Starting the Practice Success Tools blog and website has been a fun and also humbling experience. I really love talking to therapists about practice-building and marketing, and I have lots of great ideas for how to build this site so that it can be really helpful. Finding the time to do more on it has been another story. Or, to be completely honest with myself and you, realizing that I have to choose how to spend my time very consciously has been enlightening.

This is true for all of us, and impacts how we build our practices. I am fortunate in that I’ve been in practice a long time in a city that has been very kind to me. So I am busy and that is good, but it’s not so good for this website. I have a very conscious set of priorities in how I focus my time, and often, I “run out of week” before I get to some of the things on my list. On the business side of things, first comes my current clients and current practice administration. Next comes following up on thank-you’s to those who have sent new referrals. Then comes practice development and marketing, which I write about in more detail in the Practice Success Tools newsletter (shameless plug to sign up for our free membership!)

Often this takes up all the time that I have allocated to work. I’ve learned that I need to have balance in my life, and that means time for marriage, family, and self-care. So I have times that I call work times, and times that are not. At this juncture, it seems that I don’t have enough work time many weeks to devote to my goals to this blog. What to do?

You may run in to similar problems with your practice marketing, especially if you are busy but trying to “re-invent” your practice. An example of this would be a busy managed care practice that you want to shift over into a more self-pay practice. (Another shameless plug — this is the topic of my next e-book, which I am steadily getting closer to finishing!) You know what needs to be done: certain hours, certain spaces in the day and week have to be ear-marked for marketing practices, else they won’t get done.

Mind you, the new practitioner just starting out doesn’t have this problem. If you’re not busy, it’s not nearly as hard to find time to market. But it is very difficult to set aside time that might hold a paying client to devote to marketing activities to bring in other paying clients. Yet that it what we must do, in some way or manner. Otherwise, what eventually will happen in a self-pay practice is that “the well will run dry”: referral sources will dry up, people new to town won’t hear about you, new possibilities won’t get follow up.

What’s the take away here? All of us have to do a “cost-benefit” analysis of our marketing activities, and make conscious choices about how much and when to do them. Having said that, the next logical step is to learn how to carefully track the results of those efforts — also in the shamelessly plugged e-book! So get out your calendar and figure on when and what you’re going to do in the month of May to improve your practice. I’ll be doing the same!

Yesterday I decided to take a deeper look at LinkedIn for networking purposes. Oh my! I’ve been having so much fun, I’m going to need to rein myself in and get back to my “regular” work at my practice.

Specifically I found the group Links for Shrinks, and from them Facebook Marketing for Mental Health Professionals. These are really interesting groups, with great discussions. We’ll see what transpires from this. It’s an area I’ve been wanting to learn more about. As I learn, I’ll be publishing, here and even more so in the member newsletter. You’ll receive it when you sign up for our free membership. Happy networking!

A new Federal tax law will impact how you report your sales, meaning income, numbers for income earned beginning in 2012. You will need to have two separate lines, one for income received as cash and checks, and one for income received from merchant cards and other third-party payors, like Paypal.

So you’ll want to check now that your bookkeeping system keeps track of this so that you don’t have an annoying problem come this time next year, when you are preparing your taxes. I use Quicken (not Quickbooks) and I will be adding a subcategory under my normal “Client fees” category for credit card payments. That way at the end of the year it will automatically print out correctly.

If you use spreadsheets, add an extra column. If you work from your bank statements or checkbook register, you could even just use the “yellow highlighter” method. Whatever works for you is fine. I just recommend that you start your system now. That way, you can work out any kinks as you go along, too.

How to find the right balance between work and life is a dilemma for many of us. Here’s a wonderful quote I just came across. I think it’s great, and hope you do too!

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. I you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.

Suzanne’s Diary to Nicholas, by James Patterson.

This isn’t about practice-building, but sometimes, feeding our soul is really important.

Check out this link to inspirational TV spots, stories and more, all based on values. This one is on Character, and is a nice response to school bullying

http://www.values.com/inspirational-stories-tv-spots/72-Locker

As part of my New Year’s resolutions, I’ve decided that, despite a busy schedule, I need to get out of the office and do some more networking. It’s a very good problem to have, this situation of being busy enough that attending networking meetings is difficult. But a problem it definitely is, because referral sources can disappear, through attrition if nothing else.

What do I mean? Well, in the last 12 months I have seen three major physician referral sources for my practice go away. All were from sad personal circumstances, too. Two had to retire for unexpected health reasons, and one died very unexpectedly.

