Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses
Weekly doses of strategy and advice for mental health professionals building a practice the smart way. Non-Texans welcome!
Kate Walker, Ph.D. LPC, LMFT from #counselorsdontquit Blog and Kate Walker Training You Tube Channel reveals all of her practice and practice side-hustle strategies, clinical techniques, and killer marketing tips and tricks so you can be ahead of the curve with your mental health practice. Discover how you can create a mental health practice that works for YOU so you can have the time and freedom to do what you love, whether it's traveling the world, or attending your nephew's volleyball game.
Since 2007, she's been co-supporting her family (along with her amazing husband) with her counseling practice achievebalance.org and counselor education company Kate Walker Training LLC. Dr. Kate openly shares wins, losses, and all the lessons in between with the Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses Community.
Author of My Next Steps: Create a Counseling Career You'll Love, researcher, speaker, and professor of counselor education, Kate helps you learn about positioning yourself as your community's expert resource, marketing, building HIPAA compliant scalable systems and outsourcing, content creation, podcasting, search engine optimization, niche development, social media strategies, how to get more clients, creating online courses, becoming a clinical supervisor, and productivity tips so that you create something amazing without burning yourself out.
It's a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Dr. Kate you're not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses
93 Navigating the Therapy Call: Reduce Client Anxiety and Set Clear Expectations
Are you ready to transform your summer slump into a season of growth and preparation? Join us for an insightful coaching session with Dr. Kate Walker, where we uncover essential strategies to elevate your therapeutic practice ahead of the bustling fall season. From increasing client contacts to reducing phone tag and securing first appointments, Dr. Walker shares actionable steps to optimize your practice's performance. Learn how to turn initial client interactions into powerful moments that either convert potentials into new clients or create raving fans who will champion your services.
In this episode, we shift our focus to the heart of counseling: effective communication and setting client expectations. Discover the art of transitioning from counselor-centric language to client-centric conversations that emphasize the collaborative nature of therapy. Dr. Walker outlines a pragmatic approach for initial sessions, including interview-style first meetings, engaging homework, and course corrections based on client feedback. Plus, master techniques to reduce client anxiety during initial calls, transforming them into confident, engaged partners in their therapeutic journey. Tune in for a wealth of insights designed to enhance client satisfaction and engagement in your practice.
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, I'm Dr Kate Walker and welcome to your Tuesday coaching. I'm so glad you're here. If you're watching me on a replay, listening to me on a podcast, you're doing a good thing. That means you're taking time to get better, to learn something new, and I hope today is awesome. Give me two seconds. I'm going to let folks in who want to be here live, all right, and remember, if you're watching or listening live here on the Zoom call, because Step it Up members get to come every Tuesday at noon for the group coaching. You don't have to have a camera on, you don't have to do anything. I am here and at the end I'm going to open it up for questions.
Speaker 1:Generally, what I do is I talk about the topic first and then I leave it to you guys because you have good questions and this summer is all about the boot camp. We're doing a 14-week boot camp because most practices not all, but many, many practices kind of experience, the summer slump, the little doldrum, they you know everybody's out on vacation or kids have gone to summer camp. Our clients tend to dwindle in the summertime, but that's okay. We can plan for that and that's what we're doing right now. We're using the summer to tweak some things, pivot some things, adjust some things so that you can hit the ground running in the fall. And the fall is generally when things tend to pick up. So if you see kiddos or adolescents, that's when you're going to see that first note home within the first six weeks when that first grading period happens, or with couples who are trying to keep it together for all the family time over the summer. Then the kids go off to school and then you couple therapists might also see an uptick in the fall. But don't worry, we got you covered in the fall. We'll have some other trainings just for that, so that when all of this starts building, you'll know exactly what to do.
Speaker 1:So you'll finish today's episode with some skills to talk on the phone. Yes, I know, I'm using the word phone, it's so antiquated. And who talks on the phone anymore? Well, you have this amazing voice and that voice is how people connect with you, and so if you don't like the phone, totally want to respect that too. So take whatever I say today and you can translate that into text or email or however you want to have that first contact with your client.
