#64. 7 Money Mistakes I Made When I Started My Practice (Ouch!)

Whatever it was , it worked , and it worked well . I'm living proof of that today . So I'm gonna share some of that with you today , because I think some of this will work for you too . So stay tuned .

["dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" Hi , i'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and , with over two decades of experience in the private practice world , i've built my six-figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way .

This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit-centered but people-forward . This is the Ideal Practice Podcast . ["dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] . Hey guys , and welcome back . Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Ideal Practice .

This is Wendy , and I am thrilled to be hanging out with you guys today . I hope you're having a great week . I hope life is rolling along for you . I hope you have had a win this week in your practice , because I know that you're doing a lot of things right too Sometimes , even if you don't know it .

So I wanna share with you some of the things that I look back on now and I'm like . You know what . That was a really good move on my part .

I didn't have any advisors , i did not have mentors , i did not have teachers when I started my practice Not really , i did go find that along the way , but I didn't have access to the kind of resources that a lot of us have today .

I still managed to get some things right and I wanted to share that with you today , because some of this will help you reach success even faster . Does that sound good ? I hope so , and if one of these resonates with you , let me know , because I want to uplift and encourage you as well .

So the first big thing that I did right back in the day , i did have a vision for what I wanted to create . It was very specific . It was an inspiration that had hit me and wouldn't let go , and it became my guiding light . It became the North Star for everything I did .

From the very beginning I knew that I wanted to build a business that did two things . First of all , i wanted to provide a really wide variety of top notch , high quality services that would help all kinds of people in all kinds of ways . I wanted to be the go-to resource in my town for mental health . That was my original goal .

But I had a second goal as well that I didn't necessarily state out loud , but it was very near and dear to my heart , and that was I wanted to help and support other women like me who wanted to run a business , because when I was starting my practice there just weren't any resources out there for women in business .

It was pretty much a good old boys club , and I had become painfully aware of that . I wanted to change that , and so from the very beginning I had those two guiding principles that were behind every decision I made from the beginning , and you know what That served me well In many ways .

That carried me all the way through until I sold my practice a couple of years ago . It ran like that's basically what I ran on for 25 years . That is important . Do you have a vision for what it is you want to build and , even more importantly , why you want to build it . If not , take some time to get clear on that .

The second thing that I did right off the bat is that , when I look back on it was a little bit of luck . It was just a name on the door at first , but I knew somehow that we needed an actual name for our practice .

I don't know what it's like where you are , but in my town there were plenty of providers out there who just had their own , like it was , you know , joe's practice and Mary's practice , like that kind of thing .

I knew I was going to be building a group and I knew I needed to give the public a way to find us and it wasn't just going to be the name of my city and counseling practice , like it wouldn't be like that . It was a hook , it was a label , it was an identity From the very beginning .

Just the name of my practice was something I wanted people to be able to grab a hold of , be able to say easily , spell easily , find easily , and that would communicate a certain feeling to them . Back then , that's how people found you in the phone book . Today , that's how people find you online .

Well , it was a name that could grow as the business grew and though I didn't know it back then , that name was really the beginning of a brand and over the next 15 , 20 years , that brand , it really came to mean something . It stood for something in my community . What's behind the name of your practice ?

It doesn't need to be clever , it needs to be clear . It needs to be something that your people will get and connect to . All right , you need a name . The third thing I got right . Part of this was just out of desperation . Part of it was because I had enough self-awareness to know better . I studied .

I didn't know what I didn't know , but I knew I had to learn . Now , when I was a lot younger , when I was like in college or right after , you know , in my young adult , early career days , the word business used to put me to sleep but went . I didn't care about all that . I'm a social worker . I cared about social work .

But when I started my own practice , suddenly it began to matter . I knew even then that decisions I made on a daily basis would affect what kind of money I've made and what kind of impact I had . So I started reading books about running a private practice or about small business . I attended classes and workshops with the .

Now , as the internet came online and we began to have access to digital support , i started following blogs , listening to podcasts , joining Facebook groups essentially , like many of you , soaking it up anywhere I could . Yeah , i studied , i learned . I became a student of business . I learned about the business side of a practice and began to develop .

It took a while . This was none of this was fast , but I began to develop a strong business mindset . That is what I see missing in a lot of my coaching clients . If you are a clinician , you are an energy healer , you are some kind of a wellness professional . Your first call , i know , is to serve your clients and help them get better .

But you are a business owner , my friend , and you have to learn how to start thinking like a business owner . That's a big part of the conversation my clients and I often have . That's something I had to learn to do too . The fourth thing I did was I made myself get out and start meeting people in person And y'all .

