Building a group practice isn’t just about scaling your business; it’s about creating freedom. In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I chat with Julia Nepini about how she built her thriving group practice from the ground up and learned to confidently step away, travel the world, and still keep everything running smoothly. Julia shares how she moved from burnout to balance and what it really takes to delegate, trust your team, and embrace the CEO role.
In This Episode, We Explore…
Connect with Julia:
Website: https://www.compassionatecounselingcompany.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/compassionateconsultingcompany/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-nepini-licsw-29a7b5215/
Connect with me:
Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
The Traveling Therapist Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
Signup to learn more about life as a Traveling Therapist: https://www.portablepracticemethod.com/free-training
Revolutionize Your Private Practice with AI Course: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/ai
Bill Like A Boss Insurance Billing Community: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/blab
Subscribe to the Podcast:
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] _Kym: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Traveling Therapist podcast. Excited to have our guest today. Julia Nepini is here with us today.
[00:00:08] Hi, Julia. Welcome. I'm so excited to have you here. Tell us, how'd you go from being a typical therapist to a traveling therapist? Let's just dive into it.
[00:00:17] Julia: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about our conversation today. I have always had a love of travel. It is a big world out there. There is a lot to experience and immerse yourself in, but it can be challenging to afford to coordinate, and especially once you become a therapist and you're seeing a caseload, it can be challenging to step away and especially when you're in private practice.
[00:00:43] To do that and have the confidence that your clients are gonna be okay and everything will be managed. So once I started and grew a group practice, it became a lot easier for me to step away when I knew that there would still be income generated while I was not in the seat. And it really just evolved from there. A lot more opportunities presented themselves that I just jumped on.
[00:01:11] _Kym: Yeah. Well, I wanna talk about all the cool things that you're doing to be able to travel. When did you realize with the group practice that it was like, okay, I think I can step away now, there's enough income being generated.
[00:01:21] Like I know that the number's different for everybody, but for you, like what was that magic moment where it was like, you know what? I think I could step away. I think I've got enough coming in that I can kind of like go this other direction with some things.
[00:01:33] Julia: there were a few layers there, and so I would say it's taken me four years now of being a group practice owner to be able to confidently step away without the feelings of guilt and having that confidence that all the right people are in the right seats to support the team. Because there was a period of time where I would travel. But I would still be accessible.
[00:01:55] And so I would say, you know, I'll be on a plane from this time to this time, but otherwise if you need anything, I'm accessible. And that's very different than actually fully taking a step away and knowing that everything can be managed. So a big component for me that might set me apart is by the time I started hiring clinicians, I was ready to transition my caseload and no longer see clients anymore.
[00:02:19] So that was step one. So I took my entire caseload and divided it between my first two full-time clinicians, and that freed me up to a certain extent. And then once we had administrative support and someone that was answering the calls, keeping schedules full. And we had enough referrals so that I could be confident that spots were getting filled. I think those were the first steps where I started to step away a little bit more frequently.
[00:02:45] _Kym: Yeah. That's amazing. so you just went outright like, I'm done with clients kind of thing. 'cause I'm still, I still literally have two clients that I'm like, maybe I'll see 'em forever. I don't know. 'cause part of it is guilt, I don't wanna abandon them, even though I'm sure they'd be fine without me.
[00:03:00] But you made that decision, I guess. You were like, okay, I'm done with clients. Was there like some reason you decided, or were you just like over the being a therapist or just where were you with that?
[00:03:09] Julia: I, it was more burnout related. So when I had started my practice, I had made some really good connections in my community, and so when referrals would come in, it never felt good to turn anyone away. So it was saying yes when maybe it didn't always make sense.
[00:03:27] Seeing way more clients than anybody should in any given day or any given week. I also went through a divorce, and so I was now solely responsible for the home that I purchased and the mortgage and all that went along with that. I had a very young daughter, so I had to really work around the parenting schedule, so I was seeing a full caseload in two days.
[00:03:54] Which was not ideal because I needed to reserve that third day for some admin tasks. I didn't have anybody to help at that point. It was just me. And then the days with my daughter, I really wanted to be with her.
[00:04:04] So that was another huge factor that there were too many clients seen. It was the schedule that I had maintained it, and just being ready for something different and to really lean into a leadership role and be the type of group practice owner that I felt the team deserved.
[00:04:22] _Kym: That's amazing. Now, did you just kind of stumble into building your group practice or did you take a, course or something, or you just like kind of built this thing fly by the sand of your pants? Kind of. Okay. Okay. That's amazing. Yeah.
[00:04:34] Julia: so I would say that private practice was not necessarily something on my radar, but after working in community mental health, a group practice that wasn't my own, a hospital crisis center and child welfare, I really found a value misalignment.
