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 Sarna session number 101. Hope you are doing awesome. I’m Joe Stanek and we’re going to get y’all in here. I see we’ve got some people that were in the previous webinar. We got some new folks. Joe Sanok 00:01:13 we’d love to know where we are seeing you. Where are you from? What kind of practice do you have? it’s always nice when we have people from the same place that haven’t met that, they meet in one of our practice of the practice webinars. So, really excited to to have you here today. we are talking let me get this going, and then we’ll see where y’all are from. All right. So we’ve got, All right, all right. We’ve got Tennessee, and, I’m going to be down, in Franklin, at the Mental Health Marketing Conference, in just a couple of weeks here. So, we’ve got some more folks who they’re still typing. So welcome. today we are going to be talking all about uncovering the keys to a full practice. Now, when I started my counseling private practice back in 2006. I was in Kalamazoo. I was a 1099 contractor, but I filed the full LLC, all of that when I moved up to Traverse City. it was really hard to get new clients to figure out, well, how do you find clients? where should I put my time? I still remember when I was building my website, I started this website, mental wellness counseling.com, and it was through this platform called, Microsoft Office 360 websites or something like that. Joe Sanok 00:02:33 and I had a white background and just had a couch, and I just put all these keywords in white in the background, hoping that it would help Google find them. it didn’t work. My website got flagged by Google. I ended up having to take it down and then, you know, do a different platform. But, you know, it was one of those things where you just keep trying stuff and you don’t know if it’s going to work, you don’t know what’s going to work, and it shouldn’t be that way now in 2024. there’s so much information out there. if anything, there’s too much information. And maybe that’s what you feel, that there’s just so much information that you want some help with implementation. And that’s what this week is about. That’s what our communities are about. That’s what I’m about. I like helping people find those shortcuts to speed things up. That’s what I look for in whether it’s podcasts or books or consultants that I hire. I want the shortcut, I want to get it done, and I want to get back to my other life. Joe Sanok 00:03:26 which some of my life between these webinars, we’re going to be posting on Instagram, just so that you can see what’s what’s going on as well. Well, today we’re talking about uncovering the keys to a full practice. we’ve got some time to chat about kind of the content, but want to have lots of time for Q&A. In the previous one. we could have kept going. People had lots of questions. I want I want to make sure we have some extra time for questions specifically on this one. especially those of you that were just in the last one, because I think that, you’re doing some really cool stuff in your private practices. I want to make sure that we’re showing up for you to really answer those questions. Well, if you’re new to practice the practice, I’m Joe Cenac and I’m the founder of Practice the Practice. I get to podcast now 5 or 6 days a week. We’re releasing it. We passed our thousandth episode back in June. We get anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 listeners a month. Joe Sanok 00:04:16 So it’s the number one podcast for counselors and private practice. I’ve been doing this for a really long time. Our podcast was the first private practice podcast, ever. and so we’ve been doing this since 2013 was when the podcast first, released in January of that year. I also, do some public speaking, but I couldn’t be a dad of two awesome girls that we just have a ton of fun together. but let’s talk about why you’re here. So, the struggle of an empty calendar. I don’t know, like, I would love to know, like, how full are you all? so put that in the chat. Like, are you 100% full? Are you 5% full? whatever your capacity is like, say it’s ten clients, is the most you could take, and you’re only a 5 to 50%. How full are you? just so we kind of know where we’re at here. All right, so, 33% ish, 80% ish. All right. Cool. Keep those coming in. Joe Sanok 00:05:12 That’s good to just kind of gauge. no matter where you’re at, whether you really are empty or, you’re filling up, but you want to make sure you stay full. there’s some financial instability. I remember when I was deciding if I wanted to leave my full time job at the community college. so this would have been 2014 or so. and I probably thought about it for the year before because my counseling practice, I had 13 clinicians. things were exploding there, and I was working only 5 to 7 hours a week within that practice. and when I ran the numbers, it was more than what I was making in my full time job at the Or at the, community college. But there was something about it. My parents both worked for the schools. My dad was a school psychologist. My mom was a school nurse. This narrative of have a stable job, have a stable retirement and you will do well in life. That was something that I heard over and over and over. And businesses risky. Joe Sanok 00:06:06 You never know what’s going to happen. It could all fall apart. That’s what I heard. you know, through my parents and my parents are great people, but they just didn’t know any better. Also, when you think about, you know, Gen Xers and especially millennials, boy, the market has changed where you can’t just get a job and then buy a house and all these things. You know, I think the average price of a starter home I saw now is about eight times the average income of, you know, what that person is making. And I want to say it was like two times or three times the average income. you know, back in like the 80s. And so things have shifted where the story that my parents were told is very different than probably what your story is in my story. So there’s this financial instability. And I think what that’s leading to is a desire to create our own path. I still remember when I was deciding whether I was going to leave the community college. Joe Sanok 00:06:55 I was walking with one of my best friends, Taylor. I actually just texted him every Monday. We