[00:00:00] Welcome to the Scaling Therapy Practice Podcast. I'm James Marland, your guide to turning big ideas into real action. This is where therapists, coaches, and consultants find the support they need to take the next steps towards their dreams.
[00:00:20] Let me help you put your mission in motion.
[00:00:25] So many clients, when we start meeting with them, we get the books all in order and we start meeting monthly. They'll just say, Oh, this isn't as bad as I thought it was, you know, or even if they had a bad month, they're like, Oh, it wasn't as bad of a month as I thought it was, you know, they're going through that month just with that shame and that stress, but then when you look at the numbers, you're like, okay, you know, it's not where we want it to be, but it's still okay. We're not going out of business right now. You know, we can make some steps.
[00:00:51] Are you looking for ways to diversify your income? In January, I'm starting a cohort of therapists to start creating online content, to increase your impact, influence, and income.
[00:01:04] Visit course creation, studio.com and look for resources on starting your own online course today.
[00:01:14] Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is your host, James Marlin. This is the show where we empower mission driven leaders to launch life changing online courses. Today, I'm here with my special guest, Nate Hendricks. He's the owner of Navigator Bookkeeping
[00:01:32] so Nate, welcome to the show.
[00:01:34] Yeah. Thanks for having me, James. Happy to be here.
[00:01:37] All right. So we were talking in the beginning about, you know, what you do and how you got involved, but why don't we just catch up the audience with why did you choose this field and how did you get started?
[00:01:49] Yeah. I'm actually a teacher by trade, so went to school, got my education degree, taught third grade for four years. Um, but just from a work life balance point of view, from a stress point of view, it was, it was not for me long term. I knew that pretty quickly. So I have always had a love for personal finance.
[00:02:08] Like even when I was in high school and college, I was listening to podcasts on personal finance on paying down debt. You know, I had that student loan debt. So I was like, how am I going to get rid of this? Uh, so it was always, always a love of mine to be thinking about that. So as I was teaching, I was like, I need to do something else.
[00:02:22] Maybe finance is something I can go into, but I did not want that kind of. Long hours, corporate finance life that you hear about, right? Banking and all that. So through a lot of things found, um, some courses on bookkeeping, accounting, and just starting your own business. And I was like, Hey, the flexibility with that sounds great.
[00:02:41] I'll still have time to spend with my wife and my family, but I can still work in kind of the finance side. So. I was about six and a half years ago, started the business. Um, after quitting teaching, uh, you know, at this point, if I would've done that again, I would've been like, don't do that. Like, you don't have any, you don't have it ready to go.
[00:02:57] It's not enough, you know? But I think when you're, when you're ready to leave a career, sometimes you're like, let's just jump in and do it. So jumped in, uh, took us a while to get a client, which I was 0 percent worried about. My wife was very worried about, but I was just loving it. I was like, this is great.
[00:03:11] Having your own business is the best. Um, Eventually did get clients obviously. And we're here now, but yeah, started the business about six and a half years ago. And then the last two to three years we niched down into private practice and into mental health. So a good friend of mine, um, Brent Stutzman, who owns brain, your practice, who also works with private practice owners, he started referring me a bunch of clients.
[00:03:31] And, uh, I was like, Oh, this is a really cool niche. This is a great, a great field. And, you know, basically found out that when we're in a niche and when we really know a field like private practice, well, we can add value so much more quickly. To to owner's lives, right? They come in and we're like, Hey, we know how to help you think through these problems.
[00:03:48] We know your pain points. So we've really just love that. And we've really dove in with, with two feet into private practice since then. So the last couple of years, that's been all we've been doing, thinking about mental health and, and working with, uh, counseling practice owners.
