[JOE SANOK] This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 785. I’m Joe Sanok, your host and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I hope you are doing amazing today. We are in the middle of Level Up Week, which has been such a fun week. We have over 15 free webinars this week; today at 11:00 AM Eastern, today, September 14th, we have our Killin’It Camp webinar talking about Killin’It Camp. If you want to come, the first hundred people that level up this week are actually going to get a free ticket to that. That’s going to be in Cancun, Mexico, October 20th. Also, at 1:00 o’clock Eastern today, the 14th, moving from solo to group practice. Then at 2:15, we’re going to talk about how to get a book deal with Nancy Hancock. She was my writing coach and helped me get a Harper Collins book deal. Then tomorrow at 11:15 Eastern, we have the Level Up Your Practice Q&A and then we have the additional streams of income webinar tomorrow at 2:00 o’clock Eastern and we’re going to be adding more and more. Make sure you go over to practiceofthepractice.com/levelup to register for whichever free webinars suit your fancy. We’re covering everything around starting a practice, going into a group practice, rocking out group practice, and then maybe even leaving or adding additional streams of income. So, however it is that you are hoping to level up hopefully we have a handful of webinars for you. This week. We’re going to try to do this twice a year. This is the first time we’ve done Level Up Week, and really, we decided that we wanted to just have something that our whole team and all of our communities could just surround and say, we are going to level up. We’re going to keep pushing ourselves growing. Really, as I meet really interesting guests on this show planning to start to have some of them during the next Level Up week. So it’s just like a fun thing for us to do for our communities, for our listeners, and I’m just so excited about it. Today is the second to last day of Level Up Week. If you haven’t leveled up into the community you want to be in, it’s open right now. Next Level Practice, this cohort is wide open, there’s space in that for you. We only have 50 spots, so actually, I don’t, because we’re recording ahead of time, actually don’t know if it’s wide open, could be closed by this point. Then we have Group Practice Launch if you’re adding a clinician into your practice, and then Group Practice Boss, and then Audience Building Academy, if you’re building those other things, all those details over at practice, the practice.com/levelup. We are going to have an amazing show today. I can’t wait to hang out with Brian Cooper, who is the owner of North Collective Counseling in Rochester, Michigan, which is a suburb of Detroit. Brian specializes in working with interracial and multicultural couples, as well as EMDR trauma counseling. Brian has the privilege of helping couples find their way back to each other with greater connection, love, and intimacy, and helping individuals heal from what they’ve experienced in their past. In his spare time, he loves to golf and spend time with his wife and two daughters. Brian, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. [BRIAN COOPER] Thanks so much, Joe. Glad to be here, man. [JOE] Yes, it’s funny how many things we have in common, and even so much so that I was just in Detroit this weekend and you were just up in Traverse City and we missed each other. You’re raising two daughters. I mean, just, you’ve always seemed like someone that I’m like, I want to hang out with this guy, so welcome to the show, finally. [BRIAN] Hey, the feelings are mutual. I’m so sad we missed each other passing, like ships in the night, but hopefully one day. Looking forward to it. [JOE] We’ll make it happen. We’ll make it happen. Well, let’s just start with when did you open your practice and what was helpful at the beginning of the opening of your practice? [BRIAN] I opened my practice actually beginning of this year. Right as the year started out, I opened up. One of the things that really helped for me, I think it was really about gathering all the information I could. So over the past, probably a year and a half or so, I’ve been looking into podcasts, going online for different resources, things of that sort, to try to get as much information as I could to make sure I was prepared or as prepared as could be for whatever might come up as I started out. So, really wanted to start off on the right foot, and I think all of that preparation really actually helped me get on the ground running without having to have as many hiccups when I first started out. [JOE] So what were some of the things that you gathered in that year and a half of prep that really maybe helped you out in those early couple months? [BRIAN] I really wanted to understand how do I best do this from a business structure standpoint. I have a undergrad in business marketing, so I really wanted to make sure I set myself up one, business wise for an LLC. I didn’t want to make, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t risking any liability to myself and my family or anything like that. Then from just how do I do this best soup to nuts and how do I do it from a personal standpoint? I was doing everything. I was doing all of the work. So I was doing the graphic design, I was doing the marketing, I was even doing the website design. How could I make sure I do this in a way that it looks professional, but honestly, how