Grow Without The Grind | STP 1

January 01, 2023

The Scaling Therapy Practice podcast by James Marland and Dr. David Hall focuses on the topic of scaling a therapy practice without the added stress and "grind" that often comes with growth. Marland and Hall share their own experiences with growing a practice and the challenges that come with it, such as managing people and dealing with the added stress of growth. The goal of their podcast is to provide therapists with guidance and support on how to grow their practices in a sustainable and manageable way.

Episode Transcript

Grow without the Grind | STP 1
===

James Marland: This is James Marlin with Dr. David Hall with the Scaling Therapy PR practice. Thanks for joining us. So. David, we're, we're doing a podcast on scaling.

David Hall: Scaling. We are, we are doing a podcast, the

James Marland: therapy practices. So one of the first questions people might ask is, why do we even need another podcast on, you know, on this subject for

David Hall: therapist?

You know, even just a general thing, why do we need another podcast? I think some people, yeah, it's just, you know, every, everyone does a podcast. The you know, it's, it's a good question and we're gonna talk more as we kind of get into this, about the process of James and MA's conversations that kind of led to the idea of doing a podcast.

But I think it, it's, it's one of these things. Well, I've had the great enjoyment and privilege of knowing lots of people in the mental health space who do really good podcasts, and yeah, it's the, the question I think is, is what's kind of being covered well and what could use, you know, more attention or more focused attention in different sorts of ways.

And I think not wanting to get in and reinvent the wheel in your, my conversation, James, seems to be an important thing about this, but, you know, think. There's there's a lot of good podcasts out there for therapists, specifically therapists wanting to figure out the business side of mental health practice.

You know, there's good general podcasts that handle lots of things with private practice. Wanna shout out to our network compatriots for a lot of these, but gon brewer with the Practice of Therapy podcast, right? They're great podcast about kind of more of the technical aspects, parti. The computer aspects of things of, of running practice and Daniel Favas podcast.

A great example of that. Or even just kind of specific therapist niches of Kim Tolsons, the traveling therapist for therapists that are. Wanting to work completely remotely for those doing kind of niche practices like faith-based practices. And so highlight for Whitney Owens with that. And so we had this question that you and I talked about of what's not being spoken of and,

James Marland: and we found a lot of people are, are trying to grow and they're trying to.

But there's some pain in the mm-hmm. , the growing mm-hmm. , like there's, there's lots of systems to learn people to manage if you grow. One of the things, some people just wanna stay solo therapist because there's no people to manage. When you're a solo therapist, but if you, if you grow to a certain point, eventually you're gonna add maybe a virtual assistant or another therapist or a a contractor.

And how do you manage them and how do you manage them affectionately you're always asking, you see it on the, the, the message boards. Anybody got a worksheet for. Evaluations. How do you add a virtual assistant? I'm thinking about making a course or a class. What's a way to do that? How do I run a webinar?

All these things for growth, but it, it's sort of like, oh, I need it now. I need to figure out how to do this. Does anybody have a clue? You know, who's done this before?

David Hall: Yeah. And, and growth is a major point, and we really think that a lot of the podcasts we mentioned and other ones just in general, address.

And even pain and growth pretty well in the, the process of people are trying to be more impactful therapists and so maybe about focusing in on their clinical skills or managerial skills or so many different things. In the, the idea for this podcast as James kind of brought it to me and we, I, I thought, you know, this is really cool.

I'd love to kind of partner with you as a cohost, is how to grow. in ways that don't involve more hassle, for lack of a better term, . Cause people want to, cuz there is the, the growth. But I could tell you I'm a group practice owner at the time of recording. I have a group of 17 therapists. Mm-hmm. . And it is hard.

I, I don't choose anything different. it is having a practice of 17 therapists versus when I first, when I was on my, I've never been on my own, but I started with the practice of three therapists. Mm. It was me and two other therapists, and that was a very different beast to manage. It was way easier, and I.

Appreciate the growth, but it's not the same. And oftentimes I very much miss how easy it was. I appreciate like our income as a practice, of course, is way higher than it was when there were three therapists, but it's common as at a, at a huge cost and a lot of people are trying to figure out, how do I navigate growth without.

Incurring even more cost to myself of my time, of my emotional energy.

James Marland: Oh, yeah. Well that's a, that's the thing, you know, how, how do you grow without the system destroying itself or destroying you? Mm-hmm. , like you become a slave to the business. With, with all the growth, like how do you, how do you grow in a sustainable, logical, designed way Instead of like, oh, I gotta add this here and add this here, and this is the flavor of the month.

Or like, like how do you do it without losing your mind?

David Hall: And speaking of systems, James, I think is super important and that part of what this podcast is, the kind of vision of it is how to help therapists not. Grow, but grow in a systemic sort of way, right? Create systems in that have even maybe some off the shelf sort of systems that we can offer you and it can grow without growing your work burden and in, in some ways, maybe even lessening it.

