TTE 41: Is My Work as Valuable as the Work of a Master Plumber with Dr. Melissa Leedy
When debating her fees, Melissa’s house had a leak. A plumber came out and charged her $150 per hour and she asked herself: Is my work as valuable as the work of a master plumber? Well, of course! And if a master plumber can make $150 an hour, why should I struggle with charging that?
This is the tone and free-wheeling awesomeness that encompasses our chat together. You need to listen to learn more about her amazing Therapist Experience and what she’s learned, from AdWords, to hiring consultants, to crafting a marketing message.
Best Marketing Move for Her Practice
- Hiring a PPC expert to help her get her AdWords campaigns running
Previous Episodes Mentioned
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Thanks to Melissa for joining me this week. Until next time!
Transcript
Click here to read the TranscriptMelissa: I am, I’m very excited.
Perry: Alright. We are so glad to have you here Melissa. Let me tell our audience a little bit about you and then let’s dive into the interview.
Melissa: Okay.
Perry: Dr Melissa Leedy is a clinical psychologist and owner of Legacy Counseling Service in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Dr. Leedy earned her PHD from Oklahoma State University in 2007 and completed her internship at The James A. Haly VA Hospital in Tampa, Florida. She was then hired as a staff psychologist in the spinal cord injury and disorders unit as a rehabilitation psychologist. She worked in this position for three years helping veterans adjust to various levels of paralysis and other physical impairments caused by injury or illnesses such as cancer and multiple-sclerosis. Dr Leedy then transferred to the primary care clinic where she worked for four years in inter-disciplinary team. She helped veterans adjust to various chronic and acute medical conditions as well as chronic pain, insomnia, depression, and anxiety. Currently Dr. Leedy owns and operates a solo practice in Oklahoma where she works with adults ages 30 to 75 who are struggling with chronic illnesses, acute injuries, chronic pain, insomnia, depression and anxiety. She offers both face to face, and online counseling services. In addition to those specialty areas Dr Leedy also incorporates a Christian faith perspective for those clients who like do discuss these issues in treatment. Melissa, 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?
Melissa: Well, personally I am actually returning to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma from being gone for nine years while I was in Florida. So I was born and raised in Broken Arrow and I have my whole family here and all my in-laws here. So it’s been really great to be back. I’ve been back for about one year now. So it’s really great to be back and to raise our two kids here. And it’s been quite an experience learning how to build a private practice and get reconnected with the community after being gone for so long. So it’s fun but it’s also challenging.
Perry: I completely understand that. So is this your first private practice? You did not have a private practice out in Florida, is that correct?
Melissa: That’s mostly correct. When I left the VA hospital I actually did some contract work for one year in geriatrics, and rehabilitation centers, and ALS, and nursing homes. So during that time I kind of dipped my toes into private practice. I was listening to a ton of podcasts and a ton of free trainings from Joe Sanok, and Zynnyme. And I had a practice about one day a week and I think I had maybe four or five clients. That only went on for maybe four or five months before we moved back home to Oklahoma. So I did a little bit of work but it wasn’t full time and I didn’t– I had a backup because I had a contract position. So now I don’t have a backup.
Perry: Did you find that the transition to going full-time into private practice was made easier by those first four to five months of you doing it part-time and on the side?
Melissa: Yeah. I think it really was. Those months where I was building it I had created my own website. So I learned a lot about how to create a website, I learned a lot about how to write copies. Now grade that I’ve learned a lot more and I’ve been changing some things. But you know, I learned some of those initial things that I think if I went in at full force initially, it would have been much more exciting producing. So I kind of got those basics done, I got my paperwork things done, I figured out how I wanted to manage my notes and was just kind of able to ease into it. But I didn’t do any marketing really when I was doing a private practice in Florida. So the marketing issue is a new thing for me here in Oklahoma.
Perry: What’s some of the marketing that you’ve done right away? Like, the first marketing that you did when you moved to Oklahoma and you hung that shingle out on your door saying, “Legacy Counseling Service! We are open for business!”