could I do it in a way where I was being responsible with my money? I didn’t want to drop a ton of cash to get this thing started. I wanted to do it in a way that I was putting it all together myself, and I wanted to make sure I was doing that I could do it in the right way, that it wasn’t going to be a hindrance to me as well. [JOE] Are you glad that you did that initial learning to save money or are there parts of you that say, oh, I could have gone faster if I had outsourced it? Because there’s points on both sides where yes, it’s great to learn those things, but then there’s also a point where it’s like, I’m not a graphic designer, nor do I want to be one. How much are you glad that you put your time into learning those things versus maybe you should have outsourced a little faster? [BRIAN] Yes, I think it goes both ways. I’m glad I did it. One, I’ve got a background in marketing, I’ve got a little bit of a background in graphic design, so I don’t think, for me, it might have been as difficult. I still even got some help from some friends who still work in the marketing and graphic design industry so I wasn’t doing it all by myself. Would it have been helpful to outsource some of that, especially looking back on it in terms of how much money or how much time I could have spent on it? Eh, it could go either way. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing but for what I have done and the help that I even got from some friends, it worked for me, I think that, it’s based on everyone. If I didn’t have a marketing or a graphic design background, no, it wouldn’t have been worth my time. But for someone who doesn’t and can outsource that, I highly recommend it because it’s going to save you time that you could be putting towards something else. [JOE] So what were some of those things that really, for you’re like, I’m really glad that I put my time into that? [BRIAN] Really glad I put my time into my logo actually. I know that might sound weird in the sense of outsourcing that. I actually tried to outsource that to a friend who did logo design, honestly, didn’t like what they came back with. So one evening I searched around and I started playing in Photoshop myself, and I came upon something that I ended up actually liking, probably spent more time on it, but actually I had the time to spend on it because I was doing this all before the practice even started, something I probably would’ve outsourced when all was said and done. I probably would’ve outsourced my website. I did that by myself. That’s probably something I could have outsourced and saved some time on, even though I was going to put maybe a little more money towards it. But yes, I think the logo and that feeling of how I wanted it to maybe represent me and how I think I look at my practice and how I look at my work, I think it really stands out in that way. [JOE] I know that from you being in Next Level Practice, you talked a lot about networking and getting to know people. How did that fit into the equation for launch? [BRIAN] Yes, that was huge. In addition to pulling in the resources online and looking up podcasts and other online resources, a huge part of that, I mean, probably for literally the past year and a half, past two years, I’ve been networking with other therapists and trying to connect with those who’ve done this exact thing, so those who had big group practices, even to those who are just solo practitioners and solo practice owners, I’ve been trying to connect with them. So I not only got to understand some of the things that they did well to start and get some information and some insight from them, but more than anything, these are now resources I have to pull from in terms of my referral networks. So I’m getting referrals from people that I’ve connected with long before starting the practice because they knew me and that was something great, that it was intentional but at the same time, these are great relationships that I still have and I can still go to both for partnership, but also just for understanding their ups and downs and the things that I might not even know, just being into the just having started the practice at the beginning of the year. [JOE] So what are some of the things that in the first say, six months of your practice that you really invested in, you said that’s a great use of my time? So you put time into your website, your logo, networking. What are other things that you attribute the growth and success and leveling up for yourself in those first six months or so? [BRIAN] That’s a good question. I think like you were saying, the refer or the networking as well as putting in time to my website, my logo design, I got to be honest, I’m not just saying this. I mean, this truly wholeheartedly Next Level Practice was a huge resource for me. I remember even talking with my wife when I was looking into investing myself and my time and my money into Next Level Practice and hey, I’m starting off and I only have a few clients. Is this worth it? I thought it was going to be, and it’s been much better than I would’ve thought, not only from the resources that I got, but honestly the community that I’ve gotten. I’ve gotten to know practice owners all around the country. My accountability partner is from Phoenix, and he was traveling through the country and we met up for lunch, he and his wife and I. So having that and not feeling like I’m not alone in doing this is, I don’t know, I think that’s well worth the money because this can