The Practice of Therapy Podcast

In this episode, Jeremy Zug from Practice Solutions joins the show to explain what’s going on with telehealth during these uncertain times. Jeremy advises on submitting telehealth claims and explains how telehealth is rapidly becoming our new normal. Then, Jeremy gives tips on collecting from patients. As a business, we need to make money. Your patients may be in financial distress, so Jeremy describes what to do in this situation. Stay tuned as Jeremy gives the pros and cons of accepting insurance as a private practice owner.

Jeremy grew up in the Pacific Northwest where he discovered his passion for people. He decided to go to college in Chicago to further develop his skills working with people and pursue a degree in counseling. While in Chicago he worked for a group practice as a practice biller and marketing manager. This initiated his desire to pursue learning about the business of private practice, particularly medical billing. He now lives in Michigan with his wife of 3 years. They both are pursuing their passion for helping helpers maintain sustainable and compliant billing practices. In his free time, Jeremy loves reading, fishing, biking, hiking, and camping.

How can you determine whether your patient’s copay will be waived? There are some excellent resources, but the best way to do that right now is to call the insurance companies. You’re going to want to say is telemental health is covered on an outpatient basis for this patient. Then, give them the insurance information and the date of birth because that will lead the provider representative to tell you what they have. What we’re seeing as a trend is if the patient had telehealth benefits into their benefits before COVID-19, they are covered at one-hundred percent. If they didn’t have those benefits, the patients still have copays and deductibles applying through this time. It’s confusing for many people, but as providers, we can do the best job we can by being as clear as possible. We want to be as transparent as possible with that.

Providers can do a good job as far as lobbying with their government officials on telehealth being the new normal. Telemedicine is effective, and you can reach more people. Jeremy knows that insurance companies often get a bad rep, but this has been an enormous agenda item for them for a long time. Send a letter to your governor, your senator, and congressmen to push for it. Telehealth can also make the lives of the private practice owner easier too. Telehealth will make it more convenient to choose your hours, and therapists can even be available for clients who are overseas.

People need to start collecting from patients – you are contractually obligated to receive it. If the person is out of work, you still have to collect the copay and deductible. As a business owner, you need to treat people the way you want to be treated. If a patient is short on cash, the provider should tell the patient they owe for the service. However, you can offer an extension on their debt.

Another thing you can do is set up a weekly payment plan. That way, the private practice owner knows that that patient will pay. Plus, the patient can budget it into their weekly expenses. We should not feel bad for getting paid for what we do. Think about all the time and effort that you went through to get licensed. People know when they go to a doctor’s office that they are going to owe something. So, when a patient goes to a therapist, they should expect to pay. Jeremy suggests reading the book Against Empathy.

It’s much easier logistically to not take insurance. However, there is a case to accept insurance. Clinically, you can work with populations that you are passionate about. If you work with military patients, that’s a huge client base, and they need it. If that’s your expertise, then do that. At the same time, you will sacrifice profitability. If you take insurance, then you will receive a hit on the money side. Do you want to work with those clinical populations? You will have to weigh that with the profitability side. There is something to be said about access to care and that growing market. Perhaps you can grow your practice faster when accepting insurance – plus, they can be easy to work with. There is a sense of speed and deployment with insurance, and that matters. However, you’ll have to manage paperwork and fuzzy bureaucracy.

Chris Swenson joins Gordon on the podcast to explain why we shouldn’t forget about our inner game in private practice. Our inner game is always happening, and it’s continuously turning – it shouldn’t be ignored. Chris describes how he found his passions, purpose, and principles by diving deep into mindset and the importance of mental clarity. Then, Chris tells us all about what it means to be a Private Practice Warrior and why a bigger practice isn’t necessarily better.

