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Private Practice Startup Podcast
Episode 171: Getting unstuck: Transitioning from working IN your business to working ON your business
00:35:58
Damien Adler
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Private Practice Startup Podcast where we help ambitious private practitioners across the globe to brand themselves and grow their dream practices. We chat with successful private practitioners, business coaches and marketing experts bringing you tons of practice building Ninja tips. Visit privatepracticestartup.com for awesome resources, attorney approved private practice paperwork and our signature marketing E course. Here are your co hosts, Dr. Kate Campbell and Katie Lemieux. Hey there startup. Hey Startup Nation. Welcome back to another episode of the Private Practice Startup podcast. We are very excited that you guys are here. Before we dive into today's topic, I just wanted to make sure that you guys listened to last week as we talked to Beth Alford again about a topic that you are very interested in. Three ways you can use your content to reduce and ease the stigma of therapy. So that was a really good podcast and you'll definitely want to make sure you check it out for for today's topic again, another one that you requested and one that Kate and I constantly talk about. So our title today is getting transitioning from working in your business to working on your business. And we have the pleasure of interviewing Australian Damian Adler, psychologist and co founder of Power Diary. And he's actually joining us at 3.30am in Australia to make this podcast. So we are super honored that he is here. Before I tell you a little bit about Damien, if you are new, we wanted to say thank you for choosing us and we really value you and your time and Kate and I just really want to help you. We have a free gift for you and that is our A to Z cheat sheet. The essentials for building and growing your dream practice. And you can head over to private practices startup.com head over to the Resources tab. From there check out the A to Z cheat sheet and go ahead and download that. That also comes with five days of practice building emails to really jump start your practice. And of course if you are a loyal listene already part of our Startup Nation family, we wanted to say welcome back. So a little bit about Damian. So Damian Adler is a psychologist and co founder of Power Diary. He and his wife built a large and successful psychology clinic, but along the way they realized they needed the right systems and processes to really run their practice well. That's when Damian and his brother Paul Adler joined forces and began working on Power Diary, a practice management system built by practitioners for practitioners. Damian is also known publicly through his 10 years of regular guest segments on radio, as a public speaker and corporate trainer, and as a contributor for various tv, radio and print outlets. Damian enjoys mountain biking Traveling, pretending to be a handyman, which I will be asking about that. And exploring near and far with his wife and daughter, officially. Welcome, Damian, how are you?
- [02:48]
B
Thank you very much for having me. I'm very well, thank you.
- [02:52]
C
We are so excited to have you talking about this topic. From working in your business, working on your business. This is something that so many clinicians really get stuck in the trading dollars for hours and constantly just spinning their wheels, working in the business. And you can't propel things forward when you're doing that. So I'm excited to hear what you have to say.
- [03:10]
B
No, absolutely. And I think in particular, it happens to successful practitioners. You know, the people who get most stuck in this, they're actually the ones who have full books and by any other definition would be seen as super success. But like you say, they get trapped in this cycle where it is a trade for their time for money. And in fact, I call it a sugar hit. Right. Because a sugar hit. A sugar hit. And they seriously get addicted to this sugar hit. Because it's. I trade the time, I immediately get this money. And that makes us all feel good. Right. You know, to have this kind of. This impact. But it comes, as we know, as a cost. And we. We end up getting locked into this cycle of trading time for money and getting busier and busier. And so I thought, I'll talk a little bit about that and more importantly, how to get out of that cycle. And this really relates at a very personal level to our own story of developing a practice and then developing the system, the power Diary system. Because my wife and I, we met at college and went through and became licensed psychologists, worked in the public system for a while, and decided we wanted to start a private practice. But we really wanted to have a quality of life as well. And we had a lot of other goals. So we had, in addition, of course, to the work goals, so having quality treatment and working with a quality team of people. But we had some income goals, so let's not be shy about that. Yeah, we were very clear that we were working in a health space, but we weren't running a charity. Right. This had to deliver some financial results, provide a certain lifestyle. We wanted flexibility. We wanted to be able to travel, which often doesn't always fit so well when we have the responsibilities of a client load. We want to spend time. We didn't have kids at that time, but we were hoping that would be on the horizon eventually was. But we wanted to be able to spend time with kids and then pursue other Passions so that we're able to set up the system in a way that allowed us to work hard, but not only on this. And this is actually sort of how it worked. And over time, we started our practice about 10 years ago. We built it up over a few years to be a seven figure practice. So it really grew very strongly. And some of the things that we really thought were long shots, thank goodness, paid off. And people said this is never going to work, but it did. And the growth and the revenue grew. And importantly, and importantly, in the context of today's discussion is around what percentages of income and revenue were generated by BEC and I as the kind of principals, if you like, versus other people and other activities. Because that's critical. If you're earning really good money in a private practice context, but you are trading all your time to generate that, all your hours to generate that, then that's a false economy. And that's where I argue that people are addicted to the sugar hits.
