PoP 176 | Adding Supervision with Michigan LLPC Supervisor Joe Sanok

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LLPC Supervision

Today we’re talking about adding supervision with Michigan LLPC Supervisor Joe Sanok.

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In This Podcast:

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Becoming a Supervisor:

  • Consider whether it is something you would enjoy
  • Market yourself, i.e.: talks, etc.
  • Have a page specific to supervision on your Website – visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/namecheap to see what domains are available
  • Build a community
  • Decide what to charge, consider:
    • Average hourly rate for counseling
    • Size of group, i.e.: 6-8 people
    • Employing a second, contract supervisor
  • Network with other supervisors

Visit www.practiceofthepractice.com/paper and enter ’50 off’ to get $50 off Joe’s contract paperwork pack.

Meet Joe Sanok

consultant headshot JoeJoe Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is one of the world’s leading private practice consultants. He is the owner of the Traverse City counseling practice, Mental Wellness Counseling. Joe helps counselors to start private practices and grow them.

 

 

Podcast Transcription

Pop 176 | Adding Supervision With Michigan Llpc Supervisor Joe Sanok

[0:00] Go here i hope your december’s going off some one to let you know that in january i am going to be launching three video series i have the guys from cuple media cuplemedia.com they do,
amazing videos for,
counselors their private practice may help me put together three just incredible looking video so head over to slowdownschool.com we could opt in to get those videos before anybody else again that slowdownschool.com,
just popped into the email and i’m gonna be sending those videos out in january,
i know it’s me awesome and really like him and learn a lot about slowing down setting goals outsourcing them so that you can work less and make more.

[0:40] Music.

[1:09] Called welcome to practice of the practice podcast i am juice and cure host and i am so glad that you’re here with me today,
i hear the radio sent you plaza inn beautiful downtown traverse city there’s a building going in next door to me and i think it’s going to block,
part of my view of the water but i think that’s why i got a discount on the rent because they knew that was coming they knew it.

[1:34] So kind of bomber.
Well super excited about so many things the cyber monday deal that i sent out my monthly income report should reflect i think when it’s all said and done it was almost.
Two grand that i made off of the paperwork package after the hundred dollars off of the paperwork package and am so instead of being hundred forty nine ounces forty nine dollars,
it’s a great way for you to get a deal clad that you guys were on the email list,
if you are not on the email list that is probably one of the best things you can be and let me tell you some different ones you should be and paste and kind of what your goals are,
so if you’re just starting a practice and i would say you wanna download the twentieth step checklist over at www dot practiceofthepractice.com/start you gonna get e-mails are all about starting practice all the basics of starting a practice that’s exactly where you wanna be,
the oven established practice then i’d say head over to practiceofthepractice.com/grow that’s www.practiceofthepractice.com/grow,
and that’s where you’re gonna get more information on growing your practice establishing it,
i only send you guys quality e-mails i sell very few things through it and if i do sell something it usually that’s an awesome deal that like ambulance and my best friends that you gotta get this is totally worth it.
Also for blogging heading over practiceofthepractice.com/5dayblog.

[3:01] You can get all five days in a row tips on blogging and then if you have insurance or wanna taking chances part of your practice my consultant that works for practice of the practice allison pidgeon,
put together this awesome awesome,
email sequence for you’re gonna get can step by step walk through on how to add insurance to your practice method practiceofthepractice.com/insurance a bunch of really cool places to be e-mails probably.
Five to ten times a day from people that are just so excited about can what they’ve learned and what they’ve achieved and.
Big shout out to megan warner i’m gonna be interviewing her soon and she’s my consulting clients today i’ll talk with soon,
but she is has already hit six figures this year and so she’s,
anything more than doubled from last year so super huge shout out for her and just has grown in scale than two thousand seventeen going to be even bigger for her so so many cool things going on today though,
we are gonna be talking all about adding supervision.
As part of your model for can have diversified income but also in just kinda helping the world in a different way on to me it’s really important for us to think about not just our income and our influence but also or impact.

[4:24] And as a counselor we almost always have supervisors when we’re for setting us that could be in her internship.
That could be afterwards each state has have different rules some of them column on license something called pri licence in michigan it’s a limited license.
Hold on a sec and use the coffee.

[4:45] Well that’s good cup of coffee avenue standing desk and so i can it’s awesome it’s like stay its huge mr can take and i have to reset things up and as grab my coffee and it so as supervisors,
we can really pass on the things that were learning and for me it’s really important to not just passing the clinical skills but also be passing on the importance in looking good design and marketing and you just think about how the non-profit world,
is so terrible at marketing amazing services so people that are helping kids in foster care you learn life skills so they don’t end up in prison,
but that’s really really important work but so many of their websites just look terrible in their marketing and branding the way they tell stories is just terrible and then they wonder why they don’t get donations and so,
when you’re a counselor that’s been around a while you listen to podcasts like this and you decide to go into being a supervisor is part of what you do.
It’s a really big responsibility but also a chance to influences next generation of counselors that of you’re gonna be moving up.
In the world of private practices they may end up working in non profits in being directors so for me it’s a no brainer to be a supervisor.
One of the first things that i want you to think about before you go into being a supervisor is do you like it.
Do you like the idea of supervising people you like the idea of people calling you and saying here’s this crisis with one of my clients i don’t know what to do.

[6:15] Do you like the idea of coming up with teachings or ideas of things for people that are on license dupree license that you get to work with,
to start with do you like it.

[6:28] And then the next step you’re gonna wanna take is to really look at are you license to supervise and so in michigan for example you have to have your full license as an lpc is a licensed professional counselor.
In other areas so and social worker meds for my cousin that a social worker but the gift of practice for a certain amount of time.
In psychology to supervise a masters level psychologist you have to have your doctorate.

[6:56] Who is always different rules for different licenses as well you’re gonna wanna look at you need additional training so in michigan you have to go through,
if your lpc and you wanna supervise lol pc is a limited license professional counselors for example,
you have to go through supervisor training in this to make sure that supervisors know all the liabilities that they know all the methods they know the law they understand that the,
all the supervisors are on the same page and then lastly before you get started you’re really gonna wanna look at.
Is their liability involved in there almost always is.
And so the liability portion you wanna make sure your covered under your liability insurance so when you’re doing that.
Makes you look at all those things before you decide to jump into supervision.

[7:46] So after you’ve decided that you like it after you looked with your license and training have liability insurance to do it then you’re gonna wanna look,
into how do you market yourself and you really think about that when you’re gonna be a supervisor the after market yourself,
because a lot of communities only have a handful of supervisors,
but for me it’s really important to not just in things like the podcast set myself apart or just in my private practice.
But in supervision set myself apart from other supervisors and i never put other supervisors down and never say that there bad supervisors i think that’s just good.

[8:22] At six in regards to other supervisors mean if there is a fickle complaint or something then i might not say it wouldn’t recommend that person was more that what do you want as a supervisor to get out of your experience.
If you want to know more about insurance and you want to have insurance private practice and,
you don’t wanna get challenge and your marketing i’m probably not your supervisor there’s other supervisors that may be more kind of in line with your goals.
So you market yourself to your general community for me with that has looked like is speaking in class a’s,
so we have three graduate programs here in traverse city we have one counseling into social work masters program but there’s also bachelor social work programs as well,
and so for me speaking in class is the really important thing for one of them passing on information as well i’m also,
able to kinda talk about my private practice talk about my supervision,
people than are thinking about mental wellness counseling at the place that they wanna work when they’re done with their degree as well they’re also gonna be looking at you know i am one of joe’s a supervisor,
you might get and i podcasts and then over those years that and grad school i can be fostering that relationship with them,
as well every spring i put in an event that’s called the path to lpc,
remember at our local yacht club in south padre on the water and it will usually be in april right a couple of weeks before graduation and it’s super informative about in the state of michigan.

