[WHITNEY OWENS]
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Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m your host Whitney Owens recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner, and private practice consultant. Each week through personal story or amazing interviews, I will help you learn how to start, grow and scale your practice from a faith-based perspective. I will show you how to have an awesome faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake. You too can have a successful practice, make lots of money, and be true to yourself.

Today on the Faith in Practice podcast I am recording a solo show because I want to teach you where you can fit in within the Practice of the Practice community. So if you’ve been following the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, that’s awesome. You’ve probably heard him talk about a lot of different features that we offer within Practice of the Practice. If you’ve been following my podcast or maybe today’s your first day, Hey, thanks for listening. If you follow me, you may not know all that much about Practice of the Practice, but let me kind of explain the relationship and how it works and then I want to talk about ways to fit in to our community.

So I work under the umbrella of Practice of the Practice you can think of it as a contract relationship, like a group practice that hires out clinicians. So I work with Practice of the Practice in offering consulting with a special emphasis on faith-based consulting, those practices. So I have this podcast to help you do just that. So I’m under the umbrella of the Practice of the Practice podcast network. Within that, I offer services through Practice of the Practice, and there is a lot to offer here. And so I want to help you break that down in understanding what that looks like and what it is. This podcast episode is being recorded because I spoke to several people who said to me, “What exactly is Next Level Practice? I’ve heard of Group Practice Boss. What is that?”

And it can get a little confusing. I even remember, as I was being hired on as a consultant with Practice of the Practice, I was listening to the podcast and there was an episode that Joe did about Next Level Practice and I was like, “I work for this company and I still like, there’s a lot to offer it.” And that’s something that I really love about Practice of the Practice, but it even took me some time to figure out all these programs and where people fit in. But that is exactly what I love about this company is because everyone can have a spot where they are in their practice. Being in private practice is super lonely sometimes because, especially if you’re a group practice owner and you’re leading people and you’re helping clients and you’re thinking, “Gosh, I really just need a community to be a part of, of like-minded people.” And so that’s what’s great about being a part of Practice of the Practice and me working for them is everyone can have a place to belong. And as you move through our communities, you are leveling up in your life and in your practice. And that is amazing.

So here’s some things that we do through Practice of the Practice that I’m a part of. And then I’m going to speak specifically to what I do with faith-based practices. So if you are listening to this podcast and you’re in the new stages, maybe you haven’t started your private practice or you’re thinking about that or maybe you just started getting your name created, you’re getting a website put together, that is awesome. Congratulations. It’s so exciting to start a private practice, but it is so scary.

We have a community within Practice of the Practice to help you called Next Level Practice. So think of Next Level Practices are entry level to people that are at that zero to a hundred thousand a year mark, learning how to start their private practice. And when I say zero to 100,000, I’m talking about your income that you bring in or your practice, maybe you practice revenue more so as you’re thinking about that. So that was where these people, solo practice owners working to get to a hundred thousand in their revenue a year, you would fit into Next Level Practice. So Next Level Practice is a membership community and when we talk about membership communities that can look like a lot of things, but within Practice of the Practice, some of the basic things our membership communities include is a Facebook platform. We use that for communicating and for posting live in events, like to let you know about those and then we also have opportunities to be a part of a Teachable platform. And so you’d have access to hundreds of courses.

People that join Next Level Practice usually are amazed by the number of courses that are offered. And you just take them slowly. So just to give you an idea, I was just looking at it the other day, there’s a course on blogging, there’s a course on your email series, how do you market your practice, paperwork for adding clinicians or paperwork for informed consent that you can take and you can edit for your practice. So much stuff. So Practice of the Practice is really great for that sense of community getting access to that paperwork and learning a lot really fast about building your practice. The average person from the last time I had checked that stays in Next Level Practice is usually around the 18-month mark because by the time they’ve been there for a year to a year and a half, they have outgrown Next Level Practice because they’re making so much more money than they were making before and they’ve really been able to get a lot out of that amazing community.

