Ever felt stumped on how to charge and get paid as a clinical supervisor? Or ever wondered how you could transform your practice into a metaphorical strip mall? Well, we've got the keys to unlock those mysteries in this enlightening session. Not only that, we have exciting news about the only online 40-hour LPC LMFT supervisor course in Texas! Plus, we're introducing the 2023 Practice Grant giveaway, a golden opportunity to help you build your career, protect your license, and grow your practice while avoiding pitfalls.
We're taking a deep look at different business models for supervision, from fee-for-service to Anne's Place Model, where supervisees give back to the community by offering three hours of their direct service per week and receive a waived supervision fee in return. We're going to walk you through the pros and cons, helping you to understand the natural consequences for supervisees who late cancel or don't show up, and how to effectively charge for these instances. The importance of maintaining proper documents and invoices as part of the supervision file is also highlighted, to ensure you cover all your bases and stay out of trouble.
This episode is an absolute treasure trove of insights for mental health supervisors looking to scale their business and professional reach. So, buckle up for this ride, folks!
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.
Ever felt stumped on how to charge and get paid as a clinical supervisor? Or ever wondered how you could transform your practice into a metaphorical strip mall? Well, we've got the keys to unlock those mysteries in this enlightening session. Not only that, we have exciting news about the only online 40-hour LPC LMFT supervisor course in Texas! Plus, we're introducing the 2023 Practice Grant giveaway, a golden opportunity to help you build your career, protect your license, and grow your practice while avoiding pitfalls.
We're taking a deep look at different business models for supervision, from fee-for-service to Anne's Place Model, where supervisees give back to the community by offering three hours of their direct service per week and receive a waived supervision fee in return. We're going to walk you through the pros and cons, helping you to understand the natural consequences for supervisees who late cancel or don't show up, and how to effectively charge for these instances. The importance of maintaining proper documents and invoices as part of the supervision file is also highlighted, to ensure you cover all your bases and stay out of trouble.
This episode is an absolute treasure trove of insights for mental health supervisors looking to scale their business and professional reach. So, buckle up for this ride, folks!
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.
So, yeah, if you do decide to employ your supervisee, make sure that you incorporate your supervision fee in that somehow. Don't make it something where you're paying your supervisee for their employment and then you're asking them to pay you for your supervision. Make it nice and tidy so that it's all wrapped up in there together. 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. All right, let's get started. Let's get started. 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 starts her day off with yoga.
Speaker 1:Happy November. It's finally chilly in Texas. I'm hot-chai oat milk lattes without sending myself into a full-on hot flash. I've got big news about the only online 40-hour LPC LMFT supervisor course in Texas. We have officially graduated more new supervisors to be than any other course in Texas 236 graduates in 2023 alone, and the number just keeps climbing.
Speaker 1: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. And bonus points if the course is not boring and outdated but the real barrier to finishing a course that could lead to your supervisor designation. Well, sometimes it's cold hard cash. 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 November we're accepting applications for the December Practice Grant giveaway. I'm looking for counselor badasses just like you who share my mission to fill the gaps in access to affordable mental health services in rural and underserved Texas. Applications will be reviewed by a panel and will announce grant winners in December. You, my bad ass, are too important to your community to not take the supervisor training because you didn't have the cash to make it happen. Fill out the application today for the 2023 Practice Grant giveaway. It's easy. Just go to katewalkertrainingcom. Forward slash grant. That's katewalkertrainingcom. Forward slash G-R-A-N-T.
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm Dr Kate Walker. Welcome to your Tuesday training. If you're listening to this on a replay or on the podcast, yay you, because you're taking extra time. I know the people that are watching me live. You guys are awesome and you scheduled the time those of you who are listening on the replay. You are on the treadmill, you are doing carpool, you're sitting at a boring baseball game, you're doing something else and still trying to get some amazing training in the meantime and that's what it means to be a Step it Up member you get these live training. So if you want to show up and ask me questions here I am Don't forget if you are in the 40-hour course every Thursday, we'll host your live study hall. So either I or one of my trusty assistants will be there to answer your questions as well, because we don't want this just to be some online course where everything's all out here somewhere. I want you guys to feel like you've got a nice cozy safety net to make sure you have everything you need to be successful and go save the world with excellent therapy.