[9:54] How to get licensed to become lol pc and then how do you move into that lpc and i’ll have some of my current supervisor is there.
I live past supervises there all the people that work at mcdonald’s counting little panel of five to eight people.
That are either newly licensed or newly got there lol pc or only got their lpc it’s a great way to say okay there’s this gap,
between when you graduate and when you get your license in michigan here’s all the things that you need to know she need to know you gotta find your supervisor before you can get a license but often times you can get a job to your license and so,
should you try to get a job sale ply for my license to show you my license then apply for jobs so it’s asking a sticky situation some people talk about how they did that.
Also a lot of them will talk about why is better to have a supervisor that was outside of their agency such as joe it is really getting head pretty first person testimonials from people.

[10:55] And so it’s really important to create this event for me to help walk people through the process and through that process i get some new supervises as well i know just give some good information.
Bye everyone their first drink get some nice food so will get some dollars and olives and cheese and it’s just a lot of fun to get everybody together cuz a lot of them been grad school together.
And you know i’m going to drop two hundred dollars on that evening but when we look at the numbers of how much i can make per month and supervision you’ll see that little bit of marketing money goes a really long way.

[11:32] Next you wanna look at writing up a page that specific to sue.
On your website is nothing in the front and center of the you want to be ranking for the supervision determine your states of someone types in lol pc supervisor in michigan honoring number one for that,
so what did i buy i bought a little lpcsupervision.com and it just redirect to a page on my website.
So i looked at i looked up a few urls over and named chief you can go to practiceofthepractice.com/namecheap.
If you want to purchase any of these I’m so freak sample NewYorkcounselorsupervision.com is available.

[12:13] California m f t supervision is available and so is new york counselor supervisor california m f t supervision.
Counselorsupervisortexas.com so in most states people aren’t purchasing the urls to be able to.
Hi to really optimize estimate say more about the page in just a second my wife is dropping off my lunch and i want to say hi so let me pause and other it back.

[12:42] Alright was good seeing away for and daughter little lake in she’s two years old and she was so excited to see me.
So let’s talk a little bit about what you wanna do you and that page see you want that page to be the authority of guide to getting licensed in your state it should be everything that your state should have done so when i gonna michigan dot gov.
And i look at the paperwork for filing lol pc.
It is so tough to understand and continually try to improve it but typically government websites as a rule and not that great.
And sorry to burst your bubble if you loved government websites,
but you want yours to be a step by step guide in a variety of ways so that when someone googles how to become an lol p,
your website comes up right below the state of michigan or right below the state of california or texas or new york or oklahoma or minnesota our notification list all these other states so.
When you do that make it easier than the state give it a step by step maybe even print out the paperwork pull your i phone,
and video tape of filling it out so your saying so this is the part you gotta fill out if you are applying for this if you apply for this you don’t have to fill out the section.
Phillip this part in this part in this part now let’s talk about your professional disclosure statement.
And if so when you have videos when you have pretty images are on that make it easier when you have a link to the paper cuz often time just times just to find and state is so hard link directly to the paper work.

[14:19] Maybe even download as a pdf and have it right there but make sure it’s updated so if they come out with a new one and make sure that yours is updated.

[14:28] Also you want to think about with marketing.
How do you make your supervision stand out so when i often say to people that are looking to potentially doing supervision with me is that.
It’s not like we do supervision some basement office and you just sit there and we just do clinical case after clinical case no,
in the beginning we put the agenda together we talk about who has cases that they need to discuss who has marketing questions who is changing jobs.
And restructured out where we do monthly supervision instead of weekly which in michigan i’m allowed to do so will do a four hour supervision,
and we’ll just plow through a whole bunch of things over their for hours and talk more about that exact construction a minute but.
When we do for four and a half hours can a segments we can really dive deep into some cases we can dive deep into career we can dive deep into all those things that the supervisors care about.

