The Practice of Therapy

Kasey Compton
Hey, everybody, my name is Casey Compton. And I am a mental health therapist. I own a group practice. I have a consulting business, a hair salon. And recently I get to call myself an author, which I'm pretty excited about. I think I'm blushing. I don't I don't know. But I'm excited to be on the practice of therapy podcast again, with Gordon, my, my secret goal is to be the most the guest that's been on the podcast the most. So that's what I'm shooting for.

Gordon Brewer
Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the podcast again. And I am so thrilled to get my old friend Casey Compton back here on the podcast. And we were just talking before we started recording, we just waited too long to get back together. We're we're practically neighbors, she just lives literally over the mountain for me only about two hours away. And I just love hanging out with Casey and her husband, Trevor and all of their clan up there and Kentucky. And so, Casey, welcome.

Kasey Compton
Thank you so much. I'm so excited. It does, it feels like it's been forever since I've, I mean, it has been forever since I've seen you in person. And it's like, even more forever since I've seen you on a podcast. So I'm happy to be here.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, and just Casey is Casey is one of those rock stars just in this space of one of the one of the one of the people that has really taken kind of her dream of owning her own business, owning her own practice, and just expanded it so expanded it and expanded it and all of that. And she is just she is a master, kind of her superpower is knowing how to put systems and processes together to make things work and Run, run like clockwork. And I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit. But Casey white, for those that don't know about you, why don't you tell folks a little more about your private practice journey and kind of how you've landed where you've landed? Sure.

Kasey Compton
So I started this back, I guess it all really began back in graduate school, I went in, I was a teacher and went into graduate school to get my master's. And I knew I didn't want to teach anymore. So I thought counseling would be the next, the next phase of my professional journey. And so that's what I did, and went into that program, knowing that I wanted to own a business too, because that was something that was always very exciting to me. I guess just because of the creative side of me loves to create new things. And so did that back in 2015, I started my group practice, it was just me in the beginning and always knew that I wanted to add more people but started with myself just to kind of develop some processes and start to build out some systems to make it easier whenever I brought more clinicians on. And we just took off and really just doubled in size year after year. And we've kind of leveled out a little bit now. And we have nine locations we own two of our commercial properties. We're getting ready to purchase a third. We are in about 19 counties across the state of Kentucky. We have about 80 employees at the moment. We're hiring for about I would say about 40 more.

Gordon Brewer
Wow.

Kasey Compton
Yeah. So it's been a fun ride. It's the group practice. Business for me has been has been a blessing. It's been a it's been a fun journey. Yeah, yeah.

Gordon Brewer
And it's just you know, I've always I've always wanted to get inside your head Casey in terms of just understanding how you how you develop your processes and systems and kind of your your thinking about that. But I know that you're you've got a new book coming out. And I know that is something that's really exciting and you're sharing with me there's gonna be a follow up to that. But tell folks about your book and I know that the book is going to be my my window into kind of how you think about things I'm sure

Unknown Speaker
it is.

Kasey Compton
It is this this book is. So I went into this whole process of course loved Mike and I have a lot of gratitude toward you for that because I remember the day you said hey, I'm going to have Mike mccalla Wits on a podcast you want to join.

Unknown Speaker
Yes.

Kasey Compton
Yes, I want to join and so that was kind of the first interaction that I ever had on more of a personal level with him. Aside from reading his books, and so, you know, had followed all of his books implemented a lot of the things that he taught. And so when fix this next came out, I just, I read the what little I had of it in the beginning. And it was based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and essentially saying, you know, our, our practices have tons of needs. And we can't act like a firefighter, every time it has a problem, we actually have to have a system for addressing the problems rather than just willy nilly shoot from the hip top have to do lists, post it notes, strategies. And so when I read that, I just thought, Okay, this was this was meant for mental health, like, we have to have this book for mental health. And then after talking to so many other practice owners, and they loved the book, but they said, I just don't know how to apply this to my own business.

You know, they could see it a little bit, but they just couldn't figure it out. And so after a lot of thinking, and a lot of conversations with Mike and his team, I just knew that it was just something I had to do. Like, I felt like I had a responsibility to write this book. And I did, and I've really enjoyed the journey. It's unique. It's, I mean, I read a lot of business books, and I've never read one like this. It's got a lot of definitely a lot of content and a lot of teaching and a lot of strategies and implementation pieces. But it's all done through stories. And it's all done through, you know, stories of my grandpa cleaning out the gutters on his house back, you know, when I was 10. And just these little Southern stories that are helping people understand and business better, so I can't wait for people to read it. Oh, yeah,

Gordon Brewer
I can't, I can't wait to. Yeah, I'm excited. I wish I could just get it right now. So but, you know, something that I was just reminiscing, just thinking about? How Casey and I kind of connected and it was over. You were the person Casey that introduced me to profit first. In other words, I going way back in this I can't remember think how many years now? You had been on a podcast with Joe Sanok. Just talking about how you had built your practice, and you mentioned profit first. And so I probably that day went out and bought a copy of it. It just blew my mind. And then and then I I reached out I thought, well, what the heck it won't, you know, I really wasn't expecting any results reached out to Mike mccalla wits and, and got a response by email the same within an hour after I sent the email. And I was just I would just kind of intimidated by all of that. And I thought, Okay, I know Casey has got to be in this interview. So we did that kind of did it together. And it's still it's still out there. In fact, it's on YouTube and also, you can go back and listen to previous podcasts but you jump in here Casey because I don't want to steal this from you but Mike mccalla Wits has has come out with a few other books. I have not read fixed this. Next. Yeah. But I ran block clockwork, which was the next book after profit first. But yeah, so I'm feeling a little shame here that I haven't read fix this next.

Kasey Compton
So it is such a good book. It really is. It's such a good book. And if you ask Mike, he would probably tell you other than profit first you know, profit first was like the the book that that just claimed his stake in the ground, you know, that just it was unbelievable, amazing book, and but fix this next. I don't know what he'll say about his newest book coming different is better. But I know that right now, as far as his book that have been published, he would probably say that this is his favorite. And he'll also say that, that this is the one you should read first. Wow, for any of the other ones. So um, yeah, I think it's, I think it's a great book. And he just, he, you just have to read it. I mean, it's just hard to explain and I love I love profit first if I would not be where I am today, if it weren't for that book. And I think a lot of people can say the same thing. And I really truly believe that if people embrace this fix this next system, just like they do with profit first. It will be a game changer for so many people and their sanity and their time and you know as well as I do that something that Time is the one thing we can't get back, you know, there's there's no way you can't make more of it. It's not like money, you know, you just is what it is. And so I think that this book, in many ways just has, we have a responsibility to help people feel confident in the way that they're spending their time and feel like they don't need an MBA to run a therapy practice. And that's kind of one of them. Running themes throughout my book is that therapists, in my opinion, are better suited business owners than anybody else out there. And I truly believe that our businesses are much like a patient. And if we just treat our businesses like we treat our patients, then everything becomes much easier, and everything becomes much more efficient. And we have better outcomes. And so that's what I teach in the things that's next for healthcare, is how to treat your business like you do your patients. Right.

Gordon Brewer
Right. Yeah. And I'm so excited for this, to come out. And I know, one of the things that you've been doing a lot of Casey is doing some consulting with other therapists and, and really helping people kind of build their businesses, and really just kind of teaching what you do in your own practice that has become so, so successful. And I know we were talking before we started recording that, that you're starting to, you know, with this whole COVID pandemic that we've been through or going through, as we're recording this, you just seeing a lot of themes from people about really not knowing where to focus their efforts, and so on to say something about all of that. Yeah, so

Kasey Compton
one of the one of the strategies that we teach within this book is, how to power how to assess to your business. Basically, just like you would do a diagnostic assessment of a client or a patient, how to assess the business in the same way. And there are three foundational levels in your business, which are sales, profit, and order. And we have core needs within each of those levels. And so we ask ourselves, the, there's five core needs in each level. So we ask ourselves the 15 questions, we answer yes or no. And then based on that simple assessment, we're able to determine what our business's biggest priority is, and where we should start. Think about it like this. I don't know how much anxiety treatment you do. But it's all kind of the same. So if you have a client coming in to see you, and they're having panic attacks. And so what you're going to do first is you're going to gather information. So tell me about these panic attacks. When are they happening? How long do they occur? When did it start? Can you identify any triggers? Like we're going to ask them all these questions to try to determine what what's the core? What is the core? So panic and anxiety is a direct result of fear. And so fear is just manifesting itself into anxiety and then ultimately into a panic attack. So rather than if you are my client coming in for panic attacks, rather than me saying, okay, Gordon, I want you to just breathe when you're having a panic attack. Okay, that's helpful. But that's not going to fix the panic attacks, what we have to do is identify the fear, we have to identify the fear and treat that. So the way that this system works, it's called the healthcare Hierarchy of Needs is the exact same line, and helps you identify the core. So what the fear is, and when you fix the core down here, all of the symptoms that are layered on top of that, a lot of times will just fall down, you don't even have to work on those anymore, they correct themselves. So that's how we get back our time. And that's how we, that's how we business better. You know, that's how we get more confident in our decisions and what we decide to work on. Right,

Gordon Brewer
right. Yeah, and it's a you know, in my, my small group practice, I know that that is something that we're constantly working on is trying to get our, our systems and processes more and more down pat, and just, you know, with just it we're a we're an insurance based practice and a lot of our difficulties with our business around just the credentialing and the insurance and all of that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, and so that's kind of as you were describing that I was wondering, you know, what are what are our biggest fears in my own practice and has to do with Okay, getting paid, you know, the insurance companies and, and that sort of thing is really kind of whittling down on that. So

Kasey Compton
yeah, so if you are going to use the healthcare hierarchy of needs to die Notice your own practice, you're probably going to find a diagnosis in that foundational level, which is sales, and then it will tell you exactly what it is. And then that's exactly where you start. It, it just makes it so much easier and so much more concrete. Rather, you know, because we know all these things that we need to do, but how do we really know which one is more important? And how do we you know it you know how that can be? really overwhelming.

Gordon Brewer
Right? Right. It is it is. So yeah, so with with your process? How was it that you kind of it sounds like you used kind of a lot of what Mike mccalla Wits has been teaching with that. And so the starting place is just to do the questionnaire. Is that correct? He is Yep. Kind of.

Kasey Compton
Yeah. So so in fix this next that Mike wrote, his is called the business high group hierarchy of needs it, it has five levels. The healthcare hierarchy of needs only has three. And the questions are a little different. So they're all very specific to healthcare related businesses, rather than Mike's which is just very broadly targeting businesses in general. But yes, that's always in he refers to it a lot. And I do too, in my book, that this, this diagnostic assessment tool is really what it becomes your compass, it's not going to tell you how to fix your problems that comes later in the book. But the compass is always going to tell you where you stand, and the direction you need to go.

Gordon Brewer
Mm hmm. Right. Right. So as you've been working with others with all of this, what are what are some of the common problems that you You see, in in practices? I mean, I'm sure a lot of practices run into some of the same problems.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah.

Kasey Compton
One of the biggest problems is gonna always come in that foundational level of sales. And it's actually the second coordinate in that foundational level, which is prospects and provider attraction. So what one of the biggest things that we see is their practice is either going to have too many clients, and not enough clinicians, or too many clinicians and not enough clients. And, yeah, so that's a big one. That's a really that's that's one that people usually have a diagnosis in. The problem that you mentioned earlier about the credentialing, and how are we going to get paid, that's also in that foundational level of sales. And a lot of people struggle with that, too. And it is called collecting on commitment. It's in the third and the fourth, collecting and delivering on commitments. And that's, that falls in that area. And so that foundational level of sales is sort of like the bloodline for the practice. It's, it's the creation of cash, it's how, if we don't have that we can't, I mean, we don't even have a business. And so it's really, really important. The second thing that I notice, which works well for me, because it's my favorite is systems. So the third level of the hierarchy of needs is called order. And that is where all of the systemization systems processes and everything comes into play. And we noticed that there was such a huge need there that back in the fall of 2020, we launched it at the time, it was called the 30 day deep dive. Now it's called system, Iser school. We have our second group going through it right now. But we noticed that people just struggle with creating lean, creating efficient processes within their practice. And so it's an eight week program that we created just to help people that are struggling with that area in their practice. And that's huge. That's been a huge one.

Gordon Brewer
Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, that is, that is exciting. So yeah. So when people are thinking about the systems to have in place, for a practice, I know that you're a big proponent of collecting data, of really kind of knowing your numbers well, and that sort of thing. If somebody's wanting to get started with that. What's, what's one of the best ways for them to do that?

Kasey Compton
I love that question. My marketing gal. Emily, she makes fun of me about this, because I tell the story about how when my daughter's there. They're different in age, but their birthdays are really close together. So every year we throw them a birthday party, and it's always together. It's just easier. And so we were throwing them a birthday party this past year, and I was looking for the cupcake holder because I forgot to order them a birthday cake. I mean, talk about priorities and to do lists that totally slipped my mind. And so I had to go get them some cupcakes at the last minute and I couldn't find the cupcake stand and I was I don't really want to set these cupcakes in a plastic container, and you know, on the kitchen table, so I couldn't find it. But I knew we had them. And actually, I knew we had lots of cupcake stands. And at the time was running out and I was getting stressed. And I just lost lost it. I couldn't find it. So what I did is I took every single thing out of every cabinet, in my whole kitchen, just everything, every drawer, every plate, everything and I throw it in the middle of the kitchen floor. And my daughter walked in and she just like her eyes were really big. And she is like a mommy, what did you do. And then Trevor walks in, because he had gone to the store to get some ice cream. He was like, what's going on.

Unknown Speaker
And

Kasey Compton
I said, this, this chaos is killing me, I cannot live this way I can't stay in, you know, when I can't find something and I need it. And then what happens is we just go buy more of what we know we already have, but we can't find it. So it's just easier to go to Walmart and get another one. And then we spend all this extra money and I just spiraled out of control. And so I after I did that, and I threw my little temper tantrum, I left the room. And I came back in and I could hear my daughter who's 11 saying, Okay, let's sort these into piles, let's put the trash over here. Let's get all of the cooking stuff like the baking stuff. And let's put it in this pile, she was kind of telling my husband wants to do.

Unknown Speaker
And

Kasey Compton
anyway, so we put the they did all that we got rid of all the stuff we didn't need, we organize the other stuff, we put it in places in the kitchen that made sense. Some things that we used on the stove, we put by the stove, and you know, simple things like that. And so I would say the exact same thing goes in business. And this is what we do in step one of system as our school is we unpack the kitchen, we have to know what all of the current processes are. And the best way to do it is throw them all in the middle of the floor, or just document them on a spreadsheet or something, you just got to start listing them out. And when you can see that mess that you have created. unintentionally, right there in front of you, when one single process in your practice takes 42 steps, you will do something about it, you will say this is this is not gonna work. And so that's the best thing that I could advise anyone to do is just unpack the kitchen.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, I love that. I love that analogy of just being able to, you know, it's, I'm sure you've heard of it, a book called getting things done by David Allen. Well, I recommend it, it's, I think you would think you would like it. But it's he talks about some of the same thing of being able to capture everything, of being able to put and that's one of the things that I'm people have heard from me all the time. I'm not a naturally organized person. If I were to move the camera much here, you would see that with my desk, I've got this, the narrow view here. So that kind of gets rid of all the all the clutter around me. But yeah, and but he talks about just kind of the analogy of just getting a big box, and you tap pull everything out, and you put it in the box. And then you do exactly what you said you go through each item and decide what to do with it. And then so I love that. Yep, same thing. So I love that. I love that. So yeah, and so yeah, then how do you how do you figure out how to how to whittle systems down to where you can where they're manageable.

Kasey Compton
So what we do is once we have this, this list of all of the steps, and then the first thing we do is just start reading the list out loud. And then we take the little strike through option on you know, word or Google or whatever. And we just start getting rid of the things that we don't want anymore. So we still leave them on the screen, but we just strike them out. With the big things that we know ness, you know, these are just obvious things that we don't need. And then what we will do is we will, we'll make ourselves a little legend or a key at the top, and we'll write down bottlenecks. So these are the places that your process stops, we will write down the word congestion points. And this is the places where things slow down. We will also write down platforms. So this will be like EHR, spruce ringcentral, all the different platforms you have in the practice. And then lastly, we will write down documents. So this is like a spreadsheet or a form or a list or whatever. And so we'll color code all of these things. And then we start to scan your list and we will highlight each one of those things that we find in the respective colors, then what happens is you start to say, Oh my gosh, this one process, I have to click through five different forms before it ends. This has to pass through four different platforms before we finish. And so what we do there is we're saying that all of these changes all of these bottlenecks, congestion points, platforms, documents, all of that. And the more steps you have, that is more room for error. And so the longer the process, and the more that people have to flip flop between different things, the more chances and the more opportunities they have to mess it up. And so then what we start to try to do is say, Okay, what do we not need? And like, what's the point of this? Why do we have this and is there a way to achieve the same result by not using this form, or this document. So that's kind of where it starts to become a little bit more of like a problem solving thing. But basically, we we identify, so we document all the processes, then we start to streamline it, which is where we cut. And the last piece of the last step is where we automate. And that's where we take what's left, and we figure out how we can leverage technology to make things happen on its own.