be a really lonely job and a lonely industry to work in so to not have to feel like I’m doing it alone, that was a huge investment for me. I’m probably a mix of an introvert and then an extrovert, an ambivert and to have that as a resource to know I’m not doing this alone, man, that made the biggest difference for me. [JOE] Yes. I know that just having people around you that say, yes, this is how I do it, to speed that up, knowing that other people are doing it with you, and the small groups and accountability partner and trainings, to me, it’s just really awesome to see the people like yourself that show up for yourself. You come to the meetings I know your face and I know that you’re going to be involved and having watched that process over the last six months or so is so cool to watch you fill up and to, you’re putting the time in and putting the action in to what you’re learning. You’re not just expecting that if you learn something that’s going to happen. You’re putting a lot of time into it too. How do you structure your time as you learn things in Next Level Practice or from other people? How are you structuring your time now that you’re getting more full, that you’re growing? How do you think through the tasks of building the business, not just doing client work? [BRIAN] That’s a really good question. I think that’s something I’m still even learning and figuring out. That’s the cool part even of Next Level Practice is I’m actually talking with other clinicians who are in the same boat and they’re going through the same thing. So we’re trying to learn it and figure it out together. Something that I got from another clinician who was a friend of mine, but also was in the Next Level Practice he got from you, Joe, was this thought process of using the time that you would’ve been spending with a client or that you’d want to be spending with a client, using that as work time. So I meet with my clients in the evenings. If I have clients from let’s say five to seven, and then I don’t have another client till nine, or let’s even say I only have five to seven and I still have, what would’ve been, I would hope another client or two that’s not there, let’s use that time. Use that time to dive into something in Next Level Practice, to some of the resources, whether it be some of the e-courses or some of the PDFs that you can peruse, but using that time to build into the business. That is business time, that’s working time, so actually pointing that out and using that out and planning that out. Then for me, when do you work best? That’s a huge deal for me. So I like to write blogs, but that’s something that’s pretty labor intensive for me. When do I do my best writing? I do my best writing actually early in the morning. So if I’m going to go meet up with a friend for coffee, hey, what if I get up an hour earlier, get to my office or get to the coffee shop, whatever, wherever I’m going and I write for 30 minutes. And I think I got this from you as well as this sprint writing. I’m going to write for 30 minutes. It might be good. It might be bad. That’s okay. Doing that and being so much more intentional, I think that’s probably something I’ve picked up in the past eight months. Being really intentional with my time is going to really pay out, not only in the dividend of better business, but also just how well I work the bank for my book for my time. [JOE] It’s interesting this thing that for me, like I just did it intuitively, like if I want to have 10 clients, I’m going to work like I have 10 clients. Then how many people have cited that mindset being so pivotal in their growth? I feel bad because it was just something I accidentally stumbled upon, but it’s like, but it’s so helpful when you actually break it down and say, yes, if I want to work 25 hours a week and I’m working five and doing the dishes and laundry, like of course you’re not going to grow as fast as if you just put in that extra time. But it’s just, it’s so simple but it is one of those things that over and over I think people keep pointing back to saying, I’m just going to work as many hours as I want to work total, and then just keep going at it until I’m full. Now how close are you being to your ideal number of clients? Or are you at that right now, or where are you at in regards to your ideal number? [BRIAN] No, I’m not at that yet. I’m probably, I don’t know, so I do this as a part-time thing. So I have my main job that I do during the day, and I’m hoping that this practice becomes my full-time job. But for the time being, I see my clients early mornings and in the evenings. I want to fill that up and make sure that I am, I guess for me, I want to make sure that I know that I have the influx of clients coming and not only that, but more clients coming on that I could fill in during the day as well. So I have a number in mind. My number is around 17 to 20 clients that I want to fill up as a part-time clinician. Right now, I’m averaging somewhere in the 13 sessions per week number. So my goal obviously is to get to 17 to 20 and make sure that’s sustainable. Then even another thing I used with Next Level Practice was understanding my numbers and using the resource that you gave me about how to understand your numbers to know when I can make the jump into full-time practice. So knowing that I’m at that 17 to 20 sessions per week number will give me the ability to say, hey, all right, we’re good. Let’s move this in and let’s jump into this full, full force. That’s something