(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. Hey Allison. How you doing? Good. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. What would be most helpful? I guess I'll jump right in. So I am a fairly new clinician. I graduated last year. I practiced in January.
I worked at a group practice for a little while, but I found this beautiful space and I am on Blue Cross insurance panels, and business is great. I love it. But it's really hard to navigate as a new clinician and learning all the business stuff, but it's just a lot. And I'm very sensitive. I've worked up to like 13 clients a week.
That's kind of like what I could handle and like make sure I'm taking care of myself and finding balance and stuff like that, but I don't know, like I feel this urge to do more or do something different. I have a little bit of a unique position. My partner travels a lot, probably two weeks out of the month. My schedule does flux and I found it hard to communicate that with clients. And just like, what do I say?
Like how do I communicate that sometimes things might switch around or it might not be available as much. And to just like personally, I'm a routine kind of person, but I know like my life situation and this business has provided me like, I need to be flexible. So I don't know, I just kind of like need help navigating that and more other people do that. I'm curious about like when your partner is home, is that when you're working less or are you traveling with them or how's it working?
I work more. So he's home. He works from home when he's got it, everything at home. And so I can be at my office a lot more. Got it. And then when he's traveling, are you going with him? No, I'm just, I'm home and doing childcare and pets and the whole thing. So yeah, I'm home a lot more. Got it. So it's all the like home responsibilities that are making it so that the consistency isn't really doable. I haven't had like bad feedback from clients.
I just wonder if there's a way to communicate that just so people know what they're kind of getting into. Yeah. Have you considered childcare during those weeks? Yeah. It's just, it's a lot on me to kind of handle everything at home all at once. I prefer just like a lighter load. Uh huh. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're kind of in this setup where, well, does he travel two concurrent weeks or is it like home a week, gone a week, home a week, gone a week?
Yeah. It's like home a week, gone a week. Okay. Yeah. So to that end, you could really work with people who need every other week schedules, whether they're just like lower acuity. What is your niche? Who do you love to work with? I work with women who have trauma, usually trauma or religious trauma. And then I see some postpartum clients as well. So a higher-ish acuity. It's not easy for every other week for some of them.
Okay. And is 13 like the top that you want to see while he's home or is that the top that you want to see while he's gone? Um, I could, I would love to work up to like 15 to 18. I feel good doing that when he's home. And then what's the perfect number when he's not home? Um, I would say probably like eight to 10. Okay. Yeah. That feels doable. Within your niche, are there people that you're currently seeing that are good for every other week? I think so.
I've also thought about doing kind of like more intensive kind of, kind of things like yeah. Our session one week and then off fluctuating it like that. Yeah, absolutely. And I, I see like we have a lot of students, especially in our limitless practice program who are full, but they're putting into place EMDR intensive, things like that. Yeah. Would intensives work like two hours, one week break, two hours the next week.
Would that work for your clients when you think about the people in your actual caseload? Um, probably not. I mean, I have a lot of moms and, um, people with kids, so childcare and work and stuff like that, like one hour a week is hard to get, I think already. Yeah. I wonder if it'd be less hard though. When I think about like I had to arrange childcare for Friday, for instance, and it's easier to get a block of time than one hour.
Yeah. And if it's a block of time every other week, it's less juggling week to week. But I guess clinically I'm wondering, would it be efficacious for them every other week? I think for my EMDR clients, I actually prefer a longer amount of time because it feels choppy. Uh huh. You know?
Um, so maybe, yeah, I'm just wondering if you can like set up your practice so that it's basically every other week and you have a heavier week every other week and like, that's how your practice runs and then attract the people for whom that's a good fit. And they not, they might not know that's going to be up to you to assess in that initial phone call. And I'm wondering about longer intensives.
I don't know if you've looked into like the four hour intensives that folks do with EMDR that are good with like, you know, some sessions on either side of it, but there are good kind of like get stuff done sessions. I'm real big, as you know, on, you can have what you want.
So I want us to figure out what that can look like, if that means altering your ideal client, like if that's required in order to have what you want versus tweaking it versus maybe they're already on your caseload and you just haven't broached it intellectually or verbally. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I do have, um, I have like three populations I love to work with postpartum women. I'm, I've done a lot of training in that.
Um, but that feels heavy if my whole caseload was, was postpartum and then religious trauma. That one doesn't seem as heavy and then childhood trauma and how that shows up in relationships for women. Those seem less heavy, but I wonder if I market one more than the other, maybe that would help the situation. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking too, Blue Cross Blue Shield isn't going to pay you for two hour sessions. So that's true.
