The Practice of Therapy

Gordon Brewer
Hello, I'm Gordon Brewer, and welcome to the practice of therapy podcast, where we explore the business and clinical sides of running a private practice.

We're Hello everyone and Happy New Year. This is episode number 210 of the practice of therapy podcast. And so glad you've joined me as we start into this new year. And naturally at this time of the year, and probably even more so last week, a lot of us were just thinking about goals and resolutions and all that comes with starting a new year. And I think a lot of us begin to think about having a fresh start or really starting over with some things are really having different focuses. And so in this particular episode, as we start the new year, I want to just kind of give you some ideas around setting priorities and goal setting, you know that something that's a topic that I kind of tackle at the beginning of every year, and I think it's always good, a good refresher, at least for me when I start thinking about these kinds of things. If you're joining us, again from previous episodes, or have been a follower of the podcast for some time, you probably noticed a little bit of a sound facelift. We got a new intro that we started this year. And I just thought it was time to do that I've used kind of the same music and same intro over the last few years. And so it was, it was time for a change, which, again, starting a new year always brings about thought thoughts of change and what it means to do things in a different way. So as we move into the new year, one of the things that I wanted to let you know about is, and this was kind of exciting goal for me is that the practice of therapy podcast is now part of a network of podcasts. It's a network that I started, called the psych craft network. And I've got a new podcast that's going to be launching in in February. And it's called the kindness and compassion, podcast and being it's going to be co hosted with my friend and colleague Kayla tapioca. And this is just a topic that we've been passionate about for some time. But you can find out more about that podcast, if you'll go over to kindness and COMM And compassion.com just spell it out kindness and the word and in compassion comm there'll be a link here in the show notes of the show summary. And you can go ahead and listen to the trailer for that particular podcast. And I'm really excited about that. And being able to expand what I'm doing here with the practice of therapy of really moving out into more of the general public, so to speak, and teaching people how to put some mindfulness practices kindness, and compassion and gratitude and all those kinds of things, which are things that we think about as therapists. So that's coming up in February. And so you'll be hearing more about that. The other thing I want to let you know about is, as I'm moving into the month of January, I have a new focus group that starting on January the 13th. And if you're on my email list, you would have gotten an email with an invitation to that. And you know, being part of a focus group is just a great way to really build some community and really hold yourself accountable. As we move into the new year of really up in your game, upping your game within your practice. got just a few spots within that focus group. It's only going to be six to eight people. But I'd love for you to apply and consider joining me it's a great way to get some group coaching for me and also just, as I said, just developing a great a great set of colleagues to share your practice journey with and you can find out more about that by going to practice of therapy.com/focus group lost my was my place there for a minute practice of therapy.com/focus Group to find out more about that. So got a lot of great guests lined up with us upcoming episodes, I'm looking forward to you, hearing from them. And just a lot of great things planned for the practice of therapy in this coming year. But in this particular episode, we're going to be just talking about setting priorities and maybe some things to kind of think about as you plan for 2022.

And just maybe some ways to go about making those plans and setting goals for yourself. But before we get to my thoughts on setting your priorities in the coming year, love for you to hear from our sponsor therapy notes.

You know, in running a private practice, you need to have excellent systems and processes in place. And one of the leading electronic health record systems that you need to check out as therapy notes, there who I use in my practice, therapy notes provides a patient portal. Also the ability to schedule online, send appointment reminders, also handle your collections insurance claims. It's all in one platform for the clinical side of your practice. And they also have telehealth available through their platform. As I said, they are who are using my practice, and couldn't do without them. So be sure and check them out, go to practice of therapy.com/therapy notes, and you'll be able to see what they have available. And also be sure and use the promo code Gordon, just GLR doe n and you can try them out for two months for free. That's therapy notes at practice of therapy.com/therapy notes.

