What Sets Apart Therapists With Successful Practices?

Therapists with successful practices tend to spend their time and energy differently from great therapists who don’t have the practices they want.

As a therapist in private practice, there are 3 kinds of activities you spend time on in your business: providing services, taking care of the day-to-day, and moving your business forward.

Providing Services

The time you spend with clients providing therapy falls into this category. All of your income and most of your work satisfaction probably comes from providing services.

Taking care of the day-to-day

This is all the stuff you regularly do to run your business besides providing the time you’re in the room with clients. Day-to-day activities include answering your phone, paying bills, writing notes, managing your billing, going to consultation group, charging credit cards, and answering emails. It also includes maintaining your marketing. If you write a blog, give talks, or network, you can include that in this category.

Moving your business forward

This third category includes the tasks you don’t HAVE to do in order to maintain your business where it is right now. It’s the time you spend moving your business forward. This category includes  the time you put into dreaming about your business, looking at the big picture, learning new business skills, creating goals, and getting inspired for the business you want to move towards.Therapists who put time into this category tend to succeed at making more money and creating businesses they want to run.

How much time should you put into moving your business forward? At the very least, one hour or more per week. More is better.

Let’s look at some specific activities and tasks that will move your business forward.

• Reading articles and books about business. Hey, you’re moving forward right now!

• Participating in a business coaching program or peer-led business mastermind group

• Setting goals and planning the steps to accomplish them

• Overhauling your website

• Creating new services

• Reaching out to new potential referral partners

I'll give you an example of why this time makes such a big difference to your business. 

A therapist I’ll call Sheila came to me with a very full practice. She had a caseload with 80% insurance based clients and 20% private pay clients. She loved her clinical work, but she was working too many hours and needed to increase her income. She knew if she added more hours she’d burn out, but she wasn’t sure what else to do.

She signed up for my Superpower Method For Therapists™ Program, and using that process she created a new plan. Even though she was working full time, she started putting at least 2 hours per week into “moving your business forward” activities. She overhauled her website to reflect a niche and created a new business model which included group therapy. Within 6 months she had launched her group and her percentage of private pay clients was on the rise. She was following a step by step plan to move off of insurance panels. She was able to slightly cut back her hours while increasing her income.

Carve that time out. 

When I run the Superpower Method For Therapists™ Program, the participants do a lot of work. We have group calls 2 times per month, and the lessons and homework assignments between calls can take 2 or more hours per week. I also give bonus challenges to help participants move their businesses forward even more if they’ve got the time and energy. At the end of the program, participants see that they’ve managed to carve out 2 or more hours per week to move their businesses forward. Many participants then commit to continuing to carve that time out after the program is over.

But how can you possibly do more than you're doing right now?!

So I know you don’t have an extra 2 or 3 hours per week lying around on your calendar. You’d love to put time into this “move your business forward” category, but you’ve already got a long to do list. You can’t add more.  

You need a STOP doing list

If you're already working full time, you're a parent, or you're burning out, you have to get creative about what goes on that STOP doing list. 

You’ll probably find all of the items for your STOP doing list within your day-to-day tasks. In both of my businesses, I pay for excellent help from someone who takes huge items off of my “day-to-day” list. She does them so well that I can truly let them go. I rely on systems like my practice management system which includes billing and online scheduling. Many therapists have found that using an online practice management system takes hours off of their day-to-day work. If you’re spending time emailing or sending voicemail messages back and forth about scheduling, find a better system.  

Your turn. How can you take action now to move your business forward?

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How To Grow A Therapy Practice Without Overwhelm

You’re growing your practice. That means when you’re not seeing clients, you’re returning phone calls, answering emails, marketing, networking, and trying to tackle a huge to do list. Overwhelmed yet?

I spoke with Frances Harvey, founder of My Solution Services about how to get out of overwhelm. She and her team help therapists with all of the everyday tasks of running a solo or group practice.  

In this conversation, Frances talks about how to take tasks off your plate so you can focus on what matters to you.

At the end of the interview, you’ll see 2 surprise guests. 

Here are some highlights from the interview: 

What Frances says to overwhelmed therapists

#1: Breathe! It’s common for therapists in private practice to feel overwhelmed.

