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Abundant Practice Podcast
Episode #677: Outsourcing In Your Private Practice, feat. Nikki Lacherza-Drew
00:24:17
, joins me to talk about why outsourcing is essential for a sustainable private practice. We get into the fears that can hold therapists back—like losing control or worrying about the cost—and how letting go of certain tasks can actually increase...
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- [00:00]
Alison Pereira
Foreign hi, welcome to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm Alison from Abundance Practice Building. I have a nearly diagnosable obsession with helping therapists build sustainable, joy filled private practices, just like I've done for tens of thousands of therapists across the world. I'm excited to help you too. If you want to fill your practice with ideal clients, we have loads of free resources and paid support. Go to abundance practice building.com Links all right, onto the show. So I've talked about therapy notes on here for years. I could talk about the features and the benefits in my sleep. But there are a couple things I want you to know about therapy notes that doesn't typically make it into an ad script. First is that they actually care if you like their platform. They don't only make themselves available on the phone to troubleshoot so you don't pull your hair out when you get stuck. They also take member suggestions and implement those that there's client demand for. Like Therapy Search, an included listing service that helps clients find you internal and external secure messaging, clinical outcome measures to keep an eye on how your clients are progressing. A super smooth, super bill process, real time eligibility to check on your client's insurance. In my conversations with the employees there at all levels, they all really believe in their product and they want you to love it too. Second, they are proudly independently owned. Why should you care about that? Because as soon as venture capital becomes involved, the focus shifts from making customers happy to making investors happy. Prices go way up. Innovation plateaus. Making more money with as little output as possible becomes the number one focus. With over 100,000 therapists using their platform, they've been able to stay incredibly successful and they don't have to sacrifice your experience to stay there. You can try two months free@therapynotes.com with the coupon code Abundant. Welcome back to the Abundant Practice Podcast. I'm your host, Alison Pereir, founder of Abundance Practice Building, and I'm here with Nikki Drew. We're going to be talking about outsourcing. Nikki owns Couchside Coordinators, which we're going to talk about. But can we first kind of like talk about why you care about outsourcing and maybe we'll define outsourcing as we talk about that.
- [02:20]
Nikki Drew
Yes, yes, I would say outsourcing is very near and dear to my heart because as a private practice owner also I did not outsource right away. And I think a lot of therapists don't outsource right away because you're trying to keep that overhead down. But then you start wearing all of these different hats, and before you know it, you're used to wearing different hats and you're in the chaos. I think then not outsourcing starts to hinder progress for your business, for yourself. It contributes to burnout. And that's what actually led me into couchside coordinators was my own burnout from not outsourcing and not delegating.
- [03:03]
Alison Pereira
It's interesting because I do feel like there is this, like, tipping point where if you're not outsourcing, like, life feels significantly harder than it needs to because it's not just your practice. It starts to feel like your whole life is hard. And what's interesting is, for most people that I see like, and work with in my own experience is, like, when you do outsource, it's scary because you're always at a point. You're never at a point where, like, I have all this extra money. What should I do with it? Right. Like, there's this pause of, I mean, I could. It'd be tight, but I could pay for some help. But once you pay for the help, almost everybody I've seen ever makes more money than they made before.
- [03:45]
Nikki Drew
Exactly. Because then it opens up that time of, okay, well, now I just outsource, you know, this task or these couple of tasks that frees up five extra hours that I could be doing something. I could be seeing another client. And now it's not, oh, this money is going out. It's money's going out, but money's coming in now, and I can grow a little bit more.
- [04:06]
Alison Pereira
Yeah, absolutely. Can we talk about, like, some of the things that therapists are doing that they don't need to be doing? Like, what can be outsourced.
- [04:15]
Nikki Drew
Yes. And I will say, too, speaking as, you know, a psychologist, part of the difficulty with outsourcing that I've seen, aside from that money, it's also like, not wanting to give up control.
- [04:28]
Alison Pereira
Mm.
- [04:29]
Nikki Drew
Fearing that that trust piece in another person. You know, when we're in school, it's like, okay, be in session, be there, hold space, do your notes. After, it's like, okay. But then running a private practice, it's, well, there's all this other admin stuff. If I need to respond to emails, if I accept insurance, I need to follow up on that. If I don't accept insurance, I have to follow up on billing. I need to do scheduling. Now social media is the way to go with marketing. So now I have to be a social media manager. Like, there's all of this other stuff outside of the therapy room that therapists are now having to do, and most of us weren't taught how to do that.
- [05:09]
Alison Pereira
No. And. And some of us have a natural proclivity towards those kinds of things, but so many of us don't. So many of us. It's just, you know, it's like the laundry on the. On the chair in your bedroom kind of a situation, but in your practice.
- [05:22]
Nikki Drew
Yes. And the biggest thing I've seen is the social media piece or. Okay, I now need a website. And I don't know the first thing about doing a website or, you know, I want a newsletter, I want to grow my email list. All of these great things to do for a practice and for a business, but you only have so many hours in the day and making sure you're not going into that burnout mode, making sure you're there not just for your clients, but for yourself, and saying, I just want to be a therapist. And that's okay. Let me give this to somebody else.
- [05:56]
Alison Pereira
And it's like, it's kind of a way that not entirely, but almost entirely you can have that. The good parts of working for someone else, where you go, you do your therapy, you do your note, you're mostly done. It's the closest way to live, that is by hiring somebody to help you.
- [06:16]
Nikki Drew
Yeah, exactly. Hiring somebody to help you. Because I talked to so many private practice owners who are like, you couldn't pay me to be an employee again. Like, I want to be able to set my own schedule to see who I want to see all of these things, which is great. And then add to your team so you can continue focusing on that.
- [06:36]
Alison Pereira
It's interesting how the idea of working for someone makes me, like, literally a little nauseous. Like, I can't imagine. And also because as somebody who outsources a lot, the idea of doing everything that my team does would be just panic attack city. Like, there's just no possible way. So, okay, we talked about some things that can be outsourced. We're not all good at everything, Right. You can be an amazing therapist and do a really good job at so much, but suck at tech. Right? Like, you can send emails and you can get on social, but, like, you don't know how to upload a blog post or do SEO or these kinds of things. What do you see? Therapists that you work with struggle the most. Out of all the things that could be outsourced, what is it that you genuinely do better than they do? Because they just don't have the skill set.
- [07:31]
Nikki Drew
I'M going to say SEO and social media, because SEO is. It's this annoying, lovely thing that just constantly changes and keeping up with it and understanding the little nuance pieces throughout it. People are like, I'm doing all of the things, but like, I'm not ranking. And I'm like, yeah, because you're probably not doing the thing that needs to work for your practice. Let professional handle it. Or same thing with social media. Of I think the pandemic changed this piece because so many of us saw each other's homes during. During that time. Of it's not enough now to just post something for the sake of posting it. It's being authentic. It's speaking to your audience. It's knowing what your audience wants to see, wants to hear, wants to view. And I don't want to say manipulating it, because it's not manipulation, but like socially engineering that to work to your advantage. And then it helps with the SEO. Also, it's not as simple of just posting something like you would. Unlike your personal Instagram page, it's way more in depth than that and most therapists don't have the time for it and that's fine. Give it to somebody who does it all day, every day and they'll do it for you.
- [08:48]
Alison Pereira
Yeah. So I think about social media growth hinges so much on the person talking or the person's face or things like that. How do you work around that?
- [08:58]
Nikki Drew
So our social media managers at Couchside really start the very first month that we are doing any social media management with. It doesn't have to be just therapists, but I'll speak to therapists. It's really understanding their vision for the space and what their brand is, what their tone is. You know, if their niche is working with a certain population. But they don't have any of that on social media. We need to get that out there so that the algorithm starts noticing, hey, you work with this age group, this population, with this issue, let's start getting content out there. And then you'll start bringing in an audience that wants to view that material.
- [09:37]
Alison Pereira
Yeah. So are you doing primarily carousels or are you like helping them know what to record? Like, how do you do it?
- [09:43]
Nikki Drew
We do a little bit of both. We have a couple of different packages. And I always tell people who onboard with us do trial and error the first month because at the end of every month we're looking at the KPIs, we're checking the account and saying like, what post did do well, was it reels, was it carousel? Posts, and it's going to be different for everybody. We have a client right now whose Instagram took off, and all she'll do is carousel post. She doesn't want to touch reels, which is totally fine. Her stuff took off. But then we have somebody else who carousel post don't do great for them. So they went the real route, and that is what works for them. So it's figuring out what works for their audience, but also what works for that therapist. Because, yes, you want to market yourself, but do it authentically. So if you don't want to get in front of the camera and do reels or videos, don't do them because that's not authentic. So you're not going to be getting the followers that you want.
- [10:42]
Alison Pereira
Right, Right. Yeah. It's interesting how our personalities. I was just talking about this yesterday in a webinar. Like, our personalities, you know, bring in the right people, push away the other people. And if you're not showing your personality in any way, you're not really bringing anybody in.
- [10:58]
Nikki Drew
No, exactly. You're not. So it's really of, like, what is the goal? Some therapists, like, I just want something on social media. I am not necessarily trying to get clients from my social media page.
- [11:10]
Alison Pereira
Cool.
- [11:10]
Nikki Drew
We're going to go a very different route then. Then if you're actually trying to recruit clients that way, the page is going to look very different. The posts are going to look very different.
- [11:21]
Alison Pereira
Right, right. It just. It depends on those goals.
- [11:24]
Nikki Drew
Exactly.
- [11:25]
Alison Pereira
What are some signs that people are ready to hire people to help them?
- [11:31]
Nikki Drew
I would say when you start realizing that it's never ending because everybody's to do list is pretty much never ending. But, like, when it feels that it really is never ending and you just can't get to certain things, you keep pushing certain things. Going back to social media, A lot of therapists are like, I know I need a social media account. I just haven't created it yet because I don't like social media.
- [11:53]
Alison Pereira
Cool.
- [11:53]
Nikki Drew
If you don't like something, that could be a nice flag for you to say. Maybe this is something I should look into, delegating out, or I'm trying to do the things on my to do list. It's, you know, growing nonstop. And what are the things I don't like doing or I don't feel like making the time for, or they just don't fill my cup. I personally, I don't like social media.
- [12:17]
Alison Pereira
Mm.
- [12:18]
Nikki Drew
And I knew that was one of the very first things that I was going to delegate out because I didn't want to look at it. I hate opening the apps on my phone. Mm. So something you really don't like doing something that doesn't fill your cup, Something you don't have time to do. Because instead of spending. I was talking about this with one of our social media managers actually the other day. She created a post in like, under 10 minutes. And I'm like, that would have taken me like a good hour, hour and a half. That's their strength. It's not yours. And that's okay. So leave it to them to do.
- [12:54]
Alison Pereira
Yeah. I think about. I have this. Ade is always in my head. There's like, automate, delegate, eliminate. And this is something I do every quarter where I look at everything I am doing and I start with like, what am I doing that's not actually moving the needle? Because as any business owner knows, in any industry, you can add stuff to your plate for the rest of your life.
- [13:15]
Nikki Drew
Exactly that never ending to do list.
- [13:17]
Alison Pereira
Yeah. There's always more you could be doing, but you really have to assess whether or not what you're doing is working. I know most of us get really intrigued by the silver bullet that, like, is going to fix everything. Most of those are the things that get eliminated three months later when I fall for it. And so I always look every quarter. What needs to be eliminated, what's not actually moving the needle, what can be automated? I love manychat and social where I don't have to. If I'm just like, if you want the link, say this. Instead of having to go in and manually write a link, we have it where it's automated. And then delegating. There is so much. I mean, I own three businesses, so of course there's so much I delegate, but there is so much that gets delegated that other people are so much better at than me. That gives me time, freedom. It gives me more confidence in the businesses. Like, it's. Delegating is my favorite thing. It's not something I used to be good at, but now I would like to say I'm a pro.