that is extremely exciting. [JOE] Now, having a part-time side gig practice that you’re growing into a full-time practice, what are things that you would say are unique to that compared to people that maybe are jumping full into private practice without having a full-time job? [BRIAN] You know, the unique thing, I think I have a little bit of luxury in the sense of I get to build my business in a way that I want to build it. It’s not the only thing that’s contributing to my family’s income. I think that actually gives me a lot of luxury of choice in the sense of I get to hustle in my way. I’m not hustling to get any client that’s willing to meet with me. No, I get to set my fee and hold true to that. I haven’t had any pushback on my fee. I’ve actually been able to raise my fee and that’s been awesome but at the same time, I also know, hey, let’s do this the right way so that when this is my full-time gig, it’s already set up, not only in the terms of how I want to run the business in terms of like systems and things of that sort, but also how the business or how I am as a clinician. That’s extremely important to me. I want to work with the people that I believe that I can help and that it’s going to give me the best chance to make sure that they get a valuable time for their time and their money and what they spend with me. So I think that’s, honestly, I look at it as a luxury in the sense that I get to build this the way I’d like to build it, and that’s really important to me. [JOE] And I think that, because I did the same thing where I had my full-time job and then side gig practice and then eventually side group practice and at one point realized, oh my gosh, I’m making way more in this side gig practice than I am in my full-time job. How do you view risk? Because to me when I was doing that, I felt like I could take bigger risks of say raising my rates and if I didn’t get people, it’s not a big deal because I had my full-time job and we lived off of that money. How do you view risk in regards to what you’re able to do by keeping that full-time job when you have a side gig practice that you’re growing potentially into a full-time practice? [BRIAN] Exactly, exactly like you just said. Like when I raised my rates, I did not feel as much pressure to raise my rates because the worst thing that could happen was, okay, either I get some pushback and I can go back to my former rate, or I can hold true and see how long it might take. I think, again, it’s luxury is a weird way of saying it because guess what, I’m working a ton. I am doing my main job and then I’m seeing clients. So my day of work some days goes from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM. That’s a long day and that’s time away from my family and all of those things. But those are the things that I’m willing to do in hopes of being able to do this the way I want to do it in the future. So yes, I get to take a little bit of risk that other people probably don’t get to do. I think you’re right in that I get to make the choice and even choose how many clients do I want to see? If I want to work a certain Saturday, I can work Saturdays or if I want to take a Saturday off, I don’t feel as much impetus that I have to do it a certain way or I have to see a client anytime they’re willing, they’re wanting to meet. I think that gives me a little bit of choice. [LEVEL UP WEEK] I think it’s time that we speak about you and your goals for a minute. Hear me out. For a while now, we’ve been speaking about, about how to market your practice, how to grow your practice, and how to be a better boss and encourage a company culture but isn’t it time to start making it happen? I’m serious, I’m challenging you to just do it. Take that leap of faith, put yourself out there and level up in your practice. Think about it. You’re probably entering that phase where you start to set yourself up for 2023. You’re thinking about what your goals are going to be, what you’re not going to do and what you hope to achieve. But regardless of where you are within your private practice journey, I’m challenging you to make these last few months count to dig deep, to make next year the one for big changes within your business and more importantly within yourself. If you’ve been looking for a sign to either start your own private practice, grow from solo to group, or become a next level Group Practice Boss, this is it. You’re certainly not alone because Practice of the Practice is doing something we’ve never done before. We’re so convinced that now is the time for you to grow, that we’re dedicating all our resources to help you do it. We’re all in every single one of us and we’re inviting you to go all in and level up. From September 12th to September 15th, we’ll be running Level Up Week to help you decide what will work best for you in your private practice journey. There will be webinars, Q&As with experts and a chance for you to meet your accountability partners, facilitators, and community. If you’re ready to make a change and level up register at practiceofthepractice.com/levelup and follow our Facebook and Instagram pages at Practice of the Practice for live updates and event details. Lastly, before I jump back into this episode, I just want to say that I really hope to see you there, even if it’s just online. Remember that leveling up week isn’t about us. It’s not about me or about Practice of the Practice. It’s all about you and growing your practice, whether it be your first solo