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Private Practice Startup Podcast
Episode 92: 3 Tips to Get Your Clients to Do Homework
00:26:23
Kouris Kalligas
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- [00:03]
A
Welcome to the Private Practice Startup, where we inspire you from startup to mastery. We chat with entrepreneurs, experts in the mental health and business arenas, and successful private practitioners to give you the tools needed to make your dream practice a reality. Visit theprivatepracticestartup.com for awesome resources, free trainings, and so much more. Here are your hosts, Dr. Kate Campbell and Katie Lemieux.
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B
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Private Practice Startup podcast. I am one of your hosts, Katie Lemieux.
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A
What's up, startup nation superheroes? We are back and excited to be here. This is Kate Campbell.
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B
So we had a great show last week and actually I flew so low for that one. That was me with Jo Muirhead from, well, she does joemirhead.com, purple company and actually so interestingly enough, back in it's been three months now, we had Jo do a Facebook live with us and talk about her program, five favorite people to help therapists effective network market. So I did the Facebook live and then I was like, I think I want to do the course. So I actually just finished Joe's 12 week course because interestingly enough, when I came into Private practice, a lot of my practice has been built on like ads and online stuff and not a lot of effective networking. So I just wanted to know, like, what does it take to be effective at networking? So we actually just kind of talk about the course, things that we've learned and how you also can be effective at networking. So if you dread networking, you're definitely, definitely gonna wanna listen to that podcast.
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A
And that's actually the second time that we've had Jo on the podcast. We'll have to add in the show notes. The first episode where she was on where I flew solo. I'm not gonna sing like you did. Doesn't sound as well. But anyways.
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B
And you guys talked about how to write, how to speak, write so clients can listen or whatever.
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A
Yeah, it was like how to speak, how to talk, write and speak so that you attract your ideal clients.
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B
There you go.
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A
Something like that. But it was a really cool, fun episode. Value packed. So it's interesting we both flew solo with her for one episode.
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B
Yeah. So if you've actually never heard anything with Jo, you're definitely gonna want to listen to those. She's super energetic and just really a pleasure to be with. And not to mention she's from Australia. So she has a really cool accent.
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A
Yes. Which is totally cool.
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B
Listen, just for that, if that's, you know, nothing else.
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A
Yeah. Today we're Excited to have chorus here from Thera Chat. How do you pronounce your last name?
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C
Chorus in Greek or in English?
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A
Let's hear it in Greek first.
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C
Caligas.
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A
Caligas. Okay, what happens?
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C
Caligas.
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B
Caligas.
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A
Caligas. Okay.
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C
But in English, it's called Caligas. Nice to be here. I love your energy. Love your energy.
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B
Good to have you here.
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A
And this is actually the second time that we're trying to record. Well, that we're not trying. We are doing it. We're recording this time because the first time it was on Friday the 13th, and we had every tech glitch in the possible world that happened that day. It was the most bizarre thing. We had, like, four podcasts batched back to back and had to reschedule every single one of them because something went wrong on everything. So today, everything is smooth sailing. We got our new podcast Boom here. We're feeling like legit podcast people, right?
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B
That's right. Or, I don't know, like, radio show Taco. I can't breathe. Radio show. Talk show host.
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A
Co host.
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B
Yeah, whatever.
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A
Exactly.
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C
We validated the Friday the 13th, right? We validated the meanings of it.
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B
Very true. Right, Exactly.
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A
And actually, interestingly enough, chorus is in a basement. He looks like he. This is, like, the second underground podcast that we've done. The first one was with Roy Higgins. Higgins or Huggins.
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B
Huggins.
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A
Oh, Huggins.
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B
Yeah. From Person Centered.
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A
Yes.
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B
Him and Lyeth Dalton.
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A
Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. That was a fun one. So this is gonna be a good one. We got good vibes. I know this is, like, a way longer intro than we typically do, but bear with us. We're getting through it.
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B
Right?
