How To Grow Your Practice Using a CRM

Uriah
Berit, welcome to the Productive Therapist podcast.

Berit
Thanks, Uriah. It's great to be here.

Uriah
Yeah, it's so awesome to talk to you again. The cool thing is that when we met, we met in person for the first time, which is rare to say these days, isn't it?

Berit
Yeah, we did, which was great. That was awesome. In Kentucky, I think it was.

Uriah
It was.

Berit
We just hit the ground running with the conversation about all the things that we're interested in. I think you're one of those people that we knew each before we met each other or we think so similarly that it felt like that from the time we were talking. For me, at least it did.

Uriah
Yeah. Synchronicity. Absolutely. I'm genuinely excited to talk to you about CRM software It's one of... I mean, talking about software and playing with software is one of my favorite things, and I think this is something that you love to talk about, too. I think it will be really fun.

Berit
Yes, 100%. Yes. I'm so CRM stands for Client Relationship Management. It's just so interesting to me because the nature of what therapists do, the treatment itself is a relationship. Crm, the acronym I don't think it's thrown around a lot in the software world, but it's just super... It resonates so well with me when it comes to thinking about it in terms of the mental health field.

Uriah
Absolutely. Before we get into that, I would love for my audience to hear a little bit about you, your story, and what you've been up to the last couple of years?

Berit
Yeah, absolutely. Personally, I have always had a very deep interest in mental health. I love therapists, but not just because they're awesome, fun people who really empathize and understand me. But throughout my life, I actually, in my earlier life, had nearly lost more than one of the most important people of my life due to mental health struggles. But the reason I say nearly is because I firsthand how literally one relationship with a therapist could make all the difference. In my academic background, I studied... I have a master's of social psychology and theater, so nothing to do with software. Back back in the day. I was really intrigued by the healing powers of theater. I ended up writing my master's thesis on one specific theater technique, and I wanted to help people use that technique to manage their I called that emotive agility. But coming out of grad school for the next 15 years, I did a lot of coaching on my technique through theater. However, my bread and butter, my professional experience was entirely in sales. And looping back to a CRM, a CRM is a, traditionally, a sales tool. There's not a single industry that doesn't use a CRM to sell what they are doing or to develop their business. So I hopped right into the fitness world. I had my own personal training studio, but then became the National Director of Sales and Operations for six fitness franchises across the country. I did that for about 8-10 years. So lots of sales. I was a financial sales trainer. I sold advertising through the LA Times, the real estate world, even. But at 2021, when a lot of us brought This brings me to that point where the great exit, I don't know what they called it, but when everyone quit their job because they wanted to really fulfill their purpose, well, that included me. I really felt like I quit all my sales jobs that were killing my soul. I said, Who do I want to help? Now that I understand business development, I understand sales conversion and business practices, who do I want to help? It was therapist. It was around that time in 2021 that I started Practice Axis. That's such a cool story. A zigzag journey.

Uriah
Yeah, I know. It's amazing to see how a career develops. Some people's path is very linear. They're in high school or elementary school, they're like, I'm going to be a doctor, and then it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, six, and they're a doctor. But I think most of us go in a different path. I have to ask you the question, so how did you land on social psychology and theater, and how did you combine those things? Real quick, I'm just curious.

Berit
Oh, yeah. Thank you for asking. I was so intrigued with this, a theater technique, But specifically because it wasn't mental, it was physical. It was all about how your physical body can impact your own emotions from the outside in. I thought, this is personal development. This shouldn't just be to create performances for actors. This should be something that people who are not theater people, which is like most of the population is not a theater kid or an actor, they should have access to these skills. I took a theater technique called, and originally, Gertovsky was the inspiration, modified it to teach emotional intelligence skills. There was a drama therapy department at NYU, but I didn't become a drama therapist by chance. They allowed me to blend the two disciplines and create a degree out of that.

Uriah
Because you're always making your own path.

Berit
No linear academic path whatsoever.

Uriah
You're clearly the person that looks for a problem and tries to find a solution and put those two things together wherever you land. So I think that's awesome. And I'm so thrilled that you landed in supporting the mental health community with all the skills and experience that you've acquired. That's so fantastic.

Berit
Yeah. Thank you.