practice or growing you from Group Practice Boss to reaching a national audience. Make September, 2022, the month that you start your journey and level up. [JOE SANOK] Now, how do you balance family life with that, because I mean, you have two kids? How does that look for you in regards to boundaries or ways that you make sure that you still stay connected and you’re not just working all the time? [BRIAN] That’s a great question. Two kids and a wife, I think this has been hard for them, but this is something that we all talked about before I started this. We had a family meeting of sorts and I laid out, hey, here’s what dad’s looking to do and here’s how I’m looking to do it. I was very intentional with it, saying, here are the days that I’m planning on working and sometimes that means thanks to being able to work remotely. With my main job, I get to see my family sometimes during the day, especially during the summer when my kids are home from school, so get to spend time with them during the day as I’m working or at lunch and things of that sort, but also being able to say, ‘Hey, let’s be intentional about it.” When I have my days off, we’re very intentional about the time I’m spending. I’m very much trying not to work when I’m not working, so when I’m home and I’m spending time with my kids, I’m spending time with my kids. Kind of like you said at the beginning, I took some time off and went up northern Michigan for four or five days away with my family. The phone was off. I didn’t work during that time and that was just time with my kids. Man, I don’t know if it’s the joy of being able to do something that you love, like this practice, but it made that time so much more special because not only did I know the work that went into it, but being away from it and just being focused with my family and the conversations that I got to have with my daughters as they’re growing up. We’re away from technology. We did the technology free vacation; no phones, no iPads, all that stuff. That’s just invaluable and that is made that much more special by this sense of how hard I work when I am at home. So I try to be as intentional as possible in setting those boundaries, which also means guess what, unless it’s an emergency, I’m not always responding to every client call. I don’t think, I think I’ve actually had those conversations with clients in my intake. I’m pretty firm with my boundaries on when I’m available for calls and text messages and things of that sort. [JOE] That’s so great. I think that’s so awesome. Now, when you think ahead to the next six to 12 months, how are you thinking through your next steps, what you’re going to do next, how you’re thinking through your business and your time? How do you think through the next six to 12 months? [BRIAN] It’s a really good question. I think, especially being a new practice owner, there’s a lot of discovery happening right now. I started my practice in January and I had a pretty good ramp up where I mean, I think from when I started with Next Level Practice, I’ve quadrupled my average session count per week. So July was my most profitable month yet, which was awesome but now we’re getting, yes, it’s so cool. It makes me so happy. Now we’re getting into the fall, so I’m really interested to see, hey, what’s the fall going to look like? Is it going to be another influx of clientele, which is awesome, but it’s also going to be, hey, let’s see what is winter going to look like? What’s the holiday season going to look like? Do clients want to meet, then are they not going to want to meet? I’m very inter interested to see what that looks like. Then just overall business-wise, I want to use the fall as a time to really get myself out there. Again, I look at it almost like this restarting. Just as it happens a lot, at least in Michigan, September is like this almost a new year. It’s like a new school year, so everything ramps up again. So I really want to get myself out there and get my name out there and hopefully ramp up. But as I get to the end of the year, I also want to be mindful, hey, this is happening. I’m going to come up on a year anniversary of this practice and man, eight months ago, whew, I don’t know if I knew this was all going to work out as good as it is. It’s going great. So I want to be mindful of that as well and celebrate that. But yes, I think there’s going to be a lot of discovery that happens in the next six to eight months to see, all right, let’s see what things look like and see what we can plan forward for the future. [JOE] I think that’s such a good approach. Some people are like, here’s my five-year plan, and they sketch it all out, but then something grows faster than you expect slower or whatever, and then they can’t really adjust. I love that idea of, let’s see how it keeps growing and keep investing your time into it and investing in other ways and just see where it goes. Let’s see where those opportunities are. The last question I always ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know? [BRIAN] This question, this is, I’ve been listening to Practice of the Practice for, man probably two or three years now, and I always hear you ask this question, so I always wondered, what I would say when I got this question. For me, I really think, I’m going to say two things, I’m going to say, one is community. So the ability to find community in some way, it’s a really, I think not only owning a business, but running a practice is a really isolated thing. So if you