Hey there, badass! Tired of monotonous webinars and yearning for a breakthrough in your counseling career? Your search ends here. We've got a wealth of information to help you transition from the traditional modes of private practice to a smart, efficient, and ethical system. Our focus is to equip you to expand your practice while maintaining ethical standards, especially when adding therapists to your team. Together, we'll navigate the complexities of onboarding, training, evaluating, and paying associates, grad students, and other licensed professionals.
Ever wondered how you could crack the code of appropriately structuring your pay for associates and grad students without compromising on ethics? We're dropping some major knowledge bombs on that front. We're dissecting the ethical implications of fee splitting, flat fees, and separate fees for supervision and bringing to light the potential pitfalls you need to avoid when paying associates for their services as well as for their supervision. This episode is a must-listen, designed to ensure you're not left in the lurch when dealing with these tricky situations.
But wait, there's more! We're taking it up a notch with some stellar insights on expanding your marketing presence while sustaining your practice. Offering you an inside peek at our exclusive programs like the Step it Up membership, the Supervisor Training, and the Badass Basics program. Dr. Kate Walker will spill the beans about our mastermind groups that offer hands-on learning. This episode is brimming with unique insights that can revolutionize your counseling career. So, buckle up! It's time to break free from the mundane and step into the extraordinary.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
Hey there, badass! Tired of monotonous webinars and yearning for a breakthrough in your counseling career? Your search ends here. We've got a wealth of information to help you transition from the traditional modes of private practice to a smart, efficient, and ethical system. Our focus is to equip you to expand your practice while maintaining ethical standards, especially when adding therapists to your team. Together, we'll navigate the complexities of onboarding, training, evaluating, and paying associates, grad students, and other licensed professionals.
Ever wondered how you could crack the code of appropriately structuring your pay for associates and grad students without compromising on ethics? We're dropping some major knowledge bombs on that front. We're dissecting the ethical implications of fee splitting, flat fees, and separate fees for supervision and bringing to light the potential pitfalls you need to avoid when paying associates for their services as well as for their supervision. This episode is a must-listen, designed to ensure you're not left in the lurch when dealing with these tricky situations.
But wait, there's more! We're taking it up a notch with some stellar insights on expanding your marketing presence while sustaining your practice. Offering you an inside peek at our exclusive programs like the Step it Up membership, the Supervisor Training, and the Badass Basics program. Dr. Kate Walker will spill the beans about our mastermind groups that offer hands-on learning. This episode is brimming with unique insights that can revolutionize your counseling career. So, buckle up! It's time to break free from the mundane and step into the extraordinary.
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
You can do so much good work for your community. While you're helping this grad student finish their internship hours, just keep in mind there are ways to supervise them right and not pay them, and you are charging clients for their services. Hi, I'm Dr Kate Walker. I'm a marriage and family therapist practice owner and professor of counselor education who took a passion for training the next generation of mental health providers and turned it into a multi-six figure business that designs the courses that teach mental health providers how to be clinical supervisors, teaching graduate students and seasoned counselors. I learned about the fears fears about failing quitting toxic work environments where you're seeing 80 clients a week. Fears about starting a private practice running out of money, getting in trouble by the licensing board, the IRS, you name it. I created the Texas counselors creating badass businesses community so mental health providers like you could have a step-by-step guide and learn actionable steps to achieve the security, freedom and satisfaction of a counseling career you'll love. Look, you had the dream to become a mental health professional. You got the degree, you took the exams, you put in the time. Whatever, your business is a private practice. Maybe you want to sell courses, like I do. You're adding clinical supervision. You want to write a book or get paid to speak, whatever it is. You are too important to your community to lose, to getting in trouble, giving up, going broke and burning out. Are you ready to break through those fears once and for all? I thought so. Let's get to work.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Texas Counselors creating badass businesses where it's all about working smarter, not harder. And here's your host, dr Kate Walker, who loves a good flannel. Hey, badass, I know you don't have time to sit in on another boring, outdated webinar for your counseling continuing education. So I wanted to make sure you know about the best deal going in Texas counselor continuing education Free webinars at Kate Walker Training. Best of all, every webinar is presented after 5 pm. It's completely free and every webinar meets the new Texas rule mandating that 50% of CEs come from a designated provider. The free webinars are presented by real people, facilitated by yours truly, and there is always an opportunity for Q&A. Here's what we have coming up in the next four months October 25th, I'm presenting a webinar for the supervisor. Curious, scared of becoming a clinical supervisor. Attend this webinar and help me get you over your fears and out into the field where you can multiply the difference you make in underserved Texas communities by becoming a clinical supervisor. November 30th, dr Lisa Wines will present Bridging the Gap from Grad School to LPC Associate. This is one of our most popular webinars and I invite professors to tune in with your entire classroom of counseling students. Also in November, you can start applying for our Counseling Grant giveaway. Last year we gave away over $500 in grants and this year I'm matching that, so we'll hopefully be giving away $1,000 in practice grants to counselors and supervisors serving rural and underserved Texans.
