Ever wonder how to build a thriving faith-based private practice that lets you travel, lead, and grow without burning out? In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I chat with Whitney Owens, group practice owner and founder of Wise Practice Consulting. Whitney shares how she integrates travel into her consulting work, hosts in-person summits, and helps other faith-based practice owners scale sustainably.
We dive into her all-private-pay group practice model, how she trains staff to convert inquiries into clients, and why your intake process might be losing you money. She also opens up about therapist mindset blocks around money and how she overcame them to create a business that aligns with her faith, family, and mission.
In this Episode, We Explore…
Connect with Whitney:
Website - https://www.wisepracticeconsulting.com/
Wise Practice Podcast - https://www.wisepracticeconsulting.com/wise-practice-podcast
Wise Practice Summit - https://www.wisepracticeconsulting.com/summit-2025
Connect with me:
Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
The Traveling Therapist Membership: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/travelingtherapistmembership
Revolutionize Your Private Practice with AI Course: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/ai
Signup to learn more about life as a Traveling Therapist: https://www.portablepracticemethod.com/free-training
The Traveling Therapist Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
Bill Like A Boss Insurance Billing Community: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/blab
Subscribe to the Podcast:
Apple iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcast | Stitcher | Amazon | Castbox
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Sponsored by Berries: Say goodbye to the burden of mental health notes with automated note and treatment plan creation! https://heyberries.com/therapists
Sponsored by Alma: Managing a private practice can be challenging. There are obstacles at every turn — from navigating the credentialing process, to managing finances, to finding new clients. That’s where Alma can help. Alma is on a mission to simplify access to mental health care by focusing first and foremost on supporting clinicians. https://helloalma.com/kym
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Kym: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Traveling Therapist podcast. Really excited to have our guest today, Whitney Owens here with us.
[00:00:07] Whitney, I wanna hear all about you, but first I always ask, how did you go from being a traditional therapist to a traveling therapist? Your story's a little different.
[00:00:16] Whitney: Definitely, definitely. I incorporate a lot of my travel into my consulting work that I do, and I absolutely love it. I am a mom of two girls, one with special needs. I'm also the wife of a pastor, which takes out my weekend. So it's very hard for me to find time for travel But when I'm incorporating it into my work, we can have travel love it.
[00:00:38] Good way For me to kind of get away from responsibilities for a minute of home. Also focus on work and make those deep relationships with therapists around the country.
[00:00:46] Kym: So you incorporate into your consulting work, so is that like you're going to other, private practices and consulting or what type of way do you incorporate it in? I think people would love to hear about that.
[00:00:56] Whitney: Yeah. Well, you just gave me another good business
[00:00:59] Kym: Okay, well there you go.
[00:01:00] Whitney: I.
[00:01:00] Kym: wow, that would be cool.
[00:01:01] Like a mastermind where you just travel around and like help people grow their faith-based practices. You know? I think
[00:01:07] Whitney: That's right. That's right. Yeah. So I incorporate that by attending events. I actually was just in Chicago a few weeks ago, bucket led city. So I like to find conferences that are in cool cities that I want to go to and then use my work money to do that. But I also host events and I host the Wise Practice Summit.
[00:01:24] Every year I do try to switch up the city that it's in because. Who wants to go to the same city every year? Let's go to different places. Let's have fun. And so trying to get it in somewhere that people will find interesting. And I kind of have like a southern flare to it. I like doing southeast places so people can have that experience.
[00:01:40] And that's kind of part of me as
[00:01:41] Kym: love that. That's amazing. So what all happens in your summits? I, I think that's so cool. I've always wanted to do one. My friend Megan Gunnel does 'em all the time, and I just, I've always wanted to do one. So what all happens at your summits?
[00:01:52] Whitney: Oh, such a big question. So two and a half days and we incorporate, workshops, keynotes, but also time for connection, happy hours in the evenings, sponsors there at their tables for you to be able to connect with them. So we try to kind of incorporate some interactive experiences while you're also attending the event, because he wants to just sit and hear somebody talk all day
[00:02:13] Kym: Sure. Yeah.
