Strengthen Your Business by Launching a Product with Ashley Mielke | GP 125

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An image of Ashley Mielke is captured. On this therapist podcast, Ashley Mielke talks about strengthening your business by launching a produc

Do you want to expand your practice with a new product or service? Why should you pursue your passion instead of only money? How do you take the first step?

In this podcast episode, Alison Pidgeon speaks with Ashley Mielke about strengthening your business by launching a product.

Podcast Sponsor: Heard

An image of the Practice of the Practice podcast sponsor, Heard, is captured. Heard offers affordable bookkeeping services, personalized financial reporting, and tax assistance.

As a therapist, you’re probably too preoccupied with your caseload to want to think about bookkeeping or tax filing. Heard can help you out with that. Heard is a bookkeeping and tax platform built specifically for therapists in private practice that helps you track and improve your practice’s financial health. Regardless of whether you’re a seasoned clinician or are in the first year of your practice, Heard will help you to identify areas for growth and streamline best financial practices for your business.

When you sign up with Heard, you’ll work directly with financial specialists to track your income and expenses, file taxes online, and grow your business. You’ll also receive financial insights such as profit and loss statements and personalized monthly reports. You can say goodbye to poring over spreadsheets and guessing your tax deductions or quarterly payments; focus on your clients, and Heard will take care of the rest.

Plans begin at $149 per month and can easily be tailored to fit your business’ financial needs. Sign up now at www.joinheard.com.

Meet Ashley Mielke

A photo of Ashley Mielke is captured. She is a Registered Psychologist, Founder and CEO of a large group private practice in Alberta, Canada called The Grief and Trauma Healing Centre Inc. She is featured on Grow a Group Practice, a therapist podcast.

Ashley Mielke is a Registered Psychologist, Founder, and CEO of a large group private practice in Alberta, Canada called The Grief and Trauma Healing Centre Inc. She is passionate about supporting heart-centered practice owners in starting, growing, and scaling their businesses.

Ashley was called to start her company after the tragic death of her father by suicide in 2010. It was the purpose she found through her healing that inspired the ‘WHY’ that drives her 7-figure company today. It brings Ashley great joy to support other heart-centered leaders in building successful practices that are aligned with both their business goals and their deepest calling.

Visit The Grief and Trauma Healing Centre and connect with them on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Connect with Ashley Mielke on Instagram and LinkedIn.

In This Podcast

  • Creating a product within your business
  • Take the first step
  • Bonus streams of income

Creating a product within your business

Launching a product or additional service within your practice will boost success, relevance, and accessibility for your clients.

Consider creating a small, affordable product to sell to your existing and potential client base to create trust in the community, market the practice, and draw attention to how you help others.

We don’t know at this point what the future holds for the Comfort Box, but honestly, this is just how I do business. I just run with it and see what happens. (Ashley Mielke)

Take the first step

Do not allow yourself to become paralyzed by perfection or feel the need to have everything organized before you allow yourself to begin.

Start exploring, start collecting ideas, and start playing! Just start, because that is often the biggest stumbling block with any new venture.

When we try to get all of our ducks in a row, I’m not sure we’ll ever get there … launch before you’re ready, that’s exactly what we’ve done, and here we are. (Ashley Mielke)

Bonus streams of income

Not only does offering a product or different service increase your capacity to help those in your community, but it also helps you to sustain your business more long-term because it can become a passive, additional stream of income.

At the end of the day you still have to be passionate about it because it’s still building a whole other business and it’s still going to have its challenges, and if you’re not passionate about it you’re not going to want to keep doing it. (Alison Pidgeon)

Even though a new service can add another income source, you need to want to do it too.

Have it be a passion project instead of a solely monetary one because that will inspire you to work on it and keep working until it is launched.

Useful links mentioned in this episode:

Check out these additional resources:

Meet Alison Pidgeon, Group Practice Owner

An image of Alison Pidgeon is displayed. She is a successful group practice owner and offers private practice consultation for private practice owners to assist in how to grow a group practice. She is the host of Grow A Group Practice Podcast and one of the founders of Group Practice Boss.Alison Pidgeon, LPC is the owner of Move Forward Counseling, a group practice in Lancaster, PA and she runs a virtual assistant company, Move Forward Virtual Assistants.

Alison has been working with Practice of the Practice since 2016.  She has helped over 70 therapist entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses, through mastermind groups and individual consulting.