Speaker 1:Because that's what last week was about, if you recall, we talked about how to talk to that client or potential client rather so that you get a booked first session. So an actual client or a raving fan Remember, a raving fan is someone who may not be well suited for you as a client either because of cost or schedule or specialty, but they loved the phone call with you so much that they're going gonna go spread the word about what an amazing resource you are to their friends and family and colleagues. And we talked about how to make that easy for them. Right, we've talked about a call to action. So if you aren't sure what those are, just easy peasy, go back to that and you can hit, play and slow it down or speed it up or pause or whatever you got to do, so that you really understand your goal. Your goal is you're going to create a client or a fan. Now let's talk about why that's important.
Speaker 1:We talked about four KPIs this summer. Not smart goals, even though I love smart goals, you know I. Not smart goals, even though I love smart goals, you know I love smart goals. Kpis key performance indicators allow us to pivot when things aren't going well. So, if you can imagine, if you will, you're somebody who operates a practice and you've got this social media manager and you're paying this social media manager big bucks and they're doing all the things they're posting on Instagram regularly, they're interacting regularly, they're updating all of the links regularly and you're like, oh, what a good practice owner I am. Well, how do you know what they're doing is actually moving the needle on things like client caseload, money, income retention, whatever those things are that you measure. And if you are a cash-based practice, in other words, if you don't take insurance, then marketing's got to be your jam. I mean, this is you trying to get your name out there? So we talked about four KPIs when we started the bootcamp, right?
Speaker 1:Number one is the phone call, and you remember I put that in air quotes because I know some of you don't like the phone call you want the text, you want the email and that's all good. So that is the phone call. You want to increase the number of people reaching out to you KPI number one. Number two is the contact. That's when phone tag is over, email tag is over and you actually make contact with that person. Number three is the booked first appointment, so when you can look at your schedule and say, aha, that person who called me and then we made contact, they actually booked an appointment and then number four is made appointment, like they actually showed up to the first session, right? So we want to see those numbers go up and I want you to test me on this If you're following along with every week of the bootcamp and you have your Excel spreadsheet or whatever you like to track numbers with, I hope you are tracking those four numbers because we want them to go up. We want you to have more people reaching out. I want you to play less phone tag, I want you to book more first sessions and I want more of those folks to show up.
Speaker 1:Now today's continuing that, because I want to dive a little deeper into exactly what you say on the call. So we talked about the script, we talked about how to say hey, this is Kate Walker, am I speaking to Jane Doe, and is this still a good time? Because you're smart and what you did is you made sure to schedule a contact time so that phone tag goes down or actually just goes away. So we were looking at, then, what you, because I kind of skipped over the part of what you say. I mean, I talked about how to explain and you know how to ask if they have any questions, and then you can talk about your cost, your insurance, whether or not you take insurance and your schedule. Now let's talk about the meat of this. Right, you've engaged with this potential client. You have said okay, tell me a little bit about what's going on. You're helping them understand boundaries because you are watching the clock and remember, not everybody does it this way. There are lots of different ways to do this, and now you're going to let them know what to expect.
Speaker 1:Now, what I'm going to say may cause a lot of you to kind of pause and go oh crap, I don't know, because we don't often think about ready drum roll, please. How does counseling actually work? How does it actually make a difference? And some of you may be thinking well, kate, it's the relationship, or it's the intervention, or it's my theory, or it's you know, et cetera. Right, fill in the blank. That's all well and good, but that's your way of looking at it. Right? That's counselor speak, that's techie, master's level, phd level I've read all the journals in the textbook Big deal.
Speaker 1:Right, when you go to the dentist with a toothache, you don't want to hear how he's going to fix your tooth, necessarily, or just give me the brief overview. Just tell me when I'm going to feel better, and that's something I know we as counselors really struggle with, right. When am I going to feel better? Counselor says I'm not really sure. It depends a lot on you, right? So we know that Ethically we need to make sure we're not making promises that we cannot keep. Right, we can't guarantee a cure. We can't say 100% if you do X, y and Z, then blank will get better.
