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Private Practice Startup Podcast
Episode 361: How to Harness the Power of AI for Private Practice
00:24:44
Austin Kirkland
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- [00:01]
Unknown Host
Welcome to the Private Practice Startup Podcast, where we help mental health professionals grow their dream practices and live a life they love. We chat with successful private practitioners, business coaches and marketing experts, bringing you tons of practice building tips. We invite you to take advantage of our private practice paperwork and our signature marketing E course. And we have a gift for you. This is the exact methodology we use to create our six figure private pay practices have helped many other therapists do the same. Go to private practicestartup.com and on the homepage, click the button to download a free copy of your dream private practice playbook. Now onto today's episode.
- [00:39]
Katie Lemieux
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Private Practice Startup Podcast. I am one of your hosts, Katie Lemieux, and it is good to have you here. Today we're going to be diving into the very trendy topic of AI, which is very exciting and I will introduce our guest very shortly. But I hope that you joined us last week as we dove into another very interesting topic. Our guest then was Meredith Foodenec Garrick and we talked about beyond the trip, integrating psychedelic experience for growth. So today we are, like I said, talking about AI, and we're harnessing the power of artificial intelligence in private practice. So we're going to geek out all on AI. So if you're new to AI or just dipping your toe in the water, you're fully immersed. I know that this podcast is going to be very helpful because this was actually one of our free live masterclasses that we did with our friends at Brighter Vision talking about AI. And I definitely learned a lot. I know Austin learned a lot. We are sharing tips and tricks, so I'm sure you're going to get something out of this today. So Kate's actually joining us for the first time about this topic on the podcast.
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Kate
I'm excited to be here.
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Katie Lemieux
Yeah, it'll be really, really good. So I know I've. I've introduced Austin many times, so if you've ever been on one of our masterclasses, you probably have met him. But let me go ahead and make a proper introduction today. So, Austin Kirkland is a marketing and advertising professional with over a decade of experience, specialized in helping mental health professionals grow their practices outside of work. He enjoys woodworking, exploring Colorado's outdoors, and photographing nature with his fiance and their golden retriever, Tater. Welcome, Austin.
- [02:21]
Austin Kirkland
Hi. Thank you so much. Appreciate you having me on.
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Katie Lemieux
It's great to have you here. So before we dive in, let's just take a quick moment for our sponsor and then we're just going to get straight into the topic.
- [02:33]
Kate
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Katie Lemieux
So, Austin, share a little bit about. I mean, I know I gave you an introduction, but share a little bit about you and who you are and why the mental health field and advertising and then we'll get right into AI.
- [03:56]
Austin Kirkland
Yeah, yeah. So, boy, it's a long story, but I'll keep it short. So, yeah, I have the long history and experience in, you know, sales and marketing specifically. Yeah, I got into the mental health field in that kind of same area of sales and marketing because mental health changed my life. In my early 20s, I sought out a therapist and it truly saved my life. So I wanted to do everything I could to help give back in any way that my skills allowed me to. So that led me on the path to brighter vision and then one thing led to another and just sort of kind of got to a point where I sort of became somewhat of an expert in marketing therapists in their private practices. So that's a little bit about me and how I got to where I'm at.
- [04:42]
Katie Lemieux
Thank you for sharing. So where do I mean, obviously we're in a different format today, right? Masterclass. We got slides and we're showing stuff and talking about stuff. But where do you want to begin on the AI journey? I know there's a Few things that we want to cover. You know, how to integrate AI, talking about ethical considerations, and then a lot of, like, suggestions and things like that. So where shall we start?
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Austin Kirkland
Man, I think the start is just kind of tackling the elephant in the room when it comes to AI. I think a lot of people, maybe not naturally have a fear, but a lot of people that I talk to, especially on the phone, there is a hesitation to use AI for a number of different reasons. But hopefully, through this podcast and through the masterclass and through your own research, you'll learn that not only is it something to not be afraid of, but it really is something that can help increase your effectiveness in terms of your business efficiency, but also your patient effectiveness, because it'll allow you more time to focus on your clients. And so we'll get more into that as things go on. But I think really a good place to start is don't be afraid of it. It's there to help you, and help.
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Katie Lemieux
It does.
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah. For real.