Transformation From A Private Practice To Group Practice

In addition, she is a private practice consultant for Practice of the Practice. Allison’s private practice ‘grew up.’ What started out as a solo private practice in early 2015 quickly grew into a group practice and has been expanding ever since.

Visit Alison’s website, listen to her podcast, or consult with Alison. Email Alison at [email protected]

Thanks For Listening!

Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media by clicking on one of the social media links below! Alternatively, leave a review on iTunes and subscribe!

Podcast Transcription

[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 everyone. This is Alison Pidgeon, your host. I’m so glad you joined me today. I have a great interview for you. I spoke with Ashley Mielke, who is actually the newest consultant for Practice of the Practice and a past consulting client of mine. She is a registered psychologist and founder and CEO of a large group, private practice in Alberta, Canada called the Grief and Trauma Healing Center. Ashley is doing all kinds of amazing things with her practice and she talks in this interview about why she started her practice and how it’s grown, and she’s built it up to be a seven figure business. Yes, Ashley’s just such a neat person to talk to and has so much knowledge and value to give. So I hope you enjoy this interview with Ashley Mielke. [ALISON] Hi, Ashley. Welcome to the podcast. [ASHLEY MIELKE] Hi Alison, thank you so much for having me. [ALISON] I’m so excited to talk with you today. Can you give us a brief introduction of who you are and your practice and all the things that you do? [ASHLEY] Yes, absolutely. So I’m Ashley Mielke and I’m a registered psychologist and the founder and CEO of the Grief and Trauma Healing Center, which is an Edmonton Alberta, Canada. We’ve been in practice for almost a decade, we are a large group practice, we have about 20 or 21 clinicians, and we specialize in grief and trauma counseling. I am also a business consultant with the Practice of the Practice so I’m very excited to take my experiences as a group practice owner and as a psychologist now share that experience with other therapists who are looking to start to grow and scale their practices. A few other things about me, I’m very excited we just launched our very first product called the comfort box, which is a box of thoughtfully curated items for women who have experienced loss either in the form of a death, a divorce, a diagnosis, or any other difficulty. So that’s very exciting. I’m also working on my doctorate as well. So I’m very busy at the moment. [ALISON] Wow. That’s amazing. So let’s talk about the practice first. So tell me about why you chose the niche of the practice to be grief. [ASHLEY] Going back, this is a really common question that I get, how did you get into specializing in grief and trauma? I say, I didn’t choose this area of practice. It really chose me. When I was in grad school, my second year of graduate studies, my dad relapsed into alcohol and cocaine addiction and died by suicide and I realized very quickly how ill equipped I was to deal with my grief and to be honest, how ill equipped our field was to deal with grief. So I thought I would have all the tools and realized I didn’t have any emotional tools. So I graduated with my master’s degree, became a registered psychologist, and I really hadn’t dealt with my grief by this point. I really just poured myself into work and school and keeping busy and then this really beautiful thing started to happen. Grieving people were being referred to work with me, and I really felt my soul come alive in this work. I knew how to hold space and I knew how to sit with them, but I really didn’t have any tools to support them on their healing journey. So I did some research, I came across this program called the grief recovery method, which is a program that originated in the US in California and I signed up for this certification program, that was in 2013, it was a four day certification and it absolutely transformed my life so much so that the very next day, after completing the training, I went to the business registrar’s office and founded the Grief and Trauma Healing Center. I just set off with this spark in my heart to share this beautiful gift with others. I guess that’s how it all started. [ALISON] Wow, that’s an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. So now you have 21 staff. What has that been like for you , I’m assuming it started out with maybe just you or a small handful of people and then it’s grown. So what has that process been like for you? [ASHLEY] Yes, in the early days it was just myself. I think I hired my first contracting psychologist about a year into my practice. I would say every step of growth has been really exciting but also brought forth some unique challenges. The biggest period of growth we had is this last three years, even particularly the last, like I would say almost two years where we had, I think our team grew from about eight or 12 to 20 or 21. So there was some really significant growth, but really it was really an organic, I guess, unfolding of the growth of the business. Every time we were ready or I felt like my capacity was full, then I considered hiring. That’s sort of how we got to where we are today, almost nine years into the practice. [ALISON] I know you and I had worked together to do some consulting because you hit a point where you felt like, oh wow, now I have to build out this whole leadership team because the practice is getting so large. So can you explain to us what the structure of the practice is like, because I know that’s something a lot of people ask me about? [ASHLEY] Yes, that was so fundamental for