[WHITNEY]:
If you haven’t already, please head on over to the Faith in Practice Facebook page. We would love for you to be a part of this special group in which we as private practice owners learn how to start, grow and scale our faith based practices together. So please go to Facebook and search for the Faith in Practice group and become a part of that. Or send me an email [email protected] and I’ll help get you included.

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 private practice from a faith-based perspective. I’m going to 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.

________________________________________

[WHITNEY]:
So I’m excited to let you know that we are opening the doors to Group Practice Boss later this month. So that’s going to be December 29th, 30th and 31st. You might have listened to the episode I did last week with Julie from Green Oak Accounting where we talked about getting payments made before the end of year so you can save on your taxes. And so we wanted to launch Group Practice Boss not only because we love what it stands for, and it can help you with your practice but also you would be able to make your payment before the end of the year and you could save on your taxes. So let me tell you a little bit more though about Group Practice Boss, it is an online membership community with the Facebook platform and Teachable content, to help group practice owners. You are required to have at least three clinicians in your practice, including yourself because it is a group for established practice owners.

We found that group practice owners that are starting their practice or maybe only have one clinician are still in those beginning phases with lots of questions about their systems. And so once you’re past that phase, we want you to consider joining this group, because it will help you learn how to delegate, how to systematize, how to manage your money and other great things. So head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss where you can sign up for our waitlist. And if it’s already December 29, and you’re listening to this episode, you can also go there to join that membership community. If you have further questions or want to talk about it more, please send me an email [email protected] and we can discuss that further.

But on today’s episode, I wanted to give you a little bit more of a sneak peek into what Group Practice Boss is all about. So every month within Group Practice Boss, we do a monthly deep dive into a topic related to group practice ownership. So for example, in the month of October, we talked about how to design a business that fits your lifestyle. So many of us start our practice and it becomes our life. And that’s the exact opposite reason why we wanted to start it. A lot of us wanted to start it cuz we were tired of working at jobs where someone else told us what to do or how to do treatment, or we didn’t like the hours we were working or we couldn’t take time off. And so we started our practice so that we can manage our lives, make more money and have more time with our family and friends and our hobbies. So we spent the month of October talking about how do we create the lifestyle that we want.

And so then in the month of November, we discussed how to delegate in our practice. And so that could be anything from doing a delegation audit to understanding how to delegate, when to delegate, what kind of staff to hire, what kind of responsibilities to give to someone else. And so actually, on today’s episode, I want to go a little deeper into delegation. But to tell you more about Group Practice Boss, every week, we dive deep into whatever topic is that month. So this episode today is kind of a repeat for you because if you’re not in Group Practice Boss, you’ll learn it for the first time. And if you are in Group Practice Boss, what’s up, thanks for listening. So this is what I taught in one of our deep dives. And so this way you can see what we’re doing in those groups so that you can kind of make a decision if Group Practice Boss is a good fit for you.

But every Tuesday we do a webinar on the topic related to what we’re going through that month. And then people can ask questions, because honestly, I don’t want to just give information, we want to make it real. We want you to be able to get involved, we want you to have hands on for what you can do. So today when I go through the five obstacles to delegating, I’m also going to really give you some hands on thoughts, things you can do leaving this episode, you can make a difference.

So today, this episode is a solo show. And we’re going to talk about the five obstacles to delegating. So the first thing that I would want you to do if you’re able to, and maybe you could do this after the episode or maybe you’re kind of sitting at your desk right now and you can stop and do this, is a delegation audit. So that’s really making a list of the things that you are currently doing in your practice. And then beside each of those things, really assessing if these are things you need to do, or if these are things someone else could do for you. And you can mark that however you want, maybe you put a star by the things that only you can do, maybe you put a check by the things you could delegate out, or maybe someone else could do. You’d be amazed how much time practice owners are spending, doing things that someone else could do. When I think back on the early times of having a practice, I remember being the one, let’s see, I was always the one to do the supply runs, oh, I hated doing supply runs. So I would have to head on over to the Kroger down the street and buy all the drinks that were needed, buy tissue paper, all those types of things and get them back to the office. And at first, I scheduled out that time every two weeks to go do that. But honestly, my schedule got so full, it was almost like a relief when a client cancelled. I know you know that feeling. And I would run over to the store and get that done.

