Perry: In this episode of the Therapist Experience I’m speaking with Eddie Reece from Getting Along Incorporated. This is the Therapist experience, episode number 39. Welcome to the Therapist Experience. The podcast where we interview successful therapists about what it’s really like starting and growing a private practice. I’m Perry Rosenbloom, the founder of Brighter Vision, and I’m so excited to introduce our guest today Eddie Reece from Getting Along Incorporated. Eddie, are you prepared to share your therapist experience?

Eddie: Absolutely.

Perry: Alright. And so for long-time listeners of the show you’d probably remember Eddie from episode 9. Episode 9 was entitled, ‘You’re not a psychotherapist, you’re a business owner’. And it has consistently been our most popular episode. So we’re so excited to welcome Eddie back to the show here. We’re going to take a little bit of a spin here on our usual show. As opposed to the standard questions that you hear most of the time and talking about growing and starting a business, we’re going to talk more about the mental and emotional experience of being a therapist. What it takes emotionally to be a good therapist and talking about what helping people truly is. So Eddie, let me tell our audience a little bit about you and then let’s hop into the show?

Eddie: Alright.

Perry: Eddie Reece is a psychotherapist and an educator with a private practice in Alfreda, Georgia. He is also a reluctant writer who avoids writing by playing golf and music whenever he can. If that doesn’t work he watches TV. His diverse background read lots of different jobs allows him to relate to a wide variety of people whether helping a client or filling up a blank page. His practice focuses on helping people get along so he named his business Getting Along Inc. If you want help with any type of relationship give him a call. Eddie, gave a little overview of you there, 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?

Eddie: First think that pops into mind is I work by myself at home and there’s a reason for that. Because I never did really good over my authority issues. So I like being my own boss but I really can’t work for anybody else. I’m a pure entrepreneur.

Perry: I understand that sentence exactly. So Eddie, I’d love to start with a standard question that we spoke about before this show, that seems that all therapists hear. And that question is, don’t you get tired of listening to everyone’s problems?

Eddie: Yeah, that’s probably the most common response to hearing that I’m a therapist. And before I really kind of answer, give you my response to that. Part of where that question comes from in my opinion is that therapists– It’s probably what we talked before. We don’t do a very good job of marketing ourselves and telling people what we do. So that question really comes out of the thought that that’s what therapy is. A therapist sitting there listening to somebody really complaining. So what I do is I say, gosh, don’t you get tired of listening to people’s problems? I say, that’s not what I do. Then that gets them to ask me, well, what is it that you do? And I say, I help people hear what it is they’re saying. And then they go, hmm, because they have no idea–

Perry: My exact response.

Eddie: Yeah, they have no idea what that means. And then I go, what that means is that listening to people’s problems is usually just thought about as people just complying that you’re on and on and on about, I don’t like this, I don’t like that. When we do that, which we all do, we’re really not hearing ourselves. We’re not listening to ourselves. And what I mean by that is that we don’t hear what’s being said well enough to actually act on. So if I’m not happy in my job and I keep going, I’m not happy in my job, but I’m not doing anything to change it I haven’t heard myself. So what I do as a therapist is I get people to actually hear what they’re saying. And hear it well enough to actually make a change.

Perry: How do you think that can help shift the overall marketability of therapists?

Eddie: Well, it changes in that it gives people better idea of what we do, because what I’m saying in that little dialogue there is I’m helping people change. So if you want to change something give me a call. If you want to complain call somebody else.

Perry: But in terms of like shifting the overall dialogue of what a therapist does, do you think that’s essential to allowing therapists to market themselves better?

Eddie: In terms of the explanation to the general public, yeah. If we can launch probably a 10 million dollar ad campaign and go, here’s what’s therapy about, here’s what therapy does, here’s what a therapist does, so that we would never get that question. I mean, my goodness, I don’t know that I will ever live long enough to say to someone, I’m a psychotherapist and they go, oh wow, that just sounds like such a great job, helping people improve and change their lives. Hahaha. I want to hear that at least once before I die.