- [06:41]
A
So Damian, I'm curious, how did you decide to become a psychologist?
- [06:45]
B
Well, it's funny initially really just personal interest. And I make the only half joke that being a middle child, being a middle child really kind of heightened my need to be able to negotiate and be able to see multiple perspectives and understand that there isn't one reality. We all have our own reality, that reality is not always shared, our perception is not shared. So it sort of, it started from that, but that actually was an interest. And I went away to college and actually started at law school. So the plan was to become a lawyer and of all things, a commercial lawyer. So how dull and boring was that? So I soon gained some insight and decided, no offense to any commercial lawyers out there. In fact, my sister happens to be a lawyer, so no offense to her. But at law school I realized from a personality point of view this was just a real mismatch. And so I did a few, studied a few different things and eventually the only thing that I just thoroughly love and do for the fun of it rather than a career path was psychology. And eventually, in fact, someone in the one of the administration offices said, do you realize that you've got enough psychology to qualify to go on to further study? And so from there I thought, you know what, let's do that. And so I went on and did the subsequent post grad type work and then did an internship and so forth and went through our processes here. It wasn't a direct path of, you know, epiphany. As a child, this is what I'M going to do. So it took a little bit of a path and then it evolved even within. So I still love the clinical side of things and we still actually have a group psychology practice which my wife runs now because Power Diary takes up the vast majority of my time. But even within, once we started psychology and we had those that set of goals, sort of just realized the importance of systems and we were looking around and just thinking, there is nothing really good sort of out there. At the time, it's about 10 years ago, we wanted it to be cloud based because we needed the freedom. We didn't want to be stuck to some infrastructure and servers or something kind of archaic that didn't allow us to access remotely and even tried a few systems and paid the money and then went, this is just not right. And eventually decided. My brother has a very strong history in technology and he in fact had developed a very large technology practice and had sold it to Australia's largest telecoms provider.
- [09:53]
A
Very cool. And is that the older brother or younger brother?
- [09:56]
B
The older brother, yes. He's the. There's four of us in immediate, six in total, four from immediate family. I am number three, so I'm literally right there in the middle. But he developed this really successful technology company and I was at a point where I said, look, we need a system. You can't run a practice and achieve those goals and have that kind of freedom without a really solid system to become the hub of everything that a practice does. And as I know you guys are so aware of, there's all these different aspects of running practices. So many sucks up your time, doesn't it? Who knew that therapy and providing services to clients is like a tiny portion of running a successful practice? And so that's how it all grew. And we thought, right, if there's nothing out there that really does it, we're going to make sure that we develop something that is for clinicians, by clinicians, nice. The rest is history. It just grew cool.
- [11:03]
A
Before we dive in a little bit more into really becoming unstuck, I just want to take a quick break for our sponsor.
- [11:09]
C
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- [12:41]
A
So as we get into the topic, Damian, what is your perspective on why clinicians get stuck working in the business rather than on the business?