Uriah
So this is a random question, but when you talked about fitness and gyms and all that, and you talked about sales, I just have to ask you, do you know who Alex Formosi is? And if so, yes, no? No. Okay.

Berit
Should I? Oh, no.

Uriah
No, it's okay. I'm googling right now. No, it's okay. It's just a person that I found recently in the last year and started following. And he's a guy who's a serial entrepreneur, and you can Google him, but he had, I think his business was called Gymshark. He basically coached gym owners to grow their gyms. Then he talks a lot about sales and ideal life. He's like an entrepreneur guy. He really got some great YouTube videos.

Berit
No, I don't know him, but I have been a follower of how to grow your personal training studio. It is wild the parallel between group practices and personal training studios. Just From a strictly business perspective, a strictly business structure. The person is coming, well, I can get into it, but you have to exchange time and space for money, it's service-based. There's a great parallel. I followed Googles like that.

Uriah
That makes a lot It makes sense, yeah. Let's get into it. For the people listening to this, some folks will know already what a CRM means because we like acronyms, EHR, CBT, et cetera. But a lot of people won't know what a CRM is. What is CRM software and how is it used?

Berit
Okay, so a CRM, as I mentioned, stands for Client Relationship Management. But what the software is designed to do is to be a database, a repository for all potential clients, and to track the path from the time a client inquires, from the time you make contact with a client, to the... Sorry, from the time you make contact with a prospective client, and to the time that they become a close Closed client. Closed meaning closed a deal. A CRM in the sales context is traditionally a sales tool, is a software to track the stages that a lead or prospect goes through on their way to becoming your client. That means credit card swiped, bill paid, agreement signed, whatever becoming a client means in a sales context. Okay, perfect. Within a CRM, there's pathways. There's a pipeline within a CRM. Within a CRM, you can automate emails, text messages, It's a task. It's an administrative tool for salespeople originally to keep track of the deals that they're closing. I hesitate because I hate to use the word deals in the context. And the CRM is also a repository for all your marketing efforts. So digital marketing leads, it's capturing leads, and then it's tracking the process, automating, communication, and then being able to give you reports and insights on the status of how many converted to clients.

Uriah
Yeah, it's a powerful tool for sure. And correct me if I'm wrong, but Every business, specifically every service-based business, has stages that their new potential and new clients go through, whether or not they're written down, documented, or actually manually moved through a process. If somebody doesn't a CRM, they still have all of those processes and stages. They just don't maybe have them organized and a way to keep track of them and monitor it. Is that true?

Berit
Yes, that's true. I would say that is absolutely true. Those processes are already there This is a digital version of those processes. It allows you to- It also makes it visual.

Uriah
That's one of my favorite things.

Berit
Yes. Actually, what drove me nuts was that EHRs did not already have this. I went Practice Access was born while I was doing a process. I was a process consultant for a group practice that wanted to scale from 10 to 20 therapists. I said, Okay, hang on. You're turning away 50% of the people who are calling in. Maybe there's very legitimate reasons, like availability or clinical need. We just don't know why. There's a lot of availability on the client's calendar. Don't worry, I'll just get you a CRM because it came so naturally as a sales tool. Then I didn't go look for a CRM. I went to look for an HR to find which one had CRM capabilities.

Uriah
Because it must exist, right?

Berit
Yes, it must exist. Because that visual, like you said, I know you appreciate geeky versions of technology, but the visual is so important to me as well. What stage is this of my company's process or my practice's process? What stage is this person in? Imagine if you're tracking 400 a month, even if you're not, it's hard to visualize or keep in your head.

Uriah
Gosh, you know what I've realized over the last five, six years of running Productive Therapist and helping hundreds of practices is that it gets really complex. There's actually a lot of steps and stages. It's probably easier to bring in gym clients. I would imagine that it is therapy clients to a group practice because some of us make it more complex than it needs to be. But there are potentially a lot of different steps to follow, aren't there?