You know, as we jump into a new year, I think it's, as I said earlier, it's only natural that we start thinking about resolutions and setting goals for ourself. And, you know, the start of a new year is just kind of a natural bookmark for hitting the reset button. And just really thinking about things we want to change things, things we want to accomplish. In moving forward. One of the things that I've been doing this past week is really going through my planner. And going through the past years planner, I use a system called the full focus planner, which is produced by Michael Hyatt and company and it's divided into quarters, and it's a it's a paper based planner. Some would would call it old school, but I would just I would just say that being able to write things down physically write things down, rather than tapping them out on our, on our devices or on our phones has a way of allowing us to process information differently. And there, there seems to be some research around this because it forces us number one, to slow things down. But also there's that that brain hand connection that is made to you know, if you if you write something out, we have a way of remembering it and processing it differently. So I really love using a paper based planner. And just thinking about keeping me on track with productivity and just how I do things day in and day out with the different things that I have going on in my life. So you can find out about more about the full focus planner, if you're interested in that particular one. I like it a lot. So I kind of promoted here, but you can go to practice of therapy.com/full focus planner. And I've got a landing page set up there that just goes into detail more about that system. But not to go far too far down a rabbit trail about that. I think one of the things and just planning for for a new year or just really goal setting in general, I think it's important to really spend some time writing things down and really thinking about it on paper. I like doing something called a brain dump, which is just really getting a sheet of paper or your planner or notebook. And just really everything that comes to mind that you want to accomplish are things that you're thinking about tasks that you want to do. All of those things is just writing it down. And one of the things about doing that is is just really gets it all out of your brain and onto paper to where you can get a different perspective on what you're on you're working on. You know every day pretty much I set small. It's called the in the full focus planner. It's called Your daily big three. And these are just the three most important things that you want to accomplish for that day. I think it's also good to kind of back up and do it on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, that sort of thing. Whatever makes sense to you to really kind of think about that. So, a place to start in setting your priorities and goals for the new year is to really kind of do that brain dump. And then, as you do that brain dump, and the things that you write down and the things that you feel like, need to buy, be priorities, is, as always, I think you need to ask yourself, why those are priorities for you, what is your motivation behind doing those things or accomplishing those things? That is the place at which you will keep yourself grounded in what you're doing. So as you think about your practice, what are some of the things that you want to accomplish with that some of those goals or some of the things you want to accomplish might be around the financial side of your practice, being able to, for example, increase your income, with your practice being able to have other sources of incomes or diversity of income, within your practice. So think about those things, jot them down, the things that come to mind that you want to accomplish, and your motivation for accomplishing those things. You know, this past year, one of the things

that I did at the beginning of last year, is I really identified the different domains of my life, I think all of us have different domains in different areas of our life, where we have maybe some different goals associated with those things. And when I think about domains, I think about, Okay, I've got kind of my business domain, I've got my work here within my practice, that's one domain, but also I have my home life, and my family and that kind of thing, which are, is just as important, if not more important, than my business, a domain. So I've got goals around that particular domain, or that particular aspect of my life. Also, goals around my community life. And also, for me, that involves my church work and some of the things that I do as a clergy person, there are certainly goals and things I want to accomplish in that domain. Then also just, there might be some things that are more community based within your DOMA community community based, no bang domain, if you will, I've got a group of close friends that I get together with regularly. And so there are different things that I like to to be able to accomplish with those people along the way. And it might be something like getting away for a weekend or getting away for a retreat. But I think being able to do that brain dump of all the different things that you want to accomplish, all the things that have got your attention, and then being able to assign them to a different domain has a has a way of helping you organize your priorities throughout the year, you know, in associate associated with any sort of, particularly the business side, and I think even within our home domain, there are probably some financial goals or some financial things you want to accomplish. In fact, one what some people might say that your finances and the financial side of both your practice and your personal life would would constitute one domain in and of its own, and I wouldn't disagree with that. But certainly the financial side of life is tied to all the others in that we do need to have income coming in. We do need to have resources available to us in order to accomplish and to feel comfortable and safe within within our life or our lifestyle, if you will. So I think one of the things that might be a priority or is a good priority is to do a financial deep dive into your practice and into your into your own home finances. One of the things that you've heard from me a good good bet over this last year is the importance of knowing your numbers. And certainly if you're going to be successful in your business and your practice, you need to know your numbers. You need to be able to understand how the money is flowing through your business and through what you do day in and day out. So doing a financial deep dive at the beginning of the year can kind of give you a baseline for, for where you are now. And then where you want to get to with your finances.