[00:02:14] Whitney: It's specifically tailored to faith-based practice owners growing their private practice business. There are a lot of conferences out there that are for Christian therapists. Doing clinical work. You know, there are a lot of business conferences out there, but this is the only one that I'm aware of that's specifically in person for faith-based practice
[00:02:32] Kym: Yes. I, I don't think I've seen it anywhere else really. So are all the speakers Centered around a faith-based topic, or is it just, you know, business building, that sort of thing and not really always centered around that. I'm just so
[00:02:43] Whitney: Yeah. we do offer a lot of different things at the summit. So some of the talks are more geared towards faith-based and some of them are strictly business building. So if you've got something good to offer somebody, you are welcome to be at the summit. You know, and then a lot of the other faith-based components kind of come naturally with people.
[00:03:00] Usually My talks pretty faith oriented, but not all the talks are that way.
[00:03:05] Kym: Yeah, I always see 'em. It looks like you guys are having so much fun. Now, we didn't talk about this before I hit record, but I do, you know, I'm on social media all the time, but I've seen, I guess it's a mastermind maybe you have with like Uriah and Gordon and Jessica Ana.
[00:03:18] I think I always say her name wrong, but do y'all like mastermind and like travel places? Because I feel like I see you guys like gather every couple of like, I don't know if it's quarter or something and I'm like, that looks so fun. Like I need a mastermind that I travel with
[00:03:31] Whitney: Yeah, so we started meeting like five years ago. And then we met, we meet online every week. We're actually meeting this afternoon. And then we started about a year or two ago saying, let's get together in person for like our own retreat. Just for us, and then we do try to also go to conferences together.
[00:03:49] They always come to my event, and we've also met up at some other events. But yeah, that's why I was in Chicago too. I spoke at a conference and then Uriah was sponsoring and then Jessica and Gordon flew in at the end. So we were like, let's just stay at Chicago, get it, get it all done at one time.
[00:04:03] So we had a great time.
[00:04:05] Kym: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Every time I see a picture of you guys, I'm like, I wanna do that
[00:04:08] Whitney: is
[00:04:08] Kym: I've got like my business besties, but we don't like put a lot of effort into like, let's get together and just have this like, Retreat or whatever, you know, just get together and talk business and hang out and have fun.
[00:04:17] So, you know, I just love that idea. I love that you guys do that.
[00:04:20] Whitney: It's so great and you know what's so funny is we all run these businesses. Several of us have multiple businesses, but then we plan a trip and no one really wants to plan it. we just kind of wing it as we go, which is actually kind of nice, you know, because it's gonna be spontaneous . We don't get a lot of that as business owners.
[00:04:37] We're always having to plan the next thing. So travel can really bring up that creativity for us.
[00:04:42] Kym: Yes, Okay, so shifting gears, something I love about you is your group practice is all private pay, right? And you have, you have built this thing you. Talk about it in your, your summit, and I've seen you go other places and speak about the same topic. So I would love to touch on that because right now I'm getting emails almost like, like three times a week from traveling therapists that are saying, you know, I was relying on headway or Alma or you know, insurance panels.
[00:05:10] And now the insurance panels are saying I can't be. International or have we and Alma have passed these rules that you're not allowed to be international. So they're freaking out. Like I talked to a woman yesterday and she's like, I literally don't know what to do. I've had to get rid of my whole caseload.
[00:05:22] I'm living in Australia. Like what do I do? So I thought it's very timely for you to maybe talk about, you know, this topic that you do talk about is it's growing a seven figure private pay practice and how somebody would go about even starting to do that.
[00:05:38] Whitney: Yeah. I hate hearing all the struggles people are having, that's for sure. And, and it can be that way when you're relying on a third party for these payments, you just never really know.
