The Therapy Business Podcast
We know how challenging growing a therapy practice can be, and don’t think it should require an accounting degree just to run your business. If you own a solo or a group practice, we’re here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people.
The Therapy Business Podcast
Building a Thriving Therapy Team with Eric Williams
This episode emphasizes the emotional and operational aspects of transitioning from a solo therapy practice to a larger group practice. By sharing insights on delegation, developing effective systems, and clearly communicating expectations with team members, listeners are encouraged to prepare for growth while preserving their energy and sanity.
• Overcoming the fear of delegation and embracing teamwork
• The critical role of systems and procedures in practice expansion
• Recognizing and addressing burnout and overwhelm in therapists
• Understanding the importance of time management and energy allocation
• Effective communication strategies with new hires and team members
Get in touch with Eric:
www.willity.com
Our Profit Coaching program is enrolling new practices now.
We specialize in helping therapy practices like yours achieve financial clarity, so you can focus on what you do best—helping your clients and managing your team- while we help handle all the businessy stuff they didn’t teach you in grad school.
To see if your practice might be a good fit, schedule a free consultation at therapybusinesspod.com.
Meet with one of our coaches
*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl
Going from a solo practice to a group practice is incredibly, incredibly challenging. We're used to doing everything on our own, carrying the weight of the whole business on our shoulders and wearing every single hat that there could possibly be. Then, all of a sudden, we're faced with this opportunity to grow our team and to really expand our reach and take a lot of things off of our plate. But this can be a really, really tricky transition as you are hiring somebody, especially if they're going to be taking on clients. Well, today we have Eric Williams, with Willity, joining us to talk about making that transition in a way that is really beneficial and really seamless in your business. My name is Craig and I'm the CEO of Desi Financial Coaching. Our goal is simple to help you run a therapy practice that is permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people. This is the Therapy Business Podcast. All right, eric, thank you so much for being here. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Good Craig, so happy to be here to talk with you about this.
Speaker 1:Yes, me too. Me too. So I know you're an expert when it comes to just helping people grow and expand beyond themselves. But first of all, I want to learn more about you. What do you do? Tell us about your business, what's your area of expertise? We want to get to know Eric a little bit.
Speaker 2:Great. Well, so yeah, my name is Eric Williams. I'm the founder and CEO of Willity. We help business owners really navigate that transition from solo to small team or from solo to just standardizing enough of your business to get some leverage, to get to start to move in that momentum of growth, really helping people get out of their schedules, get out of the day-to-day grind and start to standardize, operationalize their business so that it's more manageable. They get their sanity back, they get their time back, they get their life back.
Speaker 1:Man, that's so important. I think of my own journey for years, years. I was the one seeing clients. I was the one doing the marketing. I was the one creating graphics for social media. I was doing the marketing, I was the one creating graphics for social media, I was doing the sales, I was doing everything, and it was really, really hard for me to change that mindset into okay, now I need to start bringing some people in to take that load off my plate. Is that something you see? A lot that it's. I don't know if it's scary or there's probably a bunch of emotions, but do you see a lot of people who are afraid to make that transition from just solo into having a team?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think that there's a couple of stages that we can talk about here too.
Speaker 2:When people are just embarking on a solo practice, it can be overwhelming the amount of business operations and admin stuff that they all of a sudden have to do, that they didn't have to think about when they were part of a bigger practice and they start to take that on. And so that's maybe the first challenge is just taking all that on and recognizing how much extra time that takes and actually getting processes in place, getting routines and practices, so that you keep it within a bounds whatever bounds you need that to be to generate new clients. You know, when you're first starting out, you might need to spend half your time, more of your time, on marketing, bringing in new clients, until you fill up your calendar, and so you kind of adjust it. But what I find in that transition from solo to starting to build a team is and the reason I started with going from a practice to solo is because people tend not to want to take on all that admin and operations stuff, but then, once they start to bring on a team, they hold it really tight.
Speaker 2:So that's the biggest part of the transition is they hold onto it a lot of the time and don't want to let it go. This is common among many other small business owners as well. When you're going from solo, and especially for folks who are technical experts, who love the craft, they love what they do. So when you're in therapy, when you're focused on seeing clients and that's what you love to do and that's where your area of expertise is, even then that transition to solo, to a small team, sometimes people hold on to it, because most business owners start to, you know, feel like this is their baby. They want to keep, they want to protect it, they want to hold on to it, they want to make sure it's done right.