can find community and someone to bounce ideas off of, and even bounce grievances off of, don’t do it alone if you don’t have to. I think it really helps to find those who can help you and just not do it by yourself. I think a community and accountability has been such a huge factor as I do this accountability in a great way in the sense of someone who’s going to push you to believe in you, maybe even if you don’t believe totally in yourself at the time. Then my second thing I would really say, and it’s something I got from you Joe, is to also realize how good we have it. In doing, in owning a private practice, you’re, you’re getting to do something that’s pretty awesome. You get the privilege of someone sitting in your office and really sharing things with you that they don’t share with anyone else and also to realize as much as we want our businesses to grow and we want our businesses to be great, also taking in mind like, life’s pretty great when we get to do what we love. I don’t know if everyone gets to do that. So being mindful of that and realizing even on a hard day that you’re still getting people who trust you enough to share with you some of the hard things in their life. That really is just a privilege that yes, it leaves me speechless, I guess, in some points because it’s a pretty awesome privilege. [JOE] So awesome. Brian, if people want to follow your work, if they want to see your website, where should we send them? [BRIAN] Yes, northcollectivecounseling.com is my website and you can follow me on Facebook and on Instagram at North Collective Counseling. [JOE] So, awesome. Thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast. [BRIAN] Thank you, Joe. [JOE] You know that second point that Brian just made there about just being grateful for just what we get to do. It really resonated last summer I was doing in the Sam Harris app. Sam Harris has the Waking Up. App there’s all these different teachings, meditations, things like that. There’s this one guy who’s doing this stoic meditation and I remember it was like the thick of my divorce and didn’t know what was going to happen with it, primary custody with the girls, like just heart-wrenching. What you do is you think through who would love to have your life even with all the junk that you have in it. I was sitting ironically at the time in my hot tub as I listened to this. So for one, I had a hot tub, which is fricking privilege right there. I’m two blocks from 25% of the world’s freshwater. I have two healthy kids, I have lots of friends and just going through all these things of being like, yes, a lot was going on at that time, but like, who would kill for this life? Who would love this life? It just really reframed it for me. I think it’s become such a strong part of my work that yes, we can want to level up, we can want to achieve, we can want to do big things and impact the world that there’s nothing wrong with that and we can have that with an open hand. We can say, hey, we’ve already done so much that if I just continue doing what I’m doing right now and never “level up,” like that’s okay. So as we go through Level Up Week, and this being the final interview of the Level Up series that we’ve done throughout all of August and September, sure, I want you to level up. I want you to go after big things. I want you to do do hard things. I want you to seek your full potential while also realizing that we have so much already. So if you’re looking to level up and just get some training we have some more trainings today and tomorrow. Things close tomorrow on Thursday for Next Level Practice and Audience Building Academy, Group Practice Launch, all these things that are going to help you level up. If you want to be in community with other people like Brian or like other people we’ve talked to Next Level Practice Group, practice Launch, Audience Building Academy, Group Practice Boss, those are our communities for every phase of practice. From the very beginning when you say I think I want to launch a practice that’s Next Level Practice and then Group Practice Launch, that’s for people that say, I’m growing and I want to add my first clinician. It’s a six-month program we walk you through. Or Group Practice Boss, that’s for people that have established group practices. Then Audience Building Academy, that’s for folks that want to build something outside of their practice; it could be an e-course, it could be a membership community, it could be a podcast. So to build that audience with the idea of then eventually launching a product. Every phase we want to support you. And all those communities, we discuss those over at practiceofthepractice.com/levelup. Also over there you can see all the remaining webinars that we have this week that are totally free, completely free over there, over at practiceofthepractice.com/levelup. This has been such a fun series to do and to see so many people leveling it up and knowing that the first a hundred people get a free Killin’It Camp Ticket for our Cancun event, October 20th. People that join Audience Building Academy get a free ticket to Slow Down School. As well, the first a hundred people get a premium membership for 2022 to TeleWellness Hub, which includes CTV ads, so those little ads you see on Hulu, things like that. You get a hundred views a month and that’s totally free. Marta Hamilton is giving that to the first a hundred people to make sure that you’re highly supported. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.