Perry: You will. I can assure you of that. So what’s it like listening and being privy and having clients share with you such intense moments in their lives that they might not have shared with anybody else? That can be very draining in some ways and it can require a reset and a refresh. What is it like to have that experience as a therapist?

Eddie: Well, a couple of things come to mind. one is that what I think we’re really going to talk about today is the therapist experience. When I saw your email go out about we’re looking for folks to get on show again, just the title hit me differently this time. The therapist experience, and what came to mind is Irvin Yalom’s books and he’s written extensively about being a therapist, and here’s what goes on inside of him as he works with clients. So I thought about our interview kind of going that way is to talk about, there’s the experience of being a therapist. So to answer your question again, you said something I think important. It seems to me it would be draining, again that comes from not really understanding what a therapist does. Going back to the earlier thing, you know? Don’t you get tired of listening to people’s problems? Well no, because it’s not what I do. I help people change. Well gosh, isn’t it draining to help people change?

Perry: Well, I think maybe draining is the wrong word but I think that your therapist experience, working with relationships and couples can be very different than an addiction specialist’s therapist experience. Where the types of problems that they’re going through with Fentanyl right now and seeing overdoses left and right at a rapid rate can be very different type of experience and type of experience as a therapist that you’re having and that you had in your career.

Eddie: Yeah, I think it would be a different experience for me to be in a different kind of therapy. I’m in private practice working with high functioning people and first world problems. So if I say moved to inner-city clinic somewhere helping people with drug addiction that would be a different experience for me and it would probably be draining for me because it’s not what I want to do.

Perry: Mhm. But I mean, it’s not even inner cities right now as well, just to–

Eddie: Well, anywhere.

Perry: Yeah. In Cleveland, Ohio I think there were a few dozen overdoses in a few hours.

Eddie: Right. But if I’m geared for that. If that’s what I want to do, if that’s my line of work, that’s not going to be draining. And this is hard for people to understand. It may be simpler to talk about it in terms of burnout. People go, how do you prevent burnout, I go, by doing something you like.

Perry: So for a therapist who– I think a common issue with burnout isn’t that they don’t– A therapist doesn’t enjoy the work that they’re doing, it can be– And I think there’s two different types of burnout. There can be a burnout when you’re working for somebody else which is something different. But if we’re talking about people who are in private practice for themselves, the kind of burnout that I see hearing from clients and speaking with people is much more so that they’re overworked and under-vacationed. And I think the integral issue sort of goes back to what we’ve talked about in episode nine is that therapists aren’t treating themselves as business owners but instead as psychotherapists. And you can’t effectively prevent burnout, even if you’re doing what you love, if you’re seeing six, seven, eight clients a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year.

Eddie: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And I would define that is that you’re doing something you don’t want to do.

Perry: Which is being a business owner?

Eddie: No, you’re seeing too many people. You don’t really want to do that. You want to see 10 to 15 a week, not 25 to 35.

Perry: So how does somebody go then if they’re seeing 25 to 35, they’re taking insurance and insurance is paying them at not reasonable reimbursement rate.

Eddie: Exactly.

Perry: How do you go from seeing 25 to 35 clients a week and facing burnout, to transitioning to seeing 10 to 15 clients a week? What kind of advice would you give to our listeners?

Eddie: Well, you’re running the risk of getting me on a huge so far.

Perry: That’s why we’re here, right?

Eddie: Yeah. Here’s what I say. And we’ll get all kind of backlash for this. Is you get off of insurance panels and you quit working for people who don’t care about you.

Perry: Are you on any insurance panels?

Eddie: No, no. I don’t do it.

Perry: And when you say, quit working for people that don’t care about you, are you referring to–? What are you referring to?

Eddie: The insurance companies. Therapists will argue about this with me until they’re blue in the face. And I’m sorry, you’re just wrong. If you take money from an insurance company, an insurance company is paying you. Who pays you is who you work for. You do not work for that client, you work for that insurance company and you are now working for somebody who underpays you, under-respects you, does not really have any good feelings about what it is you’re doing because you’re costing them money.

Perry: So maybe the tale of this episode should be, you’re not a business owner if you take insurance. Haha. You’re an employee.

Eddie: You’re an employee, right. You’re a sub-contractor.