[00:05:48] Kym: yes and then trying to be a nomad and live internationally, it's like it could change in a second the ability to do that, so what do you suggest, I'm sure you've got tons of tips, but where could somebody like get started with that process and how do they, attract private pay clients? I think that's hard too because we, you know, as therapists, a lot of us have that mindset like, I can't ask for a lot of money you know, for somebody to see me so that it's all of that rolled into trying to become a private pay practitioner.
[00:06:15] Whitney: Yeah. Well, we could go several ways with this. I mean, even just hearing you say, you know. The guilt they feel about taking the money, we could totally go down, you know, the mindset stuff, right? And I hope everyone goes see their own therapist and talks about their mindset stuff, because that's definitely a big part of it.
[00:06:31] I also do have a lot of tips and things that I can share about making that happen, which is probably the things people really wanna know. So I think so much of what's important is just really that care of clients and we get so wrapped up in the marketing and where do I put my money and Google ads, this, that, and the other.
[00:06:48] Yes, all that stuff's important, but you've got to be on it when people reach out and you gotta care. Well, for them when they do,
[00:06:55] this could look like so many things, but the first thing is really tracking your numbers. When people call, and I have so many therapists, group practice centers do consulting with me and I'm like, so how many people have reached out?
[00:07:06] What's your conversion rate? Where are they coming from? And they have no
[00:07:09] They're like, I just talked to a girl this morning and she's like, yeah, I'm spending $700 in Google ads. and she goes, but I probably need to pull up my conversions. And I'm like, so you're wasting your money. Because these people are Clicking that ad and calling and then you're not converting them.
[00:07:24] We need to go backwards and let's really work on our intake process. So that is the very first thing that I teach people, especially private pay, because an insurance based practice, it's so much easier. Someone calls, you do wanna get those calls, but they're gonna win on a call back from the provider that takes their insurance.
[00:07:41] A private pay practice is going Down their list and I am a busy mama. I have a special needs kid . tell you, we have appointments literally every day. So when I have to make a new appointment with a new provider for her, I usually get like three or four references. You know, it could be from the doctor, referrals, from the doctor, or whatever.
[00:08:00] And I do go with the one that calls me first, I don't have time. I'm busy during the day. If you're nice and you can get me an appointment, insurance or not. Like I just need to get the appointment scheduled. Right? And so, so many people are not taking the calls, not getting back to people fast enough and they're losing I. all that income. In fact, when I did our research on this, we noticed that we convert people at about 70%, which we have really honed in our process. That's in most private paper practices, you're looking for about a 50% conversion. But we also noticed that for people we have to call back, we're twice as likely not to secure that person.
[00:08:38] So to me it's well worth paying someone to take that phone call all day long because I'm much more likely to secure those clients.
[00:08:47] Kym: Absolutely. Yeah. That is so important. And I'm assuming since you have such a big practice, you've got an in-person person doing that, or, or somebody sitting at the receptionist desk to take, to handle all that stuff, I'm guessing. Right.
[00:09:00] Whitney: I do, I do. We actually hired A second person.
[00:09:03] Kym: Amazing.
[00:09:05] Whitney: On the phone, and then we need to make sure the next person gets the, gets the call. But I know that's not typical, especially a solo practice owner who's traveling, but it doesn't have to be somebody sitting at the phone. So when I first started, I had, Hired my first two therapists and I was taking the calls and it was terrible.
[00:09:23] You know, I'm like trying to, trying to take a call. I see the phone ringing. I know my next appointment starts in five minutes, but I gotta fill up my therapist. So I always made answering the phone a priority. New clients are the priority. If you need money in your business, the other client will wait and that's not the best service that I wanna offer, but gotta schedule people .
[00:09:41] So then I hired my first assistant. I put something on Facebook, no big deal. I need someone for three to five hours a week just to answer the phone when it rings. And she started working for me. She made it all the way to 15 hours a week and then she was like, I just can't do it anymore. She was a stay at home mom with four oh .
