Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive

138 Breaking Down Myths: How to Build an Ethical AND Profitable Supervision Practice

• Dr. Kate Walker Ph.D., LPC/LMFT Supervisor

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Speaker 1:

Thinking about becoming a supervisor but not sure it's worth the time or money. This episode busts myths and shows how supervision can be a legit income stream, so we will leave that open. I'll leave the Facebook page open so we can catch people too. This month for the Step it Up members is all about maybe I call it, maybe. I love doing this because in May we can do little taste tests of things you might be thinking about. So in this month I'm doing this. First one is maybe become a supervisor. So if you've been thinking about becoming a supervisor, what I'm going to talk about today you can also find in a replay of it's called Three Secrets to Successful Supervisor Certification. Lots of S's in that, but it's nice because you can actually go in there and there's a discount. There's a coupon in there for the 40-hour training if you want to take it with Kate Walker Training. Also with Step it Up members, if you got a membership, you've got a $100 coupon for the 40-hour training, and so I will refer you to that. This is more like, like I said, it's a little taste, it's a little appetizer. And then also this month we're going to talk about maybe may get it when month of May, maybe become a CE provider. That's a huge question people have. So we'll do a coaching around that group coaching for step it up members and have. So we'll do a coaching around that group coaching for Step it Up members. And then I'm going to do a members only webinar and it'll be in the evening and folks can attend if they have thought about becoming a CE provider but they don't know what that entails, or maybe they do some public speaking and they want to see how to turn that into a CE. So it's going to be. It's going to be more in depth because that's what you know. You're a member, you this is what you pay for. So you get a little bit more in depth. So today, again, it's just the taste of how to become a supervisor, what it means to become a supervisor.

Speaker 1:

May 20th, the little taste, the little appetizer for maybe becoming a CE provider. And then, may 27th, I'm going to talk about maybe start a private practice, because in the Step it Up membership we do have folks who are maybe school counselors or they're doing agency work and they want to make that leap. So we'll do the appetizer, the little taste of it, on May 27th and then we'll host a members only just full on webinar. Ask anything how to get your practice where you want it to be, or, if you've never started a practice, how to actually take those first steps. So today's little appetizer of maybe becoming a supervisor, of maybe becoming a supervisor and I actually pulled up an old webinar that I did and because it's the number one questions. Actually there are two questions that I see right now and one is can I make any money doing this? And the other one is well, I can't get any supervisees. So that must mean Texas is full of supervisors and we're saturated and associates don't need supervisors.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going to debunk both of those myths because I figure, why even talking about, talk about how to become a supervisor if the big barrier in place is well, why should I anyway, if it's all giving back? I mean counselors. By the time you guys hit five years LPCs, five years LMFTs, three years or 3,000 hours, and then social work, you've got some other hoops to jump through You're like, well, I've already given back, why do I want to give back more? So I do talk about how to make money and I do talk about this idea that people think the market is saturated because both things are baloney. First of all, with the money piece, a lot of folks just don't know how to have a decent business plan and so it's it's. And generally and I'm going to make a big general statement we charge. We supervisors charge less for supervision than we would for a client hour, right? So if I make 150 bucks on a client, well, the going rate for supervision in my town might only be 60 bucks. So if I try to charge supervisees $150, I'm going to hear crickets. So yes, you do have to price for you know, whatever area or region you're going for.

Speaker 1:

But that doesn't mean you can't make a living at supervising. I have colleagues who all they do is supervision. They don't even see clients anymore. And if you're able to balance your scheduling right because LMFT and LPC both stipulate you must have half at minimum of half an individual, and so you know you balance scheduling with individual and group supervision, you can add more people. And the same thing with triadic supervision. Triadic just means less than three. So if you have, for instance, let's say you wanted to charge $150 an hour, well, with triadic supervision that's two people in the room. They could split that cost.

