Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses

88 Mastering Private Practice Management: A Summer Boot Camp for Success

• Dr. Kate Walker Ph.D., LPC/LMFT Supervisor • Season 3 • Episode 88

Share episode

Ever wondered how you can truly maximize your private practice without burning out? Join me, Dr. Kate Walker, in an eye-opening journey through the Step it Up boot camp, designed to help you achieve a clear return on every investment—time and money. This episode promises to teach you how to set specific, measurable goals, balance your work efforts, and literally track your time to pinpoint where improvements can be made. Learn how meticulously monitoring key metrics can lead to impactful, actionable changes that optimize your practice for better results.

In this session, we dig deep into the art of balancing crucial aspects of your business—personal growth, marketing, operational tasks, and income generation. Discover the power of categorizing and color-coding activities and tracking essential metrics like first contacts, returned calls, booked appointments, and client show-ups. With a keen focus on summer sales success, we guide you on how to embrace your inner salesperson and connect clients with the valuable services they need. Tune in to uncover strategies that will not only enhance your efficiency but also elevate your private practice to new heights.

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.

Speaker 1:

Hey there, welcome to Step it Up. I'm so glad to be with you today. I'm Dr Kate Walker and you are amazing and smart because you're either joining me live here for the live Step it Up training that we have every Tuesday at noon, or you're watching this or listening to this on a replay, which means you're doing something kind of boring, or you're on a walk or you're. I would hate that you're like having a of boring, or you're on a walk or you're. I would hate that. You're like having a conversation with someone and you secretly have your earbuds in, but not going to lie. I'd still think you'd be awesome. If you're trying to learn, if you're trying to use your time this summer to get your practice up, so let's talk about that in this boot camp. So we're going to have 14 weeks. Today is week 14, right? This is the start of week 14. I'm going to give you specific, measurable, trackable things, because why take a boot camp if you don't know if your boot camp is actually working? Right? We want your boot camp to actually do a thing. I mean, this is a free one or it's not free, but it's included in your membership. And if you're listening to me on a podcast in a few weeks. Then you're hopefully gleaning some ideas.

Speaker 1:

Now, in the Step it Up membership, we always dive a little deeper because I can answer questions and things like that. But this is going to be stuff that you can hang your hat on. So what do I mean by that? How many times have you purchased something from, like, a private practice coach or something someone out there and you're like, oh my gosh, yes, I have to take this training. And then you take the training but you have no idea if it actually did anything for your practice. You know that's not okay. You have to have something called a return on your investment. So, for example, I teach the 40-hour training to become an LPC or an LMFT supervisor in Texas. It's a completely online training and I don't just sell you the course. I give you ways to make your money back. So I share business plans that you can use to get supervisees. I give you ways to refer the course and get paid back like 10% of the course cost when your colleague uses your link. So, having a return on your investment of time and money and we'll just stick with those two for now that's important to know if the thing that you're doing is actually doing what you're paying it to do.

Speaker 1:

So today's training the title, is how to embrace your inner salesperson and get more time, peace and money. So time, peace and money. So time, peace and money.

Speaker 1:

Two of those things are easy to count. One of them is not. One is more of a feeling. Right, if you have peace of mind, you may have a sense of wellbeing, you may be walking around with a smile, you may just be very, very satisfied with where you are in a moment during the day You're able to stay present and in your body. Things like time and money, on the other hand, now we can count those, we can track those.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going to give you other things today that you can count. So, as we go along this 14-week journey, you will be able to understand and describe and be able to objectively look at the data and say, oh yeah, this is working. And if it's not working, you'll be able to make changes. Right, because part of tracking specific, measurable, trackable things is so that you can pivot. Right? You think of like a soundboard in a recording studio you're going to mix and master, you're going to turn knobs or creating an amazing recipe, you're going to be tasting and adjusting ingredients because you have a vision. You know what this project looks like, sounds like, feels like, tastes like, because you visualized it. So today is going to. You know, I like the number three. Well, today I'm probably going to talk way more about more than three things. Honestly, I'll probably have four or five things that you can count and quantify to see if what you're doing is actually working.

