196 Build Your Fall Case Load Now

If your caseload feels quiet in September, it's probably because of what you didn't do in July.

Every fall, the same pattern shows up. Schools start back, associates finish summer intensives, and suddenly supervisees and clients are looking for help. The clinicians who are ready for that shift are usually the ones who started building the structure before September.

In this episode, I talk about how to build your fall supervision and client roster with intention. This is not about waiting for people to find you. It is about making sure your website, referral relationships, directories, intake process, and follow-up systems are clear before the busy season arrives.

I also talk directly to the introverts, because I see you. Updating your website is important, but sometimes the real next step is making the phone call, contacting the graduate program, reaching out to a school, or offering yourself as a resource in the community.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why July is the right time to prepare for September referrals
• Where supervisees are actually looking for supervisors
• Why your supervision page should not be hidden on your website
• How graduate programs, directories, and word of mouth work together
• Why client referrals require the same kind of intentional outreach
• How to track real connections instead of just counting contacts
• What to have ready before supervisees or clients begin reaching out

If you are building a supervision practice or trying to strengthen your client caseload, do not wait until the inquiries arrive to get organized. Choose one thing to fix this week. Make the call, update the page, check your email process, or prepare your paperwork.

Your future fall self will thank you.

Want to learn more? Check out this month’s free resource from Kate Walker Training.

Want deeper support? The supervisor training and resources at the Step It Up Membership can help you build supervision systems that are clear, ethical, and sustainable.

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. 

Transcript

Passive Marketing Vs Real Outreach

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Be consistent and persistent. This is your livelihood. And a lot of us have that. If I build it, they'll come. So I'm going to put the thing on my website and then I'm going to get really upset if nobody finds it. And that's not the way to build a business. The way you build your business is to actively get out there and help people understand how amazing you are.

Why Fall Rush Starts In July

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Welcome to Badass Therapists, building practices of life. And here's your host, Dr. Kate Walker. Hopefully network fits to break. Every September it happens the same way. Schools start back, associates finish their summer intensives, and suddenly your inbox has three inquiries from people looking for a supervisor. And if you're not ready, you spend the first two weeks of fall scrambling instead of supervising. The clinicians who go into fall with a solid, well-matched supervision caseload are the ones who started thinking about it in July. And I'm talking to you two clinicians. It's the same goes for potential clients. Now it's not because they're overachievers, but because they know that finding the right supervisees and the right potential clients takes longer than it looks. And the quiet season is the best time to get that infrastructure in place. This episode is about building your fall supervision and client roster intentionally, where serious supervisees are actually looking, potential clients that fit you and how you do counseling are finding you, how to screen for fit before you ever get on a call, and what your online presence needs to communicate right now so the right people can find you before someone else does. If supervision is part of your practice, or if you're trying to build your client load, this episode's for you. Now let's get to work.

Seasonal Demand For Therapy And Supervision

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Now with clients, we sometimes talk about September and January. Those are kind of our new year, new you times. And we see an uptick in clients generally, you know, with uh school getting back in session and notes start going home and parents start reaching out for resources. Then in January, we see the folks who maybe they've spent the holidays together, they've held it together, and now they are like, oh, I need to get into therapy. So this recording should drop sometime in July. So it's a perfect time for you to really sit down, especially if your caseload is low right now, or you just finished a supervisor training and you're like, okay, Kate taught me how to build a business. Let's do this. I want to build up my supervision practice. Awesome. So glad you're here. So glad you're listening.

Make Supervision Easy To Find

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Now, supervision caseload first. I've noticed that a lot of supervisors treat supervision kind of like an afterthought. Like they'll spend money, they'll have these beautiful websites with beautiful fonts and colors and descriptions, beautiful headshots to attract clients. And then they'll have a teeny tiny little navigation with a drop-down menu, maybe, or a button that says interested in supervision or supervision services. So a supervisee looks at this and maybe they've got to search a little bit. So guess what our most common referral source is? It's word of mouth and reputable directories. So I did an episode uh about intake mistakes. And one of the things I noted when I was talking about uh intake mistakes was the idea that the intake is also a marketing opportunity. Everybody wants to be a helper. I love to be able to tell my neighbor, hey, I know a great plumber, or uh tell a colleague, oh my gosh, yes, I have a wonderful therapist I can recommend. Well, supervisees are the same way. They love to be able to tell their graduating colleagues, I know a great supervisor. And so if you listen to that episode and you get it and you're making sure that your presentation is just super professional and you close all the loopholes and all the things, then you will get supervisees asking or telling their colleagues about you. And that's a wonderful