- [14:21]
Nikki Drew
So many people struggle with delegating. And that's why I think social media is one of those things that when we work with a lot of therapists who have never had an employee, who've never had a virtual assistant, and they typically start with social media media because I say it's one of those things that is attached to your practice, but isn't you as a practice, unless you want to make it that way. So this is the perfect time to practice giving up some of that control, delegating some things out and then building that trust and then saying, oh, okay, like in the future now I do feel a little bit more comfortable delegating out more stuff. Maybe I'll move into delegating admin stuff in a couple of months and you slowly start there to see like what works for you. And what, what I hear a lot of therapists say is going back to like that money piece that you were talking about of like this is money coming out. Yes, but how many hours were you spending on this and figure out what your hourly rate is then? Because I can assure you it is probably not what you were paying somebody else to do for you. Okay, well I can now fill this with something else. Whether it's a paying client, whether it's self care time and time for myself, like not looking at that dollar value and cringing when you see the money going out.
- [15:40]
Alison Pereira
Right. Because if you're, if you're hiring people for marketing assistance, money should be coming in. And if you're not getting a return on your investment, then that's another thing to eliminate. But if they're doing their job, then it gets done. Like you're bringing in clients and you're going to make way more than whatever.
- [15:59]
Nikki Drew
It is you're spending and just having realistic goals too. When you're delegating out for the first time or trying somebody new, it's not going to happen overnight. So you know what's going to be that benchmark in a month, in three months, you know, at the end of the quarter, whatever it is, reevaluating and saying, do I want to keep moving forward with this? Do I eliminate it or do I pivot towards somebody else to be doing this for?
- [16:24]
Alison Pereira
And on average for your clients, what's realistic? How long should they wait before deciding whether or not it's working?
- [16:33]
Nikki Drew
So I always say with SEO, rule of thumb for SEO is four to six months. And people then look at the price tag and they're like, oh my gosh, for Couchlight coordinators. When I designed Couchlight coordinators, coming from a private practice, I designed it to be as flexible as possible with therapists. So I always tell people, we don't trap you into a long term contracts. Our contracts are month to month. So if you don't want to wait four to six months, you don't have to. I'm giving you the opportunity to back out. But you should start to see, in terms of SEO, you should start to see some Growth within that first month, if it's being done correctly. And it should be being done correctly. Same thing with social media of that first month or two. You should start to see growth. You're not. Then we say, okay, let, let's look at the KPIs, what's working, what's not working. If carousel posts are working, let's stop doing all of this other stuff and let's only focus on carousel posts for the next month and then see if the numbers are where you want it a little bit more. So that piece of like collaborating with that other person, knowing what your expectations are, making sure they're realistic and having those benchmarks in place, because there are people who come in and in my discovery calls, they'll say something about SEO or social media and I'll say to them, great point, not realistic. So I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. Don't onboard with us if that's what you're looking for, because I cannot guarantee that. And it's most likely not going to happen.
- [18:08]
Alison Pereira
Yeah. And I think that that's so important because we all want it yesterday. There's like a natural impatience that goes along with just being a human being, I think. And then you add in being a business owner, especially if you're in a space where you really need more clients, there's this desperation that can have you hoping for things that aren't really possible. So people often ask me, like, how long is it going to take to get full? And I'm like, well, there are a thousand factors that are going to impact that, but it's not going to be as soon as you want, most likely.
- [18:37]
Nikki Drew
Exactly.
- [18:38]
Alison Pereira
Most of the time it's just not exactly.
- [18:40]
Nikki Drew
And it's finding out what works for you again. Like, I know plenty of therapists who got full within a certain timeframe and somebody else did similar tactics and it did not work for them. That, yes, it doesn't mean you're failing. That just might not be your authentic business self. What is your authentic business self? And let's take that and run with it.
- [19:01]
Alison Pereira
Yeah, absolutely. The need for control. I can relate to that. I remember early on thinking, like, nobody's going to love my practice the way I love my practice. Like, it feels like a little baby that I'm just. I can't just like, chuck it out there to just anybody. Right. And so I, I had a lot of reticence, delegating anything, and then I made a bad mistake and I hired somebody who I shouldn't have hired. Like, it was not a good choice as my first virtual assistant. And then I had to fire her way later than I should have, of course. And it made me want to keep clutching, like, see, I'm the only one I can trust. But then luckily I got to a point where like that just wasn't possible anymore. Like, I just couldn't with everything I had going on, do everything. And then like landed some really amazing support.
- [19:58]
Nikki Drew
Yes.
- [19:59]
Alison Pereira
So I, I share that because I think other people, I know that other people have that worry about the control piece. And I also don't want the one bad experience you might have had to stop you from getting the support you need.
- [20:11]
Nikki Drew
Yes. And I had a similar experience before I started Couchside. I went through three different VAs in my private practice and it didn't work. And I got to the point, similar to what you just said, of like, I need to do all this on my own and realized that wasn't possible, that wasn't sustainable. And that's when I was like, it shouldn't be this difficult to find VAs who understand the field and who come in to my baby practice and treat it like their own baby. And that was part of the process of me building Couchside was like, it shouldn't be this difficult. And I had horrible experiences and pulled back and I don't want other people to have to go through that.
- [21:00]
Alison Pereira
Exactly. Amazing. Well, is there anything else about delegating that you want to make sure people know and understand?
- [21:08]
Nikki Drew
They figure out what you want to delegate to? That comes up a lot on the discovery calls where people will say, like, I know I need to delegate out. And similar to what I said a few minutes ago, like, but I don't know what. Or like, I don't know how many hours I will need. And I always say to them, take, take a couple of weeks, take a month, start writing out everything you are doing for this business and how much time you are spending doing it and then go back to that list, find the things you don't like, find the things you don't want to do and figure out how many hours you are devoting to that. And make that your starting point of I was doing social media for X amount of hours a week or X amount of hours a month. I return phone calls for two hours every day and I don't want to have to do that. Okay, that's a good starting point to say this is, you know, the hourly package I want. These are the things I want to start delegating. And once you build up that trust, then you can start adding more to, to the mix. I don't, I don't recommend people coming in and saying like, here's everything with my practice. You know, you can do all of it. That's not going to end well. Start small, build the rapport like you would with any client and then build up from there.
- [22:23]
Alison Pereira
Yeah, sounds good. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Nikki. I hope that people are thinking about what they can delegate in a different way. Like maybe calling themselves on some of the clutching and holding trust issues and yeah, that. Doing that time study where you write down everything you do. It's so tedious, y', all, but it's really illuminating.
- [22:46]
Nikki Drew
Yeah. And it's a nice, it's a nice way to then go back once you do decide to hire somebody. Go back and reevaluate of I was spending this amount of time I delegated out. Is it better? Is it worse? What else do I do I need to do and what else might I need to fix?
- [23:03]
Alison Pereira
Yeah. Amazing. Awesome. Couchsidecoordinators.com is how folks can get in touch with you. Is that the best way?
- [23:10]
Nikki Drew
That is the best way. If you go on there, it shows all of our current service offerings. It links you out to create an interest form and then somebody on the team will reach out. We do complimentary discovery calls to make sure we're the right fit for you to figure out, you know, where we can help you. And like I said earlier, we don't do long term contracts. We just do month to month contracts. So you feel comfortable delegating out and adding some, adding some overhead but in a good way to your practice?
- [23:39]
Alison Pereira
Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Nikki.
- [23:42]
Nikki Drew
Thank you.
- [23:43]
Alison Pereira
Take care.
- [23:44]
Nikki Drew
You too.
- [23:47]
Alison Pereira
If you're ready for a much easier practice, therapy notes is the way to go. Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. If you're listening, you probably need some support building your practice. If you're a super newbie, grab our free checklist using the link in the show notes. I'd love for you to follow rate and review, but I really want you to share this episode with a therapist friend. Let's help all our colleagues build what they want.