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Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m your host Whitney Owens recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner, and private practice consultant. Each week through personal story or amazing interviews, I will help you learn how to start, grow and scale your practice from a faith-based perspective. I will show you how to have an awesome faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake. You too can have a successful practice, make lots of money, and be true to yourself.
I loved my interview that I did for today’s episode with Dr. Mark Mayfield. Within our Facebook community for faith in practice, I reached out to a few people and said, “What kind of topics have we not covered on the podcast? What do you want to hear about?” Several people mentioned nonprofits because nonprofit is obviously a big deal in the world, but specifically within Christianity. And then specifically within faith-based practices, we see a number of practices going the nonprofit route to be able to do ministry in their area. And so I’ve been looking for somebody to be able to interview on this topic and was really grateful to be able to find Dr. Mark Mayfield and he has got multiple locations, been doing this for almost four years or probably four years by the time this episode is released and had a lot of great information to share on nonprofit.
What I also really liked was, the problem I hear from a lot of people is how do you make the money work? So he was able to make the money work in such a way that his clinicians do well. In fact, they make more than the clinicians in the area, and he has great retention rates for his clinicians and able to do not only counseling at their centers, but really make it more of like a holistic approach in their community and being able to meet many different needs of therapy in different types of ways. And so he brings a great approach in the way that he runs not only a counseling center, but also in doing like counseling ministry, basically in his community. So you’re going to want to listen in on this interview, especially if you’ve ever considered starting a nonprofit or changing your practice to a nonprofit, or maybe you’re just trying to figure out what kind of private practice you want to have. You’ve got lots of great tips here, and he was just really great to be able to meet. So now, without any further ado, this is episode number 76 with Dr. Mark Mayfield on how to run a nonprofit private practice.
[WHITNEY]: Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. On today’s show, I have Dr. Mark Mayfield. He’s a licensed professional counselor, a board-certified counselor and founder and CEO of Mayfield Counseling Centers. He has more than 14 years of professional counseling experience in clinical, judicial, and faith-based counseling settings across a wide range of patient demographics. Dr. Mayfield has professional experience in treating and addressing anxiety, depression, and PTSD, substance abuse, domestic violence, self-injury, and suicide. He has been featured in prominent media outlets including Woman’s Day, Hello Giggles, NBC, Reader’s Digest, Byrdie, and more. Dr. Mayfield is on a list of mental health professionals that was invited to the White House in December 2019 and has had periodic calls with the White House to discuss mental health in America. Thanks for coming on the show today.
[DR. MARK MAYFIELD]: Yes, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[WHITNEY]: Yes, so let’s just kind of start out here with your private practice journey. How did you become a counselor and start your private practice? Then we can kind of go from there.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: It’s a fun story. I love telling it because it just shows how faithful God is. So I started out as youth pastor and had a young individual that attempted suicide through drug overdose and another one that completed suicide. I did not know how to respond or interact with the parent issues and school board and school and students and that kind of stuff. And so I just felt really called to go back to school and ended up going to Denver Seminary to get my master’s degree in counseling, and then went on to get my PhD in counseling and just really saw a need for a good quality therapy that was accessible.
My wife ended up calling five or six counselors to find some support just to work through her childhood leukemia story and nobody called her back. We were just sitting around one day just going, “If we could call people back or answer the phone, I wonder if we could make a difference.” And so that’s kind of how Mayfield Counseling Centers started and just from a place of wanting to care for people well.
[WHITNEY]: Yes, well, you’re making a good point. I hear that story over and over again. It’s unfortunate, but I guess fortunate for you because you learned how to answer the phone and get people into treatment.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes, right.
[WHITNEY]: Well, wonderful. Of course, I always like talking about Denver Seminary because that’s where my husband went to school and we were out there, gosh, time just flies but I feel like it was like seven, 10 years ago, something like that, where he got his master’s in divinity. So I love connecting with people that went there.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes. You probably were there right after I left.