Speaker 2:But holding on too tightly can actually keep you from getting to where you want to go. And so for therapy practices, that's serving more clients, having more people go through transformations that you help facilitate, have insights into their own life and experiences. And by holding on too tightly to the business, you actually prevent you and your growing company from being able to serve more people and help more people right. So there's a bit of a mindset shift in terms of what it means to grow and be able to move into that space but at the same time recognizing that you know as you grow you can build in standard practices, processes, start to document them so that when you're ready to pass them off and you don't have to pass everything, it's not like you go through this transition. You're one day a caterpillar, one day you're a butterfly.
Speaker 2:It's a slow and steady piece where you can delegate one thing Like you know, when we're talking about putting together all the marketing materials, putting together the graphics, you know if that's taking up five hours of your week, for example, is that something you can delegate off your plate and free up five additional hours, maybe four, with the differential of being able to manage someone to do it, be able to go in and read and review, right. You're not delegating five hours means you get back four hours because you still need to supervise that person, right? So if you think about the math that's involved, that's one of the other places where people get a little confused about what are they doing. How are they moving stuff off their plate? But think about those buckets.
Speaker 2:Like, you can move pieces off one at a time. It's important to delegate enough time to manage people as you're moving up, making sure your course correct early and be able to, you know, supervise them enough and give them enough direction and give them enough support so that they're not you're not just saying, you know, just hire someone one day and say, go make my social media graphics with no extra, you know, context, background, stuff that's been done in the past Like if you don't give them a package to be able to pass off to someone, or you know if you, as the business owners, no-transcript, so that you can delegate stuff effectively within the context of what you're looking for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can relate to that I had when I was by myself.
Speaker 1:You know, I would like to consider myself a visionary, creative type, and so processes and systems I love them because I need them, but that's just not my natural where I gravitate to. And so for years I love them because I need them, but that's just not my natural where I gravitate to. And so for years it was just I was kind of just flying by the seat of my pants. I knew what I was doing. It was all kind of here I had spreadsheets all over the place but nothing really solidified. And then when I started hiring people, it was it was kind of a wake up call on that oh, they need to know what I want, they need to know what to do or how to do it, and it just being up in my head is not going to work. And so it sounds like what you're saying is almost preparing those little things so that when you do hire them it's super clear what you want, what you expect, and so that way you can fully give it away to them. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if you think about some things, some things happen daily, some things that happen multiple times a day daily, weekly, monthly Once you started getting out into weekly, monthly, sometimes annually if you think about preparing your taxes, having to get your brain back into the space of this comes from here. This comes from here. This comes from here. It's time consuming to get your brain back up to speed. You basically have to relearn and refigure it out every time, and so what we're talking about when you do it preemptively is you're essentially saying, when I'm going through this process the first time, or this year, let's say, can I write myself a checklist? Can I write myself an outline? Can I record a video to my future self or someone on my team who's going to be doing it in the future, to explain how this works while I'm going through it? Right?
Speaker 2:So there's when I use the example of taxes, cause it's such a long time horizon that people tend to forget over the course of a lot of you know, your life goes by over the course of a year, and so there's things like that that happen once a year, whether it's licensing and certification renewal or other things that are kind of occasional and not regular, not like a daily, weekly occurrence. You can easily forget Even weekly and monthly stuff. It's easy to forget in the interim time what that's involved. So I want to use this as examples of you can delegate to yourself in the future. You can start to build the processes for yourself so that you can get up to speed more in the future. But it's something you have to start to cultivate as you're going, to start to write down and document those processes as you're going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's great. You're right. I file sales tax every year and every single year I have to Google how to file sales tax, even though it's super simple. But it's just one of those. I do it one time a year and I forget. I forget what website to go to, I forget all those little things just because it's not top of mind. So as we're looking at people who are solo right now and they're thinking, okay, I want to hire somebody soon, whether it's an admin or whether it's another clinician to work with another therapist, to work with their clients, what are some things people can do to prepare for that? Now, I'm sure there's a list of things they can do from now until they actually start interviewing or start hiring. What could they do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So, as you said, greg, one of the issues is really understanding where your time's going and what's actually the kind of ingredients to your week. To have a successful week, to have a successful month, you need to do X amount of marketing, you need to do X amount of admin, you need to do X amount of insurance billing and X amount of client meetings, client appointments, and so understanding, having that visibility into what your schedule looks like actually gives you uh, you know you need to document the processes alongside, but it basically shows you where you can take chunks out of your schedule and where you can flex right. So if it's something that you don't mind, the admin business operations work you might choose that. Hold on to that and hire a clinician because you want more billable hours and there's going to be some amount of those hours that are going to go towards the overall business profit revenue. It could be that the admin stuff is really taking you much outside of your energy and your zone.
