Selling the Couch

Melvin Varghese, PhD

With 1.81 million+ downloads, Selling the Couch is an Apple Top Career podcast for current and future mental health private practitioners who think differently. Psychologist Melvin Varghese interviews successful therapists in private practice about how they built their businesses as well as top entrepreneurs, business/marketing, and social media experts.*

You'll learn how therapists get referrals, grow their practices, work through fears, find their enough, and stop "trading time for income." Melvin also shares the lessons as he grows his impact + income beyond the therapy room (podcasting, YouTube, writing, online courses, masterminds, investing, etc) and the tips and tools he uses to grow STC from a single-person business to the CEO of a 6-figure business.*

Featured in Psychology Today, Good Therapy, and Psych Central

****Get show notes and even more good stuff at sellingthecouch.com/stcpodcast*

Episodes

Mentioned books

Apr 1, 2021 • 40min

ENCORE: How to Build a Private Practice While Dealing With Grief, Mourning, And Loss

Grief, mourning, and loss---they aren’t topics we usually enjoy discussing, but whether we like it or not, they are processes that we all have to go through at some point in life. For a therapist, how do you build your private practice while dealing with these intense feelings, and what would prompt you to find your niche within this realm? Today’s guest answers these questions and more as we delve into this topic to begin a new season of STC.Nikki Sewell, LCSW, has tackled building a private practice through the loss of a loved one. She and her husband, Andrew, built a private practice together with his psychiatry work and her social work. Shortly after establishing the practice, he had complications following an extensive surgery and passed away unexpectedly. Nikki was only 30 years old when she became a widow and had to endure grief, loss, and the practical steps involved in moving forward. In today’s conversation, Nikki shares candidly about what inspired them to form a joint practice, how she felt the strength and resolve to keep going, and how her vision for the practice has changed. She also shares how her personal experiences with grief and loss have factored into the niche she has chosen for her practice.You can read the full show notes at : Session169RESOURCES TO GUIDE YOUR BUSINESS JOURNEY Disclosures: Please note that all opinions are my own and based on my personal experience. Sponsors are acknowledged. Some links in the description are affiliate links where if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a commission at no additional cost to you. I use these funds to continue to create helpful content to serve our field. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.MY FREE ONLINE WORKSHOPS (These can be watched at a date/time that works for you):🎙️ Using Podcasting To Grow Your Business (Lessons Learned From 9 Downloads On Day 1 To 1.2 Million And a 7 Income Stream Business)💻 How To Launch And Grow A Successful Online Course (Lessons Learned From A $297 First Sale To $150k Online Course)MY FREE GUIDES:🎤 Start your Podcast: The QuickStart Guide 🖥️ The A To Z Online CourseMY COURSES:🎧 The Healthcasters (A podcasting course + community for helpers/healers): 💻 Online Course School (A course to create, sell, and grow a successful online course): COMING IN 2022 (please feel free to download the online guide course above and I can keep you updated as I'm trying to build this with ample input and care including a chance to work 1 on 1 with me!): MY FAVORITE SOFTWARE:🧳 My Podcast Hosting Platform (Captivate-Includes 7 Day Free Trial): 🚀 My All In One Online Business Platform (Kartra-Includes 14 Day Free Trial): 🤖 What I Use For Evergreen Webinars (Easy Webinar)🌐 My Website Host (SiteGround-Includes Discount)🎨 My WebSite Theme (Divi)MY FAVORITE GEAR:❤️ STC Home Office Tour! 📔 My Online Counseling + Coaching Gear🎥 My YouTube + Live Streaming Camera GearSUBSCRIBE TO THE STC PODCAST:Since 2015, I've hosted a weekly podcast where I interview successful therapists in private practice and other business owners to help us grow our impact + income in and beyond the therapy room. The podcast has been downloaded over 1.2 million times and is heard in over 140 countries.You can find also it by searching “Selling The Couch” on any podcast app (eg: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify etc) or simply saying "Alexa, listen to Selling The Couch" on your Amazon device. =Or simply click below for ease =). SUBSCRIBE HERELET'S BE FRIENDS:💌 Sign up to receive the free A To Z Online Course Guide + receive the weekly STC email newsletter (trusted by over 7k colleagues) 🌍 My website / blog📸 Instagram (I mainly post "behind the scenes" stuff about my life and business)WHO'S THIS GUY? Hi. I'm Melvin. I'm a psychologist (PhD), entrepreneur, and online creator living in Philadelphia, PA. In 2014, I began to think about how to use the therapy skills we learn in grad school, and in our clinical work into different realms (e.g., podcasting, consulting, online course creation, etc). This allows us to serve others on larger scales while diversifying our income beyond 1 to 1 work. I make podcasts and videos about business, tech, productivity, and lessons I'm learning from becoming the CEO of a lean, mean 5 person 100% remote team (we're not really mean..it just rhymed =P).Mentioned in this episode:Try Alma!Building and managing the practice you truly want can feel overwhelming. That’s why Alma is here—to help you create not just any practice, but your private practice. With Alma, you’ll get the tools and resources you need to navigate insurance with ease, connect with referrals that are the right fit for your style, and streamline those time-consuming administrative tasks. That means less time buried in the details and more time focused on delivering exceptional care to your clients. You support your clients. Alma supports you. Learn more at sellingthecouch.com/alma and get 2 months FREE—an exclusive offer for STC listeners.Sign up for the new online course workshop of a small launch to a $300K course at https://sellingthecouch.com/onlinecourseworkshopSign up for the new online course workshop of a small launch to a $300K course at https://sellingthecouch.com/onlinecourseworkshop

Mar 25, 2021 • 33min

268: Moving From An Online Course To A Membership Model with Jennifer McGurk, RDN, CDN, CEDRD-S

Today’s show takes on a very niched perspective, but the information and wisdom are useful in many aspects of our work as clinicians and business owners. We are specifically discussing how to move from an online course to a membership model. Maybe you’ve wondered about these components of your practice and how to make the transition. Join us for expert advice!Our Featured GuestJennifer McGurk, RDN, CDN, CEDRD-SJennifer McGurk is a registered dietitian in NY whose specialty is helping clients with eating disorders. She made the transition from an online course to a membership model, so she is sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of such a move. I hope our discussion will be helpful to you if you’re considering a similar transition. WebsiteYou’ll Learn:● How membership sites can help a clinician accomplish career goals● Details of Jennifer’s journey in private practice from an online course to a membership model● The benefits to therapist and client of a membership model over a one-time course model● How imposter syndrome can crop up when creating a membership site● How it’s helpful to see others reaching their goals in transitioning from an online course to a membership site● Common mistakes in this transition● What the business gurus DON’T tell you about your online course as a passive income stream● The components of Jennifer’s membership site: Dietitian Business School● Jennifer’s advice to a clinician either launching an online course or making the transition to a membership siteToday's Podcast Sponsor: Hushmail - Hushmail is a safe and secure way to email and send secure forms (e.g., intake packets and consent forms) to potential and current clients.Please visit https://sellingthecouch.com/hushmail and please let them know Mel sent you =). TRANSCRIPT Melvin:Hi Jennifer,welcome back to Selling the Couch.Jennifer:Hi, Melvin; thankyou for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you.Melvin:I really enjoyedour last conversation. I'm so grateful that you reached out, you are doing justso many neat things in the world, so many out of the box things. And I'm justgrateful when you reached out and then two, just to hear about the journey andshare all the lessons and all those things that you've learned.Jennifer:Yeah, thank you somuch. I'm so grateful for your work, too. We were talking before we hit recordabout how mental health is so needed right now and therapists are doing such anawesome job. So anyone out there listening, thank you for your work too. It's atime where people really need mental health services.Melvin:Yeah, absolutely;I do feel so grateful to be part of this profession. I don't know who couldhave imagined something like this. But I think one of the things that's reallybeen on my mind, especially through this pandemic, I think it was there beforebut it's kind of accelerated it is this question of like, what do I want mycareer to look like? And where do I want to focus my energy?And one of thethings that I've kind of realized is, I actually want to eventually justcompletely pull back on one on one work or if I have to it's kind of morehigher-priced and it's very limited. And I think one of the ways that you cando that is through online courses and membership sites. I think there's like alot of information online about how to do these, all of that kind of stuff. ButI wanted to hear from you, because you had an online course, you transitionedinto a membership site, you're actually doing it and yeah, I'm just sograteful, I think for this conversation.Jennifer:Yeah, thank you so much for letting me to share my story. Yes, I did have a course and I was inthe same situation that you have just said, I was seeing clients and I had beenseeing clients at that point for probably seven years or so in private practiceand even more before that, before I started my private practice, and I did getto the point where- I was going to say burnout, but I just wanted to dosomething different because I specialize in eating disorders.I felt likeeveryone's story is very different in a way. But I was seeing the same thingover and over again and I just thought to myself; I really want to work with Dietitians,as well to teach them all of the knowledge that I've learned over the years, fromworking with clients and my own supervision and just everything that I'velearned about business.So that's when Istarted my second company pursuing private practice. And pursuing privatepractice really was for Dietitians to start and grow a business. So long storyshort, it started out as a book series, it turned into a DIY course, and thenit kind of morphed itself into a group program/business coaching, hot seat,stuff Facebook group, and it just got way too big for a one time purchase and Ifelt like I was coaching forever.So I turned itinto a membership and that membership Dietician Business School has really doneawesome in the past six months since it's been open, and I've been able tobring on team members and really help Dietitians in a way that feels so good,because I'm giving them so much support. And I'm not burnout, because it's amembership versus a one-time course payment. So I'm happy to talk and elaborateon that process, because it was a journey to transfer it from a course to anactual membership.Melvin:Yeah, I know. Itis quite a bit of a journey. So for those of you guys are listening, I had avery similar process, I guess back in like 2018, where I had my health casterspodcasting course and then it was a single payment. And then I got to thispoint where for me I hated doing these launches, and I hated the like you saidthe one off kind of payments. And then I just began to think about how I thinkthe question that you just or the statement that you said, of thinking about yourown personal health and how do you sort of scale this while preserving thataspect, right?Jennifer:Yes, definitely. Ithink courses are great, and for anyone out there interested in even doing acourse I think courses are really great for information, and really awesome tostart someone on a journey. But let's face it; a lot of times the businessgurus out there that are teaching people how to sell courses are basicallysaying, “Oh, it's passive income, create once and sit on the beach and watchyour money roll in.” Which I absolutely hate; I feel like it's diet culture in whatI do, I'm an eating disorders dietician.So I feel likeit's this false message of hope. But yet, the reality of it is that your peopleare going to have questions, they are going to need to process and theinformation, and they are going to want to bounce ideas off of somebody, and youcan provide more than just the information as a course. But if you do thatyou're probably creating a Facebook group or you're having people come to groupcalls. And that in my opinion, I have learned kind of the hard way like, that'sa membership, that's not a course.So I was doingthis one time course all the way up until I probably knew I needed to changeJanuary 2020, before the pandemic, but once March hit, what happened to me wasjust, “Oh my Gosh, my people need help.” So I added extra group calls to mycourse, I added more prompts in my Facebook group. I added so many differentworkshops and things like that. And I saw that my Dietitians were getting somany results from it, they were actually doing better.And this was whereCOVID was really starting to hit our at least in the United States, like inMarch was starting to hit our country and people with eating disorders werereally struggling. So the Dietitians are really struggling and no one reallyknew what was going on. So I felt like all the support that I gave my Dietitiansin my course, was so helpful and I could see the results happening I could seepeople making better connections and I almost created a little bit of a mockmembership in that Facebook group and group calls. And then I decided likeokay, this is working, but I need to really officially change my businessmodel.Melvin:Yeah, that's cool.So a lot of really great information, I want to like break it down here. Sopractical kind of tools; the group was on what? Was it on Facebook? Or was iton? Where was the group on?Jennifer:The course startedout as information in teachable. I use teachable and I really like teachablealthough you can use whatever platform you want. I did information in teachableand then we had a Facebook group and we had zoom group calls once a month justas a quick QA and it was great. It was awesome to connect with people.But I personallydon't feel like that's enough of a connection for a lot of people like peopleneed constant reminders, people need to feel supported, people need to process.So once COVID hit, I really stepped up to the plate and I said my people needme. And granted meanwhile, Melvin I know you know what it's like to havechildren at home. My two kids were home. We lost our babysitting for a couplemonths. But looking back, I don't even know how I did that. But I did it. Butyeah, we were meeting over zoom with a group call. So you would see in my oldcourse site, it was literally like 15 group calls just one after the other.That's not a course that's a membership.Melvin:Yeah, it's such agood way. So you notice, like you looked at the practical schedule, and youwere like, “Oh my Gosh, this isn't sustainable.” You said it so clearly,though. But like, this is not a course this is a membership; was it as clearcut in your mind? Or was this like, “Oh my Gosh, I'm going to betrayed mymembers, or like all of that?Jennifer:It was clear cutin my mind. But how do I say this, it was not clear cut in my heart, maybe inmy soul. My brain knew that I needed to switch. But my heart had a really hardtime with it. Because I felt like I was going betray the Dietitians that hadsigned up for my course and I had a little bit of imposter syndrome, like “Whoam I to run a membership program for Dietitians in business?” Because I feellike everyone has imposter syndrome when they start something new.I really just feltlike, “Oh my Gosh, what if people don't like it,” that scary type of feeling.But then I thought to myself, and there are so many parallels, in my opinionwith running a business and eating disorder recovery, which is what I focus onin my practice. My clients do hard things all the time, they really battleeating disorder thoughts, and behaviours and feelings every single day, likesometimes even every single hour, and to think about all the clients that I havehelped and I've said to them, “You can do hard things.”I kind of said tomyself, I can do hard things and I can make decisions from a place of where Iwant to be, and almost by making that decision, I hope to inspire other peopleand other business owners that they can make those hard decisions too. And noteveryone is going to like your decision and that just goes without saying evenif you were to stay in the same exact model, some people are not going to likethat decision. So you have to almost make a decision based on what's best foryou as an act of self-care.Melvin:How do you dealwith that part? Because that's the part I often struggle with, which is knowingthere's going to be a percentage of people that will be upset by this.Jennifer:Yes. Oh, my Goshyeah. And honestly, I don't know if I have a great answer with that, because Ifeel like some people are more sensitive than others. Some people are moreempathetic than others. Some people just feel other people's energy. But Ithink what I said to myself is, you are going to have some people that are not goingto like this decision, but you have to think about what's best for you becauseif you burn out, there's going to be no online business. And you really want todo this; this is your passion. This is your calling, I almost felt like I knowthat it's a little Woo but I love it. Like this is my calling and his is what Iwant to do. And I think also to seeing other people's memberships, and not inlike a comparison type of way. But seeing other people's memberships reallywork and being a part of other people's memberships. It helps casters includedbecause I was a part of health casters for a long time; I saw that people weredoing it and I saw that other people are turning their models into memberships too.So that was really helpful to see other people reaching goals that I wanted todo as well.Melvin:I think that's areally good point. And I would say for those of you guys are listening, onething that was really helpful for me, I don't know that I thought about it, andit but I feel like there's a common overlap between our two courses in that Ithink there's some wisdom, even if you want to start with an online course.Initially, I thinkthere's some wisdom in just thinking like, is the content of this onlinecourse? Is it possible to move it or scale it into a membership model? Like,can you add things like, I don't know, I can't think of a tangible example ofhim where that wouldn't be beneficial. But I don't know. Just asking thatsimple question, I think was really helpful for me.Jennifer:Yeah, definitely, Ithink it also depends on your content and your mission too. And for me, I teachDietitians, especially non-diet dietitians, which is like anti-diet, eatingdisorder recovery, intuitive eating, and weight inclusive dietitians like I'min a very special, specific niche.Jennifer:I teach dietitians how to run abusiness from that lens. Diet Culture is everywhere. There are mixed messageswith marketing everywhere my people need to process, they need to experiment,they need to try, they have questions on not just business stuff, but clinicalcases. We all need a lot of support, especially my dietitians; we need acommunity and a lot of support sometimes, because we're battling against dietculture, which is so normal, especially if we're recording in January,especially this time of year. So it's important for them to feelsupported. And I just felt like I couldn't give the amount of support that Iwanted to give in a onetime course. I almost needed to hold their hand withmore group calls and more accountability, more team members, more people otherthan me, which I couldn't really afford to do when it was a onetime thing. NowI can bring on a lot more people, which is really awesome.Melvin:That is really awesome. What are thecomponents now? What were the components when it was just a one off course?Like it was the course the community and then a monthly coaching? What is itnow?Jennifer:Okay, so I'll tell you my mistakewith the course, which for anyone listening, you can totally learn from mymistake. The mistake with the course was that it was just a course and peoplewere paying for a course. And then I added Facebook group, I added the groupcalls. So they didn't expect it almost at first. And again, my course startedin 2017. Once it grew, and I was launching over and over again, I would talk toyou about these things, but that was my mistake to kind of just do that just,here you go, which I love doing. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret anythingI've done. Now a Dietitian Business School is,well, first of all, when I decided to revamp the course, I should say this isimportant. I decided it was time for an update because that's another thingthat a lot of the business gurus don't tell you. They say make a course andrecord once, and then you're going to be making money in your sleep and you cango on vacation all the time, you don't have to work. And that's like totallynot true. So you have to really record your information in a course. I don'tknow what you would say, Melvin every two, three years, maybe like things aredifferent, things are updated.Melvin:Yeah, it's a great point. So for me,at least with health casters, and just being completely transparent, I don'tthink I have done as good of a job as I could. Partly was related to having thebaby and just having such limited time. But now what I've started to do isactually check in with the community twice a year, like January July ish,saying, “Hey guys, what things need updating?” I think the general parameter thatI've been following, if it's like a course that's related to something that'srapidly evolving, something like podcasting, you probably need to do it morefrequently. Whereas if it's like topics that have, I guess, some evergreenpotential, I think you can go through and tweak as needed.Jennifer:Yeah, it's a really good point thatthere's obviously no right answer. But thinking about your niche and who you'reserving and the updated information and things like that is such a good point.So I felt like it was time for an update from me for Dietitian Business School.So I re-recorded all of the lessons. So basically, there's three parts, it'sthe business education part. So it went from 10 to 20 lessons. I actuallyadded, I doubled the...

Feb 18, 2021 • 36min

267: Bookkeeping Things To Consider When Transitioning From Solo to Group Practice With Michael Spencer, BS, MA

As a business owner, if you’re baffled by the world of bookkeeping, then today’s show will be helpful to you. Maybe you’re a solo practitioner considering starting a group practice, or perhaps you want to learn more about efficient financial systems and processes. Join us!Our Featured GuestMichael SpencerMichael Spencer has an interesting career background as a CPA who became a licensed clinician in private practice. Recently, she started a bookkeeping practice to serve helpers and healers in the healthcare profession. Michael has a gentle presence that brings comfort and safety, and she brings a unique perspective as a therapist with an accounting background. WebsiteYou’ll Learn:● How Michael transitioned from being a CPA to becoming a LPC, then went on to coaching before starting a bookkeeping business on the side● What’s involved in bookkeeping, which means tracking and recording all the financial transactions in a business● How to understand your “numbers” and what they mean for your business● Three financial tips in considering starting a group practice:● Take an honest but gentle assessment of your current bookkeeping system, relationship with finances, and business goals.● Have a bookkeeping system and some sort of payroll system or service.● Create monthly or weekly bookkeeping rituals to stay up-to-date and reliable.● Why bookkeeping will become overwhelming and challenging if you try to “do it all” when you don’t enjoy it● The importance of realizing where our strengths and weaknesses are found as business owners● The need to develop and expand our business that meets needs and serves the worldPODCAST SPONSORHushmail: Hushmail is a secure, HIPAA-compliant way to communicate with clients via email and to fill out clinical forms like intake packets securely. Please visit sellingthecouch.com/hushmail and let them know that Mel sent you =). TRANSCRIPTMelvin:Hey, Michael, welcome back to Selling the Couch.Michael:Oh, thank you so much, Melvin. It's great to be here.Melvin:I'm just one grateful for our friendship and two just for the privilege and honor to be able to see the ways that you have both grown as a person and as a business owner. You and I have gotten to know each other through the health casters community, and then through our mastermind community as well. And so I'm just so grateful for you.Michael:Yeah, thank you. And I'm really grateful for you, too. You've been a real constant over the past couple years as I've gone through all sorts of different changes professionally, so I really appreciate you.Melvin:You're so welcome. For folks that don't know you, you are a therapist, but you had a career prior to that. What was that career?Michael:Yeah. So right out of college, I was in accounting and auditing. I was a certified public accountant. My license is currently on inactive status. But I did hold that license from 2001 to 2008; and I did auditing of nonprofit organizations and governments, as well as some small business bookkeeping.Melvin:Nice. And then what happened in 2008?Michael:I guess it was a little bit earlier than that my license was still active and in 2006, 2007, I was just kind of becoming unfulfilled with that work. It wasn't really speaking to my soul and so I decided to go back to school for my Master's in mental health counseling. And I pursued that career, I loved that career, I was a licensed professional counselor and that license right now is also an on inactive status. And so I'm not currently practicing in the field.And what happened there was I was doing a lot of trauma therapy, and eventually just became kind of burnout. And so then I transitioned into doing some coaching and really loved that as well. And then this year, no, we're in 2021. No in 2020, at the beginning of 2020, I started doing some bookkeeping, to supplement my income, and I had been doing bookkeeping for my husband's business for about seven years, and then I was also doing bookkeeping, for my own counseling and coaching practices.So I was never totally out of the accounting realm. And in 2020, I just started doing this side work and it started growing without a whole lot of work and effort on my part. I just sent a couple emails out to family and friends and said, “Hey, I'm going to start doing some more bookkeeping and clients have been coming.” And then a few months ago, I decided, you know, I really want to see about focusing in on serving therapists and coaches and helping professionals in private practice, because I know these worlds, I know these folks, and I know that there's a lot of need for support with the money side of things and the financial tracking of things and it has been fantastic so far.Melvin:Yeah, I feel like you are so uniquely qualified because you have the mental health experience. So like you said the verbiage, the struggles, all of those different things, the roadblocks, but then you have the CPA side of you. So you're very, like, it's an amazing skill. I just wanted to tell you to be able to, like, navigate both of those worlds the way you do.Michael:Thank you, I really enjoy it and it's been really gratifying to be able to talk especially with the folks who are in the therapy realm and hearing them say, “Thank you for not judging me and I feel safe asking you questions. There are folks out there who have questions about their bookkeeping and about their finances, and who don't feel like they have a safe place to go to ask those questions because they feel like well, I should know that, I'm in business.And so when we feel inept, and yet we don't feel like we have a safe place to go to ask questions and build skills and confidence, it can be a dangerous place in terms of dealing with one's bookkeeping, because then it tends to be something that gets put off and put on the backburner.Melvin:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I wanted to ask you, and maybe I didn't want to make assumptions when we were talking. But I know that even the word bookkeeping, like I wasn't that familiar with it until a couple of days ago. So what exactly is bookkeeping?Michael:Yeah, the way I think of it is simply tracking and recording all of the financial track transactions that happen in a business. And so a lot of times, these are the things that and with -- so there are a couple of different ways of doing bookkeeping, and you can do it on the cash basis or the accrual basis and I'm not going to go too far into that.Most small businesses are on the cash basis, which just means that income is recorded whenever cash is received and expenses are recorded whenever that cash leaves the bank account, or the check is written. And so it's a matter of taking all of that information, all of those payments that are going out and the income that's coming in, and putting it into a system where you can actually make use of that data.So you can produce a financial statement. It's often called an income statement or a profit and loss, to be able to see the revenue that's coming in, the expenses that are going out, and then we've talked about the bottom line; what's left?Melvin:Yeah, absolutely and again, I feel like having a bookkeeper, for me has been one of the best things I've done for my business. And I think for me, it has been being able to make business decisions based on numbers based or like for example, really practical thing; I've been wanting to improve my video quality for a long time, and so I watch a lot of YouTube videos, and all this kind of stuff on lighting and stuff like that.And there's this light that, a lot of YouTubers recommend, this light is almost like $1,000, just for the light plus the setup, right? And so, I think if I didn't have a bookkeeper, if I didn't know my numbers, I could just be like, “Oh, I'll just charge it, whatever.”But why I was able to do is I was able to set aside a little bit of money over the span of multiple months. One, I'd like to do that, because it makes me sure like, okay, this is something I really want; is this a need versus something like a nice to have kind of thing. And then I think, but I don't know, it just gave me I think clarity and a peace of mind because then I was able to say, you know what, I have the money and I've saved up for this. And now I can purchase this and not go into debt in order to do it.Michael:Absolutely right. So you can have a sense of what you want to invest in and why and then to really understand your cash flows and this is something that in 2021 really wanting to develop in my business is to be able to help more with that advising side of things. It's like, okay, let's get your numbers in a good place. Let's make sure you're doing your reconciliations on a monthly basis. And for the clients that I'm working with, I take care of that and then let's get more clear about what these numbers mean for your business.Melvin:Yeah, absolutely, I wanted to shift a little bit and go into the meat of what we're going to talk about, which is this; I think we titled it the three bookkeeping things to have in place before transitioning from a solo to a group practice and I know when we've talked, when we have spoken about half of your client, current client, group practice owners, and then you have a decent number of solo practitioners. So you're kind of in both worlds. You understand both. How does this sound if we kind of dive into three of those tips?Michael:Yeah, that sounds wonderful. And just to clarify, so I have three folks who have group private practices, and then three folks who are in different industries, so they're not necessarily solo therapists.Melvin:Got it. So you're very vast person I think in the group space, but you're definitely vast when it comes to solo folks that are in different industries, the unique challenges that they have.Michael:Yeah, absolutely.Melvin:Got it. Okay. So what’s that first sort of tip that you would share? What's a bookkeeping thing that someone should have in place, if they're wanting, thinking about their insular practice now, but thinking about a good practice?Michael:The first thing that I was considering, as we were talking about this topic isn't necessarily something to have in place. But it's something to do. And so it's giving yourself a genuine, honest, and it can be gentle assessment of your current bookkeeping, your relationship with your business finances, and even what your financial and business goals are.So this is an opportunity to really get clear and honest about how you feel about doing your monthly bookkeeping. Are you doing it? Is this something that you put off until the end of the year? Are you a person who's saying, “Well, Gosh, I have money in the bank. So I must be doing okay.” But you don't really have the ability to read a financial statement and understand that, are you a person who's saying, I've got these huge goals? But I don't really know if financially I can afford to do this.In order to create that foundation for a healthy business growing forward, because when we're talking about moving to a group practice, we're talking about expanding, growing, scaling, and it's really important to have that sense of, do I enjoy doing this? Is this the bookkeeping, something that I can do going forward? Is it something that I should consider outsourcing? Just because it's important, especially as we're growing to make sure that we're not holding on to tasks in our business, that we're really not having the aptitude to do.Melvin:Yeah, aptitude, and I would even say, like, passion, or is this like, am I the best person to be doing this? Especially I would think, I am not a group practice owner, but with STC, I have five independent contractors that do all sorts of different things from editing to websites and all this stuff, and bookkeeping. And it’s a genuine question that I had to ask myself, like I can do this, but is this the best use of my time? And am I passionate about it? Like, does this take me away from where I should be focusing? And I think that's a great question to ask.I think especially with, and I'm curious to hear your experience with this. But I'm sure with group practice owners, especially somebody who's going from solo to group. There's that scalability component, right? So in some ways, I feel like if you sort of set up these systems, for example, with bookkeeping, and maybe when you're solo, you're the only person in the business, obviously. But now you really got to think about, okay, if I hire two, one person or two people, what's my system? How are they getting paid? Like, all of that kind of stuff, right? How are we accounting for revenue? I think that's what you're saying. Make sure what those systems are.Michael:Yeah, having those systems in place and recognizing that as a solo practitioner, you may have been able to get away with a less robust system, you may have been able to track things on spreadsheets, or maybe not even really track them at all and just see, because your costs are probably fairly stable month to month with this type of business.You've got rent, if you have an in person space, you've got your practice management system, and email system and all of that those things are going to stay relatively stable. So once you start to realize, okay, I need to make this amount of money to pay my bills. This is how much I pay myself every month. You might not even be compiling a financial statement until it's tax time.In my opinion, as a bookkeeper, I don't think that's ideal, and one can probably get away with that. As we're growing, to move into a group practice where you're going to get busier, you're going to have more responsibilities, and then there are people counting on you.As you're on employing people and providing the space for them to be able to make income to support themselves and their families, it's really important to have these systems in place to be able to track that, because as you add people too, if you have an in person space, you've got to be thinking about where am I going to put them? Do I need to pay more rent? Are other costs going to go up every time I add another employee to my practice? And so it's necessary to be able to lean into those numbers every month and to be able to see, okay, how is my business growing? Where is it flat? Even just being able to make sure that you're not missing anything. The last thing you want to have happen as you are growing is, “Oh, I didn't put a payment into my system and now I overdo my checking account.”Melvin:Yeah, this reminds me of that James, clear quote, which is, one of my most favorites is that we rise and fall to the level of our systems. And it's so true. It's so true. I think when you go from a solo to having other people. What would you say is kind of the second tip that one should consider when it comes to bookkeeping, especially as they transition or thinking about transitioning from a solo to a group practice?Michael:I feel like some of these things that I'm sharing are quite basic. And so there are some people who are listening who are like, “Yeah, I got this in place.” And for the folks who I was describing earlier, who have kind of been getting by, the next thing to have in place is a bookkeeping system, and some sort of payroll system or payroll service to be moving from the spreadsheets or I haven't really been using a system to really be getting a system in place that you can rely on. And so that might be a QuickBooks Online that might be FreshBooks, or wave. QuickBooks is the one that I'm most familiar with. And for a payroll system, it might be something like Gusto, or you can run payroll within QuickBooks, or maybe it's even a local payroll service in your area. But having a way to capture all of that data and easily produce the financial statements so that you've got that information for, like you were talking about Melvin, I want to make a purchase. Okay, let me both look at the historical data, and also use this system as a way of budgeting so that you know and you feel really comfortable and confident about the financial decisions that you're making.Melvin:That makes sense. I wanted to ask you again, sometimes I ask really basic questions, because one; I want to learn and I know sometimes folks listening they might get confused. What is a payroll system and I guess even what is payroll?Michael:Sure. So when you hire employees, you are required as an employer to set a way of paying them and then you also have to make sure that their payroll withholdings are getting submitted to the correct tax entity. So we all know about our Federal Income Taxes that we have to make sure we file and pay by April 15. And one of the ways that we pay those is through payroll tax withholdings. So each time you get paid, if you are what we call a W2 employee, you can see your gross pay, and then there's going to be federal taxes withheld on that that gets submitted to the IRS. There's also going to be state taxes withheld. Some states do a state unemployment tax. And then some states do local tax. So you're making sure that all those withholdings get taken care of for your employees and paid to the correct taxing entities, and then as an employer, you also have to pay the employers part of social security and Medicare for your employees, as well as workers comp. And I may be forgetting I'm not a payroll tax expert, which is why it's important to have a payroll service and some bookkeepers will run payroll for you and others will sub it out to another organization like Gusto or QuickBooks, or a local service. Does that answer your question?Melvin:Yeah, it does. It definitely does. I just wanted to clarify what those words because sometimes, I think sometimes we throw words out there just in general in groups or whatever, I didn't oh, there's always that person like oh, I wonder what that is, but then they don't ask. And I'd rather folks listen to this and get that clarity. Michael:Yeah, I feel that way too. And so the payroll service is the organization that is...

Feb 11, 2021 • 38min

266: How We Connect our Mindset to Systems to Achieve Entrepreneurial Confidence

We all want to have entrepreneurial confidence as we run our business. Today’s topic is how we connect our mindset to systems to achieve that confidence. Join us to learn more about translating an entrepreneurial mindset into systems and processes that will boost your profitability.Our Featured GuestKasey Compton, M.Ed, LPCC-SKasey Compton from KaseyCompton, lives and works in KY, where she has built a very successful, seven-figure group practice. When I thought about a show highlighting systems and processes, I knew Kasey would be the perfect person to cover this topic for us. We’ll discuss the dangerous trap we get stuck in as business owners, thinking that we can only be successful if we do everything ourselves. We’ll also get Kasey’s thoughts on why running your business as a therapist is not the wisest idea. We will break down a system and process that Kasey developed that’s based on the work of Mike Michalowicz and his Healthcare Hierarchy of Needs (HHN). Using this tool will help you target three areas of focus in your practice for profitability and peace of mind. WebsiteYou’ll Learn:● Why running your business like a therapist is NOT the best idea● Why we lose sight of the goal of our business, which is profitability, when we neglect foundational pieces that are crucial in operating a business● How “systems” are defined, and how they are connected to confidence, freedom, and peace in the health of a business● The Top Three Indicators of Business Health: leads, profitability, and order● How the two levels of leads for group practices, clients and therapists, work to balance prospect-provider attraction● How to determine priorities using Michalowicz’s Healthcare Hierarchy of Needs and channel the overwhelm of being a business owner● Kasey’s advice for the overwhelmed therapist/business owner● Why you should treat the core need of the business and not just the symptom● Why your to-do list is probably full of symptoms and not core issues● How to combat overwhelm in implementing new systems through a three-step processPODCAST SPONSORHushmail: Hushmail is a secure, HIPAA-compliant way to communicate with clients via email and to fill out clinical forms like intake packets securely. Please visit sellingthecouch.com/hushmail and let them know that Mel sent you =). Transcript:Melvin:Hey Kasey, welcome to Selling the Couch.Kasey:Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.Melvin:We were talking about this right before we got started, but I feel like we have been in the same like orbit, maybe for the past several years, but we haven't yet connected. And I'm just so grateful. For one, all of the things that you are doing for our profession and just all of the things that you're doing in the world. You're an extremely busy person. And I really am just grateful for our time together.Kasey:Well, thank you so much. I mean, right back at you, I’ve been following some of the things that you've been doing, and I love this podcast. So it's an honor to be here and be a guest.Melvin:When we connected end of 2020 -- thank god 2020 is over by the way, I was thinking a lot about, like what we should talk about, and I felt like one of the most common struggles that a lot of health care providers, mental health providers folks outside of the mental health space have is connecting this idea of like an entrepreneurial mindset. But how do you actually connect that to systems? And how do you implement some of that stuff in your business? And I'm so glad you reached out because you are definitely the person that I would talk to about this stuff.Kasey:Yeah, so, systems are just kind of my thing, I love them. I love everything about them. I think I was born with this nature of craving, efficiency and craving order, it makes me feel comfortable, it makes me feel at peace, it makes me have clarity. And there's just so many things that systems do for me on a personal level. And so whenever I was thinking about those from an entrepreneurial mindset, it was not really a question of is this important? Because I knew it was, it was just, how am I going to make this as usable in business as I do in personal life. And so I think a lot of it is just when you're talking to therapists that own businesses, sometimes we try to run our business like a therapist, and to a certain extent, that's good. But then there are certain pieces of that that really can get us into trouble. And I think that's where it's so important for therapists to really think about systems in a way that comes naturally to them. And I'm sure you're going to ask me about that. So I won't ramble on that.Melvin:All of that sounds really good. I actually wanted to ask you a random question before we jump in. When you think of the word systems, like how do you define it?Kasey:That's a really good question. Honestly, I've been thinking about that question in various forms since I've been doing what I'm doing and it just depends on when you ask me, and what's going on in my business is, it's usually how the answer goes. But systems really, to me, and through all of the research that I've done, and I've done quite a bit of research on this, it really equals a couple of things. Systems mean competence, systems mean freedom and systems mean peace, and you can take those three things and take them each and on whatever direction you want to take them. Peace to me means peace of mind, it means that I don't have to worry about the minutiae, I don't have to worry about the little things. That's the things that get me anxious and get me in a place that I like to be. And I think systems are the best way to prevent that.Melvin:I love the fact that you connected it to, like, just deep like core emotions, confidence, freedom and peace because that's so true. I think for many business owners we jump in, because we are passionate about a topic and niche, whatever it is. But we quickly get overwhelmed. But initially, we're thinking by jumping in, like, I'm going to have confidence and freedom and peace. And yeah, I sort of see systems as I guess that bridge or that thing that gets us from our ideas, to where we want to go kind of thing.Kasey:Yes. And they're very good indicator of your business's health too. When your systems are not strong, or they are off, or sometimes I'll say, if they're wonky, then you're going to feel that. You’re going to feel that in your chest, it's going to be a visceral response, it's going to be that, oh my gosh, feeling like the world is on your shoulders. And that is a systems reflection right there.Melvin:Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that you said earlier was, a lot of times therapists run their business like a therapist. I think I know what that means. But in your words, like, what does that mean for you?Kasey:Well, I think that there's a good side to that running your business like a therapist. And then I think there's also a challenging side to that. So when I mentioned that earlier, that a lot of therapists run their business like a therapist, they forget one thing. So in therapy, we are often looking at the client's goal. And we set that goal on that treatment plan, and we're working to achieve that goal. So that part, we know, but when we are trying to run our business, sometimes we forget that and we run our business, really based off of our purpose, which is our why and which is why we're doing this and we want to help people, and we have this passion and all these things. And we laser focus in on that which, I'm not saying that that's wrong, I am kind of saying that that's wrong. I'm not saying that that's bad. I'm just saying that when we run our business like a therapist, we lose sight that the goal of the business is actually profitability. And the purpose of the business is entirely up to you. But whenever we shift those, or flip those around and we're running the business off of a purpose, we are neglecting some of the foundational pieces of operating a business that is crucial. You can't make a profit off of purpose alone. And that's where I see people running their business as a therapist and not as a business owner.Melvin:Yeah, so I guess, let me just sort of understand that a little bit more so almost like a super hyper emphasis on purpose, to the point where purpose can almost become, like blended with the goal. Whereas what you're saying is, the goal of any business really should be profitability. And that's sort of what like goal and purpose should be distinguished as opposed to like, blending together.Kasey:Yes.Melvin:You also mentioned, there are like several indicators of business help. What are like the top three indicators?Kasey:I always start with the numbers. So really looking at those numbers and specifically your leads. And I know as therapist that people don't typically call this a lead, but just to kind of use a common word, how many leads are coming into the practice, both on a client level and on a profitability level? Because what I see often is this dichotomy that the business owners get stuck in is, it's very hard to find the balance between having enough therapist or having enough clients, they're always bouncing between the two. So the numbers to reflect that scenario is one way to assess your business's health and that KPI, key performance indicator, or that metric falls on the foundational level of our business, which is sales. Also, something else to assess the health of your business is profitability. If that is the goal, if that is what we're doing here, then our profitability and what that looks like is going to tell us if what we are doing is working. So that's a big one. And then the third one is really going to fall in the third foundational level of any business which is order. And that is where we are minimizing bottlenecks, congestion points, making the client journey easy and nice. I mean, we want our client journey to feel smooth.When things are out of order, you're going to feel it. And that's what I was talking about earlier, just feeling that sense of pressure. So really, you can assess the health of your business by looking at the numbers in your sales level, the profit margins and your profit level and the amount of chaos you may have in your business and the order level.Melvin:I love the fact that one, this is like so organized. The fact that you're both looking at things like numbers and profitability, but you're also looking at the client experience, there's like a nice blend, which I really do appreciate. I wanted to go back to the leads one, you explained it well, but my mind is not registered quite in my mind. So I wanted to make sure I really understood it. So with leads, there are two levels. There's client, the clients, like potential clients, I could call all of those things, and then there's the second level therapists. Tell me a little bit more about that, because I think that one I didn't quite understand.Kasey:So this is actually a core need. In the healthcare space, your business has about 15 coordinates. This coordinate, it's one of the foundation five. And so what it is, is prospect and provider attraction. And what this is basically saying is that if we're not attracting enough of the right clients, or enough of the right providers to work in our business to see those clients, we're going to have an unmet need in that area.Think about it, if you have, I would say 95% of every person that I've ever worked with, in the small group form or even individual, they have one of two problems. They have a waiting list, or they have too many therapists, and they can't fill their schedules, and it's usually one or the two. So that's why I'll lump those two together as a coordinate there because they usually go together and play off of each other.Melvin:Got it? I think what you're saying is this really applies to group practice owners. What about someone that might be a solo practitioner, for example, maybe they want to stay a solo practitioner, but how does this like therapists element, or does it like apply for someone that is a solo practitioner? Kasey:Yeah, that's a really good question. Even someone that is a solo practitioner, it's still going to apply, it just may not have the same meaning as it would if you were a group practice owner. So if you're in solo practice, and you want to stay in solo practice, then that coordinator of prospect attraction, you just ignore that because you're not even -- but usually I see what happens is people in solo, they get so many leads, that they start to ask themselves, “Should I start a group because I have more clients than I can handle?” And that's usually how it start. Melvin:Got it? So they get to that point where they're asking, or I guess, getting to that crossroad where they're saying, Okay, do I want to stay solo? And if so, what I do with these leads, or do I want to go into a group and kind of figure out how to house those leads within my own business.Kasey:Right that in the solo experience has given them the confidence to even be able to ask themselves, oh, what about hiring more? Most people don't start out and say right out of grad school, “I'm going to start a group practice.” They usually say, “Let me just dip my toes in the water and test this out.” And then when they know that they have a strategy that gets clients in the door, and it works, then they're like, “Okay, maybe if I can do this, then I can do this for another, or another therapist or a group of therapist.” So that competence is a big factor there, too.Melvin:Got it. So a little bit of a shift here. How do you determine like, what you have to prioritize when it comes to business, like meaning? I feel like a lot of times healthcare providers, they get stuck in this mindset that they have to do everything in order to be successful, and they don't even know where to start. So how do you prioritize where you start? Kasey:I love this question. And I'm sure that some of your listeners have read Mike Michalowicz books. And I'm sure many of them have read Fix This Next. I know that though his book profit first really took the Mental Health Group Practice robust storm. And so I'd say even if someone hasn't read his book, they're familiar with his methodologies and how everything works. So when he wrote Fix This Next, even before I read the book, and I was on a webinar with him, and he was talking about the methodology of the system and using the -- he calls it the business hierarchy of needs. But whenever I decided to write the derivative for this book, specific to healthcare providers, I sort of saw this from a different angle. Mike's book is really heavily focused on this compass, and how using this BH in the hierarchy of needs, will help someone, point them in the right direction of where to start. I know that that is very important, because one of the questions I get asked the most is, what do I do first, but I also know therapist very well. And I know that they have more struggles than what would have ever been possible for Mike to put in a very general business book. And so with Fix This Next for healthcare providers, you will see woven throughout the entire book, my thoughts on time, and how it is so precious, it is so valuable. And as healthcare providers more often than not, we are selfless when it comes to giving everything we have to help others, whether it's time, energy, money, whatever. Most of us have a really good heart, and we have a very strong purpose. And so what happens is we end up sacrificing time, and we have this huge to do list. And we get really down on ourselves, because we're doing all of these things for our practice, but it's not really getting us where we think it's supposed to get us. And so there are lots of conversations and lots of back and forth, we came to this conclusion that it's not really that people are doing the wrong things. In fact, most therapists are doing all the right things to work on their business, they're just doing them at the wrong time and in the wrong order. And so, how to prioritize the to do list is actually really easy according to this system. And for health care, it is called the healthcare hierarchy of needs. And it is a really quick diagnostic assessment of your practice. And you answer 15 questions, yes or no. And you choose the one that has the lowest unmet need, which would be a, no, on the lowest foundational level, and that is always your starting point. It takes three seconds, well, maybe more like 10 if it's your first time.Melvin:That's cool. I love just the idea of like, creating hierarchy because you said it so well. I think that is where a lot of healthcare providers get stuck. They have like the analogy of like, learning to ride a bike, but not knowing how to ride a bike. So still having like training wheels or something. It’s like trying to do the Tour de France. When you still have training wheels, I guess.Kasey:Yeah, this is a good way to support that point too. For me, I've been doing this for so long, it comes naturally to me now. But it didn't always. And in the book that my first chapter one is called the penny, the pirate and the compass and I tell a story about how, or about a time where I was just giving everything up for this business, I was giving away all of my time, I was staying up late, I was doing all these things and a disaster happened. It was just bad. And so from that experience, I learned that I'm never going to be able to do everything in the business, it's just not going to happen. And if I do, do everything, what I have done is not going to be done very well. And so I had to change the way that I thought about time and priorities. And it was so obvious to me, I started having membership community. And we started this track within the membership community called groom your COO, just Chief Operating Officer. And so I wanted to teach people how to groom someone to take over the operations in their business in a way that is slow and meticulous and very safe. And so as I'm doing this, I'm grooming my own COO in my own business. And she comes to me right in the beginning and she was like, “Kasey, there's just so much to do, I have four pages, I'm really stressed out, I...

