STP Episodes 115-117
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[00:00:00]
[00:00:06] James Marland: We are maxed out. And in a, in the, in the model where your calendar is, your income, your schedule becomes your ceiling. So we did what a lot of practices do during those busy times. Uh, we staffed up, we added space, we expanded our capacity. Uh, we took on extra debt, but when the demand dropped.
The expenses didn't drop. We still had the staff, we still had the building, we still had the facilities. We still had the, the money sunk into resources. The rent stayed high, the pressure stayed high. And that's when I started thinking, you know, what, if there was a way to, to, uh, expand and contract the offerings that wasn't necessarily dependent.
On the schedule, but it was depend, it, it was like a, how do you shift the model? [00:01:00] You became a therapist to help people, not to run yourself into the ground. In this episode, we talk about why a full caseload does not equal a full and meaningful life. And we're gonna give you suggestions on what to do if your schedule is packed, but your energy, income, or impact feels stuck.
I'm learning over the last couple months that burnout and a packed schedule is not a badge of honor. Burnout is not a badge of honor. There's a better way to build. I want you to listen now and rethink the myth of just one more client. I wanna offer you some solutions. If you're looking for a way to create more time freedom, visit courses dot course creation studio.com/step group.
That's courses dot course [00:02:00] creation studio.com/step group. You're gonna discover how taking small steps can lead to big changes.
Hi, friend. If we were talking over coffee today, I would ask you how is your stress level these days? I. You became a therapist to help more people, not to run yourself into the ground. In this episode, we talk about why full caseload does not equal a full and meaningful life and what to do if your schedule is packed, but your energy, income or your how you impact other people just feels a little stuck.
I wanna remind you, burnout is not a badge of honor. There's a better way to build. So let's listen now to rethink the myth of just one more [00:03:00] client. And if you're looking for ways to create more time freedom, visit courses dot course creation studio.com/step group and discover how taking small steps can lead to big changes.
Hello, and welcome back to the Scaling Therapy Practice. This is your host, James Marland. This is the show where we help mission-driven leaders launch life-changing online courses. This is the first episode of our new series, how Therapists Can Build What's Next without Burning Out or starting over.
Today we're gonna talk about schedules, and I'm, I'm wondering if you've ever thought if I could just fill my schedule, everything would feel easier. If you've ever had that thought. This episode is for you. Uh, I, I wanna take you behind the scenes of [00:04:00] some of the conversations I'm hearing and seeing, uh, among therapists.
I, I belong to because I support therapists and their business. I belong to a bunch of therapy, uh, just, uh, groups and I just listen in on conversations and help where I'm able. But I'm seeing a pattern where, uh, this is like snippets of what I'm hearing. Like people are saying their, their stress level is high.
I am ready to throw in the towel. I can't fill my team's calendar. My lease is too high. I, I'm drowning in debt and I don't know how much longer I can do this. And then another person might say, you know, we're working more than 40 hours a week just to cover the rent. And somehow I see other therapists making more than me, and we're the owners.
Um, now maybe that sounds familiar to you or you've heard those same conversations [00:05:00] yourself and you, you sympathize with them. And it's, it's, it goes to the point where at some point when we're building our service-based business, we've been sold the lie that if I just had a full schedule, if I just had all these clients, if I, if I didn't have to worry about who's in my calendar, everything would be fine, but it's not fine.
Being fully booked doesn't mean you're free. It. It doesn't mean that you're free from stress, so let's talk about that a little bit further. See, most people believe that the dream schedule is a full schedule. When I have a full schedule, my money problems disappear. When I have a full schedule, I'll be happier.
I. When I have a full schedule, I can finally relax. But, but here's what I've learned. A full schedule does not always bring the peace that you're [00:06:00] looking for. A while back, I was a case manager for a child adolescent day hospital, and there were certain times of the year when our intake list was literally three months long.