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A
So, yeah.
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B
So chorus is from Thera Chat, and he's going to talk about three tips to get your clients to do homework. So I'm really excited about this because I actually got to take a tour of Thera Chat with Horace, and actually, I. I went to download, like, the free trial, and I've just been, like, so busy, I haven't done it. So I told my clients about the Thera Chat. I was like, I'm gonna get this really cool app to help you guys stay accountable.
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A
They're like, yay.
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B
I'm like. But right. For now, until I get it going, just email me that you did your homework.
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C
Text me. So I know you.
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B
So anyways, we wanted to say if you're a loyal fan and listener, we love you guys. You guys are amazing. We appreciate you. And if you're a First time listener. We got a special guest gift for you. Talking too fast, I'm mumbling my words. And that gift is our A to Z cheat sheet, the essentials for building and growing your dream practice. So you can grab that over at privatepracticestartup.com head over to the resources tab or actually you'll see us right on the front page smiling on the home page. You can click the button there and download it. Easy breezy, easy breezy. And also hang out with us. Facebook the private practice. Just look for the private practice startup.
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A
Yeah, we'd love to see you there. We've got a thriving community of private practitioners all across the well, it's international. Yeah. So all across the world. Join us, we'll see you there.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And before we dive into today's episode, we wanted to give a quick thank you to the attorney approved private practice paperwork from the Private Practice startup. So if you guys are in private practice, you know you've got to have stellar paperwork that meets the legal and ethical standards. And creating that from scratch is a painstaking endeavor. And then hiring your own attorn can be extremely expensive. And there's a lot better places to spend your time and money. Right. So we have simplified that process for you. Met with. We put in a hundred plus hours, worked with four plus attorneys to bring their paperwork up to the highest legal and ethical standards. We've got both a la carte paperwork options so you can cherry pick your favorite forms or you can take advantage of our package options. We also have supervision paperwork and business forms. All sorts of good stuff. Head over to privatepracticestartup.com visit the shop tab and you'll see all of the options for paperwork there. And you can experience our paperwork forms for super affordable price there as well. We have the $5 release of information plus a free HIPAA form there. So make sure to download that.
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B
Yep. So Coris, welcome, welcome, welcome.
- [06:04]
C
Thank you. Nice to be here.
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B
Yeah. So tell us, how did you create therachat and why?
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C
Yeah, sure. Therachat is actually a product that we created with my team. We were working on another product in the well which was called Adapt and it was basically a product where we provide health recommendations and insights based on data you're tracking with wearable device and mobile apps. This was not working out from a monetization perspective. So we were really passionate about mental health and one of the things that I always believed in is that we know so much about our cars and laptops and we know so much less about Our health. And I asked myself why, when it comes to mental health, things are even worse, actually. So we started. We wanted to create other products and services. So we took an approach of. An innovative approach, starting to figure out what we want to do. So one of the first things that we did in mental health is we started talking to mental health professionals, specifically therapists, and we wanted to know their problems and needs. We actually had no product at that point of time. We wanted to understand what are they going through because we wanted to learn. So we interviewed over 500 therapists in the US and we found out all kinds of issues they're having. And to our surprise, a lot of them can be solved by technology. And one of them that we found out was the notion of homework. And specifically what happens in between therapy sessions. And what do therapists do? And they typically assign homework. Not all of them, but the majority of them. And there was nothing there for them to actually help them monitor progress, assign homework in an easy way. They were using. They're still using paper worksheets, and some of them use Google Documents and so on. And so we decided to build a product for that, and that's how it all started.
