(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm Allison from Abundance Practice Building. I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping therapists build sustainable, joy-filled private practices, just like I've done for tens of thousands of therapists across the world. I'm excited to help you too. If you want to fill your practice with ideal clients, we have loads of free resources and paid support.
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The majority of Party Plus members fill their practice in three months. Check out Party Plus in the link in the show notes and join the interest list if you're ready to build what you've been dreaming of. Hi Emily. Hello. How are you doing? I'm well. Thank you so much for taking my call today. Absolutely. Yeah. What would be most helpful? Sure. So I know that I want to be focused and efficient, so I really, again, appreciate this.
I don't know too much about what to expect, but I sought this call or this consultation because my practice isn't yet where I was hoping it would be. And I know that some of that is on me, but I wanted to kind of focus on what can I do moving forward to keep it growing and get it to where I would like it to be. Awesome. So break down your five marketing strategies and your niche for me.
Sure. So I aim to work with kids and young adults, kids, teens, and young adults with chronic pain who are struggling with functioning and well-being in their daily lives and trying to help them feel well and feel empowered and that they can be confident in moving forward with their lives. And so I try to aim at marketing mostly to physicians. I feel like that is my biggest area because most people don't think of that and think of psychology.
So I realize that marketing directly to people is like a little bit of a barrier to overcome and people who see me, see me because a physician recommended me. And so that's where I've been concentrating my efforts, although I try to be a little bit more broad. So I have a website, I do blog every week or trying to blog every week. I really, I get about three, three times a month recently since I saw the post about doing it more regularly. And so I do that.
I do my best to network, although I'm certain I could do a little bit more. And I do write a newsletter once a month to my referring providers just to keep myself top of mind. I'll let them know a little bit about what's going on in my practice. And I also try to do some research review with clinical implications so that they have something of benefit to get out of reading my newsletter. So those are my top areas. I know that's maybe only four.
So I think that's maybe something to focus on because I think my biggest barrier to being as full as I would like to be is just that the biggest thing is the call volume is not super high. Got it. Okay. So one thing that I think that you may already be doing, but didn't think to put in there and if you're not, you should absolutely be doing it is the, in the what to say when course we have the Hey doc, I'm seeing your patient template.
And so sending at least monthly for every single client, because your, your niche is so perfectly attuned to that template. And that keeps you top of mind for doctors from the perspective of their patients, like the way that they're caring for their patients. And if you have multiple clients from the same doctor, then that's opportunities for them to hear about what you're doing very briefly and how things are going multiple times a month potentially. Yeah. That's a good reminder.
I was sending out consultation reports when I got, you know, that permission from people at the beginning, but maybe not always following up. And I always wondered, you know, cause I often I'll call the clinic and say, how do I send this to the doctor? And they're usually just fax it in. And I don't know if they just gets into the chart and the, you know, kind of never gets seen. But I think, I think that you're right. That's probably something to be a little bit better about doing.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think it would depend on the doctor and the clinic and the workflow about whether or not it's seen at the moment or whether it's seen right before they see their next that patient again or whatever. Exactly. I think if there's something significant that happens, I'm trying to think within the context of your clients. Yeah. I can imagine something that requires more urgent attention.
Yeah. Then absolutely hop on the phone with them, but otherwise I think like monthly updates could be really helpful both for your, for your clients and also for the doctor and also for your practice. Yeah. I love trying to make that more of a regular practice. Yeah. You could just split that up where you do like a few each week so that it's not like you spend an entire day doing it or something like that. So I would do that. Your website, is it speaking to the parents?
Yes. It's mostly, I started with like you slash your child and I had somebody read it and they're like, that's terrible because I did want to speak to young adults too who are maybe seeking their own care. But I have found that even with, you know, early college age kids, it's often the parents were still the ones seeking that. So I did make like a young adult tab so that if they were looking, they could kind of see a place to go that speaks directly to them.