Outreach That Builds Trusted Pipelines

SPEAKER_00 4:50

thing. But I'm gonna tell you some of the things that you introverts are avoiding. And this is if you're trying to build your client load and you're trying to build your supervision load, because you guys are avoiding FaceTime, you're avoiding going out into the public, contacting cold calling folks who could make your life so much easier. So, for example, if you're a supervisor and you're ready to build that supervision, uh, your supervising caseload, contact a university. Say, who is the director or the coordinator for your practicum, for your internships? I want to talk to them. I'd love to know more about your program. And I would like to let that person know that I'm available to, and then offer yourself as a resource. You can talk to their classes, you can talk about private practice, you can talk about your specialty, you can talk about what supervision is. These folks are always looking for professionals in the community to offer their expertise, real-world expertise for their students. And if you know your stuff and you present yourself as an easy resource, they are going to put you on a short list of people they recommend for postgraduate supervision. Introverts, I know that's hard. I know that's not easy to reach out, make those cold calls. I had uh someone I spoke with a couple of weeks ago, and we actually figured out that even though they graduated from a graduate program out of state, a lot of her colleagues in her program were coming to Texas to get licensed. So they had a Texas pipeline and she was licensed in Texas as a supervisor. I'm like, get back to that grad program, go contact a professor that you know and start to form that relationship. So, for clients, if you're building that client load, you may not be contacting in university, but maybe you're going to a doctor's office. Maybe you're cold calling a school and asking for the head of their PTO so you can get on their list of workshops that they offer, usually monthly. And you become a resource for those organizations as a speaker, you become a resource for those organizations as a referral when folks are having difficulty with their kiddos. But that requires you to get out of your comfort zone now, here in the summer, when things are kind of slow, and to plan these conversations or to have these conversations.

Referral Sources And Directory Cautions

SPEAKER_00 7:31

And yes, it's true, supervisors. You know, you're the professors are going to be kind of busy toward the end of the semester. And so in the summertime, the semester generally ends the first week or so of August. So don't lose heart if you they don't get right back to you or if they don't email you right back. Be consistent and persistent. This is your livelihood. And a lot of us have that, you know, if they build, if I build it, they'll come. Uh so I'm gonna put the thing on my website and then I'm gonna get really upset if nobody finds it. That's not the way to build a business. The way you build your business is to actively get out there and help people understand how amazing you are. So I made a list here. Where are supervisees actually looking? Word of mouth, we talked about that. State and local professional organizations, a lot of them have supervisor directories. We have a directory here at K Walker Training. If you're in Texas, it's Texas only. So if you're looking for a supervisor in Texas, we've got a great directory. Graduate programs, we talked about that. And psychology today for building a client load. Now, I know a lot of people aren't a fan of psychology today, but here's what we're finding out about these organizations, these companies that promise to send you referrals. What happens is they start small and then they get bought out by another company. And what happens to all of this information? So we're finding a lot of times that protected health information, not so protected, your personal information, not so, not so protected. So just be really careful when you're signing up for a company. I saw it's funny uh because I follow a podcast and she said it's she called it the drug dealer model. And I love that because basically they get you at this really low price, and we're gonna give you a ton of referrals, so you get in there. And then later on, once you're kind of hooked, they raise the price on you, they lower the number of benefits unless you can pay that higher price. So be very, very careful with the companies who are promising to get you referrals.

Email Lists And KPIs That Matter

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Also, what we talk about here here at KateWalker Training is creating an email list. I know that seems so old school, but having resources on your website that people can click and remember, everybody wants to be a helper, they can give that resource to a friend. That resource has your email on it. You have people that maybe subscribe to your newsletter, and you don't have to do a newsletter a week. You can do a newsletter a month, but people want more pieces of you. And when you're able to give them that in an email list, that narrows down that pipeline and makes it pre-qualified for lack of a better term, because you're not having to sell your services. These people are already like you. So combine that with a 10-minute consultation and your KPI. Remember, those are key performance indicators of connections, booked appointments, people who actually show up to that first appointment, those KPIs will go up.