[00:09:57] There's So many companies out there with VA services, I mean, you know about a lot of 'em and promote 'em, and they're great companies. And they will definitely get back to people faster than you will in most cases
[00:10:07] But if you want to get someone live, you're gonna have to ask 'em if they offer that service.
[00:10:10] A lot of them don't. You go, 'cause they're calls for so many practices. So this, this lady that I hired, I mean, she's just sat at home, she had four kids. She would see the phone ring and answer it, and I'd pay her, she'd see the phone ring and not answer it. And I didn't
[00:10:23] Kym: Mm-hmm. Yeah, And I'm just thinking of, you know, our friend, mutual friend Uriah, he just sent me a link 'cause I'm really into ai. I have a whole other podcast about ai. He just sent me a link about his genic receptionist that he's programming to take. Scheduling calls.
[00:10:38] I'm like, this is really cool. If it sounds good, he's like, you gotta test it out. And I'm like, yeah, I need to test it out because that's an option too. You know, AI's becoming more and more advanced and literally can take calls for you. I don't know how people feel about it on the other end yet, but you know, these are options too.
[00:10:52] Cheaper options. 'cause I think a solo practitioner, it's like, gosh. Either I'm gonna have to do it myself, like you said, start out just, just trying to do it myself. Maybe get another clinician, try to do it for them, and then eventually at some point you've gotta decide how I need to scale. I need to give this to somebody else to do for me.
[00:11:08] Whitney: Yeah , First of all, Uriah has some really cool
[00:11:11] Kym: he is awesome. He's my AI bestie.
[00:11:13] Whitney: definitely. But one of the things about that program that it doesn't do is actually schedule the client.
[00:11:19] He sent me the link and it was a lot of fun to call and argue with it But when I got to it, I was like, I actually wanna schedule, she, they were like, no, we'll have to have someone call you back. So it's not able to integrate with your EHR
[00:11:29] Kym: yes, yes, yes, yes.
[00:11:30] Whitney: Confidentiality and all that. Now getting the phone answered is better than not getting it answered, but you still can't schedule so you really haven't secured it.
[00:11:37] I want people on the phone scheduled by the end as much information we get as possible. 'cause you wanna make it as easy as possible for someone to schedule an appointment to show up.
[00:11:47] Kym: Totally agree. I'm the same way. first of all, if I call on somebody answers, I'm thrilled. If it's not a voicemail and they say, leave your, leave your name and number, it's like, wow, okay, I could do this right now 'cause I literally have five minutes to do this and I don't even know if I'll pick up when you call me back.
[00:11:59] So to being able to do that is, that's like a really important tip. I'm so glad that you shared that.
[00:12:04] Whitney: Yeah, there's something so important about good customer service. I actually hired a company recently. I won't get into all the details about who they are, but I interviewed a few different companies for a high level business service, and one of 'em just kind of showed up haphazardly, you know, just didn't seem very interested and the other one just showed up and listened and cared for me, and yeah, the second one, they're offering the same service.
[00:12:27] The second one's more expensive, but there's something about when someone shows up on time, they listen to your story and they have a solution.
[00:12:35] Kym: Oh my gosh. I'm relating so much. I was trying to hire a social media person to help me 'cause I'm just doing all my own social media really. I mean, coming up with the ideas and the reels and all that stuff. So I was like, I gotta hire somebody. It has taken me a month and a half to try to hire this person.
[00:12:49] And then the contract they sent expired. So I've actually sent two emails and I'm like, Can you resend this because the contract has expired. Like I literally can't sign it and hire you, and I haven't heard a thing. It's like crickets, and I'm like. I can't now at this point, you can't hire that person even if they come back, you know?
[00:13:04] 'cause it's like this is how they're gonna show up all the time, you know? So I feel like you're so right. That first impression is just key, especially for somebody that's doing what you're doing with this group practice and trying to fill your clinician's caseloads. And a private pay, I mean that, I feel like private pay also sort of implies like concierge a little bit. Like, you know what I mean?