- [12:48]
B
So I have a theory about how it goes and in working with practitioners over time it seems relatively consistent. So it typically starts out someone has the idea, I want to start a practice. I'm a therapist, I want to start a practice. Their concerns at that early stage are going to things like am I going to be able to eat? Am I going to have enough food on the table, enough money and so forth. Is this going to work? So they very much are focused on survival and not yet on scale. And often it even seems silly to them to be thinking about what if it gets too busy, what if it gets too big? And so people are often reluctant at that sort of early stage. They then start to build a reputation. They're working hard and often out there, even hustling to kind of get known, but they're building that reputation around themselves and they're making themselves a brand and making themselves the brand that is recognized but is also where the referrals have been sent to. So when people think, ah, they're a really good marriage counselor or they're a really good whatever that they might be doing, it's based on the name of that clinician. So that works well initially and in fact gives people initial sense of success, which is wonderful. It helps with motivation and helps with drive. They start getting busy and kind of booked up. Their systems typically are organic. They grow out of sort of necessity and oh, I need something for this, I'll use this. Oh, I need this. So it becomes patched together. Then what happens is that as the practice grows and as they get busier, they just have to do more of the same. But it means that they are amplifying an inefficient system. So they're amplifying a system that was usually designed ad hoc to meet an immediate need not to work sort of at scale. Clinicians also overall, and I found this, it doesn't really matter whether I'm talking to people in the States, to the UK to Ireland, to Canada, people have the same reluctance to say no to referrals even when they're too busy, right? And usually because clinicians are very kind hearted and lovely people who really want to make a difference and help in the world. It means that even when they know that they're overbooked and that it's coming at a personal cost, they'll find it hard to say no. And there's always this innate fear of what if the referrals dry up? What if this, you know, I'll fit this person in because who knows how long that tap will stay on. And so they'll end up finding that it grows and grows. They feel successful, but they have less time for sort of vacations, less time for family. They find that in fact the things that are actually globally important to them, like time with kids, for instance, being able to have time, for instance, post a new addition to the family or going to school, they don't have time for any of that. And if they take a break and step back and think, wow, what's the cost here? It's really mega high. But they're trapped, they're trapped. And now there's this sort of situation is I know I have a problem, but I don't have the time to fix it because.
- [16:29]
A
Very true. And that's what happens. And so how do you recommend they become unstuck with this problem? Because you're right, because they're at this high level of doing, doing, doing in the business. And like you said, I like how you said how the systems kind of happen organically. And I find that systems really happen, especially when you're in a pinch, right? Like when you're in a deadline, like you create the system but it's not duplic one else knows about it. You have it usually in your own head. You can't scale it, you can't outsource It. But now you have this high volume of time being spent to keep the business afloat and you're probably exhausted and tired and you don't take that time to work on the business. So how do you guide folks through that mess?
- [17:07]
B
Yeah, Katie, that's exactly, exactly the scenario that we see, too. I'm the only one who can run the system. Then the idea, the perceived cost of. They might even have the awareness. I need some administration or I need. But then I think, well, my system is so idiosyncratic. It's so sort of me. Well, when that happens, you do this, you fill this, you open this, you enter them here. That it's so complicated. It's very, very difficult to change that. So making the change means that we've got to start to break the cycle to do that. We want to understand it is not going to happen by itself. And people somehow have this. We talk about magical thinking, right? In therapy, we talk about it. We're great at educating, right. Our clients and our patients about this. But we need to really be honest. This is not going to happen. So the starting point is recognizing this is not magically going to fix. In fact, if you leave it, it's going to get worse. There is no question.
- [18:13]
A
Very true. When Kate and I talk about some of the marketing myths people have, we recently added a bonus one and we've heard this before, it's like, I'll just wait it out. Your business is not going to grow if you just wait it out.
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C
That's not how it works.
- [18:28]
B
That's right. There is no evidence in history of that happening. It does not work.
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A
The system is not going to just fix itself if you just, you know, do nothing.
- [18:38]
B
No, exactly. The first thing that we recommend, and I've used it with people time and time again, and it works. They've got a quarantine. Rigidly quarantine. It can start out as a small amount of time. I'd recommend no less than two hours a week. But rigidly quarantine out no matter what. That that time is spent and dedicated to working on rather than in just very early on starting to turn and change the cycle. And there's a few rules around this that are important. You cannot have that timeout in your office or wherever it is that you normally provide therapy and the administration. And the phone rings and your email goes off because it just won't happen. Good intentions out the window because something urgent is going to come up and it's going to interfere and you're going to fit that Urgent client in that for some reason is a special case and it's not going to happen. And next week you'll start with the wonderful intentions. It's kind of like going to the gym. We have great intentions until it comes time and then something else. So it needs to be there. It needs to be a couple of hours a week, needs to be every week. It needs to be free from distractions and it needs to be away so we get that booked in. I usually will recommend something like a Friday because it means that the rest of the week is kind of behind us. When we start a week, what often happens is our heads are full of things that we managed to avoid last week, but then over the weekend and by Sunday night are starting to interfere with our thinking processes. So we get in there on a Monday and we're thinking about all these other things. So we need to make it something like that.
- [20:36]
C
Damian, one thing that I'd like to.
- [20:38]
A
Add is this appointment or this block of time needs to be a repeating appointment. Just walk it out. Don't try to fit it in every week. It needs to be as important as anything else because when you really work on your business, this really is the thing that helps you relax more. This outsource, grow, scale. It's very essential and I'm so grateful. When I did a whole year of business coaching back in 2015, is we also in which Kate and I have implemented into our business is we also do a full day of the next quarter planning. So again, you're away, it's, you know, nine to five. You're just planning the next quarter of your business and it's really been invaluable. And when Kate and I actually look back, as we were planning quarter four, we're looking back at quarter three and like, wow. Like everything that we had talked about regarding a certain section of what we wanted to achieve was done. And that was really cool to see that we accomplished that.
- [21:34]
B
Absolutely. The value that comes through from that and the positive feedback loop that develops from that, it's fantastic. And I'd add to that too, that if you're someone who's likely to struggle with the self discipline of that is to hire a business coach to aid in that process. And in fact, it's one of the things that my wife and I originally decided to do was to hire a coach. The coach was a qualified accountant and a personal trainer, so a fitness coach and had this background. So she was hard. And when there was, when there were tasks set that had to be achieved by Our next meeting. So we met with her once a month and we had our weekly meetings, but we met with her once a month. The accountability benefit of that was absolutely phenomenal because she would give us a hard time. The cost was hard, it felt hard to justify. It was one of the highest costs in the early stages of the business were this. But because we had this idea, this is where we are going, this is the plan, we knew we needed to sort of set that up. The second thing we need to do, after we've decided we're breaking the cycle, we've set the time aside rather than be tempted to jump straight in to just working on random things that are front of mind. What I think is vital is to set down and define your ideal life and your ideal practice. Because otherwise we get really busy and again, we start to feel good that, oh, okay, I'm doing this, I'm spending time. But we don't actually know if you're spending that's taking you in a direction that you want to go. So it seems sometimes people say, no, I just want to get into working on a system or working on implementing something like powder to kind of get everything running smoother and say, well, that's good, that's great. But first let's understand what it is that you want in your life. Going through and deciding. What aspects do you love of your work? What type of clients do you like working with? What type of clients do you feel energized about or type of work do you really get you fired up and motivated? How many client hours, if any, do you want to do? Because that varies significantly from clinician to clinician.
- [24:10]
A
Damian, are you taking our course? Because these are the exact same questions we ask.
- [24:14]
B
No, I'm not.
- [24:16]
A
But I'm messing with you.
- [24:19]
B
But you know what? Where there is convergence, it often tells you that's like where the truth of the matter, where it sits. Right? Because those things are what will lead to long term happiness and success.
- [24:32]
C
Absolutely. Damian, I love what you're saying. And Katie jumped in and made a joke about it. I was going to say the same thing but in a different way. It's amazing to hear what you're talking about. It's so in alignment with what we teach in our private practice marketing E course and coaching program. And it is a game changer when you step back. So many people just want to dive into strategy and spin their wheels and the do, do, do and work in the business. But when you take that step back and you really work on the business and Your vision for the business and your lifestyle, it just. And you build your business around that dream lifestyle. It's a game changer. It changes everything.
- [25:07]
B
Absolutely. And that energy cycle that sort of flows from taking that process is self perpetuating because your life is turning out in the way that you had hoped, which is lovely, which is increasing your energy, which is allowing you to focus more on the practice and the type of practice that you've designed and around and around it goes. But I should say it's not entirely coincidental that there's an alignment because with what we're talking about because we have you listed and we did a post a few months back of our favorite podcasts. Thank you. And you are right there smack up on that list because of exactly this. The approach that you take, that financial stuff is absolutely important, but it's part of how you want your life to look. It's a means to an end and not an end in itself. And you sort of take this kind of holistic view. So it is why you're on our. Our list is not long either of our favorite podcasts and we send people and say this is where you need to go and this is what you need to be listening into. Because we have these people all over the world working, using the system, but they need to be focused on these sorts of things. The other things that we work in and this really fits for people too that are planning. Planning a family is anticipating these life events and thinking about them in advance and setting things up so that those events can occur in a way that is consistent with those goals and consistent with what people would like from their lives. And so for my wife and I, one of the things that we looked at and everyone is different so no judgment whatsoever when people make different choices or need to make different choices. But we wanted to be able to spend a lot of time in those early years. We've got one child and one and two batteries. Spend a lot of time. So even whilst building Power Diary and whilst the practice was booming as well, I spent a lot of time with our infant daughter and had regular built in every week daddy days where we. We'd go off and go swimming and go fishing and do things whilst keeping everything running and operating. But that planning I think leads and helps with that life sort of satisfaction and again that kind of energy drive.
- [27:54]
C
It's interesting that you bring that up because we're right smack in the middle of that now. I'm going to be due in December and by the time this podcast actually airs In February of 2020, I'll have a probably two month old baby at home. And it's so rewarding to hear you talk about this. And it's validating too, because I've worked so hard over the years to really systemize my group practice so that it runs itself. And I can take three months, I can step away completely and it will run like clockwork for the team and for everything that's all set up. And then Katie and I have been working so hard over the past quarter to really prepare to take a maternity leave and step away. And we still have all of our systems and all of our content that's going to go out and our level up videos each week in the podcast. And it's so true to really think about those family goals, your personal goals, and to be able to set up those systems so that it can really support that.
- [28:49]
B
That's right. And by doing, you can only really do that proactively. And you can only do it proactively if you know what it is that you're trying to achieve. So you can see now, well, hey, I want everything like this to continue to run. And what are we now? So October, you're planning and getting this organized for next February so that it all flows through. And I mean, it's the same like in terms of for us, group practice and powdery. I think we've traveled to France now every year for the last four or five years and spent time over, living over there for periods for holidays. We've traveled because that's one of the values for us, is to sort of explore the world and not to be sort of just Australian focused and, you know, obviously spend time in the UK as well. So, you know, for being able to plan that out and see that happen and you know, the extent to which you'll appreciate that time you'll have with your baby. It's that rocking chair test, isn't it? You know, when you think back on your life, when you're old and you're on the rocking chair and you're thinking about your life, you're not going to think, oh gee, I worked hard. Wow, I spent every moment working hard and building this, you'll remember the other things about how much time you're able to spend with your kids and family. So that is wonderful to hear. It is heartwarming that you're putting that into practice and we'll see those sort of benefits flow through.
- [30:23]
A
And then the best part for me is I get maternity leave, but I don't have to change diapers or wake.
- [30:27]
C
Up in the middle of the night.
- [30:28]
A
For a crying baby.