Speaker 1:Need the recording because you can't make it, don't worry, step it up members. Get the recording converted into an online course that they can take whenever they like. That's right on your schedule. You're the one working your butt off getting your house ready for the high holy days, school plays, fafsa applications, sats and football season, all while trying to return all the calls and emails, because, well, you're a business owner. So I'm going to make it easy for you. Just go to katewalkertrainingcom forward slash free webinar and you can sign up and start attending free training that fits into your life and your schedule. That's katewalkertrainingcom. Forward slash free webinar. You're too important to lose because you paid too much for courses with tempting titles, sat through boring live trainings and got suckered into live, disorganized webinars. It's time to take the next step in your counseling career. Go to katewalkertrainingcom forward slash free webinar and sign up for our next free webinar. Now let's get to work.
Speaker 1:Hey, welcome everybody to Business Plan 101, ethical considerations for adding therapists to your practice. Now, if you're on my email list, you got an email this morning and I know it can seem like everybody's talking about growing your practice, getting bigger, all of that, and so I hope you heard me in the email. Read me when I said you know, this isn't just about adding therapists as a solopreneur and most of us that's what we are right. When we are entrepreneurs, we're in private practice. Maybe we're just starting out or you're thinking about being in private practice. You're all by yourself, and my example in my email was you are one COVID test bad batch of mooshy pork or a kid breaking their wrist, away from missing work because you have to do life, and I can tell you this from experience. You start to look at life as the enemy. You start to say, oh my gosh, if all of this stuff just wouldn't happen, then I could get to work, I could do my job, I could save my clients and save the world and all of that stuff. Right, folks, life isn't the problem. Life is your beautiful life. This is why we work. We work to live, not live to work. So when I talk about adding therapists to your private practice, I want you to think okay, multiple streams of income, adding streams of income and if you've heard me talk before, you know this can be your supportive partner, right? If you have someone else that lives in your home who's able to provide another income so that you feel relaxed and comfortable and able to take days off from seeing clients when you need it, that counts. If you have a W-2 job and you work nine to five, five days a week or two days a week, or whatever it is you do, that counts. So listen today as if you are looking at adding streams of income as an ethical step in your own progression as a private practice person solopreneur right. If you decide to grow the big group practice, awesome. I'll post information in the thread about getting on the wait list for our 2024 Group Practice Summit. Thank you, we'll give you so much information about all of that.
Speaker 1:I've got a podcast dropped this Friday Texas counselors creating badass businesses episode I think it's 43 and Jessica Eiseman, lpc supervisor, is going to talk about how to do what we're talking about today, which is adding graduate students who become associates, who then become your colleague. It's a great episode because she does go through the ethics in detail. I'm going to go through it in a little bit of detail today, but check out that podcast drop when it comes out this Friday. If you're listening to me on the podcast episode, it's all going to be marked and I've even got a link for you in the show notes. Let's get going.
Speaker 1:Ethical considerations for adding therapists to your private practice. Well, when I'm talking about adding therapists, I'm talking about grad students in their internship. I'm talking about associates. Those are post-grad who have an associate license. Then I'm talking about other fully licensed therapists. Now you're going to hear people talk about adding QMHPs and other acronyms skills trainers, all of that which are actually bachelors level positions. When you are a hospital or an agency, there are contracts that can be worked out with your credentialing, your insurance provider, where you can hire those folks and they can get paid by insurance. I'm not getting into that today because that is really out of the realm of private practice. That's an ethical consideration right there. If you're a private practice owner and you're trying to hire just a bachelors level somebody who's not in an internship, that can get you in some ethical hot water. Because if you're hiring a grad student which I want you to do they need the hours they have protection because they're in an internship that's covered by their university. They have a university professor who is serving as a supervisor.