Speaker 1:So today you're going to get some ideas for business plans if you're thinking about adding supervision to your private practice. So I know I just totally alienated a bunch of you who are like I don't want to be a supervisor or I'm a supervisor but I'm in an agency. It's okay, you can still listen in and pass the info to a friend or who knows, maybe someday you'll get the bug and you want to add supervision to your private practice. Now you'll have some information Now. Caveat is warning I am not an attorney. I'm not a business attorney, I'm not an accountant, I cannot tell you the tax implications or the extra kind of stuff you'll need to do with the IRS in order to make these business plans work. These are business plans, though, that you can use and then do the research. Business plan always starts with a dream. You have to see if it fits your personality and then, if it meets all that criteria, you go forward and you do your due diligence. There's some great organizations. Small business administration usually has an office near where everybody lives and they're happy to offer some free advice. So do your research, but take what I'm about to tell you as a great jumping off point.
Speaker 1:So, business models for supervision I'm going to talk about different ways to charge and get paid, a different way to serve your community, and even a way to sort of become this. I call it the strip mall. I don't mean a strip club, a strip mall. So get your mind right. I'm talking about, like, where you drive along the road and there's a target and there's a Rossens and there's a liquor store and there's a nail salon right, strip mall. So let's get into it.
Speaker 1:The first business model I want to talk about is the easiest one, and it's just the fee for service. Fee for service, also the fee per month. So LPC associates must accrue four hours in a month. So lots and lots of LPC supervisors charge per month. It makes sense. So that can be for extra contact. You know, if they have an emergency they need to call you with some situations or they're checking in with you. That way you're not sort of charging for every tiny little thing. Lmft associates those guys are still weekly. They must come to supervision every week unless and I'm making air quotes here good cause is shown. That way it's written in the rule. So that fee for service may make sense as opposed to the fee for the month.
Speaker 1:Now what goes along with that business model of just charging a fee for every time that they come to see you is you have to consider and this is for all of the business models that I'll mention today late cancels and no shows. Late cancels and no shows. How are you going to charge for that and how will you make sure that that supervisee is still receiving supervision right? Because even if they don't come, you're still responsible for their work. So while you may want to set that boundary like you would for a client, like, oh, you didn't come, you don't get to see me this week. Yeah, you still need to make sure that you're providing oversight with those clients because if we're going to use kind of the parenting model, the natural logical consequences that supervisee I'm talking about LPC associates if they don't get their four hours of supervision in a month, they lose all of the hours for that month. So that's a natural logical consequence for them.
Speaker 1:Lmft associates you can yank those hours away for the week if you like, but I'm talking about the consequence for you. Right, my job is to help you supervise and not lose your license. Right, that's my job. I'm helping supervisors help themselves, help their supervisors and help the clients. So, as the supervisor providing oversight, it behooves you to continue to see that supervisor.
Speaker 1:So what do you do? Well, you can charge your supervisor for coming at a prime time. You can say okay, my only available time for you to make up this week is Saturday morning at nine o'clock. But that is a $200 slot because I don't want to be awake at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning. You do. You are perhaps more realistically. The only slot you have available is a prime client time, let's say four or five o'clock in the afternoon. And since most of us, when we supervise, we're charging a lower rate for our supervisee. If you're having to plug a supervisee into a spot where you might make more money with a client, it's reasonable, I think, to then charge that supervisee that full client rate that you're not getting.
Speaker 1:So, agency supervisors, I hope you're kind of perking your ears up a little bit because although you cannot charge for supervision, if it is a part of your job, you still must have a natural logical consequence for a supervisee who late, cancels or no shows, right? Because natural logical consequence, yeah, they lose the hours, but your job is to protect those clients and your license. So figuring out a way to your advantage, right, shifting the angst to the supervisee and off of you. You've got to figure out a way to make sure that you meet however you can, but that you're either getting compensated for it in some way or that your supervisee recognizes that they may lose the hours for that month. Or perhaps you even want to work with your agency, if you're doing this as part of your job, to help them understand that you need extra compensation if you're going to be supervising outside of a regular workday.
