170 The Self-Audit: What Are You Cutting From Your Practice?

Most practice owners head into a new year by adding more—more offers, more marketing, more hustle. In this episode, I’m asking you to do the opposite.

We’re looking at what actually worked this year, what just felt important, and what quietly drained your time without growing your practice. This is about cutting what doesn’t move the needle and doubling down on what does.

I walk you through a simple audit you can use to evaluate your services, your marketing, your schedule, and even your habits—so you don’t carry the same problems into 2026.

If you want a practice that makes money without requiring you to hold everything together, this episode will help you decide what to keep, what to cut, and what finally deserves your energy.

In this episode, I cover:

• How to use the 4 KPIs to measure what’s actually bringing in real clients
• How to identify which services and side hustles make money—and which just steal time
• How to spot client patterns that support your schedule and income goals
• How to find and manage the biggest time-wasters in your business day

 Avoid dragging your old problems into the new year! Grab January's bonus, The Paperwork Essential Starter Kit now.

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.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And January Focus
• 0:55 Free Paperwork Bonus Announced
• 1:17 The Four KPIs That Matter
• 2:58 Audit What Truly Makes Money
• 4:33 Validate Marketing With KPI #4
• 5:54 Beyond Retention: Useful Client Patterns
• 7:23 Powerful Referrals And Niching Smart
• 10:22 Time Wasters And Tracking Your Day
• 13:41 Recap, January Plan, And CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Oh my gosh, the week that I did the TikTok dance was the week that I got 80 phone calls. We might say yay, but if not a single one of those people followed through with KPI number four, no, that is not resulting in an actual climate.

SPEAKER_01: 0:23

Welcome to the next therapist, building practices and working smart, not harder.