[00:04:01] Awesome. And that that that niche thing is super true. I had a coach once tell me James, you're poor because you can't choose who you want to serve. Like, you're too diversified. Yeah, you can do everything, but then you're doing nothing. So, uh, is one of the key elements of really, uh, maximizing your power and your force and aligning your marketing and aligning your expenditures and aligning your staff to doing one thing and doing it really well. So, man, you, you, there were two like big leaps there. I don't know if you have any more to say about that. One was jumping in and starting your own business. I mean, that's, that's one of the, Whether you're starting your own business or starting something new, uncomfortable. Like you're, you're, you're, I've often said for 20 years, I traded. I traded, uh, my future for a paycheck because the paycheck was secure and safe and relatively dependable. Um, but you, you went and started a business. Uh, can you walk through that process or maybe some of the decision points that you had when you were thinking about starting something new like that?
[00:05:20] Sure. Yeah. I think it was, it was a point of view where I just, I took stock of where I was right now, as far as what did my day to day look look like, you know, I would, I'd come home from teaching every day and. Well, I feel like, Hey, how was your day? I was like, it's, it's pretty bad. It's pretty stressful.
[00:05:35] And you know, every job has that, right? You're going to have days like that in any, any job. But when it's every day and like, you know, 29 out of the 30 days are bad. You're like, this is maybe not what I should be doing, you know? Um, so I think I just kind of thought about the future and thought, you know, I don't want myself to be coming home every day and be like, yeah, it was a bad day.
[00:05:54] Every day and just kind of be in a bad mood, not have that kind of emotional capacity to, you know, spend good time with family, friends, all those things. So I think pretty quickly in teaching, I realized, you know, there's a lot of people that can do teaching really well. And I was just maybe not one of those people.
[00:06:08] I mean, I think I did a good job, got good reviews, all that, but. It just internally was not good for me. Um, so I think I had a pretty strong motivation internally just to do something else. So whether it was financially the right thing to do or not, you know, oftentimes transitions like that, like you said, James are financially, maybe not the right thing.
[00:06:26] You know, whether you call that the golden handcuffs or whatnot, I don't think people will usually call teaching the golden handcuffs just with compensation benefits, but it still feels like that when you have a very safe, secure paycheck and you're jumping into something that has no income, um, that can be really difficult.
[00:06:42] So, I mean, I was, I'm really grateful that my wife had a job at that point that was pretty secure. She's a nurse, so we could rely on that at least. And then I could jump in, but yeah, it's, it's funny looking back. Cause I'm a relatively financially conservative person, as you would guess. Being an accountant bookkeeper.
[00:06:56] You're like, yeah, those people usually are a little careful with their money. I was like, let's do this. Let's drop half of our income. This is going to be great. Um, but I think that just shows how strong my motivation to, to move away from teaching was. And yeah, once I got into entrepreneurship and, and business ownership, I was like, wow, this is.
[00:07:14] Really new, but really cool. Like connected with so many great people, so many people who just were so willing to, to help out and add value for free. Right.
[00:07:22] Hmm.
[00:07:22] just like, Hey, I know you've never run a business for it. Let me just jump in and help you out. Give you some, some insights and some pointers.
[00:07:28] Um, so that feels like so long ago, but that was so monumental in growing the business and going from there. And yeah, I mean. I think just with business ownership, it's so funny. You, you start in a place and feel like you, you really know things and are really confident. And then you find out really quickly, you don't know much.
[00:07:43] And there's so many areas that you don't know anything about. So it's just always, you're always learning, you know, every, every week. I'm like, Oh, I had no idea that worked that way. Or, you know, this is a whole new thing for me. And I think that's what really makes it fun. And in new is you're always, always learning, always doing new things.
[00:07:58] And. That kind of potential for growth and getting better is just always there as an entrepreneur, which is, which is really exciting for me. Um,
[00:08:05] that is really exciting. Um, And the 1 of the exciting points you talked about was niching niching down. Were you afraid to start nature? Did you
[00:08:18] yes.
[00:08:19] And you're like, oh, this makes sense. Oh, you were. Okay. Can you
[00:08:22] I was so afraid.
[00:08:23] little bit?