Berit
100%. Yeah. That's why a traditional CRM wouldn't work for a mental health practice. That's one of the reasons, is it is most pathways or pipelines in a CRM are just a few steps. Client calls. We told client the pricing. Client came in for a consultation. We sent an agreement, client signed it or did not, and it's over. Maybe that's- Five stages. That's a medium-sized one. It's unbelievable the zigzagging that has to go on. Also, I'm in awe of the different intake teams that I see. It's unbelievable the numerous steps because of the insurance factor. It's amazing that there are intake teams that every single intake coordinator that I meet is just holding so much in her head. It's unbelievable. All the different steps that happen when you have to check insurance, get paperwork signed, what if there's two parents that need to sign the paperwork and one has and one hasn't? What if someone can't log into the portal? That's not an overstatement to say there. There are just so many additional steps. There's a lot to track. Just on the way to the intake session, it's such a journey.

Uriah
It really is. I actually covered our intake line for just a couple of days over the holidays, and I was almost immediately stressed out. There were a couple of calls that came in that were complex in nature, the needs of those particular clients. But I know when my intake coordinator came back, I said, Thank you so much again for everything you do and how well you do it and so consistently, because it's not an easy job. It really isn't. Crm will absolutely make the job of an intake coordinator much easier, or even a solo practice owner for that matter. Anybody who's handling that job of taking those initial calls or inquiries and trying to get those folks into the practice. You talked a little bit about why regular sales CRMs don't work for mental health practices. That makes a lot of sense, at least to me. I'm a long time user of active campaign, and it's really good for productive therapist, but it's actually pretty limited, and it's not designed for a therapy practice by any means. Talking about the complexity of the intake process, I'm curious, what are some of the biggest inefficiencies that you've seen when you've gotten the behind-the-scenes look at someone's intake process?

Berit
I think it's no secret. I think it's the typing and retyping of emails, number one. I think most intake partners would say, I'm retyping, I'm copying and pasting email templates of things that I typically need to send out to every client. Then maybe even a close second, if not, ahead of that is the phone tag and tracking who they followed up with, who they have to have followed up with. The intake teams at group practices typically might include a few part-time people. Or there might be one full-time intake coordinator, but also an operations manager. There's almost always a the biller. Coordinating that communication of what's the last communication that went out to a client when someone else is coming in on... You e-mail the client on Wednesday, and then I'm coming in because My shift is on Friday, or I'm filling in for you. Where do we see a CRM can give you the history of that communication so that the baton could be passed, so to speak? In a traditional CRM, because It's a sales tool. Nobody wants that collaboration because they're all working on commission to close deals. That makes sense. That's why it's so hard to contort a CRM for mental health practices because they're actually set up for one person to own that experience with that client and get them to a deal. It's just not the case in mental health practices. It's nice to be able to track if you want to see who was us, if you want to assign one person to that client, But it might just be for organizational purposes because it wouldn't be... There's a lot more collaboration that needs to go on in the clinical stages.

Uriah
Sure. Now, those things make a lot of sense. Did I answer your question? Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. So the manual steps of the process just with communication. Usually, those things are relatively similar for every client, but there's always some variability, right? But there's parts of that that can be either automated or at least templated, for sure. And yeah, phone tag, I think, is the bane of our existence, for sure, because most practices don't have live answers. Some try, for sure, but a lot of us don't. And so trying to get in touch with the client and, like you said, walk them through to being a closed dealer. Yeah, I don't like using that language either.

Berit
I never use that language.

Uriah
Getting them to the help they need. How about that?

Berit
Yeah, I I like to say converting them to a client, having them arrive. They complete their journey. They start a journey when they call, they complete their journey when they become a client. Then they're on the journey that they originally wanted to be, which is a whole new journey of therapy. The intake session is just the beginning, but for the intake coordinators, it's the end. I think as far as wasted time, there is a lag. In a CRM, you can have an automated email go out the second someone fills out a form on your website. You can also send out an automated email the second you type their email into one little slot on a form, and it'll send them an automated email with the forms they need. That lag can make all the difference. A lot of care coordinators are spending time, as you know, trying to call back people who filled out a website form. They filled out a website form and they didn't receive any information for maybe until you get them on the or until I come in in the morning and copy and paste an email. With the automated emails can go out, but also you can pop up templates and pull in information from existing fields to make your, let's say, your GFE email go out faster or your appointment confirmation email, what have you.

Uriah
You're still right that speed matters. It really does. I have to say this. I'm all about words, right? Maybe Instead of closing a deal, it could be, We facilitated the transformations.

