From CPS to Private Practice to Generating Additional Revenue Streams in Private Practice
Nicol Stolar-Peterson had to get creative with her networking and marketing in order to transition from CPS to private practice. But because she knew her niche, she was able to target individuals and businesses that would consistently send her a stream of referrals.
And once you get known for specializing or doing good work, THAT is when you get more work from trusted colleagues.
Best Marketing Move for Her Practice
- Attending The Most Awesome Conference
- Mari Lee’s Like A Boss Facebook group
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Most Awesome Conference
- Mari Lee’s Like a Boss Private Facebook Group
- TheKids Court & Counseling Center
- LeadPages
- Therapist Court Prep
Thanks to Nicol for joining me this week. Until next time!
Transcript
Click here to read the TranscriptNicol: Absolutely.
Perry: Fantastic Nicol, so glad to have you here on the show. Let me tell our audience a little bit about you here. Nicol has been working with children and their families for over 15 years. She has worked in private therapeutic settings as well as public agencies. Nicol has expertise in the areas of mediation, child forensic interviewing, adoptions, trainings, child custody evaluations, co-parenting boot camp, dependency preceding and cps law enforcement investigations. Nicol has completed hundreds of child abuse investigations including neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, domestic violence, child deaths and is also an expert to BBS. Nicol, I gave a little overview of you there but why don’t you take a minute, fill in the gaps from that introduction, and tell us a little bit more about you personally and about your practice?
Nicol: I’ve been in private practice for some time and what I have found to be true in some of my practice and probably some of my colleagues is that because I worked so heavily in the court system that I tend to have a different clientele and I have to market it in a different way, I have to do a lot of things in a different way simply because I work primarily in the court system so what I found overtime is that my work as a child custody evaluator requires different elements of technology and marketing that is different from my colleagues so it has been a little tricky for me at times figuring that out but I’m grateful for an entire community of therapist who are always willing to help out, lend a hand; maybe share something that worked well for them. I’m excited about this podcast just because I really think it really lends to that so thank you.
Perry: Fantastic, yeah. That’s so great to hear and I want to dive into that a lot more so you have been in private practice for how long now?
Nicol: I’ve been licensed since 2009 and I started part-time while I was working full-time for child protective services and I left child protective services almost 2 years ago to be in private practice full-time and it’s been great.
Perry: Why did you make that switch?
Nicol: I wanted to see my kids grow up and that’s the thing about CPS is that you spend multiple hours with other people’s children and its important work and I’m so grateful that I got to do it as long as I did but my kids are at that age where I wanted to see them grow up and I think private practice as scary as it can be to leave a every 2 weeks’ paycheck, The tradeoff has been huge so being available to go to soccer to be able actually walk my kids to their classroom or take a day-off to go volunteer, something like that, is something that I cherished and I would just never go back.
Perry: Amazing, that’s why we become entrepreneurs. Right. We want that freedom, we want the freedom to spend time with our families, to have a direct impact on our income and to take vacations when we want and it’s such an amazing journey and I’m so glad to have you apart it with all of us here.
Nicol: Thank you.
Perry: So Nicol, you mentioned that, working as a child custody evaluator requires different marketing strategies and different use of technology. Would you elaborate on that a little bit for our audience?
Nicol: Sure, what I have found is that alot of my networking has been mostly with therapist and with attorneys and driving traffic to my site has not necessarily been a great thing cause I get some crazy phone calls that are not from my market, if you will and so it was more time consuming actually so I pulled back on that and I actually do a lot more face-to-face interactions and as a child custody evaluator, typically, once your work is known that’s when you start getting more referrals, kind of like with anything else I guess is that once you get know for specializing or doing good work, that’s when you see your work increase and you get more referrals from trusted colleagues and so that has very been different for me and so I’ve kind of had to get creative and so far, it’s worked though. So far, so good.
Perry: So you had to get creative, tell us about that. What kind of things have you done that have been really creative for your networking and marketing strategies?