usually are walking, around lunchtime and he still works at the community college. And he said to me, people way dumber than you have been successful in business. And it was just this idea of like, yeah, there’s people that run bad businesses and still make it all the time. and that idea of, okay, every year I might get a 3% raise, a 4% raise if I’m lucky. But that doesn’t hardly even keep up with inflation. You know, with our health care costs going up, there’s all this financial instability when I had the full time job. So a lot of people now are saying, I want a part time practice. I want to grow into a full time practice, a group practice, no matter where you’re at. A lot of it is saying, I want to be more responsible for what my financial life looks like, then just relying on someone else. There can also be self-doubt and professional insecurity that, we think that if our our calendars aren’t full, if, you know, you may have a group practice, but it’s not full unless webinar. Joe Sanok 00:07:55 One of the people that asked a question, said, you know, we’ve got four clinicians here, but they’re not full. you know, is your membership community for me. And I was like, yeah, that’s exactly what it’s for. but there’s that self-doubt, like, what am I doing wrong? And, you know, professional insecurity. But then also we feel like we’ve missed opportunities that, you know, everyone else is doing better than us, that we’re around other people and they’re, you know, filling up their practices. We hear about how there’s a mental health care shortage, but then that means we should be full, right? Like if we’re if there’s a mental health shortage, that means those of us that are in the mental health field, we should be busting at the seams. And if we don’t, we feel like, what’s wrong with me? So we’re gonna talk through a lot of that stuff. So let’s start with what’s holding you back. share your experience in the chat. Joe Sanok 00:08:37 So what challenges are you facing and filling your practice? And then maybe, with an emoji. I kind of jumped the gun here. I forgot this was in this one, but using emoji, to respond to, like, how you feel about how full your practice is right now. So what’s an emoji that you could put in there as to how you feel about the fullness of your practice, and what challenges are you dealing with? So looks like we got some people that are 80%, two thirds full or so. And so practices launching in January of 2025. Awesome. You’re in the right place. 80%, 100% full. I need two clinicians in to fill them. Awesome. Yeah, that’s 50% full. love the emojis coming through. If you aren’t looking at this, you’ve got it. That’s. I’m just glad I asked this question. who just hired three more clinicians and our intakes have slowed down. Oh, that’s like a oh, my gosh, this just makes me laugh. so I love being in a presentation that makes me laugh. Joe Sanok 00:09:31 Thank you. You all are hilarious. so, wait, did I cover all the things in there? Yeah, we did. all right. Redefining the fullness. So I love stepping back and saying, should you be this full? Do I need to be this full? So we want to first think about what do you need financially? So say you’re in solo practice and you’re like, you know what? For my family to really live the life I want, I want to take home $100,000. So we’re gonna start with a higher number than maybe, you know, a lot of people are dreaming of to, you know, give a little inspiration. And then we’re going to say, okay, for, for for rent, for other things. We’re going to give ourselves like 50% more. And then maybe to help out with some, some of the taxes. Let’s do like 60%. So probably 60% of what you take home will go towards taxes, expenses, all those sorts of things. It’s pretty reasonable. Joe Sanok 00:10:17 So we’re going to multiply that times 1.6. So that’s going to be 160 k. That needs to come in. So if we know these numbers it helps us define what fullness is to us. So now we might want to say okay I’m going to divide that by the number of weeks I want to work. So I want to take off say four weeks a year. It takes them off in the summer, takes them off at other times. So we’re going to do that by 48 weeks. So that means we need to bring in $3,333.33 every single week to hit that financial goal. So if we know, okay, I got to bring in just under $3,400 a week. Now we can start to run some numbers based on either total sessions we want to do in a week or if we’re charging a certain rate. So if we say, okay, let’s just say we charged, you know, 150 a session that’s, you know, 22 sessions per week. So if we go back and say, well, if we charged 175 per session, well, that’s only 19 sessions a week. Joe Sanok 00:11:14 and so say we charged if I do that three 3333 and say we charge 200 a session, oh, that’s only 16.6 sessions a week. So that’s where we can start to run some of the numbers and say, okay, do I want to do this based on how many, how much I want to charge? Or do I want to do this based on like the what, total sessions I want to do? So imagine I took that amount and said, you know what, I’m going to be insurance based, so I know that I’m only going to average 1/20 session. Well, that then tells us you’ve got to be doing 27.7 sessions or 28 sessions a week. So, versus if we say, you know, I would really I feel like I can max out at 22 sessions. So just divide by 22. I’m going to charge 151 per session, at 22 sessions to do that. So that starts to help us then say, okay, I’ve defined fullness this way, but is it just based on my energy? I can only do 18 sessions a week. Joe Sanok 00:12:09 I can only do 31 sessions a week, whatever. We want to kind of think through some of that. So your rate should be based on the income you want, or we can do it on the market rate or on the time worked. And so running numbers are all these factors. If you said, okay, if I based it on the income I wanted 100 K give probably 60% more towards other expenses in taxes. Okay. That’s three 3333 per week if we work 48 weeks. All right. Or if we start with the market rate and say, okay, well, I’m going to take insurance and I don’t think I can charge more than 125 for private pay in my area. And to kind of let that creep up. Well, that might define what fullness is to us Or we might say, you know what? I honestly can only work two days a week, and I can only do four sessions a day