[00:13:24] Whitney: Definitely, So another thing I think is so important is our language and how we discuss insurance with clients. it is vital that you have a really good call script. it's so important that you really go through that script and gather all the information that you need, but also the way we talk about insurance. And so a couple of thoughts here is the first thing people say when they call, do you take Cigna? And look.
[00:13:50] We don't. But if I say that I've helped nobody,
[00:13:54] am here to provide a service and help somebody. Clients have no idea what they want or need. We see this when they come in, they're like, I need EMDR. Actually, you need this other therapy or you need these skills first, or whatever the case may be. So they call, do you take Cigna?
[00:14:08] Well, sir, before we get into payment, we wanna hear more about you. What your needs are so that we can help you. Right. We're building that therapeutic relationship on the phone. And it's not to manipulate or hurt somebody or just, I mean, it is to sell something. but
[00:14:23] Kym: a good, something that's really gonna help 'em.
[00:14:25] Whitney: that's right . Because we might not even have that service at our practice. What if they're like, Hey, I need couples therapy in our, we don't have a couples therapists to work with them, but we can still help them. we get a lot of anger management
[00:14:37] Kym: Ooh,
[00:14:37] Whitney: We don't have anger management, but you know, here's somebody you could call.
[00:14:41] If we get to the end of the call and they still are adamant about insurance, we will offer them therapists in the area that we know, specialize in what they said, take their insurance or refer them to psychology today. So we still are giving them some direction and I can't tell you how many times they call us back three days later and say, no one called me.
[00:15:00] I am gonna schedule with you
[00:15:02] Kym: Wow. That's
[00:15:03] Whitney: all the time. A lot of times We answer the phone and they say, oh my gosh, you answered . And that is why I pay someone to take every single call because it's so important and people are struggling when they call.
[00:15:14] So going back to how we talk about insurance.
[00:15:16] so we build that therapeutic relationship. We talk to the client about, you know, here's why you should see Amanda, because she specializes in OCD, she uses cognitive therapy, this, that, and the other, exposure therapy. And, and so we're selling, we're explaining it. And, and it's not that we're you know, sleazy, but it's because we really want to show them that they can get better. We're providing them that hope right there and we're selling that therapist So then they say, okay, well we get to the insurance question. Well, we definitely talk to them about out of network benefits, super bills, you know, you'll have to contact your insurance company.
[00:15:49] We discuss all that and, and honestly, about half the people get reimbursed,
[00:15:53] Kym: I think that sounds accurate. Yeah.
[00:15:55] Whitney: So then we also discuss with them why we don't take insurance. And I think it's so important that they understand that. So some of those are, you know, we wanna spend our time and energy focusing on client care and not on billing.
[00:16:08] Insurance companies require that we send diagnostic information. That's your private information and yes, in most cases it's confidential, but the more people that know something, the more people that know something regardless , you know, there's breaches with insurance or the insurance company will come back to us and say.
[00:16:26] That diagnosis is not severe enough that we wanna cover these sessions. Well, sometimes you don't know that till you've started therapy and then you feel this pressure to diagnose based on what the insurance company, not that we're diagnosing, but, but we wanna help clients. And so it just becomes this, this thing.
[00:16:42] And so when we start explaining that to people, they have no clue. They think it's like going to the doctor for a strep test and then, you know, they cover the test and we are like, no, we have to prove to them that you're sick enough that they will cover this. Then that's on your record for people going through a divorce.
[00:16:58] For people that have children that wanna go into politics, military doctors, we talk to 'em about all that on the on the call, hey, your child, this might come up later. Or, I have personally seen people go through divorce where records have got been
[00:17:11] Kym: Oh yeah.
[00:17:12] Whitney: so terrible. We can keep all that private if you don't go through your insurance and people are shocked.
[00:17:19] Kym: Yes. that's so good and so true. Now, your intake staff or your receptionist or like how in depth do you train them? 'cause it sounds like that's gotta be an integral part into like, this is what every clinician does. This is how we know they're a good match.