[WHITNEY]: Oh, so neat. Well, so then you and your wife, I guess, started your practice together?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: We did. She is a decorator and loves hospitality. And so we added that piece to the practice where you walk in and you feel like you’re in somebody’s living room. We have coffee and tea and a pottery barn type in waiting room and just wanted to care for people. So she was the decorator, the designer and did that for a while and has since stepped down to do homeschooling and be mom and that kind of stuff.
[WHITNEY]: Awesome. Great. So you did a solo practice for, how long was that?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: No, zero days. We started with four people.
[WHITNEY]: Oh, well, I’d love to hear more about that. People ask me if that’s possible. So I’d love to hear what was that like, starting with four.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: It was good. it was a lot of weight on my shoulders because I wanted them to succeed. And so as many people do, I had five or six different jobs to, I mean I exaggerate, but I had multiple jobs to make that work. You know, we poured everything we had into the practice and the success of those that started with us.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. So I know what we wanted to talk about today was having a nonprofit private practice. And so did you start out as a for-profit business and make a transition and then can you share with us some details about first of all, why you chose to make the transition?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Sure. Yes. So actually this is, I’m glad that, it’s fun to be on this podcast because Joe was my consultant when we started out with the for-profit practice. We live in kind of the front range of Colorado and so having just a rash of suicides, teen suicides about five years ago and you know, in a fee for service —
[WHITNEY]: I remember that.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes. I mean, it was not cool and it’s still, we’re still struggling. There’s a lot of things that are going on right now that it’s very reminiscent of five years ago. But you know, it was a free for service business. It’s really hard to develop enough margin to plant another center or to grow because you’re doing your best to take care of yourself and pay your expenses and that kind of stuff. So I just, I sat with, after a, I used to go to every funeral of the teenagers just to stay connected and to be a support and I remember driving home one day, just bawling my eyes out, I’d actually pull over, and just pulled over. I just asked the Lord, I said, “What can we do to make a difference?”
When I just got the sense that, you know research shows that if you plan to center in the hardest hit area, that suicides will go down and so I met with a commercial real estate agent who’ was a friend of mine and said, “Hey, do you got any space up in the North end of town here that I could have for free or for discounted rate for the next six months until we get our feet underneath us and kind of work towards establishing ourselves?”
And he goes, “How about you consider being a nonprofit?” And I said, “What do you mean.” He said, “What about getting the community involved in mental health and developing a client assistance fund and doing things that are beyond a typical private practice?” Because he knew my heart and he knew what I was doing in the community. And he goes, “I’ll pay for the transition.” And that was like $17,000 to transition from a for-profit to a nonprofit. And I said, “Oh my gosh. Okay.” And so he did and about three months later we opened our North location in the hardest-hit area of Colorado Springs and began seeing people. We grew exponentially and we’re helping school districts and churches and organizations just really fight the effects of the suicides. And you know, we’ve been a nonprofit ever since. We’re actually coming up on our four year anniversary in like five days.
[WHITNEY]: Oh, congratulations. That’s such an amazing story. I love what you just shared there and so important, this idea of being where people are. Like where people are in pain instead of just setting up shop wherever you want to or maybe where you think is the most affluent area, but also where’s the most pain and need. So how many centers do you have now?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Well COVID has adjusted that a little bit too. So we are readjusting kind of our mission, not readjusting the mission and vision, but we’re really adjusting kind of how we implement it. And so we have one central location right now, but we’ll soon have like five satellite locations. So we’re moving down South to a very kind of a service area, wasteland in a town called Pueblo and then we’re going to be moving into partnering with our partner churches. And so some of the partner churches we work with are going to give us office spaces that allow us to spread out throughout the town without having any overhead and then we’re partnering with another nonprofit that just opening a new building. That’s going to let us have office space for free. So basically we’re going to be in the North, central, East, West and South parts of town to be more accessible. And we just started taking Medicaid about a year ago because we really want to be a change agent in people that can’t afford typical $150 sessions. And so instead of being a name, instead of being a number, we want people to be a name and be good for it. And so we are really expanding our Medicaid services to meet the needs of people that can’t typically afford counseling.