Berit
Oh, I love it.

Uriah
Transformation facilitated. I love it. Yes. Yes.

Berit
Facilitated. I mean, I need more... I like facilitated. We transformed this prospect to a client.

Uriah
It really is a transformative process, and it is life-changing, so there should be better language. But in any case, move the referral along the process.

Berit
I'm truly not a fan of the word 'converted.'

Uriah
I know. I'm Not either, but still, it feels like we're talking about a widget. Like, Look, we converted this carburator to turbo, or something like that.

Berit
Yes. Anywho. Yes. I welcome this wordsmithing. I welcome the wordsmithing.

Uriah
Yes. There's a lot of inefficiencies in the average, let's say, intake process. The benefits to automating and streamlining an intake process are huge, right? Obviously, more clients will come into the practice. People will get the transformations that they need faster. The practice will also, of course, make more money and all the good things. This is a critical, probably one of the most critical aspects of any practice, aside from actually delivering good services. But on the front-end, this is it. It's the lifeblood of any practice.

Berit
Yeah, absolutely. It's twofold because automating is going to help people wait for therapy for less time. One of the biggest problems in the US is that the average waitlist is six to eight weeks. Documented across various cities, various demographics. So A, if there are automated elements of the process in the CRM, people will wait on waitlist for shorter amounts of time. You can sort way better. And super big bonus, the Client Care Coordinator saves herself time and frustration, as well as the Practice Owner may not need to expand their intake team as rapidly if there's more automation going on in the intake process. Then at the same time, I never would recommend automating everything. I'm not a fan of automating for the it just because we can. There might be some information that you would want to give over the phone. And definitely information. So business-wise, if you're going to tell somebody to have a giant deductible, Maybe you'd like to tell them they have the deductible over the phone and talk about the other services you have at your practice or why this private pay therapist would be a great fit if they can do it. Or maybe come in for a yoga class that we also offer or a group, rather than an email with your giant deductible. There's those kinds of things, but especially the very first... They need to know that there is a person behind the automation, that there's someone guiding them because it's really an emotionally intelligent match that needs to be made.

Uriah
That's so true. We might have to do another podcast episode on how artificial intelligence is going to change or is changing the intake process. That's something I would love to talk to you about. But I'm taking from what you're saying there, and I agree that the human touch is still important. Yeah, we shouldn't automate everything and those things. But it does make me think also that this is probably one of the reasons why Betterhelp and talk space in these other companies are doing so well, because you can download an app and you can get a therapist in, maybe not minutes, but certainly in hours and probably less than a day. You can get matched with a therapist, you can get an appointment with a therapist in a matter of hours. That's what we're competing with in a sense. So speed and efficiency, all these things are going to help.

Berit
I do know that. I think that it speaks to that larger access issue. From my perspective, which may not be the overall global statistic perspective is it's the fact that there's so many people that need therapy and there's only a finite amount of therapists. But I know that a lot of therapists with brick and mortar, so to speak, on the ground, in-person therapy centers or practices are competing with better help and may have philosophies that they're going to be able to serve that client better because the relationship can be stronger rather than through an app. I love that it's increased access, and I know that first impression matters so much when people are calling around. The phone call back is so important If a therapist, if it can help you keep track of who got a call back and who didn't, and I call them exactly six. I know a practice, one that works with us, calls seven times, and they keep track of exactly how many times. Sometimes it's an email, sometimes it's a text, sometimes it's a call, and it's tracked. It's such a fascinating issue.

Uriah
I heard one of my new friends who's going to be the podcast soon is Brett Stutzman from Brand Your Practice. He's a great guy, and he has... I can't remember his entire tagline, but part of it is the fortune is in the follow-up. When you're talking about the contact in the follow-up, that makes me think of that. But it matters because I think a lot of people, if not most people, are ambivalent about starting therapy, even when it's not because of a huge conflict in a marriage or a family or other relationship or something like that. It's hard to get yourself into therapy and admit that you need it and then reach out and get it. I think most people are ambivalent about it. If they try and it doesn't work, they can at least say, Well, I tried therapy, but nobody called me back. But not if you call my practice because we're going to follow up We're going to do everything that we can to make that happen.