Nicol: So, I’ve done free talks. I have volunteered to speak at brown-bed lunches for various bar associations talking about various issues with children and therapists and child custody evaluations and just getting known more for perhaps having some information that other evaluators don’t have especially when it comes to child abuse. I had to really take a look at my niche and be able to convey that in intimate group settings because I find that therapist and attorneys really benefit from being able to meet you face to face and then once that happens, then I’m able to include them in whether it’s Facebook or I get them on a zoom webinar or whatever it is. It makes it that much easier versus being some sort of abstract person.
Perry: So, would you say that attorneys are your greatest referral source?
Nicol: Yes.
Perry: Did you know that going into private practice?
Nicol: I thought it would be half on half, honestly, I thought it would be a lot of therapist in regards to because I used have clients come in and say I’m gonna have to go through this child custody thing, I don’t know what to do and the way it works is typically the judge would say, pick 3 names of the list and out of those 3 names then the other party would get to select one of those 3. So, you’re constantly been thrown into a little bit of a lottery if you will and so therapist do have that kind of come into their office but more so it’s attorneys that tend to be the ones that are telling their clients, you should go with person or you should go with this person and here’s why that’s been a learning curve for me but it’s been a good learning curve.
Perry: As everything is, right, I mean when you’re getting stated with business, you don’t really know even if you kind of know your niche or even if you really know, you don’t truly know who’s going to be your best referral sources.
Nicol: Right, absolutely.
Perry: And what industry. That’s why it’s so important to have niche and to have focus because then you can network with the people who matter for your better and for helping you grow your business.
Nicol: Right, absolutely.
Perry: So, once you recognize that attorney were the greatest referral source for you, what are some things you started to do with them for marketing and networking?
Nicol: Well, I had to be careful because I’m a child custody evaluator so we are the expert witness to the court and so we cannot over-market the way that Maybe I could as a therapist, where as a therapist I could drop maybe a basket of treat with some cards and maybe like a cheat sheet on when your client is feeling stressed out or something like that, but, as a child custody evaluator, it would be difficult to market that same way so I don’t. I basically send out a just little brief file of myself and my focus and my fee schedules send that out to attorneys and say, if you’re interested in hearing more about my services, if you have any questions about my background, please feel free to call. I’ve done it a little bit differently so that the aspects of my private `have 2 very different sides. You know there’s one where there’s a set-up for clients that would come in for therapy or for something else or for coaching and then there is attorneys where I really have to stay in that middle ground otherwise it would probably hurt me in court.
Perry: There’s lots of different types of attorneys, just like there’s lots of different types of therapist, an attorney can be a solo practitioner, an attorney can be a limited liability partnership with a few other attorneys and not really be a full firm, and there’s some larger firms with receptionist. Have you noticed a particular type of firm that works best for you and for getting referrals?
Nicol: You know what, for me it has been the sole practitioner. We might have an assistant and there might be just two of them in the office because they seem to be more, I don’t know how to frame it, I think that they are more open to maybe having me because my background is different than some of the other evaluators and the larger firms I think tend to find a few evaluators that they like and they tend to go with based on perhaps the outcomes of certain evaluations and the feedback that I received about my evaluations is that their very much down the middle. So, somebody wouldn’t necessarily select me because she always go with the dad, oh, she always go with the mom. They don’t know what to do with me. It’s down the middle and my background with CPS really lends to my ability to go thorough records in a different way so I’m a pretty good investigator, actually, I’m a really good investigator and so some attorneys may not want, depending on what their goal is with their clients, cause their job is really to help their client so they might pick somebody else maybe a different experience with another evaluator. That’s about the most PC way I can say it without getting sued.
Perry: That’s a very effective way of putting it. So, you know Nicol, you have come a long way over your career as a part-time private practice. Now, 2 years full on into private practice. One thing we always see therapist struggle with in the early day is with pricing themselves well. Would you mind sharing with our audience what your current session rate is to see clients and what your journey to that rate has been like?