#2: You’re not supposed to do it all yourself. You need to offload the things you shouldn’t be doing so that you can focus on the things you should be doing, like providing excellent therapy.

Some things you probably shouldn't be doing

The most common things therapists ask me for help with are #1 phones and scheduling and #2 billing.

Phones and scheduling are critically important to your private practice. That’s your life line, so it’s scary to hand them over. But most of the time I hear therapists say that they often can’t return calls until 10 at night or that it’s sometimes 3 or 4 days before they can return a call. That’s not good!

When you’re at the point where you’re not returning calls promptly, you need help.

I've developed a step by step system for handling phone calls. 

Here’s the structure we use when a potential client calls your practice:

1.   Create the relationship with the potential client. “Hi, how are you? I’m glad you called. My name is Frances.” Within a few seconds we’ve created some rapport.

2.   Create a safe place and ask them to tell me what why they want to come in for therapy.

3.   Create value. We have a detailed profile for each therapist in our system. We know how long you’ve been a therapist, your fees, what you specialize in, and everything you can possibly imagine. We pull up that information right away and it seems like we’re sitting right there in your office and we’ve known you for 10 years. We’re able to create value for the client and let them know why it would be a good idea to come and see you.

4.   Handle logistics. We give them all of the information they need including fees, length of session, and what to expect in the session. Then we move into scheduling an intake.

5.   Do the follow up work, which may include a confirmation email to the client and a message letting the therapist know we’ve booked a session. It’s a very structured process.

My staff receives about 15 to 18 hours of training on this process, including role-playing the calls.

What tasks should you hand over?

When I talk to a therapist, I help them make a big list of everything they need to offload. I help them prioritize the top 3 most important things they need to take car of, and then we identify the #1 task that we will start with.

If you know you need help, but don’t have any idea what to offload, I give you an assignment. Take a week or two, and make a note in your smart phone every time you’re doing a business related task. For each task, ask yourself: Should I be doing this task? Should I be using my time on this? Note your answer next to each task.

Why you SHOULD offload some tasks

I often ask therapists: If I gave you back 10 hours a month, what would you do with it?

It’s critical for you to market and network with your colleagues. And what about spending time with your family?!

You may have to push yourself to hire help before it’s easy to afford because you may need those 10 hours to take your practice to the next level.

To get in touch with Frances and set up a consultation, go to mysolutionservices.com or email her at  frances@mysolutionservices.com.

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A Blindspot You Can Fix Now

Here’s a problem I’ve seen happen to some excellent therapists lately. They’re doing just about everything right to build their unique and profitable therapy practices, but they leave out something important. Bear with me and I’ll tell you what it is and how to avoid it.

Let’s pretend it’s you. Imagine this: You’ve identified your niche, learned to express what’s unique about you as a therapist, created your ideal business model and implemented a solid marketing plan. Your website reflects who you are and speaks directly to your right-fit clients. Maybe you’ve even done some speaking gigs or created content that your right-fit clients value. You’ve brought up your fees so you’re getting paid well. As a result of all of this hard work, your practice has grown. Woo hoo!

But then….you start noticing you haven’t gotten a referral from a colleague in a while. What gives? You’ve got strong relationships with your colleagues, and you’ve gotten together with some of them recently. You refer clients to them, and you’d value referrals in return. You’re feeling discouraged.  

Here’s the thing. You probably haven’t been telling those colleagues that you have openings.

It’s obvious to your colleagues that you’ve done some fabulous work on your business. Your website looks great and the way you talk about your work is compelling. You look so successful to your colleagues that they assume your practice is full. They figure you don’t need or even want their referrals.

You can SO easily fix this. I got an email this week from a gifted colleague letting me know that she’s got some openings. I’ve sent her many clients over the years, and occasionally she’s been too full to take one. Thanks to her email, I’ll send her more soon.

Do this right now: Think about which of your colleagues doesn’t know you’ve got openings.

On a side note, if that description of you having it all together made you feel bummed out and you said, “No I really haven’t done all of those wonderful things,” that’s OK. Wherever you on your practice-building path, I’m here for you. Whether you’re brand new to private practice or you’re a seasoned expert, I’ve got resources to help you create the business only you can create. 

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