Melissa: Yeah, well one of the first things that I did actually was I hired Dan Windler who– He’s a graduate student but he does a lot of Adwords campaign. So I hired him to do some Adwords campaign for me and that was really good because it brought in some clients while I was learning some of the other marketing. but in addition first thing I did was I got some business cards, I made some promotional rack cards to give to physician offices and things like that. And then I basically would call people. Call physicians and dietitians, and different people and setup face to face appointments with them. So I did that nearly every day for at least a couple of months when I first got here. So I wasn’t even setup but I was just trying to get the lay of the land and who did what in terms of medical practice, and let them know that I was going to be ready for business in a few weeks. And I took that really seriously and I would sometimes have three or four networking appointments a day in the beginning.
Perry: That’s great. I want to chat more about your networking events and what you did but before we get in there, let’s talk a little more into your work with Dan. And we’ll have links to Dan, and Zinnyme, and Joe Sanok, and everything we mentioned here in this week’s show notes which you can find at Brightervision.com/session41. But Dan Windler, he does Adwords for therapists. He works primarily with mental health professionals. And we refer a lot of clients to Dan, he does great work. But one thing we hear very often from therapists is they’re a little scared to put money into that Adwords pot. And so for those of you who are not familiar, I’m just going to give a brief overview of what Adwords is. Basically, if you just search for a therapist Broken Arrow, the top results are usually ads in Google. It’ll say ad next to it in green text and you can pay to be up there. Then below that are the what’s called the organic listings, which you can do things to help improve your organic listings and your organic ranking in Google, but nothing is guaranteed. The only thing that is guaranteed with Google rankings is if you pay money you can be at the top on Adwords. And you pay on what’s called a per-click basis. So anytime someone clicks on your ad you have to pay a certain amount of money. So you hired Dan way in the beginning when you weren’t really seeing many clients, is that correct?
Melissa: Yes. I actually hired him when I was in Florida and I had a really small practice because I didn’t have time to market and I didn’t really know if I was going to be– If we’re going to be staying in Florida. I was just kind of waiting for some pieces to fall into place to figure out if we would be staying and I should really grow a practice there, or if we would be moving back home to Oklahoma. So I hired Dan even back in Florida and that’s where I got the majority of my clients while I had the small practice.
Perry: That’s fantastic. I love hearing that because Adwords can be such a great acquisition strategy and great marketing strategy that therapists are typically so scared to dip their toes in water. How and why did you decide to pursue pay per click marketing to grow your practice initially?
Melissa: Yeah. I had been following Joe Sanok’s podcast for a long time and he did an interview with Dan and at the end Dan had offered a 30-minute website consultation. So I took advantage of that and then Dan and I had a meeting over the phone and I kind of told him about my situation, I told him how much money I would have to spend, and I asked for some honest feedback if I should have him do some SEO work for me or if pay per click would be better. And he gave me his recommendations and then we really narrowed it down in terms of the key words, what I was looking for. And he just created this really great campaign for me that really got the clientele that I was wanting. And then actually as we progressed and I moved to Oklahoma I was getting some other thing that I didn’t do. I was getting calls for marital therapy, Christian marital therapy, and I don’t do that. So I would just email Dan and say, here, this is what I’m getting. So the kind of calls I’m getting. And so he would block some of those key words and I had actually tried to do a little bit of that on my own and I screwed it up.
Perry: Haha. It’s so easy to screw it up. Adwords is really complex.
Melissa: It really is complex. And I tried to watch some Youtube videos so I thought, I could probably do this myself. but I screwed it up and Dan knows what he’s doing and I felt like he’s the trustworthy guy and he always gave me good feedback and he was really responsive. For me that was a good investment because my cost per click was pretty low. I want to say it was like 10 cents per click.
Perry: Oh my goodness, really?
Melissa: And so initially my monthly expense for that was pretty low. It was sometimes 150$-200$ and you think, well, if you get one client from that and they come let’s just even say 10 times the return on investment is really good.
Perry: Oh absolutely.
Melissa: Yeah, that was a good move for me I think.
Perry: And are you still running your Adwords campaigns these days?
Melissa: I’m not actually. Just this month I decided to discontinue because I’ve been working on learning other forms of marketing and I’m kind of doing that. And my Adwords campaign got a little pricey per month and I felt like the return on investment now wasn’t as great as it was. And now there’s other things. Now I’m getting referrals from word of mouth which when I first was starting out in Oklahoma and I had to really reconnect, I mean, I hadn’t lived here since I was 18 when I went to college. So I really had to reconnect and establish myself as a trusted professional. And so that’s starting to happen and I’m starting to learn more about Facebook advertising and blogging. I took a course with Joe about blogging. So I’ve been widening my marketing efforts and so I’m going to put a pause on Adwords for now and see how I do in another way.