Speaker 1:

So let's go back and talk about your return on your investment. So what do we invest when we are starting to work on our private practice or operating our private practice? So we're either in the business right, doing the thing, doing the counseling services, or we're working on the business, and that is marketing the business. Or, you know, doing the accounting, doing all the things that make sure that you're staying ethical and compliant, and you know the lights are on. So when we talk about investing your time into or on your business, that's time away from your family, it's time away from your hobbies, it's time away from your interests. But we're also gonna dive a little deeper and we're gonna put a dollar amount on those hours, on those minutes that you're taking away from your life and putting it into this business.

Speaker 1:

So for these next few weeks, we will, or I'm going to challenge you to track your time, and I mean this very, very literally. I can remember my very first business coach made me create a spreadsheet with my daily time, set into 30-minute increments, from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. I used an app called Time Tracker and or Toggle or one of those, and there are tons out there that you can use, or you can just use a stopwatch, but the idea is to literally track your time. Don't fudge it. I mean, if you're going to be on your screens, your phone's going to come back with how much time you spent on your screen, and it may be shocking and you may be thinking, oh my gosh, how did I spend this much time on Candy Crush? But if we're going to do this challenge and you're going to do it in a way that reflects what's working and what you can do more of to grow your business, then we have to be disciplined and literally count the time that we're going to spend on this. So we're going to be tracking time.

Speaker 1:

How will you know that the things we talk about are working? Well, we should see your free time go up. Now, I'm not talking about money yet, right? I'm simply talking about time. If what you learn in this bootcamp, or anybody's bootcamp, is working, you should have an increase in your free time. Folks, that is not a feeling we're in the mental health business, right? I mean, if my client says, well, I feel like it's working, okay, well, I'm gonna make them dig a little deeper, right? I mean, if my client says, well, I feel like it's working, okay, well, I'm going to make them dig a little deeper, right? How do we know it's working? If someone was looking through a window and saw my client, you know better. What does better look like? We're always wanting to make sure our clients are able to describe what exactly is working. Define that. Well, I'm walking more. Well, I went to the doctor and my blood pressure isn't as high as it was. Well, I got off of three medications. Well, I noticed that I've been sober for two weeks.

Speaker 1:

Right, we're going to make sure to hold our clients to a standard of accountability, and that's what we got to hold ourselves to. So not only are we going to track our time literally, we are going to divide our time into four categories. All right Activities that grow you as a person. Now I'm going to make this very broad, right? This is anything that you do in your free time that is not candy crush, all right, so let me let me narrow that down for you. So, grow you. Uh, this could be going on a walk. This could be reading a business book, this could be interacting with a loved one. This could be spending quality time over coffee with your friend. All of these activities are enjoyable and you leave that activity better than you were before. So that's the only criteria for time that grows you.

Speaker 1:

So I want you to picture that spreadsheet, right. If you're starting to fill in this time with your activities and you're like, but Kate, I don't want to write down every single activity that I do, well, well, I don't blame you. So let's pick a color, right. If it's going to grow you, well, let's make that a green color, right. Green like plants. I'm looking out my window right now. I see green vines climbing up things. I see green grass where it shouldn't be. That's why we're going to pull it like weeds. But I digress. Your green boxes will indicate the times that grow you. Then we'll have time that markets you and, yes, we're going to talk a lot about marketing during this 14 week challenge.

Speaker 1:

So marketing you means just what I'm talking about and we've learned if you're a Step it Up member, writing a blog is marketing, optimizing that blog is marketing. Going to your local chamber of commerce and standing up and giving your one-minute speech is marketing. Thing that gets you in the back office of your website, that markets you. You know what guys I'm even going to count. If you're on Facebook and you're responding to things like looking for somebody in the DFW area who works with eight-year-olds suffering with trauma and you respond to that, right, that's marketing. So grows you, markets you and market.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what color you would make that, maybe yellow. I don't know what color you would make that, maybe yellow. I don't know why that came to mind. Anyway, you pick a color for marketing. Then we have time that runs the machine. This is accounting. This is bookkeeping. This is maybe vacuuming your office. This is updating your computer. This is buying a new computer. You're going to have to spend some time running the machine.

