Badass Therapists Building Practices That Thrive

167 From Manager to Mentor: Stop Babysitting, Start Leading Your Group Practice

• Dr. Kate Walker Ph.D., LPC/LMFT Supervisor • Season 3 • Episode 167

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If running a group practice feels like herding highly educated cats, this episode is going to feel like someone finally put words to what you’ve been living. I’m joined by Amanda Esquivel, a Texas group practice owner who’s scaled to 50 clinicians across seven locations—and she’s breaking down why most “staff problems” aren’t actually staff problems. They’re leadership-role problems.

Amanda names the four roles practice owners bounce between when growth accelerates: babysitter/manager, bottleneck, firefighter, and mentor-leader. And she’s honest about where she’s had to course-correct—because when everything runs through you, you don’t just get busy. You get stuck. Your team gets stuck too.

We also talk about what employees are really reacting to when they complain about low pay, lack of tools, unrealistic expectations, and “promises” that don’t materialize. Amanda shares the transparency practices she uses to educate rather than defend—like showing where the money actually goes, tracking attendance metrics without shaming, and building a training hub so clinicians aren’t reinventing the wheel. The throughline is simple: your job isn’t to be everyone’s emergency contact. Your job is to build people and systems.

If you’ve been living in manager mode, exhausted, resentful, and constantly “on,” this conversation will help you shift back into leadership that develops your staff instead of babysitting them.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • The four roles group practice owners cycle through—babysitter/manager, bottleneck, firefighter, and mentor-leader—and how to identify which one is running your practice right now.
  • How to shift out of constant firefighting and bottlenecking by building systems, metrics, and delegation structures that develop staff instead of controlling them.
  • What staff complaints about pay, tools, expectations, and follow-through are really communicating—and how transparency and education reduce resentment and turnover.
  • Practical leadership tools that support retention and accountability, including structured one-on-ones, attendance and caseload metrics, shared training hubs, and role clarity.

If you’re ready to move out of manager mode and into grounded, sustainable leadership, start by grabbing the bonus resources that support this kind of systems-based growth. 

If you’re still clarifying how your practice should be structured, the free practice guide will help you name what needs attention next. 

For supervisors and practice owners who want clearer expectations and less daily friction, the Supervisor Checklist gives you a concrete place to begin. 

And if you want ongoing CE credit, leadership support, and real-world training you can actually apply, the Step It Up Membership is where this work deepens over time. 

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_01:

We're up against the American dream, which largely tells people in this day and age that to be successful, they need to make the most money, they need to make the most impact, and that entrepreneurship is the way of that. I know that entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It's certainly not for the faint of heart.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Badass Therapists, building practices of the ride. It's all about working smart, not hard. And here's your host, Dr. Kate Walker. Oh, I clicked up. I think ever feel like running a group practice is like herding highly educated cats? Amanda Escobel, group practice owner with locations all over Texas, gets it. And she's about to hand you the playbook that turns chaos, bottlenecks, and burnout into real momentum. If you've been stuck in manager mode, this training is going to help you turn into the mentor your team really needs. Amanda, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you. Thank you so much for being here. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, everybody. So I so you're attending from manager to mentor, stop babysitting and start leading. So, you know, Kate contacted me about a month ago and said, you know, I really want to focus on this. I'm seeing a lot of banter both on the business owner side and on the employee side. And, you know, something's got to give here. So I've been known to say being in this role is like hurting cats, uh, highly educated cats, but cats nonetheless. And I share that with you today because this statement is actually more about a reflection of where I'm at when I'm frustrated with my staff. It's actually more so a reflection of my inability to articulate what I need them to do. So I affectionately call them cats, but it's actually more so a lot of directives and definitions that my clinicians need in order for them to know what they need to do. I have found that clinicians are quite amicable to structure and they give me lots of grace while I'm building that structure, but I have to be transparent about that, which we'll talk a little bit about transparency in our roles. To introduce myself, a little bit of a timeline. So I started working in the field in 2007, worked in community mental health, residential treatment, and then became independently licensed in 2013, decided with a four-month-old in 2014 to start my solo practice. Nothing will get you motivated like a newborn to make sure that you're making ends meet. Became a supervisor in December of 2016, and then hired my first contractor that following spring. Over the course of that year and the following year, started to expand to about five clinicians, then expanded to about 12 clinicians in 2019, a combination. Well, at that point, we were 1099s, and then we moved to a W-2 model. Lots of fear I had about being audited, did not want to be labeled as noncompliant. So made that transition then. 2020, as the world changed and COVID ushered in, I lost about 75% of my business in March. And in April, that first summer, scrambled, added insurance, and then ended the year about 600% up from where we were before that initial 75% dip. So adding virtual, adding insurance allowed us to scale. Added a second location in 2021, expanded to 17 clinicians, and so on and so forth. We sit here today with 50 clinicians, seven locations across Dallas, Garland, and now into Houston. I acquired a practice this year. I'd like to do a separate presentation just on that experience. It was quite the surprise to get an email saying, I'd like to give you my practice. And essentially that's what has happened in the Houston area. Even with 50 clinicians, I've had four leave this year, all who have started their practices with the caseloads that we had provided for them here. We have let a couple of clinicians go and all while looking at the woman in the mirror, right? So where am I at in my mentorship versus manager trajectory? And right now I'm course correcting. With all of this growth, we've been very much in just survival and expansion, which means I've stepped more into the managerial role than I would traditionally take on. And going into 2026, I'm going to balance back out into that more mentor role, which I'll describe here. So these are self-labeled practice owner roles, the babysitter or manager who spends lots and lots of time holding people to rules and expectations. This causes the owner to feel very exhausted and as resentful, again, hurting educated cats. And the staff then feel comfortable but disempowered, right? They're just waiting on directives and not doing any dreaming or stretching themselves. Bottleneck, which is where I find myself currently, is I have become the beginning and end of all task assignment and approval. So I'm in a delegation mindset right now because I was feeling very busy, very rigid, very overworked. And my staff was feeling controlled and somewhat judged because they were just waiting on me to do the work so that they can be freed up to do their work. The third role I have listed here is a firefighter. They tend to rescue whether they're rescuing from real or imagined danger. In the firefighter role, the owner feels dysregulated, as does the staff feel dysregulated. The owner may feel dysregulated with a plan and some power, but the staff feels that dysregulation and helplessness because they're not in the decision-making position. Where we would like all of you to be is leaning more into the mentor and leader role. So where this is where you get to develop your staff, both administrative and clinical. It allows you to be curious and you're guiding them towards your identified vision. In this case, the owner feels purposeful, connected, focused, and staff feel supported and challenged. Instead of talked down to, they're part of that vision. That vision is clear to them and they feel inspired to show up and do not just the bare minimum, but even more. So I would assume that we all dabble in these. But which role do you find yourself in most frequently? So babysitter and manager, the firefighter, the bottleneck, or the mentorslash leader. I hope after tonight's presentation, you'll be more ideally in the mentor leader role, and that that will become your baseline with only visits to the babysitter manager, the firefighter and bottleneck, right? Where this is not about going forward and never going back, as I shared a moment ago. As you grow, you may go back and forth between those roles. My hope is also by the end of tonight's presentation that this statement will feel true for you. My job is to build people and systems, not to be everyone's emergency contact, right? That emergency contact puts you back in that firefighter role. It puts you back in that bottleneck. And so if you're able to rely on systems, if you're able to rely on delegating to other people in your practice, that would be great. I did want to take a moment to mention, I understand that some practices, everything may be routed through you. You may be in the manager and the mentor role just because of your size. And that's okay too. We hope that over time you're able to share some of that responsibility with other people or relying on metrics and even some self-management, right? Hopefully you're able to get your staff to a place where they know what's expected of them and they can report to you on their status instead of you finding out when they get six months behind on their documentation. So I also wanted to take a moment to mention that we're up against a lot as group practice owners. First and foremost, I think we're up against the American dream, which largely tells people in this day and age that to be successful, they need to make the most money, they need to make the most impact, and that entrepreneurship is the way of that. I know that entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It's certainly not for the faint of heart. Two, I think that we're against the counselor dream. Unfortunately, our trainees are often told that this is the gold standard for the mental health field. That you go into private practice, you hang your sink