Also, even running payroll for my practice, like that was something I did for a very long time. And now I’m realizing that someone else can do that for me. So I can free up that time to do more design work and focus more on the practice. And so I want you to make that list of the things that someone else could be doing for you. Now, just because someone else could be doing it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be doing it. Maybe you actually like what you’re doing. But you always want to weigh out what is the reward for the amount of time and energy that I’m putting into this. So for example, maybe you enjoy doing social media, you like getting posts up, you love getting into Canva and creating things. And that’s a pleasure for you. But what if it’s taking up two hours a week? So that’s something to think about. Like, is it worth two hours that you can be doing something else because you enjoy doing it? Or would it be best to delegate that out so you can do something as a business owner that only you could do?

So maybe there are some admin things that you enjoy that you want to keep doing. But I also want you to think about are you holding your practice back from taking that step forward? Like some practice owners love answering the phone, they love scheduling new clients, because it is really cool to be able to help somebody for the first time they interact with your practice. But if the owner’s doing that, you’re gonna have a hard time moving forward right? So take that list, think through it, and consider what you can and can’t delegate.

Now, that being said, I have some questions for you to think about. Why are you not delegating in your practice? And what are the things that are holding you back from delegating out more. I have met with countless practice owners that struggle with delegating, like this is one of the biggest issues we come up with. And I have to convince them to delegate. And so usually I can sway them. And they nervously delegate. And then they come back to me and say Whitney, I can’t believe I held on to that for so long. Oh my gosh, this has helped my practice move forward, wow, I feel such a relief, that I’ve delegated this out and tell you the honest truth, at least for my practice, sometimes I delegate out and they do a better job than I do. Or most of the time, they’re able to do something I just can’t get to. And I’ll even say to people that try get in touch with me, you know what, you’re gonna get better quality, and hear back faster if I pass you off to somebody else, because I’m probably not going to do the best job getting back to you fast enough.

So, with that being said, I wanted to spend some time talking about the five obstacles that I hear from practice owners with delegating, and then let’s address each of those. And I want to debunk those for you so that there’s no more excuses for why we can’t delegate. And at the end of this episode, what I would love to know is that you took one thing off your plate because you listened to this today. And hey, if you’re feeling up for it, I would love for you to post that, either post it in the Faith in Practice Facebook page, that you listened to the episode and this is what you delegated out. Or send me an email, I would love to hear, hey, I heard your episode, this meant something to me, here’s what I delegated out. Or you can even write a podcast review and put it in there as well. Whatever is easiest for you. But I want to know that this episode brought change into your life by delegating. So here are the five obstacles to delegating.

The first one, uncertainty about what to delegate. So a lot of practice owners feel overwhelmed, but they have no idea what to do about it. And oftentimes they think I’m the only one who can do these things. That is simply not true. You can train people to do a lot of things. In fact, I even know some people will say, oh, I can’t hire an assistant that doesn’t have a mental health background. Yes, you can. And I’ve done it. I’ve done it actually several times. So, yeah, they might not know every diagnosis, but you can teach them a lot. They can learn a lot by watching videos, you can you can teach them how to do an effective suicide assessment, when would they call 911? When do they refer to certain therapists? And when would they refer to an outpatient program, all these different things, you can really train them on what to do.

So the important thing, though, is that you figure out what you want to delegate. So some questions that you could ask yourself on identifying what these items are, is what do you actually hate that you’re doing at your job. So my example earlier was hitting the grocery store and buying the supplies, I absolutely hated doing that. Another thing I really hated doing was invoicing people at the end of the month, and keeping up with who paid for what sessions. Oh, that was awful. And so actually, with delegating, even though some of it you’re gonna have to delegate to an actual person, sometimes you can just create systems that allow automation for delegating. So believe it or not, I used to use paper charts, I still laugh about that now thinking about it. It really wasn’t all that long ago that I had a group practice on paper charts. Anyway, so now we have an EHR, and that has super helped in in this process, because we can take the credit cards, we charge at the time of the appointment, it’s pretty rare that we’re having to bill somebody, usually to the third parties paying like an EAP, or church or something. So I was able to delegate out the invoicing, which I absolutely hated.