Chris Swenson, LMFT is the author of the recently published book, “Private Practice Warrior.” He is the Owner/Founder/solo-operator of Rhino Wellness Center which is Chris’ successful full-time solo practice in rural Colorado. Chris is a true Private Practice Warrior who is currently developing a program called, “Private Practice Warrior – A Powerful Mindset for Ambitious Practice Owners – The “Way” to True Fulfillment in Life and Business. To receive a free pdf copy of “Private Practice Warrior” and a special bonus, click https://rhinomentality.lpages.co/pp-warrior-ebook-pdf-giveaway/

The biggest thing for Chris is that he has learned to never forget about the inner game. It’s always going on. Early on in Chris’s private practice, he felt like he was like a slave to the practice. It didn’t feel like it was his. There was almost this illusion, and he had no sense of fulfillment. But once Chris stepped back identified his purpose, he found his passion and lives by his principles. Plus, he realized the big things he could do each and every day to move the dial, things began to fall more into place, and he began to feel a lot more fulfilled. Even though there are still struggles and challenges, we all have to fly through that turbulence to build a practice.

Chris probably took a different journey than most. He got ingrained within the warrior community and learned about mental toughness and mindset. Chris found his purpose, passion, and identified the principles which he operates by each and every day. Plus, he has daily practices to make sure that he is making the right decision instead of making decisions out of fear. Chris felt an internal struggle. However, once he began daily work and ingraining a new mentality, he feels great. Chris has a lot more confidence and is a lot calmer. Plus, Chris says he has more mental clarity for what he needs for decisions to be made.

People will say to build your practice, scale your practice, expand your stuff, do all of these things, and then you’re going to reach that promised land and feel that sense of fulfillment. Chris found that it’s an illusion. If you have a bigger practice, you might end up more stressed, more mentally fatigued, and more tired. So, Chris looked at what really makes a successful practice for the long haul. He looked at numbers of failure rates over the years, and he noticed that the failure rate has remained the same even though we’ve got better technology and we’ve got a lot more programs. What is the missing variable? It’s our inner game. We have to get ourselves to do XYZ every day, and how do we get ourselves to do that?

Get yourself, your mindset, mentality, purpose, passion, all these things in line. From there, you can accomplish great things. However, the point of it is not just to create this great business; this great practice, it’s about being a better person through doing all of it. Chris is just tired of seeing people struggle and have a hard time not getting that joy and fulfillment from what they’re doing. It’s not just building the practice. It’s becoming a better person through the challenges of building a better practice – which, of course, requires some mental skills, but also just a different mentality on how you look at your practice.

Chris initially had the idea for Private Practice Warriors when he started seeing the struggles of private practice owners, he knew he needed to do something. Chris wanted to make a difference and what made a difference was being able to share stories with others. Chris thought about writing his book. He wrote it like a story. You get to follow the main character through their journey. There’s a lot of twists and some turns in the book as well. You begin to learn about the identity of being a warrior and identifying your purpose, your passion, never forgetting about the inner game, things like that. So you can take out a lot of those ideas as you learn from the story.

What’s most important...

In this episode, Annie Schuessler joins the show and talks about serving others outside of the therapy room. Annie explains what type of people are most likely to start a business outside of therapy, including the person who is on the verge of burnout or the person who is looking to be more creative. There are many ways we can serve others outside of therapy, including coaching, courses, and groups. Stay tuned as Annie dives deep into how we can best be successful when getting outside of the therapy room.

Annie Schuessler is a business coach and the host of the podcast Rebel Therapist® Podcast. She’s been a therapist in private practice for 20 years, and a business coach for over 10 years. With her Rebel Therapist® Programs, she helps therapist entrepreneurs make an impact beyond the therapy room. You can find her resources at rebeltherapist.me.

Annie has noticed a couple of different kinds of types of folks who are drawn to creating a business outside of the therapy room. Someone who is headed to burnout will find other ways to generate income. Most likely, this person is hitting the ceiling in terms of the number of hours they can work. They have built a successful private practice. However, they want to use their time differently, and they want to be able to leverage their time, learning, and experience into something else.

The other kind of person may not even have a full practice yet, and they may just be growing their private practice. However, they already see that there’s another part of themselves that they want to bring out into the world. Or there’s another message they want to bring out into the world. Plus, creativity is a massive value for them. So, from the very beginning, they want to create some programs beyond the therapy room so that they can express their full selves and work with people in these different ways.

It works when a therapist can create some program that they can get started with quickly. We tend to have these big dreams and these visions of what it could look like, what our empires could look like. People have amazing ideas; the first step is creating something that is done more quickly so that before you have grown an enormous audience, you can start testing a pilot program. When people can start promptly and check something early in the process, Annie sees them getting early wins and being able to move forward as opposed to folks who have this tremendous vision and maybe don’t ever figure out how to accomplish it.