I don't know where you fall on the spectrum , but in terms of introvert versus extrovert , if you looked at my Myers-Briggs scores , i've scored as high as you could score on the introvert end of that spectrum . I could honestly live in a tree house and never talk to people for like weeks at a time and honestly be just fine .

Yeah , it's kind of a problem , but I knew even back then that I had to get out there and meet people , so I used every possible opportunity to network . If there was a program or an event even loosely related to mental health or counseling , i was there . Trainings , workshops , chamber of Commerce , mixers , trade shows I was there .

If it was a community event where I could meet a lot of people , i was there . Even volunteer work became a form of marketing , although I didn't know it back then , but it was Eventually , because I consciously dove into participating in my local community . I got to know people and they got to know me . I created a footprint . I established a following .

Now , in today's world , we tend to rely heavily on our online presence , and that does matter . It is important . I am not blind to that , but I often feel like we forget how important relationships in real life are Y'all and your community , unless you have a strictly online practice that is nationwide , that is not in any way geographically based .

If that's the case , then this may not matter so much for you And I do know some of you that's the case . But if you have a local , if you draw clients from your local geographic area , you've got to get into your community and get to know people , because when they get to know you , they are no longer afraid .

And when they are not afraid , they will call you when they need help . That's what happened to me . That will happen to you . The fifth thing that I got right that I don't know how I knew to do this . I focused on service because that's who I am , that's how I'm hardwired , that's how I know a lot of you are . But I did ask for the business .

I don't know how I knew to do this , but when I was spending time at those events , when I was at the Chamber Mixer , when I was exchanging a business card , when I was somebody , when I was at a trade show , i always made it a point to ask for referrals With other professionals .

I would say , hey , if you ever need a therapist or a counselor over my way , keep me in mind . Like that's what I would say to people , to colleagues , right , but with the general public , like I helped with Habitat for Humanity . I served on a couple of women's builds . I was very active in the adult education nonprofit in my town .

There are lots of different things that I did With those kinds of situations . I would just say to people things like you know , if you ever need anybody who needs help , just give me a call . Even if I can't see them myself , i'm glad to help you come up with ideas .

So I became a go-to resource personally And then over time , my practice became known for the same thing . I focused on service , but I asked for the business Pay attention to that . How often do you tell people ? do you ask people to send you people ? How often do you say I've got openings ? by the way , if there's anything I can help you with , let me know .

Okay . The sixth thing I did that really really paid off for me was I gave a lot of talks . Now some of you are going to roll your eyes and you're going to say , yeah , no way , wendy , i'm not doing that .

But I encourage you if there's any part of you that has ever given a presentation and survived to think about this Just this week or not this week . Last week , one of my coaching clients gave a presentation to her professional organization in her region . It was online . It was a webinar . She'd never done a webinar before .

She had taught before and liked teaching . This was still out of her comfort zone . It turned out to be such a huge success . She had something like 67 , 68 people register , and I want to say 50 something showed up , and of those , she's already had someone who has invited her to do the exact same presentation at their workplace .

Don't you know that's going to turn into business for her . Yeah , it is . Well , i did the same thing .

I gave talks everywhere . Most of them were free . A few were paid because somewhere along the way I hired a coach to teach me how to do that . I didn't know how in the beginning . My very first coach I hired to help me learn how to get paid to speak , but I gave tons of free talks .

Parents , support groups , church groups , civic clubs , community groups , schools , chambers , women's groups , nonprofits , you name it . I talked . I would talk to anybody who would let me .

The topics that I spoke on were simple , they were practical , they came straight out of my work , they helped people understand what I did and they provided real value in the moment . Like I remember one of the more popular talks . I did a lot of talks about parenting with teenagers , because that's kind of what I was all about .

At the time I gave a talk to a mother's a preschoolers group about what depression looked like , because that was a huge issue with that group . So here's the thing When you give talks , people get to know you . You're going to be the first person they think of .

When they know somebody who needs what you do , or when they themselves need what you do , they're going to call you . I'm telling you I cannot . I can't say this enough . Giving talks is huge and y'all Sunday school classes , your Kiwanis club , your chamber people there are all kinds of groups that are looking for speakers all the time . Don't , don't miss that .

If that's at all a part of your skill set or one you're willing to develop , don't miss that . The seventh thing that I did that was helpful in the beginning . Now I don't know if I would do this today , but it helped me and it might help you . I did bring on partners from the start .

