(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.
Go to abundancepracticebuilding.com slash links. All right, onto the show. Some of y'all aren't sending HIPAA-compliant email, and it's a problem. Even if you're paying for a business Google Workspace account and have a signed BAA, your emails still aren't 100% compliant. That's where Powerbox comes in. You can connect Powerbox to your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 email one time, and you're completely covered. No one has to sign into portals. It sends and it shows up like any other email.
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With over 100,000 therapists using their platform, they've been able to stay incredibly successful and they don't have to sacrifice your experience to stay there. You can try two months free at therapynotes .com with the coupon code ABUNDANT. Hi Allison. How are you? Hi, I'm doing okay, how are you? I'm all right also, yeah. Good to see you, good to meet with you. What would be most helpful?
Yeah, so yeah, I did the three month mentorship which was wonderful, you know, so many tangible next steps and I feel like I've made a lot of progress in terms of setting my niche, so grief and loss with young adults, my website, everything is all set up, even my PLLC, everything is set up and ready to go. Where I'm stuck now is, so it's been, let's say almost four months since I started and you know, the setup did take at least a couple of months is getting clients.
So I think networking is probably the area that I could use the most help with because I, so I have my website, I have my psychology today, not much is coming through but you know, that's that, I guess. And my SEO started in February along with blogging. So, you know, they've only been running for a little bit and you know, those are happening.
So networking, I feel like is where I can, you know, when I have downtime, like where I can put my most effort and I'm just trying to figure out, I really go in circles about where to put my effort and how to message it when I do speak with someone. Okay, perfect, love it. Yeah, I can't remember, because it's been a long time since we talked, I guess four months since we talked. How do you feel about social media? Is that a hard pass for you?
It is a hard pass, but if and when I get to a point where I'm thriving and can hire an intern, I would outsource it. I'm not against it to that degree. I just don't, I don't think I have the capacity to add that on myself and to be creative enough and just give it what it needs. Yeah, yeah, I get that. I ask because I just think about like young adults going through grief, looking for some sort of, you're not aloneness.
And frankly, I mean, even you asking the question is helpful because I sort of put social media out of my head at the beginning. And one networking strategy that has brought my like only new client is a friend suggested I reach out to, you know, there's a bunch of just like local neighborhood Instagram groups of just like new restaurants, blah, blah, blah in a neighborhood. And I paid them a little bit of money to host my practice with a link to my website.
You know, obviously I don't have social and I got a client from that. Amazing. And so I was like, oh, duh, where is someone who's 25? Like looking like they're obviously like on Instagram. So I do feel like there is something there that I'm not really tapping into, yeah. Yeah, and I mean, like you can only do what you have the capacity for. Yeah. So it's either assessing like, is that an accurate estimate of your capacity?
Yeah. And if it is, then like F it, like you don't need to do social right now, but if it is something that you could take on, I think that it could be really beneficial if you were creating content, your ideal clients really care about, which you would be uniquely qualified to do based on your own experience, personally and professionally. Yeah. I think it's worth circling back on at some point, maybe soon.
So in terms of networking, another thing I should mention is ideally I would be out of network. I did sign up for one insurance, which I've never accepted insurance before. I don't even know how to pull out any of the paperwork, but I recently got empaneled with one plan in New York because it's for a hospital that I used to work at and they reimbursed like pretty high. And I felt like I had enough contacts that it would be worth it.
And that recently all just went through like a couple of weeks ago. So that's also on my mind of, I held off on networking to certain people that I know at this hospital, because I was like, let me wait until I get empaneled and then I can share this update.
Which then took another turn because I networked with someone with like a high like behavioral health position at the hospital who then informed, I said, can I pick your brain about how to go about contacting, this hospital owns practices all over the city.
And she informed me that all of these PCPs are informed that they should not respond to therapists, individual therapists who reach out to network with them, that they need to redirect to hospital, they have contracts with different mental health clinics. And that didn't really cross my mind before, because I was like, I have this whole plan, I'm gonna reach out to all these PCPs.
And now I'm like, I don't wanna waste my time or do I reach out and say, I don't take insurance and that way, I'm going a different route than if I tell them I take their insurance and they say, no, we can't work with you. Anyway, I'm a little mixed up in where to put my efforts next. This insurance without insurance, if I'm networking in regards to my insurance, do I mention the niche? So all of that.
So is it a kind of insurance like Kaiser where everybody who sees this doctor has the same insurance or is it? So if you work for this hospital, Mount Sinai, which owns seven hospitals in the city and probably a billion primary care clinics at this point. So if you work for them, this is insurance you would sign up for if you wanted employer sponsored insurance. Got it, okay. And it's one of the biggest private employers in New York City. Yeah. Got it, okay.
So you take the insurance of the doctors and of the nurses and of the, okay. Yeah. And some of their patients have this insurance and some of them don't. Right, I assume maybe many of them don't, but yeah. Yeah, okay, cool. So they are going to refer in-house because that's their business model, right? But they're not gonna refer their colleague in -house. They're not gonna refer their son in-house.
So you would not have access to their patients, but you would potentially have access to their social circles, which is you're not gonna be able to sit down with them and talk to them because they've got systems in place to prevent that.