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Kate
It's pretty amazing all the different ways that AI can help us as clinicians and, you know, as therapists, we got into this field to be able to make a difference, to focus on our clients, to do what we love. And oftentimes we can be overwhelmed by all of the additional hats that we have to wear. And so to have a resource like AI that can help speed up some of those different roles and responsibilities and to learn opportunities to be able to leverage that is a great thing because it allows us as therapists to do what we love and not get inundated with all of the other stuff. So I'm really curious to hear what you have to say today, Austin, about this and how to go about using it in a way that is ethical, because I know that's a big concern for therapists.
- [06:48]
Austin Kirkland
Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, there. I mean, there really is just so many different ways AI can be used. I will primarily be speaking more on the marketing side of things. Just that's where my expertise lies. But when it comes to that, you know, I would say first off, assess, you know, what your needs are. You know, where are you spending a lot of time that you don't necessarily want to be spending a lot of time? Again, coming from the marketing angle here, most people that I talk to when it comes to, you know, spending a lot of time where they don't want to be spending a lot of time is content creation. Everyone, mostly everyone, I can't say everyone, but mostly everyone doesn't want to do it. And if they're okay with writing. Coming up with the idea is a whole nother challenge in and of itself. So I think, you know, when it comes to creating a website, maybe people don't feel so, you know, doesn't feel so daunting from like a design perspective, but just a content perspective can really feel overwhelming. Something like ChatGPT can really help make that so much easier. In fact, it'll become probably the easiest part of your whole like, like marketing website build. I mean you can, you can really, really utilize. You know, I'm just going to speak to ChatGPT here to ask it, you know, you really can ask it. Okay. Here. I want to have a website. My specialty is anxiety and depression for anxiety for, for children in Nashville, Tennessee. And so then you can tell ChatGPT that and that you're will, you're wanting to build a homepage for your website or you want to build a specific services page for your website and it will automatically like pull from the Internet different sources and whatnot and it'll create your own custom content for those specific pages and then you can use it, you know, as it is or you can, you know, edit it as you'd like.
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Kate
How do we ensure that it's as it's created by a ChatGPT and it's pulling it from different sources from the Internet? How do we ensure that it's fresh content? Right. That it's not going to be completely duplicated and we end up getting like dinged SEO wise from the content being already used somewhere else that we might not know about.
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah. So there are like plagiarism checkers online that are free that you can run it through and it will give you a grade. I've personally, in fact, so I've built a website separately for my woodworking business. 100 of the content was written through ChatGPT and I ran every single page through a, a plagiarizer checker play plagiarism checker. Thank you. Yeah. And nothing, nothing came up as super plagiarized. I think, I think the max was like 15% on like one section is like a very common like sentence or something. But yeah, Chat GPT does a really good job of kind of pulling things together and then making it its own. It's similar to if you were to read a bunch of different websites in an instant and then summarize that on your own page, that would be considered original content.
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Kate
Gotcha. And I guess there's ways that you could put ticklers into like the style or the voice that you want chat GPT to write it. And so maybe that could help make it a little bit more unique.
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah, exactly. So I was going to get to that, as a matter of fact. So what I, what I've done is if you have like any sort of examples of writing you've done in the past, whether it be creative writing, something that has your voice in it, you can tell ChatGPT to learn it. Just say, hey, this is my writing voice. I want you to understand it and I want you to write my website in the same style of voice. And so it'll recognize that it'll put out a whole new version of the page it just wrote, but more in your voice. And then you can really refine it from there. You can even tell it. Okay. Make it a little bit more humorous or make it more professional. And it will just rewrite the entire page to exactly your needs in like two seconds. Yeah, that's the craziest part. And it's remembering everything too. So once you tell it one thing, it'll always remember that you don't have to tell it again. Unless you want to change that one thing, like the voice in which the content is being written in.
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Kate
It's just amazing to me that this resource, I mean, it would take me like 8 hours to write a specialty page and then I'd keep having to come back to it, come back to it over like, you know, a couple of weeks to make sure it, it's on point and it can do this in a matter of seconds. Mind blowing.
- [11:09]
Austin Kirkland
Yeah. And so then. Okay, so you got all, got all your content written, right? You got your website launched, you got that box checked now. Okay, well, let's start really refining things. So let's go back into each one of those services pages and let's rewrite it to be a little bit more SEO centric so you can tell it. I want, I want to make sure that we're including teens with anxiety, teens with depression, and Nashville, Tennessee, so it can rewrite the page to be a little bit more SEO friendly to include those keywords to help make. Help you show up a little bit further on the, on search results pages.
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Kate
Wow.
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Katie Lemieux
Which is fantastic.
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Austin Kirkland
It can help in a lot of different ways. Yeah, yeah.