- [30:29]
B
That is gold. Yeah, that's whole next level, you know, to be able to do that. This is unique in my experience. I have not experienced people that have nailed this concept so well that you can get that benefit.
- [30:48]
A
I'll be doing a little work here and there, but I'm also going to actually step back to pursue some other goals and things that I want to do during, you know, this time.
- [30:55]
C
So we've set it up really, really well.
- [30:57]
A
So, Damian, we're getting kind of close to the end of our podcast. If there's one more thing that you want people to really take away from your message today, what would that be?
- [31:06]
B
Okay. I think to implement these things, we need to understand the gap of where you are and where you want to go and then really get very, very good at this. Sort of eliminate automate, delegate and using those sort of three things to be able to get rid of as much unnecessary stuff that you just don't need to do. Automate as much as you can. And that's where practice management systems like Power Diary, that can help people book appointments and manage their calendars and manage their clinical notes, collect payments, send automated SMS reminders, all of those things that are automated that make the whole practice sort of run easier, means you don't have to be thinking about or worse, paying someone else to do those sorts of manual systems and then get very comfortable with this sort of concept of delegating everything else so that you're focused on the stuff that really gets you excited and delivers the most value. So if there was a take home message from this that I'd like people to think about besides designing their kind of life and practice of their dreams, is to implement it using systems and this concept of this, you know, eliminate automate, delegate. So you're just focused on those key things and having a great life and having some fun along the way. Don't forget to enjoy the journey.
- [32:39]
A
Yeah, I mean, that's why most of us got into business. There's a lot of times to make a difference, but also really to live our dream life. And you know, Kate and I, a lot of times what we teach is because we did the complete opposite initially and we actually, that's the part, the first part of our course really is creating their goals in their dream life first. Right. We need to really just set that up and it's really important. So that's awesome. And I know that you have a giveaway for our audience Amy, what is that?
- [33:03]
B
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we are in the final stages, and certainly by the time this goes there, of developing what we call the Freedom Workbook. And that actually will help guide people through some of these key steps that will help them sort of take them from where they are sort of now and they can actually kind of track their progress in terms of how they're going, keep them focused and reminded of these key things. And for your listeners, they'll be able to download this free from our website. So from powerdiary.com freedom, well chosen name on purpose. We want people thinking about freedom. So Freedom be able to jump on that and download that. And of course, people, people can always start a free trial on our system and explore a practice management system and just see how much work it can save them and how easy it is to get up and running.
- [34:03]
A
Great. And that's@powerdiary.com right?
- [34:05]
B
That's right.
- [34:06]
A
Awesome. Well, we really so appreciate you being with us today and just talking about and sharing your passion because it's also a passion of ours and I'm just still so ambitious. Impressed how chipper you are. At 4am it's like you're right smack in the middle of your day, but you're not.
- [34:21]
C
You're right smack in the middle, in.
- [34:23]
A
The middle of the night when most people are sleeping. So we do appreciate you taking the time and we hope you guys join us next time as we talk to Tara. And Tara was one of our past coaches and she's going to be sharing her success story and also where she is now.
- [34:39]
B
Thank you both.
- [34:40]
C
Yes, it's been great having you here, Damian. And for Startup Nation listeners, we hope you're enjoying all of this content that we're producing. We have so much fun creating it and we always want to know that we're on track and providing topics that are most valuable and interesting to you. So definitely let us know if there's anything that we haven't talked about yet, topic wise that you'd love to hear or let us know how you're enjoying the podcast. We'd love to get that feedback from you guys and it really validates the direction that we're going and inspires us to keep inspiring you along your journey from Startup to Mastery.
- [35:13]
A
So Startup Nation, as always, thanks for allowing us to inspire you from Startup to Mastery. Take care and have an amazing day.
- [35:20]
C
Thanks for joining us on the Private practice startup. Visit theprivatepracticestartup.com for awesome resources. Free trainings, attorney approved private practice paperwork and so much more.
- [35:38]
B
Sam.