The Testing Psychologist ft. Jeremy Sharp

Uriah
Hey, Jeremy, welcome to the podcast.

Jeremy
Hey, Uriah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Uriah
Yeah, so good to do this. I was on your podcast twice, and this is your first time coming back on my show, right?

Jeremy
Yeah, I know. I feel like I have a big favor repay. Pay.

Uriah
Not at all.

Jeremy
You gave me that opportunity here.

Uriah
Well, I remember first talking to you before I started the Productive Therapist podcast, and you sent me your notes of like, Hey, maybe you should consider this microphone and this software. I still have that. And that was incredibly helpful.

Jeremy
I forgot about that. Just those.

Uriah
Little tips, right?

Jeremy
Absolutely. Those are the hurdles that you can get stuck on when you're.

Uriah
Getting started. It's so true. I always appreciate anybody that I can nerd out about technology with, and you seem to be a good counterpoint for that.

Jeremy
I am always up for nerding out on technology. I feel like that's always the challenge with our interviews is holding back and not just nerding out on technology and sticking.

Uriah
To whatever topic. 100 %. I remember we got off... Didn't we get off talking about artificial intelligence? But that was like, I want to say that was like a year or two ago.

Jeremy
Oh, yeah.

Uriah
Yeah. And boy, has that changed.

Jeremy
Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's funny. Here we go. But I was putting together some material for this event that I'm trying to plan. And just to see, I popped in the chat GPT and was like, Give me 10 names for an event for psychologists who want to relax but get a lot of business work done. And there we go. I've got 10 names. Then I was like, tweak it a little bit this way, 10 more names.

Uriah
Great. So I'm going to tell you about something, and then we're going to get to the topic, I promise everybody who's listening. So we actually are going to talk about getting admin support for your testing and psychology practice. So this morning, I did a little experiment with something, and I'll show you off when we're not recording, but I went on chat GPT and asked it to write me a promotional ad for Productive Therapist, a company that provides virtual assistance to group practice owners, etc. And said, and feel free to use any copy from productivetherapist. Com. So I gave it that prompt and it spit out a really nice... I think I asked for a cheerful ad, a cheerful promotional ad. So it gave me a great little script. And then I went and used this tool that I just bought called Pippio, which allows you to upload a script or an audio recording and then pair that with an artificial intelligence actor that will voice your script. I know it's hard to imagine this. I'm going to show you and it's frightening how good it is. So literally, and I'm not even joking, literally in four minutes, I had a script and I had a finished video with a professional background with a professional voice actor completely reading my script.

Uriah
And it's not like a 1,000 % perfect, but it's really good.

Jeremy
It's close enough. Yeah, close enough to be scary and.

Uriah
Awesome. yeah. And then I think I might even actually have this company create an Avatar of myself, which is even more frightening.

Jeremy
You're going deep. Yeah. It's a small step to deep fake from that point.

Uriah
Yeah, exactly. But if I could write a script and then show up on camera delivering that script for a training or an onboarding video or something like that without ever having to set up lights and camera and all that stuff, that'd be pretty cool.

Jeremy
That's super cool. I can't wait to see that.

Uriah
Yeah. Okay, so onto the topic at hand. So you know that productive therapists has gone back and forth a little bit on providing services to testing psychology practices. And that's mostly been because there's more complexity and challenges that come with any testing practice than a purely therapy practice. That's always the case.

Jeremy
Some.

Uriah
More than others. But we've come to decide that we do very much want to support testing practices. And so we figured out that the best way to do that, I actually would love your feedback on this, but is to have dedicated team members who really only work with testing practices. So they don't need a lot more training when they want to support another practice. So I think that might be the best way to go. And that's what we're doing right now. So we've got a new team member who we're training to just work with testing practices.

Jeremy
I love that.

Uriah
Yeah. I think that will make more sense than having multiple people, basically just fewer subject matter experts, if you will. What do you think about that?

Jeremy
Yeah, I really like that. I really like that. I mean, the nuances of a testing practice are just enough, I think, that it does fall outside the typical VA repertoire of skills. And to have folks just single task and zero in on testing practices makes sense to me. They're not task switching as much.