Nicol: Sure. My current rate to see clients for therapy is 200$ and that’s also the same for coaching and then for expert witness work, that I also do, I charge 250$ and then I also have a fee for prepping for court cause therapist don’t typically don’t like court unless a subpoena lands on their desk so when I get those phone calls , I do a 2 hour session for 345$ but it also includes an early on where they send me their concerns and then I give them a list of tasks to do before we talk so that they can get everything they possible need out of those 2 hours and honestly the progression of prices has been, I think when I first started and I didn’t have a list of clients and I went with, I think I started with $150 and I found that people were willing to pay it and I didn’t have to….I’ve never taken insurance but I do find that there’s a little push back cause I don’t take insurance but it’s just not cost effective for me as a sole practitioner for the amount time and money it takes simply to deal with the panels themselves and then again what they are paying you per hour because my overhead it is what is so I do cash pay only and it’s worked for me. I don’t see a lot of therapy clients, mostly, I do child custody evaluations and then I do a lot of coaching with therapists and I spend a great deal of time also on lawsuits so I’m retained currently onto lawsuits where I’m the experts consultants. I kind of dabble if you will.
Perry: Very Diversified. So, what kind of coaching do you do with therapist?
Nicol: So with therapist, I tend to help them with all things court, so, typically, court policies aren’t what they need to be in order to protect them cause a lot of therapist don’t want to go to court but their policy, their commission packet really doesn’t state that and what it does is it opens them up to unfortunately receiving that subpoena. Now, there’s clients who shop for therapist specifically to get one who would write that letter that they think will help them in court and by actually integrating into your commission packet, a significant court policy that’s clear about what you’re willing to do or not do, it tends to protect you so if you love court then you’ll say, ok, this is what I’m willing to do in regards to court letters, I’m willing to provide observations not provide recommendations, cause that’s where therapist could lose their license and so just being really clear on what the guidelines are, just to start them off but often I get the call after the subpoena has been received and after we’ve gone through the court policies and we realize that there’s nothing in there that says, this is what they charge for a full day of testimony or half day and you can’t really go back and bill for something that they didn’t contractually agree to. So, you could spend a whole day in court and miss a whole of clients and lose about 2000$ dollars or more, right of your time and money and you can’t bill for it and so that’s something I want to see change for therapist because we don’t really get a lot of that in school, they don’t get a lot of business stuff in school, obviously.
Perry: Exactly.
Nicol: So, this is one of those things though that catches up and a lot of us as therapist would want to sweep it under the rug and not have to think about but unfortunately subpoenas do happen and we have to be ready for them and also, we need to have our fees clearly laid out and then also not get sucked into a clients’ need for a recommendation because as much as we might want to help them that’s something that really hurt your license and your ability to practice.
Perry: Absolutely.
Nicol: So, it helping therapist with that stuff.
Perry: And where can audience go to learn more about that?
Nicol: That’s therapistcourtprep.com.
Perry: And of course, we’ll have links to all the great resources Nicol has mentioned here including therapistcourtprep.com in this week show notes which you can all find at brightervision.com/ session43/. So, Nicol speaking about business, you can’t build a thriving business of any sort of without effective marketing and it seems you understood this from the get-go but it’s something that we see our clients struggle with. It something that we hear our therapist struggling with across the country and one of my favorite questions that we ask here is, what do feel is the single best marketing move that you made for your private practice and why do feel like it’s worked so well for you?
Nicol: My single….man, that’s a tough one. I feel like there’s two that compete with each other.
Perry: Let’s do those two then, that’s totally fine.
Nicol: Okay, so I was invited by a colleague to go to something called “The most awesome conference”.
Perry: Oh yes, the most awesome conference is awesome.
Nicol: It was a pivotal point for me. It was a little bit overwhelming and anxiety provoking because how far behind I was in marketing and that was an extremely important experience and I got so much from it that kind of kicked me of and started me in the right direction and then the community of therapists there really impacted me in such a great way business wise and just as people but then also through I was able to meet Marley who’s an amazing business coach for therapist and also a practicing therapist and she practices out of Glendora, California and I just participated in her Facebook group, it was called ‘Like a Boss’ and it was phenomenal. It was just really a place for therapist to learn not only about marketing and price points and multiple income streams but really learning to set up for our future and not depend on always having our butt in the chair to make money and why it was important to consider other options as well while we’re engaged in our private practice as well but to think ahead. I think the combination of those two experiences has been pretty life changing and not just to sound cheesy but it’s true. I think we all need to get inspired or to have that fire lit under us and both of those experience really did that for me so I’m very grateful and so marketing for me is definitely focusing more on who is market, how do I help them, how do I get what I have to them that they need and how do I find those people and not market in a cheesy car salesman way but a way that feels good to me, that feels authentic; that is me so that it just feels good , it doesn’t feel like you’re selling yourself , it feels like that you’re offering and sharing your services.
