[ALISON PIDGEON]
You are listening to the Grow a Group Practice podcast. Whether you were thinking about starting a group practice or in the beginning stages, or want to learn how to scale up your already existing group practice, you are in the right place. I’m Alison Pidgeon, your host, a serial entrepreneur with four businesses, one of which is a large group practice that I started in 2015. Each week, I feature a guest or topic that is relevant to group practice owners. Let’s get started.

Hi, I’m Alison Pidgeon, your host. Thanks so much for listening. I’m glad you’re here. I have a great interview for you today, but first wanted to give you a little caveat, the sound quality isn’t as good as it normally is. We are having some tech issues. We have to switch over to Zoom and I just assume that if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while you know that there’s always background noise in my podcast episodes because I work from home. I have a two year old, there’s just never a time where it’s totally quiet here, so I just record anyway. If you hear silverware clanking in the background or the buzzer for the dryer going off, I figure that’s just what we have to do to get podcast episodes recorded.

So there is a little bit of background noise in this episode. Hopefully you can just ignore that. But in any case, I have a great interview for you today. Rachel Moheban-Wachtel is a practice owner that I’ve gotten to know through our Group Practice Boss community. She is so great to talk to. She is a veteran psychotherapist. She’s been doing this for over two decades. She has an office in New York city and New Jersey. She has a group practice called the Relationship Suite, where they specialize in relationship issues and couples and marriage counseling.

She has extensive training and certification in and all kinds of different couples work and the also talks about how she created a self-study audio program for couples called the Online Couples Toolkit. She’ll talk to you about how she created that, the mistake she made, the good thing she did with it and how she’s kind of pivoting it now at this point. We also talk about how she grew her group practice in a very competitive self-pay area of Manhattan. So if you are in that same boat of being in a highly competitive area and being a self-pay practice, this is definitely a great episode to listen to. Rachel Definitely is very good at marketing and has learned a lot about marketing in the many years that she’s had her practice. So I hope you enjoy this interview.
[ALISON]
Hi, Rachel, welcome to the podcast.
[RACHEL MOHEBAN-WACHTEL]
Hi Alison. Thank you for having me.
[ALISON]
I’m so excited to be able to talk to you today. Before we get started, can you introduce yourself and your practice?
[RACHEL]
For sure. So I’m Rachel Moheban-Wachtel and I have a private self-pay practice in the New York city area. And now since COVID, we’re marketing to all of New York state and also we are in New Jersey.
[ALISON]
Excellent. How many clinicians do you have now?
[RACHEL]
We are, all of us together are six clinicians and building and we’re really excited about it.
[ALISON]
Awesome. I know you’ve been doing couples work specifically for a long time, right?
[RACHEL]
That’s right. So in New York city, you really have to be specialized. In 2000, I’ve been a therapist for 22 years now and in 2004, I decided to specialize in couples counseling. It’s actually very sought after. People come to couples counseling, sometimes they’ll split off and become your individual client or they stay with you as a couple, but what’s nice in a group practice is you get the couple and then we can triage with the couple with our other clinicians. So maybe one therapist takes one person in the couple and the other one takes the other person and then maybe I would do the couples work and it works out beautifully because we all work together and it’s really for the greater good of the couple and the client.
[ALISON]
Great. So you have a niche couples counseling for the practice as a whole, but you do other things besides couples counseling, correct? Or like the other clinicians do —?
[RACHEL]
That’s right. So we do a lot of work. Well most of us are generalized. So we have experience in working with. All types of issues one of the way we market and we do a lot of work and very trained in working with couples, but we also do a lot of work with singles, relationship counseling, relationship issues, struggles. We have one of our clinicians is an expert in substance abuse. So we do a lot of couples where one partner is in recovery and because that clinician is so specialized, it really can help the couple. We do divorce counseling, we have groups for people who are divorced, we do a lot work with anxiety and trauma as well. But one of the biggest specialization for us is working with couples and relationship issues.
[ALISON]
Wonderful. So when you started the group practice, was that your original intent or did it just kind of organically grow into that or what was your thought when you started the practice and started hiring people?
[RACHEL]
It’s an excellent question. I think that because we are in New York city and it’s so competitive, we’re one of the major hubs of therapy in this city that you really have to be specialized. So I was always specializing in couples, but the clinicians that came on board with me loved working with couples too. That was one of the requirements. And then our marketing is really towards couples and those are the clients that we’ll usually get in, in our practice. So we’re all very, very skilled and trained in working with couples and relationship issues.
[ALISON]
I know you and I have known each other now for probably a year and a half, maybe, like around when the pandemic started. We connected and you’ve been a part of our Group Practice Boss membership community, which is awesome. It’s just so interesting to me how it seems like New York city is its own little enclave of —
[RACHEL]
Yes, really. We beat our own drum and it’s so interesting. What’s nice about New York city therapists is that we’re pretty much mostly self-pay. So when a client will come to you and they’ll say, do you take insurance, they recognize that most of the therapists here don’t and also we’re still not in person yet. So a lot of other cities like place is in Florida or West Coast are in-person and we’re still not in person yet. So it’s nice because we’re all sort of on the same page. In that way we really are a therapy community.
[ALISON]
It’s been so interesting to hear from different people all over the country. Like some people, the clients are like, well of course you’re going to come to the office and I’m going to be seen in person. Then I think me located in Pennsylvania and you and New York, it’s like exactly flipped the opposite. Like 95% of the people are like, oh yes, I want to be seen in telehealth.
[RACHEL]
That’s right. And Alison, even pre-pandemic, we did telehealth. We did virtual because a lot of our couples, maybe they just had babies. They don’t want to, they can’t leave. They really can only meet, let’s say eight, nine o’clock at night when their kids are sleeping. So virtual works best for them. So we were always had a part of our practice online anyway. So we were very comfortable pivoting into that space.
[ALISON]
Yes. And one thing that I’ve gotten to know about you as well is that I know you’re really excellent at marketing your practice. So I was hoping we could, you have to be self-pay, New York city. So I’m curious if you could share some of the things that you’ve done to market your group practice, because it is a little bit different being in New York city. You really have to spend a lot of time and energy focused on that.
[RACHEL]
It is and I think in New York city you have excellent, excellent clinicians here, very well trained. Not that the rest of the country, of course has that too, but it’s so competitive here and you really have to be specialized. The way I market, I wanted to share some of the things that I do and that is, first of all, you have to have a strong network and I love to network. So you’re always networking and your networking with mediators and other clinicians that don’t want to do couples. There are a lot of clinicians here that aren’t comfortable doing that. So one of the things that we do is, and this goes back to your purple cow, that book, the Purple Cow, and that’s how do we stand out amongst all this competition.