Uriah
Definitely. I'm curious, from your perspective and all the people that you consult with and talk to, what are the specific challenges for owners of testing practices when they're looking to hire an intake coordinator or even other admin support positions, maybe for the first time or maybe as they're expanding? What are the challenges that they face that are unique?

Jeremy
I don't know that this is exactly unique, but I do think that very common challenge of how do I trust someone else is just amplified to the nth degree with testing folks. I don't know if it's because testing is such a detail oriented, data driven process that it attracts personalities that are more detail oriented and maybe a little OCD or meticulous or what. But it seems like the trust factor is huge for testing folks. I think that's also complicated because testing is a niche that not a lot of people have experience with in the real world, so you might, I suppose, find a VA who's been to counseling and they get what that is and how that works and can use that experience to inform their admin duties, but testing not so much. I think that's.

Uriah
A unique skill set.

Jeremy
Yeah, it complicates the picture. So we don't have a lot of trust that there's anyone out there who gets it like we do, who can explain what we do and enter the data accurately and thing.

Uriah
That makes sense because there are a lot more steps and a lot more aspects to the process of even onboarding a client for testing services. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the price points are higher, the services that you're delivering. That changes things a little bit, I would imagine.

Jeremy
It does. It's weird. It's like your mind reading me and looking at notes. But yeah, I was just going to say the calls are longer. Our intake calls are typically 15 minutes on average, maybe 20 as we explain the whole process, which is pretty nuanced. T he price point is higher, so I think there's more to lose. I know a lot of testing practice owners who are ecstatic if they convert four clients a month. Let's say 2,500 of an Eval, that's a good chunk of income. If one of those doesn't convert, that's a lot of vulnerability for us on our income and just practice reputation. Both those things, I think, are.

Uriah
Super important. There's more risk. And it occurs to me, too, whenever a business is selling a higher priced service or product, for that matter, there's just more that goes into guiding the person to making that buying decision because they're putting more money out for the service and they want to make sure that they're making the best decision. So if you put somebody in that role that's not excellent or at least working towards being excellent, you very quickly are losing potential clients and lots of potential income.

Jeremy
Yes, 100 %. Trying to think if there are any other things. I mentioned the attention to detail. I think we just struggle to find or believe that other folks might have the attention to detail that's needed for some of the admin tasks.

Uriah
That definitely makes sense. I wonder, this is just me wondering out loud, if other professionals have similar challenges. If an engineer needs to delegate some aspect of the engineering process, I would guess that that is more complicated, more complex, and more difficult for them to hand it over to somebody else. Not to their use of virtual assistant, but just that level of specificity and processes that are really important to follow.

Jeremy
Yeah, I think you're right. Now it's got me thinking of adjacent fields that are detail oriented, what that training might look like for assistance in those fields. Think about chemists or engineers.

Uriah
Sure. I know when I reached out to you not too long ago, I was asking you the question, basically, of what types of things would you train a new intake coordinator or admin support position person on that would be specific to testing practices. So over and above general virtual assistant or just assistant duties, maybe even a step above intake coordinator role. And you give me a good list. Should we talk through that real quick?

Jeremy
Yeah, we could.

Uriah
Definitely do that. I have your list if you want me to read what you sent me, or you could tell me what you got.

Jeremy
Let's see. Yeah, I don't want to bore anybody. Let's hear the list. What did I send you before?

Uriah
Let's start here. I'll rattle it off. You had three really good points. Over and above general training for an admin person, you said meeting with the practice owner and learning more detail about the types of assessments they provide. That's really important. Then having them, you suggested to read several evaluation reports, so they really understand the product that they're selling and how that fits into the bigger picture. Then you had a great suggestion here, which I like a lot of having the owner record five to 10 intake calls and then letting the assistant transcribe them and then work with that information to train them.

Jeremy
Yes. Wow.

Uriah
Those were good ideas. Solid suggestions.