- [11:51]
Katie Lemieux
Let's say, let's just take a quick moment. For our sponsor.
- [11:56]
Unknown Sponsor
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- [12:54]
Katie Lemieux
Trying to navigate all the things as a therapist is hard, especially when you're trying to stay focused on the most important thing, your clients. Of course, that's why TherapyNotes makes billing, scheduling, notetaking and telehealth incredibly easy. Also for all you prescribers out there, Therapy Notes is proudly offering e prescribed services. One of the things that I love about Therapy Notes is that they really have the clinician in mind. Working with a company like Therapy Notes helps streamline the back end of your business. If you're a busy therapist, good quality support is essential. That's why Therapy Notes has telephone support seven days a week. No wonder why they're the number one top rated EHR and why more than a hundred thousand therapists trust them. Therapy Notes is offering two months of their EHR absolutely free, no strings attached. So go to therapynotes.com and enter the code PPS that's therapynotes.com and enter the Code PPS. So let's talk chat a little bit about note taking and AI because I know that's a big question that a lot of therapists have.
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah, yeah. I mean it, it's a really good question. Really. I think first and foremost it's important to talk about, you know, the involving the evolving role of artificial intelligence and how it's playing a role in therapy. Right. I think it's really important that your clients. Or that, yeah, that, that you as a clinician, that your clients understand that AI is being utilized to help you as a clinician, to take notes, but without you actually having to take the notes. It'll obviously help you become more present with your client, but it's important that the client has full transparency in any AI in any software tools that might be used.
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Kate
Yeah, yeah, that's a, I know, that's a good point. Oh, go ahead.
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Katie Lemieux
I know that a few companies had reached out to Kate and I like, you know, whether they're Talking about sponsorship or partnering and check out their software. And so far, and I'm sure that, you know, therapists listening might have a different view, but what we've seen so far hasn't been like the best. I know it's kind of newer, but yeah, there still is the discussion to be had, updating your consent, disclosing that those types of things when, when using AI. But you know, so far we haven't been too impressed by what's out there. You know, it's like a lot of recording of the session and then kind of typing it up, but it's almost like verbatim rather than really summarizing whether you SOAP or DAP or some other form of summary for notes.
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Kate
So I'm sure it's going to continue to evolve and they'll find ways of refining it and it's going to be a really practical solution for therapists. It's something that as a client would make me feel uncomfortable with. And so I think just as this is a newer aspect of our field, being able to, you know, if we're going to incorporate that, to be able to talk about it in a way that puts clients at ease and to assure them, you know, whatever the parameters are for the, you know, safety precautions for what's keeping their information safe and protected, you know, we'll have to see how it unfolds. It's definitely a time saving solution out there, but yeah, Katie and I haven't been that impressed to be able to incorporate it yet, but we'll see how that, how that unfolds.
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah, I'll be interested to see how it unfolds as well. I personally haven't heard of anyone using it. Like you said, I can see how it can be useful, but from what you're telling me, it doesn't sound like it's, it's overly useful at the moment.
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Katie Lemieux
Yeah, I definitely would not want everything that I'm talking courted ever, right?
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Kate
Yeah, no, definitely not. I mean I even having some of the EHRs, you know, that the information that is being shared, shared and used with, you know, AI, that stuff makes me uncomfortable. So yeah, I can imagine a lot of clients have concerns about that and we'll have to see how that, how it unfolds over time. So what other AI solutions do you have for us beyond the note taking? ChatGPT.
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah, I mean you can do, I mean on your website specifically you can have like a chatbot there to automatically respond to frequently asked questions. For example, this, I mean, while you do obviously Want phone calls, you know, as many as possible. I'm sure it can kind of get a little bit annoying when it's just the same question over and over and over again. And when you can just be like, hey, just go to my website and then, you know, read it and then we can see if we're going to fit, then we can have a consultation. Well, you can, you can kind of bypass that whole, that whole initial conversation if you choose by having some sort of AI driven chat bot on your website to, to answer those kind of frequently asked questions. And then it can, depending on the logic that you can set up, depending on the responses of your client, it can direct them to reach out to you if it deems to be a good potential fit.
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Kate
That would be an amazing solution to be able to use for a lot of clinicians, especially people who don't yet have a VA or haven't set up a care coordinator or something like that at their office and they're still, they're in session, they're getting all of their calls, they're not able to call people back. To be able to have that FAQ with questions like do you take insurance? How much does it cost? You know, are you accepting new clients? These basic questions that we get over and over and over when people are calling the office to be able to field some of those and have the responses written out. I'm sure it would be a lot of front end loading with the work to set it up. But then the time saving aspect, once you have that set up and systemized, could be, you know, really exponential.