Speaker 1:So the two models we're talking about so far are. We have the fee for service, the fee per month and in both cases and I just heard Jenda Dahlribble talked about this yesterday in our Monday morning consultation group that we have monthly for the Texas Supervisor Coalition. If you're a supervisor and you're listening to this and you are not in the Texas Supervisor Coalition Facebook page or you're not joining us in our monthly consultation groups, man, you're missing out, because I don't record those, those don't go on podcasts, those don't go anywhere, because we create a safe space where people can process and ask questions. So when Boston Attorney Jenda Dahlribble spoke to us Monday morning, she talked about making sure that those invoices how you pay your supervisee if you hire them and how they are paying you if you do one of the models we're talking about the fee for service or fee for month those documents must be part of the supervision file that you keep for each one of your supervisee. So, whatever you decide to do, if you're going to be charging for late cancels, no shows, extra time, prime time make sure you include documentation of that being paid or at least being invoiced.
Speaker 1:Next, business model is more for the community and not to say that there's not an advantage for you right, because one thing I will never tell you, superstar, is that you have to sacrifice your time, your life balance in order to give back as a supervisor. I see people doing that. They're on the road to burnout and once you burn out, well, I don't know how short your fuse is. Are you going to burn out quickly? Is it going to take a long time? But it's not sustainable. I have built my business on helping folks like you make a sustainable business model so that you can stay in business, because your community is going to grow to depend on you. So this is that business model. I call it the Anne's Place model and this is something I developed when I started the nonprofit Anne's Place. I since shut it down because I was getting overwhelmed because we got a lot of business. We helped a lot of families in the span of time that it was open.
Speaker 1:It was about five years in Montgomery County, texas, and the way I operated Anne's Place was I asked my supervisees to give me three direct hours a week in our Anne's Place office. So we had two or three offices, we did some remote offices and so if they could give me three direct hours a week roughly 12 direct hours per month, then I would waive my supervision fee and I wasn't tic-tac-y about it either. Simply if they had a no show I wasn't going to be like, oh that's only two hours, you owe me $1.50. We didn't do that. It was for two reasons. Number one to serve the community, because what my supervisees were able to do is offer counseling at a reduced rate. So we used a sliding fee scale based on the national poverty standards. We charged anywhere from $10 to $80 per session. So I was averaging an income from those services of probably close to $60, maybe $100 a week from each one of my supervisees, not per hour. So if my supervisee provided three direct hours in a week and she charged 20 for one session, 40 for another and 20 for another, so I'd get perhaps $80 from three hours of her work, and that's about what I would have charged for supervision anyway. So it was really nice.
Speaker 1:I think at one time I had seven supervisees, so that's 21 hours per week. They were able to donate to Ann's place and it wasn't the major part of their income. So that was nice too, because I always encouraged my supervisees to have an outside job. I wanted them to work in a hospital or I wanted to work someplace where you can get those hours quickly. I didn't want them to hang their hat on a private practice clientele when they were trying to get their hours fast. So it was a real win-win. My supervisees, who are in a hospital setting or a prison setting or some kind of a clinic, they go do their nine to five job. Then they come to me and get some really great private practice experience at Ann's place and then for supervision I charged them nothing and so I won, they won, the community won. So again, the Ann's place model. You just ask your supervisees to donate a certain number of hours and I keep it really low because I don't want anybody to think that I'm replacing their income or I'm getting some kind of paid service for nothing, right? Nobody's having to get me coffee or do my dry cleaning or take my car to go get washed. I wanted to make sure it was very, very clear three direct hours a week, free supervision. So that's the Ann's place model.
Speaker 1: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 questions and answers. Here's what we have coming up in the next four months.