Jeremy
I do things, forget about them and then love them again. I think that first one is huge, actually. That really truly goes above and beyond, I think, a typical VA role. To really understand testing, we do have this benefit of a concrete finished product that someone can look at and understand. And so, yes, spending the time to let your assistant read those reports and even look at the testing measures to really get a deep understanding of the service that you're providing, I think goes a long way toward helping them sell that service when they're on the phone with potential clients. Because then it's not just, hey, we do comprehensive evaluations and they're really helpful. It's, well, yeah, we administer this test and you're going to get all these results and the recommendations are going to look like this. Here's what you can expect. I think filling in those details helps potential clients feel more comfortable and understand what they're getting into.

Uriah
That is interesting that there's an actual deliverable. The report can be held and read and consumed and you can wrap your mind around that. That's probably easier to do in some ways than understanding the therapeutic process, which is much less concrete.

Jeremy
Well, sure. Right. There's variation in testing processes, of course, but with counseling, I don't know. I feel like I could observe 20 different counselors who are theoretically doing the same thing, even the same orientation, and not be able to describe what's happening without a lot of help. That's a good point. But with testing, yeah, we've got this nice written report. You can read it. It tells you exactly what we did, what the results are. That's a nice thing.

Uriah
I think one thing that's tied to that, it's always a good thing for business owners to do is to communicate the bigger vision and the bigger purpose of why we provide this service, the difference it makes in people's lives. When we train our virtual assistants, I always talk to them about why your role is so important and how do you make a difference, which I think is really valuable. Depending on the type of testing, it's always going to be a stepping stone to some, hopefully, pathway to improvement. It really is changing people's lives. At least that's the way I like to think about it. The person that's even just answering questions and guiding them to become a testing client, that's so important for that person to understand how they're making a difference in this role is really vital.

Jeremy
Yeah, I agree 100 %. For a lot of folks, it's a big moment in their lives or in their kids lives. To help our admin staff understand that, that was a real game changer where, Hey, you're not just reading from a script here, we really encourage folks to dig in with the phone call and be able to speak specifically about how the Eval can help that person and how it is a stepping stone. That's a good word. It's really important. It provides meaning. It provides.

Uriah
Meaning for the admin. And direction, understanding. For the client and for the admin, that's true. Yeah, sure. One more question.

Jeremy
I think it's important. Yeah, go ahead.

Uriah
I was just going to ask you, actually, why don't you say what you're going to say? Because mine is going to another point.

Jeremy
Let's see. I think I was going to say that it helps with the buy in of our admin team, just to feel like they're part of a bigger purpose, maybe is where I would put it. And yeah, that helps give a little more meaning to their jobs.

Uriah
That's great. Yeah, I think what we do is unique, whether it's a testing practice or a purely therapeutic focus practice in that it's an admin position, but it's one that is connected to something more meaningful than potentially other businesses. I remember one time we were interviewing someone who was really excellent, and she was working from home. I think she was working for overstock. Com, and she said it was a good job, but she only interacted with people once, maybe twice, and helped them return some blinds or whatever the thing was that she was doing. And she felt like working for a productive therapist would be actually more meaningful as far as how they're helping the person on the other side. So I like that.

Jeremy
Yeah, I'm right with you.

Uriah
So I have a logistic question about recording intake calls and how you would recommend people do that. I was actually writing a chapter on this in the book that I'm working on called The Productive Practice about how to write an SOP and how to train an intake coordinator. And one of the recommendations is various ways to record and debrief or just test debrief, like an intake call. How would you recommend or how have you done that?

Jeremy
Yeah, a couple of different ways. So if you are willing to... Sorry, I should go back. If the client is willing to have themselves be recorded, which is, of course, is ideal. So we use Google voice and Google voice allows for call recording. And so that is easy. That makes it really easy. And you can just record the call when you jump on. If the client does not want to be recorded, then what we'll do is just record the clinician side of things. They'll be on the phone call and then just hit a voice memo or whatever on their phone and try to record their side and just go about it that way. And we just take that makes it the one side. Yeah. Then, of course, you can... I'm a fan of having the admin assistant transcribe, but you could run it through a transcription service or something that will transcribe it automatically like botter. Io or whatever.

Uriah
Otter. Ai, I think.

Jeremy
Ai, yeah. Maybe.