This might mean switching over to private pay, which I don't know how you feel about that. I don't know. I'm not, I don't feel super strongly either way. I think I love being accessible and it's really helped me fill my practice. Yeah. Like being on insurance panels, but I could, I mean, that probably would open up a lot more time too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it will, it would open up time.
It would also require time because you're going to have to market so much more, which I'm hearing you say, like, I'm kind of overwhelmed just being a new clinician period, I'm overwhelmed being new in private practice. And so I think it might be feeling more confident with both of those pieces before making that leap might be important in order to really like not explode. We don't want you to explode. Yeah. I don't either.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I know in one of the lessons in the abundance party, it was like getting the foundations down first. And so I think that's also kind of pulled me back from, okay, let's do intensives. Let's do all this other stuff. I'm still finding my footing a little bit. Where is it shaky in your business? Like what foundations aren't set? I mean, I think maybe a little bit financially I'm still under supervision. That's an added cost and finding my way into the community.
I also am new to my community. I don't have a lot of contacts. So really I think feeling just like settled as weird as that sounds, like that's where it's shaky. I don't feel settled community or financially yet, or I feel stable with getting referrals and getting the right clients in. That's huge. Yeah. I mean, like, I just want to commend you. It has not been that long. You were new to this. You're kicking ass. This is awesome. Thank you.
And it may be, maybe you have a cycle where your people, like I'm thinking about staying on insurance and you're getting your people to a place where every other week makes the most sense. And you just have an ongoing cycle of that where you've got the newbies coming in weekly because that's where their needs are.
And then as people are getting more internal support and structure to be able to handle everything that's going on in their lives, they're just naturally able to go every other week, rely on themselves a little bit more in between, and then they shift. I think it would be absolutely possible to do that. It would take some maneuvering to get it to where it's like 18 people one week. And what did you say for the other? Was it 10? 10 to 13. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's totally doable, honestly. If you're keeping your eye on, can this person go to every other week? And that's something you can prep them for in the beginning and say, like my goal, I want you to be self-supporting. My goal is to put myself out of business with you. And so we're going to start every week so that you have the support that you need.
And then when it's feeling like every other week is a good pace for us to go and for you to kind of test out how that feels, then we'll have that conversation. I feel like that division of 18-13 or 18-10, I feel like that could absolutely be done just kind of more organically that way, instead of having to change your whole business model. Yeah. No, I like that.
And I will say just as a new clinician, I'm pretty good at feeling out who might be too high of an acuity for me, like I'm pretty low within the scope of my niche. Yeah. I think that's doable. I think we'll be up for it and I usually have pretty busy people. Yeah. They're usually up for it bi-weekly.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, when you set it up that way on the front end or the people you haven't set it up with, like when you have this conversation, there's like a sense of pride of like, okay, I'm making significant progress that a client feels when you're like, you know what? I think you're doing really well. I would like to try every other week. How does that sound to you? And that way they can, if they're like, I am not ready for that, then you can know and you can stay weekly.
But there is, I know with my clients, when we have those conversations, they feel like they kind of sit up a little straighter, you know, a sense of like, yeah, you're noticing me doing all the work that I'm doing to feel better. Yeah. Yeah. They really do. I've also kind of tried to systemize a lot, put my Calendly link in my website, like right on my booking page. So I don't have to do the whole back and forth trying to set up appointments.
I'm not sure what else I could do maybe just to like reduce the load of the admin stuff outside of client work and of what else I was thinking. Yeah. I think the only other systemization, do you have it set up where people, what EHR are you using right now? I use therapy notes. Okay. Cool. Do you have a system to bill regularly and easily? Like is it basically automatic? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not hearing system pains. It's more like balancing caseload pains.
Yeah. And as long as your partner's schedule is on, off, on, off with that kind of regularity, then your practice can be too. And even if like there's a hiccup in his where like a holiday happens or something. And so it's, it shifts, like you can shift your practice. Yeah. So I just always feel like, oh my gosh, it has to be weekly. It has to be 50 minutes. We have to do it the way everyone else is doing it. But in just being a new in general, I get nervous of what could I do differently?