Speaker 1:But we can do some explaining about what the potential client, if they become a client, can expect. So here's the shift I want you to make. Every time you're tempted to say I, here's what I do, you're going to shift to what you can expect. So, for example, what I teach is to explain to this potential client what they can expect in the first three sessions four sessions if it's a couple. So, for example, here we go Hi, here's I'm sorry I've already said hi, I'm skipping ahead. You can say something like well, if it's okay with you, can I explain a little bit about how counseling works and asking their permission. And they say well, yeah, I'd love to hear how counseling works, or works with me, right In the first session.
Speaker 1:It will feel like an interview. I'm going to ask you a lot of questions and at the end I'm going to ask you what you'd like to do to move forward. I'm going to give you three directions that we can take. I'm going to give you homework right, you can do any of those options. Right, you can let them know what you're going to do. I'm going to ask you a lot of questions. It's going to feel like an interview. At the interview we can discuss directions you want to take and then dot dot dot.
Speaker 1:If everyone agrees to go forward, so right, then you help your potential client understand. This is a collaboration, we are a team, right, it's not me curing you, we are working together. So if everybody agrees to go forward, then I will give you something. And this is where homework comes in. I'll give you something to read, something, to write something, to look up something, to research something, to journal, right, so that potential client understands at the end of that first session they're not just going to be left like, okay, all right, I just spilled my guts, now I'm supposed to come back in next week and then all the magic's going to happen, right, this is a safety net. You're helping them see that there's always an end in mind. There's always a goal.
Speaker 1:So you know you and I both know you're going to go through an assessment. Right, you're going to do an intake and it will be a lot of questions and you will make it feel probably a little bit like an interview. And if you've been doing this a long, long time, you know you can go a little bit faster and there are some things you can skip over. But if you haven't been doing this very long, you may think, oh gosh, I may need two sessions to get through this intake. I would encourage you to still imagine being that client at the end of the first session and they've just spilled everything and you're like okay, come back next week, silence, right. I would encourage you to let them know directions that they can take and I would encourage you to give them something to do.
Speaker 1:It's not about checking their homework and seeing if they get it done. It's about helping them understand the collaborative nature of the therapy process and giving them some control, helping them understand they can say no, they can say yes, they can contribute. Right, you've heard me say a hundred times, when a potential client calls you, anxiety is up. And when anxiety goes up, cognition goes down right, anxiety just means fear. And when you're helping this potential client understand what to expect, it's like oh okay, all right, I know what to expect. Okay, there's some control there, right? So again, first session, it's going to feel like an interview. At the end of the first session you can expect some directions and if we all agree to go forward, then I can give you something to read, write, look up research.
Speaker 1:In the second session yep, I'm going there and I promise I'm going to keep it simple. In the second session we'll course correct based on your feedback. You see what I did there. I helped them understand that that second session we're still part of a team, we are still collaborating and I'm expecting you to participate Now, whether your theory is cognitive behavioral and you do homework or not. Again, I would encourage you to help the client understand in that second session. Whether they come and say I didn't do my homework at all, that's okay. We may still be totally in left field, right? I want to get us in the ballpark. I want to make sure that we're working on what my potential client hopefully actual client wants to work on. So I tell them in this phone call at the second session we will course correct based on your feedback, so that by the end of the third session you will have see, here I am, I'm letting them know, I'm using you, you will have.
Speaker 1:Now let's think about what a client can possibly have at the end of a third session. Right, we know that they're not going to have a cure. I mean, maybe, who knows, we know that they're not going to, I don't know, have the keys to everything. Right, we cannot guarantee a cure Again, ethically, we are responsible marketers and that's what we're doing right now. We're marketing, we're advertising.
Speaker 1:At the end of the third session you can expect to have one resources. We know that because we gave them some in the second session. You can expect to have some new coping tools. Again, the resources have coping tools. If you recommended an amazing book, you probably recommended it because it has coping tools in there. Right, and number three you're going to have a good idea if working with me is going to be a good fit.