Perry: There’s nothing wrong with that at all because what’s nice about Adwords is– And I totally agree with you. As you become more engaged with Adwords you can see your costs really start creeping up. We noticed the same thing with Brighter Vision. It got to the point that it started to get unsustainable. And I personally have dug in over about two to three months now to fix our Adwords campaign and get them back to a great level. And the tool I used to help me with that was called Wordstream. I’ll throw it in this week’s show notes. It’s a pretty pricey tool but it brought our cost of acquisition down by about 60%, which is tremendous. But you do have to actively monitor and actively work on it and that’s why Adwords specialists, they charge a routine or fee for that work. But what’s nice is you have a poster now. If you decide, hey, five months down the road I need some more clients. I want to start marketing there again, you just click that unpause button, lower how much you want to bid per click and that funnel’s back open.
Melissa: And the other nice thing about it is you can set a maximum for the day. So if I have a– Let’s just say a 10 cent cost per click but I don’t want to spend more than 30$ a day then I can set that boundary, which is really nice too. There’s a lot of ways you can limit how much you spend. So I think that’s a nice feature of it too. But you’re right. I can click unpause at any point and add that back again.
Perry: And in the meantime now all those clients that you had, they become clients and something that people forget about with lifetime value of somebody in your ROI is you do a good job for them, they’re going to refer to you.
Melissa: Right.
Perry: So if you acquire a client for a 150$-200$ and one out of every three refer a new client to you, that’s well-worth the investment there.
Melissa: Right, I agree.
Perry: So Melissa, let’s go back to a point in your career as a therapist where you were just as low as you could go. We’d love to hear about this entrepreneurial journey and the struggles that we all go through in roller-coaster of entrepreneurship. So if you could take us back to that time and share with us that struggle, and more importantly, how you were able to overcome and persevere through that time?
Melissa: Well, probably like the lowest point in my career is not when I started my private practice but when I was working at the VA which I really, really loved working at the VA, but when I had my second child, my son, it was a really big struggle for me. I had about an hour commute, I was learning how to be a mom to two kids and just really struggling with juggling all those things and not feeling like I was doing a good job in any sphere. I didn’t feel like I was doing a great job at work or at home. So I really started thinking about private practice because I felt like I needed to simplify some things. So really the way that I overcame that is I’ve just talked to a lot of friends, a lot of friends who were psychologists, some who were not. And just give a lot of feedback from them about where I was and this idea that I had of developing a private practice. I did a lot of prayer, I started practicing mindfulness a lot during it. So I was really careful to put some of my concerns out there to people I trust and wait, because sometimes I can jump into things in a kind of reactive way. I knew I didn’t want to do that but I always had a dream of developing a private practice. So just really getting some feedback from people I trusted and just waiting for the right time. Waiting until I have matured in some ways that I needed to mature and so forth.
Perry: What was some of the feedback that you got really helped you get a better grasp on your situation and figure out how you wanted to proceed?
Melissa: Well, I think some of it was just the normal things that we as mental health professionals do, validating our struggles. You know, validating where we’re at and where we’re feeling confused. And sometimes you need that because you just think, well, I should be able to handle this a different way, or, I should be able to just do better at these things. So I got a lot of validation. Some of these things were new for me and even just the validation of how stressful an hour commute can be when you’ve got young baby to pick up from daycare and all those things. So I think that gave me some room to just kind of ease and to say, okay, it’s okay that I’m struggling with these things and at the same time, I have a lot of friends say, well, what do you want your life to look like? What do you want for your family and what do you love about your job? I had one friend who’s a stay at home mom and she’s not in the mental health field at all, and she would say, Melissa, I heard you talk about your job, I heard you talk about how much you love this and how much energy and excitement you get from helping people. So some of those things that she would bring back around to me were really helpful. And me saying, oh yeah, I really do love this work and just because I’m struggling now doesn’t mean that I need to change careers or quit altogether. But I needed to look different.
Perry: Fantastic. That’s such great advice there Melissa. I think that our audience can really relate with that. I know I personally can with– We just had our second child born about a year ago and the struggles of having to raise two children and how much more challenging that is? I mean I totally can relate with that and understand that.