Berit
Yes. Sorry. One thing on that, it is so interesting, the spirit of the follow-up. When When you're doing follow-up, it's such a massive point. People could be so... It could be like they work themselves up for six months to reach out to a therapist, and then they're completely ghosted. Because the therapy practice didn't intentionally ghost them, but they just literally couldn't manage the number of inquiries coming in, and that person could be very demoralized. And when you finally do call them back, they don't want to pick up the phone. So it's different than when you follow up for a sales deal for someone like, I saw an Instagram ad for your yoga studio. Now we're going to call them many times to come back to the yoga studio or buy this shake product. That's so different because the spirit of the follow-up is motivated in a traditional Serum sales sense by the commission for that salesperson. How can we be sensitive as we're following up that we're trying to be ethical and emotionally intelligent about offering that care and encouraging. Often people call, they hang up if they don't get a callback from a therapist and they call six other on Google. That speed really matters from a business sense, too. There's a statistic that if you don't call back in the first five minutes, first five minutes, if they don't get a response, text, email, call, the chance of them transforming into a client It goes down by 80% if you don't get back immediately.

Uriah
Oh, that's hard to hear. Yeah, it's true. I know. It's true. Interesting.

Berit
I love this business and healthcare side. It's so interesting, the intersection.

Uriah
It really is. There's so many different ways I want to take the conversation, but I know we don't have forever. I have to ask you this question. This is totally off script, but do you have a strong opinion about the importance of live answer for an intake line?

Berit
My instant answer, my gut reaction is like, it's always better. It's always better. I don't have a strong opinion. It's something you shouldn't do. But from a strictly business perspective, from a business development perspective, if there is live answer, the chances of that person converting to a client, they just are much higher. They just are. It's not an opinion, I think. But I think that a lot of people are reaching out through email, through text. I think there's all different ways. That way they can get a link to forms or maybe a link to a video with the client. Maybe there can be an instant text with a, I don't know about the HIPAA compliance, or if it's maybe it would have to not be perceived as solicitation in certain states, but just a friendly hello, we're glad you reached out, GIF or video that can go out if you don't have a live answer. That's off the top of my head.

Uriah
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, you're right. It's not an opinion. If you respond to that person quicker, you're more likely to transfer them into a client. I think the challenge that I've seen, and this is a whole another conversation and podcast episode, too, but the conversation is usually, I want live answer. I see the value, but it's too expensive for the business at this time. Or you hire somebody part-time and they can only do it sometimes, that thing. I'm going to try and experiment.

Berit
Do you want to trust that?

Uriah
Yeah. So many factors. I'm going to try and experiment. I do have an intake coordinator who could do this, but she also supports other practices. It's not like she can just devote a day to my practice, per se. But I'm going to clear a day in the near future, and I'm going to just be available for calls all day long. Anybody that calls, I'm picking it up right away, and I'm going to just see, out of all the calls that come in, how many of those become clients. Obviously, it's not one for one. There's reasons people can't be a client. They're not an ideal client for one reason or another, but I'm going to try that and see what happens.

Berit
Yeah, I will follow up with you if you wouldn't mind sharing the results. That sounds interesting. It's cool. I want to hear about how that goes. I want to hear about how that goes. It's also so random, right? It's so random Who knows? The day that you're doing the phones, people could have particular needs versus the other day. No, it's true. The day you didn't do the phone.

Uriah
It's so- There truly are so many variables. There are a lot.

Berit
There really are. Also, it's like, are we doing well enough broadly as a practice? Broadly as a practice, do we need live answer? Maybe you're full. Do you want live answer? Is it a priority across all? Maybe there's other clinical priorities that are more important than putting the budget towards someone to live answer. I completely appreciate that.

Uriah
It's a factor to consider, yeah. When people hire us to provide virtual assistant and virtual intake coordinator services, we always prioritize a quick response. But it's usually Within 15 minutes to 2 hours, that's usually our turnaround time. It's almost always faster than the practice owner doing it themselves. That's really beneficial. We've found that we can have really good conversion rates even without live answer. But of course, you add those layers of increased customer service, and you're just going to do better. It's a matter of, I think, using the tools and the team that you can afford as you grow and ramping those things up as you go along. That's my opinion.