Feb 4, 2021 • 34min

265: Transitioning From Conventional Business Model in Private Practice in 2021 And Beyond with Brant Thomsen, LICSW

Many of us are wondering what our careers are going to look like in 2021 and beyond. We know the therapy model of 2019 as we knew it is not coming back. How do we pivot and move forward? We are answering this question in today’s show. Our Featured GuestBrant ThomsenBrant Thomsen is a therapist in private practice in the twin cities area of MN. He has an interesting life and career because he became a social worker after training at a music school in high-level piano performance. He is now making the move into less therapy and more coaching. Through interesting and unexpected circumstances, Brant was forced to make a quick transition to telehealth during the early days of the 2020 pandemic. He’s here to share what he considered and what he encountered, along with three lessons learned during the transition.Connect with Brant: Online Practice Builder You’ll Learn:● How 2020 played out for Brant when he was abruptly quarantined because of a client’s positive exposure● How Brant transitioned smoothly to telehealth in 48 hours’ time● What it was like to quarantine in his room for two weeks, and why Brant calls it a focused, peaceful, almost monastic experience that brought increased connection with clients and colleagues● How Brant’s diverse range of careers helped prepare him mentally for his transition● How Brant navigated the struggle to be authentic in his online presence and realize what he can give to others● Three life lessons learned in Brant’s transition to online therapy:● “I realized how much passion, focus, and readiness I have in supporting other therapists in a coaching role.”● “I realized the importance of staying connected to the natural environment around me.”● “I realized the lack of permanence in our lives and that what we give each other is temporary.”● How Brant is handling the day-to-day stress of the pandemicPODCAST SPONSORHushmail: Hushmail is a secure, HIPAA-compliant way to communicate with clients via email and to fill out clinical forms like intake packets securely. Please visit sellingthecouch.com/hushmail and let them know that Mel sent you =). Transcript:Melvin:Hello, welcome tosession 265 of Selling the Couch, I hope that you are having a wonderful dayI'm actually recording this at the very tail end of December; December 30. Iknow how difficult Well, I don't know, the individual stories, but on the collectivewhole, I know how hard of a year 2020 has been for so many of us. And I knowthat many of us are ready to make this transition into 2021. So I hope thatwhen this session airs that you are doing well, that you are making thistransition and we have more clarity with regard to vaccines and all of thosedifferent things.Today’s conversationis with Brant Thomsen from onlinepracticebuilder.com. Brant is actually atherapist in private practice in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. And Brant has apretty interesting life career. So he's a social worker, but his original majorin college was high level like piano performance, and so he actually went to amusic school and was going to become a professional musician and then decidedto make this transition into social work and has done some pretty amazing stuffthroughout his career.But I wanted tohave Brant on the podcast, we've been friends for a number of years and Brantdecided as for many of us who have made this transition this past year to Telehealth,Brant had a pretty crazy situation, which you'll hear on the podcast about justhow real this became. In short, he had to make a really quick transition intotelehealth.And here intoday's session where we're planning on just talking about that, what are someof the things that he had to consider? What are the struggles that he had? Andthen wrapping up with what are three of the business or life lessons that Brantlearned during this transition?I wanted to haveBrant on because many of us are in this season, where we might be thinking,what is our career going to look like in 2021 and beyond? And I mentioned thison the podcast interview. But it's therapy and private practice. As we know it,the 2019 version of this is not coming back. There's just too many changes toomany things now to factor.And so what doesthis look like and how do we honour that part of ourselves that desires to makethat transition and not listen to fears and all of those different things.Before we get to today's podcast session, just wanted to take a moment to thankthe team over at Hushmail for supporting this month's podcast sessions. I knowthat you guys know a lot about Hushmail, but if you don't know about Hushmail,Hushmail basically allows you to send and receive private encrypted email and thenalso allows you to get your forms completed and signed faster.So for example,your initial documentation for clients and things, it allows you to do that inan encrypted way and you can actually put forms and things like that on yourwebsite. So clients can fill that out through the website instead of kind ofgoing back and forth and just generally not being efficient.You can learn moreabout Hushmail over at sellingthecouch.com/hushmail. So we'll get right totoday's podcast session. Here is my conversation with Brant Thompson, fromonlinepracticebuilder.com.Hey Brant, welcometo Selling the Couch.Brant:Thank you, Melvin.It is great to be here.Melvin:It's been reallynice. I think we've known each other a couple of years now.Brant:I think so wefirst made contact a couple of years ago, although I first became familiar withyour podcast, as it was beginning around four years ago for myself.Melvin:Wow, I didn'trealize that it had been that long. One, I'm sorry that it took so long toreach out. But I really am grateful for this conversation because I know thisis something that many of us have done in the field, which is make thistransition to telehealth and more specifically even thinking through what thismeans for our businesses going forward. So I really am just grateful for thistime.Brant:Great! Myself aswell.Melvin:I was trying tothink about where to even start this conversation. And I think that questionthat I wanted to ask you was, tell us a little bit about what was happening foryou as you transition to talk therapy, especially in the start of 2020 as thispandemic as we were learning more, and all of those different things.Brant:For me, thingschanged quite abruptly. My last in person client here, I am actually in myoffice, although I do telehealth entirely, had an exposure and he informed methe next day. And we just did not know enough about COVID its features etc. Therewere not even masks for health care providers and putting that out there as acontext, and it meant for me quarantining immediately. We have a day-care inour home and to keep those kiddos and families safe, and because we knew solittle about COVID, I ended up quarantined in my own bedroom for two or threeweeks.Melvin:Oh, my Gosh, youknow what I didn't even realize that had happened. Talk about like, somethingthat is abstract and happening somewhere else, and then becoming very real injust the course one session.Brant:So within a matterof 48 hours, I had everything set up and ready to go my computer, my laptop, mybed, my bedside table, a chair, and brought a table in, and I was figurativelyand literally in business and quite smoothly, virtually missed no sessions withmy clients.Melvin:How did you Iguess, communicate with the remainder of your clients about this transition andpotential exposure? Like how much I guess disclosure did you have with that?Brant:Yeah, thank you.Good question. I tend to do long term work with my clients. So about 80% of myclients have been with me for more than two years approach being psychodynamicprimarily, and in those cases, it was fairly easy, we have a fairly closerelationship and of course, with boundaries. What I found was, it was nice wasthere really was a lot of parallel process happening with my clients, many ofthem are professional, and supporting them in the transition from being at workto needing to be at home, while the same thing was happening to me. Self-disclosurewas actually a wonderful thing that we could do that, because I already hadsuch strong relationships with those clients.Melvin:And I thinkthere's something just so unique about this pandemic. We were all in this anddealing with it. So it's not like some abstract thing. For example, if you wereto tell a client, significant person in your life passed away, and I need to dosomething or I need it; we were all dealing with it. So you made thistransition set up the office. Even take us into that moment, were you scared,like uncertain or it was more like, you know what, this is what we have to do,it kind of just went into like, okay, this is the next logical step.Brant:So a five secondnarrative, and then how it felt, I went in the back door, I was required to buymy family, took off any potential laundry, shoes, etc, showered, and wasbasically forced by my family with a smile, to go up into my room and staythere. And I did not come out for about two weeks. But for me, setting up therewas a level of focus. It was almost a monastic experience. It was verypeaceful.Although there wasisolation, on a deeper spiritual level and emotional level, there was increasedconnection with the people who I could not see in person, family, clients,professional colleagues, networks, long term relationships I've had with peoplewere no longer in person. And what I would add to that is there also was somefun. I had times where I literally would go out my window onto my porch roofwith a pizza and social distance, 100 yards from people walking by and have mypizza and wave of people walking by playing Yahtzee with a friend in Maryland,while I'm here in Minnesota. So we made some good, positive experience out ofwhat really was a true quarantine.Melvin:Yeah, it isamazing that you took something that's so startling and sudden and just beingable to see things like almost a spiritual experience and then to even like reframethat, and not just in your mind, but actually that it translates into tangibleaction. These are opportunities where I can now connect with different peoplewhere I can see the world differently and all of those things.I'm really curiousbecause I know a little bit more about your past history, careers and all ofthese different things that then listeners might know. But so I wanted to askyou that you've had a diverse range of careers and I know like you were even ahigh level performer in music, right. I was just really curious, how do youthink that if, if you think it did, how do you think that affected just sort ofyour mentality in that moment?Brant:If you were to askpeople who know me the best they would say I'm creative, I have a quietemotional intensity and I think that carries across areas of who a person is,as well as what they do with it professionally. So I went to New EnglandConservatory piano performance major, realized that was not what I wantedprofessionally, became a social worker realized that frontline, straight socialwork was not just what I wanted, I became a clinical social worker, worked inthe schools for almost 15 years. As the role of clinical social work andtherapy, school base changed, I no longer felt like I was a good fit in theschool setting and I opened my own practice.It literally was aleap, I left, let everything go and jumped right into my practice. And as atherapist, in practice, it was very scary, discerning, what is my niche? Wheredo I want to work? Who am I, as a therapist? What do I feel like? What clinicalskills and information do I bring to the table? It has now moved forward evenfurther to Who am I as a creative, as someone with clinical knowledge andskills in front of a computer screen? Who am I? What do I do? How do I engagewith people over the computer screen? Whether it's personally orprofessionally?Melvin:I love how you'resaying this because truthfully, this is a struggle that I have. I consider I'ma psychologist, I'm a licensed psychologist, but I'm also I think that title ofcreator is sort of how I would think of myself in this space. I love buildingthings, creating things, creating videos, doing podcasts, all of these things.And truthfully,it's something that I've struggled with even very recently, which is, I feellike intuitively, and creatively, I want to do all of these things. But I do insome ways, feel that tension of needing to confine myself, I guess, maybe totraditional talk therapy. I don't know if that makes sense. But I wonder ifyou've ever struggled with that because I think a lot of folks listening havethat tension and do you sort of navigate that?Brant:That's a nice wayto think about who we are as therapists, but also who we are in person comparedto online because ultimately, that is the question that is the reality thatwe're living in. So discovering who I am, and going through processesinternally, spiritually, with people who know me well, of self-exploration hasbeen very important and it has changed since the quarantine I had in March.I was againquarantined with my daughter who's a young adult who works at the hospital, shewas at bedside of two people who died from COVID on the same day, and sheneeded her dad. So when she got home that night, I gave her a hug and I knew itwould mean a couple more weeks of quarantine. But I was okay with that. Itwasn't necessarily a problem. So I brought my family, my daughter and I closerand it made me realize that I have much to give other people in addition totherapy.So during thattime, I have literally taken more than 150 hours of courses on becoming aprofessional coach on what does different aspects of therapy look like online?On what does it mean to be a business person online? And I had not thoughtabout that in such clarity until this time.Melvin:I think that thingthat I often struggle with is, especially in this online space, especially inlike a lot of these professional communities of therapists, we see this oneside. This is the niche that I work with. This is my training. But yeah, we'reall hold people and how do we sort of integrate all those parts of ourselves?Because I don't know, at least for me, that's such a big part of small businessownership is that we get to create something that I guess honours that creativespark, you know?Brant:Yes.Melvin:I also just wantedto say I resonate as a fellow girl dad. So yeah it’s wonderful. I wanted tojust transition and kind of dive a little bit deeper into a couple of things.So I think I'd asked you Brant, would you mind just thinking about like, threelife or business realizations that you've had as a result of transitioning toteletherapy and making this transition now to 100% online, what would thosethree be and maybe what we can do is just kind of take one at a time and divedeep in?Brant:Sure. The firstone would be that I realized how much passion and focus and readiness I have tobe supporting other therapists in a coaching role. I had not realized thatbefore I began noticing and realizing that I was increasing my contact withother therapists. They were having anxieties like I was. So we were having acommon experience.But I found myselfwanting to reach to provide information to support and challenge accountabilityto my colleagues who are also therapists. So for me, that has meant a realbusiness change, I'm intentionally allowing my own therapy practice, togradually decrease in numbers just on its own, not accepting new clients makingreferrals out, and I'm increasing the number of professionals to whom I providebusiness coaching, including therapists, and I could not have seen this coming10 months ago.Melvin:It's amazing, whatis it like to slowly let go of the therapy practice?Brant:Letting go of thetherapy practice slowly on two levels has a level of sadness to it. Because itmeans knowing that I'm letting go of my clients who I have supported for longperiods of time, it's nice that I have the option of doing that gradually.That's very, very nice. But it also means a change in identity. I'm a veryvisual person, a very physical person and experiencing an environment when Iwalk into a room, into a space, feeling the energy of that space, I will haveto give up my office, I will have to transition into a new space, which is my home,and create that new space and there's some sadness in that.Melvin:Yeah, which iscompletely understandable; how do you make space, I guess, for that newidentity, and emotionally and all of those things?Brant:Relationship, soinfluence of other people asking others, what do you think? Or how does it feelif the wall is this color, or some funk tray, and actually getting the input ofother people, and then I'm not so alone in making the change, and I...