One of the things that we pride ourselves on is white glove service. So we never make anybody wait. Somebody calls us, we call them right away, call them back. We spend a lot of time giving them a consultation, making sure we’re the right fit, making sure we understand how we can provide the best service for them. We get them in right away. We’re open nighttime, which is really when most couples can come. So a lot of us work till 10 o’clock at night, we work Saturdays, just so that they can feel they’re getting the best service. A lot of times they’ll say, oh wow, this was so easy and seamless. That’s what we want to be known for. So that’s our purple cow.

The other way that I market is I’m constantly, constantly working on my website. And one of the things we do is we really want to speak to our client. So one of the catch phrases, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I know what people are struggling with, are you having the same fight over and over again? Are you talking in circles with your partner? So we really try on our website, before you even meet us to speak to those issues and to have that empathic connection. So people, every time, how did you hear about us, well, your website really spoke to me and you have great reviews. Then again, we make the onboarding very white so that they can come and work with us and feel most, very comfortable with it.
[ALISON]
I’m really glad that you brought up about how you really speak to their pain points on your website because I think that’s such an important piece of the marketing puzzle and not a lot of people do that. Like they really want to read on that website and kind of a illustration of a typical client and say, oh my gosh, that’s me, because that’s, what’s going to compel them to call like, oh yes, Rachel gets it. So I need to call this practice and make an appointment.
[RACHEL]
Absolutely. Also in New York city, because there’s so much competition you really want to work on your SEO, your search engine optimization. So we are, I mean, we’re so grateful we’re on page one for many, many keywords around couples and relationship counseling, relationship issues and premarital counseling. So that takes a very long time and a lot of work gets put into that. So on the back end, we’re constantly making sure that we’re on top of that. So that’s another way that we market.
[ALISON]
And I know you use Yelp as well, correct, to market the practice?
[RACHEL]
We use Yelp, for sure. Now that our SEO is so good and we’re even on top of Yelp now, we don’t need it as much. But again, I think what’s key is you have that search engine optimization and you’re ranking really well, working with good people to make sure that you are on top and then having a really, really strong website. So we just we want to start really opening up to doing singles because we’re the relationship suite, so couples and singles and we see there’s a great need there. So we have this fantastic new page up to call in those singles because there are the keywords there on Yelp. We want to start running groups for singles and also four couples just to really broaden and open up and service more people.
[ALISON]
Nice. So switching gears for a minute, when you look to hire clinicians, do they always come having that couple’s therapy training or do you take on people who need additional training or how do you work that in your practice?
[RACHEL]
It’s a great question. One of my requirements is if you want to work with us, you have to really love working with couples. So some of our clinicians, maybe they don’t have that training, but I’m always training them. I want to make sure that this is really important in our practice that we are providing the best service. So our therapists are older, we’re more seasoned. Some of us work at universities, some of us are experts in certain areas and I think we bring that into the room and our couples and because we’re self-pay, they’re paying us a lot of money. So they’re also older. They want to be with somebody who’s more seasoned in life. So that’s important because we want to make sure that our couples that are coming in are getting that the life wisdom.