[00:08:24] Yeah. I, and I had tried to niche a couple of times to be honest. So I had tried two other times to niche down and it didn't really work out. You know, there are some clients that came in from that niche, but it just didn't turn into the traction that I thought it would. And looking back at that, the problem was I just did not go all in on it.
[00:08:41] You know, I kind of was like trying to niche while also not niching, which is just, it doesn't work that way. You know, you can't, you can't hold both. So, um, those previous niches, I was like, well, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to niche, but I'm still going to take on other clients and marketing wise, I'm still going to be available for everyone.
[00:08:57] And it just, we never got that traction in that movement. So yeah, there's a lot of fear there because you're, you're repelling clients, right? You're saying to people, Hey, I'm not going to work with you. Cause you're not in my niche. And when you're starting out, that can be really difficult to do. Cause there's just people who are saying, I want to work with you.
[00:09:12] And you're saying, no, I don't want, I don't want your revenue. I don't want your money. We're not going to work together and that can be pretty tough. So there's a lot of fear there, but I think eventually talking with enough people, just reading some resources, um, and just working with a couple of private practices and being like, these, these people are great.
[00:09:28] This industry is great. I really love this. That just gave me that pull to keep moving towards that. And then once we got in.
[00:09:34] and you want to be a part of it. Like, yeah.
[00:09:36] Yeah. I mean, exactly. Like they're helping out the community. They're providing a really needed resource and, and health resource to, to the community. It's like, why wouldn't you wanna work with these people?
[00:09:45] Right? So there's just a lot of good there. Um, and yeah, once we got into it was like, this is, yeah. Why didn't we do this sooner? Should have done this four years ago. This is great. So it's been, been fun. Mm-Hmm.
[00:09:56] some of the books I've read, like the Mike McCollough, it's book like the pumpkin plan, and I'm sure he's, I'm sure he's said it in other books. just it's a scary thing to niche down. But if you don't hear, you're going to be chasing your business is going to be running you. You're not going to be running your business and everything's less powerful. I think in the, in the pumpkin plant book, you know, you take off the, you take off the pumpkins that aren't going to produce, they're not going to produce the big results and you feed the one that is gonna produce the big results. So pumpkin plant, great book. Also, we're recording this on Halloween. So it's, it's top of mind, pumpkins and all
[00:10:36] There it is. Yeah. Mm-Hmm?
[00:10:39] So you're, you're, you started, uh, you're an entrepreneur, you're working with therapists. we were talking a little bit about finding you help therapists find their financial story or you've, I think that's how you phrased it. Can you
[00:10:53] Yeah.
[00:10:53] that with me? Like, how does that help? So, okay. I'm asking this because when people come to me or they're engaging with me about, uh, Hey, I want to create a course, but, but, you know, I want to create a course, but I'm afraid, you know, I don't have enough money or I won't get a return on investment. I want to set a course, but I don't know how much it's going to cost because they don't know the numbers and they don't know the story or I want to create a course, but, um, I don't, um, you know, I don't have regular source of income, or I don't know how my my money work like money is a big part of starting something new. So.
[00:11:31] Mm-Hmm.
[00:11:32] could help my audience just a little bit understand their their financial story, then that would allow them like, I can't take clients who don't know their numbers. I can't take clients who aren't financially stable because. If you're not financially stable, of course, it's not going to save you, like
[00:11:54] right? Mm-Hmm.
[00:11:55] something new is not going to save your failing practice. So I need to have, you know, my clients need to be stable enough that they're looking for a way to grow or expand or, you know, Market or create more influence without killing their core business. So they have to know their finances. They have to know their story. So that's why that's the background for
[00:12:18] Yeah,
[00:12:19] How do you, what do you do? How can you help people understand their numbers that make them feel secure so that they can expand, build, or have just freedom.
[00:12:29] right. Well, I'll stick with that with the Halloween reference here. When you don't know your financial story, it's kind of like there, there's, there's a monster in your closet. You don't know, or there's something in your closet. You don't know if it's a monster or if it's just like clothes sitting in there.