I use QuickBooks for that. The one of the one of the ways that I've got things set up within my practice the system, two processes, I use therapy notes to kind of manage the individual patient or client accounts, the money there, but the overall practice, I use QuickBooks for that. And so within QuickBooks, you can create various reports and that sort of thing. And I think one particular area that's important to look at is to look at your Where are your best income sources for the year? You know, where are you where's the money coming in, where are the places where maybe it's falling behind, or things that you want to look at there. An example of that, in my own practice, one of the things that we we discovered here towards the end of the year, is that we weren't doing as good a job on our collection of co pays, and the insurance based practice, so we weren't collecting well, on those. And that was something that we needed to tweak. Because that's some people like to put it some low hanging fruit, if you're not getting your money on the front end from your, from your clients, it, it's harder later to, to collect from them if you're not getting it on the on the front end. So by doing a financial deep dive with those different things, that's how you can discover where what I like to call the money leaks are. And so that can give you another priority to look at, within your practice. Um, another another area that I think is important to people, and we've learned a lot about this over this past, past, really, I started to say the past year, but the last couple of years with COVID, in that when we start getting isolated from folks, we kind of lose a sense of community and a sense of support from others. I know that this past year, back in October, I got together with my mastermind group we ended meaning on on zoom up until that time, and we got together for a long weekend retreat. And it did so much to kind of give me clarity about my goals within my practice, but also within my consulting business with the practice of therapy where I want to want to take those things. So being able to have a community and a group of trusted colleagues to bounce things off of with just goes a long way in being able to help you have some clarity. But also not only that, but also gives you some accountability, within accomplishing the goals and in the priorities that you have for your, for your practice and for your businesses. So I would encourage you to seek out community encourage you to find ways to do that and incorporate that within your within your practice within your your daily, your daily activities. Again, focus group is a good way to do that. In that you You quickly learn about other other people's struggles, but you also have people trusted people that you can bounce ideas off of to help you in your own struggles and know only the the things that you're you're working on within your practice. So having a sense of community is an important thing and an important priority for people. Another another thing that I think is important to remember. And just thinking about not only short term, like when I say short term, what are you going to be doing over the next year? What are you going to be doing over the next several months, what are you going to be doing over the next week is to really kind of look at what you need to be focused on in order to to reach your goals. There are a lot of different paths to that. But I think one of the things that was helpful for me is to do what I call a 50,000 foot view. In other words, where do I want to be five and 10 years from now, in terms of what I see my lifestyle being what I see, as I want practice to look like how I want it to run all of those kinds of things. So spend some time writing those down and just brainstorming around long term goals and how they're connected to your short term goals. In other words, what are you doing now that's going to move the the needle forward for you in the long run.