Cause I can tell you I have, I have two major businesses I run as a mental health. One is a group therapy practice. The other is I run a continuing education and course business. We do continuing approved continuing education for therapists in training on clinical skills, but we also run courses on non CE sorts of things, but in kind of business skills sorts of things.

And it's under our organization, psych Maven. And I can tell you, Psych Maven. My ability to scale in what I do there is very different than how I can scale in growing a group therapy practice. But even that being said, I've, I've realized that I cannot run a group therapy practice like I used to. I can't apply the same tools.

I need different systems. And I will say even with the larger practice, I am getting more efficient. And one of my goals is not just to not work harder. , I wanna work. And I think I hear so many therapists trying to get that goal that their major pain point is they wanna grow without creating more grind and hassle for themselves.

And in fact, they wanna be able to grow ideally and maybe even lessen the workload they have. Cuz I see a lot of therapists, I talk to a lot of therapists that if they're not burnt out, they're, they can see it over the. They can see how they're, they're gonna get there unless they make some systemic changes.

And that goes to what you were saying, James, about creating systems. Yeah. You, you

James Marland: were telling me right now in the landscape we are 2022. You, you can throw, you, you can be full, right? Mm-hmm. like finding the clients because of what's been going on in the world and other things and, and the ease of access through online services.

You can find the clients, but do, as the therapist, business owners thinking about it, do they wanna sit in the chair for 30 plus hours or 30 plus clients a week with no end in sight? Like, how do you, how do you grow beyond that? And some ways, There are therapists who just wanna do that. I wanna sit in the chair for 30 hours a week or 30 for 30 clients, help as many people as possible, and that's all they wanna do.

But then they need the systems to cut out everything else. Like how? How do you optimize your intake, optimize your rescheduling, optimize your billing? How do you do those things so that you can just be available? That's your way to scale, your way to scale. Then is just to see the people you wanna see.

How do you build that business? That that's, there's, there's many ways to scale and grow you, you have the two ways. You know, the, the, the courses and then your therapy practice. You're adding people, you're adding opportunities. But there are people who just want to grow with their, their, their core business, their IC people.

I help people, this is how I'm gonna grow, but they need, they need systems to scale as well. .

David Hall: Yeah. And you're bringing up a great point, James. Cause a lot of times I think the pitch has been, scaling looks like one thing. Scaling looks like. Mm-hmm. to create an online course or scaling means you do a coaching program, right?

Scaling means you membership program or something. You do a membership program or whatever it is. And all those things are good. And that's stuff that we wanna talk about in our conversations in this podcast. But we really don't wanna offer people one size fits all. Scaling looks like James said a lot of different things, and I think highlighting that I, I talked to therapists that they're like, I didn't get into this to, to be a manager.

I didn't get into this to, you know, I just, I just like to be a therapist. Give me, make that simple. And we live in a very fortunate time in, in some aspects for that, that technology particularly has allowed people to run practices with. Overhead than ever before. You know, 20 years ago you needed, if you were a therapist, it was really hard to do it completely on your own.

You kind of, you needed somebody to answer the phone. You needed somebody to check in, clients to handle your billing, right? To and. As different systems have come into place, people can run really scale back practices. You know, one of the things I'll probably talk about is even though I run a large group practice, I don't have any admin.

We, we don't have a receptionist and I'll, I, I've got, we,

James Marland: let's mark that down as an episode. An

David Hall: episode like that, people are gonna wanna know how do you do that? Yes. And I've, I've, I've got that automated and so you can streamline the process and make it a lot more efficient and a lot smoother. Kind of take out that friction to tell, as James said, just be a therapist because a lot of people, we assume people who might be checking out into this aren't looking to move out.

One on one therapy work, they just wanna take out all the other work. Yeah, absolutely. So scaling can look like all that. And that's what the podcast as, as James kind of has set it up. And where I'm excited to partner with them on this is about that. How do we help people discover all the different ways that they can scale and, and apply the different scaling practices for themselves.

And you know, scaling is this idea of. Without increasing the, the work or pain, and ideally even decreasing over time of how can you grow you can impact more people in more positive ways of you can grow your livelihood as a, as a provider, as a mental health clinician, and ideally make. Work less now.

A lot of us like to work, but I could tell you a lot of therapists I talk to don't wanna work quite as much as they are . They, they would, they, they would like to work, but maybe a little less and maybe a little less. You know, there's the great expression of figuring out how to work smarter, not harder.

And I think that's a big thing about this too. Like there are a lot of things you can do to make it harder for yourself. We wanna give you tools for it to be smart. .

James Marland: Yeah. I think a lot of people say, think if I, if I wanna grow, I gotta spread myself thinner. You know, I got, I need more and more the, the system, the business will need more and more of me and we're, we're gonna be working towards helping therapists and practice owners create systems that don't spread themselves out, but they grow in a way that.

Puts them in a place where they're best able to serve their, their industry, their client, without removing all the good things that they, they like doing. Yeah. So the the, the thing about it was the work Smarter, not Harder. It's, oh, it was disproportionate. I think it was it was a book I recently read on course Creation.

It'll come to me in a second. It's Graham Copy's.