[WHITNEY]: That’s great. Let me ask you a few details about the transition. So what kind of things did you have to do to go from a for-profit to a nonprofit?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: It was a lot of paperwork filed with the state. So one of the things, the best advice I ever was given was to actually hire a a charity lawyer. We had a common friend in our circles that was a charity lawyer and that’s what he does. And so he would file the paperwork, he would get things done with the state, write the articles of incorporation and all the things that go into the legalities of that, and then file that with the state. So we were able to get the money through this friend of mine to help with that and then basically it was up to them to do that. So getting a new employee identification number you know, the articles of incorporation, the bylaws, all those kinds of things were done by this charity lawyer and then turned into the state.
[WHITNEY]: What were some of the structural changes that you had to make or kind of like system changes at the practice, maybe the way you related to the other clinicians or meetings or what kind of other things had to change?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes, I mean, in some ways, not much change because we were always doing team meetings and it was a, you know, there were W2, W4 employees instead of contractors. So the way that we did and ran the business was a little bit, it didn’t change much. The one thing that did change by requirement was to have a board of directors. So I was no longer the owner. I was now the founder and CEO and therefore I had to have a board of directors. We have five on our board that meet with me and my chief operating officer once every two months to talk about governance and vision and mission, and then making sure that we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing and coming back to strategic plans and all that kind of stuff. And so that was the only thing that was different. I now had somebody that I was accountable to, and to be honest, that was freeing because it shed the burden of the practice.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. I’ve actually heard several people who have nonprofits say that, they, you were discussing earlier that weight on your shoulders that you felt. And a lot of people have said that to me. Once they have that board, they just feel that support and especially in a Christian setting, because you’ve got people that are praying for you and supporting you and just kind of in a special kind of way.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes, absolutely. I think, the one thing that’s been the most difficult thing for me has been just the fundraising pieces of it. And so the board has really been a big help in that with the shouldering the burden.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. Yes. So can you speak a little bit to the financial part of that? So a couple of my questions here are when you transitioned to the nonprofit, did that change your pay? And then how did it change like what the clinicians make and then what the clients are paying for therapy services?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: That is very much unique to the person calling in if that makes any sense. I mean, so we do take insurance, we do cash pay and so we do our best to really balance out percentages of how many cash pay clients we have. The best thing that we ever do is start as a cash pay practice. And Joe is a big advocate of that. So we keep a big part of that, that if people can pay for therapy, we’re going to, we want them to pay for therapy but with the client assistance fund, if somebody calls in and really need support and you know, now with COVID and everything, some people can’t even afford their copays because their copays $93 until they hit their deductible. And that’s expensive for people that are underemployed or unemployed with COVID1 or whatever that might be.
So with the client assistance fund, we then are able to pay our staff their going rate, and while supplementing the individual that’s coming in with what they can pay. And so trying to find ways to not limit the accessibility for mental health with individuals but also not letting the burden fall on the shoulders of our counselors. We want them to be taken care of and they take care of their families and that kind of stuff as well. And so you know, we have a full-time office manager that answers the phone, we just hired an assistant that will be helping answering the phone. So that works with insurance, that works with our billing company, that works in a lot of areas to get people connected to the right counselor and making sure that they can afford it long-term.
[WHITNEY]: I love this, I love the model that you’re sharing and just the way it really that community mindset that you’re bringing up. And I’m bringing to you all like things that I’m hearing from consultees and questions I’m hearing from them. Another one that comes up a lot is people at nonprofits struggle to keep clinicians on their team because they’re not paying them as much as the clinicians at the other practices in the areas and the clinicians end up leaving. So I’m curious, is that something that you have found at Mayfield or what do you do to keep your clinicians at your practice?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Well, I’m glad you’re asking that question. I’ve learned a lot this year, so people are going to learn from my mistakes which is, I love it. This is the way it should be. We set out to pay our people better than any place else. And part of my heart was to, and desire was to supplement our overhead expenses through grants and through fundraising. That worked for a while until COVID hit and then a lot of the fundraising dried up and we realized we couldn’t balance our budget with how we were paying our staff, even though they were getting paid 20 to 22.5% better than any place else. So we ended up having to do a pay cut last September so that we could balance our budget and it created, I think it created a culture that wasn’t conducive for longevity in that almost an unrealistic culture.
