland, Washington, DC, California, northern new Jersey, another Baltimore, Gainesville, Wilton Manors, Florida, Overland Park, Texas, Birmingham, another Texas. Welcome, everybody. We have across the whole the whole country there. Especially the California people. thanks for getting up early for this. Joe Sanok 00:07:55 So we want to look at our online presence first, and we want to start using more social media to attract clients and really thinking through our ideal client. So where are they hanging out? Where are they spending their time? What sort of things are they doing to, just think about the world. So who do they follow on TikTok? Who do they follow on Instagram? are they even on those platforms? We want to then start looking at networking and referrals. we want to do some math here. So we want to think about, okay, for every 100 people that you send an email to, or every 50 people or 20 people wherever you’re starting. how many of them even respond? So say you send 20 emails to people that are potential referrals to you, and then five of them respond to you, okay, we know 25% then are going to respond. Of those five, maybe one becomes a good referral source because you grab coffee with them or you connect with them, or they say, oh my gosh, I’ve been looking for a referral. Joe Sanok 00:08:45 So we know that for you to get one new referral source, you got to have 20 meetings. Now there’s other creative ways to do this too. You can do therapist meetup gatherings. You can do therapist hikes. You can do things that you want to do that just sound fun and invite other therapists to come along. That’s a way to get kind of more authentic relationships with people. We just want to be looking at content marketing strategies. So that means that you’re going to be thinking about the content that your ideal client is thinking about. So, you know, I have two daughters. They are ten and 13. I’m a single dad raising them. And so the kind of content I’m going to consume, like I follow a guy on TikTok who it’s a dad that teaches you how to braid. I want to get better at braiding hair. Okay, so the guys like me, if if there were therapy, you right away probably can think about if you wanted to target Joe as a single dad that cares about his daughters, what kind of marketing would you have? It’d be way different than if you were focusing on a couple, or if you were focusing on other individuals, or a struggling single mom or any sorts of different demographics. Joe Sanok 00:09:44 And then we want to also look at online advertising. So Google and Facebook or Meta are kind of the two big ones. Google is around the idea of someone searching specifically for something like therapists in my area, and then that’s going to pop up as an ad that that they can click on. Or what we can see is a little softer way is using meta, where it pops up in, in someone’s feed. And so you’re either paying to boost posts or you’re doing things like you’re targeting specific demographics in your area. Like, I want to target people that had the life event of having a baby sometime in the last three years that are between the ages of 30 and 45, and they have a socio economic income of a certain amount. All right. So when we’re thinking marketing, here’s the top ten things that I see that are working right now in late 2024. So SEO and website optimization, having a website that looks beautiful, having a website that it works well on phones, we want it to work well on phones. Joe Sanok 00:10:41 I think it’s like 70% of people will use phones to to reach out to their first therapist or to reach out to a therapist. And so we want to make sure that your website looks awesome on a phone. We all look at blogging content creation. Now you can use AI to start with kind of the first round of some of these blogs, but we want to make sure that you’re giving it that human element. Google and a lot of other places are seeing a lot of the content that’s made by AI and kind of screening it out. So we want you to make sure you’re thinking through, okay, let’s just say you work with couples. What are the top three things that you see couples screw up? you know, around the holiday season in late in the year, you know, Halloween, Christmas, Rosh Hashanah, all the different holidays that go on. so thinking through. Okay, what is it that, couples struggle with? Okay. how to connect with family and set boundaries around family? how what kind of gifts should we be giving? we’re thinking about, maybe how much money to spend now under each of those three things. Joe Sanok 00:11:42 What are the five tips you have around, say, being on the same page as a couple in round money? Now, when you have that first idea, you could use AI to help you create that, but then to go through and have your own tips go in there as well. We’re on social media marketing. That’s number three. email campaigns. Now, we don’t want to do an email newsletter. those are not effective right now. But what we are seeing is that email courses are really effective. And so it might be that you might have an eight week couples course, where it’s like date night prompts or something like that, where we make sure that we say, okay, here, here are the things that we think are great, you know, for, for you. it could also be an email that’s done via text that’s sent to people once a week, and then it’s automated. You write it once and then people opt in and then you don’t have to do anything. Google ads and online advertising. Joe Sanok 00:12:31 We’re seeing work, local community involvement, networking with other professionals, offering free workshops or webinars. we’re seeing that this is working again for a while. It wasn’t working very well, especially, you know, Covid and those live workshops. What works best is typically partnering with an established organization that can help you get the crowd there. So Parent-Teacher organizations, different organizations that maybe are valuing mental health, could be some nonprofits, things like that. You can bring together your blog posts into an e-book or a print on demand book. That’s what I did with mental wellness parenting. So we had a business called Mental Wellness Counseling. I sold that practice in 2019. but I brought together a bunch of my blog posts. They brought together a bunch of I would go on local radio, so I had the notes from that and put together this small. It’s probably a 150 page book, where I then kind of made it all flow together. It was called Mental Wellness Parenting, and the idea was that it helped parents with just a lot of variety