Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey. Hey. Shauna A. The delightful Clinician and welcome back to Delightful Audiosodes. It's been a while since I've recorded an audiosode, so you are officially listening to season three, episode one titled how to scale your private practice without a set it and forget it system. Delightful Audiosodes are mini podcast episode designed to help therapists scale their practice beyond one to one direct care. This is going to help you go beyond the couch utilizing my framework, the can framework that is consistency, audacity and network. And we're going to talk all about how that applies to scaling your practice beyond the couch while abandoning the systems that we've always learned, the set it and forget it systems. So we're going to talk about that today. I'm so happy to be back. I kind of feel a little bit like Scooter from In Living Single. In Living Single was a sitcom that came on in the 90s as that followed Khadijah, her cousin Sinclair, their roommate Regine, and Khadijah's best friend Max.
[00:01:13] And in this, Khadijah had a longtime love interest, Scooter. They went to high school together. And in season one, Scooter was kind of around and then he like disappeared out of nowhere. He kind of abandoned Khadijah. Now Khadijah was like getting back to her dating life. And then at the end of season one, Scooter kind of pops up and he's like, baby, I'm back. It's kind of like how I feel. So let's talk about what happened last year. I had several episodes of the Delightful Audiosodes and they are really episodes that I really enjoy. But after some time it kind of felt like I was like searching for new content to make. I just couldn't find it. And then there was a lot of things that was going on. So I just let Delightful Audiosodes have a very natural break. Last year I recorded episodes from January all the way through May, and that's likely what's going to happen this time around. So I'm happy to say that I'm just going to give it its natural season and when that last episode comes, it just does until I'm ready to bring it back the following year.
[00:02:17] So we're going to do things a little bit different. We're going to talk about what it means to scale your practice and bring your practice beyond the couch. Really what I do is I help clinicians build sustainable careers as mental health professionals. Now I've seen so many people say, hey, you don't have to do that. You can do therapy if that's what you want to do. You can work at community levels if that's what you want to do. And yes, that is absolutely true. This is not for you. If you are someone who wants to provide only therapy. If you're someone who wants to do this only at a community level or in different systems and private practice isn't for you. While you might be interested in other things, this is really about clinicians who are in private practice who are looking to do more than their therapy work. So we're talking about going beyond the one to one direct care. And what I say is that when I work with clinicians, I work with clinicians who are highly creative people. These are innovative people, but they are deeply connected to the services that they want to provide. They want to expand their impact. They want to expand what they do so that they are not getting burned out on what they do. For some people, their capacity for one to one therapy services is not as big as others. And that's okay. We can recognize the differences and value how people show up as clinicians as long as they're doing it in a ethical and quality way. That being said, let's talk about what today's show is all about and that is scaling your private practice. So the big question that I get often is how do you scale your therapy practice? And I want to tell you that scaling your private practice is is going to require some questions that you ask of yourself. The first step in scaling your private practice is making sure that your practice is ready to be scaled. A lot of times people will come to me and their practice isn't actually ready to be scaled. They don't have the things in place that will help sustain that scale. Because what is happening as you're scaling is that you're going to be doing some shifting. You're going to be looking at what is stable for you and how you can bring other things in in that.
[00:04:40] So that might mean that you have less therapy hours.
[00:04:45] And if we have a practice that doesn't have consistent hours or it doesn't have a consistent revenue cycle, then that might be really hard to go without those funds for some people. So we have to be able to talk about what is it that your practice is bringing in and how is it bringing in those funds as well as are you bringing in enough to sustain a shift or pivot in your practice? Another big question that people should be asking is how do they want to go about making those funds if someone comes to me and they tell me that they are exhausted and they don't want to do direct care work at all, I'm not going to suggest to them that they start coaching. What I'm going to say is, how can we help you provide a service that doesn't involve you directly having to perform that service each and every time? So maybe that means you're putting your knowledge into some kind of course or webinar. Maybe that means that you're doing some public speaking. Are you perhaps doing some supervision? The big thing is, I'm also going to ask, how are you getting clients?