Perry: So there’s so many different ways that we can twist and turn this conversation. One question that I want to spin back around to is what kind of advice you would give to people who are listening to this and are like, yes, I want to get off insurance panels. But before we get there, insurance does play a valuable role for some people and in some communities, in many communities, and depending on your clientele that’s the only way people will be able to have therapy.

Eddie: Yeah. So I say to the people that are burned out because they’re working for very real money is, you’re not doing what you really want to do. Let somebody else do that. The argument that, well, if I don’t take insurance they won’t get therapy. No, that’s not true at all. Because somebody else takes insurance. You don’t have to be the person who does that. And that’s where it’s really tricky for people to change their mindset to where they don’t have to be that person. They can be the person who works in private practice, doesn’t take insurance. Then you have to go back to episode 9 and become a business owner and quit working for somebody else.

Perry: So to someone listening to this show, what would you say to them that if they want to stop taking insurance, what kinds of recommendations would you give to them to transition from seeing 25 to 35 clients a week to go into a cash-pay only private practice? Because how you market yourself, where you market yourself, how you present yourself. It all changes.

Eddie: It all changes. It changes 100%. Not only what you do in terms of marketing and then selling yourself. You have to change an internal part of yourself. You have to in a sense become more of an entrepreneur than you are. You know, and I say it kind of jokingly but it’s really sure. I am a pure entrepreneur. I can’t work for somebody else. If an insurance company came to me and said, Eddie, see who you’re seeing, work what you want to work or exactly who are you doing it, we won’t say another word to you and we’ll pay you five million dollars a year. The only requirement we have is you check with us to find out what your work schedule is and we’ll tell you to be at work at eight in the morning, get off at five, work Monday through Friday, have an hour for lunch. And when you want to take a vacation call and ask us for permission. We’ll give you a couple of weeks a year. I certainly would want the five million dollars but I get fired.

Perry: So what are some action steps that a therapist could take if they’re listening to this podcast and they have a pen and paper in front of them? What are some action steps that they can take today to start moving away from insurance?

Eddie: Here’s what I tell them to start. I tell them to start by logging the amount of hours you’re working. And work includes not only sitting in front of a client but the paperwork afterwards, filling out insurance forms, calling the insurance companies. Add all that up and then take a look at your income. And just simple division, what am I making per hour. And when I’ve done that with people it’s worked out to be sometimes as low as 15 but generally around 25 to 30 dollars an hour. And then I say, would you apply for a job now that pays you 30 dollars an hour for all the schooling and all the training you did? Is that what you were sitting in class for? I can’t wait to get out of here, get my degree, get my license, sit in front of a client for 30 dollars an hour. Is that really what you want? And I have yet to have anybody go, oh gosh, yeah that was my dream from day one.

Perry: So that sounds more like the people who are debating it and that’s really great advice. But what about, what can I do to start– So I want to go off insurance panels. I know it’s not good for me, I know it’s not the direction I want my business to go, I know it’s leading me to burnout. And I live Alfreda, I think further West. This is something I spoke about with Shane Burkle in a previous episode. Out West it’s more common place I think for therapists to not take insurance. They’re cash pay only. I think on the East coast it’s less common. So to a therapist that’s in an area that it’s not that common for therapist to be cash pay. How do they begin educating clients, how do they begin working with their existing clients to ramp down and get out of being in insurance panels and be a cash-pay private practice?

Eddie: Well, the transition is what you’re asking about and you do two things. One is you revamp your website, you revamp your marketing, and you raise your rates. And you that from the beginning so that the new clients that come in come in at your rate, no insurance. And then you’ll get calls, like I get calls all the time, oh, I thought I could come see you, do you take–? No, I don’t take insurance. You can file your out of network benefits if you want. Oh no, I can’t afford that, I can only pay the co-pay. Okay, here are some therapist– Really I don’t know the therapists so send me the list of providers. If there’s somebody on there that I know, that I could recommend I’ll be happy to help you find somebody and go in network. Then I explain to them that if you go and network you’re going to get a mental health value notices, if you go out of network you’re going to get a mental health value notices. I got a big thick book here and I’ve got to pick one from that. And there’s not a good one in there. There’s not one that says, really nice person trying to have a better life. And that mental value notice becomes part of your permanent medical record. Now, some people that doesn’t bother. If it doesn’t bother you, great, use your insurance, if it bothers you, don’t use your insurance. Okay, I don’t want to use my insurance but I still can’t afford to pay you 200 dollars. Okay great, here are some low cost clinics, give them a call. You don’t have to use your insurance and you don’t have to pay 200 dollars. You have to be willing to give up clients.

Perry: Absolutely.

Eddie: That’s hard for people.

Perry: It is hard for people. So that was a great conversation there that can I think lend itself to other people to figure out how to converse with those clients that can only go insurance. But what about somebody who is curious? Okay, you tell them, I don’t take insurance, I can provide you, here’s the pros and cons of insurance. Okay Eddie, what’s your hourly rate? 200 dollars an hour. Well, that’s kind of expensive. I didn’t expect to be paying that much.

Eddie: I go, yeah, it is. It is expensive. And that stops them. And then I go, and so are a lot of other things in your life. And you’re calling because your marriage isn’t working out really well. Let me ask you this. Let’s say you agree to 10 sessions with me, that’s 2000 dollars– I’m going to make the math easy because I’m not good at math. That’s why I went into social sciences. Would you write me a check for 2000 dollars right now to improve your marriage? Well, sure. Okay, that’s 10 sessions, come on.

Perry: Hah. So what it sounds like is you’re becoming much more of a salesman, saleswoman, when you go into being cash-pay. Because it’s easier to get clients if you take insurance.

Eddie: It is easier but it’s not profitable.

Perry: So are there any great sales books for therapists out there?

Eddie: No.

Perry: We should write that.

Eddie: Oh, tell me about it. That is one of the books on my list of all the books that I’ll never write.

Perry: How to sell yourself and move into cash-pay.

Eddie: Exactly. Because that’s what it comes down to. And here’s the real problem Perry is that the usual personality of a therapist is not the personality of a sales person. I’m a freak of nature. I max out in personality for sales and I max out in personality for therapists. That’s rare. So a lot of what I do in my consulting with therapists is I help them alter their way of really thinking and approaching their business in a way that says, you’ve got to learn how to sell. You’ve got to learn how to close the deal, you’ve got to learn how to turn that phone call into money.

Perry: So closing a deal, that’s hard.

Eddie: Not if you’re good at it. Haha.

Perry: I would agree. But it’s hard, especially at the beginning. What’s hard is asking for the sale, because with any sale– When I started Brighter Vision I did a 100% of the sales. It wasn’t until we were a year and a half old that I moved out of sales. And even just yesterday, Sam was out so I took over sales and I had four phone calls and three of them became clients.

Eddie: Right. So that’s a good closing ratio.

Perry: I love it. I’ll take that all the time. But you know, there comes a point in a conversation, in a sales conversation. And any time someone calls you to inquire about therapy, it’s a sales conversation.

Eddie: It is a sales call, yes it is.

Perry: There comes a point in time in a sales call where you’re going through the loops. The first loop is, are we a good fit. I only want to go with someone in insurance. Okay, we’re not a good fit. Okay, I was thinking I want to go with insurance, but maybe I’ll do cash-pay, tell me about it. Alright, we might be a good fit. Oh, am I too expensive for me? Alright, bad fit. There comes a point where it’s like, okay, the fit looks like it should be good, now is the hard part. You have to ask for the sale. For us, here at Brighter Vision it’s pretty straightforward. With a ‘be to be’ kind of company it’s, okay, we can get started today and take your credit card right over the phone. For a therapist, how do you ask for the sale?

Eddie: It’s exactly the same way. It’s let me grab my appointment book here, and let’s find the time that will be convenient for you. I’ve got two times here. I’ve got a Thursday at 12 and I’ve got Tuesday at 6. Which one of those would work best for you. That’s called a choice closed, and then shut up and don’t say anything.

Perry: Hahaha. It’s so hard to shut up, isn’t it? But it’s true. That’s perfect advice right there.

Eddie: That’s how you do it.

Perry: You ask for the sale and you shut up.

Eddie: And you shut up. And then they’ll go, but, that’s just so much money. Shut up! You know, I don’t know if that time would work for me. Shut up! Don’t say anything. They are not talking themselves out of it, they’re talking themselves into it. Let them talk themselves into it.

Perry: As a therapist you should be a good sales person because you’re great at listening.

Eddie: Exactly.

Perry: And that’s what sales is, it’s just listening.

Eddie: It’s listening. But here’s why it’s hard for people, especially therapists. And I get a lot of backlash when I tell people this too. It’s hard for you because you honestly deep down inside don’t think you’re worth 200 dollars for 45 minutes. You honestly don’t think that what you have to offer is the greatest thing in the world and you are shocked that people wouldn’t want to give you even more money for it. That’s why it’s hard for you. It’s not hard for me because I know that what I have to offer is– And I’ll say it this way for dramatic effect. It’s better than a cure for cancer. The reason it’s better than a cure for cancer is that if I had a cure for cancer or good therapy, and I had to make a choice, okay, I’m going to choose good therapy. Why? Because more people need that than a cure for cancer. So what with the first Star Trek movie? Yeah, it’s the first Star Trek movie. It’s the need of the many over the need of the few. And I honestly believe that. I really do. If I had that choice it would be a no-brainer for me. I would turn down a cure for cancer.

Perry: So how do you– Getting over the issues of money guilt and rate guilt, what would you say to therapists listening today who are like, I charge a 125 an hour but I really feel like I’m underselling myself. I want to be charging 160 an hour but I don’t feel comfortable doing that.

Eddie: Okay. The first way to go after that in my opinion is to go to therapy yourself. And this is another one of my soap boxes. I spent probably more money on therapy– Because I was self-pay. on my own therapy than money I have. Was it worth it? You bet. Does it make it easy for me to sell therapy? You bet. Because I’m not telling you what I have heard and seen. I’m telling you what I’ve experienced. And I know in every cell in my body that your 200 bucks that you’re going to give me is so worth it. That I can’t say it in any other way other than, what do you charge? 200 dollars. Whereas everybody else does. What do you charge? Well, I charge 140 but I mean I do have a… That’s not sales. That’s begging. And as soon as you do that why would I pay you 140? And you’re also telling me unconsciously maybe that you don’t value what you’re doing.

Perry: Eddie, do you know how many sessions on average a client spends with you?

Eddie: I used to keep all that info because it’s really important in terms of monitoring your business and profitability of it to know what that client’s worth. What that one client that comes in, what’s he worth. And I don’t know anymore. I finally stopped because it wasn’t useful to me anymore. But the way that I talk about that in my own practice is I have– I still am seeing clients that came from a client, and a client, and a client, and a client, and a client. To where that client back there some 15-18 years ago, I stopped counting after that client was worth 150,000 dollars.

Perry: That’s pretty remarkable.

Eddie: Yeah, I stopped counting. Now those are few and far between, but when somebody calls me, a perspective client, in my mind this could be another 100+ thousand dollar client. What is it worth to have that client call me? So that’s why I spend this much money that I spend on average on advertising and marketing.

Perry: And what do you spend on advertising and marketing roughly, if you don’t mind me asking?

Eddie: It works out on the average to be about 2500-2700 dollars a month, and I can hear therapists listening to this right now throwing up because that’s a shocking figure to most therapists. There are therapists that they’re giving you 60 dollars a month and it’s like crying it out of their hands. And they’re like, oh my god, it’s costing me 60 dollars a month. And I go, look folks, here’s the deal. I’m giving all these companies 2500 dollars a month and they’re giving me 8-10-12,000 dollars a month. Is that a good deal? Yeah. You’d be surprised how many times I’ll say that at a workshop to therapists and they start doing the math.

Perry: Yeah. One of my major goals with this podcast is to help educate therapists about business and marketing. And a bunch of 25,000 bucks a month for advertising, that’s pretty good. I mean, I can’t think of many therapists I know that would have anywhere near that advertising budget. But the math works and so–

Eddie: The math works, right.

Perry: It’s just math. And now for just getting started, if you’re just starting to move into cash-pay. You’re not going to spend 2500 dollars a month on advertising. You need to pick a single marketing channel and spend some money. Dedicate 300 or 400 dollars a month for a few months and see. You know, when Brighter Vision was first getting started, our marketing budget, I think we were throwing about 300, 400, maybe 500 bucks a month on AdWords. Now we’re spending over 10,000 dollars a month on AdWords.

Eddie: Right.

Perry: But it took time to ramp up to that. And you test and you see. So I know you’re a huge proponent of Kudzoo, and that’s worked really well for your business, so if someone out there wants to check out Kudzoo– And again we’ll have links to it in this week’s show notes at Brightervision.com/session39. If someone wants to try out Kudzoo to market their practice on try it out, throw a few hundred bucks at it and see.

Eddie: And see what happens, sure. And again, here’s where I can sell business consulting. Don’t go out there on your own not knowing anything and give companies you don’t know anything about your money. Come to somebody who knows how to do it. Here’s where I’ve spent the money, here’s the money that’s coming back, this is what works. Kudzoo obviously worked for me, Brighter Vision worked for me, Google works for me because I keep giving them money every month. So you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and what you’re saying, throw 300 or 400 dollars a month and you’d be shocked as to the reaction for most therapist, certainly the ones that have been in my workshop and have been consulting with me, again, they start throwing up. Because they honestly cannot change the mindset. This is what I was referring to earlier, you really have to change your internal world to where you see it differently. That you’re not spending money you don’t have. You’re spending money that will create income and there’s no reason in the world you wouldn’t do that. There’s no reason in the world you shouldn’t go into debt even to do that. That’s called a business loan. It’s not something new. Business loans are not something new. Business is actually taking out business loans. And you do have because of the return on your investment is way brighter than the interest on that note, and could help therapists think that way as a monumental task sometimes.

Perry: And I think we’re seeing more and more of it but it definitely is monumental at times. For those of you listening who are thinking that 300 or 400 dollars to try out paid acquisition method is too much, I want you to think about non-paid acquisition method. If you went and printed up a few hundred brochures, that’s going to cost you some money. That’s paid acquisition. And then you’re driving around in your car, you’re spending your time going to doctor’s offices, you’re calling doctor’s offices, that’s all paid acquisition as well. It’s just a different mindset. So if you want to go with a method of driving around, printing material, just make sure that you actually have a clear strategy with it. Because I hear all the time of just, oh yeah, just networking with people. Just networking without a clear direction and clear strategy is not going to be as effective as if you had a clear strategy that you’re able to repeat time and time again to acquire new clients and acquire new referral sources.

Eddie: Right. And I really like what you’re saying because it fits well with what I tell people. I go, there’s really two ways to build your practice. One is on foot and the other one is on the internet. And to me it’s about your personality. pick the method that fits your personality. I am not the personality, as much of a sales person as I am, to go and make an appointment with a doctor and a dentist, a chiropractor. And there’s probably eight of them within walking distance of me. I’m not going to take the time to go and sit with them and give them a sales pitch about therapy. It’s not any fun for me. If I meet one of these people at random and we start a conversation, I’d love talking to them then. But the whole thing of I’m going to go make an appointment, I’m going to go in, I’m going to give him my card, I’m going to say, send me some referrals. I don’t enjoy that. So I’m going to go with the internet. But if you enjoy that, if you used to be a drug rep and talked to doctors, you got that inside thing then yeah, go for it. It is in the long run less expensive momentarily. I don’t think it’s any less expensive than time.

Perry: Yeah. I probably agree with that. I mean, word of mouth referrals are certainly the cheapest costs of acquisition, there’s no denying that. And for everybody listening, there was a great episode that I recorded with Shane Birkel over at Brightervision.com/session31 about how he’s used Facebook to build and maintain relationships with other local therapists and use it skyrocket his referrals. And that’s a really effective way to do both and happy medium between online and in person. And basically what Shane did is he created a local therapist marketing and networking group for his community. And just started– He created a networking group for the seacoast area of New Hampshire and just invited a bunch of therapists and others joined the group. And it’s become a great referral network. So that sort of combines the online aspect as well as the on foot aspect without the huge time commitment of on foot.