shingle, and you skip into the sunset with your clients and wads of money. For all of you, I see the chuckles. It's not the reality, right? And so I wish training programs and mentors did a better job of explaining the various parts of our industry and how diverse our skill sets truly are, because this is not for everyone. The third thing that we're up against are generational shifts, right? The employee-employer relationship that Boomers had is different than Gen Z and Gen X. And there's this pendulum that swings back and forth, much like we find with like family systems. We find with the employer-employee relationship. So I know a lot of Gen X and millennial practice owners that are scratching their heads, beating their foreheads as they employ younger generations within their practice. And why don't they act like we do? Why don't they value the same things that we do? And so we're up against that shifting viewpoint as well. Fourth, we're up against our own conflict and power avoidance, right? So I know a lot of clinicians that are like, I don't want to manage educated cats because, you know, master educated people should be able to manage their own. I really think that's more so about our power avoidance and not willing to have these difficult conversations. And at the end of the day, the conflict and power avoidance is because we want to be liked, we want to be understood. And so a lot of our non-behavior is as a result of that fear of not being liked. And fifth, we're wearing lots of hats. And I'll call it what it is. It is a dual role, especially if you are supervising and employing. Even if you're not the licensure supervisor, if you're doing what is suggested of you here tonight by stepping into a mentorship role, you are still navigating dual roles of employer where you have to keep your eye on the business, but also as the mentor, you're keeping your eye on the development of this clinician or this admin person that's working for you. So we are, I wanted to acknowledge we are all up against this. I'm up against all five of these things every day, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to grow and to fully step into the mentor role. Based off of some of the feedback that Kate shared with me, I've identified these very common staff complaints as to what contributes to decisions to leave practices. They're all listed here, but I'll go in and talk about them individually. So the first is siloing us versus them between departments. So here at Run for Change, we have 50 plus clinicians, and then we have seven admin, right? It is very important that I, as the leader, explain why all the pieces, all the moving pieces work together in concert to ensure the best quality care for our clients. I find that our clinicians aren't the ones necessarily looking down on our admin, but our admin are apt to do that themselves because they don't have the advanced degrees that our clinicians do. So there's that natural diverting to, oh, I'm just a lonely admin or receptionist. The counselors know because they hold master's degrees and a higher level of education. So making sure that I'm balancing that out by again sharing with the staff why all hands on deck are equal to the care of our clients. It is so important that we speak on we terms. We don't speak on this department versus that department. We are often speaking about we and the collective goal of healing our clients in the ways that they need. We also do suggest that our clinicians shadow our admin in their early stages of employment with us. It doesn't have to be a ton of work, but even just a few hours where the clinicians are able to see all of the balls that our admin are juggling when they're answering phone calls, setting up client charts, answering questions that may ultimately not even land in the person being a client at Room for Change, but it does give them just a little bit of insight. Similarly, our admin are invited to all of our clinical trainings. So some of our admin are in master's programs themselves. They may advance to being a clinician at some point. Some of our admin, they're not in school, like receptionist work is what their career trajectory is. However, we find that exposing them to the clinical training that we have gives them some unique perspective when they're dealing with clients over the phone. We also make sure that all of our workflows, discussions about new policy implementation, and celebrations include all departments, right? Again, it's that we mentality. Low pay. This is a difficult one because we have limited money coming in, especially if you're an insurance-based practice. But even if you're a fully cash-based practice, cash-based services are largely dependent on what's happening in the insurance industry. Whether you want that to be true or not, it is. So it's so important to explain what money is coming into the practice and where it's going. I am very transparent with my staff about our insurance rates and where our money is going to make sure that they don't have this assumption that Amanda is sitting on a mountain of money at home. And, you know, where is this other 50% going? I help them conceptualize that their hourly pay is not that, that it's encompasses the case management that is associated with having a caseload, right? So making sure that you're engaging your clients, that if they don't have a standing appointment, that you're reaching out to them to get them scheduled, that maybe you're making recommendations for adjacent services based off of what they're sharing with you, right? So that work may transcend that 53-minute session. I did want to share with you, this was from a couple of years ago, towards the end of the year, we were going over our financials. At the time, we had$2 million in gross for the year. Today it looks like we're projected to gross about 3.7 million. But I really liked this visual that my husband that works for the practice created. So this is just showing like all that money. Well, we hope all of that money going to the funnel, it goes into the piggy. And this is how it's divvied up, right? The overwhelming majority goes towards wages. We also have fixed and variable costs, marketing and miscellaneous fees associated with marketing and advertising, our other benefits. We offer medical, dental, vision, PTO, CEU reimbursement. All of those things cost money. Taxes that we share in responsibility with our clinicians. And I didn't change the color, but you may see systems are the smallest blue there at the top. So our EHR, our phone answering system, you know, all of those things that cost money. And then at the very top is money to reinvest, right? So we have a sofa that someone spilled something on and it's stained, and I've got to replace that sofa. Or actually, right before I got on the call, my laptop is no longer charging. So I need to get somebody a new laptop, right? So most of the money we are reinvesting that's left over there. So this paints a much different picture. We also paired with this, even more nuanced, right? So these are the things that you don't necessarily anticipate or see, but these are our purchase assets. These are like some of the most unsexy things that we're investing in. How much thousands of dollars a year I'm putting towards tissues and hand sanitizer and you know, these things that like most people are just unaware of. We also discuss the money we never see, right? So if you're in solo practice, you don't have protections from clients that never pay. We still pay our clinicians, even if we never see this money. Clients that dispute with their bank, and then that money is taken out. Clinicians already paid, room for change may never see it. Insurance clawbacks are the bane of my existence, right? Like we are held to these standard, but insurance can claw that money back at their whim. Other write-offs, when our clinicians say, Can you waive the late cancellation fee? My heart's bleeding for this client. You know, that may be money that we never see. And for that year that we reviewed this, this was over$100,000 in just the money that we never saw.