Uriah
Yeah, or IO, I don't know.

Jeremy
It's one of them, too.

Uriah
That's good. I like those suggestions. That's exactly what I recommend, too. I know years ago, we worked with a practice that used a software called Call Rail, which is still around. I t allows for recording of incoming and outbound calls. It automatically... And everybody's heard this when you get on the phone. This call may be used for training purposes or something along those lines. Obviously, we have to be extra careful with PHI and with client information. I even think about Google voice. Where does that send the voice recording? Where does it store it?

Jeremy
Yeah, it stores it on the drive. We have Google Workspace. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. It's the same place if we use Google Meet and record the meetings. Yeah, it just stores on the drive.

Uriah
That's great. In my opinion, there's no better way to train somebody for this type of role than to observe them or listen back afterwards and then talk about how the call went because there's just so many nuances. It's almost impossible or it's unwise at least to put somebody in this role and then just never observe them or coach them, that would be a really bad idea.

Jeremy
Totally agree. I talk with my practitioners about recording themselves because I found the vast majority of practice owners, and you probably see this too, have these little turns of phrase or the way they inflect their voice or whatever it may be that it just goes beyond the content of the conversation. It's the process component. And you miss that unless you're doing the recording. You miss those things because people are just like, Oh, I don't know. I'll describe what I do and then tell them the cost and then they book. It's like, No, there's way more to it than that. Let's get this recording and actually...

Uriah
There's so much nuance. I remember listening to a recording of one of my assistants about... This was about five years ago, I think. I will warn people listening to this, if you've never done this and you do it, you will probably have moments where you're terrified or shocked. Even just little things. For example, I was listening to this recording and my assistant, the client on the other end was telling this heart wrenching story of I think it was about their teenager, right? And everything that they were going through. And then when they were done telling that part of their story, my assistant was just quiet for the longest time. It might have only been 3 to 5 seconds, right? But I was like, Oh, no, you can't leave somebody hanging like that. You have to immediately jump in with an empathetic comment of some sort. Oh, my goodness, that must have been so hard. I'm glad that you called and I'm glad that you're sharing this. I listened to that and I was just like, Oh, that poor person. Literally left hanging on that note. So I was like, Okay, so let's not do that again.

Jeremy
Right. Oh, my gosh. Just hearing that, that makes my stomach...

Uriah
That's so tough. The thing that I think about, too, though, and we do a lot of training with our team here, of course, because this is what we do every day, day in and day out. But how to be able to handle even hearing some of those stories. They're not the therapist. They're not the provider of services at all. There's only so much they can do in that moment. And sometimes it's very hard, as you know, all of us listening, all of you listening to this, most likely are therapists. It's very hard to listen to people's stories, even if it's just a snippet of domestic violence or learning disabilities, or any of those types of things that hits you as a human being. So you've got to be able to show up on that call and be supportive.

Jeremy
Yeah. I think we lose track of that, or I'll speak for it. I lose track of that, having done this work for many years now, I take for granted how natural that is. It just hits different when you've been doing it for 20 years or whatever. We have to keep a real close watch on our admin team around burnout. We talk with them about burnout almost as much as we talk with our clinicians simply because they are on the front lines. Not only do they have the emotional empathic component of whatever clinical issue is going on, but then they're also having to deal with people who are upset about long wait times or insurance not covering something or whatever it may be. They get this double whammy of hard human experience, and we try to stay really tuned into that, just knowing that it can be pretty heavy for folks.

Uriah
That's so true. Even in situations where, let's say, the practice is full and there's no capacity, and this person has just told part of their story, and guess what? I don't have a solution as the intake coordinator. I don't have a solution for them. Maybe give them a community referral, hopefully, but that's not a great feeling. The great feeling is when you can say, yes, we have openings, we have providers, we can connect you with the services that you need. That's the home run. But if not, yeah, it comes from all these directions. You're right.