Melissa: Yeah.
Perry: So you’ve come such a long way from there but something we often see with therapists that they struggle with in the early days is with pricing themselves well. Can you share with our audience what your current hourly rate is or your current session rate is to see clients and what your journey has been to that rate?
Melissa: Sure. My current hourly rate is 165$ and basically how I came to that rate is that early on I had looked at different therapist profiles on Psychology Today and I kind of figured out what were other PHDs charging, what were master’s level therapists charging. And so I kind of found a middle ground in there and what I was comfortable with. I thought a lot about what would I be willing to pay if I were going to therapy. And then honestly the other thing that I did around that time, we have had some plumbing issues at our home and so we had to hire a plumber. And the man who came out was a master plumber and he charged 150$ an hour. And I really thought about that and I thought, this is a person who is well trained in his field, he’s got technical training and he’s going to come and fix my plumbing and maybe that will be an hour, an hour and a half, but that’s a one-time deal. So I just really thought about what do I have to offer clients, what’s the lifetime value that my clients are going to get from working with me? And when I thought about that, I feel like I am definitely worth 165$ because I do feel like I provide good value and it makes me take my work even more seriously charging a higher rate, that I want to provide really, really excellent services. I want them to feel like this was the best use of their time and their money and their energy. But yeah, I kind of thought about all the overhead in terms of how much schooling I’ve gone through and how much that cost me. And basically all the overhead that’s literally in my head, what is that worth? And someone who is technically trained, sure they’ve gone through education to get trained in their trade. But they didn’t do that for six years, and so I don’t know. It was kind of a turning point for me and I thought, oh, and that’s a plumber who can make 150$ an hour and I’m struggling with charging that. But maybe I shouldn’t struggle with charging around that fee.
Perry: That is such a great line. I’m writing that down now and I think certainly someone who’s a master plumber, they have a lot of experience, they have a lot of training, and obviously there’s a lot of value there, fixing a leak in your house, that can be devastating but so can a failed marriage, so can struggling with anxiety and depression. That’s incredibly devastating.
Melissa: Right. You can see changes in people’s relationship with their family, with themselves, and with their spiritual life and their work. I mean, they really can be devastating. So I really thought a lot about that, what’s the lifetime value, even if someone only comes for therapy however many times, five, 12, 20, a year, what’s the lifetime value that you’re providing to somebody and how does that impact with people in their lives. If they can learn how to handle some of these things better and really be involved in their family and their work and their health in a way that feels valuable and important to them, that can change the whole legacy of a family.
Perry: Oh my goodness, yeah.
Melissa: And that’s huge to me. So yeah, that’s kind of how that happened.
Perry: And what was the time frame for that again? That was once you moved out to Broken Arrow, is that correct?
Melissa: Well, actually when I was in Florida I had a higher rate. I think my rate in Florida was 175$ or 170$, and then when I moved to Broken Arrow I lowered it to 165$ and honestly, I lowered it to 165$ I think out of fear. And the Broken Arrow community is also a different type of community than Tampa Florida is. But I think I lowered it out of fear that now that I didn’t have a backup, I wasn’t doing contract work, what if people wouldn’t pay me that? And I really had a lot of questions about my value as a psychologist that I worried that maybe I just didn’t have a lot to offer people. So it’s taken me some time to kind of wrap my mind around and say, wait a second, I really do know what I’m doing and I do it well, and I don’t mean to say that in an arrogant way but that I have a lot of value that I can offer my clients.
Perry: Absolutely. And do you take insurance or are you cash pay?
Melissa: I’m cash pay.
Perry: And what’s been– This is what I’ve really been interested in. A lot of the therapists we’ve been interviewing lately are cash pay and from what I am aware of, it feels like cash pay is much more popular further West you go. That’s at least from what my interactions and my knowledge has been like. What’s been the reaction to cash pay in your community? Have you gotten any push back about that or, yeah, if you can elaborate on that for us?
Melissa: I don’t feel like I’ve gotten any push back from a client.
Perry: Maybe push back is the wrong word, but have you had individuals not want to see you because you weren’t able to take their insurance?