Speaker 1:

Now, those of you who own a group practice, you know what I'm talking about, right? You know that those types of jobs can be like an alligator and they just consume your time and you just have to keep feeding the alligator. So we got to be careful with that one time that you must spend running the machine. So, if you want to call that one red I don't know, and I should have made this last one green you may want to switch this, but this is the time that makes you money. Now you can think of this a couple of ways. All right, and you know how we do. I mean, I know how my clients do, I know how I do personally. We want to kind of justify things like well, you know what? I was writing a blog, or I was in Canva and I was making this amazing graphic and eventually that's going to be on. This thing that makes me money. No, that's not what I mean. I mean literally the time that you spend doing an activity that results in a sale, right? So I don't know what that means for you, but we'll define that as we go along, because, as your Excel spreadsheet or whatever thing you decide to do, again, just Google time to track or ways to track my time what we want to end up with at the end, we want a visualization of your time. We want to see how much of that spreadsheet in a week is green, how much of it is red, how much of it is whatever color you picked, because what you've got to decide is do you want to make more money?

Speaker 1:

The title of this presentation today is Embracing your Inner Salesperson. Now, a good salesperson isn't somebody who tries to sell someone something they don't need. Right? If I'm out here and I'm trying to sell you a broken car, I'm a terrible salesperson. I mean, forget it, I'm a terrible person. Right? Embracing your inner salesperson means you have a product to sell and you have potential clients out there who need what you're having to sell.

Speaker 1:

All we're doing here, all a good salesman does, is they connect the person to the thing that they need. I mean, think of a lemonade stand at the top of a hill on a hot day. Right, you climb that hill, you get to the top of the hill and you see a lemonade stand. Holy moly. Right, the kid who's operating that lemonade stand doesn't have to be a great salesperson, right, they just need to hold out their hand and hand you a glass of lemonade. So that's what I want you to embrace inside of you. You are amazing, you're wonderful, you have a story, you have a calling, you have a set of skills and all we're doing this summer is we're going to work on connecting you to an ideal client or creating a super fan out of that person who maybe was not a good fit for you.

Speaker 1:

So the other thing so we're tracking time. I know that was a bunch of stuff dividing the time, tracking the time but number one, if you're participating in this challenge this summer, I'm going to challenge you to commit to honestly, brutally, honestly tracking your time and then how that's divided up right, does it make you money? Does it run the machine? Does it market you? Does it grow you? Okay, next are calls, and I'm going to make air quotes. So here I go. I just made air quotes. I want you to track incoming calls. Now and I'll talk about this later in one of our trainings I truly think you need to have one way.

Speaker 1:

If you're a one-person show, if you are a solo practitioner, you need to have one way that clients come to you. Now, if you want a group practice, that's great. Then you can have multiple ways that clients contact you, but then you can hire people to be in charge of that. So if you own a group practice and you're listening to me now, I want you to picture, okay, this is how I would train one person to interact that first initial contact with that potential client. Okay, so either group practice owner they're answering an email, they're answering phone messages, they're answering forms on the website Okay, it's that initial contact with that potential client. So I'm going to call it a call.

Speaker 1:

So one of the things you're going to track as we do this challenge is how many incoming contacts do you have? And again, brutally honest, here you're going to hold yourself accountable. If you're an email person, all right, how many incoming emails do you get every single week? Because, if you're doing your job, what should those numbers be doing? Right, they should be going up. So, incoming call, that's the voice message, right, and I'm not talking about phone tag or email tag or anything like that. This is a very simple number. You are going to track the initial outreach to you. So if you're an email person and you look and you see, okay, this person reached out to me at 945 this morning and it's three o'clock in the afternoon, and you're and you see, okay, this person reached out to me at 945 this morning and it's three o'clock in the afternoon and you're like, oh wow, well, six hours, that's a pretty stale contact, right. So it's okay, though, because that's what we're looking to pivot. That's what we may be changing this summer, but that's what you'll be tracking.

Speaker 1:

So number two is that incoming call email text. I don't know if you guys are doing texts for your incoming no judgment here. I just I want it to work. Whatever it is that you're doing, I want it to work Because the next thing we're going to track is the returned call or the returned email, and this is where you're going to start to see your Excel spreadsheet get really blocked off with some stuff that you don't want to see, because you're going to track. You're going to be tracking how much time it takes, how many I call them touches does each contact require before there is a meaningful connection.

Speaker 1:

So, for example, if you are trying to return a phone call at the end of the day and you say, hey, calling you back, I'm available tomorrow at 9 am, look forward to your call, that's two touches, right, Because you had the voicemail. That's one touch. You called them back. That's two touches. They call you back at nine o'clock, but you missed the call. Three touches. You call them back. Four touches, right? No appointment has been made, but you're having to fill in your Excel spreadsheet with time. That is not making you money, it's not running the machine, it is not marketing you. It's simply wow. I'm trying to connect my goodness to this potential person who needs my goodness, and it's wasting time, right.