Speaker 1:There are some things encoded into our licensing rules that speak to grad students in an internship. Ethical consideration number one yes, bring grad students in, but make sure they are in their internship. Ethical considerations I've broken it down into four things. Number one how they're trained. Number two how they are paid. Number three how you are paid. Then we're going to talk about grad students again. Number four actually this is an issue with the associates as well, and those are issues surrounding client abandonment. This just comes down to making sure we're being completely transparent with our clients. When we talk about how they are trained, I'm talking about everybody, not just your grad students. I'm talking about anybody you bring on. A fully licensed professional still must go through your orientation Now.
Speaker 1:Last Friday, or a couple of Fridays ago, we dropped a podcast. Ashley Hubbard talked about a policy and procedures manual really good onboarding systems. I dropped a podcast episode, episode 50, talking about onboarding procedures. I cannot emphasize this enough you can't evaluate something you haven't taught and it's tough to remediate something you haven't evaluated. When I talk about onboarding your new folks, this is the first step in laying that ethical groundwork. Of course you've got a policy and procedures manual, but take them through a day of training In Texas.
Speaker 1:You don't have to have any special designation to be a CE provider. Provide them with their training to get HIPAA certified. Provide them with the training so that they understand how to handle protected health information. Also, supervision doesn't end with your associate. Now, if you're hiring a grad student, wonderful, they will have so much supervision because they're going to have a minimum number of hours of supervision they must have from their university professors. They have a minimum number of hours. They have to be supervised by you. I mean, every time they turn around they are getting supervised. But your associates must have supervision as well. If you're thinking about becoming a supervisor, you have to dedicate four hours a month for your LPC associates and weekly supervision for your LMFT associates.
Speaker 1:But guess what? Supervision shouldn't stop with those pre-licensed and provisionally licensed folk. You've got fully licensed LPC and LMFT people that you're bringing on. Honestly, you don't know what kind of CEs they're getting. You don't know if they're attending live trainings or doing some kind of not-so-great training to fulfill their CE requirement. So there is nothing stopping you from continually requiring training for even your fully licensed people. I know in agencies they have staffing where they go over all of the clients. Well, why don't you have some kind of a monthly CE that you offer? Or, twice a month, sit down where you do case consultation? That is absolutely okay because it sets you up for the next part, which is evaluation.
Speaker 1:So many business owners run into problems because they get to a place where it's like, oh my gosh, I thought they were the dream employee, I thought they were amazing, and then they weren't. And now they hate me and I'm starting to resent them and I don't know how to fire them. Because dot, dot, dot, dot. It's because of what I'm about to tell you. Right, when you are ready to hire somebody, it's all unicorns and rainbows.
Speaker 1:But if you aren't giving them an orientation, if you aren't listing your expectations and here's the kicker you must evaluate everyone. Grad students easy peasy because their university is going to say, hey, we need some written evaluations, we need you to look at their videos. Right, easy, associates. You start to think, oh, you know what, I don't have to evaluate anymore. And your LPCs and your LMFTs, who are fully licensed, you're like, oh, thank goodness, I have those fully licensed professionals, I don't have to evaluate anymore. No, scratch everything. I just said you should be evaluating everyone regularly. Let them know if they are meeting expectations, exceeding expectations, are miserably falling below your expectations. Give them something to hold in their hands so they know where they stand with you. Then, if you have problems, you're able to have some evidence that shows, hey, I had to fire this person, but here's a record where I trained them and here's their record of evaluations. And, as you can see, they got progressively worse over time.
Speaker 1:So what are some things that you can evaluate? You can evaluate notes. Are they timely getting their notes in? You can evaluate whether or not they have their treatment plans completed. You can even have client outcome surveys. So if clients are filling out these outcome surveys and they are not looking good, that can become part of the evaluation for any of the folks you are onboarding and bringing on to your practice for that additional stream of income.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about income. You've got to pay them, right. So how do you want to pay them? I know some people just went ding. I have to pay grad students. Put a pin in that. I'm going to get to that Now. We have so many podcasts and trainings out there about the difference between 1099 and W2. So I do have episode 34. Head over there in Texas, counselors creating bad-ass businesses Check out episode 34.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to go into it in a lot of detail because you can literally go to the IRS website. There are 20-factor tests that you can see if this person you're bringing on should be classified as a 1099 or a W2, or there are three criteria you can use. I mean you do you just please classify them correctly? It becomes an ethical issue if you have misclassified them because you're going to get in trouble. Somebody's going to owe a lot of money, resentment will result and in supervision land we call that a relationship rupture. We don't want that. We don't want you and your employee or staff to become antagonistic. So classifying them correctly in order to pay them is key.