[00:04:50] And so it was very clear to me that in order to do the work, in the way that felt like it was in alignment and in integrity, I had to do it myself and be my own boss. So then once I made that shift, there were more referrals than I knew what to do with, and I missed working in community.
[00:05:07] So that's where the group practice came into play. I had set it up as a group practice just in the event that I decided to expand at some point. And I also thought it made a lot more sense from a practical standpoint and a liability standpoint that there's the separate entity that I created and so when the time came, I was prepared.
[00:05:26] _Kym: So you built this thing, you got freedom, you got to a point where you could have freedom from it, and then decided you wanted to travel more. So could we talk about how you put that into your life, like how you made that work with business write offs and all that stuff?
[00:05:39] Julia: absolutely. So it started off slowly when I was single for the first time, so there was a five year period post-divorce before I got into the relationship that I'm in now, where I kind of made up for lost time where I had this freedom and I had some time without my daughter, and I knew that she was okay with her dad.
[00:06:00] And so I started to branch out a little bit and I would take some trainings that weren't in Massachusetts where I'm from, and I would obviously be able to write off the flight and the stay and the training itself.
[00:06:14] At that time, I got trained as a divorce mediator and a parenting coordinator, so I branched off and took trainings in that, and I actually went to Seattle and met the Gottman's, and did my level three Gottman training so that I kind of spread my wings a little bit.
[00:06:30] And then once I had the group practice and I had a solid foundation , the pandemic happened, and so I feel like a lot of it was kind of this overcompensation for my love of travel in the period of time that I couldn't, and so I really kicked it into high gear once we could travel again.
[00:06:48] And so then there were like more trips than ever I was lucky if I could do one, maybe two a year, and post pandemic, I did multiple trips, some domestic, some international, so it started off with participating in someone else's retreat. There was an opportunity to go to Kenya.
[00:07:08] And it was with another therapist and her husband who was from there. I just happened to hear about it in a Facebook group. It seemed really intriguing, and I was able to bring my fiance and my daughter with me,
[00:07:20] and it was absolutely life changing. And there were trainings provided on kind of the culture, and we visited the Maasai Mara, and so there was a way that I could incorporate that into business.
[00:07:33] And then from there it has just exponentially grown. So attended a lot more retreats. I attended some conferences that I was really intrigued by and then it made sense to apply, to speak at those conferences once I had attended, and I knew what they were all about and really enjoyed the community and the shared experience and the networking, and so that has brought me to this point.
[00:07:59] _Kym: That's amazing. Before we hit record Julia actually mentioned that to me and I was like, I admire anybody that just decides, okay, now I'm gonna go be a speaker at conferences. Like to me, that's so brave and just amazing. So did you have like topics that you already had in mind for these conferences?
[00:08:15] Or, or is it like a, 'cause people do ask this a lot, like, how do I get into that sort of thing? Like how did that process happen for you? I'd love if you could tell everybody,
[00:08:24] Julia: Of course. It's a good question and I think it goes back a little bit to when I was in my undergrad program, I was simultaneously taking all the course requirements for social work and education. And so when it came to my senior year, and I think this is so telling as to where I am right now, I had to decide am I gonna do student teaching to complete those requirements, or am I gonna go on a trip to Honduras where I could stay at an orphanage and we could do, you know, service work, and I chose Honduras, and so there's always been this teaching spirit within me.
[00:08:58] So it started off providing trainings through the National Association of Social Workers. I started off with a webinar on starting a private practice. So just taking everything that I had learned on the business side and sharing that. Then I did one on expanding the group practice and then one on being an insurance based practice, and I'm an Enneagram enthusiast. I am obsessed with that model of the human psyche. And so that has also provided a lot of opportunities as well, where I integrate that into consulting.
[00:09:33] I've incorporated it into clinical work, the hiring process, and managing a team. So a lot of opportunities that I have come across this coming year are kind of different variations of how to use the Enneagram. So using it in a trauma informed way, using it in your supervisory experience and using your Enneagram number with self-care.
[00:09:57] _Kym: that's so cool. So for the conferences, do you like hunt out a conference that in a place you'd like to go to and then you, like, pitch what you would talk about? Like how does that work? You know, or are people finding you because of all your speaking you've already done and then they're like inviting you? Like I'm just curious.
[00:10:14] Julia: So I would say what you just said is happening a lot more now. In the beginning stages, it was more as I was making connections to other clinicians, private practice owners, group practice owners, and navigating the consulting space. I was becoming aware of a lot more opportunities with retreats and conferences, and so I would pick which ones to attend based on location was definitely a factor.
[00:10:39] If they offered CEEs, what a bonus, and then if there were individuals that I had either been listening to on podcasts. Or that I had maybe connected to on social media and wanted to learn more about. And then there were times when there were people that I had personally connected to and we would join different groups.