SPEAKER_00:

Amanda, I want to stop you just a second because I think this alone should be part of educating people who want to go into group practice. Absolutely. Because you're holding on to people's money. And what do you do with it? Do you reinvest it? Do you keep it in an equity fund in case of a rainy day? I think that's something that a lot of group practice, and you'll probably talk about this later. But they're just operating by the skin of their teeth because they don't set aside the money for these things.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, absolutely. And I I think my staff really values that I'm taking the time to say, you know, this is where it's going. And you can certainly go off on your own, but these things will fall to you as well. So just within the last few weeks, I renewed our malpractice policy for the coming year. For a practice this size, it's$8,000, right? So here's your individual certificate of insurance, which you can use for all of your work here, as well as off-site, if you have multiple sites, as well as I've gotten subpoenaed three times this month, right? So if I have to go to court and protect myself, I have to have that money set aside to protect my license and ultimately to protect the practice. So, you know, these are things that are unseen and again are certainly unsexy, but being transparent and not a defensive way, but my intention is just to educate. Another thing that we shared with our staff is how can we improve? So at the time, the this was our show and no show rates in comparison to 2021-2022. You'll notice that clinician cancel is NA for 21-22. That was just simply because simple practice didn't have that as an option. And we give our clinicians, we give them this breakdown once a month that shows them this is your number of showed appointments for that time period, your no show for the year or for that time period, late cancel, canceled, clinician canceled. And if it's green, it's either higher than or less than the average. If it's red, it means that. So for this first one here, we want that number to be high. So red means it's below the average. On these subsequent rows, we want those numbers to be really low. If it's red, it's above the average, the company average, right? So we hold them accountable and say, I'm not mad at you. The numbers aren't adding up, right? So that we have this ongoing dialogue about what's getting in the way. And we'll get into kind of mentor verbiage and how to have those types of conversations, right? Another staff complaint is not having access to tools or resources. Tools can be anything from job aids that are specific to your practice. Those could be we have something called at a glance. It's all of the services we offer all of our staff and who they report to, who to go to for what, like HR and technical issues versus billing issues. And so that's an easy job aid that helps them specifically with their position with us. We also offer lots of career and clinical aids that will transcend their work with us. So these may be things, basic things like feelings wheels. We have metal feelings wheels in all of our offices, weighted blankets, digital and physical libraries at all of our locations, art supplies. So those accessible things, so they're not having to pay out of pocket for them. Other resources that are ready-made for clients to use, like support plans, handouts, referral listings, all of those have a value to clinicians because they don't have to create or source them themselves. They're all listed on our Google Drive, which I'll comment on here in a bit. The next staff complaint are unrealistic expectations. I hear some extraordinary expectations with like large caseloads, 35 clients a week, 40 clients a week. These are some of the non-clinician-owned practices that have these expectations. Versus here, full-time clinician sees 25 clients per week on average over the quarter. That is our expectation. And that's how we're able to offer medical benefits and PTO and those types of things. But those large caseloads can be a real turnoff, especially if people don't understand why the expectation is what it is. Another unrealistic expectation is your staff being mini business owners, right? They're seeking out employment in a group practice because they don't want to work on their own, right? They either need the clinical or business chops before they feel confident in going off on their own. But there's this expectation that you should be marketing, you should be accruing your clients. Well, why work for you if I have to go beat the street myself? Another unrealistic expectation is that your staff are able to read your mind, right? We need to make sure that we're very clear in what those expectations are. We need to have formal job descriptions for them, handbooks, written policies and procedures. And these take years to fully draft, right? So don't let your expectation be it's one and done and it's beautiful forever. No, this is something that you need to build on with every new staff member that you bring on, every new situation that you find yourself in. That's a new SOP or that's a new policy that you need to roll out. Having these job aids will help people understand what's expected of them and help them make decisions along the way. Something that we experienced this year was a staff member leaving due to misaligned values, right? So my suggestion here is be clear in your messaging up front and don't be desperate about hiring an expansion. I know that finding strong clinicians can be hard to find. We tend to go the very long invested route with getting them when they're students and then training them through their associate hours. If you are not doing that, be very clear with your messaging up front and be slow to hire, quick to fire, right? I don't hire people I wouldn't want to hang out with, right? Not that I need to be best friends with all of my staff, and I'm not best friends with all of my staff, but I wouldn't want to hire someone to come into this company culture who may not be aligned, right? I'm very transparent with my staff about where my political leanings are. And I wouldn't be the best boss or mentor for people that have super different leanings or political affiliation, right? I'm just not the person for that. And so being upfront with that, starting with I would say before your interview, before your first interview. So when we receive an inquiry from somebody that wants to work for Room for Change, I say, great, here are four screening questions I'd like you to answer. And I'd like you to watch this five-minute recording of me. And that five minute recording says what generally we look for in good cultural fits, right? And I've had a couple of people that say, Thank you for letting me know you have a great life, right? But the overwhelming majority of people, they fill out the screening questions, they watch the video, and then thereafter we have two full interviews that they do with our staff. Undelivered promises. So I hear from people that have been burned in the industry that they're promised full caseloads, yet it's 12 months, 18 months, two years or more, and they're never getting full caseloads. So don't overpromise that a case, a full caseload will happen. Be transparent about how long it does take. So with our practice, it takes about 45 days to fill a caseload. Granted, that does require that the clinician have desirable availability, right? You're not going to come in and work from 10 to 3 every day and have a full caseload in 45 days, right? But if you're open to seeing a pretty wide variety of people and you have availability in those high traffic times, which we identify what those are for them. And we do require of our new staff to have 40% of their hours be in those high traffic times. For us, that's 7 and 8 a.m. in the morning, as well as five o'clock and later during a week and/or weekend hours. So 40% of their initial schedule with us has to fall within those high traffic hours. And then we can deliver on that promise of 45 days to have a full caseload. Other unpromised or undelivered promises are addressing issues or not addressing issues when they arise, right? So there's an issue between peers within the office, or maybe even technically with the office itself, the heating, the cooling, the hearing people between the walls, or something like that. That sounded paranoid and like a delusion, but like actual hearing people on the other side of the wall, so not addressing those issues or promising to address those issues and then not following through. Be honest when you fall short. Say you forgot, right? I forgot you mentioned that. I'm gonna get on it, or I'm going to tag the person that is in charge of that. So be honest and up front, if I were to say to a new staff member, I'm gonna get you a full caseload in 45 days, and then 45 days comes and goes, I'm gonna have a conversation with them. I think, you know, we have fewer inquiries right now. There's been a downturn in our inquiries, and that may be because of the political climate or the economy, or if I think it's because their caseload or their availability is restrictive, I'm going to have that conversation. I'm not going to kick the can down the road because I want them to know that I've got my eye on it just as much as they should.

