Everything I Outsource

Hello, and welcome back to the Productive Therapist Podcast!

Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate you.

I wanted to do a quick episode on all of the tasks and the roles that I use for outsourcing and delegating. So this is a topic that we cover a lot on this podcast. And certainly ProductiveTherapist.com about delegating and outsourcing and how much leverage that creates to free up your time to focus on things that might be more aligned with your skills, talents and interests.

So I wanted to just kind of run down the list and tell you who I outsource to and what I outsource to them.

So the start of the list here is my CPA. So my accountant actually is somebody that's in my office complex, so I can walk about two minutes outside of my office door and be in the office of my CPA. Obviously, they handle all taxes for both of my businesses, so that's really helpful in getting tax advice directly from a professional. Super helpful. Next up is my bookkeeper. I use Greg Higdon and his team from Growth of Books. I've never enjoyed QuickBooks or bookkeeping in general, so I'm happy to outsource that. And they do an amazing job.

Next up is intake coordinator. And as I've talked about on many podcasts before, it's such a wonderful thing to be able to hand over your intakes, your initial consultations with potential clients to somebody that you can trust that's going to convert those callers to clients in a really wonderful, compassionate way. So Tiffany is my longtime intake coordinator, and she is an employee of Productive Therapist. So she's a virtual assistant. She actually lives down in San Diego.

And then next up is my practice manager. Jamie is also an employee team member at Productive Therapist. And she handles just about everything you can imagine, from credentialing to insurance billing, human resources, quality assurance. She's just amazing. She's my right hand person, absolutely. And she happens to be local-remote. So she lives about 40 minutes from the office here. And so she's able to come in a couple of times...actually, it used to be a couple of times a year; maybe that was pandemic times, but now it's maybe once a month or so. So that's really wonderful.

Next up is my site supervisor, Jim, a long time team member here and therapist. And he handles all kinds of things related to the office space, whether that's buying snacks for all of us, getting the mail and getting printer ink, those types of things. But more importantly, he is sort of the onboarding person for new therapists. When new therapists are hired and getting sort of used to our systems and the way we operate, he is the point of contact and walks them through everything and helps them. Super wonderful to have, Jim.

Next up is my clinical supervisor, Shauna, who is absolutely wonderful, and she handles everything related to supervising the pre-licensed clinicians here. And we currently have four of those folks. And Shaun is just an amazing, trustworthy, solid clinician who is so good at mentoring and guiding the pre licensed therapist. I did supervision for a while and I did enjoy it, but I don't feel like that was absolutely the best use of my time, so she handles that. Next up is marketing. So Google AdWords and SEO. I outsourced to WSI, which is a company owned by a friend here locally in Sonoma County. I'm in California, and they are just so good at paid advertising and search engine optimization, so they help me with all of that.

And then just to round out the list, I've got a couple of folks that pop in when they're needed.

I've got a local photographer that comes by to take headshots of the therapist. And also my good friend Ernesto, owner of FylmIt.com, comes up whenever I need new videos. So he's my videographer. He's going to come this year because we've got a new brand, a new name for the practice, and record a new promo video for the whole practice, and then do individual promotional videos for the therapist as well.

So that's my list. I think that covers everyone.

Of course, I've got a business coach, and I've got a business adviser to the local small business development board, and that's about it. Maybe I'll do another episode on what I actually do, what's left. I guess I could tell you in a quick note here!

So I do still handle the email marketing because I enjoy that. I do still build the websites and maintain the websites, although I forgot about that. The new website we're having developed for Intune Family Counseling, which is our new brand. Actually the first time I'm not going to be the one building the website. So I guess I can officially add to this list that I'm adding website design and maybe even maintenance to that.

And I'm working with the amazing folks at Practicery, Justin and Kimberly Slagel, and they did the logo design for both of my businesses as well, so I couldn't recommend them more.

Let's see, what else do I do? I'm still very involved with hiring and providing feedback sessions. So employee reviews, managing essentially. And then any time there's a need for discipline or firing those kinds of things, I'm still on my plate. At some point, I'm going to sort of outsource and delegate those things to an executive director to kind of run more of the day to day and be in charge of that what else do I do? Obviously, as the CEO and the owner, I am responsible for the vision and the direction of the practice, so I still very much handle that and the goal setting and keeping us on track with what we're trying to accomplish in any given quarter, Any given year. But to be honest with you, when I'm sitting here thinking about it, looking at this list, there's not a lot that I still do. I actually don't provide direct services so I don't see clients, so my practice probably requires of me maybe two to 4 hours a week.

Yeah, that's about accurate. Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, but that's about what it is. So I really do believe in the power of delegating and outsourcing and I've done that to a high level and honestly, it's working very well for my family counseling practice and I'm very happy about it, so I hope that was helpful for you.

And my recommendation, no matter where you are in your private practice journey, Is to make this list, include all of these things and maybe you've only filled one or two of these roles. Maybe you filled none of them. That's okay, but this can be sort of a road map for you to look at who you could add to your team, whether it's contractors like my photographer and videographer or it's employees and team members so you can build out the team to help you accomplish your dream. I know that's cheesy and cliche, but it really is true.

Teamwork makes the dream work. So there you go. A couple of tips on outsourcing and delegating for becoming a more productive therapist. Thanks so much for listening.

And if you want more support with staying on track with your goals, I highly recommend Focus Club. It's not open all the time, but you can head over ProductiveTherapist.com/Focus and it's an accountability program that I built specifically for therapists to help them achieve their big goals and create a life that they love.

All kinds of wonderful components to that that I'd love for you to go check out, but if you really want help creating some momentum and staying on track with your goals this year, check out Focus Club.

Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening!