Growing pains: Hiring and training new clinicians
Developing a good process for hiring new clinicians is essential to your health as an organization. It is one foundational to your success as an organization. And we need to […]
How to master the unrelenting business demands of practice
Some start a mental health business to avoid having a boss. They want to answer to no one. This is a myth. In truth, every owner must make peace with […]
Picking the best option: Independent Contracting vs Employing
According to the Internal Revenue Service, there are only two employment types: independent contractors (1099-employees) and regular employees (W-2 employees). Who pays which taxes is determined by this legal distinction. […]
How to grow consistent community marketing: Community Connection Plan
For the first 20 years of my practice, we struggled with our marketing our mental health practice. We needed to find a community marketing system that we all could embrace […]
How mental health businesses weathered the health care storms
Mental health practices have weathered many storms through the last decade. Here is an analysis of how we have done.
How to calculate a psychotherapist’s private practice pay
Calculating psychotherapist pay means considering many factors. Unfortunately, the complexity leaves lots of room for some wild estimates regarding how much a therapist makes in private practice. But here I […]
Financial rewards for owners of private practices
A practice owner I was consulting with said, “I am not tasting a lot of financial rewards as the owner of a practice.” His comment transported me back to the […]
Successful Practice Management that leaves you sane
Managing a practice is difficult to do well. And doing the right sort of successful practice management is challenging. There are so many things to juggle, each with a level […]
How to increase therapist pay in private practice
Everyone who is in private practice wants to know how to increase therapist pay. Of course, our first goal is to fill our schedule with clients. But once that is […]
Growing pains: Outgrowing your brand and how to fix it
Over the years of growing our practice, we found ourselves outgrowing our brand. My practice started as a partnership–until my partner took a university job. Then it was just me–until […]
Starting a new business? The start-up blues
Every one underestimates the challenges of starting a new business. Starting a new business is hard. It is hard even after you read everything you can find and done tons […]
Follow the money: Therapist pay in private practice
Private practice therapist pay is rarely based on a salary. Instead, there is a series of steps for determining psychotherapist pay. Firstly, every private practice sells a service, usually psychotherapy […]
Wealth in Mental Health – Where are the good paying jobs?
Mental health is a small margin business. But there are some jobs that pay better than others. Where are they and why do they pay better?
Using staff complaints to make your organization great
Staff complains, and managers listen. But understanding staff complaints and then properly interpreting them is one of the key things that good managers do. Over the years, I have noticed […]
From nothing to something: Beginning of an organization
The beginning of an organization is a story worth considering. Each has its own history. No two are alike. This is the story of the early history of Centennial Counseling […]
Wealth in mental health–Why isn’t there more?
Perhaps one of the more shocking secrets in our mental health field is how little profit is in the profession. There is not much wealth in mental health. The whole […]
Connecting therapists with each other: An interview with David Klow
David Klow, the founder of Skylight Counseling Center, has a unique way of connecting therapists with each other. I first heard about his “Therapist on Tap” events via his email […]
Developing deeper referrer relationships: How to broaden your reach
Whenever a clinician begins a new referrer relationship, that clinician becomes the point person for that connection. And we want the clinician to nurture that referrer relationship until the point […]
The training we never had—Excellence in managing staff
Success inevitably requires a difficult choice: either refer out the excess referrals or hire staff to handle the overflow (see “The dilemma of success: Do it myself or delegate” for […]
Dilemmas of success: Do it myself or delegate
If you are fortunate enough to grow, you will soon discover an additional challenge–having too many referrals to manage. While this may be a welcome relief from earlier struggles, it […]
Selling a practice: How they become assets and how to maximize their value
When a practice owner plans on selling a practice, there may be a bit of a shock. Practice owners are often surprised at how accountants and potential purchasers determine a monetary […]
Avoiding these partnership issues saves you down the line
When people form a partnership, there are always issues to work through. We have all heard the saying, “taking a business partner is like taking a marriage partner” and it […]
Ten examples of culture change in one organization
Using the history of the organization I led (Centennial Counseling Center, P.C.) I have highlighted ten examples of decisions our leaders made that changed our culture. In essence, our understanding […]
How to use meetings to build your workplace culture
Once your organization reaches a certain size, building a strong workplace culture needs to become more organized and formalized. Certainly, the leadership of every organization should spend time thinking about and then […]
Addition by subtraction: Types of difficult, disastrous employees
Over the 38 years of owning a practice, we hired over 100 employees. They came in all sorts. Some fit well. Others did not. And some were disastrous employees. Dealing […]