with my level of just like energy. And I want to maximize that. And so we’re going to base it on your life right now. Joe Sanok 00:12:57 Maybe it can only be eight sessions a week. And so we say okay we’re going to do that. So we want to go beyond just the numbers. We want to think through your energy. We want to think through what kind of people drain you versus invigorate you. What sessions do you leave going, dang, that was awesome. I feel like a badass therapist. Holy cow, that was incredible. And which ones do you leave going? Oh my gosh, when I see that person on my calendar again, I don’t want to see that person on my calendar again. We don’t want that. We want to be able to say, the people that you show up for, you’re excited for that. That last session of the week has the same energy as that first session of the week. And so we start to evaluate that. I just want to look at the personal fulfillment side, you know, are there specific areas that you deeply care about. You know, for me, raising two daughters that are ten and 13, primarily on my own. Joe Sanok 00:13:47 to me, as a single dad, like when I do podcasts, I just did one last week that’s going to release, I think, late September, early October. and it was all around like a new version of feminism and raising kids. We talked through all these things, like, I care about that, and I leave that podcast interview excited. It’s like, I just had coffee with a friend and I get paid for that. We want to find that personal fulfillment where you say, yes, this is the kind of place I want to work. That’s why in almost every single podcast, I say we help you build a thriving practice you absolutely love. Because to me, there’s lots of ways that you can make money. There’s lots of ways that you can, you know, define the market and say, oh, there’s a need here, but do you want to fill that gap because it’s too easy early on in particular, or even if you have a group practice and overextend yourself to say, oh, there’s a market need here, we should do it. Joe Sanok 00:14:38 But do you want to do it, will that help you thrive? Let’s ask that question. But also, will you still be in love with your practice? Will you say, yes, this is the work we want to do. And then lastly, we want to think about quality over quantity. now there are times like if you’re an insurance based practice and you’ve got 20 or 30 clinicians, like, yeah, we got to look at the quantity, we got to look at how do we do that. But we also want to look at on the micro scale. How do we look at the quality. How do we make sure that we have good quality assurance. How do we make sure we look at the user experience, whether you are one person or 50 people, we want to make sure that we’re looking at that quality of care over just the quantity. All right. So thinking through what does full mean to you. So as we’ve run some of these numbers I’d love for you to share in the chat. Joe Sanok 00:15:22 just what is full look like to you now? We said some percentages. but have you evaluated if your percentages are based on what you actually need, maybe you need fewer sessions. Maybe you need more sessions. is it just is it, just about the numbers or is there something more for you, Like energy. So we’d love to have you put any of that in the chat around specifically. Like what’s full look like to you and how did you land on that? Because sometimes hearing other people say things really helps you be able to say like, oh, okay, I didn’t think of it that way. All right. First thing I say, I met my financial goals and still have energy to cook dinner and we just move on. Another thing. I meet my financial goals and still have energy to cook dinner and have a conversation with my husband. At the end of the day, that is such a great beyond the numbers. So you’ve got the financial goals, but to have that energy to cook dinner and to have a conversation with your husband at the end of the day, yeah, to me, if I work so hard that when I have days off, I’m just recovering. Joe Sanok 00:16:19 to me, that’s not healthy. I want to be having my weekends be in preparation for the next week. In regards to that, it feels like, okay, I’m doing things that give me energy instead of just recovering from the week before. so on my own full is 24 hours a week, but not when I’m doing admin and leadership work in group practice. All right, so we’ve got some different, different ways of thinking through it there. All right. So let’s talk a few things about marketing. to fill your practice. All right. So generalist versus a niche. So in some cities you really need to be a generalist, especially rural areas. if you take insurance and you just have a steady flow, oftentimes being a generalist is just fine. And maybe you like that. Maybe you like to be, doing a variety of different things within it. but if you are struggling to fill up niching down a little bit more can be really, really helpful. so I like to often use an example here in downtown Traverse City, we have an awesome food scene. Joe Sanok 00:17:18 there’s this place called AMA called. It’s a French restaurant. They have niched into French food, delicious food. Now they don’t have a hamburger on their menu. But I imagine if I went there with someone that really just liked burgers and they weren’t really a French food person. I mean, it’s kind of a waste of money for me to go there in the first place, but say they asked for a burger and say we didn’t get kicked out. And Michael said, yeah, we’ll make you a burger. That burger would probably be delicious because they are so good at what they do. They could then generalize into something else. Whereas if I went to a general diner, the general restaurant said, you know what? Can you whip up a creme brulée for me? That would be awesome. I just have in the mood for a Kimberly. They’d be like, what are you talking about? And if they made it, it probably wouldn’t be that great. We assume that a generalist cannot be a specialist or general care doctor. Joe Sanok 00:18:04 We don’t say, hey, could you maybe do some brain surgery on me? Whereas if we had a brain surgeon that was working on us or that we knew and we said, hey, like, I have this rash, do you think I should talk to my general practitioner? They’d be like, oh, yeah. Or they say, oh, no, they just put some cream on it. We assume that a specialist will be a