So the training comes along with a lot of supervision from me and because a couple’s modality is so different than working with individuals, so you can be the best individual counselor, but be thrown in a room and a couple and not know how to navigate. So I do a lot of supervision. I overhear in the New York area, EFT, emotionally focused therapy is huge. So we try to get training in emotionally focused therapy. We have a lot of requesting that .in the eighties and nineties Imago relationship therapy was huge here too. So we have a lot of trainings in that because our couples are older are. So we try to give them as much as we can in those modalities.
[ALISON]
So I know you said that you created kind of an e-course.
[RACHEL]
Yes, it’s a self-study program for couples.
[ALISON]
A self-study program? Can you tell us about that? Because I know how it started and how you’re using it now is quite different.
[RACHEL]
Yes. So I started this, I’m going to say about 13 years ago. I just felt called to do this because there were so many couples that maybe couldn’t afford our services or maybe we were thinking we want to market to places, maybe middle America. So I created this, it’s called the Online Couples Toolkit and it has five modules, communication, anger, physical intimacy, and emotional intimacy. I created it based on all my years of being a therapist and knowing what people needed. It’s me giving, basically each module starts with a visualization, some psychological education and a lot of strategies so that couples can do this together and maybe in combination with counseling or maybe just to introduce them to what it’s like.

I have many couples that love the program and it’s very funny because I tell them, this is really not designed for you. You’ll be in therapy be for a long time, but they love it. It’s a really nice compliment to our work together. Also with my therapists that work with me, they love it because it gives them a toolkit. So it gives them different strategies to teach our couples. We run anger groups, and so a lot of our curriculum is based on the anger module. Then we give that as a little gift to our group members. They love it because they can have it for life. So it’s a really nice program and now other therapists around the country are saying, “Hey, I would love to do some kind of affiliate program with you where we can actually sell it in our state or to our couples or individuals.” They don’t have to rework it and create a whole new program because it’s there for them from all my years of therapy and all the specialists in the field.
[ALISON]
Cool. So how it started was really geared towards selling it to the couples themselves, is that kind of how it started?
[RACHEL]
Exactly. And now we use it as a compliment to our counseling to train our therapists and to help other therapists around the country that are working with couples.
[ALISON]
Did you just take kind of bits and pieces of things that you learned, but also the different modalities and just kind of put it together in a way that made sense to you or how did you start it?
[RACHEL]
I came up with, it took me a year to write, and then it took another year where I had churches. I had the top therapist in New York, look at it, edit it, re-edit it. I had somebody who actually developed curriculum for churches edit it. So it’s really sound, it’s well researched and people that listen to it think it’s really good and effective and it helps many people. Some of my clients just say, this is fantastic because it integrates a lot of, let’s say Imago relationship therapy or the best people that, like Olivia Mellon who talks about money issues with couples, you know all the best of the best in the field is rolled up into one big program.
[ALISON]
Nice. So I think, we originally had talked about how you were thinking you were going to market it to couples and now it seems like it’s even more effective to give it or to sell it to the therapists or provide it to the therapists so that they can use it when they work with couples rather than the couples themselves buying it. Is that kind of how it evolved?
[RACHEL]
Exactly how it’s evolving, where other therapists are like, wait a minute, I want that or one therapist, very funny, she said, I need that with my husband. So it’s great because listen, you go with the flow wherever with marketing. You can create something and you constantly need to pivot and make sure that it’s meeting the need of the person who wants to buy it and however they want to use it and however it’s going to work for them.
[ALISON]
So what were some things that you learned, whether things you did right or things you did wrong in that process of putting together the toolkit?
[RACHEL]