of different issues. Joe Sanok 00:13:30 And then I could give it to people, cost $1.80 or so to print on Amazon. So I would get 20 or so printed and then give every new client one of those if parenting was one of their focuses. So that makes you stand out in a different way where it’s like, oh, my therapist wrote a book. And then last client testimonials and reviews from a survey. And it’s confidential. And so the way we’re going to do this isn’t going to be, going against, obviously, all of our code of ethics. You don’t go to people and say, hey, will you do a Google review for us? Or, you know, hey, can you do a testimonial that I can use on the website? No. Good. Don’t do that. so what you can do, though, is you can have an annual survey, where you have people fill out questions about it, about their experience of therapy, like, what were things like. And then there’s a section, you know, oftentimes it says, you know, would you refer a friend or family member and then after that, how would you explain therapy and what you got of therapy to someone that’s never been to therapy? then at the end, you can say, May we use some of your comments, in our marketing, such as our website or other places, without any identifying information at all. Joe Sanok 00:14:34 So we’re not going to even use initials. We’re not going to say ages, nothing like that. We aren’t even going to ask for that stuff. we’re just going to say, can you say yes or no? so that’s a great way that you can get some comments from people that they say in the survey, of course, talk to your own attorney in your state just to make sure that that follows those ethical guidelines. But we’re seeing that work as well. So as we build an online presence, some of the things we want to do is to just look at a few different areas. So, Kate Hertz is someone that we’ve worked with. And so she did a great job where, so she’s a therapist in New York City. And Kate, built out a website, and she focuses on chronic illness. She has her own chronic illness. She also, helps people with chronic illness. And so as she was growing, she was working at Columbia as a professor. She was doing a little bit of the side gig kind of stuff in her practice, and she noticed that a lot of people were referring to her. Joe Sanok 00:15:27 And so she kept building out more and more. On her website, you’re talking about different things. Even launched the Teaspoon podcast, which is a podcast about chronic illness and just her point of view. So she starts to strategize in different ways to say, how do I continue to help those people that are referred to me, while also helping people beyond here to position myself. And in a lot of different ways, we can see that her results where she’s completely full, she’s bringing in an extra therapist, and there’s a lot of different things that grew out of that one decision to specialize and to continue to grow online. Now, we talked about online, but now we want to dig into some of that operational excellence, like how do you streamline your processes at every phase of practice. So we want to first look at some sort of clear online booking. So many therapists we work with, it’s like you have a website and you’re on the main page, and then you click schedule an intake, and then you go to this page that has all these Q&A. Joe Sanok 00:16:20 And then you enter some information. Then it goes to another page that then you send an email, and then you have to wait for that person to email back. And then what happens is, you know, that person doesn’t get any email back and then you know, they schedule someone else. We want this to be so streamlined where someone says book now right away they can see are their openings. Right away we want them to find a time and then fill out the paperwork and be done with it. People get so frustrated when they have to enter information over and over when they can’t just schedule the thing. Like think about your hairstylist. If you have a hairstylist, I imagine if you want to book, there’s a way to do that online. You can either go to their website, they may have a secret like square link, they may have some way that you can go through and say, okay, so my my hairstylist name is is Sarah. So all right. When is Sarah available? Okay. Joe Sanok 00:17:09 She’s not available until a month from now. Oh that’s not going to work. So maybe you call them. Imagine you had to go back and forth 3 or 4 times just to do that. You would probably go to a new place. Same sort of thing with counseling. The more that we can have the online booking that we can have that be quick, the more that you’re going to get filled up. We want to look at some automated billing and invoicing. So using something like therapy notes so that you can have that EHR and that billing and the insurance and all that. And if you’re not using insurance, maybe use something like mental where they’re helping with that out-of-network billing, they’re helping with that reimbursement that you’re not just kind of winging it on your own. We want to have clear client communication channels. So we want to know when are we emailing, when are we calling and when are we messaging. Do we use messaging apps that are secure? how do we do that? To be able to make sure that it’s secure and we disclose any vulnerabilities there may be? also, do we know if we text that we’re allowed to text because we would hate for something to pop up and, you know, have someone be like, why did you text me? My husband saw that. Joe Sanok 00:18:05 He’s not supposed to know I’m in counseling and, you know, whatever. Like we want to make sure that we disclose all of that. We want to use those effective practice management softwares and, you know, have regular review of our overall processes. Thinking about it from the client point of view, then thinking about it from a few different points of view, like the operational side and the money side. Next, we want to start looking at streamlining our processes. So we’re going to we’re sharing with you a bunch of things that we use that we see a lot of our our folks use some of these are sponsors, some of them are not sponsors. These are things that we have vetted or that we use, depending on kind of what you’re using it for, for scheduling tools like Calendly or therapy notes. Both signed Business associates agreements therapy notes integrates directly with your EHR your progress notes for tele therapy. So that’s a smart choice for you if you’re looking for EHR for billing, we want to be looking at implementing and automating those invoices through