[00:05:58] What does that look like for you? If someone came to me and they said, I'm ready to scale my practice and I want to do something that's not direct care, like writing a course, I want to know how you're going about getting referrals to your practice. Because if the way that you're going about getting referrals to your practice is through a directory, I'm going to question how are you going to be able to get referrals to that course that you're making? The method is different. Directories are a set it and forget it system. You go to a directory, you put your name on there, you fill in some information, you tell people what kind of things that you're taking, what kind of reimbursements you'll use for this service, and then you set it up and you walk away from it. And sometimes you might go and be like, oh, I'm not getting enough referrals. Let me see if I can change up something so that I get a refresh in the algorithm. But if that's the only system that you have in procuring new clients, then we have to talk about client acquisition for you, because that means that other means in which it's not as easy to get new people by setting it and forgetting it.
[00:06:59] We have to practice those other means. We have to talk about your active marketing and visibility skills. And for a lot of therapists, active marketing and visibility is like zero to none. And this is nothing to be ashamed about. We weren't taught about this formally, but as you're expanding your business now, we have to talk about those things because those things are really important.
[00:07:20] I don't think there's anything wrong with having the set it or forget it systems. I just believe, though, that they spoil us a little bit as clinicians because we're used to not having to chase leads. We're used to not having to create visibility for ourselves. And once we have to do that. That can feel really, really, really uncomfortable because for a lot of clinicians, setting up visibility systems is like, okay, where can I put information and just walk away from it? And even social media, that does not work as well because social media requires engagement. These algorithms want you to be engaged on. But there are places where we can put things right. We can have websites and really good SEO on our websites. There's even the GPT eo, right? The chat version of SEO is available to people. We can create blogs and we can create newsletters to talk to people about our work. Where when you create a blog that's essentially a set it up and forget it, that really can be. But the way that we see really good visibility is through action, even when we're networking. The best networking you can do is an active kind of networking, collaborating with our peers, creating networks so that our peers are pushing our work and vice versa, creating networks with other like professionals who serve our clients. For example, what that could look like is if you work with people who are going through divorce or recently divorced and you don't have divorce attorneys on speed dial, you don't have divorce attorneys in your network, you're missing out on a big opportunity because those are the people that can align you with the same kind of clients that you could be potentially working with. So we want to create active networks. This is a part of the CAN framework. We want you to be consistent in what you're trying to do. We want you to be audacious in what you're trying to do. Be bold. We also want you to have a strong network that is working for you. So this is not I'm going out and I'm sharing my business cards. This is I'm going out and I'm telling you your people are my people and we should collaborate, we should work together. Tell me the conferences that you're going to. Tell me how you find people in the community. Probably people are being referred in that way. But where do those referral sources? One of the biggest referral sources that I see all the time, and I tell new moms about this as well, is social media groups. Those mom groups on social media can be very interesting. But I see referrals on a regular basis on social media mom groups. And perhaps you're like, well, I'm not a mom, I can't be in these mom groups or I can't actively sell in these mom groups. What I've seen is have a couple of people that you've befriended in the group. Maybe you know them naturally, if it's a local mom group and those people refer you, if you have other professionals in the mom group and they see people asking for certain things, they might drop the referral for your name. I know of this organization here in local to the community creating these natural relationships in which you build your network.
[00:10:39] This is the kind of system that is active. It's not one that we just kind of like set up and walk away from. It's relationships that we nurture and that we keep attuned to. And this is going to help you scale your practice in the sense that it keeps consistent referrals coming in. It keeps consistent audience eyes on the expansion of your practice as well. The thing for you to know is that when you are trying to create a scalable system in your private practice, you have to walk away from a lot of these set it and forget it models. And for some of us this is going to be hard because we might not have the infrastructure or the system built into our practice just yet to get there, but we have to start thinking about how do we engage in a more active system to scale our practice.
[00:11:30] Hey hey. My name is Shauna A and you have just listened to season three, Episode one of the delightful Scaling youg Private Practice without Set it and Forget it systems. I'm so excited you are here again. If you would like to know more and build your private practice, your sustainable private practice, check out Therapist Thrive with Shauna. This is going to be in the episode notes down below in the description. As a therapist, you can click on the link and join. There is multiple tiers for working with me under Therapist Thrive with Shawna. I look forward to seeing you there and I'll catch you in the next audiosode. Until next time. Bye for now.