But it is mostly parent focused language. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Your child is your child experiencing this or that. Yeah. Yeah. And are you talking about the parent's experience? Hmm. I don't know if I am enough because I think there is a lot of sense of overwhelm or feeling lost. Yeah. Feeling lost.
And I think so for anybody watching or listening, I have had the benefit of interviewing Emily three times for my new business, Not Boring CEs, all around children in pain or the pain, like pain across the lifespan. So I've learned a lot about what you do. It's a realm I knew nothing about. And so I'm like even more acutely aware now of how needed you are in your community because there's so much that as a therapist, I would have just messed up with if your clients came to my room.
Right. So I think speaking to the client, the parent's experience of being overwhelmed, of not knowing what's real and what's not, that's something we talked about in one of the pods or maybe all the podcasts about not knowing when to be like, you're fine, dust yourself off versus okay, like I hear you and maybe we need to make a doctor's appointment.
So talking about that and just the frustration that parents have too, because it is an interruption in already very busy lives, that if they have their own struggles with it, it's likely making it worse for their kids. And it's becoming the cycle of like, then there's more stress on the kid, which is likely to impact their experience. Because as we discussed, there's no mind, body, disconnection place, it's all one. Yeah. So I would speak to the parent's struggle as well as the kid's struggle.
Because while the parents are concerned for their kids and they're looking, underlying that is their own stuff. And you can make it very clear, like you're working with the kids, there is some like parent involvement in helping the child and supporting the child, but that like, you're not going to be their therapist. Yes. I think there's a lot of opportunity in reaching back out to all the docs that have referred to you.
And I think expanding who you're reaching out to, I know you're already well connected within like the medical community, a certain part of the medical community, but also maybe branching out to the people. If you're close with a particular doc or NP or PA, ask like, who else should I reach out to that your office trusts in terms of like other providers, other medical providers? That's a great idea. Thank you. And if you can get in with like hospital social workers, talk to them.
And to ask, and who do you refer to medically? Who else are y'all connecting with that I can connect with? You've got, because you're just so beautifully specific. As soon as everybody knows that you're there, like there's zero worry for me. I know that you will feel, because I know there are more clients than you could ever handle in your city, struggling with what you treat so well. Yeah. Thank you for that encouragement. Yeah. Just letting them know that you're there.
And I'm thinking too, about alternative treatments. Like, what about the parents who are not going medical model? Are there some naturopaths or some functional medicine docs that you could connect with? Some chiropractors, some Reiki healers, like going the non-allopathic route also. That's a good reminder, especially where I live. Right. Because you're like in medical model land. So, yeah. But also, you know, a little bit of a hippie town too. Right. I mean, like you have lived career-wise.
I've lived in one of those worlds. Yes. So getting to the other side of it with the other providers, because the beautiful thing about psychology is it's accepted by both groups. Nobody's going to be like, that's a racket. So. Yeah. That's a great idea. That's probably a world I haven't tapped into, but I know that, you know, people seek out and derive a lot of benefit from, or at least try. So those are good people to get connected with.
I wonder too about any sort of like lunch and learns you could do at different pediatrician's offices or different, but specifically to how to help them with their job. So like it's something the nurses would come to, not just the doctors, but like a kid is suffering and the parents really wound up and feeling like lawyers are no answer right now because they all want answers, whether it's our health or our kids' health. The answer is better than the not knowing.
So how to help manage that or thinking through some of that parent-child dynamic that can happen sometimes in their offices that make their jobs harder, essentially. It sounds like offering a lunch and learn around a very specific practical topic as opposed to like, here's what I do. But kind of to exhibit what I do or demonstrate it a little bit more concretely around something that might be a pain point in their specific clinical encounters to make it super useful for them.
Yeah. I think that would be really helpful, particularly for the doctors who don't know about you yet. And you can practice on the ones that do, right? You can start with those offices and kind of refine your talk and always leave time for questions. And you can say, I know that there are interactions that you have in your offices that I haven't talked about. What am I missing? How can I help you? We've got 10 minutes left.