platforms like QuickBooks that sync with your bank. Joe Sanok 00:18:59 That then also connects to things like therapy notes or other things that are better able to kind of keep track of all that. So you’re not having to keep track as much. We want to use HIPAA compliant messaging like spruce or well received. Those are two that are really good ones that a lot of our folks use. Then we want to use some management software. So looking at some of those KPIs that key performance indicators again, things like therapy notes are up. Helio is an AI that a lot of our members are using to help with their progress notes and things like that. And then out of network billing. Automating that is a great service that helps. It doesn’t cost anything to you. And then the client, they are able to submit their super bills through there. It’s all automated. They have this system where they can show all the things that like what’s the person’s benefits. And so that’s a great service as well. If you forgot any of those, you can drop them in the chat. Joe Sanok 00:19:52 We’ll have somebody, put it in there. all right. When we’re enhancing the client satisfaction, we want to do a few things. We want to be creating a welcoming environment. And so we want to have our environment where they come into or if they’re online, we want to make sure that’s easy, that you have high speed internet, that they know kind of the level of internet they need, that they’re doing a speed check ahead of time. It’s amazing how just asking someone in an automated email, you know, the day before, hey, can you do a speed check? if you’re not sure how to do a speed check, literally just go and Google and type in speed check. and Google has one. There’s a few others. it just checks the speed of your internet and it tells you like, is it strong? Is it low? That’s good to know if you’re going into tele therapy. It can be a really pain. Like a pain if, you know, someone comes to their session, they’re ready to talk, and then it’s really glitchy. Joe Sanok 00:20:41 We want to have consistent follow up and feedback. So do you have an automated text after a couple sessions saying how’s therapy going? Do you have any sort of surveys, especially as you grow into a group practice? We want to make sure that the kind of DNA that you created, that culture you created, is being exemplified by all the people that work for you and with your clients. We want to personalize those client interactions. There’s ways we can do this where, you know, an email says like, Dear Joe or it changes to. Dear Samantha, dear men, dear whoever like that, it changes that first name so it feels more personalized. And then one thing we see a lot of therapists starting to do is to use HIPAA compliant texting, where they have an automated text message series going from that first intake. And if they stop being a client, then there’s a series of texts. If they start being a client, we all get client reminders from our pharmacy or, you know, from our doctors. Joe Sanok 00:21:28 But this is going a little a step further to help in a different way. Cool. So boosting client retention and really glad to hear so many people are just starting out. You’re in the right place if you’re in solo practice and you just want to sustain and do things a little bit better, great. If you’re in group practice, awesome. We have a lot of things that we’re going to be covering here, right? So we want to build those strong client relationships regularly updating those clients and then offering any additional services. So one thing that people often miss is the opportunity to do what we call the sandwich approach. So if we think of the middle of the sandwich as therapy, so that’s like the core product you offer. What’s something before someone starts therapy that could be helpful. And so maybe someone’s like, you know, I’m not ready to start therapy, you know, could you have an e-course or could you have some sort of email sequence. So if you help couples like the example I gave, one thing could be that we offer that email, date night ideas. Joe Sanok 00:22:19 We could have an E course that’s free or cheap. That’s maybe, you know, $49 that you can sign up for until they maybe want to come in for therapy. What’s something that before they start therapy, that could be a product. And then what’s something maybe after therapy. So take a couple for example. what would it look like to have a couples group where you have maybe 3 or 4 couples that come together once a month that, you know, just work on strengthening their relationships or, you know, after someone’s done doing treatment around anxiety and they’re ready to kind of step down, but they maybe want to do one session with you a month. Could you do a group around that? Could there be courses that help them with it? Thinking about those additional services, could you be partnering with different nonprofits in town to offer therapy in a different way? Could you partner with businesses to do either an EAP or a lunch and learn? There’s so many opportunities around that that go beyond just the traditional therapy. Joe Sanok 00:23:11 All right. Let’s talk through, you’re kind of being full in six months, and I have a framework we’re going to walk through in a second. But the main thing is that we want to be attracting clients. And so we talked about doing that through marketing and a variety of ways, as you get 60% full, we want you to be raising your prices. And so continue to raise those prices by not $5 or $10. We’re probably about $25. So that if in year one you start at 125 per session, you know, as you get to 60% full, we want to jump up to at least one 5165 for private pay. Of course, your insurance that’s regulated by what’s on the insurance contract. And then, you know, as the new people come in throughout that year, they’re getting those higher prices and then realigning on the first of the year with everybody. You may lose some people. You may get some people to go from weekly to every other week. But then over time, we’re building the overall income of the practice without even starting having any other people work at the practice. Joe Sanok 00:24:05 We want to streamline that intake, because the sooner you can get people in, the sooner that you can respond to them, oftentimes the longer they stay. We want to use some of those tools to use for optimization, and we want to make sure we look at those clients satisfaction results and take action on the things that aren’t working. All right. So growing strategy growth strategies for scaling your practice. So once