generalist, but we don’t assume a generalist will be a specialist. So there’s a lot of value, especially in competitive markets, to niching in and to not just niching in and saying I help people with anxiety and depression. Everybody helps people with anxiety and depression. Who do you help? So in the last webinar. we were talking a little bit about, you know, one specialty area that it was, women that on the outside look like they have it put together. They might be on the parent teacher organization, they might be a member of the country club, but they might also have some childhood trauma and feel like they are just moments away from it all exploding. Joe Sanok 00:18:52 So to say something like, I help women who seemingly have all of their life put together but feel like on the inside it could all crumble at any moment. or to think through like, what is that pain? And what’s that transformation that you help people with? We also want to add layers of the niche. So maybe you do like anxiety and you really want to work on anxiety anxiety. Now we can think about a certain population that you help a certain phase of life, that you help even your own layers of niche. Like we have someone in our next level practice community, that’s really into like Comic Con and video games and things like that, and is really supportive of that community because she’s in that community. And so she can speak in that language in a way that other people couldn’t. That’s a layer of niche just in who you are. So maybe you run triathlons and you become the person that helps folks dealing with anxiety that also maybe are running a triathlon. So thinking through some of that now, when we look at marketing, we want to also look at private pay versus insurance. Joe Sanok 00:19:52 So private pay we tend to do more on the marketing side. We tend to do more on how do you stand out, how do you get known for a specialty so that people pay for it? On the insurance side, you’re going to put your time share into some marketing, not nearly as much, but you’re going to put more into kind of that infrastructure, that operations of making sure that the flow, getting all the approvals from insurance, the follow up with insurance and all of that, that you’re able to get that, that that’s where you’re putting more of your time in. It’s never too early to start thinking about tax season. That’s why I’ve partnered with my friends over at herd. Herd serves as the financial back office built specifically for therapists in private practice. They’re an all in one financial solution that combines software with human support to handle bookkeeping, taxes, payroll, and more. Regardless of whether you’re a seasoned clinician or in your first year of your practice, heard will identify growth areas and streamline best financial practices for your business when you sign up with heard. Joe Sanok 00:21:04 You’ll connect your bank accounts so your transactions will be automatically pulled in and categorized. My favorite thing about heard is their allocation guide, which helps you decide how much to pay yourself each month and how much to set aside for taxes. You’ll also receive financial insights such as profit and loss statements and monthly reports. You can say goodbye to poring over spreadsheets and guessing your tax deductions or quarterly payments. Focus on your clients and heard will take care of the rest. Sign up for a free consultation today at join heard. Com forward slash Joe and get one month free with promo code Joe. Again that’s join heard.com/joe. Next we want to be looking at optimizing your website and making sure that your website flows well. That it’s easy to find that in the upper right corner we have something that says schedule an intake or get started. Don’t have contact us or let’s talk or chat with us. Make it clear that this is clinical and they’re signing up to get an intake with you. So we want to have something like schedule an intake. Joe Sanok 00:22:13 We want that website to have very clear calls to actions that your counseling, the amount of websites that I have seen where there’s like a tree with a river and it says there’s hope for your family or something like that. Nothing clear about counseling. It could just as easily be a website for a funeral home. And so to me, we want to make sure it’s super clear that you do counseling, that you do therapy, that it’s all over the place, that wherever you look, you see therapy or counseling or family counseling, couples counseling, whatever, so that in a millisecond people know they’re in the right place. Because people only ask themselves two things when they’re on your website, because we’re so used to be on websites that aren’t good for us, that are just like, oh, this isn’t what I was looking for. And so the first question is, me in the right place, so am I on a counseling website. And then second, can this person help? So can this person. Joe Sanok 00:22:59 Help is basically saying like, do they do what I think they do? And also do they have the expertise? So we want to use what we call the pain to transformation formula. And so what’s the pain that you help with and what’s the transformation you see. So I help kids who keep getting kicked out of school to have a plan for their behavior and educational success. I help couples that crave that original spark of their relationship to fall in love again, I help young people that are launching into college to find their wings and leave the nest. So what is the struggle? And then what is that transformation? We just want to optimize for SEO, for search engine optimization. So creating content, having links that come back to the website, having things that help people know that you have that expertise. So you’re about us or about me page should never be. I went to Western Michigan University. I majored in psychology and comparative religion and did a double master’s in counseling and psychology. And I’m trained in all these things and super boring. Joe Sanok 00:24:05 Not what the client wants to see. We want to start with, I absolutely love working with couples that have lost the spark in their relationship, to find the next chapter of what they want in that relationship. I got trained through the Gottman because I love research and being able to help you find effective ways as a couple. I majored in psychology at Western Michigan University