Perry: Absolutely and the car salesman analogy, it’s so popular, and I kind of which it would die, yeah.
Nicol: It won’t die, it will not die, ok Perry and it’s not dying and it needs to because I think it makes, especially for therapist we feel guilty for marketing ourselves which is crazy because we have something that helps people but for some reason we struggle probably more than any other group you probably ever study on that somewhere. I’m sure it’s us that we struggle with getting our names out there saying, I’m good at this you know, I’m good at therapy or I’m good at EMDR or I’m great at this, you know , this is why you should select me and we’re not very good at that and so if marketing in of itself we weren’t taught in school but I think that’s one of the biggest obstacles we have to overcome as therapist is recognizing one we have something valuable that need to be offered and then two, be okay with offering it.
Perry: I kind of feel and hope that, you know, I’m noticing a trend around the country where people are starting to move off insurance panels and move more towards a cash based private practice and it could just be the individuals and the practices that I’m speaking with but I’m seeing it obviously in the southwest and California, and here in Colorado and also further back East where it has not been as popular and I hope that trend continues, first of all and then provided that it does continue, we start seeing therapist being able to value themselves more because when you’re valuing yourself and putting a price point on your work; you’re able to see the value of it a little more clearly then because your value is not being dictated by insurance company and that’s what happening right now.
Nicol: Absolutely.
Perry: the insurance are dictating what your value is and we don’t know insurance companies,. Their goal is to minimize how much they’re paying out and the insurance company dictating what you’re value is, they’re gonna try and reduce your value as low as possible and so if you are able to move away from that and be a cash-based private practice, you’re dictating what your value is and also your clients are as well, because if you’re saying my session fee is 200$ bucks per session and you’re not getting any clients well then maybe your market and your clients are saying we don’t actually think you’re worth this but instead if you lower it down to 175$ and you start seeing more clients, that way you’re seeing this actually could be what my value is . This is the value that may market is willing to bare; thinks I’m worth.
Nicol: Right, no, absolutely and just to Segway, you know as we know with insurance, you know that first session somebody is getting tagged with a diagnosis, I mean , you just met them ,’hello’ but that’s the requirement and the great thing about cash pay is that you ethically get to do your job and I think a lot of time with insurance, you don’t feel very ethical and I know just from my years at working at the county and dealing with a very large insurance company that we were forced to worked with and the limitations that it placed. I’m watching actually hurt children in a way that was just unforgivable and I never forgot and that was just something that I was just not interested in and so in all my spare time, I also run a non-profit.
Perry: With a plethora of spare time, my goodness…
Nicol: Right, exactly. In all my spare time , I run a kids court and counseling center and one of the things we do is that we prepare children for free when they have to testify in court or make an appearance which children and foster care go to court more than any other group of children and we also receive grant funding, which is amazing to be able to offer therapy but my biggest stip was that I wanted to be able to pay therapist a great wage to able to work with these kids, I wanted to pay therapist. I want people who were really good at what they do. I didn’t want whatever the insurance was gonna force me into and I also running non-profit is much like running any other business, you have to keep it afloat, you have overhead. This grant money what it allowed to do is offer therapist 100$/hr. to come in and to do play therapy with kids and which more than most places would offer for somebody underneath their roof and what it did was it just offered an opportunity to bring true quality to our kids that deserve it, that typically that would receive the state version of insurance, which unfortunately, means you have students providing therapy, which some, I’m sure are great but what happens with that is then they go away when school is over and a lot of kids have attachment issues and that doesn’t feel ethical and so I think I’ve gone in my private practice and focus on what I can offer and when I do offer deciding skill but really through kids court , being able to reach and help children and provide really good therapy for them at no cost, there’s no authorization , there’s no how many can we get? It’s just free. And so it’s really wonderful. I’m smiling right now cause I get so excited about cause it’s almost impossible and unheard of but it can be done, you really just have to know why and honestly sticking a child with a diagnosis is obviously not something I’m not interested in so we actually don’t do that because a lot of children and foster care actually would want to go into arm services and they can’t when they’ve been tag with an unfortunate diagnosis that may have really been a snapshot of their life. Overall, I think insurance it serves purpose. I’m grateful for my health insurance but I think when it comes to insurance and mental health, I think they can really improve, I think they could listen to therapist and really improve what they’re doing but that doesn’t seem to be the trend.
