Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive
Welcome to Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive, the ultimate resource for mental health professionals ready to step into their power, grow their practices, and create a career they love. I'm Dr. Kate Walker, a Texas LPC/LMFT Supervisor, author, and business strategist who's here to show you the path to success.
Formerly Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses, we’ve rebranded because, well, we’re way too big for Texas now! This community of badass therapists is growing nationwide, and we’re here to help you create a career and practice you love, no matter where you are.
Every week, you'll get practical advice, proven strategies, and motivation to help you build a thriving practice—one that gives you the freedom to live your life on your terms. From mastering marketing to designing scalable systems and becoming a clinical supervisor, this podcast is your roadmap to leveling up without burnout.
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Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive
125 Enhancing Your Practice: Leveraging AI for Administrative Tasks
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.
Thank you. Thank you, hey, I'm Dr Kate Walker. Welcome to your Tuesday group coaching in the Step it Up membership. If you are going to join me, live yay, I'm going to let folks in in just a second. If you are just listening to some kind of a replay on YouTube or a podcast or you're in the Step it Up membership and you're able to get all of the transcripts and ask questions and interact in the Facebook group, yay, go you, because you're doing something great to badass up your practice. And today is super exciting, let me let folks in.
Speaker 1:So I love this topic so much but, to be completely honest and vulnerable, probably two months ago I did not love this. And it is not that I'm like against AI. You know, I think AI is great. It just you know, have you ever been in one of those seasons where you're like I will deal with that later, I will deal with that later, right, and I'm sure a lot of us are there, and especially this time of year, I was thinking, okay, absolutely no way am I going to dive into AI. No way am I going to dive into AI. Well, serendipitously enough, our expert this month was Dr Melissa McCaffrey, who taught us how AI and notes is a thing and it's doable and it's ethical and there are great ways to do that. And that piqued my interest. And then my business coach. She's been pushing AI on me forever and so I was like, okay, let me give this a try. And so there is. I gave myself this sort of 90 days, right. So I thought, okay, I got to get my ideas and my strategies together for 2025. How about if I combine sort of what I do every year, which is take this time of year and sort of do retrospect what went well, what could I do better? But I wasn't feeling inspired, you know. I was just sort of like, all right, same old, same old, I'm going to come up with the same things. But still, yeah, I get stuck with numbers. You know, I'm not sure what to measure. I'm not sure what means I'm doing a great job or I'm doing not a great job. So here's where this all came to pass.
Speaker 1:Two weeks ago, in our group coaching, I kind of got off topic. I was planning to do, you know, just kind of paperwork, but then I got into strategies for marketing, because that's where I started with AI. I was like, okay, I need content for the month of January, because I'm gonna have a promotion for this product and I need emails that will help me. And all of a sudden, I was putting all this into AI and it went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. My work was done, like this was work that would normally take me all afternoon and it just there. It was Now, as I mentioned in the workshop two weeks ago, and you'll be able to download this and see it soon.
Speaker 1:It was not my voice, so I did have to go through and make sure that what was being produced in writing because this is what I'm gonna send out to you guys, or this is how I'm gonna develop my website copy it needs to be in my voice and it needs to be accurate, and so, with AI, it's not like a magic genie. It's not just going to spit stuff at you and it's going to automatically be correct, at least now. You know, maybe in another year it will be wonderful, and we can all trust it implicitly, explicitly, whatever, but right now, yeah, you know, maybe in another year it will be wonderful, and we can all trust it implicitly, explicitly, whatever, but right now, yeah, you do need to go back and make sure it's in your voice. So today I was going to kind of I was going to review what we talked about last time, which is paperwork. You know things like your intake forms asking chat, GPT or Claude or one of the other AI engines. You know, okay, what would be. Give me an example of intake paperwork for an LPC in Texas and it would give you a good framework, right. So if you are going through and redoing your paperwork, the other thing I talked about was strategies for content.
Speaker 1:We talked about SEO, search engine optimization which all that means is Google's out there trying to be the best butler it can be, right, so or best waiter it can be. You know, like if you're at a restaurant and you're like I want this, but I want this on the side and make sure it's medium rare you want to make sure that the waiter doesn't just bring you a bowl of porridge or something, unless that's what you ordered. So that's what Google is. Google is trying to be a really good waiter or a really good butler and serve whoever's on the other end of that keyboard. So that is your potential client typing away, looking, and Google wants to bring them the best match for what they're searching for? Well, it does that by crawling with the bots and don't ask me any more than that. But it can't help the potential client find you if you have not created content for Google to crawl.
Speaker 1:And so I talked about how blog posts excellent way to develop content, your website copy like if you don't do anything else, make sure that you have website copy that would resonate with your potential client. And I talked about things like your ideal client. We talked about things like your ideal client. We talked about pain points that this ideal client experiences and then creating content that shows how you are the perfect match for that client at this point in their pain. And so go back and listen to that. But don't worry, I'm going to talk about that, I'm not going to leave you hanging, I'm just going to. I want to develop more of it.