But it's one of those things where like, if you can just get in, it's kind of like people who get in with a school counselor at one school, all of a sudden it kind of like cracks it open for them and they can meet with others, whereas that first one is really hard. So I might, because they have all these systems in place, I might put this on the shelf for now.
There are so many therapists, we talked about this, I think, like there are so many of us who don't know what the hell we're doing with grief and we don't really feel competent and confident treating it. And we feel helpless in the face of it. And you can relieve that pain for therapists by being a great referral source for them. So I think networking with other therapists, networking with other grief therapists who are likely full.
Yeah, and just to add a little here, so in my networking journey, which has been like two months, I started with everybody I know professionally. So all my therapist friends know what I'm up to. I reached out to, I met with a bunch of psychiatrists I used to work with a couple of jobs ago at another hospital.
I would say in terms of like the therapists I know, most people don't seem like they're in a position where they're referring out, like no one's super full, or if they found a private pay client, I think they would wanna keep for themselves. The psychiatrists, I thought the meetings went well, because there were people I already knew, a lot of it was kind of catch up and schmoozy with a mix of us both saying we would refer to each other, but they haven't referred to me.
And I don't know if they were just being polite or just the right person hasn't come across, or they already have their referral systems in place. I met with a therapist who, a grief therapist, grief counselor, who I didn't know, and we had an amazing conversation, but she also shared at the end that she's not full and wouldn't be like referring out. A few others just didn't respond.
So I guess like any suggestions for next steps with like who to reach out to and find these grief therapists, did a Google search, did psychology today, Yeah, it depends on, well, I'm thinking about my first question, I will get to your question, but I have a question about how have you followed up with these psychiatrists? That's another question I have too, because I didn't know where to, I'm still not sure where to put my efforts. So, do I follow up with people who haven't referred to me yet?
So I made sure to follow up with each of them, so good to meet with you, a little like something that we laughed about or connected on, would love to meet again. And then I sort of fell off from there because I was like, were they just being polite and they have no intention of referring to me and like, why would I keep asking this person for coffee? And then I should go somewhere, should I put those efforts somewhere else? So yeah, yeah, curious to hear what you think in terms of the follow-up.
Mm-hmm, so the insecurity that's leading you to worry about that, I don't want it taking any sort of driver's seat. Okay. Let's assume they meant what they said, like they're grown adults. Let's just assume they meant what they said and that they would like to refer to you, but you're back on their radar after a bunch of time off, they have people they're used to referring to, they probably just forgot about you. Yeah. Because they're just in their flow.
So it could go a couple of different ways. You could let them know, hey, I got empaneled on this major thing. If any of your clients need to use insurance for weekly therapy, it could really help them out, especially if these are private pay psychiatrists. So you can just be like, I still have a few spots left. So let them know you have availability, but it's not like a gaping hole in your schedule.
I still have a few spots left and maybe then make the offer of like, would love to grab coffee again sometime if you're interested for the people that you just really enjoy talking to. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's helpful. The insurance update feels like concrete enough to creep back in. Because there are probably so many people on their caseload who have that insurance that are going outside of the in-house people because like who wants to see the therapist down the hall? Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like there is a lot of hospital employees who don't want to go in -house and I don't know how to reach them, but I think that that does give me an up there. Okay. Yeah, because I did like talk and some of these psychiatrists said that for med management they see like hundreds of people. Yeah. Yeah. My husband had a psychiatric practice and I think he had three or 400 people in his caseload. Some of them are stable. You see them once every three months.
Yeah. I'm trying to think of what else would be helpful with the networking. Yeah. I guess I was curious with the insurance, like am I going to like organically get clients who are just checking their insurance and I pop up versus like how intentional do I need to be with that? You need to be intentional because like a huge city like New York, you know, like you've, there were so many people probably who take that insurance. So as such a major employer.
So I would, you still need to be intentional with it in terms of staying on top of your marketing, those kinds of things. You will get some randos who aren't struggling with grief, who find you on their insurance listing and get in touch. And then you can decide based on what they say. If you want to take them on, you don't have to have all niche people. You don't have to have all ideal clients. If they feel like somebody you'd enjoy working with and you'd do good work with, then take them on.
And if no to either of those things, then no. Refer them on. Okay. Okay. And then any other suggestions of who to be networking with in addition to circling back to the people I've met with and enjoy talking to and connected with? Yeah, I mean, I made like a monster, a list of, you know, every idea I had, and, you know, even had lots of like idea meetings with friends of, you know, different directions to go in. It just seems like there's so many resources out there.
It's hard to kind of crack through or know like where it's going to fall. Yeah. I mean, I think the psychiatrists that you already have a relationship with, like really, really maintaining and building those relationships since you genuinely like them, like that's probably the best route to go. You can still do PCP offices, but I would find the ones not owned by the hospital system, which- Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking.
I was like so fixated on that being my next step, but I think I can pivot and find a different route. And then I'm wondering, you know, the hospitals own so many PCP practices as well, and they probably have their own systems. So maybe more like independent practices. Yeah. I think you'd get a lot farther there. Yeah. I had this other idea because I am working part-time NYU at the university in the counseling center. So I was like, perfect, I'll find clients there.