Speaker 2:And so if it's really frustrating to you you're not bringing, it might be impacting your, bringing your A game to your work with your clients too, and so understanding your energy levels, your tolerance around these things, can help give you the visibility about what's actually going to be the most valuable for me to delegate. In some cases, if you delegate five hours off your plate, that person is going to be able to get it done in one hour. Right, because you might be dragging your feet through it, because you don't't like it and it's not in your area of expertise. Someone else might be able to do it quite fast. Similarly, it could be that someone else is going to take 10 hours to do something that you took five hours.
Speaker 2:That's something that's really common for entrepreneurs to get frustrated about is someone else taking a longer time to get it done.
Speaker 2:But if you look at the math, who you're bringing on to do let's say you know an admin project it could be that you could use, instead of those five hours you know if you're billing three times, you know the hourly rate that it costs to delegate that time to.
Speaker 2:You're still making a benefit from delegating to that person, even if they take longer to do it. So I think, not being too sensitive, you need to understand kind of what's the math around, what you're delegating, how much money you're spending versus what you're able to bring in with unlocking new hours in your schedule. But that's how I would think about, because therapists are really on a like the revenue comes from billable hours and so anytime that you're not doing billable hours is time you're not making money and it kind of offsets. Not that a lot of people are in this just for the money, but it's part of the equation. It's about the impact and the financial piece and so thinking about where those levers are, to think about in your schedule, what you want to change, where is it going to make sense for you to delegate stuff off your plate that you really don't like, that you don't do well, that someone else could perhaps do better, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's great and I think, as a lot of therapists are thinking about hiring and I see it, it's super common.
Speaker 1:So I was always told and I don't know if this is what you recommend too but a lot of people say the first hire should be an assistant, a VA or some kind of person to help with those admin tasks.
Speaker 1:But what I think a lot of therapists find is they get to a place where they're swamped and their calendar is so full that they are either not able to take on new clients or they're just starting to burn out, and so their immediate reaction is okay, I need to hire another clinician to come in Not always a bad thing. But I think sounds like what you're saying is sitting down and kind of looking and saying, okay, yeah, my calendar's maxed out, but how many hours am I spending doing these admin tests that maybe I could offload and I could then, in turn, see more clients and make more money in that realm? Or do I really need to bring in another clinician? Am I burned out on seeing clients already and I need to bring somebody in? So I think to kind of reiterate what you're saying, looking down and saying what do I need to offload or what would I like to offload on my plate right now and that can maybe guide that first hire?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit hard to harder to measure, but energy is part of the trifecta, of what you're bringing to the table on your day to day, week to week. It's time. So you kind of think about the trifecta that I'm talking about is time, money and energy, and so there's definitely times I'm sure, craig, you've had this situation where you just fly through work. You're able to sit down, you're able to focus, you just fly through it. It feels like hours go by, you get a ton done and in very quick amount of time. Other times you're kind of like watching the clock and hours go by and you still haven't gotten this thing done Right. And so that's when I think about energy and focus that you're bringing real.
Speaker 2:That's one of the biggest variables in the equation is how much time and focus you can, or energy and focus you can, bring to the equation on the specific tasks, and so that's why you might want to think about stuff that's not give. You're not bringing the energy to. You know, that's where you could easily hire someone who, who does love to do that. When we talk about hiring, too, it doesn't always have to be a full-time hire. A lot of people think that it's this big leap from solo to another full-time person. But there's ways to structure your business that you're bringing on, you know, a part-time clinician you can bring. You know, bring, bring someone on for 10 hours or 20 hours earlier on, or you can outsource some of your marketing to an assistant or an expert in that where it's 10 hours a week or so or just like a regular monthly kind of billing arrangement for whether it's hours or kind of a scope.