Speaker 1:So when we talked about this ideal client, I think I made up someone who is grieving over the loss of a pet. They are looking for a counselor to help them with their grief over the loss of a pet. And we talked about okay, what would 12 months of blogs look like? Well, that's what you would plug into chat. Gpt, give me 12 months of blog titles related to grieving the loss of a pet. That would resonate with a potential client, and then you could get even more detailed. You could give maybe the city that you live in, maybe the demographic that you serve, right. Do you work with adolescents? Do you work with an older population? So ChatGPT could give you 12 blog titles and that's a wonderful place to start your journey into AI.
Speaker 1:Just getting that copy, getting that content on your website. So I'm going to dovetail off of that today and I'm going to talk about the parts of your website that need to be optimized so that the search engines can find it easily and deliver it easily to your potential client at the other end of that keyboard. So the parts of the website I'm going to. I'm online, but I'm not going to screen share today, so I'm going to my clinical website, achievebalanceorg. Oh, that's not good. Website's not working. Okay, hope it's just land past the center. Oh, there, it is Okay. When it rains and land passes, our internet goes down.
Speaker 1:So the homepage, the way I have my website set up, it's actually a blog and that's what WordPress is. It's kind of the old school blog website, but it's wonderful for SEO. So my blog is actually on my home page. So you see my picture, you see a little blurb about mindfulness and then bam, it takes you right into all of my blog posts. Now you don't have to do that. That's just how I chose to do my home page. Also on my home page, you know I've talked about if you've ever heard me teach my phone number is right there, above the fold. Above the fold is just an old-fashioned word. If you think of a pamphlet, right, that fold is where you open it up with a website, or if you're on your phone, that's before you hit scroll, right Before you have to scroll. That's above the fold. So I have everything you need to contact me above the fold. I've got a schedule and appointment button, I've got a phone number. All this good information and you don't have to scroll to find it.
Speaker 1:So the next thing I have is an about and services, so you can click that and you can see about me, and I have not updated this in a while. So if you're following along on my website, you'll hopefully know it's pretty up to date. So you'll see information that would hopefully resonate with a potential client. That fits my niche and my specialty and my office hours and all of the things we've talked about before that make a potential counselor or client a good fit. So you would go into chat GPT and you would give it information about you and that doesn't have to be great grammar you don't have to use. You know capitals and lowercase or whatever you like to do. Just do a little free form typing about you and then ask ChatGPT or the AI hey, give me about a paragraph and a half. Make sure that it highlights the areas that would attract or be a good fit for my potential client. Now that means you also have to put in free form into ChatGPT information about your potential client as detailed as you can.
Speaker 1:The other part, services. So I've got information about individual and couple and family. I've got, of course, my blog and then counselor education and supervision. That just goes to the Kate Walker training website. And then I have testimonials from colleagues. I never gather testimonials from clients. You guys know about that and me, so go back and grab that in another episode if you're not sure about that. So, most important, your homepage, your about me page and your services page and then, if you're able to and you're willing and you're feeling up to it, you can add your blog website SEO, google, yahoo, bing they all love content, right? So blogs are wonderful.
Speaker 1:And then, if you're feeling adventurous and I talked about this last time if you enjoy email, then you can add a form so people can ask for more information. Or you can create something we call an opt-in, where they give you the information and they get something that they need. So let's say, you work with young kids, right? And you want parents to have five ways to entertain your toddlers during a family meal over the holidays, right. So you give them five tips on a PDF and when they sign up for your form, they can download that freebie and they are already just in love with your services because you just gave them something to navigate the next family gathering a little bit less stressfully, right. So that's how we build relationships.
Speaker 1:So you see chat, gpt and AI. It's not just a robot and it's giving you this canned response. I guess what comes to mind is like when you get a transcript of something like this if I send out and I just clicked okay, regurgitate a transcript, and I'm looking at this sort of robotic thing where I just say I say so all the time and I'm going through right. It's not like that. It's going to give you information and the more detailed you are, the more detailed the information it will give you. Then you can copy paste it into the back office of your website and start your journey to building that content. But okay, here's the part I'm really excited about.
Speaker 1:So the thing that got me just so hooked into AI over the past few days, as I mentioned before this time of year is my strategizing. It's the end of Q4 and I'm going to start Q1 January. Well, we all do right, q1 is January and we want to hit the ground running, and I've been doing this a long time and I was just I was not feeling inspired for Q1. I mean, if you're listening to this now, you know we have a giveaway that we're doing super excited about that and I was like, oh, I just don't know what I want to do in 2025. What's new and different and how can I reach more people and how can we close the gaps in access to care in Texas? You know I was out of ideas, so I'm going to spell it out really clearly how you can do this, just like I did.