Melissa: Well, certainly, yeah. I mean there are certain clients who– They can’t afford it. And there are other clients who probably could afford it but I don’t think they see the value, the difference between what it’s like to pay a 25$ co-pay versus the some of the sacrifices that you might have to pay to pay cash. But when I have clients who call me and they say, you know, I really can’t afford your services. I very, very rarely– I think only twice have I offered a reduced fee. But I am very careful to offer them good referrals. So that’s one of the things I’ve been doing since I’ve been here is trying to figure out who are the other therapists in town, other psychologists in towns. Really get to know them, talk about how they work, so I can provide good referrals because I’ve kind of learned through listening so many different podcasts and really starting to accept the idea of an ideal client that– If a client is not able or willing to pay my full fee then they might not be my ideal client. And that’s been a little bit hard for me to swallow but actually the longer that I’m in practice I’m noticing that there’s some mindset differences around– I mean, I only work with clients who pay my full fee. So I don’t know what it would be like to work with a client who, you know, takes insurance. But I do know what that’s like to work with clients from the VA perspective who don’t pay much or they pay a small fee for services. So I kind of do know what that’s like from the VA end. But I think that my clients who are full-fee clients, they’re really, really invested. They’re really invested in the work. I mean, I’ve been really surprised. I have some clients who come twice a week and some who come for two hours at a time and it surprises me all the time. But their level of investment and their energy towards what they’re working on is just like out of this world. Like, they’re very, very invested. And those are the kind of clients that I now know I really want to work with those people who take this really seriously.
Perry: Absolutely. I’ve heard the same thing before. I believe it was in our most recent podcast episode with Eddie Reece. I don’t recall the session number off the top of my head but we’ll have the link to it at this week’s show notes at Brightervision.com/session41, but I’ve heard that before and I completely agree. Obviously, I’m not a therapist but we work with thousands of therapists and psychologists. And when we were first getting started our billing process was– Our first billing was, we won’t bill you until your site’s actually live. What that did is it prevented people from getting their website live. Then we started billing people right away. We saw an improvement but it still wasn’t that great. Then we put on a 100$ setup fee and we waved that setup fee to people who pay annually. And what did is revolutionized things. People had more skid in the game. We found that the clients actually deciding to sign up with us were better clients, they were more invested, and the crazy thing, whenever we have run any sort of promotion, whether it’s an advertisement on Adwords or in a magazine or any kind of promotion where we waved the setup fee for people. The clients that signup I believe 90% of them have canceled, which is crazy. We see about one and a half percent of our clients cancel a month. So I completely see that. People have more skin in the game, they’re more invested. They’re wanting to see what they’re investing and succeed.
Melissa: Right.
Perry: Some great advice and great strategies there Melissa. Thank you so much for sharing. One question I love to ask though is you went to school to become a psychologist, not to get your MBA, but you decided to open your own private practice. What’s the one thing that you wish you would have learned in school about starting your own business?
Melissa: I mean, there’s so many things I wish I would have learned but I really think that learning some basic marketing principles of developing a niche and a specialization, and learning how to craft your marketing messages from a solution focused perspective. That’s one of the things that I have been learning a lot. As just listening to podcasts and reading more and signing up for different trainings that really you have to speak to your client’s pinpoint and you have to be able to show them that you have a solution. Because if you’re just kind of speaking out there generally, really no one’s going to be listening. But you need to figure out who is it that you like to work with. And I think that takes time to do, but who is it that you like to work with and what type of things do you like to work with. Where do you get the most energy from your work, where do you– When you’re in the session, who are those people and what are those topics that you’re talking about that you just feel so alive and energized and confident and to really say like, I’ve done great work. And I think you take those things and you say, okay, how can I develop this into a specialty area. And then how do I craft messages for this group of people that they’re going to need and want to hear. I think that’s really been the hardest thing for me. Learning how to do that and feeling like I really have something worthwhile to say.
Perry: Understanding you need to do that though is such an accomplishment in itself because then you’re able to think about that whenever you’re marketing yourself. Whenever you go into networking events, whenever you’re speaking, whenever you’re writing a blog post.
