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Foreign. Welcome to Ask Allison. Y' all ask the questions about having a fun and thriving practice and I answer them. We have a worksheet for you today so you can bring this answer into your life. You can Access that@AbundancePracticeBuilding.com links where you'll also be able to ask any questions you have for Ask Allison. If you want more support, we've got some free trainings in there too. If you can't get enough Ask Allison, check out our YouTube channel for our entire Ask Allison library. Welcome back to Ask Allison. Here is today's question. I will say before we actually get to the question that today's question is going to sound very specific to this one person. But in my answer I'm going to talk you through how to assess return on investment. So like whether something is worth the expense and help you think through the trade offs in these scenarios. So here's their question. I'm part of a small group practice in a wealthy part of the city. We're all private, pay full and have a great location. I charge 175 an hour. I see 21 to 26 clients a week and give the practice owner 20% for rent. The practice owner provides great furniture, website and marketing. They're easy to work with and we do our own billing. My overhead is 20% rent, 30% taxes, any continuing ad, etc. I would like to lower my 20% rent to 15%. So $3,000 down to $2,000 a month in rent. Do you think that's appropriate? All right, like I said, we're going to talk through how to assess whether something is worth what you're investing. But first, I Want to thank TherapyNotes for sponsoring Ask Allison. I've talked about them for years, know their features by heart, but what truly sets them apart is that they genuinely care about your experience. It's not just about troubleshooting. They actively implement user suggested features like clinical outcome tracking, insurance checks, a smooth super bill process, and their AI feature, therapy fuel. Everyone at TherapyNotes believes in the product and wants you to love it too. Plus, they're independently owned, which means no venture capital and no pressure to prioritize investors over customers. This independence allows them to keep their prices fair, focus on innovation, and prioritize customer experience. With over 100,000 therapists already on board, they've proven that you don't have to compromise success for quality. If you're ready to see for yourself, try TherapyNotes free for two months with the code abundanttherapynotes.com all right, so this is a great question to get instructional, so thank you for asking. Before we jump in, I want to clarify something up front because it matters for context. This person is paying $3000 total, not $3000 for rent, plus a percentage of what they're coming in. That $3000 is everything that they pay the practice owner. That's important to consider. It's not stacked on top of anything else. So a lot of people feel a number is too high or too low without ever breaking down what that number includes. So let's make this concrete. If you're listening and you're in a similar setup, here are the exact questions to ask. What does the rent percentage cover? So this person mentioned beautiful furniture, website marketing, great location, support of easy practice owner. Those are real costs. What you didn't mention is ehr. Like are you paying for your own? Is it included phone liability insurance, not malpractice insurance. I'm assuming you're handling that. But is there slip and fall insurance if somebody literally slips and falls so that you don't get sued? Wi fi supplies, utility maintenance, cleaning, those kinds of things. Each of those has a very real monthly cost. And before you decide whether 3,000 is too much, you need to know exactly what's included in that number. I want you to compare it to reality. What would this cost if you went solo? So let's do a rough estimate of running your own practice in a similar wealthy area. Here's what you'd likely pay on your own. I don't know what city you're in, but if it's a wealthy part of a major city, a single office could easily run 1500 to $3500 a month, depending on your square footage, your building amenities, whether utilities are included, et cetera. Which doesn't include furniture, art, rugs, plants, lamps, chairs, a couch that people actually want to cry on. Good decor can easily run you 3-7k up front. Your practice owner is fronting that investment for you. Ehr, telehealth, storage, that kind of stuff. I don't know if that's covered by your practice owner or not, but depending on what systems you're using, that's going to be anywhere from 30 to $130 per month for a practice management system. Marketing. This is where most therapists dramatically underestimate the value. So you said the practice owner provides website and marketing. Let me tell you what that's worth. The SEO company that I usually recommend runs around $1,000 a month. Is this person using Google Ads to get people in for A private pay therapist, you could easily spend 500 to 1500 dollars a month just to get enough clicks to get clients in the door. A high quality website build can be really affordable if you DIY it or if you have someone build it, that's