SPEAKER_00:

Quick break. If you've been meaning to clean up your paperwork for oh the past six months, here's your easy button for January. This month's free listener bonus is the paperwork power hour pack. And it includes an updated intake packet checklist, a clean 2026 ready soap note template, a social media policy you can drop straight into your client consent paperwork, and a mini onboarding checklist for new employees or contractors. And a mini onboarding checklist for new employees or contractors. It's everything you need to tighten up your systems without spending an entire weekend buried in forms. Grab it at KateWalker Training.com slash bonus and give your practice a smart start to the new year. Amanda question it says for the screening questions, can you give us an idea to what those are and the content of what a video can have? I love the idea of having a political transparency stance. What is a way that you've found to communicate that effectively?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so one of the things that we mention in the welcome video, and I can actually send over the screening questions, the email template, and the link to that video, it's just uploaded to YouTube. I can send that over to you, Kate. One of the comments that I make in that five-minute video is that we very much serve the LGBTQ community. And if you're not interested or affectionate towards that community, then this is probably not the practice for you. Now, certainly we don't, that's not every client that we serve, but we are truly an affirming practice. And so if we were to have someone on staff who was not affirming, that would really put kind of a hole in the balloon, right? I wouldn't without certainty be able to say everyone on our staff is affirming. So that is something that we mention in that welcome video as well. So much like the low pay that I mentioned earlier, PTO and benefits are difficult to come by. I certainly would not suggest offering this until you have the money set aside to be able to carry this. PTO can be very expensive. Benefits can be very expensive. We just shopped for medical benefits and we had Blue Cross Blue Shield that we offered to our staff for the last four years. We kept being promised, oh, it's going to come down, it's going to come down. We just got our quote. It went up 28% going into the new year. That's just not something. My family of four were paying$2,300 a month for healthcare insurance for four healthy people that very rarely used it. So we are transitioning to United. I happen to be cheaper. I have my own feelings about United and all the things they own and control. But in order to continue to allow benefits, medical benefits to our staff, we had to look at other options. So this is one of the things don't overpromise and under-deliver. You know, if you were to roll this out and then take it away later on, that could be a bigger burn for your staff. So I'd be very hesitant. You know, we are able to get by without uh the requirement for PTO and benefits because most of us are not like our job descriptions don't meet the full-time requirement, right? So although I have 60 staff, our admin are the only ones that are working 40 hours. Our clinicians are working the 25 hours per week. And then our clinical management team, they're salaried. So we have some leeway with that. But my big pause with this is don't offer it until you can sustain it.

SPEAKER_00:

So there's another question about pay. What is reasonable pay for associates and fully licensed individuals? Do you pay salary or hourly? If full time is 25 hours per week, do you pay them only the 25 hours or add admin time as well?