And that way you can then start building that into the talk as just a part of it. So that it shows like, I really get what you do. I get how hard it is and I'm here to make it easier by making things better for the kids and thus the family. Great. Thank you. Oh my gosh. I feel like I've already gotten so many gems. Good. Good. I will give you a lot of work. I'm sorry. This is good. This is really helpful. I want, I was hoping to leave with some action items. How are you doing with it?
Mindset wise? Like, how are you feeling? It hasn't built as quickly as you wanted. How are you handling that? That's a great question. It's a mixed bag. Yeah. It's a mixed bag, moment to moment. I think it's really coming up because I am looking to invest more in my business right now. You know, trying to take on a full -time office because I've been getting so many requests for in-person, but then the worries, well, will, you know, if you build it, will they come? Right. And a lot of questions.
So I think it is coming up a little bit there, but I also am really lucky to have a really strong support system who are encouraging and patient, but I think it, you know, there's always that second guessing. Am I doing something wrong or, you know, do I change everything about my model? Right. Right. But what you're doing, you know, what you do works.
You know that your clients get the relief that they need and they get the ability to manage symptoms that they need so that it doesn't, they don't spin out and things don't get worse. So it's having an office, you know, you can start with subleasing. You don't have to get your own, your own entire place that you have to furnish, or you can get your whole entire place, furnish it and sublease the days you're not there. Cause there's still, I don't know. Every place is different where I live.
There's not enough offices for therapists. They're always in need. So there are opportunities there for it to be less expensive than it feels. That's very true. Yeah. That's kind of what I've been doing. Yeah. Another thing that helps me with those kinds of investment things is breaking down like how many clients do I need to pay for this? Like how many sessions will pay for this office? If it's like four sessions, like one client a month, like one client weekly for a month.
I mean, that's great. If it's two, that's great too. You know? So just like figuring out what that looks like, are you taking insurance or are you private pay? I'm private pay, which is definitely something I continue to wrestle with. So that's like a mindset thing to you. I know that for my own wellbeing, I don't want to be working on insurance authorizations and approvals and things like that.
I want to be able to concentrate on doing the clinical work of helping my clients and patients and doing all the background work that goes in between sessions. But, you know, I do feel bad about access and I worry that that is maybe also driving the low calls of people are looking at my website or hearing that I don't take insurance and just writing me off right at the beginning. I do try to do some mitigation strategies when they call.
I try to give them lots of information about reimbursement options and talking about that, you know, this is not a lifelong investment and what they can get out of it. But yeah, that's something I worry about too, but I am right now entirely private pay. And if where you live, the insurance does a decent job of out-of-network benefits, something like Mentia or one of those kinds of things can also be really helpful.
Where I live, it's kind of like, well, yeah, you have out-of-network benefits as soon as you've met your out-of-network deductible of 10 grand a year. So like here, it kind of feels like it just doesn't work with our biggest insurer. But if it does work where you are, then that could be a real benefit. That's a really great reminder of trying to break it down and help people have resources to figure that out. Because I think about parents who have kids with chronic illnesses or chronic pain.
They've messed with insurance a fair amount, right? Like this is not their first rodeo. They know what a deductible is. They know all these things, unless this is their first year and it just landed and they're still learning. But most of them have probably been around the block with insurance and most of them probably really get why you wouldn't take it. So it could also be like the education around, I can give you a super bill. They probably already know what that is.
But I think if you can get some like real world examples of how much people are getting reimbursed in your area, then you can say like, I can't speak for your insurance, but I know one of my other clients is getting back 60% of what they spent. So we were doing a little investigating there with some peers. Yeah, that's a great reminder. Thank you. Yeah. What other questions? Oh, goodness.
I guess I guess like, yeah, I hadn't gone in with specific questions other than how do I get more people in because everybody tells me, which is so lovely that there's a need, but I haven't seen that that connecting the dots. I wish I wish I'd prepared more specific questions. It's all right. I mean, we can just riff off like I'm thinking about is there a children's hospital nearby? Yeah, when I worked at.