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B
Yeah, and it is really cool. I mean, like I said, I got to do a tour with you and some of the things that I really liked and a lot of times. So my first. One of my first questions when clients come back is, you know, what's working? What do you. What progress are you making? But also, what do you want to focus on today? And many clients will say, like, oh, my gosh, like last Wednesday, like, there's something I wanted to talk about with you, but I can't remember. And you guys in the app actually have a question that says you can let your therapist know if there's something you want to talk about. You can give feedback to your therapist on the session. And that was really cool because, like, as a therapist, you could just pull up the app and say, oh, well, you had mentioned that you wanted to talk about this. Do you still want to talk about that today? So that was a definitely cool feature. And I love the features you have. Like, you can upload files and videos and all these other worksheets, like you were saying, and it all gets done through the app.
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A
That's really cool.
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B
It is really cool. And the level of accountability. And I, you know, sometimes I personally get frustrated because I know whatever it is, whether it's in business or whatever you want to excel in is you have to be accountable and you have to do the work. And sometimes, like, I don't know for me, I don't know for you, but like, sometimes I get lax with that with therapy because I feel like sometimes people are like, some of them are really just process oriented. Right. And they like to talk and they, like, think about it and whatever. And they don't like to do a lot of stuff, even though a lot of clients say they do. But when you have like this level of accountability, they actually do it more, which is super cool.
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C
Yeah, they make better progress, definitely. And actually one of the things that was a surprise for us, we have over 40 activities ready to be assigned. So they're ready to. To be scheduled based on a date and time. And, you know, we went and created some smart activities like emotion tracking and journaling. And one of the most successful activities, what is one, what you've mentioned, which is very, very simple. It's about. We call it about next session. So it's one of the activities that are being assigned the first two clients, which is the client can talk about the next session and what they want to talk about. And this is the first and most successful activity that clients really use because it's also about the recent surprise. Right. You're more likely to remember what happened yesterday rather than a week ago, rather. So at the moment that something happening, you kind of write down the activity and you write down, I'm going to talk about my relationship issues or a work situation, whatever that is. That's really, really helpful for therapists. But also clients, they save a lot of time in the therapy hour, you know, figuring out what they want to discuss, basically.
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A
So that's so interesting to have it all in one place. I'll have clients that come in and they're like, oh, let me pull up my notes, and they'll scroll through their phone and they'll be looking and looking. And then all of a sudden, sudden they're like, okay, here they are, here, there. So it's nice to be able to have that all organized and they can make the best use of their session time being organized like that and coming prepared and knowing that what they want to talk about.
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B
And they're just more of an initiative.
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A
Yeah, sure. And therapy is expensive. You know, it's a big investment to be paying out of pocket for therapy sessions. So you want to make the most of that.
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B
Exactly, yeah. And I'm sure you guys are wondering, is this app HIPAA compliant? And.
- [10:34]
C
Yeah, of course, it's Hippopotam.
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A
I was gonna say, you always are like, Right in my head.
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B
I'm pretty close to your head.
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C
I should always mention that in the beginning because we actually built the product ground up being HIPAA compliant. It was one of the first things we took care of. So yeah, it is HIPAA compliant.
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A
How do you make something HIPAA compliant like this? Oh, we would have to get Tylenol for that question. Is it like a certain level of encryption? Give me the high level answer, not like super techy answer.
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C
All right, high level answer. And I'm not technical as well, so that might help. So basically it' the one is making sure that the data people share are not patient identifiable. So nobody can be identified by the information they share. So that's very, very important. So we actually don't see what your clients are, who your clients are. We see an ID number, for example, for very, very urgent situations. We do go and see who it is, but only if it's required and it's always logged and who did it and why they did it. So we have to really log that. And the other part of it, the second part is simply admin stuff. So make sure your laptop is locked. Because my laptop has very, very sensitive information. So I make sure that it's locked, I make sure it's never stolen, I make sure that I don't leave it unattended. And this goes on for all kinds of other things within our organization and also being trained to know all these different guidelines. So that's my high level. Hopefully it was good enough.
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A
Yeah, it was definitely good enough.
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B
So there's a part of the technology but also part that we're responsible.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Yes.