It's nice to have a container to work within when it works for you. But the container that you're trying to work with and doesn't work for you, it's not sustainable for you to be able to feel like you're doing all the things you need to do for your life as well as work. Yeah. Yeah. So the beauty is you don't have to work within that container anymore. And there are some really out of the box ways to go about it. And then there are some really organic, smooth ways to go about it too.
Yeah. It feels like I'm working around the container as I like catch my footing as a new clinician and not going all the way to the moon and doing just really interesting, fun things. But maybe in a little while I can do that. Yeah, absolutely. It's a possibility for sure. Yeah. Anything else that would be helpful? I think maybe just if we have a few minutes, talk about niching and communicating that a little bit. Yeah. I feel like I have a lot going on. Sounds like it.
I want to target women with childhood trauma, but that gets kind of sticky sometimes. I think when I try to communicate that, it falls into a lot of different things. And so I've kind of just focused on women with depression, anxiety, but then I'm like, I don't know if people really know that they have those things or would use that language. Yeah. And it depends on your ideal client, right?
Because when I think of people who are like, I had childhood trauma, I think of people who have just awoken to the fact that the childhood trauma is impacting them and needs to be addressed. We have those folks who have up until now been dealing with anxiety, depression, relationship issues, et cetera. And then we have people who identify as childhood trauma, like it has become a large part of their identity. And that comes with a lot of depression, anxiety, relationship issues.
And so if you were to say like, I work with women with childhood trauma, for instance, you're often going to get one of those two or both of those people in your practice, depending on how you message it. If your person is not there yet, right? Like they're experiencing anxiety and depression, they know shit was bad, you know, like they know that wasn't okay, but it feels like a lifetime ago. And here they are and they are functioning, they are over-functioning.
They are like doing all the things that they've needed their parents to do for them. They're being that mom now. Maybe a little helicoptery, maybe, you know, these kinds of things. So it's not what they're coming into therapy for most of the time. It's probably they're coming into therapy because they're overwhelmed or they're burned out or they're feeling like everything's on them. That's something I hear a lot.
And then when you realize like, are you taking on everything by default for a reason? And is that reason because you had to do that as a kid? So there's a lot of digging into it that you get to do in session, but when you're calling them in marketing-wise, what you're messaging isn't necessarily about the childhood trauma at that phase. It's about the anxiety and depression. So it's describing the anxiety and depression as they feel it, how it manifests, and maybe not using those words.
I mean, I think most people could be like, yeah, I'm anxious in a way that is accurate. Or I worry all the time or some other way of putting it. Depression, I think some people are like, well, I'm getting out of bed, I'm showering. So I don't think I have depression, depression. So I'd be careful with that word, unless your person is having a really hard time functioning.
Yeah. Yeah. When I think of my ideal client, it's like maybe a first time mom, you're discovering like, oh, parenting things are different from what I remember. And my relationship with my parents wasn't what I thought it was. And then we start to dig in there and that's kind of how I landed into this anyway. So maybe I could target that. Yeah. A little bit more. Absolutely. Because I think about being a new mom is a cluster for anyone, right? It's just, it's so much.
And when you haven't had good enough, in quotes, parenting growing up, it's particularly hard. And puts you at risk for a lot of things. Yeah. I see a lot of like postpartum depression, kind of mom rage. And then blah, because of the dissonance of power and responsibilities and what they were modeled as kids. That's where I see it pop up a lot. Yeah. And then the mom guilt that follows that rage, right?
Yeah. And so talking about that rage and how it's so uncharacteristic for who they have known themselves to be. Talk about how, like, it just feels so, it feels scary to be out of control or to feel feelings that are so incredibly uncomfortable and make you feel like a bad person. Like really digging into that lived experience and how, you know, you're snapping or you're yelling or you're doing whatever. And maybe you've never yelled in your whole entire life.
And having to be like, didn't becoming a mom turn me into this new person that I don't want to be. Yeah. Oh, I love this. Yeah. I can like really feel like my ideal client just like talking and what I can, how I can communicate that. So yeah. Awesome. Yay. Well, thank you so much. Absolutely. I'm really glad. I'm so glad. And yeah, let us know how it's going in the party. Don't be afraid to ask for help in that Facebook group. We're there. So. Okay. Awesome. Yay. Take good care. Thank you.
You too. Bye. Bye. If you're ready for a much easier practice, therapy notes is the way to go. Go to therapy notes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. If you're listening, you probably need some support building your practice. If you're a super newbie, grab our free checklist using the link in the show notes. I'd love for you to follow rate and review, but I really want you to share this episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.