Speaker 2:There's ways to do this incrementally, and so I think that's why, without it being a huge jump from solo to not solo, it's more of a you can make this, break this up into smaller steps, start to test the waters. You can have a team of four or five people who kind of equate to another full-time person, but you can have actually a mix of people who are working part-time in your business as you grow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's awesome. I love that I wrote it down. The energy side is such a good litmus test of what you should offload. Because again, I'm just kind of reflecting on my path from solo to people was, as my calendar got so full and clients couldn't get booked on it, I kind of looked down and was like, the things I was procrastinating are the things. I was like those obviously are the things I don't want to be doing right now. Um, and I would sit there doing them. And I started just generating a list.
Speaker 1:Uh, before I was ready to hire a VA, I was like, okay, this is something I could offload. And so by the time I hired somebody, I had a nice list of things that I was eager to get off of my plate. Um, and then same with once it got to a point where I was so busy that I was procrastinating client work where I'm going. Okay, they would, our clients would be so much better taken care of if I had somebody starting to take on the future clients. So just realizing, where, what am I? What am I putting off all the time? What am I dreading? Am I looking at my calendar in the morning and saying, oh, I've got five client sessions today or whatever. If I'm feeling that it sounds like that's a good litmus test for okay, this is probably something I need to start making a process to offload off my plate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, the energy is such a like. We don't talk about it all that often and it's a little bit more ephemeral in terms of a thing.
Speaker 2:It's harder to measure, but that's exactly right where if you're dragging your feet on something that should give you some indication about, let me figure out what to do with this. And one of the things that's one of the biggest worries that I have with business owners a lot of the kind of red flag warning signs is being overworked and overwhelmed and it's kind of a natural ebb and flow as you're growing your practice to kind of hit those stretch moments where you don't quite have enough time and you need to figure out what the next steps are. The warning sign is when you live there for too long.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you know, as as many therapists work with clients around, overwhelm and burnout. It can very easily happen when you're running your own business If you're not mindful about where you're hitting your, about when you're hitting your stretch moments, Because something that can happen is that a busy week turns into a busy couple weeks, a busy month, a busy six months a year, and you're still working 60, 80 hours trying to accommodate everything. And when we talk about energy, this is why this is a good kind of pulling in the energy piece, because what happens when you're overworked and burnt out is your productivity goes down, and it's not just about your productivity your energy level goes down you're bringing you know. What I like to say is it's like bringing 50% productivity to this problem, and so you might be working 80 hours a week at 50% productivity, and so that really means you're only working 40 hours a week, right, so it doesn't.
Speaker 2:When you're doing billable hours with clients, it may danger zone, because you start to get into a downward spiral of not having enough energy to focus. Operating at 50% capacity, dealing with the brain fog, dragging your feet through more tasks, which means more. You need to work late again that night to catch up, which means you're not sleeping, which means that your next day your brain fogs. You're about 50% right. So you can get into the spiral where even just a busy week, if you don't have that recovery, rest and recovery time after, if you don't kind of snap back into something that's sustainable, that it can start to snowball if you don't kind of make a plan and move quickly.
Speaker 2:So the biggest warning signs I see with clients of mine is that is when they get go too far into that burnout zone and they have trouble walking it back because of this, because they need to start. You know there's a ways to do it, there's ways to get into the upward spiral, but you have to start taking, you know, essentially slow the downward spiral. Put the brakes on, start to put like a new, a new automation here. Save five you know a few hours here, you know another five hours here and just start to work your way back up. So it's a little bit of you have to gain the momentum back. But first you have to stop the downwards slide, start to move it back up the spiral so you can start working towards unlocking more freedom and time in your business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of therapists. No one teaches a therapist in grad school how to run a business. And you and I were even touching on this just a little bit before we started recording of going from I'm working for another practice, another firm, and then I decided to go on my own. And then you're starting to build up the solo practice. Then all of a sudden you're going okay, now I need to grow a team.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of times it's just we're kind of just flying by the seat of our pants. We don't even know. Like you know, when you got your their degree in therapy, they maybe didn't think about owning their own practice. Maybe it was just like okay, great, I'm going to go get a job and do therapy. So all these things we kind of fall backward into.
Speaker 1:I had no intention of having a team. I was, I was, I used to be a teacher and I would just dream of being able to work for myself and go to Target at 1030 in the morning on a Tuesday without having to worry about anything. That was as far as my dream went. And then all of a sudden I reach a point where I'm at that place of burnout and I'm going okay, now I need to fix it.