Now, another aspect of Next Level Practice that’s really great is small groups. So you will be put into a small group based on when you enter into Next Level Practice and based on what it is that you want to focus on within your practice and you meet, however, often you as a group decide to meet, I think it’s once or twice a month. And so that’s another really great opportunity to connect with other practice owners. And then sometimes people continue to connect. Like people can build their best relationships through these membership communities where you’re texting, you’re calling when things come up in your practice. So you’re not alone.

Also with the Next Level Practice, we have live webinars. I lead one of those every single month, as well as some of the other consultants within Practice of the Practice. And we do Ask the Experts. Right now, they’re bringing in some real big wigs. They just have Pat Flynn come in and some other people that are kind of taking it up a level for Next Level Practice. And then Joe also goes on there and does at least one live webinar, if not more a month. And so there’s a lot going on in Next Level Practice. So if you’re in that first wave, starting your practice, I really want you to think about checking out Next Level Practice. And we will put all the links in the show notes to these, but you can also go to the Practice of the Practice website.

There’s a Ways To Grow section and you can click on Next Level Practice and then you can look into joining that cohort. Now Next Level Practice only launches a few times a year, certain cohorts for only a few days. So you’re going to want to go on there and click the links so that you can join the wait list. The next cohort is launching in June. So don’t miss out. And if you’re listening to this episode and it’s past June, 2021, you could still go to the website and hit Join The Wait List and you’ll get an email for when to join that. I can tell you, I know people that have been a part of that community and their practice has exploded by being a part of that. So I want you to consider joining that community.

Now, let’s say you’re ready to start hiring your first clinician. So you’ve had your solo practice, it’s grown, and now you want to make yourself into a group practice. We know that starting a group practice has a lot of details, a lot of things to take care of, and so we have a special community. It’s a six month very structured program, just for people hiring their first clinicians called Group Practice Launch. We launch this community twice a year and we will offer it more if needed. But at this point, it’s twice a year and it’s six months and it’s a closed group.

During that six months, we myself and Alison Pidgeon, who’s another consultant who’s been helping people start group practices for years, we will walk you step by step through the process. Every single week we have a webinar where we tackle a topic, we send you a video to watch an advance on that topic and then we answer all your questions because we don’t want to just give you the information. We want to teach you how to make it happen in your practice. So people who enter this community will have one to two clinicians hired within six months if they do the things that we’re asking them to do. So just to give you an idea, we kind of walk through three phases of starting a group practice, the first phase, just kind of being that foundation, making sure your systems are all set up. And I can’t tell you how many practice owners say, “I’ve got that figured out,” but then once they enter the group, they’re like, “Wow, I didn’t realize that this wasn’t HIPAA-compliant or I didn’t realize that I needed this for my practice or the cost of this or so many things.”

So we really walk you through that. And then we take you into writing that job description, getting it posted, hiring your first clinician. And then the last phase is moving forward to how do you market a group practice, because that’s different than a solo practice. How do you monitor your KPIs, those are the key performance indicators, making sure that you’re moving forward as a practice, that your marketing is working, that your finances are good, that you’re going to be able to pay yourself enough. So we walk you through all those steps. So we have live events in there every week, as well as open office hours once a month and another Learn from a Boss. So we bring in someone that is a Group Practice Boss and they come and they share with you their practice journey and you can ask questions.

We try to bring a variety of people. That way you can kind of see how different group practices function, because every practice is different and has a different culture. So that community is called Group Practice Launch, and those are for people ready to hire their first clinician.

After that community, the last community that we have, so the highest level is called Group Practice Boss. And that is for people who have at least two other clinicians in their practice they’ve hired, so there’s three total, and then wanting to really work on their group practice. So we’ve got people in a variety of places there. We’ve got some people that have three or four clinicians, we have people who have 10, 20 clinicians. And we do put you into small groups based on your face of practice, how many years you’ve had your group practice, so that way you can also be with like-minded people in their face. Alison and I lead that membership community, Group Practice Boss, and we do live webinars every single week on topics related to a group practice.