Speaker 1:

Another way is something I call the Ann's Place Model, and if you are a Step it Up member, you already have this training. You may not be able to find it because it is a training that I did a while ago, but I will talk about that when we do kind of the members only supervision class, but I can give you a taste of it right here. The Ann's Place Model simply means you don't charge anything for supervision. Okay, that's step one. Step two you open up three spots in your calendar for your supervisee to see clients, right, and probably going to make that either a pro bono or a sliding fee scale. Sorry, scratch that, not pro bono, definitely sliding fee scale. Sorry, scratch that, not pro bono, definitely sliding fee scale.

Speaker 1:

And so that supervisee, in exchange for 12 hours in your practice, right, so do the math. We've got three hours a week, times four weeks in a month. They get free supervision from you and you're like well, kate, how do I make money from that? Well, when you have someone, let's say your supervisee, let's say they're charging $60 or $80 for that client, it's a sliding fee scale and so I'm not going to go in that into that today. You can decide how to do that. Well, if you saw, if they sorry, they saw three clients in your practice at $80 an hour. Eight times three, that's $240 you just made in that week, as opposed to making $75 from one hour of supervision with them. So they charge the client anywhere from $20 to $80. You will make more from those sessions than you would from that supervisee and the community gets a benefit because they're getting a sliding fee scale and your supervisee is getting a benefit because they're getting private practice experience.

Speaker 1:

Now where Ann's Place model breaks down and where some folks get confused by this is they tell the supervisee yeah, come on board, I will get you all the clients you want. And that's just hard right. It's really, really hard to guarantee another person who has zero marketing experience, zero reputation in the community as a counselor, it's really hard to say you can guarantee them. Let's say you know 20 clients a week. So if you say no, no, come to my practice. You give me three hours a week, anywhere between 20 and $80,. You're not going to make money from those clients, you're just getting experience and you're getting free supervision. In the meantime, go get the majority of your hours at a hospital, at an agency, at a prison, at some place where they can accrue those experience hours. Then now you're letting them have that private practice experience. You're giving them the free supervision the community is benefiting. So again, I call this the Anne's Place model, because you know we have to be careful when we're exchanging supervision for a service right. There are laws surrounding unpaid internships and again I'm not going to go into that here. You can Google that online. But one way to make a living as a supervisor if you're going to charge, let's say, half of your client rate is this Ann's Place model.

Speaker 1:

Another way if you're thinking about becoming a supervisor is to offer niche or niche help, and the most sought after one that I. Actually there are two that I hear folks looking for a lot, and that is for supervisors who have a dual. So they have their license, of course, and your supervisor designation, but then your play therapy designated or you are EMDR certified or art therapy licensed or LSOTP licensed sexual treatment I'm gonna get the acronym wrong, sorry. I'll fill it in later, but that's you know. Anytime you can have another designation and offer that. So the associate coming to you is not only getting experience hours supervised, they're also getting a certification right. So if you have some kind of a certification and you can help them get that alongside their experience hours, so they can upgrade to full LPC or LMFT. You can charge more for that right, and because you would charge more for that right, they're getting two for the price of one. They're getting a lot of bang for the buck.

Speaker 1:

So another niche that I talk about is, of course, private practice mentoring. But y'all, you got to know what you're doing, right? I mean, a lot of times I'll hear like, okay, I'm going to do private practice mentoring, but look at your own practice, right? Are you? Do you know how to optimize your website based on search engine keywords, et cetera? Do you know how to utilize attraction marketing? Are you aware of how AI is impacting all of that right? And if you don't have an answer to that, or you can't look at a supervisee and say, yeah, I'll help you get clients and then have some sort of a specific, measurable, attainable, trackable goal so that, let's say, in six months, you can look at each other and say, yeah, this is working, You've definitely helped me get a business that's sustainable, you know, I would really hesitate to offer that. Now you can say, yeah, I'll supervise you in private practice and that may be worth raising your prices for, because that's important If you are gonna work with associates who want to open their own business. But don't say you're a practice mentor if you aren't up on the latest market. I can't even tell you guys how crazy it is right now out in SEO land with ChatGPT. You know it used to be that we had to fight for that top spot. Well then, about a year ago, we had to fight for the top spot with, you know, the National Institute of Mental Health and universities, right, they got the top spot, and now ChatGPT gets the top spot. I don't even think advertisers are up there anymore. So, unless you know what you're doing, it's a whole new world, right? So all of these things can add to the fee that you charge for supervision, right? And so we talk yes, you can definitely make a living as a supervisor.