Speaker 1:So I think hearing this for people who are maybe not quite at that burnout point, this is really helpful to say. Maybe it's time to start thinking ahead before you reach that place. So that's what we see a lot is it's it's man, I am stressed, I'm burnt out, I'm tired of this, and this job is, you know, hours trading, hours for money, and so the only way to make more money is to get more burnt out. And that's when we start trying to hire and it's just kind of a crazy situation, whereas maybe if you start hiring before you're ready, is that kind of a like, maybe starting that process or that thought process is that kind of what you recommend doing?
Speaker 2:Well, I I'd maybe push back on that, I I. I usually if there's something that I also teach, which is don't build your systems until you need it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because if you pre-build things oh, I'm forgetting the quote, but it's it's basically if you build kind of an imaginary system to handle an imaginary future problem it's not going to work. It very rarely is your solution going to be the right solution for that, because you're the pain points.
Speaker 2:The frustrations are different once you're actually there and your life might look different, right, like when you design it, when you are kind of starting out and say, you know, when I, when I get my business to five, five clinicians, it's going to look this way, well, it might look very different. You know, maybe you, your life looks different. You have a kid in between or two in between. You know, like there's and you're, you may have different constraints, different challenges. So all those things kind of don't over plan on the front end is what I'm saying. But build as you go because it's easier to understand what your constraints are and absolutely the stress points. The growing pains from zero to one or two is going to be different than the growing pains to five or six, is different from the growing pains up to 10 or 15 or 20. And so it looks different for every business. But you generally want to think about, you know, you kind of build for the next stage of your business and you can anticipate ahead. Say, I want to bring in some leeway here, I want to bring in some flexibility in this process so that when I get to that point I can flex into, you know, jumping up from two, two to five, right, so you can anticipate it.
Speaker 2:But I wouldn't say don't build for it exactly. Build as you go, because then you'll be responding to real problems that you're dealing with. I see this a lot of the time when people are doing kind of figuring out their technology and solutions, and we've recently introduced a kind of a tech platform backend. That's also speaking of therapist, hipaa compliant as well, but speaking of having all your stuff in one place so you can manage your, your tech and tools. A lot of people might, when they're kind of starting out, say like I need this tool. I need this tool. I need to like you know whether it's invoicing, billing.
Speaker 2:They might get a really fancy tool anticipating the need for it, but it's actually maybe designed for like a hundred person company or a thousand person company and it's like good at that level, but it's really not good for kind of the incidental, like using it once or twice a week or a couple times a month, right. So figure that. You know. I use the tech, technology and tools example for that reason too, because sometimes when you build things out, you want to build for kind of what you have, what you're anticipating having over the next six months to a year, understanding that you need some room to move, room to grow, but you don't know what the problems and stress points are going to be until you're actually there and there's some experts who know the path ahead, what it's going to look like, give you some visibility there, but at the same time, you know.
Speaker 2:If you don't know where it's heading exactly, just build it as you go and identify it. But be be flexible and nimble about recognizing where your pain points and stress points are and don't let them linger too long.
Speaker 2:Right as you said like if you, if you let them linger too long, uh, they can come back to bite you. Um, so just be mindful, aware of what's going on in your body, how you're responding, how you're emotionally responding to different things in your business, and just make a plan for how to how to tackle that. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the tech, the technology is so spot on. We've I've worked with really small businesses who, who maybe they got HubSpot as their CRM because they're thinking, you know, I'm going to as we grow one day, then we don't have to change CRMs down the road, and I'm we're going, yeah, but the cost of changing CRMs down the road is going to be a lot less than you pay in years for something that is just way too big for what you need. So I think that's really great, just kind of almost like keeping a great pulse on where you are. Where are we today, being realistic with that and, yeah, having an idea of where am I headed. But you know, I think too, I didn't know who I was going to hire the first time.
Speaker 1:And when I hired Alicia our person who took over the whole personal finance side of our business she came in with all these ideas and processes and systems that she created, which are far better than anything I would have created. And so, to your point, yeah, if I had sat down and tried to map everything out, I either would have hindered what could have been or it would have been time wasted because she would have come in and again done something 10 times better that we would have just thrown mine out anyway. So, yeah, yeah, I like that idea. It's just, it's this kind of balance of stay and stay in your place now, but also keep in the future in mind, so you're not caught off guard when it comes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and I think there's a level of mindfulness in there too or intention that you bring to your business.