Speaker 1:Take the time and do that, and if you don't know, that's okay. This is a safe space. We don't know what we don't know. Ask for help. Make sure that you're checking with the professionals you need to check with so that you're doing it right. It's sweater weather and while we may still have a few days in the 90s here in Texas, I'm going to put my Uggs on anyway, even if I have to turn on the fan when I'm watching UT kick Alabama's butt on the big screen at the neighbors down the street. And what's better than sweater weather?
Speaker 1:How about taking the next step in your counseling career and getting your clinical supervisor designation? We all know that counselors need quality continuing education courses full of great information that will help them build their career, protect their license, grow a practice and stay out of trouble. Oh and bonus points at the course is not boring and outdated, but the real barrier to finishing a course that could lead to your supervisor designation. You, my bad ass, are busy saving the world with excellent therapy. So for you to get the training to improve your practice and your skill set while still caring for people, your choices are compromise your work week life balance with overwhelming boring, outdated online courses, or pay for a live training, but if you have to miss work to travel, then you just doubled the cost of that course. Let me make it easy for you. I host the only online 40 hour LPC LMFT supervisor training that can lead to the supervisor designation in Texas, and in the month of October I'm giving you the two hour 2023 rules review with the latest update as a bonus when you purchase that course from me. The rules review is not available to the general public for purchase, but you get it free when you purchase the 40 hour supervisor training in October. Want to see if you're eligible for your supervisor designation? It's easy. Just go to katewalkertrainingcom forward, slash 40 STC. That's katewalkertrainingcom. Forward. Slash the number 40, so a four and a zero STC. I'm going to say it one more time katewalkertrainingcom forward, slash four, zero STC.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about those grad students and those associates. There is a way to not pay them. In fact, grad students aren't generally paid. Of course, it's wonderful if you can oh my gosh, they need the money, you know. And of course, you're able to bring in clients and do the work of the pro bono right, making sure you can do sliding fee scale. You can do so much good work for your community. While you're helping this grad student finish their internship hours, just keep in mind there are ways to supervise them right and not pay them, and you are charging clients for their services.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have an upcoming episode on that. In September, I'm going to give a webinar and a training on supervision business plans. So I'm going to just kind of give you that teaser for now, because I want you to find out more information. If you're bringing on a grad student or students and you're not paying them, well, that's an unpaid internship and that's OK. You can have an offer, an unpaid internship, and that grad student can see clients. Now you're getting the income from those clients right, because they're coming in. They're paying you.
Speaker 1:Whether or not you choose to pay your grad student, that's up to you. Now, when it gets to be associate, these are licensed people. It's a provisional license, but they hold an associate license and are you going to pay them. Or are you going to say you know what, if you see, I don't know, three hours a week at my office, if you give me three direct hours every week, I'll give you free supervision. That's a total of 12 direct hours a month and for you then practice owner solopreneur, who is now a group practice owner, you're able to still collect for the clients that they see right, and the post grad, this associate is now getting free supervision and there are some expectations in there. That's why I'm going to devote an entire episode to this in September, because it's important that you know the ends and out, because, remember, we don't want this to turn into an antagonistic relationship, because then we have relationship rupture and when you have a supervisor who is not happy with you because of the payment situation, that's a problem.
Speaker 1:So when you're thinking about how you're going to pay your grad students, your associates, your fully licensed professionals number one start off with classifying them correctly. If money is going to change hands, you must designate them a 1099 or a W-2, and that's determined by the IRS, not you. If you're going to do some other arrangement, whether it's free supervision in exchange for a few direct hours a month, or you're going to do something else, check with your trusted professional, an attorney or a tax professional, all right. Number three how you are paid Now.
Speaker 1:I'm talking here now about fee splitting. I'm talking about flat fees. I'm talking about a separate fee for supervision. So let's start with fee splitting. Now, fee splitting is a dicey way to get paid. It's unethical. It's written into the rules. We don't get paid by fee splitting.
Speaker 1:Now, what you're going to hear a lot of are folks who work in practices and they have a 70-30 split or a 50-50 split or a 80-20 split. I'm gonna let you do your homework on that. What I propose is a flat fee. You can offer all of the services in your practice I'm talking about your licensed professionals now, and even now, really, you're associates. You can offer them record keeping and front desk administration. You can offer them furnished office space on your website all of these wonderful things and they can pay you a flat fee. Now, how do you determine a flat fee? Well, imagine what you would get paid over three months with a 70-30 split. Some months it would be high, some months it would be low. If you took an average of that for three months, well, just charge them that flat fee and you can reevaluate it every three months, and that's just one way. I'm not going into depth about that.