Speaker 1: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. 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. December 22nd isn't exactly a webinar, but we are announcing the winners of the 2023 practice grant giveaway. January 25th 2024 will be the exception to our 5 o'clock rule, because our speaker will be the fabulous and knowledgeable Christina DeLuna, board Administrator for the Texas LPC Board. She'll tell us what's new at the board and, of course, answer your questions. Get in on all the fun by going to wwwkatewalkertrainingcom. Forward slash free webinar. That's wwwkatewalkertrainingcom. Forward slash free webinar.
Speaker 1:So one that's becoming a lot more prevalent is simply to employ your supervisees, and I've got a great blog about 1099 versus W2, making sure you know the law, because classifying someone as 1099 or W2 is not really your choice. There are very clear criteria that the IRS sets out, and if your supervisee meets these criteria, they're 1099. If they meet those criteria, they're W2. So I'm going to leave that conversation for another day. I'll post a link to that article when we make this live in the blog and on the podcast.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, if you do decide to employ your supervisee, make sure that you incorporate your supervision fee in that somehow. Don't make it something where you're paying your supervisee for their employment and then you're asking them to pay you for your supervision. Make it nice and tidy so that it's all wrapped up in there together. I hope that makes sense. Oh, we got questions, all right, okay.
Speaker 1:So yes, I can give you an example. So let's say you hire Fred, fred is seeing clients at your practice and you're paying Fred $25 an hour to see clients in your practice. Well, in that $25 an hour, I hope you have kept in mind what you would have charged Fred for supervision. Okay, so let's say you would have charged $75 a week for supervision, right? So instead of you writing Fred a check for, let's say, $250 and then saying, hey, fred, give me $75 of that back for your supervision fee this week, make sure you're paying Fred or he's able to generate enough income so that your supervision fee is already coming out of that so you can do it as a line item on his paycheck. Somehow make it like a cost for doing business or something like that, so that Fred sees it's very clear. You want to make sure it's transparent on his paycheck and it's part of the contract that you two signed together, so he's not looking at it going hey, I know I saw 15 clients this week. Why did I only make this much money? Right, make sure it's a conversation. So I hope that helped. The line item is always better because it's like when you know you're looking at your paycheck and you're trying to figure out what all that stuff is the first time you have a job, right? And also, don't forget, if you're going to hire Fred as a W-2 employee, a program like QuickBooks Payroll is really and I don't work for QuickBooks, but it's really easy to put things into that line item because you're already taking out things like their taxes and their finca and all that fun stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the last business model I'm going to talk about is actually this is the strip mall, not the strip club. The strip mall, when I put this together, this really was for LPCs only, because basically it was for if you wanted to have the big group practice and you were going to have five fully licensed folks and you were trying to say, oh, how much do I want to pay them, which would mean paperwork, you know, tax paperwork, w-2, 1099, all of that or do you want all five of these people to pay you? Right, and it works for LPCs because back before the law changed, lpc associates could not own their own practice, so this didn't even apply to supervisors. Well, now it does. And this is not the same as being hired by your supervisee. Remember, the rule says that you can't work for your supervisee, right, they can't hire you, and this is charging a rent.
Speaker 1:Okay, so go with me on this, because step one, you have to value what it is you offer, right? So if you've got a supervisee right, you've got friend and you're like okay, here are all the things I offer Fred. I offer Fred supervision, I offer Fred office space. I offer Fred access to the electronic health record system. We have front office staff. We have HIPAA compliant, this HIPAA compliant, that we make sure this, this, we go in and we audit this, this, this. Oh, my goodness, that's a very valuable service You're offering Fred. And let's say, fred, there are four other therapists, right so you've got 12345 therapists and you're like okay, I'm a very valuable service here that I'm going to offer to these four therapists and my associate Fred, what would you charge for that? Right?
Speaker 1:So now I want you to think like a landlord. If you're a landlord and you have a strict mall and you're like ah, got a wonderful location, I'm going to put in Wi-Fi, plumbing, pest control, electricity, all of these things, how much would I charge people to rent a spot in my strip mall? Well, you would value that and you would charge a rent and this is the fifth business plan that I'm talking about charging a rent for the services that you provide your supervisees, if they are working in your practice. So it's kind of a flip, right, you're not paying them. So no W-2, no 1099, because there's no money leaving your hands to pay them for the services they render. It's going the other way. They can see as many clients as they want, charge what they want, but at the end of the month they're paying you for this.