Speaker 1:So, first things first, think about your why, and with your why. This is for your practice. I want you to put anything, at least five things. Why are you wanting to be in private practice? Why are you in private practice? Why are you adding supervision? Why are you adding a new specialty? So your why for what you're doing, and don't leave things out like well, because I want to have time with my family. I want a flexible schedule. I want to make more money than I can when I do, when I take insurance. I mean, be brutally honest, right? This is your time to really just dump, brain dump about your why. Do you want to leave a legacy? Are you trying to create something that'll last in your community? Do you want to create something that maybe you can sell someday?
Speaker 1:Okay, then, your vision, which is just your why, but it's long term, a little more actionable, right? So if your why is because you want to give back, you want flexibility, you want to be able to make more money, whatever that is, what's your vision for this? And this could be a little harder. So maybe, instead of five things, you think of one or two things and then ask chat, gpt, and this is what blew my mind ask them, ask it, not them. Ask it where your everyday aligns and where it misaligns with your why and your vision.
Speaker 1:So here's what I did. I did my why. Put it into chat GPT. I did my vision. Put it into ChatGPT. Then I just sat there for a second and I thought, okay, I'm just going to free flow and I'm going to type everything about my business. And I didn't take a lot of time to do this, like I didn't sit and make an outline or anything, I just thought through it. Okay, here's what I do. Here's what I sell. Here's my team. Here's about how much. Here's what every team member does. Here's what I enjoy. I put in there how I like to travel. I put in there I love the freedom to go visit my pregnant daughter in Conroe, texas, when she's graduating from Sam Houston State University.
Speaker 1:I put it all in there and it already had the information about my vision, what I hope to do with this business, who I hope to reach, what I hope the business does right. And then I asked the magic question where does my everyday business management align with that vision and where does it struggle to make what? What might I have to give up? Right, and it was incredible. I mean it was. I've got a whiteboard over here just with all of the things it told me. It said Okay, here's four ways that your everyday aligns with your why and your vision. Good job. Well, here's four things over here that you may need to rethink and do better. Do you need help with that? And that's what's so cool. Ai will ask at the end of it do you need help with that? And I always answer yes, I do. So it gave me. Here are some actionable steps that you can take. See, this is my Q1 plan. This is my strategic thinking. Now I'm getting somewhere with actionable work that I can schedule to hit the ground running in 2025.
Speaker 1:Now, it was good, you know, but I'm not going to lie. I went down a rabbit hole a little bit because it was just okay there's more, there's more, there's more Because chat, openai, chat, gpt kept asking would you like help with that? Would you like me to show you that? Would you like to see an example of that? And, of course, I'm like yes, yes, I do, yes, please. And so what I'm doing today is I'm actually going through the prompts that were created from my prompts and I'm just copy and pasting it into a Word document so it's more organized for me. So, for example, I'll give you.
Speaker 1:Let's see, here's something ChatGPT told me. It said to build operational efficiency with your team. Your current team setup is helpful but could be optimized to free you up for high level strategic activities. And then it gave me three areas of focus and then three steps, actionable steps, to achieve that focus. And then it went through. I think five, yeah, five things. Refine marketing strategy, it says your email strategy is active, but refining it to focus on segmentation and automation could improve engagement and conversions. And if you don't know what those mean, that's okay. You don't have to know what that means, because ChatGPT will say, okay, do you know what that is? Because if you don't know what that is, I can absolutely explain to you what that is. And that's where I kind of went down the rabbit hole, because there were some new terms. I had no idea. But I wanted to know and I'm not going to lie, I love dashboards. If you can show me a way to create a dashboard, I would love that. And it did. It was showing me how I could create dashboards. So let's review.
Speaker 1:We talked about last time paperwork, things like asking ChatGPT, how to improve your intake paperwork and when we use it for paperwork anything that's official always, always, take that paperwork and have it tested and looked at by a trusted human right. We talked about strategies for content because search engine optimization the search engines love content, right? So your website copy, your blog, copy, if you like to do email, making sure that you're strategizing about emails and how to send them out all of that ChatGPT can help you with. If you're way into this and you're doing YouTube videos or podcasts, you need content to stay consistent. Yeah, I'm not even going to talk about social media, but start with that.
Speaker 1:More we talked about the more today, right, we went through the parts of your website we talked about strategies for future thinking and that is dumping your why and your vision into ChatGPT. Then dumping in your daily operations, sort of how, the snapshot of the state of your practice right now, and then asking ChatGPT basically, okay, what do I do next? How should I prioritize this? In fact, it was funny. It put in something. I prioritize this. In fact, it was funny. It put in something and I was just like, oh no, like I'm going to have to go through and deconstruct and reconstruct, and so I typed in the prompt is it worth it to go back and try to deconstruct and reconstruct this?
Speaker 1:And ChatGPT came back and said no, don't do that. Y'all I need that. I need somebody to say hey, stop, don't go down this rabbit hole, come back. And it said this is what I think, and remember, it's just a robot. This is what I think will give you the most bang for your buck. So start here, and so that's what I've done. I've started putting it into a Word document and then I, the human, get to choose what I do next. But I got to tell you I like this chat GPT. You know it's helping me out a lot. All right, so that's my spiel. I'm going to hit pause and open it up for questions.