Speaker 2:Right, because if you had locked yourself into a very specific vision of your business, you might have not found her to hire right, it could have been, or it could have just been that you know, going through the hiring process, a new hire might feel too constrained in not you know in the kind of process, and that's why it's a balance.
Speaker 2:Right, because I talk about systems and process a lot, but the intention around it is to create enough support systems in there so someone's not lost and flailing in a new job where they have enough of your vision for the businessmaking framework so that they can make, they understand how you make decisions. They're not just kind of guessing and hoping that they're aligned. You've communicated enough, you've built it into the structure enough that they can make an approximately similar decision with the values that you bring to the business, the intention you want to bring to the business. And so that's why we're trying to talk about capturing enough, but not too much, of the systems and processes in your business so that you have flexibility but you also have the ability to train someone up quickly so that they can jump in and do this stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're speaking exactly into what I've been focused on this last quarter and what my coaches have been guiding me through is how to articulate my vision to my team, how to not only create a vision of where I want to go, but make it to where.
Speaker 1:They know where we want to go and they can help create that path but also know what those expectations are. This year we always have a theme for the year. This year was client experience how can we improve client experience and make that the forefront, and next year we've already decided it's going to be systems and processes of how can we take this, create these processes in order to reinforce that. When it comes to sharing your vision with your team, do you have any tips there for how to take this kind of I'm going to call it intangible? Yeah, you can have a. Oh, we want to help people pay off this X dollars in debt or we want to help this many patients, but how can you take a vision and get help your team kind of get behind or articulate it to your team in a way that makes sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think the disconnect is where it doesn't show up in the day to day operations. Sometimes, when I'm teaching kind of bigger, bigger companies around organizational management and team management, employees experience really happens on the front lines of their work, with their team, with their manager, right.
Speaker 2:So if you have a small team, it's really you as the manager and their day-to-day experience with you and maybe with some other people on the team right, but you want to create the measures of success, how people are being evaluated for the success of their own work. The benchmarks make sure they're aligned with the values that you have in the business, that you're measuring the right things for the right kind of intention, as well as the day-to-day practice. And so, if you think about the values that you want to bring to the business, are those being manifested in the way that you're interacting with clients, the templates that you have to communicate with clients, the expectations on client follow-up, and so it's really building out the systems and processes in your business is a reflection of those values, Because when you're solo, you're really doing it all yourself, and so you build your business based on your own value system, your own vision for the business, and so you are manifesting that into the process already. It's just that once you hire other people, you need to tell them what that process is. You need to give them enough of the framework so that they can do it the same way. So, when I talk about the mental framework, when you're starting a business and you have the vision for what it can and should be and how it should be run.
Speaker 2:It's an amalgamation of your lived experience, your professional education, your professional work, your upbringing all sorts of things that are in this kind of messy algorithm. I call it an algorithm or an equation or a framework. Your brain's running this all the time. It's the filter that you're running through. You know a variety of frameworks in your brain to get to the outcome, the solution, what you think is the right way to handle this solution. You want to download enough of that so that people on your team can make decisions that are aligned with the values that you have, and so that means you know if it's a client's coming back to contest a payment for a session, or how would you want them to handle that Like.
Speaker 2:Use that as an example of you know, maybe a little bit tense, higher pressure situation. How would you handle it? Why are you handling it that way? What decisions are you making? It feels like instinct, but what decisions are you making to say, oh, we should do this or we should do this right? So in those moments this is why it's a little some of these things are quite hard to kind of pull out and dissect, and when I work with clients.
Speaker 2:This is a part of the fun part of the work, but also a challenging part to kind of. You have have to tease out like how? How are they making decisions in their brain about what's the right outcome here? Because when I get, when I go back to saying, you know, entrepreneurs get frustrated when they delegate stuff and people don't come back with the same type of quality of work or the same you know the the outcome.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean everybody you hire is going to be perfect. There's plenty of people who, people who aren't good at their job or finding the right person can be a challenge to find the right fit or eventually you find the right fit with the right kind of hiring practices. But all that said, assuming you have all that right, you can still fall down when you don't communicate effectively with people on your team. And part of that is communicating enough of how you make decisions, how you want to see those decisions play out. You don't have to micromanage it, but giving them enough of the structure, about the values, the process, the decision-making piece that you've thought and dissected, enough of how you make decisions so that you can communicate that to your team and say this is why I want to see this done this way.