Jan 28, 2021 • 37min

264: Building A Second Brain, Melvin Varghese, Ph.D.

Do you love learning new things but struggle to retain the information you’d like to remember for later use? This problem is an ever-present obstacle in my nerdy quest to accumulate knowledge. The good news? I’ve found something that works for me, and I’m sharing it in today’s show. Join me to learn more.This is a solo episode about building a second brain. You may or may not have heard of this concept, but it has revolutionized my life. As I stick to my commitment of setting aside two hours every day to learn new things, I find that I can grow as a business owner, gain knowledge and expertise, become more proficient in offering valuable products and services, and improve my physical and mental health. The problem is that I can’t always remember everything I read, hear, and think. That’s where the magic of the second brain comes in to help. Let’s dive in. You’ll Learn:● How note-taking helps me remember things and stay organized● How I was introduced to the “second brain concept” through the work of Ali Abdaal, a physician in England● The basics of the second brain: Instead of feeling pressure to store accumulated knowledge in my brain, I can store it online in a digital brain● How the second brain principles of productivity were developed by world-renowned productivity expert Tiago Forte, who has a free 10-part podcast on the topic (see Resources)● Ten Principles in Building a Second Brain:○ Borrowed creativity○ The capture habit○ Idea recycling○ Projects over categories○ Slow burns○ Start with abundance○ Intermediate packets○ You only know what you make○ Make things easier for your future self○ Keep your ideas moving ● “The key is not to just consume content, but to personalize and recycle it.”Resources mentioned:Ali AbdaalForte Labs Find the 10-part podcast series on Building a Second Brain at Forte LabsApps and tools recommended by Melvin:For live transcription of Mastermind groups: OtterFor pulling highlights from Kindle books: Readwise For capturing snippets of podcasts: Airr For pulling highlights from blog posts: Instapaper To use a central repository for information: Notion or Evernote or Roam Research.com Transcript:Melvin:Hey friends, welcome to session 264 of Selling the Couch, I hope that you are having a wonderful day. So today's episode is a solo one. And I wanted to start this episode by sharing a story or rather a scenario. As you may have figured out based on these podcasts episodes, I’m a little bit of a nerd when it comes to learning new things. And in fact, as Selling the Couch has grown and as I've really worked hard to create a schedule that's conducive to both doing things as well as ample time learning.What I have actually tried to do is set aside two hours each afternoon to simply learn. And these days, I'm learning about podcasting, because, as you know, I'm a podcaster, and the world of podcasting is constantly growing. And so I think a lot about how to grow the STC podcast. I also have a course called Healthcasters, which helps you create and launch a successful podcast. And I'm learning a lot about online courses as well, because Healthcasters is an online course, and I'm constantly trying to figure out how to tweak things and all of those different things.Then I actually have my second online course that's coming out in the future, with hopefully three to four more in the pipeline. And it's a course that's actually focused on helping you create, plan, launch and scale a successful online course. I know that most of us are really nerdy, and we're probably nerds just walking around as therapists.I imagine, for you, if you're like me, which I imagine you are, you read through a lot of clinical stuff, a lot of business books, you go to a lot of trainings and conferences, and maybe you watch YouTube videos or live streams, or you listen to podcasts, or you read blog posts, or watch webinars, or however, the many ways that you can consume content. And I do this in the same way as you do so that I can grow as a business owner, I can get proficient when I offer products and services and gain knowledge and expertise that way, or just to improve my own physical or mental health.Now I have a little bit of a confession which is; when I go to these things, generally I try to take notes, just because I find that taking notes and actively engaging with that material helps me to remember things a lot better. So I might jot down some notes at a conference or a training on some paper, or a Word document, or I might even - if I've got my laptop near me, I'll pull up the Notes app on my Mac, and just take some notes there.Sometimes I use Evernote, or something like that to summarize a blog post that I want to incorporate into a future podcast episode or something for an online course or if I'm providing direct services, just something that I can reference later. Other times, I might even just put it in like a Google Drive document.So here's the confession part in this episode; I try to take a lot of pride in just being organized, I find that just being organized makes business a lot easier, and my mental health just a lot better. But honestly, how I take notes and more specifically how I connect my past, current and future learning is not really very organized and in fact, I would say it's almost chaotic. And if I'm just being completely honest, there are times where I've taken notes in the past that I keep thinking, “Okay, I'm going to remember this and I got a reference this for something for the future,” and then I actually never do that, and it’s okay, I guess in some scenarios.But to me, one is I’m just being honest, I don't have like the greatest memory where I can access all of this, like accumulated knowledge at the drop of a hat, and so I have to kind of take notes and in order to just remember things. I think, personally for me, and this is just something I've realized as a business owner, having a great way to take notes, and being able to access these notes when needed is really important. Because as healthcare professionals and business owners, we're knowledge workers, people seek our services based on our knowledge and expertise. We're also knowledge shares. So in other words, we accumulate this shared knowledge and we share it through various free mediums and through paid products and services.So for example, let's say you go to a brain spotting training and you read an article later on brain spotting. And then later, you might listen to a podcast interview on somebody that has built a successful practice based on brain spotting. How do you take all of that knowledge? So how do you connect your past knowledge, your current knowledge and your future knowledge, so that you can make it easier to access this knowledge for your future self in however you want to use it, whether it's to incorporate it into a therapy session, or let's say you end up doing consults on brain spotting, or you want to plan some future content, or maybe you want to do some sort of a webinar or something just to explain, or even just create a simple video just explain to potential clients what brain spotting is.But how do you do that? How do you take that knowledge and store it in an organized way so that you can access it when you need it? As I shared kind of at the beginning, this is something I've been thinking a lot about, especially now that I'm six years into my small business journey, I've crossed the five year mark, and I think one of the most important lessons I've learned as a small business owner, and as an online creator is that you have to optimize your environment and schedule for learning.I came across this YouTube video in late 2020, from Ali Abdol, who when it was all about something called the second brain. Ali is actually a physician based in Cambridge, England, and he has over a million subscribers and the channel is a great one to check out, especially if you're interested in tech and productivity and learning and all of these different things. And I've been fortunate to actually meet Ali and we actually got on a zoom call fairly recently and it was just really nice just to be able to connect with him and just learn about some of the things that he's doing in the world.And the second brain that Ali mentioned is simply this idea that instead of feeling all of this pressure to store accumulated knowledge in our brains, why not store this online in our digital brain in an organized way, so that we can maximize our output with it. And this way we maximize productivity, we maximize creativity, all of these different things.The second brain concept is actually based on the work of Tiago Forte. His website is over at fortelabs.com, which is another blog that I highly recommend checking out. Tiago actually has this crazy expensive online course that goes into the second brain concept. I've heard really good things about it. Honestly just haven't had the financial resources to take it yet, I'm hoping to one day, because I tried to be really discretionary in terms of just taking online courses. But this is one of these things that it's absolutely changed the way that I look at my business and more specifically, it's absolutely changed the way that I look at learning.Tiago also has a free 10 part podcast, like a mini podcasts. And I'll link to in the show notes for this episode that's well worth listening to. I've listened to those series; they're just basically 10 minute episodes. And I've listened to that about four or five times just to really wrap my mind around this. Today, I actually want to share the 10 principles, of how you can build a second brain and just briefly share how I'm actually employing this in my own business so that it can help you as well.The first principle is something called borrowed creativity. Borrowed creativity is basically this idea that creativity is less about original ideas, but more about blending existing ideas to create novel connections. Basically, you take things that you see here and watch. You see them through your experience and perspectives and connect them in new and unique ways. For example, I didn't realize I was doing this at the time. But my first online course was, as I mentioned was a course on how to plan launch and generate income from podcasting. So I took notes that I had learned from going to a bunch of podcasting conferences, from mentors that I had done consult with, from people that I consider experts in the podcasting space. And then I used all my own experiences in creating and growing the Selling the Couch podcast.But by having these notes digitally, I could then visually see things and form patterns and create. Then when I was ready to create the course I could create the course based on my unit bent and my own unique experiences.Principle two is called the capture habit. And one of the most honoring things that I think we can all do as business owners is to write down every idea that pops up in our brain without judgment, just the act of saying, “Hey, this is a great idea brain, I'm going to write this down,” is so powerful. So the capture habit is basically this idea that every time you have an idea that comes in your mind, no matter how silly or any of those things that it seems, at the time, trying to just find a good and simple system to be able to write these things down. This does not come naturally for me, because I have a very strong critical voice that often says, “Oh, Melvin, that's a really dumb idea, or, oh, no one's going to pay for that. Or someone's already thought of that. So why are you trying to do that again?”Or sometimes I convince myself, “Oh, Mel, this is a good idea. You can remember it later.” But the reality is, I hardly ever remember it later and so it usually then ends up getting lost. Now I'm still trying to figure out a great way to have a good capture habit, but I wanted to at least share a little bit about how I'm capturing ideas depending on where I am.So I get a lot of ideas in the shower, and I keep shower markers to write things down that come to mind, because I noticed that my mind goes into creativity hyper drive when I'm in the shower; I'm calm, I'm relaxed and all of those different things. And shower markers are basically these markers that you can use to write on glass, or on tile. And the cool thing is they wash off when you're done. Usually what I do is I'll jot down ideas and on the tile, and then after I'm done taking a shower or whatever, I will take my phone and take a picture of it, and then I'll wash it or whatever. The shower is actually how I came up with the name Selling the Couch, and so I really do try to think about how I can alter that shower type.The second thing is I usually do masterminds with various folks during the week talking a walk. Specifically I try to do many of these when taking a walk. I'll do a future episode on this. But there are a lot of benefits of hiking, and creativity. And so what I've been trying to do, actually pretty much most days of the week is I do a 1pm hike and that's usually my mastermind time as well. And what I do is we usually meet on zoom, and I use otter.ai to do live transcription of what we're talking about during the mastermind. After the mastermind, I have a fairly flawless script; otter.ai uses artificial intelligence. So it's not like a real person transcribing. But it's pretty accurate and I can then use this transcript to pull things from. I can then go back later or do this even in real time and highlight things and pull things into my central repository.So usually during masterminds, what I'm doing is I'm asking a question that I'm struggling with in my business, and I'm getting feedback from my mastermind friends. Then I take that piece of advice and then I put that into my central repository. I use an app called Readwise to pull highlights from Kindle books that I'm reading. I use an app called Airr, A-I-R-R to capture snippets of podcasts that I hear. I capture blog posts using Instapaper, which is a really cool app that lets you clip blog posts and videos that you want to check out later, perhaps during your own learning time. I believe Instapaper is still something I've just recently downloaded. But I also believe you can actually copy or you can actually like clip tweets, things that you might find on Pinterest, all of these into like a central repository.So basically what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to use these different pieces of software to capture ideas in environments that I'm usually in, and then I'm taking those ideas into a central repository. And that central repository that I use is called Notion, N-O-T-I-O-N. There are a bunch of different ones. Evernote is a really common one as well. There's one called Roam Research that is well worth checking out. I like Notion because I feel like for me, I like having structure and I also like having a little bit of unstructured or chaos in structure and so I feel like Notion is kind of a good balance of those kind of things.So principle three is this idea of idea of recycling. So in other words, you can reuse or repurpose ideas in multiple ways. So for example, I've spent quite a bit of time researching and scripting for this podcast episode. I'm doing this because I'm planning on using second brain concepts into future videos that I might create, or as part of an online course. So for example, as part of my Healthcasters course, one of the pieces of content I'll likely create is how do you come up with new podcast episode ideas without starting with a blank canvas?The best way to think about idea recycling is I was trying to figure out a good image. And when I was a kid I used to love Connex. I don't know if you remember Connex, but they're like Legos, but they have blocks, rods, and these various different shapes and you can use them to create things like a simple car, or a Ferris wheel.The only reason I remember this is my AP physics teacher passed away really recently, and I saw social media posts and it reminded me of this project I did in AP Physics, when I had Mr. Renshaw. And it was, I created a mousetrap car out of connects and connects comes with these gear sets and so I basically use like CDs, to create this mousetrap car, and got this mousetrap car to go down this hallway using gears and stuff. But so think of your ideas like pieces of Connex or Legos, and you can then swap out those ideas in and out of like different situations.Principle four is projects over categories. One of the roadblocks that I was having with my previous way of taking notes was how I organize things. So for example, let's say I wanted to learn more about Instagram, what I used to do was I have a folder called Instagram, and then I put a bunch of stuff in there and that's where it set me never looking at it again. Instead, what second brain says is thinking projects. So what I should do is if I have my Healthcasters online course folder. I should have a folder called Healthcasters online course, and then put the content that I find into those, because it will further enrich that course.And going back to principle one of borrowed creativity, I can more easily form connections between ideas. So another example of this would be let's say that you are creating a productivity course for entrepreneurs who are held back by their trauma. Instead of separate folders for productivity and trauma, you actually create a folder for your online course, and put related ideas in there. And that way, you are accumulating all of this store's knowledge over time, and when you are ready to create that course, you actually have a nice repository to work from. And it's literally like then, like pieces of Legos or Connex, where you're just connecting these pieces in order to form your online course.Principle five is called slow burn. So think of your business products and services as slow burns versus heavy lifts. This is what the...

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