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C
Actually most errors happen from humans. Even when we talk about hacking for examp, mostly human error, actually it's never, you know, we have this images of a hacker going in and doing all kinds of, you know, very, very complicated stuff. Sometimes it's just about deceiving the human behind it.
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B
You know, as you say that I just was. I watch a lot of like murder FBI crime shows and they were like the FBI was following this guy on like the dark web and he would go to like different coffee shops or whatever. The day that they were going to arrest him he went to his usual coffee shop but the Internet wasn't working. And so they followed him into the library. And so two of the agents stood behind him and actually started like a ruckus. So he like literally turns around and when he turns around, the other agent grabbed his computer. Like, like stuff like that happens that quick and that. But that could be like Human error. Right. Like you're doing your notes at Starbucks and you don't realize there's people window walking behind you and looking at your computer.
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C
Exactly.
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B
So it's just important. So, yeah, so tell us, like how, how is this app helping clients be more accountable? How are they making more progress? What's happening?
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C
Definitely. So right now we have a lot of active therapists using it with our clients and they're using it in different ways. One of the major ways they're using it is assigning homework, of course. And that's very helpful for those therapists that are already assigning homework via paperwork sheets, because the big question they have is that their clients actually are not doing homework. So that's where we help because we know that homework compliance leads to better outcomes. There are many clinical studies which actually proven that the missing piece is how do you give therapists superpowers? That's what I like to say, to assign homework to their clients. And how do you actually get those clients to do it? Now, most of the people nowadays know about smartphones and they're using apps. So it is very helpful for a client to be able to use and complete activities on their mobile application at their own time. So there are two, there are two or three different types of kind of usages that we see. We see the therapist who goes in assign homework and they're very interested in their CL kind of having homework, not necessarily monitoring it at all times. We see the other type of therapist who is assigning homework, but also very, very regularly kind of monitors what are they doing, why are they not doing it, adapting the treatment plan, creating new activities, discussing it in the session. And in terms of the clients, they really love it because it's easy, it's accessible, they don't have to carry with them notebooks and so on. And it's engaging. We are trying to do the app, it's a lot more engaging. And right now we have a lot data in terms of which activities are helpful, which activities are being assigned, which activities being completed. And we know, for example, that 97% of the clients using it find the activities helpful because we asked them was the activity helpful, and so on. Some of the most successful activities, as I said, was, is about next session feedback. Also on the last session, emotion tracking, journaling, self care journaling, for example, as well. And also distress level tracking, which is very important to know, monitor throughout the session. And we're adding activities as we go forward. The feedback from the therapist has been the one thing that really makes me Wake up in the morning and go to work. Because we get it via support, via Facebook group that we have as well. And they just want more. They want a mobile app for therapists as well. They want the commenting in between sessions, the activities that they're being completing. So we are actually launching new features every single month. One of the latest features we're going to be releasing this month is exporting for anyone who wants to use it for insurance purposes or other purposes. So that's something that has been asked. But we also want to do further on HR integrations, for example, just make the life of the therapist as easy as possible. Because one of the pushback we have gotten sometimes from therapists is, you know, this is going to take time off my day. Time is very, very important. And normally they don't bill for hours outside of the sessions. Right. And those who have actually. They say that it actually saves them time because. Saves them time, but also helps their clients get better and also reduce dropout because the client gets engaged and they understand the purpose of the therapy even more. So that's. The feedback has been very, very positive. And we're really excited to kind of go in the next six to 12 months to make the product better and better and better. We're a small team of seven people and we are very accessible. We have customer support despite our small size.
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B
So I know we're going to talk. We were talking about like three tips specifically. And one of the things that you were just already mentioning is about like, how. And as you were talking, like, I get it, right? It's like technology makes it easier, right? Because if you hand a client a worksheet, maybe they put it in whatever, they stick it in their purse or they leave it in their car and then they forget about it. Well, we always have these guys in our hands, always. Right. Phones. And so it just makes it easier. Right. And so is there like a reminder on the app? Like, can your therapist send a reminder? Is it automatic? How does that happen?