So also thinking about what are the tasks that you found super time consuming? Right. So when I had to go pick up supplies, that would take an hour of my time, hands down, that I could have really spent with a client or maybe you find that you’re spending, I know a lot of practice owners, especially group owners tell me that they’re spending a lot of time on email, that they check it three times a day, and it takes 30 to 45 minutes every time they sit down and do their email. Wow, that’s an hour and a half to two hours of your day if I did my math, right, I might have done my math wrong. But it’s a lot of time that you’re spending on your email. So look at your schedule, and think what are the most time consuming jobs on my schedule? What could someone else be doing? And like I said, other people can be doing a lot more than you realize that they could be doing for you. What brings you minimal to no income that you’re spending your time doing? You know what, because you are one of the biggest assets of your business, or you are really the biggest asset. So you bring in a lot of the cash flow to your practice. So if you’re spending your time doing things that aren’t bringing you in money, you’re actually going to hurt yourself in the long run. It’s better to hire an admin staff or someone to do these tasks for you. And then you actually see clients, which technically brings you well, it does it brings you more money in the long run.

And then another thing to consider is what is it that’s really overwhelming you like, for example, for me, that was social media, I knew that I needed to probably do something with social media, but it overwhelmed me to consider like, what am I doing and getting these things put out and SEO and all that. So yeah, I delegated out for that. And it has made the world of difference in my own sanity. So the first obstacle here is just uncertainty on what to delegate. And then if you ask these questions, you’ll really be able to identify what it is you need to delegate your practice.

Okay, the next problem that I find is the cost of delegating. So that’s twofold here. So the first is the cost of adding tasks to other staff, but also the cost of adding a staff. So that being said, if you were to add extra responsibilities onto one of your staff, then you’re actually going to have to pay them more because they’re going to be working more right. Or you have to hire somebody outside your practice to come in and do a task and you’re going to be paying for that. So the cost of delegating can be [unclear]. But I love to do a play on words with cost of delegating, because not only is there a financial cost, but the cost to you emotionally, and to your practice, like there is a cost if you don’t delegate here. So you’re going to have to get it together. Because when you delegate you’re actually taking your practice to the next level. Okay.

So here’s how I want you to deal with this myth or debunk this idea of the cost of delegation that it’s too expensive to delegate. I want you to think about what is the financial loss by not delegating. And then I want you to run numbers on that. So an example here would be hiring an assistant. I think this is just the classic one right here. So I know when I run numbers for my practice, that we convert at least 50% of our calls. So that being said if we have a given week, where let’s say eight people called, we know four of them are going to schedule if the phone is answered in real time. So let’s say on a given week, you’re a solo practice owner, you’re thinking, oh, I don’t have money to hire an assistant, but I need like more clients, you know, you maybe you’ve got 15 clients, and you would really like to have 20. So let’s say you also have a 50% conversion rate. Now, you’re gonna have to figure out what your conversion rate is, you know, if you’re a cash pay practice, which I am, that’s pretty reasonable, like, maybe even 30-40%. But 50 is, you know, doing pretty good for cash pay practice. If you’re an insurance based practice, you’re probably sitting at more like 65-70% conversion at least.

So say you’re a cash pay practice and you usually convert about 50% of your calls, let’s say any given week, four people call to make appointments, you miss all four calls. Of those four calls, two of them, you’re able to get back in touch within 24 hours. And then two of them, you just never speak to again, they never call you back because honestly, they probably went through a list and you didn’t answer and the next therapist did. So they scheduled with that person. So then of the two people, you actually got in touch with one of them scheduled, right, because usually when you talk on the phone with someone half of them schedule, so we can say pretty confidently that of those four people that call that week you lost a client, because you would have gotten two, but instead you got one. Let’s say your rate is $100. That’s pretty conservative. I hope y’all are charging more for that. But if you’re charging 100, that’s okay. So $100. And if that person had scheduled every week, for a month, that’s $400 that you would have made by seeing that client.

Now, if you had had someone like an assistant hired, maybe you hire that assistant to work, I don’t know, 5, 10 hours a week, and you pay them, let’s say, let’s say 10 hours a week at $12 an hour. Right? So that’s $120 a week. Now, yep, you only made $100 off that person. But you have to think about how this, how this adds to itself, right? For that week, you made that but you got a client’s gonna pay $400 a month, and then the next week, you get another client plus that client. So that’s $200 a week that you’re making, right? So it really compounds on each other. And then let’s also just say, hey, you just got something off your plate here, and you created more time. So yeah, you’re having to pay that person for 10 hours. But you just gained 10 hours of time that you’re not having to follow up with anybody, schedule people. And then you could actually see another client to make up for that. And I will tell you, if you’re thinking about hiring an assistant and you haven’t yet, then you probably waited too long. Because once you start thinking about it’s time to do it.