me, Alison, the simplicity of creating an organizational chart, which I had heard of and I know that was a very businessy thing, but never actually sat down to create that. So how I’ve structured it, that works really well for where we’re at in our growth is I am, I sort of promoted myself to CEO and sort of at the top of the organizational chart. Then I promoted four directors. So I really looked at where can I delegate some of those tasks that are now overflowing on my plate? We created a position for the director of people and culture because culture is a really important part of our business. It always has been so that was very important to me to maintain that as we grow. We created the director of operations position for all the high level operations and to oversee the day to day operations. Then I promoted two clinical directors. So I was supervising all of our students before. I’ve now delegated that to those clinical directors. They also lead all of our team consultations and they update all of our forms and they just make sure that we’re always practicing ethically in every way. that was really huge in terms of creating space for me to look at expanding and growing the practice now. [ALISON] Nice. So what do you do as the CEO? What are the tasks that you’ve held onto? [ASHLEY] I would say there’s still a few things that I oversee in terms of what goes out into like our social media or our newsletter, so few of those things, but really it’s the vision and strategy behind the business. I’ve now been able to look at expanding and opening up a second location and I wouldn’t have had the space to be able to do that. We’re also looking at creating a nonprofit part of the business as well, so I’m really into the philanthropy and the community aspect of the business. We have this beautiful fundraiser that we facilitate every year called the hope campaign, which happens in November every year, which is an honor of my dad. So I run the hope campaign and so just some of those more community oriented aspects of the business, of course just the big picture vision. [ALISON] Awesome. Let’s talk about the product that you launched recently called the comfort box. So how did you come up with that idea? [ASHLEY] This is an idea that’s two years in the making and because as I’m sure a lot of practice owners can relate, I didn’t have a lot of capacity to really pour myself into it. So it was a slow build, but I’m really grateful that I still made time for that. So a couple of years ago I had this idea that, gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a thoughtfully and intentionally curated package for women who are grieving? So many friends would reach out to me and say, “Hey I’ve just lost someone. What do you think would be something nice I could get for them other than just a bouquet of flowers and not to minimize that that’s still a lovely gift, but something that feels a little bit more thoughtful?” What I did with my team is reflect on what are the things that give us peace and comfort when we’re going through a difficult time. So we came up with a list of items. I put it out there into the Facebook world and Instagram asked my friends and family, “Hey, what are the things that you would love to get if you were going through a hard time?” Then we came up with our, with our first box of items and really solidified that plan and then went on a mission of just sourcing out local women-owned businesses that we could also support through this process. We finally had it all come together, literally this last two weeks. I would like to share, Alison, if you’d like me to share what’s in our box. [ALISON] Yes. [ASHLEY] Okay, so we had to think of every single detail from the box itself, which is this beautifully printed box with our branding on the front. This is the comfort box inside on the lid of the box that says love in a box, which is our slogan that we have a beautiful Brené Brown quote in the box. On the bed of the box is Aspen wood, these Aspen wood strands that you can use as a part of a burn ceremony, like maybe you wanted to write a letter and burn it for a loved one. So that can be sustainable. We have a beautiful pillow that smells of lavender. It’s so nice. It can be used for cool or warm on your eyes if you’re just wanting to rest. It’s actually really good for your nervous system. We have this incredible sea salt soak that we made to have like a lovely bath with our signature essential oil blend, which includes sense like almonds, Berg, Palm, Rosa, Frankensense and Rose. We also have an essential oil roll on as well, which is really lovely, a hand poured soy candle and some organic herbal tea. To top that off, we included this beautiful little floral bundle as well, just like a nice little touch and some of our favorite treats from a local company called Kick-Ass Caramels, these delicious melt in your mouth caramels that we also included in the box. The other piece that was really important to us is this intention card. So we actually thought out how every item in the box can be used with intentions so you don’t have to think about, well, how do I use this roll on? Or how can I best utilize my bath soak. That is what you’ll find in the first edition of the comfort box. [ALISON] Wow, that sounds so nice. I could just imagine if somebody received it, just feeling like so cared for and everything has been so well thought out. That’s amazing. [ASHLEY] Yes. And for me like why this piece, it, wasn’t not only to have a product that someone could purchase for a woman in their life, but also as an extension of our vision at the Grief and Trauma Healing Center, which is that everyone will have the tools to heal from loss and no one will ever grieve alone. So we thought this is a really beautiful way