Jeremy
I talk with... Just another thing to throw in there about training admin staff for a testing practice. That's actually built into the process is making sure that the practitioner brainstorms a couple of safety net responses for the admin team. If people don't want to wait as long as they need to wait, because testing practices are usually booked out pretty far. We're talking 3, 6, 9, 12 months sometimes. What do you say if somebody's really upset about the wait time? Or what do you do? Do we have community referrals that we could offer if someone doesn't want to wait that long? Just making sure there's a decision tree there if folks do get really upset about that. But that's good. Sometimes a little different than counseling practice.

Uriah
I'm guessing you have those things written out somewhere in your SOP, right?

Jeremy
Yes. Our script is pretty solid.

Uriah
I was listening to your... I can't remember the date on this one, but your podcast episode on documenting SOPs, and you were talking specifically about how you thought things were in pretty good shape. And then you started the EOS process and you got a consultant and you realized you're talking about all the different things of the different kinds of leave that a practice needs. And you're like, Okay, there's more processes and procedures to document now.

Jeremy
Yes. yes, classic case of being super naive and thinking I was doing well. Just want a mini in practice ownership. But yeah, there are so many processes.

Uriah
To that. Just when you think you got a handle on it. I don't think there's a finish line, right? Because when you're talking about standard operating procedures or even training and onboarding information, it should be evolving over time and improving and all of that. That makes sense. I am just curious because you have a large practice and I'm wondering, over time, how have your admin support needs changed and how have you expanded to meet those needs when you had 10 clinicians to 20 to 30, and I think you have 40 or so now. How has that been for you?

Jeremy
How has it been for me?

Uriah
Like a roller coaster.

Jeremy
Let's see. This is one of the things. It's a double edged sword. It's what keeps me in practice ownership because it's a continual challenge and problem to solve and figuring out how to navigate growth at different stages. That's been awesome. At the same time, just completely overwhelming at points and really challenging to navigate. But on the admin side, I was thinking about this, at 10 clinicians, I think we were at one admin at that point. We had one person who was doing it all answering the phones, sending out statements, doing billing, doing insurance verification. I'd say as things have expanded, as we've grown, the biggest problem area has probably been billing. We do take a lot of insurance in our practice. I think this is probably different for private pay practices. But yeah, at this point, we have multiple full time positions just dedicated to billing because insurance billing specifically for testing is complex, I won't say that, and burdensome. If we weren't doing testing, we could probably get away with a half time billing person. But the fact that we've been testing it lends a lot of complexity there.

Uriah
You've got a division. You've got a billing division.

Jeremy
We do. We actually do. Yeah, it's weird. I will say this, we do use a virtual assistant for one of our billing positions, and it has worked out quite well.

Uriah
That's really great.

Jeremy
Let me see. Yeah, the insurance and billing component has grown a lot. We talked about standard operating procedures or SOPs. I can't emphasize enough, problems multiply exponentially as you add people. So if there are any cracks in your SOPs, they just get blown wide open the more people you add. I figured that out too.

Uriah
Late, probably. The hard way, maybe. The hard way. Because you don't know. You've never had a business this large, right? And I've never had a business as large as mine is currently. So you don't know what you don't know. No way around that. There are some ways to shortcut that, like join one of your masterminds.

Jeremy
Well.

Uriah
Sure. Yeah. Or get a good coach. There's ways to get there with less pain and agony but still that doesn't remove the trial and error and the learning from... I think of.

Jeremy
It like having kids. People will give you all sorts of advice and you think you know what to expect because you've seen kids running around in the world or whatever. But then when you have them, it's like, this is insane. It's like what Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until you get punched in.

Uriah
The face. Until you get punched in the face.

Jeremy
Yeah. That applies to so many places. But yeah, admin support is one of them and training staff is one of them.

Uriah
There's nothing like learning by doing.

Jeremy
Exactly. Trying to think what else. I mean, other things that have changed as we've grown, getting my clinicians on the same page has been challenging so that my admin team is not dealing with 12 different ways of doing testing or hopes or processes from clinicians. So training both sides equally and having joint meetings between both sides just to make sure everybody's on the same page. Then just super practically, people probably know this, but it's been incredibly helpful now to have, we call her an office manager or office lead or whatever you want to call it, but she oversees the admin team and that has been incredible.

Uriah
Does that person oversee the billing team as well as the admin folks?