[00:17:33] Like I feel like that's gotta be a whole process and you've gotta find a really good, competent person that can like, understand those nuances.
[00:17:42] Whitney: Yep. our training Is several months. We're watching every single call and I watch my calls every week, and then I look at what those conversions are, if the conversion rate drops, which great example. We also have our interns take calls when they to get hours. So we had this one person start and I noticed the calls dropped significantly,
[00:17:59] but then we track who took each call . And so I was able to like filter out and go, oh, her conversions are really low. And I sat with her and I said, look, what's going on? She was like. don't really like the private pay model.
[00:18:10] I feel very uncomfortable about it. So then we explored that together, like what makes you uncomfortable? And then I kind of discussed more about why we're a private pay model and had to help her get on board with that. And then she was like, oh, I get it. Like it clicked for her that this is really actually better client care for our practice and the way we function .
[00:18:27] And boy, her numbers went right up after
[00:18:29] Kym: That is amazing. So even working with the mindset of your, front staff, was she an intern or she was she a receptionist.
[00:18:35] Whitney: She was an
[00:18:36] Kym: Okay.
[00:18:36] Whitney: she's so fabulous. Doing great clinical work.
[00:18:38] Kym: That's amazing. And that speaks to the mindset, right? of therapists in general. You know, like, I mean, I'm an insurance-based provider. I teach therapists how to take insurance if that's what they wanna do. I have no like qualms about if they do or don't. There's definitely that mentality, especially when you go into private practice, that you should be an insurance based provider and there's, you know, even like shame based stuff around like charging $250 an hour or something like that.
[00:19:01] Whitney: That is so true, Kim. And it's sad, right? Because. You gotta do what works best for you, you know, in the way you wanna run your business, what your values are, and the types of clients that you wanna serve. I mean, being a private pay practice, it does tend to go to a different type of client. And, that's okay.
[00:19:17] You know, it's what we cater to in this area.
[00:19:20] Kym: Yeah, that makes sense. So do you all offer like pro bono slots? 'cause I hear that a lot with private pay practices, like, you know, we charge two 50, but we also have like six slots for pro bono or like reduced fee based on your income or something like that. Do y'all have a model like that or is that something you opted out of?
[00:19:37] Whitney: Yeah, good question. I don't really offer pro
[00:19:41] Kym: Okay.
[00:19:41] Whitney: and that's because I wanna pay my therapists. You know, and we have so many clients that wanna get in. It's kind of the idea that when your, when your caseload fills, you start raising your rates. And it would be one thing if I lived in a town that there were no other services, like I'd probably offer it more so, but there are a non, there's a nonprofit organization down the street.
[00:20:01] You know, if you're low income, you can get that service. We also have interns, so we can offer a very low fee. So of course people call, they want the license person, then we say we offer the associate or we offer the intern. But that's one thing. Being a group private pay practice, I. Can hire people at all different levels and then offer different rates based on, you know, their experience and stuff like that. But I can also pay my therapist well,
[00:20:24] and then they only have to see six clients a day, five days a week, to be full-time. the minimum is five a day, but we ask 'em to schedule six. So the burnout level's so much lower. They can stay longer, they're happier and they're giving better care 'cause they're not burnt out.
[00:20:40] We do offer sliding scale for those in need. We don't have like a specific process for it. We just have a conversation about that. I will say we have one pro bono right now in a very particular situation. But most of the time we, we don't do
[00:20:55] Kym: That's cool though, that you could be flexible with it. Especially, you know, a clinician comes and says, look, can we please just do this briefly or something? I'll, you know, I'll donate the hour, whatever. I'm sure, I'm sure that you can be flexible with that stuff when the need comes up too, so that, that's pretty cool.
[00:21:08] Whitney: Yeah, and you know, we feel, I think a lot of therapists feel like they have to give all that, like they have to do pro bono or sliding scale. But you know, we actually see that clients who pay for therapy do better in therapy.