and primarily focused on couples because I know. So you’re always thinking through the lens of what’s in it for me. So that’s what the client’s asking. Is this about me or is this about that person? So we always wanted that client in mind. All right. We’ll leverage social media. So we want to do some analysis of where is your ideal client hanging out. Are they on Instagram. Are they on TikTok. Are they on Facebook LinkedIn? finding those ways to create content there? I would say follow a bunch of people on whatever platform it is that you really like personally. and follow people that are similar to your ideal client. Joe Sanok 00:25:08 And so thinking about, okay, how do people on Instagram talk about couples compared to how do people talk about couples on TikTok? how do people talk about mental health issues on LinkedIn differently? Usually it’s probably an employee type of discussion rather than just a, hey, are you struggling with this? So starting to understand that culture of that social media is so important, so that then we next can start to create our own content there that feels authentic to that environment. And then we want to engage with your local community. So doing public speaking, connecting with organizations that are already there so that you’re not building audiences from scratch. So a lot of therapists we’ve noticed lately are doing different hikes around different things in town. Here we have a therapist that does this thing called a glimmer hike. And, you know, she asks for, I think, you know, ten bucks or so for someone to, like, pay to go on these hikes. And so there’s, I don’t know, 20 people or so they go. Joe Sanok 00:26:01 And she does some kind of mindfulness type of things. That’s a great way to connect with people in the community that could become referral sources or could also become clients. We really want to continue to build that power of your referrals, that those connections. Now, these aren’t always just these super formal like, hey, let me bring lunch to the doctor’s office. No, these can be just getting coffee with another therapist that’s in your specialty. So if you help kids get to know the other people that help kids, if you help couples get to know other people, to help couples, if you help people that are anxious, get to know other therapists, to help people that are anxious, you’re strengthening that professional relationship in a number of different ways. you know, I was just at a wedding this weekend, for my friends Nick and Elise. Now, Nick has this thing called the Boardman review. It’s sort of like the size of, like, an academic journal. And they put it out quarterly, and they usually have 10 to 12, different stories from people in the area about different things. Joe Sanok 00:26:57 And they’ll have sort of a theme for some of it. And they do this big release party where they, you know, sell a bunch of the Boardman review things and each author probably buys, you know, 10 or 20 of them to give to friends, family, clients, things like that. It’s kind of a big deal to be in it. So I wrote an article in there, about the four day workweek and kind of some different things around that. but through doing that, what Nick has done is every quarter he has, you know, 10 to 12. And sometimes the articles have, you know, two people co-write it and then has, you know, 50 people a year that he’s deeply connecting with locally around different interesting stories. Now his business is videography and design. So he and his brother have this really awesome business that they do all sorts of videography design. The network they’ve created has thus allowed them to spread their business, because they have this one thing that just brings people together and helps them network. Joe Sanok 00:27:51 Now that’s way different than Nick being like, hey Joe, you want to grab a beer sometime? And just like, get to know each other, like, sure, we can do that. Or maybe you start some mental health magazine that once a month or once a year, you have some really interesting stories, or you have an event that you put on. We have several events here in town that are similar to sort of like the NPR moth, or like Story Lab or things like that, where, you know, people tell a story that’s, you know, 10 to 15 minutes long around a certain topic. Those are all great ways to become the person that creates the networks. And then when I look at developing a referral system so clinicians eat insurance out of network other groups and keeping track of that. So if somebody sends you a referral, to send them a thank you card, say thank you so much for your referral. If you ever have questions, give me a call. you’re not necessarily saying that person’s name. Joe Sanok 00:28:43 but, you know, to make sure that either you or your front desk coordinator is sending that out to other people when they get those referral for referrals and then engaging past clients when someone isn’t coming, to send them an email and say, hey, we’re starting this group, that I think you’d be a great fit for it. It’s around people who have been in counseling but now are managing that well, that just, you know, once a month or once a quarter are going to get together, or to even say, hey, I don’t know if you have any friends or family members dealing with this topic, but, we have some openings we’d love to have you refer any friends or family members. As we look at retaining and growing, we want to look at that, that exceptional customer service. this is an area so many therapists drop the ball on, and it’s such an opportunity to be able to grow really easily compared to other people in your area. because, a lot of people aren’t doing it. Joe Sanok 00:29:33 We want to do better follow up care. So, you know, follow up after the intake follow up. in different ways. Do customer surveys. There’s so many ways you can do this in a really easy way to have that regular communication. So do they prefer to get an email to they prefer to get a text or a phone call that’s automated to say, hey, just a reminder, calendar invites, those sorts of things are small and don’t take much, but also make sure that people come to their counseling appointments. We want to simplify your practice overall, so we want to automate those admin tasks as much as possible. using things like Zapier, Zapier, can help kind of connect different things