SPEAKER_01:

So there's a million different ways you can address this. I offer a business consultation. I swear every business owner I meet with does it slightly different. Here at Room for Change, what I decided to do is I felt as though associates, as they work towards their licensure, they pose less risk and they have less clinical need on their supervisor. And so we compensate them more over time. So we start them off at$38 an hour when they're working on their first 500 hours. We jump up$4 an hour when they're working on their second 500 hours, and we jump up again another$4 when they're working on their last 500 hours. Keeping in mind supervision is a benefit here that they don't have any out-of-pocket expense for. And we are paying for everything. We pay for their EHR, their email, their malpractice insurance, EMDR training. So maybe at first glance the hourly rate seems low, but then you add all of those benefits in. This is another point of transparency that I have is I share with them, okay, so if we're paying you, say$44 an hour, let's add 16% of my tax liability that I have to pay on your behalf. And then let's add PTO and then let's add medical. And so they have a better understanding of what the full package looks like. And they're not just caught off guard by the one price point because it's not usually apples to apples when they're comparing their work with us versus their work with, say, a hospital, right? So I want them to know what the full value they're getting out of working for us and the dollar amounts associated with each of those. We also pay for all of our onboarding hours, required meetings. We pay for access to AI note-taking. So there's no documentation time, right? They finish up the session, they click a button, they pull it over. It may take them 60 seconds to review the note that AI prepped for them, but there's not a ton of outside of session admin time for them. So for practice this size, that was about$10,000 for the year for AI note-taking software. We do require all of our students to do organic note-taking. And in the beginning, our associates are required to do organic note-taking until they demonstrate competency and then their supervisor signs off on them having access to AI functionality. So we want them to master that skill because they're not going to always be with us, or maybe AI note-taking will not always be accessible. So we want them to master that skill and then we are given access to it. So I hope that answers your questions about pay. The only salary positions are myself, my husband, who is the director of operations, and our clinical directors. Our clinical directors have fewer per week client hours, and the rest of their time is spent on, you know, managing the team their team. Another concern or complaint is not having training on site. So training can be both formal and informal. I do a lot of the trainings myself, my senior staff who are in managerial roles or tasked with trainings. We then tag in our other clinicians based off of their areas of specialty. So if they have an area of specialty with DID or eating disorders or whatever, they're invited to lead a training for their peers and they're paid for that, right? So they're paid a stipend for leading that training. All of those trainings go onto our training hub, which is hosted through Google. They will see the recording itself and all supplemental documents. So when they become a clinician with Rimford Change, they have access to probably six dozen trainings that are already primed and ready for them. So if they're building their caseload, they can certainly review those trainings. If they have a desire to work with a certain population or they want to learn about a certain technique, we probably have a training that covers it. For trainings that we don't host ourselves, I will pay my staff to attend a training and then I ask them to share their notes with their peers, right? So say it's a primer on Gottman or couples therapy or something like that. I'll say, hey, so and so, you expressed an interest on working with couples. I see this really great training coming up. I'll pay for you to go through it and could would you share what you learned, key takeaways with your peers? And so there's that communal piece as well. The training. Hub actually grew out of our Google Drive. We used to just have everything in Google Drive folders and then moving it over to this hub, it reads more like a library of sorts, and it's much easier to sort through. And then as I said, everything's paired together, the video as well as any supplemental handouts. In addition to all the things that I've already shared, things that you can implement, I also wanted to break down things that you can do today, this week, this year, and over the course of your career. So, number one, I invite you to clarify your why. So many clinicians find themselves as accidental entrepreneurs, right? You become an LPC and then you become a supervisor, and oh, you want to come work for me? Okay, I'll do that, right? That's how I arrived here was very accidentally. I missed consultation, I missed mentorship, and then I blink in 10 years in, and we've got 50 plus clinicians. But, you know, your why of why you started in this field, or maybe even when you began working for yourself, will not sustain your growth. Your why needs to be updated for where your trajectory is currently going. Right. So my why for being a large group practice owner is different than my why was when I first started out, which was to have better life balance for me to be available to my kids as they were growing up. Right. Now my why is central to making an impact on the field, both with the people that clinicians that I directly mentor in their roles as counselors, as well as other counselors that are creating badass businesses, right? So I really enjoy through business consultation working with solo or small group practice owners that want to go larger. They want to scale. So clarifying your why. I do have a training called Heal Thyself, and it helps walk people through drafting your why and how you update that throughout the course of your career. If you're interested in that, you can certainly email me after today. The second thing that you can do today is to change your email signature, right? Make sure that you're owning your leadership role within your practice. Leadership titles include CEO, owner, lead counselor, lead change maker, whatever fits for you, but something that sets you apart from the clinicians that you're leading. I also need you to acknowledge what you don't know. None of us, well, unless you have an MBA, like none of us were taught this stuff in grad school, right? And so what you have is a master's degree in companioning. And what we need as leaders is we need a master's degree in leading to do this work that I'm talking about today. Lastly, own your shortcomings, right? And be transparent as possible without scaring your stuff, right? So as I mentioned earlier, a dysregulated leader then creates dysregulated stuff. So I suggest that you send the following email, which you'll have access to the template. And this allows you to own by saying, Today I attended a CEU on mentorship and have realized I've not fully embraced the leadership role in our relationship. I want to make sure all of the people that contribute to the success of fill in the blank with your practice know that they have my full support as they step into or further their identities as counselors. I've been managing the day-to-day and putting out fires when in reality what keeps me going is impacting lives, much like I assume what keeps you going in your work with clients. My hope is that this email serves as an invitation to share with me what you need and what you hope out of our relationship. Let's schedule some time to talk about this in four weeks, which I'll come back to four weeks in just a moment. I've learned better, so now I'll do better. Looking forward to hearing back from you and to our continued relationship together, right? Owning it. Let's step into a new part of our relationship. And I need your help in doing that. So that's what you can do today. What you can do next week is I want you to spend some time clearly defining the differences between if you're supervising and your leading or aka boss, you need to clearly define that. Because when you have meetings with your associates that are both of those things, you need to clearly define this is a supervision meeting or this is a business meeting, right? The agenda items for those two different meetings should be very different and again clearly defined. Again, own your shortcomings by looking at every staff member who has left and take at least partial credit for their departure based off of the feedback that I've given you about the top complaints, right? This is very hard to do. I'm actively doing this myself. So I would never ask you all to do something I'm not willing to do. But looking back and saying, this is what they set their reasons, they said they left over. But in reflection, could there have been others? And what could I have done maybe differently within the course of that to help solidify their investment in staying to work for here? This is not an exercise on shame. This is an exercise on looking back so that you can look forward. What can I learn from previous experiences that I can glean and apply to future staff that come to work for me? The third is to dream big and to plan for 2026. It is