Perry: Right.
Nicol: Sorry, that was a long time to chat. Sorry about that.
Perry: Well, it perfectly alright Nicol. What is the name of your non-profit?
Nicol: It’s called the Kids Court and Counseling Center.
Perry: Do you guys have a website?
Nicol: We do.
Perry: What’s that URL for our audience?
Nicol: www.kc-cc.org. We are as grass-root as they come.
Perry: Fantastic and of course, we will have a link to Kids Court and Counseling Center as well as all the other great resources Nicol has mentioned over in this week show notes at brightervision.com/session43/. So Nicol, we mentioned business and school and education a lot. You know, you went to school to become a therapist, not to get your MBA but decided to open you own private practice and it’s thriving, what’s the one thing you which you’d learn in school about starting your own business that they never taught you.
Nicol: I would’ve just appreciated an actual business class because they train you to go get a job working for someone else. There is no mention of how to go into a private practice or even having that being something that seems like an option and so anytime I talked to somebody younger that says, they want to be a social worker, they want to be a therapist, they want to do these things, I said fantastic but you have to take a business class. You have to take a marketing class. You will not get that. They will not tell you need it but you need it. Stay that extra summer, take those extra classes, you won’t regret it. I feel like we got cheated a little bit in that way because we didn’t know that we need it and now that we’re out, we spend thousands of dollars on coaching on conferences , on all sorts of things to learn how to run these businesses in an ethical way and also be able to be comfortable with income and be able to pay our bills and so that is something that I would above all else, that they should be offering business and marketing whether you’re going to school for marriage and family therapy, counseling, social work, regardless, I think it really did a disservice to a lot of us.
Perry: I agree, that’s definitely what we’re hearing in the community as well. So Nicole, we’re going to move to my favorite part of the show, the part that we like to refer to as ‘brighter insights’, and what’s so great about this part here, we really get to distilled your experience and your expertise into quick little sound bites that our audience can use to motivate and inspire them throughout their week. Are you ready?
Nicol: Yes.
Perry: What or whom inspired you to become a mental health professional?
Nicol: Sherry Shockey-Pope.
Perry: Who is that?
Nicol: Sherry Shockey-Pope runs central counseling services in riverside and she worked with me at CPS and she kept telling me, “you can leave, you can do it, you’ll be fine`, over and over for a few years until I finally believed her.
Perry: And you were able to do it and you were fine, you’re doing great.
Nicol: Yes. She just came here and visited me and that’s exactly what she said, “you’re doing fine.” You’re all grown up now. You’ve got your own office and everything.
Perry: That’s awesome. Everybody needs a mentor and somebody to help push them in the right direction, I think when it comes to business, and it’s such a key element that often that often gets overlooked.
Nicol: Yeah. Absolutely.
Perry: What is it that you do to get a fresh start in your day?
Nicol: I actually sit up in bed , I’m always the first one who’s up in my house I wish i could say that I got out the yoga mat and did all that but that’s not what happens. I sit up in bed and I take a few deep breaths and I just focus on my breathing and get really calm and then think about what I want to accomplish that day and I also have my vision board next to my bed that I tend to look at because it’s got projects on their that i know will offer me some different opportunities so I just sit there for a few minutes before I jump and run around and start getting all crazy and making lunches and ironing clothes for kids and all that stuff. I take few minutes for me and get really centered and focus on my day and decide that today is going to be amazing and it works really well.
Perry: What are some tools you’ve used to leverage the power of technology in your private practice so technology is no longer a hurdle but instead an assets for you.
Nicol: I would say finding a VA was extremely helpful.
Perry: Where did you find a virtual assistant?
Nicol: Through a friend. I had tried a few out, it hadn’t worked so honestly talking to your colleagues about who they use and why they like that person and price coins, I find that to be very helpful, probably some of the best referral sources has been from our community so that’ been huge and honestly learning about different like Leadpages, how to use Facebook from a business perspective versus a personal. I use zoom for webinars because it’s easy and I’m not a techie person. I have dabbled in WordPress and left with my head down and there’s people who do this better and I could just pay them and that’s what I do. I think , I honestly have to say outsourcing might be probably one of the smartest things I’ve done is outsourcing because I’m not a techie person and so I do a lot of shopping what I can afford , what can I not and then I look at is this something I can learn or is it smarter for me to hire someone else to build the website, to make the Facebook ad to do because the hours that it would take me would be 3 times , well if my time is valuable and I believe it is then those hours cost me what, 600$, whereas, I could have paid somebody 50$ or 300$ or whatever. I think outsourcing is probably one of the most important things to learn because theirs things that I’m very good at, I’m your girl in court, I’ll take on any attorney in court but if want to put WordPress in front of me, I’m gonna probably be in a futile position.
Perry: I understand entirely. You want to work with people at what they do and things that cause you stress and anxiety and your time is better spent elsewhere. Let some else take of it for you.
Nicol: It doesn’t feel good and then you start getting hard on yourself, why can’t you do this and I thought, there’s one day I was having one of my little break downs and Sherry Shockey-Pope said to me, this is isn’t what we went to school for and there’s other people who knows these things and we are gonna call them right now. I said, fantastic. Call those people because this is not working for me, so outsourcing is key.
Perry: What’s a quote you hold near and dear, something that’s help formulate your perspective on life or had motivated and inspired you.
Nicol: Never give up.
Perry: So important, that’s the entrepreneur’s mantra, right.
Nicol: Absolutely, you cannot give up and people say, I can’t do that and if you say that enough times, it’ll probably be true. You really don’t have a choice. You can never give up and I think as look around my office right now as I’m talking to you and I think of where I started and where I am now and I look out my front door and I have lovely little waterfall out there, I think my gosh, I never would’ve thought but I think we’re just a little too hard on ourselves, but, being an entrepreneur means that you can’t give up and it is okay to fail ,we have permission, oh to fail and that for some reason therapist , we hold on to that , I think too long when we have a fail but failures are great. The more we fail, the closer we are getting to the good stuff and we survive it and then we move on. When I have a little failure instead of breaking down, I look at it, and kind of laugh and go kind of sucked. Alright, moving on and I’m done with it.
Perry: You have to fail.
Nicol: You have to. Look at all the millionaires who’ve had millions of other businesses that fail before they had like the one and people say, oh, you’re so successful. Well, you didn’t see them ten years ago when they bankrupted here and they failed at and for some reason, we think that we’re supposed to succeed right away. We’re suppose have our return on investment (ROI) right away. We don’t want to put in the 2-3 years we need to really get ourselves grounded. We’re very hard on ourselves so we have to work on that.
Perry: I think therapist are but so are entrepreneurs in general. You know, if you don’t fail, you don’t learn. Everyone will point to these overnight success and there’s no such thing as overnight successes. There’s no such thing as an overnight success unless you happen to win the lottery.
Nicol: Really… And those people usually lose their money.
Perry: Yeah, the Company that gets attributed as an overnight success. Well, what about the last 10 years they’ve been working hard and learning about entrepreneurship and learning about business and had 2 businesses fail and then from those 2 business that fail , they learnt alot and they were able to apply those learnings to this new business that suddenly shot-up and became a huge success quote and quote “overnight”.
Nicol: Right, and therapist who come in and see clients Monday through Friday but they don’t pick a day to just work on their business, they’re hurting themselves because you have invest in your business and our business is not just sitting in chair doing therapy. We have to take the time to work on our actual business so that it can succeed and we don’t have to close our doors and that’s I think really important to focus is being able to set aside time to work on your business and knowing that it’s not going to be overnight and accepting that and that can be a good thing.
Perry: Absolutely. Nicol, if you can recommend one book to our audience, what would that book be and why?
Nicol: You are a badass by Jen Sincero. It’s quite the one that stands out the most to me and I have it audio and I listen to it in the car sometimes especially if I went to court and it didn’t go the way I wanted it to. Not with me but it’s just crazy…..we have just crazy going on in our court right now and I’ll leave an just okay, “get your head straight, let’s go , let’s go”, you go to go to another meeting and I’ll be laughing and driving down the street and people will look at me and I’m probably going to get fifty one-fifty sooner or later but people see that and like, ‘what is going on there?”, but it’s just funny to listen to obviously not for when your kids are in the car. I’m sure there are plenty of smart, deep books that I could probably share with you but I honestly think that’s probably a really good one for therapist.
Perry: You’re a badass is a great one. You don’t always need those smart eyebrow book, I mean, I don’t know what you’re a badass is like but I take it that it’s got some non-pg language in there.
Nicol: And it just says it like it is and I can appreciate that because I think sometimes, we get a little bit too serious and the work we do can be exhausting depending on how much trauma walks into your office and so I think having something that makes you laugh and reminds you to get back up especially after a difficult day. I know as a therapist that one of the hardest thing for me is when I am in therapist role and not the evaluator role and I don’t get to make a recommendation and I watch maybe a case that’s going on and I do specialize in girls who’ve been sexually abuse from about 6-14-15 years old and so I do that work and it can be frustrating watching what’s happening in the family law court or watching what’s happening with CPS and not being able to really have a say in those areas and so I really find that when I leave this office and I want to leave that behind that listening to something funny or something that’s going to lift me up a little bit is really a great way to start getting myself back into self-care.
Perry: Absolutely, You know, my mother-in-law, which I have mentioned a few times and I’m trying to get her on the podcast here. She owns a private practice in Jacksonville, Florida and you know, they do IOP and addictions counseling. She doesn’t like drama-filled movies or TV shows. She wants to watch comedies, I think we hear about that more often in this field, you know, your day has so much going on in it and it can be so challenging. You need that communic element in your life outside of work.
Nicol: Absolutely.
Perry: Alright Nicol, last question here. If you move to a new city tomorrow, you don’t know anybody there and all that you had was your computer and 100$ to start a new private practice. What is it that you would do on your very first day?
Nicol: My very first day with a 100$ and a laptop, well, I would probably find a Starbucks and use their Wi-Fi and get a very big cup of coffee that I can refill. In a new city as a therapist, I would probably go and look for some coaching clients who are struggling, going through their divorces that aren’t doing well in mediation or in child custody battle so I would probably send out a quick Facebook Ad that I had just started business. I would probably do walk-in therapy cause I don’t have an office yet, I’ve got my 100$ and I would do walk-in therapy or walk in coaching and I would help parents who tend to struggle in those situations and unfortunately, horrible outcomes can come of that but if they stand a little bit and focus on goals and child safety, I can help them do better in court and so if I moved to a new city I would probably focus on that throughout my Facebook Ads and pick up some coaching clients and help more people do better in court because unfortunately, court can make people look unstable when they really not and unfortunately that carries over to the bench and how they make their decisions. I love helping people do better and feel better when they leave court whether it’s a therapist or it’s a client but anytime especially when it has do with kids and kids’ safety, I’m all for it so that would be awesome. I like that question Perry, thank you for asking that.
Perry: You’re welcome Nicol, I like having you as a guest here. Tell us a little bit more about therapist court prep once again for everybody listening here and who can find that valuable.