we start to get full we want to look at expanding those service offerings and hiring and training staff. Usually your first staff you’ll hire is some sort of executive assistant intake coordinator front desk coordinator, someone that’s going to be answering the phones, returning emails, working on scheduling paperwork, billing, those sorts of things. This person is oftentimes a virtual assistant. They don’t have to be sitting in your office. That can be terribly expensive, or it can be an organization that you outsource to as well. There’s lots of great organizations. we we have our preferred providers on the website as well. We can have those strategic partnerships and collaborations to help people refer to us. Joe Sanok 00:25:01 And then knowing when we want to scale and signs of of readiness that you’re ready to scale. So a couple things are first, do you want to scale? You may be in solo practice and say, I love it here. You know the amount that I’m making. I just want to have good operational sustainability. Ability. I want my solo practice to be sustainable and strong, and I’m not ready to start a group practice. Awesome. There’s lots of tools out there that we can help you with, that we can support you in that. you may say, okay, I’m getting full. I see some opportunity here. I want to hire my first person. I’m going to hire a clinician to help in the same area. So I do Gottman couples work. I want to hire another Gottman couples person. Or maybe you do divorce counseling and you need a child therapist to help with the kids of those divorces. So it may be kind of sideways to what kind of work you’re doing. So looking at that and then from a readiness standpoint, I always encourage people to think about if they had 2 to 3 clinicians that came on and were completely full, where would they lose their mind? What would keep you up at night? What would stress you out? What would freak you out? and then let’s work on those cracks before we bring a bunch of people in. Joe Sanok 00:26:15 We can be paralyzed by perfection Affection sometimes just not take action. so I am a big fan of jumping before you’re probably completely ready. But there are things where it’s like, if you know that you’ve kind of hodgepodge it all together in your solo practice, that maybe we need to work a little bit on bringing things together before you start a group practice. We want to have sustainable growth without sacrificing quality. So maintaining those high standards of care, being clear about what those are within your practice, monitoring your growth. So looking at client satisfaction, looking at the revenue, understanding those things. adjusting your strategies based on that feedback based on the results and then making sure that as you have more people coming in, having that alignment and having consistent training. one big tip I would have for you is if you’re in group practice or starting a group practice, when you have your team meetings, have them at least quarterly and have other people tell stories of success. So if you want to teach people about marketing in networking and someone did really well, have them tell that story. Joe Sanok 00:27:13 So, for example, when I had my counseling practice, this guy Steve. we had identified a business avatar, so, like, an ideal client that we were going to go after. So, in the news that year, on New Year’s Eve, the mayor of our town, was arrested for a DUI for driving under, intoxication. And so we thought about how he’s not going to go through your typical, like, DUI training at the courthouse. there was an alternative where you could go to three counseling sessions with a substance abuse counselor instead of going to this public training. and so we thought about, okay, how do we do more of that? So Steve went around and this was like the November afterwards, and he met with, I think, 15 or so criminal defense attorneys and just said, hey, if any of your clients get any sort of, things this year where they get a DUI or things like that, that they need therapy, I’m your guy. I’m a substance abuse counselor. Joe Sanok 00:28:08 I love working with these people. And that year he just filled up. Now, him telling that story, him saying, I noticed this problem. I then went out and met with all these attorneys and the result was I’m making like two grand more a week. That is more impactful than me saying, hey y’all, come on, you’ve got to get out there and network with people like our numbers aren’t where we want them. That’s just a different tone to have somebody else tell that. So when you’re doing these team meetings, have them tell the success stories because it’s going to mean more. All right. Pull out your phones. Take a picture of this. this is something that is the repeatable formula for filling your practice that we’ve used with tons of therapists. it’s something that we’re going to continue to drill into through our membership communities of next level practice, group practice, launching group practice. Boss. So it’s the practice formula. All right. So first we’re going to plan we’re going to set clear goals and actionable steps. Joe Sanok 00:28:59 And so at the very beginning we have to say like what are we even doing here. Like what’s our goal. You know you want to run some numbers and say, okay, do I need to see 30 people a week? Do I need to see 15 people a week for my family? Do I need to be home two days a week with the kids. And then, you know, maybe I just go see a handful of clients outside. They’re like, what’s the goal? Let’s set some goals. Have some action steps. Do you often find yourself overwhelmed by the influx of client calls you receive? Receptionists are expensive, but you can’t afford to let your patients go to voicemail. You care for your clients, so you try to phone them back. But more often than not, it’s too late. They’ve gone to another practice. When you partner with well-received, you capture every opportunity. Your calls are answered by professional medical receptionists 24 over seven, and they can support you with more than just message checking. Joe Sanok 00:29:59 They offer new patient intake after our service bilingual services, medical appointment scheduling, medical live chat, and so much more. All this at a fraction of the cost of an in-house Receptionist. Your patients are well received. Priority. As a practice of the practice listener, you can get an exclusive 50% off your first two months of service. Head on over to well received. Com forward slash Joe to start growing your practice today. Next we’re going to refine that. So we’re