So we ended up cutting pay and we had some staff leave but this year we’ve hired nine new staff in the last five months or four months. It’s been fantastic, but really now in a good spot, we’re still paying about eight to 10% better than they do in practices in town, but we’re in a place that we can balance our budget, utilize funding to help enhance some of the programs that we’re doing and the extracurricular stuff that we’re doing, but it’s not going to affect the therapist. And so yes, I think it’s, you know we have to be always learning and growing and so I learned some very valuable lessons this last year.
[WHITNEY]: Oh yes. And regardless of for-profit, nonprofit, how long you’ve been in the business, like running the numbers, it’s always a trick and a game and like figuring out best situations. Because yes, we, your board or practice owners want to maximize what we can pay our therapists, but also if you pay them too much, the business suffers and if the business suffers everybody’s suffering.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Right.
[WHITNEY]: So it is kind of playing with those numbers there. So do you have any other advice to people who are thinking about starting a nonprofit?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes. It’s a, I think you need to have a realistic expectation and realistic dreams. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but it’s good. Fundraising is not easy. Getting individuals in the community to buy into the fact that they’re supporting somebody else’s mental health has been a harder challenge than I ever expected. And so one of the things that I’ve done that I would encourage people to do is to make relationships with organizations, businesses, and churches and their communities. That’s one of our greatest assets right now; are five or six churches in the Colorado Springs area that sponsor us at a thousand dollars a month, every month and then we give them a discount for the people that they send to us and we do trainings for them at a discount or free. And then we’ve got car dealerships and housing, building, you know house builders and different organizations that sponsor us throughout the year.
So it’s really building those relationships that’s really helped us grow and maintain our relationship or our reputation in the community, but it also creates solid flow of income to really help with our mission, our projects. We just don’t, we’re not just counselors. We do a lot more in the community than just counseling. And so I think that’s the advice I would give; have a realistic picture that you’re not going to turn a nonprofit and then raise a hundred thousand dollars that next year to do things that you want. It’s going to be a slow growth, but it’s a good growth.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. And it again, fosters community and you’re all doing it together and not just this counseling center doing the mental health. Like the churches are a part of it, all these other organizations are a part of that, and so that’s, it’s just such a beautiful vision that y’all have there.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Well, thank you. It’s morphed over time —
[WHITNEY]: I’m sure. Now you’re doing a lot of other things from what I saw on there on your website. So tell me more about the other things you’re doing besides seeing clients and running a practice.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: So one of our big things is always wanting to take these mental health concepts and make them accessible to the everyday person and the lay person. And so about three years and a half, four years ago, four years ago, almost five years ago, we started a early summit called The Springs Mental Health Summit. We partner with a big church here and we do live in-person except for this year conference where we bring in speakers and we do breakouts. But it’s a conference just like the American Association of Christian Counselors conference or ACA conference and that kind of stuff, where we bring in speakers, keynote speakers and breakout sessions for the lay person, for the volunteer, for the mom, for the dad. And we make it for them so that was, that’s been a big deal.
We’ve had speakers like Dr. Caroline Leaf and Kurt Thompson, John Eldridge, and others come in and speak. And then our team gets to do breakouts. So I task my team to develop breakouts based on themes for each year. So that’s one thing we’re doing, but that we’re trying to continue that in a deeper way and so we’re actually launching in about three weeks a new website called the Mayfield Collective, and it’s going to be mayfieldcollective.com. It’s going to be basically a YouTube type channel for mental and emotional health for the lay person. So anywhere from five to 20 minute videos to masterclass type videos on how do I talk to my kids about sex? How do I engage somebody that is self-injuring? What do I do if my kid is suicidal. We will have hundreds of hours of videos of content on there for the mom, the dad, the youth pastor, the sibling, the aunt, the uncle to really help them be the mental health caregiver in their current world.