David Hall: How to get paid for what you know? Yeah.

James Marland: How to get paid for what, you know, it's disproportionate work. You put in some work, but the benefit you get out of it is disproportionate to what you put in. So those systems and things that you put in place, you're able to get more with less.

You know, do that type of, I love how he said that it was just That's what a lot of what we're trying to do, that's what I'm trying to do with the, I'm trying to help therapists create courses for themselves so that they can sort of get out of the chair a little bit, share their knowledge, help people, but also, Put some of that on automatic so you don't have to keep doing it over and over again, like your course business.

David Hall: Sure. And a lot of people might be listening to this and thinking like, you know, I've seen books, I've seen blog posts, I've listened to podcast episodes on all this, and it just feels overwhelming. It feels like there are all these systems to learn, and I can say I can't speak for James. I can say for myself as a therapist, I am not a very naturally technical person.

I've learned things and I'm more capable in utilizing certain systems than I used to be, but it's still my, not my natural thing, I'm not. A computer whiz. It. It's funny, I was , I was at a conference this last weekend and I was teaching on social media, which is a topic I teach on, and I couldn't get the, the TV display in the room to work , and I was being chastised by someone in the building.

They're like, I thought you were the, the, the technology person. I'm like, look, I'm a psychologist. I'm here. I'm here to teach this. Like, I, I don't necessarily know how to make this TV work. Some of what we wanna offer is not like, Hey, you have to go get another degree to figure out how to make all these things work.

Like what is the easiest plugin sorts of ways. Sometimes it's kind of small adjustments that kind of improve the system. So if, if any of this speaks to you, if any of these kind of pain points speak to you, that you're trying to figure out how to grow in all the different ways, the growth means without working hard.

Maybe there's the dream of working less. That's kind of the vision we wanna put before you all. And we've got, you know, a lot of stuff coming up as we're launching. There's gonna be a lot of episodes very quickly back to back, and we hope you, you all check them out. But yeah, this is the vision, how to grow in, in, as a mental health provider if you're a therapist.

Other helping professional, but doing client work in counseling as a psycho, the. How to grow and how to scale , as we said, without this being this endless, I've gotta come up with another five hours in my week. Oh, I've gotta because I see so many therapists do that. It's the, the pain point, as James was saying, doesn't seem to be, most therapists I know, you know, are able to get, clients are able to make that part of things work.

It's figuring out efficiencies. And it not just feeling like you're burning the candle at both ends, cuz that's so many of us in the profession. So yeah. James, any, you know, we've got a shorter episode we wanted to start people with, but.

James Marland: Yeah, I like to. So what's one thing you want people to remember from this episode?

I'll, I'll go first while you think about your one thing the one thing I want people to remember is it there are different ways to grow. There are, you can be the, the therapist who wants to just see clients. You can be the therapist who wants to add staff. You can be the therapist who's efficient in their systems, or you can be the networking therapist.

There are lots of different ways to scale and grow, and we wanna help you scale, scale in a way that you, it's your natural way of growth. And just join us for the ride. .

David Hall: That's a good one thing. I kind of wish I had thought of it because it's, it's, it's good. It is. I have more time to think about it.

I'm gonna reiterate your one thing. Okay. Because I think it's worth repeating. It's this idea of like, growth does not look like one thing. It doesn't mean is it a membership? Maybe, maybe not. Is it, you know, doing a course, is it coaching programs? Is it growing to group practice? It may be some of those things for you, it may be none of those things.

It may be a combination of those things. It may be so many different things you are to quote Pat Flynn, you, you are 100% unique and your growth is going to be 100, a hundred percent unique. Mm-hmm. , that can't be one. My one thing because it james's one thing. No, my one thing is this idea of this is not the goal of what we hope to share in our conversations and our time together is not how to make your life more.

It's how to create more grind. It is easy in so many professions, but particularly ours that we equate our ability to impact people. Our ability to increase our livelihood is I've gotta put in more hours. And it's not that that's never the case, but that's not the goal of what we hope to share. We hope to share that you're able to grow without adding those extra hours and ideal.

Maybe even a little less. I keep on working towards my early retirement. I'm not doing a very good job cuz I keep on, cuz I, I agree to co-host a podcast with somebody and other things I could always, but doesn't mean I'm not working towards it. One of my friends and, and a mentor of mine in the psychotherapy field, bill Hanlin.

You can actually go to his website, bill hanlon.com, and he's got a free book download. It's one of his favorite books, Bill's written, 40 books. But his book is called A Lazy Man's Guide to Success. And it, it's a, it's a mantra I kind of wanna live by. I'd like to be able to get there, but if you're looking to grow without increasing the grind you know, grow without grind.

Grow without the grind. Grow with, grow with less grind. That's the one thing we hope you, I'll take away from, from what we're hoping to share with you in episodes to come. All right.

James Marland: Well, this has been James Marlin and Dr. David Hall with the Scaling Therapy Practice podcast. Thanks for much for joining us.

We'll see you next week,

Grow Without The Grind | STP 1

Join Our Free Trial