Melissa: Yeah, I think so too. I think early on I was doing some– When I was in Florida I was part of two networking groups and I remember one of them, they would do like a five or ten minute business training and one of the things that they would say is when you’re in a large networking group like B&I. It wasn’t B&I that I was in, but when you’re in a large networking group and you do your 30 second spiel about who you are and who you serve, that really you want again speak to people’s pinpoint and offer a solution right then. So people know like, when I come across this person or my patients have this issue or whoever it is, that they can say, oh, I know person who treats insomnia and she talked about that, and she said that this treatment’s really effective and so forth. But if you just say, well, I’m Dr Leedy and I treat people 30 to 75 years old with these issues. They’re not going to remember that because that’s not how people talk about their pinpoints and daily life. They don’t just say, I’m depressed. They say, it’s so hard for me to get out of bed and it’s so hard for me to concentrate at work and I’m frustrated that I can’t stay asleep at night. Or whatever their issues are.
Perry: That was fantastic. So where are you learning to craft a marketing message from a solution-focused perspective. And I love that line that you deliver there. Crafting of marketing message from a solution-focused perspective. Where are you learning about that and teaching yourself?
Melissa: I have been following Amy Porterfield who is an online marketer. She does a great podcast and I had heard about her about a year ago and kind of followed her off and on. But she really drives that point home. There’s a couple of her webinars that I went in and a couple of courses that I have of her’s that are like lifetime access. I’m not doing them right now but I can do. But some of them I have delved into and that was probably one of the very first things that I learned from her. Like, what if I actually need to have solution-focused content and how you learn the language that your clients are speaking or know talking about their pinpoints. And she just really goes into detail about this is how you do it and really helping you think about if you have let’s say you do kind of three specialty areas, you really need to create a solution-focused marketing message to each niche area that you’re in using the language of the client. And I already feel like I’ve learned a ton from her just from listening to her podcast. So I think she really drove that point home. I mean, I’ve heard that from a lot of other podcasts and the therapist community, but for some reason the way that she says it and teaches it really drove it home for me.
Perry: Fantastic. And I heard great things about Amy Porterfield, I’ve seen her ads on Facebook. I’ve never actually listened to her podcast or webinar but as you were talking there I pulled up her podcast and we’ll have links in this week’s show notes of course and I’m excited to listen to one. I think it’s about time I gave her a listen. She’s got 225,000 likes on Facebook so she must be doing something right here.
Melissa: She’s got a large following. And the one thing I like about her, which is similar to I like about Joe Sanok and Zynnyme, is she’s really vulnerable and upfront about just her journey. She doesn’t try to pretend that she’s always had it all together. She talks about how she learned different things and Zynnyme and Joe, they do the same thing. So I noticed that I kind of gravitate towards those coaches who are not afraid to be vulnerable with their audience and I think Amy Porterfield is similar in that respect.
Perry: Fantastic. I’m excited, once we finish up here I’m going to go listen to one of her podcast episode. So Melissa, now we’re going to move into the final part of our interview and this part we like to refer to as Brighter Insights. What I really love about this part is we get to distill down your experience and your expertise into little sound bites and quick answers that our audience can use to motivate and excite them in growing their private practice. Are you ready?
Melissa: I think.
Perry: Oh, of course you are. You’ve been great. This has been so much fun and so valuable. So of course you’re ready. What or whom inspired you to become a mental health professional?
Melissa: Well, I think honestly my mother did. From a very young age she really inspired me to be in service. I mean, we were always doing things growing up through our church, or through girl scouts. Or just little things, going to the grocery store. If someone needed help, you just have to know. So I think she really instilled that value in me to serve other people, but actually when I was in college I think it was my sophomore year of college I had a really good friend say, Melissa, you’re really good at listening to people and you give really good advice. You should think about going into psychology. So I said, hey, that sounds really interesting. So I did and that’s what happened. So I fell in love with it.
Perry: What do you do to clear your head and get a fresh start in your day?
Melissa: I go outside. I love to be outside in nature, kind of a very mindful spiritual time for me. Yeah, I go out and I look at trees or flowers or I just feel the breeze. That’s definitely one of the things that I do a lot.
Perry: Love it. What are some tools that you’ve used to leverage the power of technology in your private practice so that technology is no longer a hurdle but instead an asset for you?
Melissa: I love using electronic health record system. So I use counsel and I use that for a lot of different reasons because it’s got I think easy interface for clients. They’re able to look in my availability online and schedule appointments. Clients can register themselves. It’s got a online feature, like an online video session feature which I did purposefully for the population that I see. Working with people with chronic illnesses and disabilities sometimes are not able to make it to the office. So I wanted to add that feature but everything’s online. I mean, I can scan any attachments or measures that I use. So I have a completely paperless office and it’s always accessible to me. So I love that feature.