going to continuously improve those processes and strategies. See what’s working what’s not working. And then we’re going to move into attracting new clients. So we want to attract new clients through that marketing drawing in clients through a variety of different ways. There’s really two different ways that people find a practice. One is that they get, you know, you as a therapist, get the blessing of someone. So you get the blessing of a pastor. You get the blessing of their doctor, you get the blessing of their friend that they say, oh my gosh, you have got to go see Caroline. Joe Sanok 00:31:00 She’s an amazing therapist. Go work with her. Or someone searches therapists in my area and you show up through blind searches. Now that can come through SEO work that can come through good marketing pay per click that can come through. If people are doing Yelp reviews on you that you don’t ask for directly. but it’s either kind of a blind search that somehow they find you or it’s kind of the blessing of someone else. Then we want to communicate. We want to maintain that clear and consistent communication. We want to make sure the expectations are clear. So for your no show policy, if it’s a no show, no color, they charge for it or they charge $25 for it. do you waive any of them? If kids are sick, let’s make sure we communicate well so that we retain those clients. Next he is trained. So that’s your own training, your own community, your own people that you’re around that can support you. They can say, oh my gosh, you’re not crazy. I’m going through that as well. Joe Sanok 00:31:50 Or yeah, that sounds a little crazy. Like, let’s work on that together and figure out a different plan. or it might be the training for your staff. So if you own a group practice or if you have a virtual assistant making sure that they have that ongoing education and staff development, next, we want to innovate. I often use the analogy of, plates spinning. Like, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen people spin plates. Like, you’ve got the things that bring in the money. We want to keep those plates spinning. but as they’re spinning, you’re going to kind of have to step back and spin it a little more. But there’s time when the plates are spinning that you can try other things. So we can throw spaghetti at the wall, we can see what sticks. We can try new things, we can innovate, we can do courses, we can do podcasts. But we want to make sure we keep the money coming in through the things that are financially bringing that money in before we’re innovating too much and running after just shiny objects. Joe Sanok 00:32:38 Next, we want to care. Hopefully we care throughout, but prioritizing that client satisfaction and well-being to genuinely think about, okay, what could I do more for my clients? Is it could we have more plants in the waiting room? Could we turn one of our offices into a meditation room? could we offer once a month on a Saturday something that we don’t usually offer on the weekend? What are some things that we can help them with their well-being? maybe it’s an app that you partner with that, you somehow get them a discount on, or you maybe even pay for it. There’s so many ways that you can build that client care. For us, it was even just having a small mini fridge with a kind of clear window in the front and having healthy drinks, having juices and smoothies and things that were a little bit healthier that they could grab. Then last, we want to evaluate and regularly assess that progress and adjust accordingly. We want to make sure we’re planning throughout and then we’re adjusting accordingly. Joe Sanok 00:33:27 All right. Some of the key takeaways of this is we want to make sure we have that effective client attraction operational excellence. We want to have that sustainable growth. However that looks for us. We had some of those real life success stories and then that practice formula. All right I’m going to start going through the chat area. if you have a question where you might want to unmute and come on video and ask the question directly, I would love that. just virtually raise your hand at the bottom, you’ll see that you can react by raising your hand. That’ll just tell me that, you’re ready, that you’re ready to talk. all right. So let’s see. so we had a lot of the discussion here around where you live. Ireland. I’m headed to Ireland, next summer. I’ve been there twice. We’d love to know. where on the West Coast are your favorite parts of Ireland? that’s where we’re headed. all right, first question. Are these ranked in terms of most helpful techniques? So great question. Joe Sanok 00:34:19 I would say that those ten that I went through, I wouldn’t say the most helpful. Those are the ten that I would focus on. and then you can figure out what you feel kind of most drawn to. in general, I say start with one and do it really, really well, then, you know, okay, I just did SEO for a month and I worked really hard on SEO, and then all of a sudden we’re ranking higher and getting new clients. Now, you know, okay, SEO works, or you might network like crazy for a month and then you get no new referrals. You’re like, okay, maybe I don’t need to do that. what software can we use for text sequences? so, conveyor is what we use. So it’s spelled like, c o n v e u r and they have, good, like HIPAA compliant ways to text within a whole sequence. I believe they also will sign a bar with you. also, those other ones that we mentioned are good for just like reminders and things like that. Joe Sanok 00:35:12 All right. Some good conversation there about your morning drinks. all right. So, I see so, Jeremiah, I see you said I need direction. I don’t know where to start. I would love for you to raise your hand. And then maybe we can talk a little bit about that. We’d love to help you. have a little bit of direction as well. next question. What are the organizations that you refer for virtual assistance and what is the cost and things they do for business? let me jump over to, our list of different, let me just pull up all of our different people that we refer to. So and then we’ve got some promo codes that you get a better deal than normal. So well-received. yeah. Let me grab this link. So it’s well received.com/joe. So I would say in general those end up being, anywhere from 500 to $1000 a month. but oftentimes they’ll charge you by the minute. so that’s really helpful to, have something that does it by the minute. Joe Sanok 00:36:14 all right. what if you’re already in the membership? I like the solo practice