[00:21:20] Kym: Yes.
[00:21:22] Whitney: So you, I know this sounds a little crazy, but it's almost like you're doing a disservice to your client.
[00:21:27] Kym: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:27] Whitney: I know when I first started, I did a lot of that stuff and the clients that didn't pay as much, didn't show up as much, weren't as committed, and didn't get better as fast. So I see my rates and a rate that's appropriate to my years of experience, my licensure, and I'm the group practice owner, so I need to be the highest
[00:21:45] Kym: Yeah. Yep.
[00:21:46] Whitney: You know, and, and yeah, people wanna gimme the stink eye for that, but people will pay it and people get better.
[00:21:51] Kym: I think you're right. I mean, it makes perfect sense. So you touched on something like, it's just like the longer you go, the more you increase your rate, the fuller your caseload gets, you can go up on your rate like. do you do that as an overall group practice policy? Like every January 1st we raise our rates?
[00:22:05] Or do you base it on education experience? Like how do you manage that as a group practice owner.
[00:22:10] Whitney: So we raise our rate every year.
[00:22:11] Kym: Okay.
[00:22:12] Whitney: There are a few therapists that are high, and so they prefer to not raise it every year. And I'm okay with that as long as we're doing it every other year because I do give raises every year based on performance. So they'll get the raise if they're performing well.
[00:22:25] So I do try to put that alongside of. Raising the rate on clients at the same time,
[00:22:30] All of our associate level therapists start at the same rate that we charge clients and pay them the same rate. And then licensed people start at the same rate. They get paid the same. And then when you get licensed, you jump up, which is really exciting for them.
[00:22:44] And we talk about that at the very beginning. Hey, when you get licensed, you're gonna be at this amount which is hard to do as an insurance based group practice because it's all dependent on what the insurance company's reimbursing you. And some of them pay the same. For an associate and licensed person, or a very small difference.
[00:23:00] But we charge a significant amount more for a licensed person because they have that
[00:23:03] Kym: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. So. How do you decide how much to go up? 'cause I'm just curious, is this like built into like your metrics and experience over the years and how many clinicians you have? Like a, maybe it's a formula. I don't even know 'cause I don't have a group practice,
[00:23:16] Whitney: Um, I usually go up $10. for the overall rate. so let's say an associate starts, they are a hundred dollars an hour. All of our associates started that. So then when they hit their first year, we send out a letter, November 1st to all their current clients, and it says, Hey, I wanna make you aware that January 1st, our rate's going to one 10, but because you're a current client of us, you will be going to 1 0 5.
[00:23:39] Kym: Nice.
[00:23:40] Whitney: client that calls after November 1st. We go ahead and give them the one 10 rate, because what we don't wanna do is have someone start December 20th and then, hey, in 10 days your rate changes. Like we go ahead and tell 'em at that point. It can get a little complicated when you're doing this for 15 different people, but it seems to work.
[00:23:55] Kym: great. I mean, it sounds like you've got everything systemized, so I'm, I'm sure that's the key You're like, yeah, baby, no.
[00:24:01] Whitney: we have a lot of systems And have a lot of good leadership in place to help run the business. That's
[00:24:05] Kym: That's amazing. So one more thing you touched on was like talking about if the clinician's performing well, what type of metric do you use for that? Is it like retention rates? Like, I'm just curious how you monitor that. Like what constitutes like, well, you know,
[00:24:18] Whitney: So we do have reviews that we send to them through Gusto. They complete their part of the review and we complete ours, and then we sit down and look at it together. So some of it is what you just said. we look at churn ratios. The big thing we're working at right now, so that's keeping clients to session four.
[00:24:35] our metric for that is 40%. So we expect 60% of your clients to make it to session four, and that you only churn out less than 40%. So churn means not returning to session four. And that's a metric we're working at across the practice. So if you're not hitting that, you're not gonna get your raise or we're doing a performance improvement plan, stuff like that.