SPEAKER_00: 0:37

January isn't just about adding goals. It's about cutting the dead weight that slows your practice down. Today we're talking about the habits, tasks, and systems that no longer serve you and how to release them without guilt. Think of it as professional decluttering therapist style. Before we get started, grab your January freebie. It's the Paperwork Essential Starter Kit at KateWalkertraining.com slash bonus. It's a simple way to clean up your 2026 paperwork so you're not dragging old problems into a new year. Now let's get to work. Hey, it's Dr. Kate Walker. Welcome to your Tuesday Step It Up Training. And one of the things that we're talking about, actually, the main thing we're talking about, we're getting rid of the things that aren't working, and we're doubling down on things that will actually move the legal. So when we talk about the things that you're going to audit, the things that you're getting rid of, the things that you're going to double down on, we've got to have KPIs. And so just a little reminder of the KPIs that I recommend that you use. There are four of them. Number one is the number of contacts. So the number of people that you actually stop playing phone tag or email tag or text tag. So that's the actual, we're counting. It's almost like if you're thinking about your website, this would be page views, right? So those are people who actually come in contact with you. Number two are the connections. So when you make a connection, so you actually speak to them or the text goes through and they're actually on the other end of the text at the same time you are. Third KPI is the booked first appointments, which those are wonderful, but they don't matter for squat if you don't have number four, which is the actual made first appointment. So as we're tracking these things, uh, or actually we're getting ready to, because I don't want you guys doing anything right now. It's you're getting ready for the holidays, everybody's swamped, everybody needs a break. So I don't want you focused on this stuff. I want you thinking about it. So you're building the framework for Q1 for January. So number one on the list of things, you need to look at what made money versus what just felt like it was important. And I'm talking to you, course creators. I get so many of you who want to start side hustles by doing a course, or maybe you want to add a group. That's so that's one group of y'all. Another group of y'all are the ones, and I'm going to shamelessly call you out. You're the ones who are seeing clients there in the evening or on Saturdays when you really should be going to your kids' soccer game or spending time uh doing something you love. So it feels like you're making money. And I hear my own colleagues doing this. They'll put on a huge event and say, oh yeah, but but kid, I made$2,000. And I'll be like, that's great. But when you look at the time that you actually put into it, and then you measure it against what it costs you to put this on, what how much money are you truly making? So when you think about your own practice, I want you to think like uh, you know, like a business owner, think of the products you're selling. And you've heard me talk about big pumpkins versus small pumpkins, it's all kind of the same thing. You're looking at the products that are not making money. So that could be courses, it could be t-shirts, but it could also be individual sessions on a Saturday. Or uh if you're trying to run groups that consistently only two people show up and you're only charging them$25 a piece. All right, so the next thing, what is resulting in actual clients? So you're testing it with our four P KPIs. So actual clients are going to meet our criteria for KPI number four, the person that actually shows up for the appointment. So if you were doing your TikTok dances and you're getting lots and lots of views, and you can look at your calendar and you can say, oh my gosh, the week that I did the TikTok dance was the week that I got 80 phone calls, we might say, yay, do more of that because we got KPI number one. But if not a single one of those people followed through with KPI number four, no, that is not resulting in an actual client. So as you go through your list of the things that you do as a business owner on a daily basis, from creating blog content to maybe next week you're gonna make an opt-in with me, all of the things we're gonna look at that and see what is actually moving the needle on KPI number four. The people that show up for session one. I'm not I'm gonna talk about the ones that show up for session two and three and four in just a minute. But if it's not resulting in an actual client, we're gonna look at next year. All right, next. This is the one. Okay, so client patterns. Now, I'm gonna tell you my trigger word, trigger brains, and that is retention rates. I hear this on the internet all the time. My retention rate is low. The therapists in my group practice, their retention rate is low. Now, I'm not talking about if you have a supervisee who never gets a second session with a client. That's an issue. That's something you need to address. We talked about it in the training called What to Tell Your Supervisee when their clients don't come back. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about which clients show up, right? They meet KPI number four, but let's look at other patterns besides retention, right? Because if you take insurance and insurance approves 10 sessions, that's really not on you. Like it's nothing you're doing except taking that insurance. But I want you to look at the clients who show up and who can pay your rate and who can come at a time when you want them to. They're not constantly rescheduling, or maybe they take your first, you know, appointment at uh Tuesday at four o'clock, and you're like, oh, that's amazing. I love giving away Tuesday at four o'clock. But every time after that, they can only come in at Saturday on Saturday at 10 a.m. That's not a pattern that you want to continue. 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. It's everything you need to tighten up your systems without spending an entire weekend buried in forms. Grab it at KateWalkertraining.com slash bonus and give your practice a smart start to the new year. And so some patterns you might want to think about are flexibility. Which of your clients have a flexible schedule? Think CEOs who get Fridays off. They have a flexible work schedule. Think small business owners who have the ability to take off in the middle of the day. A lot of us who see kids, uh, we think we're locked into this sweet spot of, well, I can only see clients from four to seven. Well, you might want to consider only seeing kids a couple of days a week. I know, I know it's your niche. And everybody wants to talk about, well, which clients energize me and which clients do I enjoy? So I don't want to discount that. If that's your niche, then yeah, we can go with it. But I want to consider a third pattern. This may be a fourth pattern. Who is referring to you? So when you see people come through the door, do you ask them, how did you hear about me? And when I say come through the door, I'm let me put them in air quotes. I mean, you know, when you're doing your 10-minute consultation, do you ask people how they heard about you? So you'll start to discover patterns when you ask that question. Perhaps the PTO is giving out your name and you didn't even know it. Maybe there's a doctor who is consistently referring to you and you can't even remember giving them your card. So starting to identify, I know with me, one pattern that I noticed was I gave my card to physicians, thinking they would give them to their patients. But what really started happening is the physicians themselves started coming on. So it totally changed my marketing angle when I went to the physician's office. It wasn't just a pitch to, hey, give this to your patients. It was, hey, I have a clientele that uh is made up of physicians, and I help physicians who are struggling with work-life balance because maybe both partners are working. So I had a spiel, I had a marketing pitch for physicians to them to come in. And it was a great client for me because they could pay my rate. They did have a flexible schedule in most cases, and it was a it was a good niche. It matched my niche. So I'm not encouraging you to totally baby and bathwater this thing and start from scratch and say, okay, Kate says I just need to go after physicians and small business owners. No, that's not it. I'm saying look at your own calendar and go beyond who do I enjoy and start to look at each one of those hours like an airplane seat, right? Each one of those hours is a product. So if four o'clock on Tuesday is your sweet spot, start looking at the types of clients, the demographic, or sometimes we call it your avatar of those clients that come in at those times that you really, really enjoy and you can pay your rate and all the things, then you can start marketing to that client. We can start designing pitches, and that'll line up so nicely with what we're doing next week and what we're gonna be doing in January when we really start to nail down the marketing player for those ideal clients that are moving the needle on the KPIs. All right, last thing, and I've talked about this so much. I didn't I didn't want to be the dead horse here, but time wasters, right? What are the things that are really wasting your time? And it's funny because I've thought about this a lot from the course of my you know business life. And you know, I can actually say to myself when I'm about to indulge in a time waster. So for example, I have a little routine in the morning. I wake up, I do my reading, I do some praying, some visualizing, all the things, and then I go through my business. I have a few things, I check a box, and then I look at the clock. And when I look the look at the clock, I know I'm sunk because what I'm doing is I'm trying to measure how much time I have to get on Facebook. Like I'm literally planning to waste time. And so, hey, you know, I'm not saying don't ever do it. I'm just saying be mindful of the time wasters that fall into your business day. So, how can you combat that? Well, I will tell you the same thing that my business coach a long time ago made me do. And that is to divide your day up by hour, and you can download these things online. You can do a time to track some kind of app if you want to. For me, it was just an old school spreadsheet that I started at 7 a.m. and I went all the way till I think probably 8 p.m. And I just took a week and I tracked exactly what I did. And I remember looking at this and thinking, gosh, I waste a lot of time. But I also realized that I'm a little ADD and I tend to go down rabbit holes. And what I think is research, what I think is a really good idea for my business is actually shiny object itis. It doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. It just means to really tighten up and maybe schedule time. If you enjoy rabbit holes and shiny object itis like I do, schedule time for it. And there are two newsletters that I get that I really enjoy. One is called the medium. And the medium, it's just like kind of these far out articles about, you know, what's on the future for AI, you know, what is what are the latest trends in books? You know, what are the five nonfiction books everybody should read this year? And it's fun. And but I save it for Friday because I know, yes, I'm learning something so I can justify it. But at the same time, it's not making me money, it's not working on my marketing, and it's doing nothing to forward my business in any way. So I'll have to plot spite of the time waster. All right, so let's go back through. Here we go. Here are the things you're going to do. Because right, the promise for today is that you cut three things and you double down on one thing. So we're asking ourselves what made money this year versus what just felt like it was important. We're asking what is resulting in actual clients. So we're gonna test that with our four KPIs. Four KPIs are contacts, connections, booked first appointments, and actually showed up first appointments, and then finally, we're gonna look at client patterns, right? We're gonna go through our schedule, we're seeing who we enjoy, but also who's paying our rate, and who maybe, I don't know, we can add other things to that. Who really works hard in session? What's a client that seems to be highly motivated? Um, you get to do this, it's your your practice. And then finally, your time wasters. All right. 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, soap 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 to thrive. Big thanks to Ridgley Walker for our original fun facts and podcast intro, and to Carl Diamella for editing this episode and making us sound amazing. See you next week.