So we take topics that are like money management, or I think next month, we’re going to talk about website development in the month of may, which is when you’re listening to this podcast. We’re also going to talk about how to market social media-wise. Last month or two months ago, actually we talked about hiring your first clinicians. So we really take topics related to being a group practice owner and dive deep into those for a full month because we found that we don’t really want to do a community where there’s random topics and random webinars. It becomes difficult to focus. So we really want to focus and get stuff done on each topic. So we do the webinars at the same time, every single week. That way as a group practice owner, you can set aside that time to be there. Those are every Tuesday at one o’clock Eastern. And then we also intermingle a few more.

We have office hours that we bring in. So that way, if you have questions unrelated to that month, deep dive, you can meet with myself or Alison. And within all the communities that Alison and I are part of that’s group practice, lunch, and Group Practice Boss, we offer a discount for working with us. And even Next Level Practice, those members can also get a discount and working with us because you’re already a part of the Practice of the Practice community. So if you end up deciding, “Hey, I need a little extra help on my practice,” you can get in touch with us and we can provide you a discounted rate in doing a consult session to kind of help you move along.

So basically there’s a membership community for wherever you are in your group practice or in your private practice journey. So that’s Next Level Practice for the entry-level all the way up to a hundred thousand K, usually, for revenue and then if you’re wanting to start a group practice, we have Group Practice Launch for those people that are hiring the first clinicians and we have Group Practice Boss. So you can go to the Practice of the Practice website and click on Ways To Grow and all that is there. For Group Practice Launch. If you’re interested in hiring, then go to the practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticelaunch, and you can join that wait list if we don’t have a cohort available at the moment. And then for Group Practice Boss, that is a constantly open door. We did start with cohorts. We were finding people wanting to join, and we don’t want to keep people from coming in at whatever time they want to as a group practice owner.

So you just joined that community at any time. So you can just go to that website, practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss, and you can hit the link and go ahead and join the community. And then you have access with all these communities through a Teachable platform with hundreds of courses and paperwork that really help you move forward in your practice like time that you would have this, working with an attorney on hiring. We have contracts offer letters already there that you can edit and give to your attorney for a final review. And also what other people love about these communities is just that connection with other people in a similar place of practice. You can post a question and get an immediate response. You know, usually within 24 hours, multiple people have responded and giving you advice on your practice. Plus sometimes Joe, Alison, or myself, or LaToya or other consultants with the Practice of the Practice, we’ll jump on there and do some live, just quick Facebook lives to give you tips on your practice.

Now, if you are a part of those communities or maybe you’re not, or maybe you’re just wanting some more personal help on your practice, there’s two other options, especially in what I offer for faith-based practice owners. One, there’s individual consulting. So if you’re wanting a real hands-on approach, you can shoot me an email, [email protected], or you can go to the website, practiceofthepractice.com/apply and you can do individual. I offer three month packages with five calls in the package because I find that that’s the great amount of time to really get a lot done. Most people, for example, that are wanting to grow a group practice, but they want it to go faster or they want a little bit more hands on approach, when they do the three month package, usually they’ve hired two people by the end of the three months and it can really help them move fast. So if that’s something that you’re interested in, you’re wanting that one-on-one approach, you can definitely go and apply to work with me. Would love to set up a call with you and to talk more about that.

I also want to talk to you about mastermind groups. I absolutely love mastermind groups. So these are groups of people that get together with a similar faith-based background, a similar idea of growing their business, and we meet every other week on Zoom, and this group is for six months, where we really tackle your goals and your practice. I love it because the members get so close to one another as they meet every other week and we’re talking about not only our business, but also our faith and how that influences our business. It’s amazing. I’ve shared this story on the podcast before, but I just think it’s incredible that one of our members in one of my masterminds was really struggling and asked for prayer on getting more clients or making some decisions in her practice. And we all prayed for, and then the next time we got together, she had a lot more clients in a practice.

It was so cool. So having a community that not only you could say, give me some advice on this and this, but you can also say, “Hey, can y’all pray about this, or I’m not sure how I feel about my faith or my values in regards to setting my rates, or how do I work with churches,” so we can bring all that to the table within this community. So I’m going to be launching another mastermind group. So if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re thinking I really want to connect with other business owners with a like-minded faith. I also have some really big goals for my practice. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to meet those goals, or I’m just needing some more accountability, a mastermind group would be a great fit for you. It’s a good balance between a membership community and individual consulting. So you still get the personal touch of working with me, but you’re not in such a large membership community.