here, right? Six weeks, it will be here. And when I say dream big, there are two questions that I want you to ask yourself. What professional achievement would make all of this worth it? This meaning with all of the headache, all of the extended hours, what would make this worth it? Secondly, I want you to ask what would need to happen in 2026 to get you closer to that achievement. What would need to happen so that in 2027 you have achieved that goal? Right. Whether that's more time away, more flexibility, additional locations, whatever that achievement looks like for you, what would get you closer to that goal? In the next month, the thing that you're going to do today or that you can do today is invite them for that one-to-one meeting. In a month, you'll host that one-to-one meeting. And I have an agenda for that meeting for you. In addition to hosting those meetings, writing those job descriptions for each role, including your own. Kate, I'm not sure that I included my job description when I sent out the other supplemental documents, but I'll include that later tonight. And then third, share with your staff what you're doing and what you're planning to do, right? Again, not out of obligation, but out of a sense of transparency and bringing them into the fold of where your mindset is and getting them to buy into the vision and the course for the coming year. Transparency is with the intent to educate, not out of obligation. For that one-to-one meeting, these are the things that you would send out before that meeting. So we call this DEETS on peeps. And these are some of the questions that we send over when we're onboarding a staff member and they've introduced themselves or been introduced to their clinical director. So, how do you like to engage with peers? What's your favorite color? Do you prefer bagels or donuts? What is your favorite sports team? What's your favorite salty snack? Sweet snack. The sports team one results in some lovely banter with some of our staff. Some of these things about favorite, like snack and color and donuts and stuff, those are just little perks that we may sprinkle in in the future based off of performance and availability. So, what's your favorite movie, fast food place, favorite sit-down restaurant, favorite animal? What hobbies do you have? These, knowing what our staff's hobbies are, allows us to be able to ask about them, right? So I know your son is in Little League. How are things going? What is your coffee and tea order? What they don't like, and what is their work love language, right? Do they want to be affirmed in public when they do something great? Or would they prefer that to happen in private? Do they like gifts or not? Appropriate physical touch, high fives, handshakes, hugs. Sonic order, one of our clinical directors did this last month on Halloween. She printed out these cute little things that was like, I hope you enjoy your potion, but it was their sonic drinks from this. And there's a sonic across the street from this location. So she picked up their favorite drink, added that little, it looked almost like a Valentine, but it was Halloween themed. And if they have any allergies, this is good for us to have on hand. Should we have marketers that want to provide a lunch for them? Favorite cake, flowers, etc. So that's the prep for the one-on-one meeting. And then when you meet with them, these are the things that I want you to have on your agenda. Spend a two a few minutes bantering. This allows for a deeper connection. Ask them about the weekend, their holiday plans, maybe something, their special interest or hobby that they just shared with you on that survey. Write these down, keep them for yourself. Ask the staff member to discuss, or you as the mentor can summarize what you already know about their prior experiences with mentors, bosses, et cetera, right? This is great information for you to have because they may be bringing some of that muck left over from their last boss into their relationship with you. So it may not be about you, but you are left with, you know, managing them through that. It's good for you to have insights about how they best receive feedback. Do they want it written? Do they want it verbal, direct, indirect, the frequency they want that? I ask them if they want a shit sandwich. Do they want me to, you know, fluff it up before I give them the direct? Or are they just like, give me the direct stuff? I don't need the fluff. Their professional goals for the coming year, as well as their personal goals. Your staff need to know that you're invested in them as individuals, not just workhorses. Ask them to prioritize the common complaints that I had earlier. So those different color circles, ask them to prioritize what would be most to least concerning for you or most to least important in your employment relationship with us. What would cause you to leave? And in what ways would you like your job here to change over the coming year? This may be, I want to build my caseload, I'd like my office to be changed, you know, niching down, trainings, whatever it may be. So in a month, this is the agenda that I'd like you to follow for that meeting. In the new year, I want you to spend some time doing a brain dump. All the things that you know that are in here, you need to get out of your head, right? Because that is one of the bottlenecks that we want to address in your company. So the goal is to get out of your brain so others can access it and duplicate it when necessary. This will help you be able to draft interview questions so that someone else can do some of the interviewing. This will allow you to create those SOPs, those handbooks that your staff are in need of. And they truly want it. They want that structure more than you know. The other thing I want you to do in the new year is to identify and review company data and metrics. These are also known as KPIs. So for your clinicians, this may mean like their retention rate, something called a churn rate. That's how quickly they go through new clients, their net promoter score, how likely are they to refer to you as an employer to their peers, attendance reports like the one I went over earlier that says how many people actually show versus cancel. For your clients, client satisfaction ratings may be a metric that you want to track. For your admin, how many calls in a day are they receiving and answering? How many are they missing? And how many are they converting? So it's great that you're getting the phone to ring. Now, how well is your staff doing your admin staff and converting those callers to clients? Many of the phone systems allow for these reporting functions. So that would be unique to whatever phone system that you're using. The metrics are used for accountability. So you aren't answering to me, you're answering to the metric, right? So this helps to distance you from being, you know, the finger that's wagging at them, that's telling them they are not meeting it. It's based on the numbers. Some questions to gain clinician retention or gauge clinician retention. I would say asking these twice a year, you'll have access to this in the PowerPoint. It's very simple across your career. Advocate, decolonize your practices, educate your staff without using fear as a teaching tactic and cheer others on, cheer other group practices and solo providers on. Your staff need to see that you're not just focused on your own successes, but that you are there to cheerlead them on and other people outside of your practice. Some statements that show what mentors sound like. Mentors ask questions, they don't jump to solutions, right? Allow your staff the space to think critically and share with you what they would like to do, how they see this being outlined. Some suggested readings for leaders. I just finished Leaders Eat Last, Love Who Not How. This will help you with delegation for the love of therapy, the accountability equation, and decolonizing therapy. Those three were written by therapists. And Dr. Cloud, Necessary Endings is basically boundaries for your business. Love this book. I actually reread it about once a year. And then I usually clean house, right? To look at perhaps it's time for us to part ways with a clinician because they need something that we are able to offer. I'd like you to ask answer these four questions for your homework. What you need to shift away from from your baby babysitter and manager so you can lead and mentor, what you need to shift away from in the firefighting and the system that needs your attention the most. And lastly, identifying what your why is for business ownership because that needs to be different than your why for being a clinician. You could do all of this and people will still leave, right? That's the kicker. And I am faced with my ego every single time somebody chooses to leave the practice. It's just a reality, right? And it's not always personal. So you can do all of the things and people will still leave. The million dollar question is what value do you bring to the table that would be difficult for a solo practitioner to recreate on their own? This is your secret sauce. This is why people will stay, right? Do you have a robust training program? Do you offer mentorship and not just management? Do you offer them protections that otherwise they would not have in their solo practice? You need to be able to set yourself apart from that. I do enjoy working with other practices. I do business consultation, and this is my contact information here.