Nicol: Sure, I developed an online class with 6 CEs in the state of California with BBS and it’s for therapist to learn everything they need to learn about court. They can do it in their jammies. They can do it at home and it comes with a supplemental handbook and then per request as many therapist, I have written a separate handbook that will be available very soon and that’s one they can literally download and print as many times as they need and write in it and really prepare especially if they got that subpoena and their worried. It actually has worksheets that you can fill out getting ready for depositions, creating your timeline, getting organized so you’re not that person sitting on a stand flipping through a five thousand page case-file that’s unorganized. I mean , I actually tell people get you three-ring binders out, really get your tabs, highlighter, it’s like you need to prepare. You can’t just read it the night before and walk into court. You need to be ready. I teach a lot of anxiety reduction for therapist in class and then also through my coaching because we do such important work and what I found is that we…..one bad in court for a therapist can hurt them in so many ways, it’s this dark cloud that follows them and so therapist court prep is about learning what to do, how to reduce your anxiety, how to have a good day in court and how to leave feeling taller not smaller and to feel empowered and it gets around. When you do well in court you tend to get referrals from attorneys whether it’s for therapy or coaching or whatever cause they see that you know your stuff but unfortunately, a lot of therapist role into court wearing a scarf or a long pretty flowy skirt, they look like therapist and that’s not the look you want to go for in court, like you have to dress for war and the way you do that is that you wear a suite and you put your shield of armor on and you match yourself to that attorney so that they know that you are ready, and that you’re not warm and approachable and all those things that we’re supposed to be as therapist. When you go to court it’s business and you want to match up to them and that honestly sets the tone for how things are gonna go and just be ready because the more ready we are the more prepared we are for anything. We do better at it and then it’s not scary and I think with therapist, we tend to not wanna deal with court stuff and I totally get that but it does come up and so I really like helping therapist prepare and then also implement court policies so I have a court policy I sell because I was helping everybody with theirs and I thought, oh my gosh, this is getting exhausting. I thought to just create one, like, here you go, now you can copy and paste and stick it in your packet.
You can pick a ‘yay’ court person or ‘nay’ court person, pick which one and copy-paste. You’re done because people should get paid for their time and you should be protected and your clients should really know what you’re willing to do or not to do regarding court and so overall therapist court prep really came from a lot of late night phone calls from colleagues asking for help, they had court the next day. They already call their association, they didn’t get a lot of help or they just review your records and tell the truth. That’s not helpful for court so you need to create a timeline you have get organized. You have to look for what you think they might be concern with or what your concern are but we do make mistakes but you can’t just change your notes so there’s different thing that I work on with therapist so that they really feel good about any interaction with court and that is a gift cause I just value our work so much and to let some attorney make us look bad or make us feel bad is just unacceptable to me. I just think we are better than that and we deserve to stand up for the work that we do.
Perry: Absolutely. Nicol, this has been so wonderful, so much great value here and of course to our listeners, you can learn about Nicol and all the great resources she mention over at brightervision.com/session43/. Nicol, thank you so much for being so generous with your time, expertise and your knowledge. I know that I’m speaking for our entire audience here when we say, we appreciate the great advice you provided and the therapist experience that you have shared.
Nicol: Thank you Perry.
Perry: Thanks again.
Nicol: Thank you.
Perry: And thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have a question for us please email it to us at [email protected]. And of course, if you’d like to hire an expert to handle your website and your search engine optimization and all of the technical issues that come along with it, reach out to Brighter Vision. We’re the worldwide leader in custom therapist website design. For just 59$ a month we’ll build you a website that’s as unique as your practice, and take care of every single issue when it comes to your website, all the tech support, the seo to get you found. To learn more head on over to Brightervision.com and drop us a line through one of our contact forms. That does it for today, thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Erin Bennetts says
THANK YOU SO MUCH for pointing out the importance of setting time aside to focus on the business! Our business is not just seeing clients it is taking care of and growing a practice. This is a great reminder for me as I am looking at how to schedule my time in the new year.
Nicol Stolar-Peterson says
Business Growth is key! Setting aside time to plan and organize our business goals is vital 🙂 Shoring up our clinician packets to include a solid court policy is a great start !
Perry~ thank you so much, this podcast was a blast !
Perry Rosenbloom says
Thank YOU Nicol!
And Erin, so glad to see you! Haven’t heard from you in so long!