If you’re wanting more information on hiring an assistant, I did a podcast episode with my assistant, that’s episode nine. So if you want to go back to that episode, it was fabulous. And she’ll walk you through the process of what it was like when I hired her how we do her pay, how she does her time, and all that good stuff. So there’s a cost to not delegating honestly, in your practice. And it’s the cost of money, time and energy. So I want you to also think about what you could have put your time and energy into when you could have been doing all these other tasks that you’ve now delegated. Now you’ve got time to design your business. Think about how you’re going to move forward, think about how you’re gonna make money, maybe you have time to create a side hustle. Delegating really does open the door up to so much more that you can do. And it just makes you happier, you’ve got more energy and more time, you’re doing things that you love more. It’s just all around amazing. So that was the second and third myths where the people don’t delegate because the cost of adding a task to someone else, but also the potentially thinking through what is the cost of hiring a new staff and going through that training process, which it’s a lot but it’s worth it.

So the next one here is the next obstacle is the time of training other people. So practice owners will say to me, I don’t want to delegate because then I got to teach somebody how to do this thing that I do and that’s just too much work, right? I mean, I will say hiring an assistant boy, you’ve got to really tell them how do you answer these calls, all these questions, how to use the EHR, how do you respond to an email like you’ve got to walk through all that with them. It does become a lot. But it ultimately saves you time. I was laying on my sofa the other day looking through my email on my phone and oh, I’m so annoyed. I get so many junk emails, right? How did these people all get my email? So then I’m unsubscribing unsubscribing. And while I’m doing it, I’m thinking this is so time consuming that have to take the time to go into this email, hit unsubscribe, go to this other page, check a box as to why I don’t want to be on your email list because you know what, you know, I never gave me my email in the first place, and then hit something else, it takes me to another page that lets me know that I successfully unsubscribed from this list. But in the long run, I’m now getting, I don’t know, 20 less emails a year, maybe even more, so that’s less deleting overall. So even though it took me time to go in and unsubscribe from that list, it’s saved me time in the long run. Because then I don’t have to delete it all the time, I don’t have to look at it, just takes up my space, in my email or my headspace, honestly.

So that’s what training is like, like, we do have to put that time and energy into it. But then we save so much time in the long run. So if you train someone to take your phones, and let’s say the training takes a week, it’s been a whole week. But now you get someone taking care of that for years, at least we hope so. I want you to think about the most recent tasks maybe you hired out. So maybe you added QuickBooks so that you didn’t have to handwrite all of your items anymore that you’re spending money on and all the times you’re bringing in money. So think about the most recent tasks that you were able to delegate, and then think about how much time you’ve saved. How much time did you save a week? How much time did you save a month, because now you don’t have to do that? When it comes to taxes now, I have all that money, I mean, all that time, all that time saved, because I’m not having to go through and rewrite everything. It’s on QuickBooks. So yeah, QuickBooks was a lot of time to set up. But it has been well worth it in the long run.

Also, with training, just another tip here for training, if you are a larger practice, you could totally train a lot of different ways to save time, you could make videos, and they just watch the video to get trained. Or maybe you have your assistant and your assistant does the training for people. And you don’t have to do that. I think there’s a lot of ways you can even delegate out training your staff. But don’t let the hassle of training keep you from moving forward in your practice, because you’re going to grow in this way. So here’s the formula I want you to consider, the time of someone else doing a task, minus the time training them to do the task. So think about how much time you’re going to save over the next year. So maybe you need someone to answer emails and phones for, I don’t know, five hours a week, for the next three months, you would say, let’s say 20 hours a month, for three months, that would be 60 hours. So it can take you 60 hours to train the person. So maybe it takes you 10 to train. And then over the course of three months, you’ve saved yourself 50 hours. Okay. So that would be obstacle number four, which is the time of training someone else.

Now, the last one here, I do seem to find, probably above all the other ones really is what it boils down to is trusting other people. Practice owners are so scared to trust somebody else with their practice. This is your baby that you created and that you love. And you would hate for something to happen to it. I have been there, sometimes I’m still there. But especially when I first started hiring and delegating, and honestly delegating too is hiring clinicians, because you’re hiring other people to see clients so that more clients get seen, right. And if you’re not spending your time seeing clients. I was so scared when I hired my first clinicians that they would do terrible treatment or something would happen with somebody. And you know what, sometimes they didn’t do the best treatment. And that’s okay. I trained them and we worked on it. And you know what, you might trust somebody and then they leave your practice, or they turn their back on you. These things are going to happen. But you have to pick up and keep going. Because they’re going to be other people that you can trust and that do good work. And that really allow you to be successful, your practice to be successful, but even greater than that, they help the community because more people are getting therapy. So you do have to have some trust there. Same way with someone answering the phones. I know a lot of people will say, well, you know what, no one can convert clients like I can. And that might be true on some extent. But if you can really train someone and get them really good at it, they can convert. In fact, my assistant now converts better than me, which I just think is so fabulous.