Another thing that I think is important in this kind of this kind of has a thread back to the financial side of things, but really looking at what you can do within your systems and processes, to clean things up to kind of get rid of the deadwood, so to speak, there might be things that you're doing within your practice that you could outsource that you could hand off to somebody else, which would be a much better use of your time. If you were to think about it, and you were to spend anywhere from 15 to $30, an hour on a virtual assistant that can answer phone calls for you that could set appointments for you, that would be a huge return on your investment. One, usually one client pays for a virtual assistant, if you're able to get one appointment from a client that will pay for the cost of a virtual assistant. So being able to look at your money mindset around those kinds of things, is an important priority. But also looking at how you can can outsource in a more efficient way of being able to hand things off so that you're not spending time on things that really aren't going to bring you any income anyway. Quick shout out to Uriah Gill for Uriah has got a company called the productive therapist. And rearise really kind of forte is really helping people see how they can manage their time more efficiently, but also learning how to outsource things in a way that are going to bring you a good return on your investment for that outsourcing. So be sure to check that out with Uriah, at practice, the productive excuse me, the productive therapist calm and there'll be links here in the show notes and the show summary. So you can find out more about Uriah. So just a quick recap of the some of the things that I've covered, first of all, is just looking at doing a brain dump, being able to kind of get everything out of the brain, and putting it all down on paper, so that you can see how it's connected to the very the differing domains of your life. And so kind of categories, categorizing the different things that you want to accomplish over this next year. The other thing is to look at the things that you want to accomplish is to have clarity around the why around those things, the motivation behind wanting to accomplish and set goals for yourself. Because if you don't start with why you're gonna quickly flounder and you're really not going to really know the way forward very well, you'll be shooting from your hip too much. So understand your why understand your motivation behind things. The other thing that I mentioned, of course, is doing a financial deep dive are really looking at where the money's coming in where it's going out. And looking for ways to diversify your income over this next year, whether it's either starting a group practice or creating products and services that other people are interested in buying. So that's, that's another another part of the financial piece and being able to understand all of that. The other part is to do that financial deep dive of being able to look at your numbers and understand them, and not to be to shy away from that too much. The other thing is building community and the importance of having people that are going to support you and hold yourself accountable in the coming year with the with the ideas and the different domains that you have in your life. Then when it comes down to it, one of the things about creating change just means creating new routines in our life. We're all creatures of habit. And I think one thing that just makes sense sometimes is to is to is to mix up our routine. I know that one of the things that has been helpful for me is really looking at how I've done things over this past year, and just being able to look at okay, let me change the order of some of the things that I'm doing. And that just kind of gives us a fresh perspective when we go about it in that way. So hopefully these Tips are going to be helpful for you and give you some things to think about. Yeah, and I'm looking forward to you being with me through 2022. Folks, this

wraps up this first episode of 2022. So glad you join me on this journey. Hopefully the things that I spoke about here in this particular episode gave you some food for thought, and helping you know how to set your priorities for this coming year. Certainly, there's a whole lot more to this than what I mentioned in just a little short podcast episode. But hopefully, it'll give you some things to think about and just kind of how you organize your priorities for the coming year. Be sure to check out the focus groups that I've got coming up. And you can go over to practice of therapy.com/focus Group to apply there. I'd love to have you join me. And as I mentioned in this episode, having some community that can support you through your journey is just a big game changer for a lot of folks. And I know it has been for me in the past. And I would love to have you join me in this upcoming focus group, it's going to be a limited, limited just to just six day people. So grab your spot while they're available. And as always a big thanks to our sponsor of the podcast, therapy notes. You can check them out by going to practice of therapy.com/therapy notes. They are the leading electronic health record system for mental health providers there who I use a my practice and couldn't couldn't operate without them. They are one of those processes, systems and processes that you got to have. So be sure and check them out and use the coupon code Gordon just GLR doe and and you can try them out for two months for free. So thanks again for joining me for the podcast. I'm looking forward to you being with me in 2022. Be sure to follow us or subscribe to the podcast, wherever you might be listening to it and glad you're with me. Take care folks. You have been listening to the practice of therapy podcast with Gordon Brewer, part of the psych craft network of podcasts. Please visit us at practice of therapy.com For more information, resources and tools to help you in starting building and growing your private practice. And if you haven't done so already, please sign up to receive the free private practice startup guide and practice of therapy.com. The information in this podcast is intended to be accurate and authoritative concerning the subject matter covered. It has given what the understanding that neither the host guests or producers are rendering legal accounting or clinical advice. If you need a professional, you should find the right person for them.