to reach people that we may not otherwise reach through our counseling practice. We’re really excited to see just the impact this will have on people’s lives. [HEARD] As a therapist, you’re probably too preoccupied with your caseload to want to think about bookkeeping or tax filing. Heard can help you out with that. Heard is a bookkeeping and tax platform built specifically for therapists in private practice that helps you track and improve your practice’s financial health. Regardless of whether you’re a seasoned clinician or in the first year of your practice, Heard will help you to identify areas for growth and streamline best financial practices for your business. When you sign up with Heard, you’ll work directly with financial specialists to track your income and expenses, file taxes online and grow your business. You’ll also receive financial insights, such as profit and loss statements and personalized monthly reports. You can say goodbye to pouring over spreadsheets and guessing your tax deductions or quarterly payments, focus on your clients Heard will take care of the rest. Plans begin at $149 per month and can easily be tailored to fit your business’ financial needs. Sign up now at www.joinheard.com. [ALISON] Yes, for sure. I imagine that having to come up with a product based business, or even thinking through the logistics of how do you find all those things and put them together and then how do you ship them and how do you build out the website, how did you figure all of that out? [ASHLEY] One of my favorite Brené Brown quotes is the slice the plane while you’re building it. This literally has just been figuring it out as we go in terms of sourcing local products and finding a good wholesale rate. I mean, that is a whole beast in and of itself; looking at branding and labeling looking at how do we track all of these purchases and how do we set a cost and what are other people doing in the market? So all of that, we’ve just done as we went and then for those other pieces, like creating a website, creating our e-commerce I outsource all of that. I had some of our teammates at the Grief and Trauma Healing Center help me with this, so while they weren’t doing like one in particular, her name is Miranda, she’s amazing. She’s one of our client connection specialists, which is what we call our admin team. When she wasn’t busy doing admin related stuff, she was helping with sourcing out the products and orders and all of that good stuff. We don’t really know at this point, Alison, what the future holds for the comfort box but honestly, this is just how I do business. I just run with it and see what happens because I think when we try to get all of our ducks in a row, I’m not sure we’ll ever get there. [ASHLEY] There was a message I heard on a podcast years ago and it was launch before you’re ready and that’s exactly what we’ve done and here we are. I know that there will be challenges and lots of questions that come up, but I’m confident that we will be able to figure that out as we go. [ALISON] Yes, I live by that motto as well. because if you wait till everything is perfect, you’ll never get started. That’s what live by. So are you actually ordering things and putting the boxes together and shipping them out or do you have a company that does that for you? [ASHLEY] We are doing that now. I have voluntold my husband, that he is in charge of packing the boxes for us. This is great because he’s a stay-at-home dad for our son and so it’s really great to be able to have his support while we get it going. So we’ve got all of the products at home for us to get that started and I know as soon as we see the consistency or what this is actually going to look like, we will hire for that position, but I thought why not maximize resources that we have while we’re getting started? Right now, we are looking at shipping options, but because it’s a pretty large heavy box, what we’re doing is pick up and local delivery only. So we’re just going to be staying in the Edmonton area and surrounding areas right now until we figure out our shipping solution. Once we got that under wraps, then we’re going to open up for shipping probably across Canada and then across the US. [ALISON] Awesome. So you are truly figuring it out as you go? [ASHLEY] Yes, we are, absolutely. [ALISON] That’s a good way to do it. Anything else that you learned with starting a whole nother line of your business that was obviously very different from the service oriented, providing counseling to clients? [ASHLEY] I would say the biggest challenge for me is shifting my mindset from being a service provider, because as we know, as therapists and even running a business, that’s based on a service, it’s like, okay, well I am the service. I show up, I do my job or therapists show up and do the job. This is very different. Sourcing products, ordering products, building those relationships, putting things together, it’s a very different experience. To be honest, that that has been the most challenging shift for me. I think what I’m most passionate about when it comes to the comfort box is the impact. That goes back to why I chose this profession in the first place, is how is this going to impact a person’s life and how can I create a business that’s sustainable that I can put the right people in place to order, wholesale pack, ship these boxes and I don’t have to worry about that. That’s the journey that we’re on is getting the comfort box to a place where I don’t have to be the one doing those things in the weeds and have people in place to support that so we can continue to grow the vision. [ALISON] So is that a whole separate business from your counseling practice or it’s an extension, or how do you see that? [ASHLEY] It is a separate business? We