Okay. So this is the number one thing you do when you’re creating a program. You always have to look at, this was my biggest mistake, what is the need? What is the need out there? And one of the things that my mistakes was, I thought, wow, I think couples will love this. What came to realize is that couples really want to come to therapy and talk about their relationship with somebody. They don’t necessarily want this self-study program initially. So that was the little glitch there and now when I work with couples, they purchased the program just as a compliment to have there and to listen to maybe in between sessions or do some of the exercises. There are some fabulous exercises in this program and it just helps in combination with the therapy.
[ALISON]
So if you were to do it over again, you would’ve created it with that in mind, but not necessarily like —
[RACHEL]
I would’ve definitely create it with that in mind. I didn’t realize that it was going to be such a wonderful training vehicle for my therapists to help them learn how to work better and more effectively with couples. Sometimes I’ll get a really seasoned therapist and she or he loves working with couples and they think, wow, I just want to make sure I’m more comfortable in the room with them. Then I say, well, let’s listen to this program and they’re like, I feel so much more comfortable because I have a tool belt now. So I have all these different strategies or exercises just in case they need them to be able to give it to them.
[ALISON]
That’s great. That’s really cool. So what’s your kind of future plan for that program?
[RACHEL]
My future plan is to pivot and really look at it as a coaching module and maybe do some affiliate work with other clinicians around the country that want this for their therapists or maybe want to sell it with their clients.
[ALISON]
That’s exciting.
[RACHEL]
Yes, and then to continue giving it to our couples who are benefiting greatly from it.
[ALISON]
Very cool. So what’s been your kind of greatest joy or accomplishment with running the group practice?
[RACHEL]
Two things, one is watching my therapists grow and watching them feel so grateful that they have this opportunity with the Relationship Suite and so watching them grow and their retention get better and better. Then also hearing from our clients, “I’m so happy here. I’m so happy with this clinician.” One of the thing is we want to create this group practice and sometimes we get lost in creating the practice and having all these clinicians, but are we giving the best service possible to people because mental health has been stigmatized and now people are opening up to it and I want to make sure they’re loving it too. So while you’re doing the business end of it, you also want to make sure that people are really getting the clinic, the experience and the healing that they’re signing up for as well. So it’s a fine line and we have to be aware and tuned into both those pieces.
[ALISON]
Definitely. So it sounds like it’s gratifying to see that the good service that people are receiving is beyond what you’re actually doing. That it’s sort of growing with all of the people that you hire and yes, it’s going beyond just the work that you’re able to do yourself.
[RACHEL]
Absolutely. So both therapists that work with me and clients are feeling that they’re both growing, everybody’s healing, everybody’s getting what they want out of it.
[ALISON]
Yes. And how much clinical work are you still doing?
[RACHEL]
Alison, unfortunately not too much, but in the new year I will pull back a little bit and really focus on doing more training and really focus on pushing this program out too. Because it’s so wonderful and I really want to get it off the shelf and out there in the world because I think it can help many people and group practices.
[ALISON]
Yes, absolutely. If you start a couples group practice, I’ll be your first customer.
[RACHEL]
All right, Alison. I think you’ll like it.
[ALISON]
So how do you balance, like you said, the business side with you’re still doing clinical work. Does that ever feel overwhelming? Do you feel after doing it for a good chunk of time it’s gotten easier?
[RACHEL]
One of the things that I’ve realized about myself is I’ve been a therapist for 22 years and I still love being a therapist, and growing. I mean, I just got certified in EMDR and EFT and I really, because I always want to give the best to my clients. I have so many that are still with me from years ago. So we already have relationships. So while I love doing this work, I also love doing the business end of it. So now as I’ve been doing the business, and that I’m really keen into what it is that I need to be doing, so as I’m fine tuning that and learning better how to market I’m able to balance it a little bit better.