Berit
Yeah, that's super fast. If I reach out for therapy and someone called me within the first five hours of the day, I'd be like, Wow, because there's a lot of volume of calls.

Uriah
Yeah, so that's definitely. Definitely. I'm going to let you choose between these two questions. Pick your favorite. Okay. How about this? Let's talk about either what data most practice owners are missing out on by not having a CRM or what best practices can private practice owners borrow from other industries. Which one of those do you like?

Berit
I like them both, but I'm so passionate about the first one.

Uriah
Yes. Let's talk about data.

Berit
I'm not sure. Because I don't think we I haven't touched on it just yet. It's the reason for going through maybe the growing pains of adopting a CRM at your practice. Data is the reason that once you follow certain best practices, it's the gold for putting the effort in to switch to a CRM. So business intelligence, that is what practice owners are missing. So the business intelligence needed to scale their practice effectively is what's lacking if you don't have a CRM. So what I mean by that is a couple of examples. If you realize that 60 people inquired this month and 32 did not become clients or didn't make it to an intake session, if we can track with the CRM through reports, was it due to availability Well, hey, maybe... And then we can dig deeper. Oh, they were requesting Saturdays. Okay, it could be as easy as add a therapist to my team for Saturdays. Same goes for clinical needs. Are we turning away people for certain clinical needs? That can inform your hiring decisions, who you hire next, or are we turning away so many people who are requesting this particular insurance panel? Well, maybe that's something in our next quarterly meeting we think about getting on that panel because it can actually give The CRM can give you the data on how many you lost out on, so to speak, for not having that insurance. So that business intelligence is a huge part. Another one is termination reason by therapist. This isn't like a one that anyone who's not a practice owner is a fan of, but knowing why... Managing, I should have said retention first. A serum can help you track retention just because you have the data on the first time they reached out and how long they remained as a client. But then why are they terminating with each particular person on your team? Maybe there's some coaching opportunities for your clinical staff.

Uriah
Yeah. Those are two examples. There's a lot of options for data that you can pull out of a CRM, the metrics that you want to track, maybe some more important to some people than others. But if you don't have a tool like this, you can still track the metrics, but they're harder to... It takes longer and it's harder to pull that information from a spreadsheet or from other sources, isn't it?

Berit
Yeah, right. There's certain reports, if you're tracking all this data by hand, that you can then spend some time building in Google Sheets some graphs. But it's more instant with a CRM, and a CRM allows you to drill down instantly. Okay, we had I didn't mention marketing. So we had five inquiries or 50 inquiries this month who just emailed us directly. They just emailed us and said, Are you taking new clients? Okay, who were those people? We can click on that part of the pie graph and instantly see a list of them. Then if you're noticing, Wait, why does this data look off? You might be able to catch inefficiencies in your intake process quickly. If you're like, Oh, my client care team was using It was selecting that drop-down item, and it was making us think that we had people inquired through psychology today when they really had inquired through a different way. You can catch inefficiencies and use that to inform your marketing and hiring decisions, too.

Uriah
I like that. I think this is not just a therapist thing, but it's probably a human entrepreneur thing. But we often make emotionally-driven decisions instead of data-driven decisions. It's so easy to do that because we can't help but make our business personal. But it's much better when you can look at some numbers and some charts, not to be cold about it, but just to say, What are we actually dealing with here and what are the problems that we need to solve? Not just like, It feels like things are not going well, because that's never going to get you to actually a good problem solving place.

Berit
Yeah, the numbers are so clarifying. As someone that did not study math or accounting, it I do tend to be more emotionally... When I evaluate something, I go on my gut. When I look at numbers, it's so illuminating. I'm trying to think of even some more good examples. Maybe time, like how long did it take from the time someone inquired to the time they made it to an intake session? Some practice owners are just trying to know, Do I need more staff now? Or like, How, based on the volume of inquiries, am I overloading my amazing intake coordinator who I adore and could not stand to lose? Should I get them more support? Just looking at the numbers of the time this takes.