So could you do could you offer a free workshop for parents whose kids are currently there? That way they're like you would leave them with very actionable like understandings about like pain, their kid in pain and how parents typically respond to that. Like you could, I think, as a parent of a kid who often experience, which is better since we last talked. But yeah, yeah. Apparently some medications just make things hurt. So we got off.
But thinking about how, you know, there's the dismissing that often happens with parents. There's the like overreacting to like going through each of those kinds of things, especially if their kids are currently in the hospital or are frequent flyers in the hospital. There's this. It's easy to panic and then it's easy to get at the start and then easy to get complacent, basically. Right. And so just talking about those dynamics is going to help them feel very seen and known.
And even if they're not people who can afford your services, they're going to leave with something that helps them know they're not being jerks when they're dismissive. There's something else they can be doing instead. And the overreaction is also a natural parental thing, and there's something they can do instead.
So talking them through that and maybe coaching them on some of the strategies that you use with kids, like some some things within ACT or whatever that you can teach them to use with their kids to help their kids not be spinning out about the pain or not be as rooted in the pain. It's kind of like a little like a little taster, you know, like it's like just a little spoon at the at the ice cream shop. I'm like, here's here's some of what I work with families on.
And my favorite thing, whenever anybody gives a talk is is at the end to be like for some of you, this is exactly what you needed for others. You want and need to go deeper. You want some more support. And I would love to offer that. My cards are here. I would love to talk about how I can support you. That's a great reminder. Yeah, that's a great idea. I like that, you know, kind of call to action for for some people giving everybody something.
And that's always something I'd wanted to be able to do in my previous role and I wasn't able to. So I I appreciate the idea of being able to be creative and do these different things and be able to give it more in my community. I think that's something I've been wanting to be able to do, especially being Private Bay. But I think just in general, wanting to be able to be a good member of the community, not just in my own little corner. I love that idea, so thank you for that. Sure. I'm sorry.
I have like major to do list extremely long already, but but it will get the clients in the door. So it's time. There we go. And it's also the summertime, which people tend to get more calls.
And so it'll probably ramp up all because there's also, depending on the family and how it manages things like it may be that things really ramp up in the fall because now the parents are even more overwhelmed and every complaint feels like a dagger, like every complaint about pain, because now they're trying to get them to school. They're trying to manage all these things and like picking them up from school and it just becomes more chaotic.
So that might also be a historically high time for your for your practice as you move forward. You might be like, oh, yeah, gear up for September. So I've heard and we'll see. Yeah, I like your idea of I think that you posted recently about aiming to have a slightly just slightly higher number or volume during the school year and then being able to handle a lower volume in the summer, which also sounds pretty pleasant and nice, too.
So I liked that kind of shifting goal and being able to work with the season. Yes, absolutely. Especially for folks that work with kids, because it is it is going to be like a dip season almost every year unless something big and catastrophic happens. But there will probably always be a dip for people working with kids. I guess speaking of hours, I kind of had two questions and maybe we have time for both or maybe neither.
One of them is around, you know, I know you do a lot of talking about set the hours that you want to work and of course, you know, feeling that tension, especially when the school year comes around of getting requests for every odd hour and weekends, which I do not want to work.
And similarly, I feel like something that I get some tension around is encouraging families to do a regular schedule versus being accommodating and kind of shifting the appointments around week to week, which I think leads to some disconnect. I think there's benefit in that it works with a chaotic family schedule that I think leads to a deprioritization of our sessions.
And sometimes they are scheduled a little bit irregularly, which I think affects things for the clinical care and also affects things for my business side of things. Absolutely. I love a recurring schedule time. And I think you can frame it with parents because it does actually make it better for them to not just because they're coming more regularly, their kids getting more benefit, but also it's one less thing they have to schedule that week. It takes the pressure off.