Annie says that people are starting with perhaps either a small group coaching program or even a one on one coaching program. Make sure you are creating a separate website. This is going to be an independent business, so that you’re not taking any chances with your private practice. Start with one program. It could be one on one coaching where you’re walking through people through a process, within a very particular niche and a specific outcome. Or it could be a small group coaching program where you’ve got three people who you’re walking through a process that brings about a profound change in one particular area.

Annie sees people growing their businesses into membership communities. It is a beautiful way to bring people together who share a particular problem and who share a specific identity. Plus, it’s a way to add value! Also, Annie sees people creating courses. That can be such a rewarding way to bring together a lot of the stuff that you’ve learned and that you love. However, some people believe that they can create a course, never touch it again, and make a load of money. Annie doesn’t see that working except for when it’s Oprah. Annie advises people to at least start with a lot of interaction where you’re just adding tons of value by actually being with the people who you’re serving and then pulling back from there.

Being Transparent... Some of the resources listed below are affiliate links. This simply means that if you make purchase using the link, we receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for using the links!

TherapyNotes.com

John Clarke joins the show; he helps private practice owners build a practice that they love. In this episode, John gives tips on how to do private practice made human. First, start with your “why”. Why are you considering private practice, or why did you get into private practice in the first place? Later, John gives more tips on establishing your endpoint, creating company values, and knowing your ideal income.

John Clarke is a licensed psychotherapist and a private practice expert at PrivatePracticeWorkshop. After learning a lot of things the hard way while building his first practice in San Francisco, he started a blog to share with others the lessons he had learned. Private Practice Workshop was born, and this blog eventually evolved into so much more: a thriving Facebook community, a successful podcast, online courses, and coaching/consulting. Some therapists want to learn how to use digital marketing to grow their audience and get more clients, but the majority just want to leave it to the pros. John founded Unconditional Media, the digital marketing team for therapists, to meet the biggest need of private practitioners: getting more clients! When he’s not nerding out over all things private practice, he’s playing jazz drums, practicing Muay Thai martial arts, and talking to his pets like they’re humans.

Start with your why. You are crafting your purpose statement. Why do any of this in the first place? Why does this matter? Knowing your why will be your fuel source. So especially on days where it’s tough to get out of bed in the morning like in a crisis, you need enough fuel in the tank to make this worth it. There are more risks associated with being a business owner than being an employee. There are more risks; there’s more stress. You are going to take work home more often; you’re liable to different things that you’re not as responsible for if you’re the employee of a company. So for John, it has to be worth that. The bumps in the road have to be worth it.

Many therapists feel like they were born to do this. They were born to help people. Take that one step further and write down why private practice? If your purpose in life is to help people, then why private practice? It’s not the most effective place for you to help people. Do you have other ideas behind your purpose? Whether it’s owning your schedule or increasing income. Try to get honest with yourself.

The endpoint is a mission statement. You should think big! You should think of the ripple effects of your work. Your mission statement is this high-level impact that your business could have on the world. Start to sketch out how are you going to get there? If you don’t know where you’re going, than any place will do—reverse engineer your big tasks. So if you want to get 50 fully booked students in this launch, you can start to work backward and go, then what do you need to do in these next one to three months to build your email list for that? What do you need to do this week to create more lead magnets to make your email list? So it helps if you trace back what actions you are taking today and what they should lead to.

Establishing your company values will help you make decisions. Even if you’re a solo practitioner, John highly recommends doing this. Create the kind of practice that you want to have for yourself. Put some thought into that and get out a piece of paper to write stuff down. When we write, we get clarity and can see the big picture.

Get in there, create that income target and make it sure it’s based on something. What are you going to need to get that money, and how are you going to use it? Then, you can reverse engineer that around your schedule. If you want to make a certain amount, how many hours will you have to work to get there? What kind of schedule do you need? Start sketching out your days, weeks, months, and years and make sure when you look at your calendar that it seems right to you. It looks good. It looks like, yes, this is worth it.

John’s Resources