Uriah
I'll tell you a quick anecdote. We just hired a new pre-licensed therapist who's starting in about two weeks. I was trying to gage how long it's going to take to fill up her caseload. I got in touch with my intake coordinator and I said, Hey, can you look at the last three and tell me how many inquiries we turned away due to a lack of availability? Because the new person coming on is going to have a good amount of availability in the times that are most important. She came back and said it was like 21 people. I thought, Well, that's a lot. If we can even capture, not capture, but transform half of those folks, that would be amazing. That was helpful. It definitely helped me be more confident that, yes, hiring a person now and bringing them on is a good idea because we have the the lead flow or the referral flow to do that. That was a recent example that I think fits our conversation.

Berit
A hundred %, yeah. It also speaks to the fact that you can get this data. You know your intake order, you know this data, you can quickly get it. It's at the moment that you're thinking about scaling and expanding is when you want to go all in on a serum. I don't know why. I'm saying this for people that it may be overwhelming to think about adopting a new software tool. I want people to know that it's out there, that there's machines out there that can calculate these things for you, and that they go hand in hand with best practices and training opportunities. That's a perfect example of hiring information.

Uriah
Yeah, that was actually my next question.

Berit
Business intelligence. Yeah.

Uriah
100%. If someone's listening to this and they're thinking like, Well, I don't know. Is this the right time? Should I take on this expense? I mean, clearly between you and I, we both believe that it's going to benefit any practice at any level, but it is a business expense, so they have to figure that out and make sure it fits the budget because you don't want to put the work in and then have it to pull the plug a couple months later because it's not affordable or something like that. But what are the questions that person should ask themselves about? Is now the right time? Is this a good move for my practice?

Berit
Yeah. Number one is, are you growing your practice? I know that probably many, 99% of your listeners are, but if you're not growing a practice, Sure. You may not need a serum. It may be a nice to have, or if things feel like you don't have an intake headache, you're not overwhelmed with that. That's one reason. That's a good question is, are we growing? If we are growing, this is a yes. If you are in another... Speaking of where you put your focus on your business, as you can only put your focus in so many places at once, if you're changing your EHR, for example, you're making another big change in your practice at the same time, you probably wouldn't want to also make another... I never recommend people make software changes simultaneously. That's just on a practical level. Then if you can think about what you would consolidate or things you can replace. If you're logging into many things at once, for example, CRMs can send out email campaigns. If you want to cancel Mailchimp, if you're using a task management, you may or may not want to still keep it. But I think a good thing to do is to demo a CRM and see, would this save me expense elsewhere? Whether on administrative hours for a client care team or on other software that I'm using? Yeah, that in addition to wanting to grow.

Uriah
What I heard you say is, ask yourself, is my intake process a hot mess? If it feels like it's disorganized, or honestly, if your intake coordinator is really stressed out all the time and they're like, I can't do this job. I might have to quit. You might need a CR. That'd be a funny comedy bit, wouldn't it? Yeah, that'd be fun to make a little video on that for some market practice access.

Berit
It would. The big dumpster comes by with a fire coming out. It's a dumpster fire.

Uriah
Oh my goodness. Is your intake coordinator asking for Ibuprofen every day because they have a headache? Is it an intake headache? Okay, I'm I'm going to stop there.

Berit
You're right. You're good. You're too good at this. You're too good at this.

Uriah
I have to start an ad agency.

Berit
I may poach you to help do it as they have to do ads.

Uriah
Oh my gosh. So much good stuff. Okay, so what I want... People are listening to this and they probably want to see a visual. They want to check it out, take a look. Can you tell people where to go to check out Practice Access and learn more?

Berit
Yeah, absolutely. PracticeAxis.com, and you'll find a link to book a demo. If It's a quick and easy form, and then we will get you set up with a demo. I also should clarify, it will in the title of your podcast, but it's a double entendre. It's not Access, it's not A-C-C-E-S-S. It's Practice Axis.com. Perfect. I like to think of us as the X axis is sales and business development, and the Y axis is health care. We're this line right in between, on a line graph right in between those things.

Uriah
I like it. Well, thank you so much for everything that you do. And thanks for being on the podcast. It's always so fun to talk to you. And hopefully, we can meet up in person sometime again in this year or next That would be cool.

Berit
That would be so... This was a blast to talk to you. Yeah. And I do hope we can meet in person sometime soon. Okay. Take care. Bye. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.