within your practice. You always want to make sure you’re looking at kind of HIPAA compliance and business associates agreements, those sorts of things, but using that technology to your advantage to be able to level up differently, to really, like, grow in a way that isn’t just creating extra bulk within your practice. Joe Sanok 00:30:25 We want to reduce your burnout, by making sure that you’re focusing on your time outside of the practice, that you’re doing, things that fill you up, that you’re not just constantly working. we just did the 2024 State of Private Practice survey, and the number one, kind of area of struggle was marketing. But behind that tied for second was financial problems and like time and burnout. So people feeling like they didn’t know where to spend their time, they didn’t want to burn out. They didn’t know how to manage their money, that it was all jumbled in the number two. and we need to have a plan for that. We need to think through. Okay. I’m gonna have some hard boundaries on when I work. When I don’t work, I’m not going to be emailing after the kids are in bed, or at least defining what that looks like. And then lastly, we want to make sure that we’re outsourcing early on in this process, even if it’s just like five hours a week spending, you know, $30 an hour or something. Joe Sanok 00:31:19 The things that you can get done for that $150 a week, have five hours and then to go do one more session to kind of pay for that. Do what you do best and outsource the rest. The more that we can be doing that, the more we can scale around the areas that we’re really good and have someone else help with all that admin that’s behind the scenes. We want to make sure that we price for success. So having competitive rates, but that doesn’t mean that you’re always going to be the lowest common denominator. Thinking about well what am I offering here. So one thing I did with a consulting client, this was a couple of years ago, but it really helped her shift her mindset around her rate. So she had gone through this training where when it came to, to like falling asleep like narcolepsy, she could solve it within usually six sessions or so. Whereas the average therapist that would take 20 plus if they solved it at all. and so what happened was we, I think she was charging like 150 a session, and I was challenging her to significantly raise her rates to like 225 or more. Joe Sanok 00:32:20 And so we walked through all the details of what her ideal clients were dealing with. And so she probably would have anywhere from 10 to 15 clients and were dealing with like, sleep disorders. And every single one of them would bring someone with them to the session. They wouldn’t necessarily sit in the session. but they needed a driver because of kind of what was going on with their sleep. and so when we looked at, okay, this person’s taking off work for counseling, they’re getting driven. they’re coming to the office. They have another person. When we added up, how much? She saved them in time by doing six sessions instead of 20, the rate per hour of how much it would cost for 20 sessions versus six was around $900 per hour. And so when she heard that, she said, okay, I’m more confident in what I’m offering is really, really good. And it allowed her then to raise her rates higher and higher to then be able to think differently about the practice. This is where understanding the market and the demographics and you know, is what you offer something that is a hot commodity, like a lot of areas, eMDR, for example, there’s not a lot of people doing that. Joe Sanok 00:33:21 More are, thankfully. But, you know, oftentimes because of the level of certification, things like that, you know, whether you’re Gottman level, whether you’re eMDR or different things, understanding your market. And are you a bit of a unicorn, like, are you a hot commodity that you should be charging more? and then figuring out how do you get in front of those audiences so that they are making referrals into your practice? And then we want to communicate that value with confidence. so practicing that to, to say, I help therapists scale their private practice so large that they don’t have to put in more than five hours a week into the practice, or I help people leave their counseling practice to write a book and do a Ted talk so that they can level up in a way that helps more people on a national scale to be able to say, okay, what is it that you do? Those are things that I do, but what do you do? And how do you say that? With confidence. Joe Sanok 00:34:14 So what will you implement? First, we just covered a lot of things. I would love for you to chat about which strategy you resonate with the most. I don’t want you to do all of them. I’m a big fan of picking the one thing that you’re going to try for a while. Go a foot in that direction instead of 12in in 12 or 1in and 12 directions. and so finding something going with it, giving it a whirl, seeing the results, mastering it, get that plate spinning, then move on to the next thing where you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall. that’s what we want. So let’s see, what’s coming in. Also your questions. we’re going to have lots of time for that. so put some questions in here, too. all right. And, so the way we’re going to do this is, I know there was a whole lot of, a whole lot of different, questions that came in through the chat. So I’m going to start there with some of those. Joe Sanok 00:35:03 I’m going to give you all the ability to unmute yourself. All right. Cool. so if you have a question where you want to go back and forth, please just virtually raise your hand. at the very bottom, you’ll see. Raise your hand. and then your little hand will go up. that lets me know that you want to go back and forth and we’ll chat a little bit about your situation. some of the questions in the chat, I may ask you to unmute yourself to dig in a little bit more, but let’s dive into the questions there and let people, raise their hands. All right. Jen’s been answering a bunch of the questions that are in here. If they’re more logistical. So I’ll skip over. There’s those. when working with the community regarding networking, do I charge as a beginner to do I charge as a beginner to present on a subject, etc.? I would say when you’re first getting started, networking and public speaking