If you come every Tuesday at two, then I'll be here every time, you know, like it's if there is a doctor's appointment that gets scheduled during that time, then, yeah, absolutely. We can be we can be flexible about that. But everybody who calls you, you can start out just explaining to them like, no, I work with people at a regularly scheduled time, like every Tuesday at two. It looks like right now I have every Thursday at one available. Does that work for you?
The working every hour that they want you to work, I think that when you're not yet full, it's easy to feel like maybe I should be doing that. But when you're full or near full, you only have like Wednesday at 10 a.m., you only have like weird times and they end up getting filled. So that's why I'm always like work the hours you want to work because they will all fill anyway.
They might feel slightly slower, sure, but I would rather it feel slower if you can handle it financially than you having to be like, OK, I have all these clients who are really committed to five o'clock in the afternoon to six at night and six to seven, like I have all these clients who maybe can't shift because I took them on. And now I'm stuck with this weird split shift schedule that I don't want as I try to transition to what I do want.
And every job I ever worked were like nine to five hours. So when I worked with kids for a lot of my career, so it gets handled, people make it work. Yeah. Yeah. When is the option they want? You know. I'm thinking about how you were like, I'm trying to like, I want to explain to them and like show the benefit in that first phone call. Does it feel like convincing like you're trying to convince them?
I work very hard not to appear that way because I don't want to be a sales pitchy kind of person. Yeah. If it starts to feel like you're trying to convince them like you can just ditch that part of your script, whatever you've been saying, if it feels like people are retracting on the phone, trust your gut with it and like you don't need to prove the benefit.
You can say my goal is that your kids in therapy fairly short term because I want to teach them all of the skills for them to practice this on their own. And later in the future, if they need some like refresher sessions, we can do that. But I don't want your family to have to bring somebody to an appointment every single week for the next two years. That's not my vibe. So you can say it like that so that.
I like the way I think it's a little bit more succinct than the way I start to explain it about like, oh, we're going to do regular chickens and all this and that. So, yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, because I'm thinking about your ideal clients. Parents are they're overwhelmed and they probably are talking to or have talked to a lot of providers who talk at them.
And so part of what you have the opportunity to do is like show like you were sitting right beside them and you are yeah, you are slowing it down for them if they need it slowed down. You were using like more succinct language or smaller words or whatever in order for them to be able to get what they need. Because we're overwhelmed, we just don't process as well. Yeah, I think I start out with like a lot of what are your goals or what do you want out of this?
And then it becomes like almost a mini therapy session, which is something I have to work on, too, because it ends up being pretty long. But I try to then learn what they're looking for and then try to connect. It sounds like you really want your your son or daughter to feel this way or to be able to do this thing and to connect what I do to that goal. But it ends up being a super long conversation. But I think when it goes well, it goes well. And I feel really good about it.
And I want them to feel confident in their decisions, too, because I think there's so much uncertainty, I think probably in general for anybody approaching a new therapist or psychologist, but especially I think in the work that I do. And I think because of their they are becoming savvy with the whole medical system in a way they probably never wanted to be or hope to be.
And so, yeah, being able to be picky about their providers, too, is something that they're probably realizing along the way is going to be necessary for them to get the care that they need. So they get to be picky in a good way. With you, like choose you because you I mean, you're just so uniquely trained, you know what you're doing in a way that most of us don't with this population. So they need you to get out there more because they need you so they can come to you.
I do hope other people take up the challenge and continue to do the work that I'm doing. I think a lot of people can, but I appreciate the, you know, the vote of confidence in my niche. Yeah, it's amazing. It's so good. Awesome. Well, I'm glad we got to talk. I'm I won't apologize for the work. The work is going to yield what you want. So yay for the work.
I appreciate the tangible action items and I can see where I can kind of fit them into a routine to, you know, to make it a sustainable part of my work. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, thanks, Emily. Thank you. I appreciate your time. Take care. If you're ready for a much easier practice, Therapy Notes is the way to go. Go to TherapyNotes.com and use the promo code ABUNDANT for two months free.