Other times we may notice that certain people who were referring seem to have stopped. I try hard to thank referrers when they send a new client, even if I have to do a generic “thanks for the recent referral” when I don’t have permission to send a more specific thank you. About once a year I also try to send an “update” type of letter, perhaps with a small gift like dried fruit, to acknowledge that referrals have been sent throughout the year. But I will admit that I’m not good at certain things some practice coaches will advise, like doing an in-service training for office staff and bringing lunch. I think I feel a bit intimidated with that approach.

At any rate, since I belong to our local Chamber of Commerce and a very pleasant women’s business networking group, I intend to start attending more meetings. The women’s group is easier; it meets at lunch time once a month, so if I can just keep my schedule for that 3 hours total block, I get to network with about 40 local business women in a very comfortable situation. That has created referral sources over the years.

Our Chamber of Commerce has several monthly events. There is a monthly luncheon with a speaker, a monthly evening “mixer” type event, and a monthly Friday breakfast meeting. That’s the one that is the most beneficial. There are probably 70 to 100 people there, with 10 seated at my table. So there’s some good “get to know you” talk with 10 people, and a 30-second self-introduction to the rest of the room. That pays off over time, but by Friday I can think of lots of reasons not to set the alarm even earlier than I do the rest of the week. However, that’s my stated intention, so we’ll see what happens.

You may notice I haven’t mentioned the type of networking that’s done at weekly groups like BNI, where there is one person per profession and an expectation that members generate a certain number of referrals for each other. I’ve not heard great successes for therapists with these types of groups, at least in our area. I’d be curious to know what others think about this.

So, hopefully in 2012 I will meet quite a few new people, several of which will develop into good referral sources, and people that I can refer to. We’ll see what happens!

For the last couple of months, I’ve been trying out a really helpful tool, and I’m so pleased. They have really made my life better! And did I mention that they’re free?

Evernote ™ is a wonderful tool that helps you “remember everything” — that’s their tagline. You can put in on your computer, smartphone, and/or iPad, and you can access it from any computer, anywhere. It lets you store a note, picture, clipping from a web page, URL, voice recording, or anything else you can think of.

The beauty of it is that you can “tag” each item with categories, and then sort or view your notes by category. So I have notes tagged with @home computer, @work computer, @errands, and a few other “location” type tags. You can tag it with subjects like Vacation, Blog, Practice, Book, or any other subject you can think of. And here’s a great idea. Things that need to be done “Next” or “Today” can be tagged with that as well.

So, at any point I can be out running around and remember all my errands. I can be sitting at my home computer and remember all the tasks I’m wanting to do related to it. I can make notes of all sorts of cool things about my upcoming vacation. And if I need to know what’s pressing, I can look at what’s “Next”.

It’s really simple to use, and if you start using it a lot, pretty soon all those little scraps of paper with scribbled notes will be gone! Try it! It’s at www.evernote.com. And if you’re feeling extravagant, check out this $5 ebook on how to use it with the Getting Things Done system. This is the book that sold me on Evernote ™. I had never read the Getting Things Done book before, but this little e-book explained the entire really well for my purposes. Later, I read the GTD book, as it’s called, but really, it’s not necessary.

Anyway, I’m loving using Evernote, and little by little, I think I’m getting more organized!

Disclosure: If you buy the e-book from the link above, I make a little bit of money.

After a busy week, relaxing on Sunday with the morning paper is a way to start the day. What did I find but this article, which started with a quote from C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors. It reminds us that we are far,far more than our work. So important for us in our work as healers, to remember to feed our souls. Hope it is helpful to you.

Last time, we talked about how to raise your gross income by taking a look at the average fee you charge. The other side of the equation is how many clients you see. If your practice is full, read through the following, and if you are doing other things than what is suggested, please comment below to share your ideas.

At this time of year I always like to assess what I’ve done well, and what I need to improve. Along with this is looking at strengths and weaknesses, both for myself and for the techniques I use to build my practice. Casey Truffo talks about introvert methods and extrovert methods of practice building, and I just love that concept!

I am very drawn to introvert methods, like blogging, sending out newsletters, maintaining my website, and writing thank you letters to referral sources. I think I’ve done a great job with most of that in my practice this year, with the exception of sending out newsletters. This needs improvement. It’s a little more time intensive, but very important, so I want to focus more on that this year.

Last year at this time I took a look at my referral sources, and realized that one or two big ones had retired. That made me realize that I need to continue to develop new referral sources, or I’ll end up with an empty list of professionals and others who know me well enough to send me clients. So last year, early in the year, I decided to try to meet one or two more doctors. I initiated contact with two. One didn’t seem to generate any results, but the other has sent me several clients over the year, so that has been a resounding success!