[15:29] So that’s part of it also we me and my beautiful corner office in downtown traverse city where there’s lots of light you can see the water were a block away from the water in so in the summer time.
Well sometimes go down stairs i give them an assignment talk with the part about something on the way to the water will go walk by the water,
also do some anti burn out moments where people can just sit and look at the water and tell him to put the phone on airplane mode.
And don’t look at the phones you start the water and enjoy the beach.
He’s if we burnout counselors and we’re not gonna be as affective so they need to slow down.

[16:06] So we do all these really can’t innovative and fun things will do team builders at almost every summer will go sailing into one of our supervision on a sailboat.
So people get the experiences the steam connections community of counselors that they have fun together.
They make meals together so some bring a pot bring like a big pot hot pot of sauce heating pot the green pot to supervision no bring a crock pot of soup though make something for everybody.
And so really becomes a community and it’s going to be something i talk about it at the very end house structure to build that community in a sec after i drink this coffee really talk about can figuring out what to charge.

[16:53] Izzo couple things around what to charge.

[16:58] And building that community is one way to think about it think about your average hourly that you do for counseling,
and they also look at what size group you can do in your states are different states have different rules and you have groups for you can groups of eight there is no rules.
So in michigan is not specific cap,
because the best practices that you don’t want to group to be more than six to eight people and so if i have more than eight people actually a second supervisor that i bring in and i just pay him an hourly,
and he then make some money by being there and doing supervision i then have a better ratio and we’ll talk about that a little bit but say your state allows you to have six people in a group.
You want to look at hopefully making about 25% or more,
then what you make in a regular counseling so if you do a hundred fifty dollars a session and say for most practice of the practice listeners,
that’s a pretty good ratio is a pretty standard average rate for council of three multiply that times one point two five.
That’s a hundred and eighty seven dollars and fifty cents no see can you six.
By the basic so that would be around thirty one dollars per person and a group of six so thirty one dollars per hour,
that’s a lot better than a lot of supervises the only do individual me chart hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars so they get cheaper supervision,
can you get more per hour Messi you wanted to make you to 25 an hour let’s just divide that by 6 that’d be $37.

[18:30] So what i do is i say with a group of four it’s gonna be forty dollars an hour.

[18:38] And if it’s a group of five or six its thirty five dollars an hour.
And it’s a group of seven or more than its gonna be thirty dollars an hour so they know the in that group of four hours they’re gonna pay somewhere between a hundred and twenty and hundred sixty dollars.
Free monthly budget 160 a month they are good they know exactly how much they’re going to be paying for their supervision.
Now it’s nice is that as we have those larger groups if i pay for that second supervisor let’s run a little bit and after so say we have twelve people.

[19:12] And they are each paying thirty dollars an hour and we do that times four hours,
that’s one thousand four hundred and forty dollars so i pay the supervisor fifty bucks an hour he just shows up,
doesn’t supervision walks away there’s no marketing has own liability insurance all that.
So then summer subtract two hundred off of that so that’s one thousand two hundred and forty dollars that i made over that for hours actually give away the first thirty minutes for free so that she four and a half hours.
So we are official supervision is from four thirty until eight thirty once a month,
but if people shop at four in the still legally thirty can leave early then they get that extra half hour supervision for free,
so the way to make sure everybody’s there right at four thirty spanish up at four fifteen only get fifteen minutes of free supervision,
but the way to really get people going and by.
Bring that larger chunk of time once a month i have people that drive up three or four hours from south of kalamazoo down by bay city in detroit from lp now south of the bridges of places if you’re in mission you know i do and i’m talking about.
But the drive from all over the state because they want to work with me for consulting but they also want to work with me on the clinical work and they have to do it,
for their own lol pc so if i divide this out over the four point five hours then zipping two hundred and seventy dollars and fifty six cents per hour.
So franklin asian that’s a really good hourly rate and it for the supervisor she’s thirty bucks an hour is a really good rate as well.