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C
Yeah, there are reminders for both the therapist and the client. The therapist can schedule an activity, for example, about next session, and they can say on Mondays and Wednesdays at 10am for this client. And the client receives the push notification at the time that the therapist scheduled it. So that's very helpful for the client.
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B
So cool. You're liking this. I see it on your face.
- [17:40]
A
Yeah.
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C
And the therapist also receives email notifications when their clients have completed activities or send messages, and they can see it at their own time. So they also receive reminders and they have web app reminders. So if they go into the dashboard, they will see specifically, for example, Kate did X activity and you will click on that, it will take you directly to that activity. So it's very, very easy, user friendly.
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A
There's something that's very different about having a reminder that you know is sent from your therapist, getting that on your phone than a reminder that you set yourself. Like, oh, meditation, it's, you know, 8:00am I'm tired, you know, like, I didn't sleep well last night or I have a crazy day, I'm just gonna skip it. But when your therapist sends that and sets that up, it's something like, I don't know, I would have, I'd be like, okay, I gotta make this happen.
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C
Accountability.
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B
And I think there's sometimes this, you know, I think our clients sometimes don't want to let us down. Like that's like this unspoken thing that we usually don't know. You know, they also want to do well. And yeah, I guess it would be the same if you like had a trainer, you're working out or something like.
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C
Yeah, it's pretty much the same. And we always use an analogy of a music teacher. Right. If you're trying to play a musical instrument, it is hard and it takes effort and time and focus and it depends on the teacher, but also it depends on you doing the work as well. So it's also accountability towards yourself, but also towards your therapist.
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B
In this case, yeah. And how easy is it to get buy in from the client?
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C
I think that's one of the most important. It's one of my first tips as well. Get buy in from your clients. We see, we have interviewed, as I said, Over 500 therapists, but we interview our customers regularly to understand how they're doing the work. The most successful therapist when it comes to homework, assigning homework and getting the clients to do it, is get the buy in. Explain to them why does this homework exist? Why do you actually introduce therachat, for example, or any other tool or any other type of homework in your therapy? How is it going to help them? And I think that's very, very important to do it in the first session. And because we do see also other therapists, for example, just assigning it without necessarily explaining that to clients. And we see that those who actually get the buy in are the ones who are more successful. And it makes sense. You just have to explain why does this exist and what is in it for them. So getting buy in from your clients on doing the Homework is number one advice I would have based on what we see from what we see from the therapist we interview and assign a homework.
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A
So far, the app gives the opportunity to have such a different conversation about that it changes the context a little bit because you don't when you as a therapist, I mean, I know I don't sit there and explain the reasons why I'm giving an assignment or inviting them to do some work, some homework in between sessions. I don't explain why that's important off the bat. But if I had an app, then it would be changing the dynamic of the conversation. That's so interesting. Yeah.
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B
And I think about how many times I assign the same stuff to different clients. Right. Like it just did it yesterday. The same stuff, the same video, the same distressing conversation. You know what I mean?
- [20:44]
A
Yeah.
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C
Makes sense.
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B
It's all country located with an app.
- [20:49]
C
Definitely. And I mean, we plan to help there as well as we go forward, kind of providing, for example, explanations to therapists that they can give to their clients. But it is about the alliance that a therapist and a client have. And I think we've heard that term a lot. And it's so, so important to get that. Bianca.
- [21:07]
A
Cool. That's awesome. Yeah, Very, very interesting. Really, really interesting. So what do you want to make sure our audience takes away from your message here today? Coris?