Perry: Fantastic. That’s always important. And we’ve heard some great things about them. So they’re a practice management solution and they offer you tele-health solution as well, correct?
Melissa: Yes.
Perry: Great. What’s the quote that you hold near and dear, something that has helped formulate your perspective on life or has motivated and inspired you?
Melissa: One quote that I love, “If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to?” It’s really not a quote, it’s a question. Haha.
Perry: Haha. It’s a quote.
Melissa: Yeah. If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to? And so that actually came from one of those flip calendars that you can buy. And that flip calendar was there in my early years at the VA and I remember tearing that out and taping it to my bookshelf, and I’ve had it ever since. And it’s really helped me prioritize my commitment and think about like, in the short-term, what are my energy resources and my time resources, and then also in the long-term, what do I want to create in my community and from my family and from my health. So if I say yes to this thing am I saying no to my family or am I saying no to my health? If I say yes to my anxiety, I’m saying no to being brave. So that’s a big one for me.
Perry: Absolutely. I love that quote or that question. Hahaha. If you could recommend one book to our audience, what would that book be?
Melissa: Well, this book that I love that has been life-changing for me is called Visioneering by Andy Stanley. It is a book from a Christian-based perspective but that book I started reading a couple years before I started private practice. And it really helped me work through, what are my visions for my future. What do I want for my family and for me and for my community. And what are the steps I need to take to get there. So it kind of gave me a baseline from which to judge different opportunities. I would answer some of those questions from this Visioneering book about what kind of day that I want, what kind of life that I want, what kind of relationships do I want. How do I want to feel when I’m at work and so forth. So then I would have these other opportunities that would present themselves and I would go back and I would look at my answers and I would say, huh, this opportunity is really, really great but the commute would be really long and I would have to be at the office really early. So there were some things that I said no to because I was able to look back at just kind of these baseline things that felt important to me. So I’ve really actually created my private practice around some of those ideas that I’ve got that helped me clarify, what do I want my daily life and long-term life to look like.
Perry: Love that so much Melissa. Alright, last question. If you moved to a new city tomorrow, you didn’t know anybody there, and all that you had with you was your computer and 100$ to start a new private practice, what is it that you would do on your very first day?
Melissa: I would find a place to sublease by the hour, get some business cards and I would start making some phone calls to physicians in town and dietitians and pastors and whoever else, and I would start face to face networking blitz and be able to go and meet them face to face so they could ask me questions, they could feel my energy and I could leave my cards. But I would definitely find a space to see people because if they start sending me folks and you have no place– Suddenly, seen by the hour is a really great way to start out as you’re going.
Perry: That’s something that nobody has mentioned yet when asking that question. And it’s such a great point. Something to really consider. If you’re getting started here you don’t need to go get your own office space, you can sublease by the hour and really maximize your ROI on that investment. Any parting advice for our listeners Melissa?
Melissa: I would say just lean into your anxiety and lean into your fear and really practice being mindful of those things and just keep going. I mean, the only thing that’s going to happen if you stop your efforts because you’re worried or scared is you’re going to stop. But if you can keep doing it anyway you’re going to find that you have more confidence and you start to feel that sense of worth about what you’re doing and things do get easier over time. But I think really just lean in to that anxiety about starting a practice and when you have bumps on the road, just lean into it and just keep going.
Perry: Great Melissa, where can our listeners find you to connect and learn more about you?
Melissa: They can find me through my website. It’s www.legacycounselingservice.com and there there’s a secure email through you guys and there’s also my phone number. So yeah, that’d be the best way.
Perry: Fantastic. And of course, we’ll have links to your website and all the great resources that you’ve mentioned here in this week’s show notes at Brightervision.com/session41. Melissa, thank you so much for being so generous with your time, your expertise, and your knowledge. I know that I’m speaking for our entire audience here when I say that we appreciate the great advice that you provided and the therapist experience that you have shared.
Melissa: Well, thanks for having me. It was really fun.
Perry: 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’re interested in launching a website reach out to Brighter Vision. We are the worldwide leader in custom therapist website design. For less than 2$ a day we’ll build you a website that’s as unique as your practice, take care of all of your tech support and do your SEO so 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 will see you next week.