So you want to be able to trust other people, other people do have skills, you can train them on those skills, or they have different skills than you, other people might actually do a better job than you at a certain thing. Maybe you hire an assistant has a lot more detail orientedness than you do. And so they notice mistakes that you don’t notice, they get back to people faster, those types of things. So people actually might do a better job than you. And when you give tasks to other people, like when you trust them with something, you are empowering them to do a fabulous job. And to make them feel good. I mean, think about in jobs you’ve been in, when your boss comes to you and says, hey, I trust you with this project. Here it is, go do it. It feels so good. I love it. And so I think when you do that for your employees or for your clinicians, your staff and they come back feeling better about their work, and then they actually are more productive than they were before.

I wanted to share a quote here by Andrew Carnegie, ‘No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.’ You’ve got to trust other people, you can’t do your practice by yourself. So to kind of bring all this together here, I want you to look at your practice and ask yourself is delegating working? So once you start getting some things off your plate, we don’t want to just get things off our plate and then not do anything about it. We want to actually pay attention to is this actually working? So these are some things to look at to see is delegation working in your practice. The first one here is look at your income and expenses and see if delegation is creating profit. Make sure that your money is going up and not down. Check your metrics, check your Google Analytics, check your Facebook, check your Instagram, check the things that you’re doing in your Google Business. See if you’re having more contacts and more people go into your website, because of whatever it is that you delegated out. Look at your schedule. Are you having more time to do the things you enjoy doing? Do you find that you have more energy than you had before because you’re delegating out your practice? And just evaluate your overall level of well being, like are you enjoying who you are and what you do more, because you’re delegating? Or are you feeling just the same, or maybe even more overwhelmed?

So obviously, I think delegating is fabulous. I love delegating in my practice, it was super hard for me at first, but over time, I’m finding it easier and easier to delegate. And that’s why I’m all about it and talking to you guys. And then just to bring it back here, we were talking about Group Practice Boss at the beginning of this episode, I’m going to bring it back here at the end. This lesson that I just did for you was something that I did in Group Practice Boss. But even beyond that, there was conversation, there were questions asked, we did really specific things people were going to delegate and how they were going to delegate. Because you can sit and listen to this podcast and I hope that you can go to your practice and do some of these things. But sometimes it just helps to talk it through with a consultant, to talk it through with other practice owners. Or maybe you’re like me, and you’re just a verbal processor. And so I want you to think about how cool would it have been if you’d been in a live webinar with me, and we were chatting back and forth on this. And then you left and did something and came back and told the whole group about it. And then you were able to really grow your practice with a cohort that you got to know intimately and understand their practice and they understood your practice and you’re all growing together. It’s the coolest thing.

And so if you think that would be something that would help you, or that this lesson would have helped you then I want you to join Group Practice Boss, go to practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss, hit the link to get on the email list, you’ll start getting some emails with information about Group Practice Boss, you can read about it on the website. And if you’re listening to this episode, and it’s December 29th, 30th, or 31st, do not delay. Go and join Group Practice Boss. If you have further questions email me would love to answer those. Group Practice Boss is a membership community that’s monthly. So your payments do go through every month and it’s $149 a month. We feel like that’s probably about the cost of seeing one maybe two clients a month and you get so much out of it because Alison and I are able to price it in such a way that we can be super involved in the group and helping you build your business. We don’t want to be a membership community that y’all are only supporting each other. We want to also provide feedback and input for you guys. So thanks for taking the time to listen to this episode and I look forward to getting to know you better in Group Practice Boss.

________________________________________

[WHITNEY]:
Thank you for listening to the Faith in Practice podcast. If you love this podcast, please rate and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. If you liked this episode and want to know more, check out the Practice of the Practice website. Also, there you can learn more about me, options for working together, such as individual and group consulting, or just shoot me an email [email protected]. Would love to hear from you.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.