How do You Allocate Time When Building Your Practice?

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Allocating time in private practice

Q&A was part of Next Level Practice, the most supportive community for therapists starting a private practice. In this video, Joe answers the question based on how you allocate time when building your practice.

Question

How do you allocate time when building your practice?

Answer

I started with the central question of what’s going to get clients in the door. Ultimately, I wanted to put in as little as possible to growing the practice and see as many clients as possible. So I looked for opportunities to, in a broad way, get my voice out there. For example, every other week at 7:00am, I was on a radio show called ‘Mary in the Morning’, because I knew it was broadcast to like 50,000 people. I was like their call-in therapist. So I looked for opportunities to really get my name out there quickly, and to stand out.
Next, I spent time really making sure our website looked good. Because, in most markets, the average counseling website is just plain terrible. So, having beautiful images from Unsplash.com, which are totally free to use, having a good template in WordPress, or Squarespace, and making sure that my SEO is good.
I would kind of do ‘sprints’ rather than allocate percentages. So, I would say:
‘What’s the big thing I need to do now? Well, I need to get out a little bit more and I need to have some decent business cards. I need to have some blogs written over the next three months, so I’m going to write 12 blog posts. I’m going to sit down and do it all in an afternoon, like while my kids are napping over a weekend. Because, at that time, I had my full-time job. Get those all scheduled out. Okay, now what’s next? It could be connecting with doctors offices and attorneys and reaching out, having that be part of it.’
So, to me, it was more kind of phases than saying, ‘I’m going to do just a little blogging, a little marketing, etc.’ Here’s another video all about How to Schedule Your Day.

Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC

joe-sanok-private-practice-consultant-headshot-smaller-versionJoe Sanok is an ambitious results expert. He is a private practice business consultant and counselor that helps small businesses and counselors in private practice to increase revenue and have more fun! He helps owners with website design, vision, growth, and using their time to create income through being a private practice consultant. Joe was frustrated with his lack of business and marketing skills when he left graduate school. He loved helping people through counseling, but felt that often people couldn’t find him. Over the past few years he has grown his skills, income, and ability to lead others, while still maintaining an active private practice in Traverse City, MI. To link to Joe’s Google+ .