[00:12:40] Right.
[00:12:41] Or it
[00:12:41] It's like,
[00:12:42] but yeah, yeah, you don't
[00:12:43] yeah. It's like, You have no idea. You're like, there's something moving over there, but I don't know what it is. That's, that's what it feels like to not know your financial story. And we talked to practice owners all the time. They're like, I, my gut feels this right. Like my checking account seems okay, but I don't know if that's actually true.
[00:12:58] And to me, that's one of the worst feelings you can have as an entrepreneur is when there's anything that is not clear. Right. If there's anything that's not clear, you're like, well, I don't even know what to do next because I don't know if it's good or if it's bad. So yeah, we call, we call that finding your financial story.
[00:13:11] What that means is that you just know where your numbers are. You know, the story that's happening, right. What happened in the last couple of months, what's happening right now. And where are we kind of trending? That's your financial story. And, you know, numbers sometimes can get boiled down, especially when we talk to accountants and CPAs.
[00:13:27] Numbers can get spoiled down to like, here's these just black and white financial statements. It's just like dead and lifeless. But I don't feel like that's the case. I don't believe that's the case with, with numbers. Numbers are a story that are impacted by a lot of the things that you're doing day in and day out, and that your team is doing day in and day out.
[00:13:40] It's a living, breathing thing. So when we can find the story, not just what was your profit, but what caused the profit to be that number or what caused your revenue to shift down this month, when we can find that story, that's infinitely more powerful than And confidence building than just knowing what your numbers are even.
[00:13:58] Right. So it's, it's not only just, Hey, can you tell me around where your profit is? Cause I think, I don't think memorizing numbers is helpful in this case, but why is your profit the way it is? Right. Did you hire a new therapist? And now this is growing. Now, if you started this course, you started pumping some advertising budget into it.
[00:14:15] Now it's bumping up. Well, that's why it's bumping up. Cause you pump some advertising budget into it. So knowing the why behind the numbers is so key. So yeah, finding that financial story is a big part of that. So. That's kind of the core of what we do in a lot of ways is, is try to share that financial story with as many practice owners as possible and really give them that confidence in their numbers so that even if it's a bad situation, right?
[00:14:37] Even if profits tight, cashflow is terrible. We at least know why. And we know, okay, these are the three steps we now need to take to get moving in the right direction instead of just being like, there's something moving in that closet and we don't know what it is, right? So that's, that's the place we're trying to move to.
[00:14:52] So, without naming names or saying practices, unless they gave you permission, can you me a caricature of like, how you help somebody Liz's like, where they started and where. Maybe they fixed everything or maybe they're in the process, but you have a story of how this has helped somebody.
[00:15:10] Sure. Yeah. I mean, I have many, many stories we can talk about. Um, I'll talk about a solo practice owner, a solo practitioner, cause I think this is a pretty powerful one. So she started her practice, private pay, pretty specialized. It goes back to a niche. Like she had a niche really was living into it, which was, which is very good for private practices as well.
[00:15:27] Um, but her personal finances and her business finances were mixed. There's a lot going in there between, and she just had no idea. What was actually happening? Like, she's like, I don't know how much money I'm actually spending on the business versus what we're spending on the personal side. And she had this kind of historical IRS debt as well.
[00:15:44] Right. So there's a lot of like previously, uh, non paid taxes. There's interest on that. There's all these payment plans happening is really messy. So what we started doing is just kind of getting into the numbers, separating personal and business, right. Making it clear. This is the business. This is you. Um, and then we, we had to figure out even what we were paying to the IRS.
[00:16:02] She wasn't even exactly sure of like, how much do I owe to the IRS? What is my payment plan? Am I overpaying? So we figured out all those pieces. And over time, I mean, this is not a fast process. This is sometimes over a course of years, right? This is over two years. She's now gotten to the point where she's, she's raised her rates.