[20:49] And so even if you have a cap.
I think we’re looking at could you have a second supervisor that you just contract with and as needed basis and so paul who’s one of my friends and he also is a supervisor.
He said as long as nobody knew in that day i can come or i can come let you know how many people are coming.
So you can have the can at will employer or at will contract your kind of approach that’s really you know a great way to do that.
Great way to have can extra money coming in start from the for my words desert song next door.

[21:24] So we’ve looked at the money we put the marketing we’ve looked at the training liability whether you like it or talk just a little bit more about how you zoom out from the specific supervision.
So when i think about doing supervision i really want this to be a safe community for counselors.
And what that means is it’s not just a place where people are getting a clinical hours in but it also place where counselors can,
vent they can talk about some personal issues it can be a healthy place for counselor sort through things not count.
If things are going wrong in their life we should know about that so that we can better support.
So one of a kind of things that i always do at the beginning is we start with making agenda of what’s going on with you and talk about client cases so jake has a claim case you know.
Tara has something else ans we make that age and i kinda lump them together,
and then after that we always do something called happy and crappy so one person will say hear something happy that happened over the last month and hear something crappy and can be from their personal life it can be from their work life.
And then they choose the one pass at right for some reason i just hate going in a circle and so they get to choose who they want to do and other people in my group just love going in a circle.

[22:50] And so we had people talk about how their dad was just diagnosed with cancer we’ve had people talk about how some health issues were happening their kids we’ve had people talk about how frustrated they are with their job.
So becomes a safe place to talk to these things and often times people are from the same agency.
And we talked about how important it is that this doesn’t go back to the agency and that if there is something about the agency that maybe you ask that person to step out of the room for a couple of minutes you can process through any can be a safe place.

[23:20] As well i really want this to be a place that counselors can develop that they can help each other grow they can come to the growing professionally that they hear about jobs that they hear about opportunities that the really.
Are looking for each other in a way that helps them to all grow faster.

[23:40] Some really at the end of it all when your supervisor it comes back to two things first you wanna make it really awesome you wanna do things that,
our creative fun that build community that just yo make it lively and tap into the reason we went to counseling.

[23:57] But this has been awesome yes wanna be available mean your town’s easier licensees they need to be able to access you process through things.
Talk about difficult situations so that they can continue to grow as therapists as well.
So if you’re interested in looking at my contract that i have for supervision my paperwork packet my ten ninety-nine contract all of that you can get over at practiceofthepractice.com/paperwork again this practice of the practiceofthepractice.com/paperwork and if you enter fifty the number fifty off it will take fifty bucks off right away so you will get it for i think it’s ninety seven dollars instead of one forty seven.
So head over there that discount is limited to just a handful of people so again that’s practiceofthepractice.com/paperwork and use fifty off,
get fifty bucks off so if you listen to this in,
two thousand eighteen that probably still not going on so sorry about that but i imagine in two thousand seventeen that discount should be going on for a bit.

[25:04] And any other updates i need to make sure you know about all,
slowdownschool.com make sure you subscribe over there to get the videos that are gonna be launching and then on christmas day i’m going to be launching the twelve days of practice in between podcasts and a row.
All about different tips based on the numbers to three for five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve on the twelve days of practice with your.
Consulting joe and i can i am so excited to help you grow your practice started planning all that things to me in two years into your brain,
you inspire me so much with the work that you’re doing and keep it up and i’ll talk to you soon.

[25:46] Music.

[25:57] Fifty thousand right after the thirty of information in regards to the subject matter covered is giving me understanding that needed to host with a publisher rendering legal hunting clinical or other professional information if you need a professional,
you should find one and special thanks to advance ounces sexy for the intro music and i think that’s it.

[26:17] Music.