Speaker 1:

So, embracing your inner salesperson and understanding that you need more time with this person quality time, not phone tag time or email tag time. So you're going to count that. You're going to track how many touches it takes before you're able to book that first appointment. So, if the next email is, I've got Tuesdays and Thursdays at nine o'clock and 10 am, which ones work for you? Four to five touches? Well, neither one of those work for me. Okay, how about Saturday morning at nine? Nope, that doesn't work for me either, right? So now we're getting to nine touches, 10 touches. You gotta track that. The next thing you're going to track. I told you it would be more than four. So the next thing you're gonna track is booked appointments. So these are appointments that literally go into the books. Nobody shows up, right? We just were going to track booked appointments.

Speaker 1:

So, after you've done all the phone tag, after you've done all the chasing, the emailing, the touches, and you decide, oh okay, here we go and you send them the link with the paperwork. They are on your schedule. We're going to track that Books appointments. You know what the last thing is going to be You're going to start tracking how many people actually show up to the first appointment. Now, one thing we're not going to do is, at least for now, we're not going to track do they come to the second or the third or the fourth appointment. We're not tracking that yet. We're simply tracking do they show up for that first appointment? All right.

Speaker 1:

So if you came to, let's say, your Step it Up membership 14-week boot camp right, that's included in your membership and you were thinking, wow, I wonder if this membership is really worth it, right? Well, what did I teach you? You need to see a return on your monthly investment. Some of you have annual memberships. Either way, you're paying a certain amount every month for this membership, certain amount every month for this membership, and so if you get one booked appointment that pays for that month, that's great. I mean, I'm happy, you're happy, but wouldn't it be nice to see your booked appointments go up 10% or 20% or 30%, and then you're having to look at, maybe, what to do on the waiting list. By the way, a great thing to do for folks on a waiting list is to create an online course that they can participate in and still interact with you, even though it's asynchronous, and it gives them tools and creates a raving fan.

Speaker 1:

So we have tactics for too much business. I promise you. I'm going to teach you that. I'm going to help you understand what to do if you have too many people knocking on your door, which is what I want to happen, which is what I think will happen, because it's Texas and we are number 50 when it comes to access to affordable mental health care. So I have no doubt that people will be knocking at your door, but you've got all summer long to work on this project.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm talking to people, probably like me, who don't have kids at home, and you're like Kate. Summer is like every other season for me. I get that. I didn't even know school was out until I saw the buses aren't running and the school zones aren't blinking. So, yeah, no, I get that. But summer, traditionally for our business, business goes down. You know you just have people traveling, you have people with inconsistent schedules, you have parents that are working, kids in daycare, et cetera. So spend this time, but don't spend the time spinning your wheel. So let's review.

Speaker 1:

Here's what you will track in order to make sure what we do this summer actually makes a difference in your bottom line. Number one you are going to track your time. You're going to track your time ruthlessly, mercilessly, honestly, and you're going to track it according to and you can hit rewind on this in case you didn't get this before right what grows you, what markets you, what runs the machine, what makes you money? Okay, the next thing you're going to track are calls. Quote unquote calls. That's just the number of first contacts, however you do that. That is email number one, that is voicemail number one, that is text message, whatever that first contact is with that potential client reaching out to you You're going to track. Then, number three returned calls.

Speaker 1:

Right, and I also refer to them as touches. So the incoming call, that's touch one. You call it back, email them back. Touch two they call you back, email you back. Touch three, touch four, touch five. How many touches does it take before that first appointment, or you both decide it's not a good fit, so that's the next thing.

Speaker 1:

Number four you're going to track booked appointments. That's booked first appointments, and then, finally, you're going to track how many people actually show up to that first appointment. And I'm not talking about in person, I'm completely virtual, so please don't take that literally. It means you know webcam in person knocking on your door, showing up whatever right Time calls, returned calls, booked appointments, actually showed up appointments. So we're doing five things. So I kind of lied to you. We're tracking way more than four things. So that's the challenge. This summer we're going to dive into all of these changes that you can make in your practice and they're doable, I promise you. I'm not going to give you anything that's not doable or requires a million dollars. These are things you can tweak and the only way, guys, you're gonna hold yourselves and me accountable is to count these things so we can make sure it's working. All right, I'm gonna hit pause and I will open it up to questions.