[00:16:17] She's building savings. And she actually got hit with a tax bill from her state. Cause she hadn't paid, you know, unemployment tax, this whole thing, but instead of it torpedoing her, which it maybe would have two years ago, she had the money saved up because she had been setting aside that money. We were building tax savings together with her.
[00:16:33] Um, I don't know if you've read profit first, or, you know, you mentioned Mike Michalowicz, I'm guessing you maybe have, but,
[00:16:38] I
[00:16:38] um, So we were building a tax savings account and this big unemployment bill came in from her state and it was like, Hey, we actually have this money ready to go for this. We can just pull from your tax account, pay this bill.
[00:16:50] I mean, it was a big bill, tens of thousands of dollars. She paid it, she was okay. She's now on payroll. She's paying herself. She's building up that tax savings and just in such a better space as far as money stress. You know, I, when I first was meeting with her, Every meeting, she was just so stressed and there was so much, you know, just papers everywhere, notes everywhere.
[00:17:09] She didn't know where things are. Now she comes. And of course it's not like life is all rainbows and unicorns and perfect, but it's at least like, I at least know where we are. I know I have money saved up so that if another unexpected bill comes in. We're ready to go. We can handle that. So I just love seeing that.
[00:17:24] That was, that was so fun. You know, I don't usually, you know, we don't enjoy when the clients have big tax bills, but in this case, I still didn't enjoy it, but I was so happy for her just to say like, Hey, you have money. You can, you can pay that. It's no big deal. You don't have to worry about a payment plan.
[00:17:37] You don't have to worry about penalties. Let's just pay it and get it out of there. So that was, that was really exciting. Um, I can share lots more, you know, group practice owners scaling up all that, but that was a, that was a really cool one.
[00:17:47] that's got to feel really good for you as like the helper and the guide, but also for her, she had that scary monster in the closet and you, you helped her prepare for it, but you helped your, your understanding of how to get things done. Um, yeah. Put her in a much better situation. I can imagine going into work day in and day out, like not wanting to open emails, not wanting to open
[00:18:17] Uh,
[00:18:18] like afraid, like, Oh, well, I, am I gonna, is that tax bill going to come knowing you didn't, you don't have anything for it.
[00:18:26] And I, you're in business because people live that way. Right. They like, that's not, that's not fantasy. That's reality for a
[00:18:38] it's very common.
[00:18:39] that they, they, they don't know their, their story. They don't know their numbers and they don't have a plan,
[00:18:45] Yeah.
[00:18:46] not able to grow or expand in a way that feels good or comfortable to them.
[00:18:53] Um, yeah,
[00:18:55] I,
[00:18:56] go ahead. Go ahead.
[00:18:56] sorry, I was just going to say, that's, it's a great point. And. And I think so many practice owners feel guilt and shame about that, right? They're like, I have this kind of crazy financial situation. I don't want to look at the numbers. You know, we do monthly meetings. They're like, I don't want to come to my meeting with you, but I will.
[00:19:11] Cause I don't want to know the numbers. Um, but so many practice owners feel, feel shame about that. You know, like I'm in this bad financial situation. Everybody else has it figured out. I'm the only one like this. It's like, no, no, no, no. So many practice owners, whether giant or tiny have this same problem, right?
[00:19:27] So if you're feeling that right now, right. Just speaking to your listeners here. If you feel shame about your financial situation, if you do, if you're someone who doesn't want to look at those emails, look at the numbers, I can't tell you not to feel that because it's a valid emotion, but just start, start just in small steps, looking at those numbers, because you're not alone.
[00:19:43] There's so many people who are going through the same situation. And once you start looking at it, I can almost guarantee it's going to be less scary than, than what you think it is. So many clients, when we start meeting with them, we get the books all in order and we start meeting monthly. They'll just say, Oh, this isn't as bad as I thought it was, you know, or even if they had a bad month, they're like, Oh, it wasn't as bad of a month as I thought it was, you know, they're going through that month just with that shame and that stress, but then when you look at the numbers, you're like, okay, you know, it's not where we want it to be, but it's still okay.