Speaker 1:

Now the other part about there being a scarcity or, I'm sorry, flip that, that we have too many supervisors. Yeah, baloney, I, we just did a meet and greet last week and so it's it. We didn't have a lot of graduate students show up, which was like, okay, wait, you know that's. That's kind of weird. How come the grad students didn't come. And then, as we start to survey people, as we start to understand what's going on and this is data that you can pull, you can actually go to the BHEC website what we find is that so many supervisors hold the designation but they only take on one supervisee and then they're done. Or they hold the supervisor designation and they don't take on any supervisees, or they hold the supervisor designation and they don't take on any supervisees. So, yes, we do have about 5,000 to 6,000 folks who hold the supervisor designation, but it's nowhere near enough for the grad students who are coming out and who want to, let's say, specialize, or they want to open their own practice.

Speaker 1:

And I would even venture to say, if you're a supervisor who wants to have associates, you know, like Kate, I don't know what you're talking about. I would ask you how you're marketing yourself, right? It's the same paradigm as your clients, right? If you're sitting there going, well, I you know, I don't have any clients, so people must not need therapy. I mean, we would never say that. Right, it's like, of course people need therapy, right? And with telehealth opening up our territory, and then the compact, the counseling compact, is coming and we've got Kathy Ibanez-Lorente who's going to talk about that with us next week. Our territories are huge, right? So to say no, no, no, there just aren't enough people who need therapy. The market's saturated. That's why I don't have any business. How about? If you look at how you're marketing?

Speaker 1:

Because, as a supervisor and this was the great discussion that we had after the meet and greet a lot of supervisors we all just kind of sat around and we were like, okay, virtually sat around, it was virtual. We sat around and said, okay, what's going on here? And we were talking about, okay, how many of us are forming relationships with universities, how many of us host in-person events at universities, how many of us are offering our services to professors. And if you're again, if you're saying, but, kate, I tried that, I would say really Okay, have you done it 20 times at 20 universities? Yes, right, because we've got online universities. You've got universities from all over the country who are teaching Texas associates and those Texas I should say Texas grad students. Those Texas grad students need to know how to bridge from grad school to becoming an associate. You've got that information.

Speaker 1:

So, if you say, yeah, kate, I've reached out, I've done it. It didn't work. I would challenge you to say, yeah, kate, I've reached out, I've done it. It didn't work. I would challenge you to say, okay, do it 20 more times. Do it 20 more times to 20 more universities Cold, call them, email them, get on their mailing list, contact their Chi, sigma, iota chapters. Offer to be public speakers, offer to bring them lunch right, this doesn't fall under the same category as when we're marketing to physicians right, we can't bring them lunch. We can't offer them gifts right, that's kickbacks, that's against the law.

Speaker 1:

But when you're offering your supervisor services, if you want to set up a career day, if you want to set up a supervisor meet and greet, but you want to do it in person at a university, oh, my goodness, right. Or even if you did it virtually for an online university, imagine how much value that would bring to an out-of-state university who is teaching Texas grad students how to be Texas associates? So I'm here to answer questions. I'm here to help you make your supervision business work, because here's what I do know Statistics say I've already talked about that supervisors get their designation and then lots of them don't supervise for lots of reasons.

Speaker 1:

Right, and life happens. We know that I don't supervise anymore, right, so, totally, totally get that. But we also have graduate students starting their first semester of counseling, their second semester of counseling, third, fourth semester. They don't even know they need a supervisor. They're not aware of what Texas requires for them to bridge from grad school to associate, and then that last semester they kind of get hit upside the head with it. Or, in worst case scenarios, they graduate and they're like, ok, now I guess I need to find a supervisor, right, Ah, right. So you have a vacuum you could fill with your knowledge. Ready to explore supervision without wasting your time or losing your sanity? Hit, subscribe and learn how to lead, earn and support the next generation of counselors.