Speaker 2:This is why we should handle this type of situation this way, and that's when you can start to build in those kind of what feels like intangibles, but it starts to be, built into the practice of the business and ideally in the written kind of policies and procedures, but at least in kind of the cultural practice of how the how the work gets handled in business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I I err on the side sometimes of being afraid of micromanaging, so that is really, really helpful. And just the little thing, like it's almost to me I'm going I don't want to micromanage so much that I probably don't. There's times where I find that I'm not supporting enough. They don't, you know, I'm leaving them out to dry in the way of how would I handle if a client wants to cancel their coaching program early, or a million other things. Like how would I handle those things? Creating almost like a toolkit for them to access.
Speaker 1:And you're right, it's not a read the script verbatim, but it's a here's how I would handle it so that they feel supported and equipped on how to approach those things. Once again, things you just don't think of. And I think that kind of goes back to your point that by planning too much, some of these things just kind of arrive and you realize, oh wow, I need a process for this. Like this is a great opportunity to create a little system or a standard operating procedure, is something that our team can lean back on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good way to reframe it too. It's not about micromanaging the team. It's about giving them enough support so that they don't feel lost, so that they have enough of the tools to go back in and rely on when they are in those moments, because it helps support them in making independent decisions as well. It's not wholly independent, because they're using your toolkit, they're using the framework for the business about how to make decisions. It's just that they have something to fall back on and use as a guide for when they're making those decisions.
Speaker 2:Because ideally, you're helping your team, not involve you, in every single decision, right? And so that's why, if you want an outcome, your vision for this business, you want an outcome a certain way, you need to be able to communicate. Your team needs to be able to do that separate from you, because otherwise, if they're bringing you into every decision, then it kind of defeats the purpose of delegating, right? So that's why you need to equip your team with enough of the toolkit about how to make decisions independently, where their boundaries are, where their boundaries are not, where they have flexibility, where they do not have flexibility. That's all part of communication. So we normally think about communication as just something we do verbally, but it's the kind of package of stuff that we deliver, the package of support that we deliver to people on our team to be able to get the outcome that we're looking for. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's letting your team know. What does success look like to me? And I think that's everybody does things a million different ways, and so a team of clinicians them knowing. Okay, your definition of success is that you are arriving to your sessions five minutes early so that when your client logs on that you're already there waiting, or maybe it's your notes are submitted in X amount of days. So maybe they've worked for another team that notes were not due for a week and for you you're like no, I want it done in 48 hours or whatever it is. So just being able to clearly articulate that. I think a lot of times there's probably disconnect purely from not letting them know what you expect or what, what you, what you want from them, and there's it's not right or wrong, they're probably eager to do it, it's just they just don't know, they can't read your mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such a great example because it can be something so small, as like when you expect notes to be in the system, and sometimes entrepreneurs will say. It's something to the equivalent of like you're not doing it fast enough and so the clinicians left to say, well, so then what's fast enough? I don't know. Does it need to be done in five minutes? Does it need to be done in a day? Is it that a week was too long? But six days is fine, right? Specificity communicate specificity. When you don't have boundaries. Communicate that they're free to make a decision about this thing without too many boundaries. Tell them where the boundaries are, where they're not, so that they know clearly what to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Awesome, Eric, I could talk to you about this forever because I'm learning a lot. I've already taken a lot of notes myself, but for time's sake we may need to pick up this conversation another time for another episode. But I would love to direct people to you because I know what you're speaking about is resonating with a lot of practice owners, and it sounds like even not only the ones who are going solo to group, but I think a lot of those group practice owners out there who are hearing what we're talking about and you're going, just like I am here. I'm going. Okay, I could definitely use grow in this area. I don't have processes, or oh. No wonder they're not doing what I'm thinking because I haven't articulated it. So all these things tell us about how people can get in touch with you, how can they work with you. Yeah, when can we send people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, the best place is my website, willitycom W-I-L-L-I-T-Ycom little play off my name and Willplusability but for people to remember it. But yes, I have a couple webinars on there to walk through how to use Streamline and create a sustainable business as well, so people can reach out to me through there if they want to talk about their business, dig into, you know, what's stopping them from moving into this phase that they really want to in their business, happy to hop on the phone and do a 45-minute call to really dig into those things, and that's probably the best place, right? Anybody can benefit from just some time to talk with someone with expertise, to dig in, make a game plan for how to move forward.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a practice owner that you may know If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspodcom to learn how we can help.
%20copy%202.jpg)