SPEAKER_00:

This was wonderful. This was so amazing. Thank you so much, Amanda. Yeah, I just everything in there, I just want to because you know, I was a practice owner once, and I just know the landscape has changed, but in a lot of ways it hasn't. So thank you so, so much. And Amanda is in our Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses Facebook group, and she's always in there asking questions, answering questions. So I highly encourage you to reach out to her and all of the resources Amanda provides, I'll make sure they get into your profile. So, Amanda, thank you again so much. And if you are at TCA, you guys come by and say hi, come to come to my booth, come uh give me a hug, and let's talk business. So, Amanda, have fun in Dallas.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Good so good to see you all. Take care. If you are watching this thinking, wow, I wish I could get CE credit for learning this stuff, well, you can. Step It Up Members Earn CEs all the time on replays on trainings just like this one. If you're ready to deepen your skills, protect your license, and get support year-round, join us at Katewalkertraining.com slash step it up. Before you head out, a quick reminder. This month's free bonus for podcast listeners is the paperwork power hour pack. If you want your intake forms, soaked notes, and supervision paperwork to stop being the slowest part of your day, this bundle will get you there fast. You can grab it at KateWalkertraining.com slash bonus. It's free for January and built to make your practice run smoother without adding more to your plate. Thanks for spending part of your week with me. I'll see you in the next episode. If you love today's episode, be sure to leave a five-star review. It helps other badass therapists find the show and build practices that thrive. Big thanks to Ridgely Walker for our original fun facts and podcast intro, and to Carl Guyanella for editing this episode and making us sound amazing. See you next week.