track. then when I am successful, I want to go into groups. Great questions. So whenever somebody is in one of our anything, if they level up, they never lose anything. We want to make sure that leveling up, you never lose anything. So say you pay for a year of next level practice and you know, Jeremiah, you’re like, okay, I want to get those two months for free by paying for a year of next level practice. so you pay for that year and then say you’re busting at the seams within four months or five months and you’re like, I want to do group practice launch. We take whatever’s left over that you paid for and apply that to the next program. Same if you level up into consulting. We always include our membership communities within consulting. and so, you know, you’re paying a thousand bucks a month for consulting, if you’ve already paid money towards one of the memberships that money’s then applied forward. Joe Sanok 00:37:01 So to me. Everything I do in business, I want it to be like, what would I want if I had paid a thousand bucks to be in a program that I level up into a bigger program, but then I just like lose that thousand bucks, like forget that. So we always apply that. It’s more manual on our team. You know, Jen does an awesome job working with drew to figure all that out. But it is one of those things that it’s like it just is the right thing to do. All right. and, Doctor Sean just finished up group practice lunch. Well worth it. Thank you. Doctor Sean, for saying that. I hope you’re joining group practice, boss, because we’ve got some really awesome things we’re releasing there. if we are already in the membership, does this apply? I really want to focus on this. So if you’re already in next level practice, Jeremiah, you can go into that sustainable practice track. totally. That’s totally part of your membership now. Joe Sanok 00:37:46 So you don’t have to pay anything extra if you’re already in next level practice. and all right. So we’ve got those links in there. what is included in the third option? Full practice, boss. So? So group practice boss. group practice boss is. What’s included in there is you get the weekly meeting on Tuesday. and then you get to come to the next level practice meeting on Wednesday. so that would be six a month that you get. We also have small groups that you go into with other group practice owners. And so if you’re a smaller group practice you’ll be a smaller group practices. If you’re mega practice you go with mega practices. then you also get access to the 30 courses or so that we have specific around group practice. and then you also get discounts on things like our group practice boss conference that we’re doing in May. so really, it’s meant to be all these are meant to be an all inclusive, just kind of be the community for you to to make the best progress as much as possible. Joe Sanok 00:38:41 So. All right. So we got some hands. Rebecca, go ahead and unmute yourself if you want to be on video. That’d be awesome too. I see your hand was up first. Great. Welcome. Speaker 2 00:38:55 I was just curious. So one thing that I hear a lot when it comes to marketing and networking is think about where your ideal client is going. Think about what they’re doing, where they’re engaged, and then reach out to those folks. but I am totally stuck, like, I, I’ve done an ideal client profile, but I haven’t really thought about. I don’t know, is this person going to be in the plant store downtown? Is this person going to be doing yoga? Like, what does that tell me about your ideal client? Joe Sanok 00:39:26 And then we’ll just brainstorm for sure. Speaker 2 00:39:28 So my ideal client is probably in her 30s or 40s. She has a complex childhood trauma history, which she coped with through a lot of internalization strategies. So from the outside, she looks really well healed and put together. Speaker 2 00:39:47 and on the inside, she has been dying for a space to not have to be a boss all the time. Joe Sanok 00:39:56 Okay I’m going to pause you there. So you said 30 to 40. Let’s pick one age that your ideal client is just to make a better profile. So what age you want to give her. Speaker 2 00:40:05 36. Joe Sanok 00:40:07 Okay. She’s 36. she looks put together. She’s got childhood trauma. All right. And then, if she were to write in her journal the night before that, she starts, like, searching for a therapist in her area that can help with childhood trauma for put together women. like, what would she write in her journal that night before? Speaker 2 00:40:27 probably that she is anxious, that she’s feeling overwhelmed, that it’s hard to manage it all. especially hard to manage the pressures of work and relationships and kids. She’s probably a go getter at work. she wants to have the first healthy relationship of her life, and she’s managing her kids, who she more likely than not had young, probably in her teens. Joe Sanok 00:40:49 Okay. so let’s think about where, put together. Women might spend their time. And so like right away I think about my, 36 year old sister, who is pretty put together as far as I know, doesn’t have childhood trauma. but she’s on the PTO. she volunteers at the country club. She’s, connected, you know, with the school beyond just the PTO. so I would start there with, like, parent teacher organizations with, like, other fundraisers at the local country club, at the local yacht club, at the local private schools that you could be a part of in some way. you know, a lot of the private schools will have sort of a, like breakfast and learn or like, you know, right after drop off, you know, the kids get dropped off at 830 and then from, you know, 840 to 910, there’s a quick half hour kind of breakfast and lunch or coffee and counselors or something like that. so I would start to look for those established organizations where put together, you know, moms and women hang out. Joe Sanok 00:41:50 and I’d start with just those couple that I just I just said. Speaker 2 00:41:54 Okay, thank you. I really, really appreciate that. Absolutely. Joe Sanok 00:41:57 Thanks for the first question. All right, men, go ahead. And if I said your name incorrect, please correct me. Yes. Speaker 2 00:42:02 Hi. Speaker 3 00:42:02 Yes. You said it correctly. So I have a general question just regarding like the membership communities. So just a little bit a little bit background. Me and my therapist friend, we started a group practice like last year. So I feel like we already kind of pass like the beginning stage because now we have like, four clinician clinicians on our team. So, but