I also within the mastermind, let me tell you a little bit of what’s included if you were to want to join that group. So I’m going to be launching this mastermind group in July, and it’s going to run for six months. We’re going to meet on Wednesdays at 12:30 Eastern for one hour. Within that time, we will talk about wins going on in our practice, we’ll have a time for hot seats where people bring concerns to the table goals, and we give them feedback and I help give direct advice and tips and tools for helping you meet those goals. And then we’ll also have an extra Q&A session where I help you grow your practice and then I can give you other resources along the way. It’s really tailored to the people that are in the group in being able to meet your goals as we move forward.

So some of the topics that we’ll be covering, this is obviously not a full list, but we’ll talk about money management, how to make more money, how to work less hours, how to develop a schedule that makes you happy, because a lot of therapists are super overwhelmed in working with their clients and trying to find that work-life balance. That’ll be a big part of what we tackle. We’ll also do a lot with marketing, website development, social media, how do you use that appropriately, and all those other things that come along with marketing, working with churches and really anything business related to your practice. Some people join the group because they want to work on a side hustle. So maybe you’re listening to this show and you’re thinking, “Oh, I love my private practice. I think that’s going pretty well, but I’d really like to develop my own podcast. I’d really like to develop a coaching outside of my practice that has to do with my faith.”

So that would be a good place for you to join the mastermind so that can really help you do just that. So in the month of May, I’m offering an early bird special. So until the 31st, you can join the group for $347 a month for six months. With that, you get access to a Facebook group of just the people in the mastermind so that way we can talk to one another and help each other in between meetings. You’ll meet every other week for an hour over Zoom with me leading those meetings, you’ll have a one-on-one consult for 45 minutes with me, as well as an accountability partner within the group. You will have access to one of our membership communities within Practice of the Practice, depending on where you are in your practice. If you’re more in the early phases, you’d go into Next Level Practice. If you’re a Group Practice Boss, you get into that community.

Wherever you are in your practice, you would have access to those communities while you’re in the mastermind group. Also, if you join the mastermind group and you’re already in one of those communities, maybe listening right now, and you kind of want to get a little bit more attention on your practice, then we stop those membership payments while you’re working with me or with Alison. So that part is really great as well. So if you’re thinking you want to join a mastermind group, I want you to go to practiceofthepractice.com\faithinpracticemastermind and you can go ahead and join that group today. I only allow eight to 10 people in the group because I want to have that personal approach. So if you’re really wanting to do it, go ahead and secure your spot by making your payment.

Like I said, I’m offering that discounted rate for the month of May, but then when we hit June, the price will go up to $397 a month. I think I’m saying all those numbers right. So any way, the early price is basically $350 a month through the end of May, and then we’ll hop on up to $400 a month if you joined in the month of June. If you’re having questions or you want to talk more about the mastermind group, please shoot me an email. I would love to jump on a call and talk to you more about that. And if you go to that page, practiceofthepractice.com\faithinpracticemastermind, you can read testimonials about people that were a part of the mastermind group. If you want to hear more stories about people that I’ve worked with, you can go back through old episodes of this podcast.

I interviewed Carole Cullen and Stephanie Korpal a few months ago, and we talked about their experience of working with me and how they did individual consulting. And then I also interviewed people while back, David Sturgess and Scott Waters and Cindy Brock who were all part of my mastermind group. So you could go back and listen to those episodes as well and learn about their experience being part of the mastermind group. And if you want to talk to someone who a part of the group, just send me an email. I’ll connect you to somebody.

I remember being where you’re at. Back in 2017, I had a private practice and it was exploding. I was just so overwhelmed, had a wait list and didn’t know how do I grow my practice, trying to pray and figure out direction from God as to what is it specific like in my community? How much should I be working? How much should I be home with my family? How much money do I need to make to be able to care for my family? And those of you heard me for a while, I actually have a child with special needs so that dictates a lot of my work as far as the finances. I need to care for her and the treatment that she needs and my time that I need to be with her. So back in 2017, I didn’t know what to do. And that was when I connected with Joe Sanok, who owns Practice of the Practice and through that connection, I remember so clearly, we were on a call together and I was just so nervous because it wasn’t sure what steps to take next.