haven’t incorporated the comfort box yet so it sort of falls under the umbrella of the Grief and Trauma Healing Center right now, but it does function as its own website. So eventually we will incorporate when that makes sense and have that become a separate entity. [ALISON] So are you hoping it becomes a whole nother stream of income for you? [ASHLEY] Yes, absolutely. That was definitely an inspiring factor in this as well as how can we create another source of income on top of the counseling practice and still make an impact and something that still feels really meaningful to me. [ALISON] I think that anytime you’re looking to start a side hustle, I think a lot of people maybe think about, oh, what might make me a nice bit of extra money or whatever, but I think at the end of the day, you still have to be passionate about it because it’s still building a whole nother business and it’s still going to have its challenges and if you’re not passionate about it, you’re not going to want to keep doing it. [ASHLEY] Oh, absolutely. I so agree if it’s purely about money, it wouldn’t be worth it. It wouldn’t even be worth it to me already. Just the sheer amount of hours and time and effort that goes into creating something and thinking about this is really a reflection of me. This is a reflection of our practice. So just to throw something out there willynilly is not something that I would do. So making sure it’s an integrity and that you want to see it through, like, that’s another big piece of it too, is if I’m going to bring this to market, I want to be able to follow through and see the longevity of this business. That’s why it took two years Alison, to get to this point. [ALISON] Yes because I can tell you’re the person who wants to do something really well and so you wanted to make sure it was done. Let’s talk about your business consulting for a minute because I know that is a new venture for you and you have some expertise in some different areas of private practice that you can help people with. Obviously one of those is being familiar with the Canadian system of healthcare. Then tell us about other ways that you can help private practice owners. [ASHLEY] As a business consultant there’s two parts of the business that I’m really passionate about in supporting other therapists in growing and scaling their companies. The one side is the business side of things, looking at their administrative processes, their operations, the financial aspect of their business, how to grow their team, how to create a leadership team, how to delegate tasks, how to create standard operating procedures to make their company more efficient so that they understand their business on a day to day. The other half of the business that I really, or the other half of consulting that I really love that really lights me up is helping a therapist to stay connected to the purpose and the why behind their company, why they started their business in the first place and how the purpose and the vision, the mission, the values that they have can be the driving force behind their growth. Because as we know, when we go through different seasons of growth, there’s going to be new challenges and setbacks and some of those times can feel, be very scary and very dark. So having their connection to their vision and their why is really important. Also helping them to really market their niche if they have a niche, helping them to grow as a heart centered or faith based practice owner, and also developing a really healthy, productive, safe workplace culture. That is something that we’re known for at the Grief and Trauma Healing Center is a safe, inviting, warm, healthy, fun place to work that really inspires you to show up with your whole self and to take risks as a therapist in private practice. All of those things really excite me in terms of supporting therapists who are looking for a little bit of extra help. [ALISON] Awesome. We’re happy to have you as part of the team and looking forward to watching you expand your skillset and yes, it’ll be great to have you. [ASHLEY] Thank you so much. I’m very excited, very humbled to be a part of this team. [ALISON] Can you tell us the different ways that people could get in touch with you and then of course, tell us about the website for the comfort box too? [ASHLEY] Yes. So if anyone wanted to get in touch with me, please feel free to send me an email. My email is [email protected]. If you want to follow me on Instagram or connect with you on Instagram, you can find me at @The Ashley Mielke. If you want to check out the comfort box, it is thecomfortbox.ca. [ALISON] Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ashley, for telling us about all the cool things that you’re doing. I’m really excited to hear more about how the comfort box goes when you roll it out. [ASHLEY] Thank you so much, Alison, thank you so much for having me. [ALISON] I wanted to say thank you one more time to Heard who is our sponsor for this podcast episode. They can help you with bookkeeping and tax filing and all of those things we as therapists don’t really like doing. If you’re interested in learning more about their plans and how they can help you go to www.joinheard.com. Is going to be joining us in our group practice boss membership community because she is the newest consultant for Practice of the Practice. If you want to hang out with other private practice owners who are doing cool things and get help and support, definitely check out Group Practice Boss, which you can find at practice of the practice.com/grouppracticeboss. I’ll talk to y’all next time. If you love this podcast, will you please rate and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player? 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.