averaging around $3,000 upfront. So if the practice owner is filling your caseload or contributing to it even partially has serious market value. And here's the kicker. You said you're full. That is not accidental. That means they know what they're doing and they're doing it well. So let's look at opportunity cost. What do you lose if you leave a full caseload in a wealthy part of a city? All private pay, with a supportive owner, no insurance hassles, no marketing overwhelm, no furniture expenses. It's not nothing if you renegotiate the rate. The practice owner may say no. They may accept it, they may compromise. They might say, I can't sustainably run the practice at that rate. So it's a business decision for both of you. So ask yourself, do you want to take on marketing yourself? Do you want to buy everything? Do you want to build and maintain a website? Do you want to learn how to do SEO or pay someone around $1,000 a month? Do you want to handle phone system storage, admin repairs, utilities? And also do you want to raise your rate? I don't know if there's a cap on it where you are, but that might be another compelling reason to want more autonomy. The answer is no. Then the 3k per month might not be too high. It might be a real bargain. I also want to know, is this the first step towards going solo? Sometimes wanting to renegotiate is really curiosity about independence. So if you're thinking I want more take home money and maybe I'd like more control, then yeah, going solo could be a long term plan. But you need to understand two things. Number one, there's going to be short term costs. Marketing is a skill, it is not a switch. So to replace what your practice owner has been doing, you'd need a website SEO, consistent content networking, referral pipelines, clarity in the niche systems for onboarding clients, there's this ramp up period. Number two, there's going to be learning costs. If you decide you want to learn marketing rather than outsourcing it. The most affordable, effective place to do that, yes, this is my thing is the Abundance party. Six months to a year in the party gives you a niche, clear website guidance, referral building strategies, messaging clarity, consistent clients, the confidence to actually fill a practice under your own name, it costs a fraction of what you're currently paying the practice owner. And that's important when you're comparing roi. So coming back to your original question, should you ask for the lower percentage? You absolutely can ask for the reduction. I had a therapist when I was in my early 20s that told me, you have that right to ask, just not the right to expect. But instead of asking is this appropriate, ask is this number sustainable for the practice owner and still worth it for me. If you take home significantly more but the practice becomes unprofitable for them, the whole ecosystem collapses. If you're full private pay and high value area using their furniture and marketing, you're benefiting from the infrastructure most therapists would kill to have. So I'd frame the conversation like this. I want to talk about my rent percentage and explore whether there's a sustainable adjustment. I'd also love to understand what the rent covers so I can make informed decisions about my long term planning. That's collaborative, it's respectful, it's rooted in reality. I also know that a lot of really supportive group practice owners sometimes don't respond well to these kinds of things. I want to give you a warning there that for them it might bring up scarcity, it might bring up some panic. And if that's the case, I would be ready with a response to that that is very calm and measured, maybe reassuring. If you decide you do want to stay, no matter, you know whether they're willing to reduce the pay or not. Okay, final thoughts. Before you ask for a reduction, I would list everything they provide that you know that they provide. If you know what marketing they use, then I would list that out. Quantify the market value for each thing. Decide whether you want to outsource or learn those skills. Consider whether this is a step towards leaving or just wanting more take home pay. There's no wrong answer, but there are more and less informed answers. You do deserve to make the informed one. So today's free worksheet is working in group practice versus going out on your own. This is more for people in a typical group practice where they're taking a bigger chunk of your money. And if you would like that and you are watching this on social then you can DM me the word sheets and I will send it to you. If you are listening on the podcast, the show notes have the link for that free worksheet. I hope that that helps you think through your decisions about how much to invest in things and what not to invest in. And I will see you later. If you're ready for a much easier practice, TherapyNotes is the way to go. Go to therapynotes.com and use the promo code abundant for two months free. I hope that helped. If you have questions for Ask Allison or you want to get your hands on the worksheet for this episode, go to abundancepracticebuilding.com l 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. 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