- [21:18]
C
Two other things, actually, three other things. One of them, in terms of the homework activities, make it short and feasible. Right. So we. There are even within therapy there are activities which are longer and bigger and maybe more complicated. And I think assigning a first activity which is easy and short and something realistic makes absolute sense. That's probably why many therapists decide to assign about next session. It's so simple. It makes so much sense. That's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, technology is something that can help. It's an enabler. It's not the solution necessarily for everything. And there are products out there like theratat, but other products as well which can be acting as an enabler. So use technology as enabler, but not the solution. Even from our customers, we see that not 100% of their clients are using theratat, but definitely the majority of them. So it is for some people, maybe not for others, but use it as an enabler or technology. And the other thing, if you're definitely interested in assigning homework, I know no better tool to do that than Thera chat, of course. And you can go to www.therachat t h e r a c h a t IO we are running promotions for the May meta health awareness. So if you go to our pricing page, you'll see them. And if you have any feedback. We love feedback. You will realize that the first moment you get in touc with us. So that's.
- [22:43]
B
That's all right. And you have a special for our listeners that if they put in the coupon code month off, they'll receive a free month.
- [22:49]
A
Is that right?
- [22:50]
C
Definitely. Exactly. Month off. Low keys, letters, all of them. One, one word.
- [22:55]
B
So we're gonna also put that on the show Notes. So for you guys that aren't in a place where you can write down or whatever, no worries. We always got you covered there. So definitely check it out. I mean, I still have to check it out. I signed up and then I haven't gotten on yet, but I've been excited about it and. And I'm excited to actually utilize it.
- [23:12]
C
Great.
- [23:13]
B
Yeah. So thanks so much for hanging with us today and sharing this really cool technology opportunity for clients really to succeed and therapists to succeed with their clients. It's just. It's awesome.
- [23:25]
C
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And also props and kudos to everything that you do. I think you're pretty amazing. Your energy is amazing, but also the content, what you share is amazing. We see therapists wanting to hear a lot of the stories that you actually produce. So thank you.
- [23:41]
A
Thank you. That's culture. Great.
- [23:43]
B
Yeah, we appreciate that. And you know, interestingly enough, being an online entrepreneur sometimes is. We don't always get that feedback. So when an email pops up or something like that, or you share that, we totally appreciate that. So thank you.
- [23:55]
C
You're welcome.
- [23:56]
B
So next week, you guys want to join us on the podcast for Danielle Kepler, who's talking about myths about insurance practices. Danielle is a licensed therapist herself in Chicago, and she actually created Be youe Own Biller to help therapist Credential bill insurance. And one of the cool things that she talked about is how to advocate to raise your rates. So you're definitely not going to want to miss that podcast, especially if you take insurance. One thing I know that we haven't actually mentioned about our podcast, so we've been videoing our podcasts probably like the last 20 episodes now. And we're going to be maybe a little bit.
- [24:30]
A
Maybe a little bit more. Maybe a little bit more. Probably about 30 episodes now. And we mentioned it. A couple podcast together, we might say.
- [24:36]
B
It, but we're not like, really clear. So they are going to be eventually on YouTube. So if you enjoy listening to us, great. If you want to see us, cool too.
- [24:44]
A
And the fun thing about the YouTube is that they're unedited. You get the raw version. So you get the mistakes, you get the laughs, you get the, you know, the things that are edited out of the actual auditory podcast.
- [24:54]
B
This is true.
- [24:55]
A
So it's quite entertaining.
- [24:58]
B
So I'm sure that you have a colleague, I'm sure you have many colleagues actually. And if you think that they would find this podcast interesting, we're going to recommend you to share that with your colleague and actually really try out Thera Chat. It could improve your therapeutic relationship, your practice and think about when clients have better outcomes. Right. What do you think that they're going to do? They're probably going to talk about you and say you got spread the word.
- [25:22]
A
Word of mouth, baby.
- [25:23]
B
You want some raving fans. So if their chat helps you with this, this is a great way to build your practice and not like one of those like direct, direct ways that we always talk about, like have a great website or this. It could be a really great resource. So thanks guys for hanging out with us today. We hope you have an inspired and amazing day and thank you for allowing us to continue to inspire you from startup to mastery.
- [25:46]
A
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.