is usually free of charge. knowing that you then are allowed to kind of promote your practice. Joe Sanok 00:35:58 Now, if someone comes to you and says, I know you’re an expert in trauma, will you present at our conference? I usually would ask, do you have a budget for that? and then I’m going to just kind of think through. Well, is getting in front of those people worth it for my time and energy and it takes to put into this conference planning? Or is this something that I really do need to charge for? I say, when you first get started, take anything you can get present anywhere you can be, and don’t worry about charging because you’ll get a whole bunch and more and kind of clients and stuff. when you go to resources on deprogramming the therapist money guilt, I mean, there’s some, some good mindset, podcasts out there. there was one that I was just on, a top seven list. I posted on Facebook, that I forgot what she’s like at the money therapist or something like that. I think that reading. So I just, I’m reading the book called The Algebra of Wealth. Joe Sanok 00:36:56 it’s a really good book. and the guy, Scott Galloway, I would definitely follow him. He has a lot of really just good ways. He thinks about life. He thinks about money. He thinks about how we’ve been programmed. he’s a really good resource. I think that if anything, meditating, and thinking and walking and journaling around where it’s coming from, kind of doing your own therapeutic work on just money guilt, because if you really think about it, money, it just expands what’s already there. We’ve been given this narrative through television, through our social work classes, through whatever that if you have money or participate in a capitalist system, you are the enemy. and this is we each have to figure out where we personally fall in regards to our beliefs around what I just said. But we are in a system and we can choose do we participate in that system or not? And if we choose to participate, then we still come in with all of our values. We still come in with all of our DNA, all the ways we think about the world. Joe Sanok 00:37:59 So if we make more money, hopefully we then expand those very things that that we believe about the world. That money then becomes a tool that helps us do things on a different level. hopefully that’s helpful. If you need more resources, we can kind of look around. Let’s see. Engage community is my thing. It’s kind of hard when I’m still working full time with an agency. I don’t want them to know. Oh, I get that. I think that, that’s always a sticky situation. Especially if you feel like they might just let you go as soon as they know you’re working on a side gig thing. If. Terry, if you have extra questions, feel free to raise your hand and we can dig into kind of more around that. Is it possible to over niche or too much niche? So I see there’s already some comments in there. I think you can I mean, if you are a therapist that helps people dealing with anxiety for people that own dogs, that have Polish descent and live in the zip code 49686, it’s probably too much. Joe Sanok 00:39:00 but I do think that the more you specialize in, the more you attract the exact client that you want to attract. And so, thinking through who is it that you want to attract? And if you’re not attracting those people, niche in a little bit more. All right. I want to learn about marketing and group. what should I sign up with you guys? okay, so if you’re looking at and feel free to raise your hand and we can dig into this if I don’t answer it. if you haven’t hired your first clinician, you can have hired, like, a virtual assistant or intake assistant. But if you haven’t hired the first clinician, group practice launch would be for you. So group practice launch. That’s a, a six month program to help you make that first hire. Oh, I see you unmuted. Tell me. Yeah. Sorry. Speaker 2 00:39:50 Yeah, I already have, five therapists that work for me, but I’m. I can’t get them filled up, and I need, marketing, lead magnets, courses, all of that to attract more people for that. Joe Sanok 00:40:06 Yeah. So that would be group practice, boss. 100%. So you’ve made your first hire around filling them up. That’s a common problem actually. In the last webinar we had some people asking about that too. It’s it’s more that we want to make sure that we have people that own group practices, even if they’re not filled up yet, they’re in group practice, boss. So the requirement is they’ve at least hired their first clinician. more times than not, we’re in the 5 to 10 range. And that’s a very common struggle to kind of have okay, we’ve been full we’re not full and and talk you through that. So group practice boss 100% would be where you’d want to sign up. Speaker 2 00:40:36 Okay. And there’s help with marketing and like virtual assistants and all of that. I’m really struggling. And like you said, I don’t want to go to like, Facebook and hear and how to hire a marketer, how to have people help me. So that covers it. Joe Sanok 00:40:52 Yes. Every single month in our Ask the Expert we bring in different experts. Joe Sanok 00:40:55 So for example, last month, we, we had heard from a lot of people that they didn’t feel like they knew how to do good video, both tele therapy, but also like promo videos. So we brought in an expert, a friend of mine who is an amazing photographer and videographer, and he talked about lighting. He talked about your narrative, he talked about how to do good video. And so we’ll do really hyper niche things like that. But then we also have full courses on, you know, marketing your your group practice on networking and expanding and filling people up and how to focus on each person as having their own really hyper niche so that they can get filled up. So yeah, what you’re talking about are all things that we cover in group practice, boss. All right. and, Teri, let me bounce to you, and then we’ll go back over to what’s in the chat. go ahead and, Yeah, go ahead and ask your question. Speaker 3 00:41:43 I just wanted to follow up with the question I put in there. Speaker 3 00:41:45 Like, I’m the one that’s starting, practice in 2025, and I just passed my, last January, the 22nd. So I was working two jobs. Thank you. I know I’m still trying. I’m still feeling it. So I was working a full time and a part time because I needed the