[00:20:10] We're not going out of business right now. You know, we can make some steps.
[00:20:13] And, you know, you know why and how, like, when you have that advice or that somebody that can help you understand the story, you know, oh, we're a little low because we, you know, we spent some money. We had an extra expense. So this yearly expense came out. We saved for it. You know, you just have that process and plan. I think that's very beneficial. I got to tell you, um. Uh, Nate, uh, a confession time for the first year, year and a half. I thought I didn't have a ton of clients, I could try to do my own taxes and things that was that that ended up. So, then I spent, you know, hours and hours and days of time trying to figure it out and fighting with web pages and forms and like, being super secure on what I was doing because I didn't really know what I was doing. then when I, when I did bite the bullet and spent a little money for, uh, somebody to help me with my finances, I, they tell me what they need. I give it to them. I follow the steps and I feel better.
[00:21:20] Right.
[00:21:21] it's
[00:21:21] You're saving so much time.
[00:21:22] Yeah, I'm actually saving time, money, frustration by getting services from a professional who does this, not just for me, but for hundreds of other people that they know the, they know the formulas, the forms of the process.
[00:21:37] So it's really been a great boon, uh, to me to get that support. Well, speaking of that, where, if people are looking to understand their numbers and they want either some advice or to look at what you offer, where can people find you?
[00:21:53] Yeah, I, I just love being around practice owners and hopefully giving them as much value as possible. So we try to put out a lot of resources that are hopefully helpful. You know, even if you're like, Hey, I just, I'm going to, you know, kind of like you said, James, even if I'm just going to try to manage this on my own.
[00:22:06] I mean, that is possible. It is probably going to take you longer, but it's possible. You know, hopefully these resources can be helpful as you start that, you know, as far as just like, Hey, let's open up a basic QuickBooks account. Show you how to do that. If you're small, that's usually pretty doable. So, uh, we have a YouTube channel.
[00:22:21] Uh, if you just search navigator bookkeeping and YouTube, you'll find us. Um, and then, so there's a lot of how to videos on there. There's a lot of stuff about private practice finance specifically. If you have course creators, you know, a lot of what we're talking about will, will apply to that. We'll be pretty similar.
[00:22:34] Um, and then we also have a website, of course, as everyone does. Uh, and, and, you know, what you mentioned about spending time and effort. A website is a great example of one that you should offload. I tried to do that on my own for a long time when I started the business. So. Such a waste of time now, just like, Hey, expert, please handle this for me.
[00:22:49] Cause I'm going to mess it up. Um, but we have a great website that was not designed by me. And, uh, that's navigating your books. com. Um, or if you just search navigator bookkeeping, we're where you'll find us. We'll pop up pretty quickly on Google there. So we have a blog on their series of blogs. You can find us on there as well.
[00:23:05] Um, but yeah, otherwise I'm always happy to chat. About finance, about private practice. So I just love helping people out and bringing some values. So you can schedule a time with me on that website. If you're like, Hey, can you just, uh, look at some of these numbers or tell me a little bit about services?
[00:23:20] You know, I'm happy to do that. I'm about the least pushy salesperson ever. So what you'll probably leave with that is, is hopefully some good value for you and, uh, you can see, you know, if we're a good fit, but if not, I'm also happy just to chat about questions that you have about QuickBooks finance.
[00:23:33] Anything like that?
[00:23:35] awesome. That, that sounds great. And, uh, it's, it's a needed, it's a needed service. And if you, if you can help get the help, um, there's people out there to help. Like if you're struggling with like that scary monster in the corner, know, in with somebody like Nate to help you get secure and feel confident about growing and expanding your business. Nate, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for being on the show.
[00:24:03] Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for, thanks for having me on here. Always fun to chat.
[00:24:08] Okay. Listeners. Thanks for tuning in. This is James with the Scaling Therapy Practice and Course Creation Studio. It's now time to put your mission in motion. That might get cut. Will probably not.
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