Speaker 1:There are lots of ways that you can get paid, but it becomes an ethical issue If you are benefiting or if there's an appearance that you're sending referrals to the provider where you get paid the most money. You want to make sure that if you are getting a benefit, then let's face it. If you're bringing in people I mean that's how I started this episode right? You're adding this as another stream of income. Of course you're getting benefit. You're getting paid by these folks or from their services. You just need to do your homework and make sure that it is not a fee-splitting arrangement.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about supervisees. So these are your provisionally licensed folks, your associates. Now, traditionally, they would just write you a check once a week or once a month for doing supervision. Well, if you're paying them to see clients, do you really want them turning around and paying you for supervision? Because if they're seeing clients at your practice and you're making money from their services and then they're paying you again for supervision, again we're talking about how this can impact the relationship with that supervisee. So I always recommend just make something very clean. Pay them their service fee, right, if they're seeing clients in your office, pay them for their services and include supervision in that math. If it's something you need to say. Well, I would have paid you $50, but I charged $20 for supervision, so you're getting paid $30. Include that in the payment for them. And again, this is just one way. It is not the way. I'm giving you these pointers because I know this can cause a lot of animosity between supervisors and associates who work for them, and I've seen it come up in board meetings. I've seen it come up in public commented board meetings. So be very, very careful how you're paid so that and I'm talking about your associates now you're not exerting any undo, you're not being a jerk, right? You wanna make sure that your supervisee feels like they're being treated fairly and you're being treated fairly, all right. Last but not least, let's do some considerations. Oh and I see we're up against time, so I'm gonna go fast With graduate students and associates, the issue with abandonment.
Speaker 1:So with graduate students, they are only with you one semester at a time. So you need to make sure it's very, very clear in the informed consent with all new clients that the clients understand at the end of every semester they're gonna have to say goodbye to their counselor and then they may start up again in the next semester, but there may be a break for a bit. That's the same with associates who may be coming up against their five years. You need to start letting new clients know. At the end of five years your license expires and if you haven't fulfilled your hours you can no longer see clients. Well, that also will affect intakes, won't it? Because if you're working with a grad student, you may not want them to take any new clients, let's say, after October in the fall, or after February in the spring, because they'll only get two or three sessions before they have to start to terminate and move on with their lives. So, with associates, if they're bumping up against that five year mark, remember both associate license expire at 60 months. Now, that's a new rule that just came out this year you might wanna consider putting into the informed consent for their clients or potential clients. Hey, my time here is very, very limited. I don't know if I'll be able to fulfill our entire treatment plan, et cetera, et cetera. All right, so that was my presentation on the four ethical considerations that I came up with how they're trained, how they're paid, how you're paid, and then issues with abandonment when it comes to associates and graduate students.
Speaker 1:["bad Asses"]. Hey, bad Asses. We can all agree that counselors want a path to a successful counseling career, but that means you have to find quality training. That's not even the real barrier. The real problem is a lot of information can be overwhelming and you my Bad Ass are busy. So you're probably asking yourself how can I improve my practice while still caring for people? How do I grow my skill set, become a supervisor, without losing my work-life balance? How do I find quality training that won't cost too much time and money?
Speaker 1:Bottom line counselors who want a successful counseling career value the goal of growing their skill set and even becoming a supervisor, but at the same time, struggle with finding time to attend quality courses. Counselors can't overcome this barrier because so many times, courses with tempting titles over promise and underperform. Let me ask you something what if there were courses that delivered exactly what they promised, that didn't take a lot of time and didn't break the bank? That's exactly the kind of course we design at Kate Walker Training. I specialize in helping you grow your skill set and career with quality courses on demand, and we have so many to choose from.
Speaker 1:If you're asking yourself, where do I go if I want to sustain my practice and grow my marketing presence? Well, check out the Step it Up membership. What do you do if you're ready to pay it forward and add streams of income. Well, check out the supervisor training, see if you're eligible. If you're looking for an experience that's more hands on, keep an eye out for open enrollment for Badass Basics and our exclusive mastermind groups. I'm Dr Kate Walker. Thank you so much for listening to Texas counselors creating Badass Businesses. Thank you to Ridgely Walker for her lovely voiceovers at our introduction and do me a favor when you get a second, please like, share and subscribe and write us a review. That's really how we get picked up by other RSS feeds and we get this information out to the mental health Badass as we need it. Thanks again and keep saving the world with excellent therapy.