[00:10:57] And so we would go together and meet there. And it was a great way, even though we didn't live near each other, that we could spend time in person. Then from there, after I would attend a conference, it was, or a retreat, there are a couple of re retreats that I'm speaking at. It made it so much easier for me because I would meet the host or the person that was putting on the event.
[00:11:17] Very oftentimes I'd have 'em on my podcast. It would be such a great way to learn about them and what they're doing, peel back the layers of the onion, and then if the opportunity presented itself, I was coming in with so much more confirmation that these were my people. So it made it a lot easier to apply to speak, or have a conversation that just resulted in an opportunity.
[00:11:41] _Kym: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. Amazing. And it's like you get to do that, expand your professional voice or whatever, but also get to travel in all these beautiful places. That's just so smart.
[00:11:51] So you mentioned your podcast. Can we talk about that a little bit? Like how did that come about? What's it about? And you know, just the process about it. I'd love to, people ask me all the time, like, how do you start a podcast? It's like, well, it's not that hard. You just record something start talking, but I wanna hear about yours and how you got to that place with starting it.
[00:12:08] Julia: Yeah, well we were talking before we started recording and kind of commiserating with each other about how I think starting the podcast isn't the hard part. It's maintaining it and being consistent and continuing to deliver value.
[00:12:21] So starting the podcast was relatively easy. I am a huge podcast listener myself, and you would ask me if I had done anything related to business and preparation for owning my own, and the answer is no.
[00:12:34] But I would listen to so many podcasts and get these nuggets of wisdom from people that had gone before me, and so that's where it started. Then there were opportunities to speak on podcasts as I started to provide more trainings and expand in the consulting space and offer a lot more of the kind of steps needed to build a solid foundation for your business and grow a team and diversify income streams.
[00:13:03] So there was a lot to talk about and I realized how much I enjoyed that opportunity to just like now kind of pause and reflect on the journey that I had some unique things to share. That to me just seemed like my life. But to other people it was a little bit intriguing and maybe inspiring. Then the next natural step was to create my own platform, and I will say podcasting has been some of the best practice for speaking.
[00:13:31] So training, yes. But the whole dynamic of speaking as opposed to providing training is very different. I'm learning. And so you have more of this message and the information is important, but it's not the most prominent important thing. It's much more about your interaction with the audience and getting them involved and having some tangible takeaways and maybe having a little bit more opportunity to, you know, engage them and do something live, which is really intimidating for me.
[00:14:05] And so it's really been pushing me out of my comfort zone. But I feel like podcasting, you never know what you're gonna get. So a lot of times you're interviewing somebody that you're meeting for the first time, you have to help 'em feel really comfortable very quickly, just like in a therapy session. And then you are getting them to share their career climb on my podcast. Right. A little background. And so I feel like it's been great preparation.
[00:14:27] _Kym: That's amazing. Okay, so it's called Career Climb.
[00:14:29] Julia: Mm-hmm. So. It's the compassionate climb
[00:14:32] _Kym: sorry. The Compassionate Climb. it focuses on, maybe you could just tell us a little bit about the topic. I mean, it sounds like people Yeah. Compassionately
[00:14:39] Julia: It's all about building a business while maintaining integrity. So initially it came out of my own experience trying to build my team outside of my team.
[00:14:50] So working with different accountants and financial advisors and attorneys, and struggling to find people who could provide a quality service, but also offer a rate that was reasonable for someone that was in the early stages of their business. And so I struggled with that a lot and was doing my own kind of money mindset work. And then as I obviously was growing my team, realizing more of why that is.
[00:15:21] And as you get bigger, the more responsibility that comes with that liability that comes with that expense and that you're also, in essence, once you start consulting and you can set your rates. I now am clearer on all that goes into that and why people charge what they charge. And so it was a great opportunity to have a platform to try to identify people that found that balance where they're able to offer a great service and they're able to educate people and they're sharing all that they've learned, and also mindful and maintaining compassion and empathy for individual circumstance.
[00:15:57] _Kym: Yes. Right. Oh, I love that. Yeah, I gotta go listen to it. I'm excited to actually check it out. Yeah,
[00:16:03] Julia: Yeah. Well, I would love to have you on as a guest. We were talking about that. So yeah, stay tuned.
[00:16:08] _Kym: Thank you. Yeah, I look forward to it. And then the third piece of what you're doing on top of everything else is also consulting. So what does your consulting look like that you're doing? Like how are you making that fit in with everything else?
[00:16:20] Julia: Yeah, so now it's a nice balance between about half of my week is focused on practice management. And the other half is consulting. So it started off where I was a one woman show, so it's called Compassionate Consulting Company, and it was me helping people at all stages of business, so business startups, team expansion, and then diversifying income and doing things like adding consulting, speaking, starting a podcast.