[00:24:55] Other things is about, you know, seeing the number of clients they're supposed to see, keeping their case load up showing that their team players doing good clinical work, all that kind of stuff. Good communication. That's big for
[00:25:08] Kym: Yeah. I mean, it really does sound like you've thought of everything with this practice. I bet it runs just like a fine tuned machine.
[00:25:15] Whitney: Well, I have put a lot of time and energy into it. I absolutely love it. I love group practice work. I think it's so much fun, like the intricacies of it and everything. Always enjoying my own learning, like through running my practice and then I get to impart that knowledge to other practice centers. So it's really enjoyable.
[00:25:31] I really do help. People with the private pay practice model. I really do love it. And honestly, I kind of fell into it like a lot of us do. I moved here and I couldn't get on panels, I couldn't find a job, so just started a practice and was like, well I guess I'll just take cash till I get license. 'cause my license wouldn't transfer.
[00:25:48] You know how that can be. And that was a, you know, years ago. And then I built a cash pay practice in under a year. I was like, why would I change it now? This is great.
[00:25:56] Kym: So that leads me into other income streams. I'd love to talk about that for a second. 'cause you got the summit, but you also have another thing that you do and I'd love to talk about that. 'cause we always on this podcast talk about other income streams, how to scale up from that one-to-one model.
[00:26:11] Group practices are great for group practice owners, but you do something else too. So I'd love to. Talk about that for a minute, if you don't mind.
[00:26:18] Whitney: Yeah, so I have a second business wise practice consulting where we help faith-based practice owners start growing, scale their practices. And when we say faith-based, that can mean the gamut of things. It just means that faith's a part of your life to some degree. Maybe it's a part of your business or not, but it's a part of you.
[00:26:34] So we are an accepting community of lots of different types of people. I have a podcast as well, the Wise Practice podcast, which I've had you on. And then also I have a membership community faith-based practice owners. So we meet every week online. We do teachings, there's resources, a lot of things we're talking about today.
[00:26:50] I have all that in my resource library with the membership community. Oh, here's a letter that you can give to your clients about your rate increase. Here's our call script. Um, So I have that community and I used to do launches. But I just decided I'm done with that.
[00:27:03] So somebody's listening , They're looking to connect with other faith-based practice owners. It's $89 a month right now, and you can get into that community by going to the website, best practice consulting.com. So I have the membership community and then I do the summit. And so the idea of the summit really was.
[00:27:17] All these people I meet with every week in the community, let's get together in person once a year. Let's save our money. It's special that we have these relationships, but let's meet in person. So that's kind of the concept behind it. I have about half the community that
[00:27:29] Kym: Oh
[00:27:29] Whitney: so it's a lot of fun when we finally get to meet in person and some of them I only have met with online.
[00:27:34] So yes, that's the idea behind the summit, but I also have people come that aren't a part of the community. People that just wanna grow their business or people that wanna meet other faith-based practice owners. So we have that too. And then a lot of people come a part of the community, so they kind of feed one another.
[00:27:46] And then we have other consulting services, like individual consulting mastermind groups that we teach, stuff like that.
[00:27:51] Kym: That's amazing. Well, thank you so much. So you've mentioned a couple of different places where just like, if you could run down the list, where can people find you and connect with you if they want to work with you or learn from you?
[00:28:01] Whitney: Sure, yeah, just head to the website wise practice consulting.com or you can email meWhitney@wisepracticeconsulting.com. I love when people reach out and say, I heard you on this podcast. I have this question or this thing. It's really cool. So I love hearing from people I.
[00:28:15] Kym: That's great. Thank you so much for coming today. So many amazing tips and we will definitely put in the show notes how to contact you and also that script that you said you'd send us, I'd love to put that down for people to download and grab.
[00:28:26] Whitney: Sounds great.
[00:28:27] Well, thank you, Kim for the opportunity to be on the show.