Gordon Brewer
Right. Oh, wow, I love that. I love that. Because that just gives me such a visual for thinking about how some of the things I've been working on in my own practice, of just being able to streamline our processes a whole lot more. And you know, one of the things I don't know if you've run into this, this this concept, Casey or not, but I'd also think about domains. In other words, there are different parts of a business or different parts of what we do. And kind of the two big, big one that I think about up it'd be, I'd be interested, interested to know how you conceptualize this got kind of the business side of the business of the of the practice, and then the clinical side of the practice. And there's, there's some overlap, but for the most part, you want to try to keep those separate to some degree. But how do you think about that?

Kasey Compton
Yeah, so the way that I kind of think about it, as in the term, I usually uses just departments. So we'll have the clinical department will have the front office department, which includes receptionist, client care, human resources. And then we'll have the back office department, which houses the billing and credentialing and all those names. But the way that we have looked at it, and that has worked really well for us is just to think that they are all, they are all separate in their own way. But they all impact one another. So if our front office system is not streamlined and efficient, then that's going to negatively impact our clinical system. If we if our clinical system promises good client care, and outcomes and all these things, but then when the clients call, the people that answer the phone aren't getting back to them, or they're dropping the ball, then the client starts to see, they start to think of the clinical system is bad to, you know, think about if you go to a doctor's office, and you like the doctor, but it's horrible having to go there, like you can't get there on the phone, if you need something that people are rude. It really taints your perspective of the whole the whole practice. And so we have purposely integrated all of those different departments together in leadership meetings, because it's important for me to to show that if the clinical system isn't doing its job, that's gonna impact the billing department because our clients aren't going to come back to therapy. And then the billing departments not going to have the revenue in the clinical system is not doing its job that's going to affect the front office system that's going to affect the hiring that's going to have I mean, it just it all affects one another.

Unknown Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah. Now,

Kasey Compton
I will say that we don't involve our clinical department in the business operations. So they know that they're connected, but they don't know how to run the business or anything about that side. I do believe in keeping that completely separate. Right,

Gordon Brewer
right. Yeah. Yeah, I like the way I like that idea about the department's Yeah, so Wow, Casey, we got to hang out again. I know I've got to make a trip to Kentucky here before long and i'd love it. What I'd love to do and is just bring my whole team up there and let them see how you guys are doing what you're doing. Because amazing, it's amazing. It's amazing. Anytime

Kasey Compton
we'd love to have you we like company.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. So so to be respectful of your time case. See, tell folks about where they can find out more about the book and the title again, and just more about how they can get in touch with you. Cool.

Kasey Compton
The title of the book is fix the snacks for healthcare providers, there is an entire landing page, I'll actually there's two on an on my website, it's just Casey Compton calm. And if you add forward slash f t n, you'll find information about getting on the list for updates on the book, you can pre order signed copies of the book right now, we're, I mean, we're not like on a big push for that at the moment, but you can do it. If you opt into the list to get updates, we are going to be building a launch team, these are going to be people that are willing to read the book are willing to take a picture of the book on social media. And in return, we're going to send them a launch kit that's going to have lots of cool freebies and stuff in there. So if anyone wants to do that, just opt in on that page. And follow us on social media. I mean, everything we do, we try to post on social media and keep everybody updated. The book officially launches July 19 of this year. 2021. So Wow, will not be long.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, yeah, it'll get here before we know it. And we'll have course links in the show notes and show some refer for all of this and to get how to get in touch with Casey. Yeah, it's just I've kind of I've kind of watched Casey from the very beginning. And so we kind of had parent, we've had kind of parallel journeys with this whole consulting bed and all of that. And so it's been great to be that and I just, I just like hanging out with Trevor. I mean,

Kasey Compton
they just use me to get to Trevor.

Unknown Speaker
The social one of the two of us.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, so Well, folks. Yeah. Casey, thanks for joining me. Let's do this again before long and do some work, collaborate, collaborating on stuff. So, again, check it out Casey compton.com. And also in social media, and there'll be links below for you to get to that. So take care cases.