Free Summer Practice Audit Bonus

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Hey, quick pause. This month's free bonus is the summer practice audit pick three. It gives you a menu of seven practice areas, lets you choose three, and hands you a checklist for each so you know exactly what done looks like. It takes about an afternoon and it's completely free. Grab it at KateWalkertraining.com slash bonus. Now back to the episode.

Start Small And Get Support

SPEAKER_00 11:28

So let me talk to supervisors a minute. What are some changes you can make this week to just one thing? Is it a phone call you can make to a graduate school? Is it something you can do on your website? I mean, make it a, you know, make it a bigger button instead of a teeny tiny button, making maybe even a new website, having something where people can search and find you. Is it listing yourself on a directory? Just remember, it's not uh that one of these things is going to be the magic golden key, right? It's likely going to be a combination of all of these things. So decide now how you want to do this and how many supervisees you want to have. Uh, I'm just gonna reach maybe a little bit, but sometimes I think people don't actively go after supervisees because they're a little bit worried about the liability. They're a little bit afraid of supervising, and that's normal, especially if you're a brand new graduate from one of the supervisor training courses. So we have support for you. Uh, you can get my book, The Clinical Supervision Survival Guide. You can join the Texas Supervisor Coalition Facebook page, even if you're not in Texas. So getting that support, listening to this podcast, watching this YouTube channel, getting the support you need so that you don't feel so alone out there. And then, yeah, start small. Get one supervisee and then build your supervision load

Reduce Friction In Contacting You

SPEAKER_00 13:04

from there. So if you are convinced you really do want to build your supervision load, you really do want to do your uh build your client load. I've got one more thing I want you to check. How many steps does it take for someone to actually contact you? Remember a second ago, I talked about KPIs of connection, booked appointments, and made appointments. Well, it starts with this other KPI that people get suckered into tracking, which is how many emails am I getting? How many texts, how many phone calls? Y'all, if those aren't answered in a timely manner, or if you ghost someone or they ghost you, right? That's not an indicator of any kind of performance. That's just a missed connection. So I want you to think honestly about how many steps it takes for someone to contact you, really contact you. I can tell you right now, there's a text thread going, my kids have with like 50 text messages on it. They can't contact me right now. I put it on do not disturb. So right now I am very, very difficult to contact, but I'm doing that on purpose. For you folks who are trying to build a client load, how many emails does it take for someone to actually connect with you? I saw a website uh yesterday that said, text me. And if I'm in between clients, I will text you right back. Actually, I kind of like that. That was clear. That said that hey, I'm not going to get back to you immediately. And I work. And that's a good thing. I want to know that my therapist is working. So just having that message on the website, text me here, and I will contact you in between sessions. That sets my expectations. And if you listen to me before, we talk about matching those expectations. Mismatched expectations leads to disappointment. So think very, very, very critically about how many steps does it really take someone to reach you? Do you have one of those emails like dot edu or dot info and everything goes to spam? So maybe you're a supervisor and you emailed the directors of three graduate programs, but their email replies to you all went to spam. Well, don't be surprised if your emails to them went to spam. Universities are notoriously hard on email. Their spam catchers are amazing. So if you don't hear back from them, call. Reach out over that old-fashioned phone and make a voice connection. Because remember, the number of contacts, that's not a performance indicator. It's the number of connections. That's the number we want to track. How many times you actually connect with a person.

Prep Paperwork And Closing Moves

SPEAKER_00 15:56

All right. So once you pick your thing to fix, then get ready. Have your intake paperwork ready and up to date. If you're a supervisor, make sure your contract is ready and your orientation's ready to go. Be like somebody who's preparing for a party, right? You want everything set up and ready and anticipate that folks will come because you're being active about this. You're not being passive about it. You're being active and you're getting out of your comfort zone and you're reaching out because you're amazing. You need to let people know you're amazing and you need to give them the ability to refer back to you. All right. Have a great day. If this episode got you thinking seriously about your practice or your supervision setup, the free summer practice audit at KateWalkertraining.com slash bonus is a great next step. Pick three areas, get a checklist for each. And if you're ready to build this out fully, the supervisor training is at KateWalkertraining.com. Links are in the description. See you next week. 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 Ridgley Walker for our original fun facts and podcast intro, and to Carl Dianella for editing this episode and making us sound amazing. See you next week.