Speaker 1:Rent. I'm going to make the air quotes again. Rent, because rent can include whatever you value yourself at right. So that's the supervision service, that's the rent, that's the office furniture, the computer system, the internet, all the things that I mentioned. So it may be hard for you, and I've had therapists, you know they're trying to write it on a piece of paper, like, okay, if I take my air conditioning bill and I divide it by five, no, I don't do that, right, just a rough ballpark estimate and think about your bills and divide it by five, right? And then what would that supervision be worth? What would it be worth for all of these people to basically park themselves in your practice, use all of your amenities? What would you charge for that? Now, that's income, right, that's income coming to you, so you don't have to worry about paying them. So we're almost back to the fee for service model, aren't we? Because number one, fee for service or fee for month. That's about what you would charge for the service of supervision. All right, so let's review.
Speaker 1:I talked about five business plans fee for service, which is just per service, like LMFT associates. I talked about fee per month. I talked about an and place model where they donate three hours a week and deliver low cost counseling services to the community and you don't charge for supervision at all. I talked about employing your supervisees and then you have to classify them 1099 or W2, because as an employer, you're going to have to pay them. And then number five, which is kind of a hybrid I'm calling it the strip mall just because I don't have a better name for it but it starts with you valuing your services, all of the services, and if your supervisee wants to open their own private practice and use your amenities, use your filing system, use your office space, then what would you charge for? All of those amenities, including supervision? But you would not pay them for services. You wouldn't pay them anything for seeing those clients. Those clients are theirs and they pay. Your supervisee.
Speaker 1:Tiffany wants to know can we still require them to have a certain amount of clients if they are W2, to ensure it covers supervision? Why don't you know why not. I know, if you're working at Walmart, they're going to require you to work a certain number of hours, so you can do whatever you want. You're an employer. Good question too. All right, so that was just off the top of my head. Some business models for supervision. There are other ones out there. Oh, nikia wants to know what if they don't have the number of hours? Okay, so this gets a little bit complicated.
Speaker 1:When Kinda talked to us on Monday, it seems to me that most of the problems came from clinical supervisors who were in the dual role of clinical supervisor and boss. So you would have to decide and communicate to your supervisor is this hours requirement an employment issue or a clinical issue? Right? Because if it's supervision and it's a clinical issue, you've got to remediate before you terminate. But if they're just over here and life happens and it's out of their control, or maybe they're slackers and they just don't feel like working, that might be an employment issue and it's really difficult for that clinical supervisor to be over here going. Man, you've got to get your hours together, but I'm gonna have to charge you for supervision this month and then over here you're like oh, tell me everything that happened this week. Please be open with me, share everything, right? So that's where the trouble can come.
Speaker 1:So with any of these I would say Ann's place, employing your supervisor or doing the strip mall. It's really better if you are not in both of those roles the clinical supervisor and the boss, right? Even if you have somebody that you could just bring in to do that employment stuff. So you stay completely out of it and you are just focusing on that clinical piece. So I hope that answered that I'm gonna pull out the chat Cause.
Speaker 1:Remember, you're allowed to have a dual relationship in the supervision arena. It's just. You must do your best to mitigate any problems and you always, as the supervisor, are responsible for maintaining that relationship that's healthy with your supervisee, so that they aren't afraid to tell you things or they're not afraid for their job, right? You still have to kind of be that safe space, right? You're welcome. You're welcome for all the great info. You guys are awesome. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. If you're watching or listening on a replay, you're awesome. Thanks for sharing your day with me. ["the Last Song of the Year"].
Speaker 1:Hey badasses, 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. 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 bad-ass basics and our exclusive mastermind groups.
Speaker 1:["massive Masterminds"]. I'm Dr Kate Walker. Thank you so much for listening to Texas counselors creating bad-ass 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 bad-asses who need it. Thanks again and keep saving the world with excellent therapy. ["massive Masterminds"].