Jeremy
Yeah. s he's front office and back office, as we call it.

Uriah
Okay. You said you have a virtual assistant for part of the billing tasks. I'm guessing everybody else is local and in office or local remote?

Jeremy
Yeah, everyone else is local remote, actually. We don't have any... No, I'll take that back. We have one admin staff person who is in the office, but the other four, or five, or six are remote.

Uriah
And was it that way before the pandemic, or is it now that way as a result of?

Jeremy
It was not that way before the pandemic. It was a combination of factors. Pandemic for sure, hiring folks who appreciate the flexibility, running out of office space and needing office space for clinicians, all those things.

Uriah
I'm grateful for that. Some of those aspects of what we learned through that process. I'm really a huge fan of local remote employees for various things, for providing service. I still have therapists who don't come into the office at all but are very happy working from home. My practice manager is about 45 minutes away. Once or twice a month, she can pop in and do what needs to be done. I think it works out really nice.

Jeremy
It's a nice hybrid. It's a happy medium, I think. They can come... We're big on culture, as you are, I believe. So knowing they can come to in person events but still have that flexibility to work from home. It's really nice. People seem to appreciate it.

Uriah
I have to say, congratulations on what you've built. That's no small feat of how you've done what you've done. Good job.

Jeremy
Well, I appreciate it. It doesn't always feel like a good job day in and day out, but it's happening and people are still here. I'll take that.

Uriah
Yeah, that's so cool. I'm sure there's other things we could talk about, but I would love to have you just share a couple of the resources that you have for testing psychologists specifically in testing practices so folks can know. I know there's a lot of people who already know you and know what you do, but if you could share that, that'd be awesome.

Jeremy
Yeah, of course. Well, the place where I'm putting a lot of my energy these days is Mastermind groups. So if they're testing practice owners out there. Really at any stage of development, I do beginner, intermediate, and advanced groups. It's just group coaching. There's a lot of accountability built in. There's some homework, there's connection, there's support. I love these groups. So if any folks are interested, those are certainly out there. I'm putting the finishing touches on an event for the summer as well to bring people together and connect and get some work done and just nerd out on testing for a few days here in beautiful Colorado.

Uriah
Yeah.

Jeremy
That sounds really good. Information, yeah, they can learn about either of those things on the website, thetestingpsychologist. Com. And you've got.

Uriah
A Facebook group with a ton of testing psychologists?

Jeremy
Yes, of course. Yeah, that's the easy one. I always forget about that one. Yeah, the testing psychologist community on Facebook. It's a thriving community. I took.

Uriah
A peek at it. You've got 11,000 people in there.

Jeremy
It's amazing. There's a lot of people in that group, yes. It's so wild to see this. I mean, I remember, I literally remember I sat down in 2017, I think, and just sent a Facebook messenger message to my 20 psychologist friends and was like, Hey, I'm trying to do this Facebook group thing. Just jump in and talk and make it seem like there's activity and share it with anybody who might be interested.

Uriah
You're like, Maybe 20 people might come and hang out here.

Jeremy
Maybe for a week and then they probably leave.

Uriah
That's so cool. Then, of course, I have to mention your podcast, which has 3,000 episodes. No kidding. You're in the 300s, though. It's amazing. 300s. Yeah.

Jeremy
It's.

Uriah
Wild. Again, never anticipated.

Jeremy
People would want to hear about testing.

Uriah
So much. Yeah. You have a lot of good stuff to share. I generally skip past the testing episodes because we don't do testing, but your business episodes are solid. I'm sure the other ones are, too. Like I said, I was binging it the other day and getting some good stuff, so definitely check it out. We'll put all those links in the show notes here so people can check it out. But yeah, always fun to talk to you, Jeremy.

Jeremy
Oh, absolutely. I'm honored to be invited on here. You're doing great work as well. And it's fun to connect with somebody else who's absolutely killing it.

Uriah
And we'll get to see each other in Kentucky in just a few short months. That'll be great.

Jeremy
So excited. Yes.

Uriah
It's going to be a good time. All right. Well, hope you have a great day.

Jeremy
You.

Uriah
Too. Thanks. Bye.