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Austin Kirkland
Absolutely. Yeah, it really can be if used correctly and set up correctly initially.
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Kate
Very cool.
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah, yeah. Another, another, you know, example that, that would be something that you could use would be, you know, something like AI driven self care apps. You know, this is something that you can utilize in with your care, with your clients. And we have, there's a lot of different, you know, stress management apps that are AI driven that can really customize the treatment plan depending on the client.
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Katie Lemieux
Tell us a little bit more like what, what examples do you have of that?
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Austin Kirkland
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So a couple of examples that there are. So there's a wiza, wisa. It's an AI to provide emotional support through conversation driven interactions. And then there's another one called wobot. It's a therapy chatbot that delivers cognitive behavioral therapy techniques to help users manage anxiety and depress depression. So these things are meant to be used in conjunction with your actual therapy to help clients sort of manage Their symptoms in between sessions.
- [19:58]
Katie Lemieux
Gotcha.
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Kate
Interesting.
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Katie Lemieux
So we can, yeah, so we're talking about the content copy, we're talking about notes and ethics around that and AI covering kind of useful tools that help and supplement the work that someone is doing with a therapist.
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Kate
I just want to add like, I think it's really cool to not be afraid of those types of apps. Right. Because no one is going to completely replace us as therapists. We're so unique and the like the presence of being in the room with clients or being connected to clients virtually, but to be able to welcome it and incorporate it and make it like a collaborative thing rather than this competition with us and AI or this fear that we're going to be replaced and this, you know, this whole mindset block that can get in the way to be able to just utilize it as a resource and to bring it into the space if it's appropriate for your clients to use as a resource in addition to the therapy work that you're doing with them. So to not feel threatened or that it's like taking over our space or whatever, but to be able to find ways of incorporating it and collaborating with it just like you would with other providers who maybe provide a cross specialty or similar specialty to you. So instead of having that like fear based mentality to have an open mind and see how it could be a resource for you and your practice.
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's something, you know, to be embraced. Kind of going back to what I was saying at the beginning, it really comes down to you and your practice needs. You know, that's really where you want to start is by assessing your practice, your practice needs. I mean, not everything we've talked about is going to be perfect for every single person. But you know, depending on where your needs lie, you know, some of these, these AI, you know, tools could be a really good resource for some folks.
- [21:52]
Kate
Very cool. Yeah.
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Katie Lemieux
And kind of what Kate's talking about, especially as you talk about the Self Care app or the cbt, you know, it's, it's really an enhancement and also creates a level of accountability and also too, it's kind of like quote, unquote, a second voice continuing the learning, even outside session. Right. Like if people are engaging with these apps, you know, something that you said in session and now they're applying their own outcomes can be better. So it's definitely something to experiment with, using conjunction with. But like Kate said, it's not going to replace humans. So don't be afraid there.
- [22:27]
Austin Kirkland
Yeah, it's Definitely not. It's just only going to help humans lives become easier. That's it.
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Kate
Yeah. Austin, I love what you're sharing today and ultimately what do you want Startup Nation to take away from your message today?
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Austin Kirkland
Yeah, I think really don't be afraid of AI. Embrace AI, you know, as much as is necessary for your practice. So yeah, just assess your practice needs, see if AI can help you out in certain areas and test it out, see if it's worth it. It probably will be awesome.
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Katie Lemieux
Well, we so appreciate you being here, Austin. It's always good to see you on the masterclass. So if you haven't ever attended one of our masterclasses, definitely check them out. We do offer them usually every other month free and it's really all about you and your private practice. So on the podcast next week we have return guest and now author Katie Keats May. So we hope you join us as she chats about her book and what's going on with her then. Kate.
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Kate
Yeah, Startup Nation. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. We always love to hear your feedback and you know, if there's a topic that we haven't had on the podcast yet and you have a suggestion, let us know. We've been podcasting for eight years now. It's pretty amazing that we have come this far and we're always trying to create content that really meets your needs along the practice, building and scaling and growing journey. So we love hearing your feedback, as I said, and encourage you to subscribe, rate and review the show. And we will hope you stay inspired. Until next time. See you later everybody.
- [24:04]
Katie Lemieux
Take care.
- [24:05]
Austin Kirkland
Thank you.
- [24:06]
Kate
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.