Uh, it was probably around the middle of the year when. People had tried other alternatives and they were just school counselors and guidance workers were just looking for solutions. And we literally could not serve like we were maxed at the capacity we had to, we had, we didn't have what we ran out of space really.
And we had to stop taking referrals. Not because we didn't care, not, uh, we just couldn't keep up with the demand. And the worst part was by the time we got to some of those kids, their need had passed or they moved on to a different crisis. And it, in those few months where we were, um, maxed out, [00:07:00] we, we, we moved heaven and earth to see everybody when we had that opportunity.
And then, you know, when school ended, about two weeks after school ended, everything flipped. We suddenly had empty spots and extra staff and no referrals. We had the same team, the same mission, but now we couldn't fill the hours. And maybe this sounds familiar to you or you know, somebody like this where you're in an endless cycle, you're overwhelmed when you're busy, you know, and then anxious when it was slow.
How am I gonna, how am I gonna pay for the staff? How am I gonna hit the budget? And that type of cycle. As I think about it now, it hit me because being fully booked booked did not mean that we were free. We were just dependent on the, the, the referral list and the schedule. I. Being fully booked. That doesn't mean that we [00:08:00] were impactful.
It just means we were maxed. We are maxed out. And in a, in the, in the model where your calendar is, your income, your schedule becomes your ceiling. So we did what a lot of practices do during those busy times. Uh, we staffed up, we added space, we expanded our capacity. Uh, we took on extra debt, but when the demand dropped.
The expenses didn't drop. We still had the staff, we still had the building, we still had the facilities. We still had the, the money sunk into resources. The rent stayed high, the pressure stayed high. And that's when I started thinking, you know, what, if there was a way to, to, uh, expand and contract the offerings that wasn't necessarily dependent.
On the schedule, but it was depend, it, it was like a, how do you shift the model? So maybe, maybe time or the [00:09:00] schedule isn't the problem. Maybe the model is, what do I mean by model here? Here's what I mean. And most therapy practices, your business model is a service model and it, it's relatively simple. You trade your time for dollars, time for dollars.
One hour of service equals one hour of pay. But here's the big problem with that is therapy time has no shelf life. You can't store it. You can't save your time. If a session goes unused, it's just gone. It's gone. It's wasted. It's like a bag of spinach that sits too long in the fridge. Uh, that reminds me, uh.
I've been trying to eat healthier lately. And uh, honestly, I've just developed this love of looking for the yellow discount coupons on produce. It's like at our grocery store. It's a [00:10:00] yellow sticker. Um, maybe you've seen it. It's the same food, same nourishing. It's just cheaper because it's close to expiration.
Uh, I look for those little yellow tags all the time now and. Just like, just like those vegetables that are about to spoil. There's the, the shelf life is almost over once and once it's over, it can't be sold anymore. The same is true about your valuable time, your, your time. Once the time is passed, it's valuable and perishable.
And that perishable time makes you do things that maybe you wouldn't do. It makes you, uh, extra worried about things. Uh, it's your, it creates this pressure to be always available and take every session. It's the pressure to keep your calendar full, even when your energy isn't full, your emotional energy isn't full.
It's a pressure to, [00:11:00] uh, uh, never waste an hour. Even when you're exhausted, it's the pressure to put off your family when they, you know, they need you, but you're in the busy season and you gotta take clients when you, when you do or you put off vacations, or you put off, uh, dinners, or you put off events, uh, that you wanna go to because you just have this pressure.
It's the model. It's not, it's not you, it's just the model. The model of trading time for dollars does not support any flexibility or freedom with your time and location. But what if you could package your experience in a way that lasted instead of, you know, instead of having the short shelf life of vegetables, what if you could create something that had.
A longer shelf life, a [00:12:00] longer time where people could purchase or even they could purchase when they wanted, where they wanted. In the therapy world, the, this is what we call, like recorded workshops or cohort courses or online courses or intensivess or, uh, continuing education classes. The $97 product that you can sell wherever, whenever, to whoever wants to buy it.