We have a podcast The Therapist Invitation that we do every week. We do short Facebook videos called the Monday Minute and it’s just encouraging people with different ideas every Monday. We are supporting a local crisis pregnancy center with a counselor embedded, we have an organization that we work with called Mary’s Home that takes homeless moms off the streets and gets them GED and education jobs, and that kind of stuff in that apartment complex. And we have counselors down there doing that. So that’s just a little tidbit of snippet of what we do.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. That’s a lot, but it’s a great. I mean, you’ve been able to develop a number of people to come together to provide all these services in your area. So I love that. And the conference sounds like a lot of fun.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: It is. Yes, and we, I mean, and I will say that we have a staff of 32, so 23 counselors, six interns, and then support staff. So this is not just me doing it. I’ve got a lot of really good people around me.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. Well, that’s what makes a good business model, having good support and being able to delegate. So you’ve written a book recently, I guess that’s about to come out, is that right?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes, I’ve got one. I have one book called HELP! My Teen is Self-Injuring: A Crisis Manual for Parents that people can find on my website, drmayfield.com and it’s just a free eBook download, PDF. I wrote with focusing on the family, and then I have another book coming out in September called The Path Out of Loneliness: Finding and Fostering Connection to God, Ourselves, and One Another and that’ll be out in September through NavPress and Tyndale. So a lot of neat things there just inspiring others that it has been a lot of fun.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. That’s great. So if people are kind of listening and they’re thinking I might want to start a nonprofit, I’m kind of unsure. I think I read somewhere, do you offer consulting or am I making that up?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Nope, I do. I do —
[WHITNEY]: Is there a portal to that?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes. Not been broadcasting it too much because I want to, if anybody wants to, I’d be more than happy to do that with people and so yes, they can find that on the mayfieldcounseling.com website under resources. They can reach out to me directly at [email protected]. I’d ne more than happy to help, because I think this is, to be honest, I love counselors and I love nonprofits and I think this is the way that we can most effectively change the world.
[WHITNEY]: Hm, definitely. Well, I might be sending some people your way because I definitely get those calls and I can definitely do so much, but I do think there’s an element of nonprofit that someone who’s actually been there can understand it in a much different way than I can.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes. Happy to help however I can.
[WHITNEY]: Yes. Well, great. Do you have any other kind of final tips or stuff that you’re doing that you wanted to make sure to with the audience today?
[DR. MAYFIELD]: I just think I appreciate you doing this. And I think the biggest thing is don’t let fear get in the way of what you’re called to. I think there’s such power in this and I think a lot of times we second guess ourselves, “Oh, that’s too big for me or who am I? I can’t do this.” I just want to encourage those that are listening, that this is not about us and about our strength and our power. It’s about really leaning into what we’re called to do and the strength that we receive from our faith. I think that’s really important.
[WHITNEY]: Yes, so important. I mean, I even think back on my journey, it’s like every single time fear crept in and every single time I have to push past that and that’s when God does something.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes, yes. I think that’s why I love the nonprofit too, because it’s not, I think the for-profit is about what can I control and the nonprofit is about what can I release?
[WHITNEY]: Hmm. That’s so good. Yes. It’s definitely a different kind of model and mindset that’s for sure. So Mark, I want to ask you what I ask everyone that comes on this show. What do you believe that Christian counselors need to know?
[WHITNEY]: I think that we need to recognize that the people that are entrusted to us are going to meet the Holy spirit, whether they realize it or not. And it’s not our responsibility to do that. It’s our responsibility to be open and to be available. Not our responsibility to proselytize or any of that kind of stuff, obviously, but I think we can get so stuck in our heads sometimes about what it means to be a counselor who’s Christian or a Christian counselor or this or other thing. And I think just be who God has gifted you to be and allow the Holy spirit to do its work because that’s where true healing comes.
[WHITNEY]: Preach it. I love it. It’s so true. Well, I’m just, I’m so glad to connect with you. Like this is one of my favorite things about the podcast is all the neat people that I get to meet. So I hope that we can connect again in the future in whatever way God sees fit. And I really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show today.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Yes. Thank you, Whitney for having me and I love what you all are doing and Joe never ceases to amaze me and then people he brings around himself. I’m excited to meet you.
[WHITNEY]: I will. Thank you. All right. Well, you take care.
[DR. MAYFIELD]: Okay. Have a good one.
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