He said to me, “Whitney, you need to join my mastermind group.” I was like, “Really? Am I ready for something like that? He said, “You’re definitely ready for something like that.” I prayed about it. I talked to my husband about it and I was so scared because it seemed like such a big commitment. And honestly, I was scared about what would happen if my practice grew. What was that going to look like? What was that going to require of me? And then I was also scared that what if it didn’t work? What if I joined this mastermind group and I put all this time and money into it and it doesn’t work? I could not be more grateful telling you now that joining a mastermind group, and this sounds totally dramatic, but it changed my life. I joined that group in January, 2018, I stuck in a mastermind group for two years, and the cost of that mastermind group was $500 a month at that time, and ended up moving up after that.

Honestly that amount of money sounded astronomical as a solo practice owner that was going to put that in every month. But I’m telling you, it has paid off so much. I’ve made so much more. Not only financially, but emotionally I gained so much support and friendships through those communities. There’s one person in that community that I still talk to. I just talked to her yesterday. Like we stay in connection, and of course it was that that actually led to me working with Practice of the Practice. But I remember so clearly praying and I just felt this sense of you know what, God was honestly knocking me over inside my head and saying, “This is the time. I want you to do this.” And I remember making that payment and I was so scared and so excited and my husband was celebrating with me, “You did it. You made a payment.”

And then we started that mastermind group and it was during that group that I hired my first clinician., By the time I was done with that group, I think I had six people working at the practice. Six clinicians. I was definitely paying myself much more than I ever had before. I was seeing less clients and doing more of the things I enjoyed, doing some marketing and having a more of an administrative role and really being leader to the other therapists in my practice, which I really love doing. And then it was through that, at the very end, I started really growing the consulting business. And so I was able to get my practice to a place where I could do a side hustle that I was excited about.

And I say all that to say, listen to what I’ve shared today. I’m not here to sell you something and take all your money or anything like that. I want to let you know that being a part of these communities can be life-changing not only for you, but there are people out there that need to know about your practice. Like there is a lack of Christian counselors in our world and people need to know about you and if that means you join one of our communities or you do a mastermind group and your practice grows, that’s awesome. More people are getting healing. That’s amazing. So I want you to do what works best for you. I don’t want to be sleazy or try to sell anything, but I also want to share my story and how doing these communities has changed my life. And I can tell you countless stories of people I’ve worked with that I could tell you the exact same thing.

So I would love for you to really consider the mastermind group, because it’s one of my favorite things about consulting and seeing these people grow together. And so if you’re interested in that, go ahead and go to practiceofthepractice.com\faithinpracticemastermind and join that group. If you’re uncertain, shoot me an email and let’s jump on a call and talk more about it, [email protected]. And you will have until July 7th or until that group fills up to join. But remember that discounted price is only good through the end of May.

I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to this podcast and I hope it helps you see where you can fit in to our membership communities within Practice of the Practice. Either be a part of us, there are lots of other consultants out there that do really good work, that have really great membership communities. Go do that if that’s what works for you. What I want you to find is a place where you can fit in and that you can feel comfortable in growing your practice and have other people around you to support and encourage and pray for you. Thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast and being a part of this Faith in Practice podcast community.

Once again, thank you so much to Therapy Notes for sponsoring the show. It makes notes, billing, scheduling, and tele-health a whole lot easier. And if you’re coming from another EHR, they make the transition really easy. Therapy Notes will import your client’s demographic data free of charge during your trials so that you can get going right away. Use promo code [JOE] to get three months to try out Therapy Notes for free.

Thank you for listening to the Faith in Practice podcast. If you love this podcast, please rate and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. If you liked this episode and want to know more, check out the Practice of the Practice website. Also there, you can learn more about me, options for working together, such as individual and in group consulting, or just shoot me an email, [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

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, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.