This coming year I plan to do that again, so I need to develop a “target list” of who to try to meet. I’ll send an introductory letter, then follow up with a phone call (this is the hardest part for me) asking for a short meeting. The meeting part will take about 15 minutes to introduce myself, ask questions about their practice and how I can be of help, and ask how they would like any referrals to be handled by me. (Notice the emphasis on helping them, rather than simply asking them to send me referrals).

I used to attend two local networking groups, and I miss doing that. My favorite one is a monthly lunch meeting for women, and I keep ending up with clients scheduled in that time. I don’t know if I can change that easily, but I continue to try. The other is a much larger group that meets monthly for a Friday breakfast. There is absolutely no reason that I can’t attend this, other than the fact that I love not having to get up and get dressed right away on Friday mornings (my day off). I’m not making any promises here, but really, it would be good to go. I always love it once I’m there, because the energy is so high in the room. We’ll see!

What can you do to increase the number of clients who call you? What is your marketing personality, a la Casey Truffo ?((See a previous post about that here.)). I’d suggest coming up with a short list of 1 or 2 easier things you can do, and 1 or 2 “stretches”. Then get really specific: write up your goal, put them on the calendar, and do them! Then track your results, and modify from there.

Here’s wishing all of you a happy and successful New Year! Remember, if you are seeing more clients, you are helping more clients, and that makes a positive impact on the world around you.

Well, we appear to have made it through 2011. I’ve had a very busy year in my practice, which makes me happy. My clients, and those I’ve spoken with to direct them to our other therapists, have had a mixed year, and that makes me sad. It seems that either they are in good shape but worried because their job is still in place so far, or they are really feeling the pinch because they have lost a job, or their business has lost customers.

I think it’s always good to do an assessment of what has gone well, what has not, and what we want to differently. That’s what we do for our clients, and we need to do it for ourselves regarding our practices..

I suggest that you start by looking at the cold hard numbers: how’s your gross income (before expenses) and how are your expenses? Every dollar of expense that you can trim creates more profit, but you have to be careful: some expenses produce what’s called a Return on Investment (ROI). For instance, my practice website costs me money, but I would never consider that an expense to be trimmed because it pays for itself many times over in new clients.

Gross income in very important, as is the number of clients that you saw. We all need to earn a living, and because all of our living expenses go up, our income needs to go up every year as well. Because we sell our time, there are only two ways to make that income go up: see more clients, and increase fees. Both are important.

Do you have a clear sense of the number of clients you want to see, and the times you want to see them? If you are just starting out, you may think that you should see clients whenever they want to come to come, and maybe at first that’s true. But if you have any other sort of life commitments, that idea quickly becomes unworkable.

I keep a “master schedule” of client appointments on a small piece of paper with my smartphone calendar. (How’s that for low-tech meeting high-tech?!). Most of my clients like to have standing appointments, and that works for me as well. Using this method helps to easily see where my standing openings are. It also encourages me to block out a longer lunch break, which greatly improves the flow of my day by helping me stay caught up with returning calls and hopefully taking a short walk outside for some sunlight.

I also keep a simple spreadsheet on the computer, that tracks how many clients I see each week and my weekly client fees charged (whether they are paid that week or not). This accomplishes two things. It helps me see over time that certain months are just slower than other months, and not to worry about it. And it helps me track how my “average client fee” is doing.

Most of us have a top fee we charge, and then a range we are willing to deal with. By adding up the total fees charged for the week, and dividing by the number of clients seen, you arrive at your average fee. There are two ways to make this increase: you can raise your bottom, and your can raise your top. I don’t like to raise fees for current clients unless they have been coming in a long time and their circumstances have changed dramatically. So all of the following is what I do with new clients as they call.

First, how long has it been since your raised your full fee? How often do you get it? What do others in your area charge? What is your experience and skill set compared to theirs? These are all factors to consider. Next, can you say “My fee is …..” comfortably and congruently? Sometimes this takes a bit of practice. Finally, and this is hardest of all, can you say “My fee is ….” and then be quiet, and let the client respond. Many therapists rattle on at this point, saying “but I can charge less if needed”, or something like that. Just say your fee, and see what happens. If the client sounds like they can’t afford it, you can ask them what is workable and see if they are even in your ballpark. Learning not to undersell your fee at the initial phone contact can really boost your income a lot.

Take a very hard look at how low a fee you state that you will accept. If there is much more than a 25% difference between the two, then I think the range is too large. You can often significantly boost your income simply by raising your bottom fee.

So there’s something to think about it in terms of the fee part of your income equation. Next time, we’ll take a quick look at some New Year’s resolutions for boosting numbers of clients.