In the beginning , i had business partners who were totally in alignment with the vision that I had for practice . Now I asked somebody to join me originally , and then somebody else invited me to join them and we joined forces and that became the core of what turned into a really thriving group practice . Working together with somebody else .

In the beginning , when I didn't have much confidence , that gave all of us the mutual kind of support and companionship and confidence that we needed to grow . It helped relieve stress . It gave us a way to share overhead costs and sometimes we would offer workshops and groups together . It enabled us to expand the services that we wanted .

That really helped me to get a practice going in the early days . Now I don't have partners anymore . Today I have enough confidence to handle this on my own , and over time , indeed , those partners changed because our visions evolved and people wanted different things right . Nothing wrong with that at all . So my client changed . My client basis changed .

My interests have changed . My practice has too . Yours will too , and I'm not going to say that you necessarily need a partner If you can do this on your own . Actually , i encourage you to do it on your own , but I do think that helped me in the beginning . So I don't regret it .

A lot of those early partners are still among my best friends today and still are like advisors to me even today , sort of along those same lines . The eighth thing that I would say I did right back then was I did look for and find mentors . Now , back then this was way before the coaching industry had taken off , that term wasn't even around .

But I've always , like throughout my life , i've always been someone who would learn from people that I admire And I have never been afraid to seek that out . I mean , even as a young , as a young adult , even as a teen sometime . I've always been someone . I'm not afraid to go to somebody and say I really love the way you do X , y , z .

Is there any way that you could show me how you do that or tell me more about that ? I have never been shy about that And in my experience people are eager and willing to share that I am when people ask me for that kind of thing . I've always loved that right .

So I would reach out to , for example , senior level clinicians who were in private practice and I would ask them for lunch or a phone consult . I would ask them clinical questions and about their business practices . That was immensely helpful to me . Or in the early days .

At one point , one of my colleagues started a consultation group , which I joined , and I was a member of the same consultation group that met twice a month y'all for 20 something years .

We finally disbanded when the pandemic hit , but we had been meeting literally twice a month , every every first and third Tuesday , from 10 , 30 to 12 , like clockwork , for literally decades . That was incredibly helpful . Running a practice can get a little lonely sometime . Don't be afraid to ask for help from each other and from those that you admire .

And , although it goes without saying , if I was starting a practice today , i would take a course , i would join a mastermind , i would hire a coach .

That wasn't available to me back then , but , by golly , today I wouldn't even think about doing this without taking advantage of those kinds of opportunities , cause it can just make everything so much better , so much easier .

Yeah , and I think the last thing I want to share is that I I would say that one of the last things I mean there are so many things I've done right , like I'm not even including in this list that when I made the decision to to shift away from insurance and into self-pay , when I made the decision to start hiring coaches . I did do that .

When I made the decision to add packages into my work , when I began to develop online courses , like all of those are things that I did right too , but that was much , much , much later in the process . What I'm sharing with you today are what happened in like the first five years 10 years that I was in business .

But the last thing I want to share with you today is that , above all else , i just kept going . I stayed with it . As with any business , there have always been highs and lows . There were times when I made lots of money and there were times when I could barely pay the rent . That was part of the process .

There were times when I had difficult staffing issues that I had to address . It was not always , you know , unicorns and roses . Things happen , things work , things don't work , things don't work But when those times hit , i never even thought about quitting ever . Not once did I ever think this was a mistake .

I should never have done this and want to go get a job Never . I looked for help , i brainstormed solutions , i journaled , i meditated , i turned to my friends , i paid people to help me . I did whatever I had to do . I figured things out , i learned and I grew as a human being , as a clinician and as a business owner .

I hope , and I think I know that you are the same . You don't quit either . You might stumble a little bit . There might be days when you wonder what the heck you're doing , but you too , i believe , are the kind of person who's going to keep going and growing Right . Yeah , i think you are too Well .

I'd love to hear from you This is short and sweet today .

Is there anything I shared with today that really resonates with you , and is there anything I've shared today you'd like to hear a little bit more about ? If there is , shoot me a DM on Facebook or an email message , reach out to me and let me know . I love hearing from you .

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If you go to my podcast and you click on the show notes for this episode , you'll see down near the bottom there's a place that says support the show .

You can actually on your own sort of subscribe with a small monthly donation as little as $3 a month which would just be a nice little way of showing a little love and let me know that this is helpful to you . I really appreciate that .

I appreciate you more than you know And I would love to hear what do you feel like you're getting right in your practice ? Reach out to me , let me know today . Have a great week , everybody . That's what I got for you today And I will see you next week right here , same bat time , same bat station , on the next episode of ideal practice .