Eddie: Right, right. And you can also do that here in Atlanta. We have several professional list serves and the big part of the list serves and these emails every day, looking for somebody in this area that takes this insurance, sees these people. So that costs nothing, it just costs some time to go through the emails. So there’s all kinds of different ways to do it. Again, you have to have entrepreneurial mindset of finding those ways, and then actually using them. And you do that, to go back to your earlier question. How do I get off insurance? You do that at the same time as you wean your insurance clients. And there’s all kinds of paperwork you have to fill out to get off of the panels and actually be off of them and they don’t make it easy.

Perry: Of course not, right? They don’t make anything easy, do they?

Eddie: Right. No, they don’t. So you got to go through that process and actually get off the panel so that you stop giving the referrals. Because the way it works with insurance what I understand is if Joe is covered by ETNA and he comes to see you and he wants to use his insurance, you can’t charge him full fee, even if he’s willing to. Of course, you can do that and not tell anybody but you’re breaking your contract with insurance company when you do that. So that’s another reason I don’t want to be anywhere near– Again, you don’t have the freedom of being your own boss when you work for insurance company. That’s my familiar problem with it. Like I said, I didn’t get over my authority issues and I really don’t want to.

Perry: Eddie, can you share with our audience a little more about your business consulting that you offer?

Eddie: Yeah. It’s pretty straightforward. Folks can call me, they can meet me online, they can come see me in person if they’re local. Then that’s matter of, we’ll spend the time it takes. The way that I do my consulting is the same way I run my practice. It’s a concierge model here and if you need me for a full 45 minute session, great. If you need me for 5 minutes, great. Meter starts running and we start talking. And so we can do that face to face, online, email, text, carrier pigeon, doesn’t matter. And there’s a question here and there. We get you started. It’s like, alright, here’s some to do list, do this, do this, do that. Get back, how did that work? Let’s add this.

Perry: And what’s your rate for consulting?

Eddie: It’s 200 dollars for 45 minutes.

Perry: I’m glad you didn’t him and haw there.

Eddie: Yeah, it works out to be 266 an hour but I do 45 minute sessions and I start my sessions at the top of the hour so I have 15 minutes to write notes and go pee.

Perry: Eddie, and how would you like our people who are interested to get in touch with you. I know you gave a bunch of different options there, would you prefer email, would you prefer phone? Where would you like this to put in the show notes for this week?

Eddie: For most people it’s probably an email because there’s so many people that don’t even setup a voice mail anymore if I try to call them back. So that’s probably the most efficient way. Send me an email [email protected], and then the website’s Gettingalong.net.

Perry: Great. And we’ll have links to all this in this week’s show notes over at Brightervision.com/session39. Eddie, thank you so much for being so generous with your time, your expertise and your knowledge. This was so much fun as always, had a great time chatting with you and so much great information. Thank you for the therapist experience you had shared.

Eddie: Oh, you’re welcome Perry. It really is fun talking to you. I shared this with our audience and said this in an email to you, it’s like two really good jazz musicians when we start talking.

Perry: I love it, it’s a lot of fun.

Eddie: A lot of fun. So any time my friend.

Perry: And Eddie, just to give some background to everybody, Eddie was probably– I think you were one of the first 10 clients to ever sign up with Brighter Vision.

Eddie: I was, I was. Yeah.

Perry: Eddie entrusted us with his business back when we were just flying by, barely even knowing what we were doing. We got a lot better since then. I know we just redesigned your site and it’s looking fantastic. So Eddie, again, always a pleasure and thank you so much to everyone who tuned in today. If you have a question for us you can email it to us at [email protected] and, of course, if you’re interested in investing in your practice to help you grow your business, the bast way to do that is through a website. Reach out to Brightervision.com, we’re the worldwide leader in custom therapist website design. For less than 2 dollars a day you’ll get a website that’s as unique as your practice, and provide you with unlimited tech support. And we do your SEO, or your search engine optimization, so that people can actually find you online. 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.