Speaker 1:So you see how I'm priming the pump here. I'm helping them understand that compatibility is a huge part of success in therapy as well, right? So I've planted these seeds collaboration, teamwork, you giving me input, understanding that you're going to have a job here too. And finally, if working with me is going to be a good fit for you, right. And then, if they want to ask more about your theory and your style and get down to real specifics of how you do things and remember I'm hoping you're listening to this or watching this kind of filtering this through your own specialty If you're EMDR, if you're a DBT, if you're a play therapist, right, you have particular things that you do and I'm just have particular things that you do, and I'm just challenging you, encouraging you to think about what that might look like if you were the client in those first three sessions.
Speaker 1:Now, here's how I switch it up for couples, because for couples, I do a single individual with each of them. I let them know, okay, in the first session it's going to feel like an interview. I'm going to ask a lot of questions and at the end you will have some directions that we can take. If everybody agrees to go forward, then I will schedule one individual session with you, caller, and one individual session with your partner, and we will work on goals and I can find out more information. And then the fourth session will be a communication exercise. I'll put you through the exercise so that by the end of the fourth session, here we go. Remember, you'll have resources, you'll have tools and you will know if working with me is going to be a good fit.
Speaker 1:Now, depending on the call, I may or may not mention that in those individual sessions. I'm not a secret keeper, right, and that, again, that depends on you and your theory and how you do things. I know that for me, when I do those individual sessions, if there's an active affair or an active addiction, I will not keep that secret and I let them know that from the beginning so we don't get in that awkward situation later on and I'm having to refer them out and it just gets really messy, right. So from the very, very beginning, you're letting them know how you do business. Now we take a breath. You see the homework you gotta do here right Now you have to think about how you do business, right, and remember, it's not about being perfect, it's not about showing them how amazing you are.
Speaker 1:Again, I love the idea of you know the metaphor of the dentist when you go to the dentist for major medical work, usually they're going to take you back into a room and they're going to show you the treatment plan, right, they're going to show you about how many days it'll take, what you can expect. They'll probably tell you how much it's going to cost, hopefully, so you have some control, you can make some decisions. There's transparency. You can trust the dentist to do what they say they're going to do, because they put it in writing and then, if you agree to it, you sign it. Right, this is the same thing, or it's close to it, right? You're helping the client understand so that they can start to trust you and trust the counseling process, especially if this is their first time, right? They don't know how counseling works other than what they see on TV. So they're going to listen to you, they're going to be educated by you but, most importantly, they're going to be assured by you, right?
Speaker 1:We want that anxiety to come down, because that's when you get to the next question, which is can I get you scheduled? Right? And then they can ask questions about your cost, your schedule, your specialty, your insurance and things like that. And you'd be so surprised how this phone call changes from that first contact where they're maybe telling their story and it's hard to get them to draw breath and you're trying to help them understand and at the end they're like, oh okay, I can do this. In fact, I'll tell you personally that when I do this particular script, I often not just once in a while.
Speaker 1:I often get the comment oh, this is wonderful. I've never had anybody really talk to me like this about counseling, helped me understand and y'all, I'm not doing anything magical, I'm doing what you do. I've just explained it in a way that helps them have some control, have some clarity, and reassure them that they still have choices. Right, they're expected to be a partner and that it's not like they're signing up for 10 sessions and away. We go right, they're expected to be a partner and that it's not like they're signing up for 10 sessions and away.
Speaker 1:We go right, we want them to understand that they're part of a team. So that's it. That's it for this phone call, right? We're going to take what you learned last week about what to say exactly what to say. You're going to combine it with this week where you're really diving in to the verbiage that reassures and helps this potential client understand what to expect, so that they remember. There are two choices here. We want them to become a client or a raving fan who goes and tells all the world about how amazing you are and how wonderful your website is. All right, I'm going to hit pause and open it up for questions.