like now we have challenges, in terms of referrals attracting enough clients. So which membership you would recommend? Like it’s this. Joe Sanok 00:42:36 You are 100%, group practice boss like group practice boss is totally your people. Those are people that have at least made their first hire. I would say most people have probably 4 to 10 clinicians is the average. And then we’ve got a handful that have anywhere from 10 to 50. Joe Sanok 00:42:52 those people were starting to look at like, do we want to kind of have similar to our sustainable solo practice track? Do we want to have like a mega practice track within it? because we don’t want to lose them, but also they have different things when you have 50 clinicians compared to four. but yeah, group practice boss is 100% your people. that would definitely be the spot to be. Speaker 3 00:43:10 Okay. Gotcha. Because it’s the thing is, even though we have four clinicians, but we don’t have a lot of clients, so you would still recommend, group practice, boss community. Joe Sanok 00:43:21 Yeah, because you’re a group practice owner. And then you also get access to, like, if you needed to go back through any of the group practice launch information or needed to go into next level practice, you get full access to all of that with your group practice boss membership, so you can go to all the I mean, you can go to next level practice, group practice, boss. I mean, there’s more information than you could ever consume in a month. Joe Sanok 00:43:39 It’s like Netflix. You can never watch everything on Netflix, and they’re always releasing new things. Same mentality that we have. Okay. which also I saw someone in the chat asked about cancellation. We view it like Netflix, where it’s like, if you’re in there for two months and you’re like, you know what? Like, I got what I needed. I’m good. you can just cancel. you know, if you level up and you’ve paid for a year, then that goes, you know, towards whatever you level up into. So, yeah. So it’s similar to Netflix where you can cancel at any time. Okay. Got it. Speaker 3 00:44:06 Thank you. Joe Sanok 00:44:07 Yeah. All right. Jeremiah. Speaker 4 00:44:10 How are you doing, sir? Joe Sanok 00:44:12 Good. How are you today? Good. Speaker 4 00:44:14 All right. I love this, this group. so where my confusion lies is I’m currently in a group practice. I’m underneath somebody, and it’s good for now. It’s sustaining me. But I really want to grow my solo practice. Speaker 4 00:44:33 some of the confusion that I have is whether I should take insurance or cash. So I know there’s there’s pros and cons to both. And I was just wondering, what would you like suggest? Because I have some confusion around it. I, I like insurance because it there’s more of a flow, I would say, but I just don’t like the, the tediousness about insurances. Joe Sanok 00:45:00 Yeah. Let me ask you a couple of questions about your situation with the group practice. So, you’re launching the solo practice. You’re under the group practice. Are they aware that you want to start a solo practice? Speaker 4 00:45:10 Yes. They’re aware. Joe Sanok 00:45:11 Okay. And is the long term plan that you do the solo and leave the group, or is it to keep concurrently doing both of them? Speaker 4 00:45:18 my long term plan. I would like by next year to be, almost all on my own. Joe Sanok 00:45:23 Okay, cool. So it’s just good to know those goals. Okay. And when it comes to your personality, do you tend to do pretty well with with networking, marketing, kind of get your name out there or is that a little bit of a struggle? Speaker 4 00:45:34 I’m really good with, networking. Speaker 4 00:45:35 Naturally. Joe Sanok 00:45:37 Okay. I mean, I would say, you know, the easiest thing then would be to try private pay, and to really push into that. Do you have a rate that you’ve set yet for private pay? Speaker 4 00:45:47 Yes. 175. Joe Sanok 00:45:49 Okay, good. That’s a great starting point. I think as you fill up, continuing to just push that number up. so yeah, I would say first steps are we want to have a really good looking website. So whether that’s you or having a designer do that, you should be able to get a good website designed for 1500 to $2000 or so if you’re paying someone to do it. you know, a lot of people are, you know, like to try to do that and use AI or there’s all sorts of crazy tools out there now. if you don’t feel like it, I would have it be a WordPress based website that’s going to be the most agile to change. when you do something like a square website, or have a custom website. Joe Sanok 00:46:26 it’s really hard to change or to leave that that platform if you don’t like it, whereas WordPress makes it a lot easier to kind of change out the look of your website. once you have the website going, then I would definitely just network like crazy around people that are, you know, your ideal clients. So similar to Rebecca, talking about her ideal client, thinking about the ideal client, and then I would sign up with something like mentor hire. let me grab that promo code for you. they they are a sponsor, but they are seriously what I wish I had had in my private pay practice because it’s just, like, so easy to have the client go get reimbursed. and. All right, here, let’s get this link for you. yes, you can try it out for free. It doesn’t cost you anything. It’s the clients, that pay, I think 3 or 5%, something like that. you know, of whatever is collected and so, you know, say you charge 175. Joe Sanok 00:47:18 typically what happens is then the client has to pay 30 to $40 to, to you, and then they get reimbursed for the rest of they’re paying about the same as what they would pay for insurance. But it covers all of that behind the scenes. So totally worth it. I have a couple of podcasts on it too, if you just search for mentor in the podcast. Speaker 4 00:47:34 Awesome. can I have one last question real quick? Joe Sanok 00:47:36 Absolutely, yeah. Speaker 4 00:47:39 so do you do any, one on one, like, coaching Or is that something that you don’t do? Joe Sanok 00:47:44 We do. Yeah. Yeah. We have five consultants that do it. so, people that do one on one consulting our plans, usually depending on which consultant you’re working with, are somewhere around $600 a month, up to $1,500 a month. So when you’re just getting started, like where you’re at, unless you’re, like, flush with money and you’re like, okay, like, you know, somebody somebody gave me a bunch of money and I want to like, go really fast. Joe Sanok 00:48:04 Usually we recommend joining next level practice doing that for a while. if you want to start a group practice and group practice launch. so there’s times with next level practice when five people show up to some of these meetings, even though we have hundreds of members. So you kind of get the benefits of that one on one consulting without having to, you know, spend six, $700 a month. So I’d say probably for your phase, next level practice would just be like the best place to just dig in as much as possible. Keep doing that. and to learn as much as possible in there. If you if anyone does want to do one on one consulting, we always I always do a pre consulting call just to make sure it’s a good fit. Make sure that we can get you good outcomes. That’s just practice of the practice. Com forward slash apply. So that’s a great place for us to chat about kind of where you’re headed. cool. Thanks Jeremiah. Awesome. Speaker 4 00:48:51 Thank you I appreciate it. Speaker 4 00:48:52 Yeah. Joe Sanok 00:48:53 all right. Seeing some great questions come in. So I see if I’m looking to transition from one to multiple clinicians, what is the best way to move forward? Which program would you pick? Daniella. I think, let me have you unmute. I have a couple of questions for you if you’re still here. Speaker 5 00:49:12 Hi. Hi. How are you? Joe Sanok 00:49:14 Good. How are you? Speaker 5 00:49:16 Good. So when you’re saying. Joe Sanok 00:49:17 You’re just looking at going from having one clinician to then hiring more or tell me more about this transition. Speaker 5 00:49:21 Okay. So basically I developed okay. I’m not sure. Is everybody here like more like a clinical psychologist. Is that what I’m getting? Joe Sanok 00:49:28 Yeah. Most people are therapists, counselors, social workers meets couple life coaches, a psychiatrist here and there. Speaker 5 00:49:35 Okay, okay. So that works. Okay. So I’m a school psychologist. I’m an educational therapist. I created, crash courses. And so basically, my lead gen is the crash course, because my goal is actually to get people somewhere faster. Speaker 5 00:49:49 And if I just front load, then either they’re functional or they know what they’re doing right or what they’re doing wrong, and then we just basically go into, therapy from there. So it could be educational therapy. It could be mindset. Anyway, from there, so I have a really good mousetrap and I get too many people and I’ve just been, on a burnout. I just spent a year burning out, and I don’t know how to make the jump, so it’s actually programs I want to sell, and then a clinician can go Free Willy, but I need them to use a particular foundation. How do I move forward without having to be their employer. So yeah there’s like a win win. You give me the schedule of hours you want to work and you know I’ll fill it up or whatever it is. Joe Sanok 00:50:40 So what you’re talking about really sounds like probably a 1099 contractor, group practice launch with 100% like you are the exact type of person. So everyone has kind of their method or their DNA for their practice that they want to do it. Joe Sanok 00:50:53 and so I would say group practice launch is going to be that community that helps you hire that first person. And then also how do you keep the culture? We have tons of trainings and keeping the culture. So integrating your course and those sorts of things. So 100% group practice launch. Speaker 5 00:51:08 Okay. And as far as like as far as like what to focus on as when I’m attending it, I’ve been reticent to move forward because I’ve done a few hires and have not been happy. So what would be, what would be the ten millimeter move that would make me being in that expansion mode comfortable, I think, or or free flowing. I have everything, I have lots of things established, but I don’t have talent established. I had people who just do whatever they feel like doing. And so I don’t know. So that’s what I’m looking for. Synergy. Joe Sanok 00:51:44 Yeah. So me, so me, Ash and Andrew, all run group practice launch. Andrew, in addition to being a group practice owner, went through this whole HR training and certification, passed the national test. Joe Sanok 00:51:57 Ash just sold her practice that had, I think, 55 clinicians. So so they both are really good at hiring decisions, good questions. How do you wean people in or out? and so part like a huge part of it is making the right decisions with it. So and we’re going to have lots of these. There’s no hard sell. Right. The second like I’d say read there’s a link right in there. that Jen just dropped. Thanks, Jen. to read about group practice launch. come to some of the other Q and A and we can dig in more, especially next week, those like, we can really dig into your situation and make sure that group practice launch is the best fit for you. We always want people to be in the right program, for sure. So, we’re at the end of our time here. As you see, there’s one more quick question. I have a group practice with six providers and one intern. I’m looking for support as a leader. would you still recommend group practice, boss? Yes, 100%. Joe Sanok 00:52:44 I would say. Luba, did I say your name correctly? If not. Okay. Luba, that group practice boss is 100% the, where you should be. also, I would say make sure you come to the group practice boss conference, in May, we’re going to have tons of group practice owners together, next May. So that’s just practice the practice.com/conference. But, just sign up for group practice, boss. And, yeah, we’ll get you going into a small group with other people at your phase. And we have tons of trainings and all sorts of stuff. Well, thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. We could not do the show without our amazing sponsors, and we’ve had a bunch of people join. Well received. So if you are overwhelmed by all of the clients that are calling you, and you’re just like, I don’t know if I should hire a receptionist or not. Getting a virtual assistant company like Well Received is the way to go. Joe Sanok 00:53:42 They can handle your new patient intakes, your after hours services, bilingual. They’re 24 over seven. They do the medical appointments, scheduling all the things we talked about around sales. They are experts in. And you can get the first three months at 50% off when you head on over to well received. Com forward slash Joe. Again that’s well received. Dot com forward slash 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 Silences Sexy for that intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers or guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.