But once I started, I found out that it's a conflict of interest to work with students while I'm there. And that also, I was like, should I reach out to other universities or are they going to have like, you know, every place has their own systems, but I haven't really spent, put effort in there to universities. Yeah. I think that's a brilliant idea is having worked in the university system as well, because these are your favorite age people, right? Or close.
So the way, and you know this probably from your experience, so many university counseling centers get full and stay full and the waiting lists are awful. And there's a triage system and things like that, that it might not work well for your people to try to go through those systems. And if their surviving parent or something like that happens to be insured by the biggest insurer in the state then, or in the city, then that works for them as well.
Or it's private pay because when somebody loses a partner and they want to make sure their kid's okay, who's like off of college trying to make it happen while they're heartbroken, then often if parents can't afford it, they will. And that also brought up another question for me of, do I put in effort to try to market where the parents are interfacing and then where's that? I mean, you're gonna be where, you've got SEO rolling.
So I think that the kids, because they're older and they're more, slightly more internet savvy, are likely to find you before the parents. I think if the parents are finding you, you might be talking about kind of a more acute presentation of the kid, which may or may not be your ideal. But I think the other concern would be where the parents are besides Google might make them try to send you like children, which I know is not.
Yeah, I've had a mix of the adult child reaching out and sometimes the parents, I do honestly think probably like every therapy referral, it usually works out best when the individual's reaching out versus somebody else. So that's my preference. Do you think if I did do social, is there another strategy I could or should drop just in terms of... Well, you're not doing the SEO yourself, right? Like you've hired it out.
So I think like it still definitely counts as a marketing strategy, but it's not one that's eating your time. Are you writing the blogs yourself and they're SEOing it? Yeah. Okay, cool. I think that you could count it. I might just from an efficiency standpoint suggest maybe you spend the next month with the psychiatrists, like really focusing on the psychiatrists that you know, you can also ask them like, who are some other prescribers in town that you like?
Yeah. And would you be willing to email introduce us? Okay. So I would spend the next month working on psychiatrists and university counseling centers. And then if you're like, okay, I'm not getting the traction I expected, which often with networking, there's a lag. Yeah. Then maybe consider social and hop in the Facebook group and we can kind of talk through some ideas for social, make that really valuable and also not super time consuming.
Yeah, that sounds like a good plan focusing on the psychiatrists. I already know and I'm comfortable talking to other universities and really around the state. I'm like, so like focused on the city, but I wanna think about around the state and yeah, if the psychiatrists have other prescribers that they can connect me to. Okay. I'd really go hard. There's so many universities in New York, like not just the city, but the whole state.
Yeah. I'd go hard on those counseling centers because they need you, flat out. They've got your people. I know so many of them have in -house counseling, but it seems like to be the norm that they're short term. Right. Short term and often wait-listed. So it's just like, there's just too much demand and not enough supply. Okay. Trying to think of how to best use the rest of my precious minutes here.
And I guess, unless like while we're talking, you're like, okay, you think you need to focus on networking and you suggested social, if there's any other like gaping where I need to focus, but it's actually something else. No, I think you're on the right track. I think you've been really thoughtful about it. I'm not like, ooh, Natalie is really like not seeing this thing right in front of her face or she's like messing up in this book. I just flat out tell you. Okay, yeah.
I mean, yeah, and like Lindsay was so helpful. She's like, I have no doubts that you're gonna be where you want to be, which is helpful to hear over and over. Yeah. But it's also been four months and there's one new client, like. Yeah. Yeah, just like, if I had a few more, I would be like, okay, it's like trending in that direction. And the new client just popped up like this week. So that's exciting and happy to celebrate that, but.
And also to normalize, because I think there are people who pop off real quick and that's fantastic. That's what we hope for everyone. And then there's, I mean, my first full -time practice in Seattle, I didn't get a single call until, I think it was three and a half months in. And I was like busting ass every day.
I was really working hard and then it was still slow, but I don't remember if it was three and a half or two and a half months in, but then by like month five, I think, I was like nearly full or full. I was already making way more than I'd made in an agency. Okay. Yeah, it's helpful to hear because I had, I was like six months kind of stuck in my head and then I'm like, well, there's no way that's even close to that. Yeah. And as long as it's trending, even if slowly, fine.
Yeah. So I'd just keep your head down for the next month and work on those two networking opportunities. Okay. And be annoying if you need to be annoying with like the university counseling centers and ask about their case managers and who provides the referrals and those kinds of things for longer term counseling, maybe even just frame it for longer term counseling so that they know you're not trying to coach their short termers. Okay. Thank you.
This is really helpful in helping me narrow where I need to go next. Awesome. Well, yeah, let us know in the Facebook group how it's going. I'm in there. Yes, I will. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Do it. Take care. Talk to you later, bye. Bye. Make sure your email is actually HIPAA compliant with POWBOX. Use code ABUNDANT to get POWBOX for less than a hundred dollars your first year at p-a-u-b-o-x.com. If you're ready for a much easier practice, Therapy Notes is the way to go.
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