It's the same valuable things that you're, you're doing your same experience, the same, uh, emotion, the same, uh, life experience that you bring, the same education. It's just packaged different. It's just put in a way that can be used different. Your best ideas shouldn't expire at the end of a 50 minute session.
It, it's you like it's you and what you bring to the table. [00:13:00] So at this point you might be thinking, oh, that sounds great James, but when am I gonna find the time to do this? I already have a busy schedule right now, or I already feel this pressure right now to do it. I get it. I I definitely get it. You're busy, you're tired, you're holding a lot, you, you're wearing a lot of hats.
But I want, I want you to know at some point for, for for many people developing, uh, something they can sell with a longer shelf life than just the 50 minute session is gonna be part of your business strategy. It's gonna be part of your business model. I wanna tell you just a quick story about my messed up timing.
Um, I grew up in the era where Netflix, Amazon, and Bitcoin were affordable investments. And I, I looked at them and I was like, oh, I want, I wanna [00:14:00] invest, but now's the night. Now's not the right time. I just kept waiting. I just kept waiting for the perfect time. I was waiting for when I was ready, I was waiting for when it, it dropped a little bit and I kept waiting and I kept waiting and those opportunities kept going up and up and up.
And I even, I remember when Netflix changed from, um, shipping DVDs to the online streaming service, and they, they had this, uh. Customer service nightmare where the price got chopped in half or two thirds because people weren't happy with something they did. And I was like, oh, now is the right time to buy.
But I waited and I waited, and then it shot, you know, two months later or three months later, it shot back up and I missed my opportunities. The, the hard reality was that was the right time. You know, that was the right time to invest in, if I [00:15:00] waited. Until I knew it was a sure thing, then it's the opportunity had passed me.
That was the perfect time, and I needed to invest. I just needed to start small though. I didn't need to go all in at the moment, but invest what I had at that time.
And I've just regretted it. If you've ever had an investment where you're like, oh, this is, this is right up my alley and I should do this, and you didn't do it, you, you kinda live with those regrets. And I see the same hesitation for experts in the field where they wait or they overthink, they stall, they say, when, when I have the perfect time, or I have the perfect course.
We believe in the myth that we have to build everything before we can build anything. I wanna say that again. We believe in the myth that we have to build everything before we [00:16:00] build anything I've learned and the hard way, I've learned the hard way that clarity does not come from waiting you. You can plan all you want, but the market is gonna tell you.
What they want, and it's not by words, it's by action and really money. And you're never gonna, you're never gonna know if you have the next great idea, if you don't. Start with some small steps, call it. It starts with movement, it action, and that's what the Scaling Therapy Empowerment Program or Step is all about.
You don't need a flagship course or big audience to get started. You just need a a plan. You need one small step after the other. It could be a lead magnet, a short workshop, a mini offer, something to test the market to see if this is something that people would wanna spend, spend money on. You start small with things that [00:17:00] align with you and who you are, and you, you start putting one foot in front of the other and do them one step at a time.
So if you're feeling stuck in your schedule, if burnout is creeping in, if you're starting to feel like your work is running your life, which sounds horrible, then maybe it's time to invest some time into building something that works for you. To start, I wanted to just give you a free resource. It's 15 ways to package your experience into a coaching product.
It's just a, it's a resource list. It's a simple, practical way to start building something sustainable and life giving to yourself without quitting your therapy practice or changing everything or starting over. You can just take a look at the resource and see if one of those options look good for you and your situation.
You can find [00:18:00] that at courses dot course creation studio.com/store, S-T-O-R-E. You can find a couple free resources there. It's free, it's thoughtful, and hopefully it gives you the, the spark to get started building the life that you need to free you from the, the tyranny of the urgent and the pressures that you've, you face every day with trying to fill your schedule.
Here's the final thing I wanna leave you with. Being fully booked does not mean you're, you are totally free. So start building something that gives you your life back. You are made for more than burnout. Let's build what's next together. I'm James and I want to help you put your mission in motion.