Also making sure that I’m not seeing too many people and that my therapists are being nurtured. And of course always looking for more marketings and being on top. Yes, we’re also have a virtual couples therapy practice in New Jersey too, that we’ve opened up too. So that’s also something that we want to flesh out and get more therapists for just because we are specialized in working with couples and we’re seeing a lot of couples in New Jersey also like the virtual piece of it.
[ALISON]
That’s great. So was that tricky to set up, having the practice in two different states or was it pretty straightforward?
[RACHEL]
It’s a great question. We are sisters, New Jersey and New York. So during the pandemic, I mean, we all wanted to make sure we were doing things legally. So I had a clinician that was licensed in both states. I’m licensed in both states. So while the states have different requirements, actually it’s working beautifully. New Jersey, they they’ve been wonderful in licensing New Yorkers, so we’re very grateful for them. It’s interesting because people that used to come to our office like people in Jersey City or Hoboken, they’re 10 minutes away from our suite in New York and now we want to make sure it’s legal so our New Jersey clinicians are seeing them.

But meanwhile, they’re so much further away from them, right where they’re living, but at the same time, they can legally see them and our New York clinicians can’t. So it’s all very tricky, but if you’re being really smart and legal about it’s working out beautifully. So we just onboarded another New Jersey clinician and we’re filling her caseload so quickly because so many of those people that want to see us and that are 10 minutes away are living in another state. So it’s interesting the way it’s all falling into place.
[ALISON]
Yes, for sure. I think that’ll be interesting to see how that gets sorted out in the future with crossing state lines and all of those things and seems like very arbitrary because they literally are so close to you, which is technically a different state.
[RACHEL]
It’s so true.
[ALISON]
So if you had to offer some advice to a practice owner who might be starting like a couples counseling niched practice, group practice, what advice would you give to them?
[RACHEL]
So one most important is where are you living and what is the vibe of your city, your town? Is insurance big where you are and where you’re opening up a practice? It’s so important to key into that because living in New York, in this big metropolitan area, we are definitely not insurance-based here. We’re self-pay. So how does your city or your town, how does it operate? What are people doing? What is the trend? Also in New York, on every two blocks, we have a Starbucks. In New York, in the building that our suite is in, they’re all couples therapists and there’s enough for everybody here. So we have over 12 million people that we can service. So I really feel that there is abundance.

So one of the things is really checking in with where you are and making sure that you are going with the trend and also opening up to your state, now that we can do couples because their schedules are so complicated or sometimes they may not be in the same place. They actually are very open to doing virtual work. So if you can open up to your state and do more virtual, that can also be something that I would advise. And most important is being trained in working with couples, because I’ve been doing this since 2004. I’m specializing in working with couples. You have to be really well trained and comfortably being in a room with a couple. Many therapists, they’re not comfortable with it. So you want to be trained and you want to be comfortable. That’s what I would advise.
[ALISON]
That’s good advice. So it’s been great talking with you, Rachel. If folks want to get ahold of you or check out your practice what’s the best way for them to contact you? I also was hoping you could share your information about the online toolkit too, that you created.
[RACHEL]
Absolutely. So our website is called the Relationship Suite. So it’s www.relationshipsuite.com. So it’s a suite. Then if you go to the online counseling piece, the dropdown says online couple’s toolkit. If you click on online couple’s toolkit, you’ll see everything about the program. It’s a step by step program on how to create more intimacy and rekindle romance in your relationship. There’s a video and it’s actually very inexpensive. I only sell it for $99, so it can be affordable. Then at the bottom of that page, you can subscribe and just get our blogs and some great tips on how to tame your temper and rekindle intimacy in your relationship. So it’s relationshipsuite.com
[ALISON]
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Rachel. It’s been great talking with you today.
[RACHEL]
Thank you, Alison.
[ALISON]
Thanks again for listening. If you, like Rachel, want some support and guidance for your group practice, definitely check out our membership community Group Practice Boss. We have a different topic every month. Whitney Owens and I lead people through different webinars and questions and answers and the kind of beauty of having a like-minded community of other practice owners. We have so much fun working with those folks. You can check out all of the details and the link to sign up at practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss.

Thanks so much. I’ll talk to you next time.

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This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, 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.