[00:16:47] And then I realized that I really had an affinity for those people that were more expansion focused and diversification focused. So I brought on another consultant. Her name is Luta and she focuses on the startups. She's wonderful. And she also is in a business partnership, so it's her and one other person, and that is their practice, and they've maintained that relationship and achieved a lot of success. She's great at streamlining and spreadsheets and the business side just comes so easy to her.
[00:17:20] And then we recently brought on Kaitlyn, who actually has a practice that's larger than mine, so I manage a team of 30. She has high twenties clinicians, and then five nurse practitioners.
[00:17:34] So she helped with streamlining operations and adding prescribers to your team. So now the three of us are able to help even more people at each stage in business, and we're really focusing on that stage that really lights us up.
[00:17:47] _Kym: So is it a like a group coaching program, or is it a one-to-one?
[00:17:50] Julia: it is one-to-one, depending on kind of which track you're on. But then each of us at different times have offered different group coaching programs to try to serve one to many. So like for example, I have several people right now that I'm working one-to-one with.
[00:18:06] But it would make a lot of sense for them to be in a group where you're providing the same steps, the same guidance, the same resources, but then they can all come together, support one another. There's that like hive mind and you know, we're better together than just any one person. And so we have each offer kind of our own mastermind or masterclass.
[00:18:26] _Kym: Oh, that's so cool. Do you feel like you're able to balance all of this, the podcasts, the travel and the speaking and the consulting and all of that? Or like, how's that going for you? 'cause people ask me that all the time. They're like, how do you do all this?
[00:18:39] Julia: I often question the same thing with people, and I'm always taking just kind of little pieces of what they share and trying to implement it, but. I would say in this very moment, I can emphatically say yes. Has that always been the case? No.
[00:18:53] So there was definitely a time where opportunities would present themselves and there wasn't really much time that I would take to consider. And so I would end up taking on so much my plate was full and I would find a way to do it and do it to the best of my ability. But it was a lot.
[00:19:10] And so I feel like I'm at a position now where I'm much clearer on this filter and what are the things that are the best use of my time. And a lot of that has come from delegation, and especially in my group practice, having a really solid leadership team, having a rock solid administrative team, and knowing that it's run well so that I am able to branch out and experience a lot of these other things.
[00:19:38] And there was a period of time for me where I would experience a lot of guilt when I would step away. I would feel bad for being away from my family. I would feel bad about being away from the team. And as time has gone on, I've been able to incorporate my family in a lot of this,
[00:19:53] but also really seeing the beauty in when you take a step away, there's this renewed appreciation for everything you have and so much more to share when you come back together.
[00:20:02] And then with my team, seeing how it's really provided opportunities for those in leadership positions to step up and really empowering them to shine, and that it's much more of a collective, collaborative effort than everything falling on Julia's shoulders. So it feels much more manageable now than ever, and, and the travel increased more than.
[00:20:26] _Kym: That is amazing. It sounds like you're doing so many cool things, and it sounds like, you know, I mean, I don't know the whole story obviously, but it sounds like maybe you had some lessons to learn early around, like who are you bringing into your business and hiring with the authenticity piece and compassionate piece.
[00:20:40] And then it sounds like at some point you figured out a good system and now you've got a really strong team that you can trust and just kind of step away from and know it's gonna all run okay. Yeah.
[00:20:50] Julia: Hard lessons learned for sure. And that's where the not having any business experience or opportunities in a leadership or managerial position before starting my own. So, so much of it was just learning by doing. But in all reality, if I could go back, I personally would not have done it any other way.
[00:21:08] But now I can help other people get to this like CEO role and embrace it so much faster than it was for me and have 'em start to do things really early on to set 'em up for success so that they can get to whatever point they want and have the time available to devote to the things that they really want to, not just those obligatory.
[00:21:34] _Kym: Yes. All the annoying little tedious things that take up all of our time if we don't manage it the right way. Exactly.
[00:21:42] Julia: Exactly.
[00:21:42] _Kym: Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much for sharing. So how do people find you if they wanna work with you, if they wanna see what you're up to and what you offer, where do we find you?
[00:21:50] Julia: I would say compassionate consulting company.com is the best place to go, and all of our links for social media are on there. I have had so much fun lately. So with the counseling practice, we have someone on our team that handles our social media, so that has really freed me up to have a lot more fun on Facebook and Instagram particularly.
[00:22:11] And just record a lot of these travels, but also the things that are going well and not so well. It's not just a highlight reel, it's a lot of the reality of group practice ownership, business ownership, and we have a good time on there.
[00:22:27] So, and then they can tune into the Compassionate Climb Podcast, if that sounds like it would be in alignment and beneficial.
[00:22:35] _Kym: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.
[00:22:39] Julia: Thank you so much for what you do and inspiring me, and I appreciate you having me on the show.
[00:22:44] _Kym: Well, thank you.