money. So I let the part time go so I could start focusing on private practice. But I’m coming to a point now where I’m trying to get all this stuff together to launch. But there’s the fear of certain avenues I don’t want to go because of fear of my full time job finding out because they’re not very encouraging with you, doing your own thing and venturing out and there and there. The type of mentality that when an employee comes in, you’re supposed to be right or die. You stay with the company forever. So it’s that part. I mean, I’m going to do it anyway, but that part is very nervous. I’m having a lot of, struggle with that. Joe Sanok 00:42:38 Yeah. I mean, I think that’s it’s unfortunately a very common mindset and it’s a very sort of like, industrialist way of thinking about the world instead of kind of a post-industrial world where it’s like people just stay here forever. Joe Sanok 00:42:51 Like, man, if people leave, practice the practice, I want them to leave on good terms and go after whatever their big things are. I do think that, yeah, there’s a couple of things like if, if they found out what you’re doing, like, would they just, like, fire you on the spot? no. Speaker 3 00:43:06 But I think other people have other things, like they’re writing chapters and books and things have been made very uncomfortable for them. The environment has been. Yeah. Joe Sanok 00:43:16 Well, I mean, it sounds clear to me just from that little bit that you’ve shared, that there’s no way you’d want to stay in that environment long term. Like the thing that they fear of people leaving is the thing that they’re creating by being like that. So it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I think I would be careful on a certain number of areas. And there’s there’s actually people in next level practice who have gone through that. I remember a couple people specifically, and I’m sure, Sarah and Jen would know their names once you get in the program, to connect you with that have been in various similar situations. Joe Sanok 00:43:46 yeah. There’s unfortunately people that, you know, they treat the business that way like it’s like you’re somehow like divorcing them instead of just, like, growing up, doing your own thing. But I think we do it over because you think about if we had October, November, December, you know, probably half of December. Most people are not working that much. So two and a half months to say what what can we work on? Typical websites going to take you probably about a month or so to launch. You can have it be all ready to go, and then maybe you don’t launch it until you’re ready. you know, have the social media setup, but and have a whole bunch of posts ready to go and planned out so that maybe you have social media scheduled out, you know, from January until March. And so there’s a lot of things you could write, you know, 20 blog posts ahead of time, and we don’t launch it until January. So there’s so much of that stuff that you could kind of have in the hopper just ready to go when you’re ready to go public. Joe Sanok 00:44:35 so then you can focus on the things that, you know, like the therapy or the in-person networking. but then, you know, I’ve got a blog post going out every week, I’ve got good SEO going on, I’ve got a beautiful website, I’ve got my logo done. Those are all things that you definitely over the next two and a half months could work on with, with the help of people in next level practice. Speaker 3 00:44:52 Thank you so much. Joe Sanok 00:44:53 Yeah, you’re not alone in this. It can feel very lonely, especially when you have an employer like that. So I’m sorry about that. Speaker 3 00:44:59 Thank you. Joe Sanok 00:45:01 All right. I see the next one is what if I want to grow my solo practice as well as start with hiring 1 or 2 interns? Would next level practice or group practice launch be better? So in that situation, I would say those two interns would kind of qualify as your first hires. So you really want to make sure that you have someone that’s an expert in HR helping you decide some of those things. Joe Sanok 00:45:21 So Andrew, who’s one of our facilitators of group practice, launch this round, he’s gone through a whole national HR training certification, passed the test. So having him be able to kind of say, here’s things you need to ask your accountant or your attorney, here’s ways to structure it, to be around other people who have had more of a teaching based practice. we want to make sure that you do that right from the beginning. and then also, how do you make sure those interns understand a track into potentially joining your practice? Like, that’s a great way to kind of mold that next generation of therapists, teach them the things that maybe they missed in grad school, and then instead of them going into someone else’s practice and getting all those benefits like, let’s keep them in-house. You know, if it’s a one year internship, how do we kind of move them along so that eventually they may want to join your practice? So group practice launch would be for sure the best one for you. Susanna. Joe Sanok 00:46:10 big, I would like you all to go down to reactions and, pick a reaction for this webinar especially, I’m going to do my reaction around Jen and Sarah kind of fielding things behind the scene. So, I’m going to I’m going to give them a bunch of rocket ships, because they are helping us blast off into a next level. but we’d love for you to just, pick a little icon as your reaction. Awesome. Thank you so much, everyone, for hanging out and leveling up while other people are giving up. Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day! Thank you for hanging out today with us at Level Up Week. We have tons of trainings here all around every single phase of practice, and we also love the tools that help you if you’re thinking about the end of the year and taxes and wrapping all of that up, you need to connect with heard. Connect with them before the end of the year so that you can get a free consultation to talk through your tax situation. Joe Sanok 00:47:12 There’s tons of things that you need to think about year end and heard is going to help you with it. Head on over to join. heard.com/joe that’s joined h e a r d.com/joe thank you for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. We’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.