TTE 58: Luck is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity w/Dr. Jeremy Sharp
Are you able to recognize business opportunities when they present themselves? Opportunities that will allow you to pursue your passion while simultaneously building a thriving private practice? Dr. Jeremy Sharp is.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp likes to say he has had two lives in private practice. For 2 years, he had a generalist practice. But after two years, he shifted to solely providing testing & evaluations and his practice exploded to 5 other clinicians. Here is Jeremy’s Therapist Experience.
Best Marketing Move for His Practice
- Building Relationships
Links & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Practice of the Practice
- The Testing Psychologist – Jeremy’s Podcast
- TherapyNotes
- Awesome Scanner
- Jeremy’s Private Practice Website
Thanks to Jeremy for joining me this week. Until next time!
Transcript
Click here to read the TranscriptJeremy: Absolutely.
Perry: Fantastic, so glad to have you here Jeremy. Let me tell our audience a little bit about you and then we’ll hop into the show. Dr. Jeremy Sharpe is a licensed psychologist and clinical director at the Colorado Center for Assessment and Counseling, a private practice that he founded in 2009 and has growing include 5 other clinicians. He earned in his undergraduate degree in experimental psychology from the University of South Carolina before getting his Masters’ and Ph.D. in counselling psychology from Colorado State University. These days Jeremy specializes in psychological and nuero-psychological evaluation with kids and adolescence as the host of the Testing Psychologist podcast, he provides private practice consultation for psychologist and other mental health professionals who want to start or grow testing services in their practice. Jeremy lives in Fort Colorado with his wife, also a therapist and two young kids. Jeremy, thank you so much for being on the show here, gave a little overview there but why don’t you take a minute fill in the gaps from that introduction and tell our audience a little bit more about personally and about your practice?
Jeremy: Yeah, thanks Perry. Yeah, it’s great to be here. I’ve had, I think what I would call a dynamic journey through my training and into the private practice. I often will say that I’ve had kind of two lives in private practice and that’s been really interesting for me so when I first started my private practice , I had a generalist practice where I was doing primarily therapy with an evaluation or two kind of on the side but then a couple months in things really shifted and it was almost an overnight change where I moved to doing primarily testing an evaluation and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, that was probably five or six years ago so now , I talk about therapy as though it was my former life as a psychologist.
Perry: So for about 2 years, you were more of a generalist is that accurate to say?
Jeremy: Yeah, it was. When I came out of grad school and started my practice and from my post stock, I pursued a lot of advance training and emotionally focused therapy for couples so I really focused on couples primarily for a couple of years and then like I said ,testing and evaluation really kicked up and became a bigger apart of the practice.
Perry: So what is it that cause that shift?
Jeremy: I had done probably an evaluation or two each month for those first couple years but what really happened is our local university here , Colorado state changed their policy on prescribing medication for college students to where they required each of those students to get a full psychological evaluation before they got ADHD medication and so I found myself 1 month, this is maybe 2011 with I think is like 15-18 evaluations referrals like in the same week where as I was doing one to two a month up to then, yeah, so I said , “okay, let’s go with it. I need to figure this out and do these evals.”
Perry: Isn’t that amazing how that happens, you prepare and you’re ready for what business has to throw at you but you’re not sure what you’re gonna do and then all of sudden , all that prep that you’ve done, it all pays off and also you’re seeing, “hey, I need to shift , I need to focus exclusively on this because this is a business opportunity here that’s going allow me to pursue my passions in private practice while simultaneously build a thriving business.
Jeremy: Exactly, yeah, I was so fortunate that I was in a place to be able to do it. There was some panicky moments for sure.
Perry: What was the transition like? Did you take on other clients on more of general sense still and couples or did you sort just cold turkey say, I’m done seeing couples and being in generalize practice and all I’m going to be doing is psych-evaluations.
Jeremy: Yeah, it was actually quite a process, it probably took me, I’d say a year to phase out my therapy clients . Once I took on that many evaluations, I was working a lot over that year because of course, I want to just stick with my therapy clients and really enjoy that and after a couple months, I realized that evaluation referrals was going to keep coming and it wasn’t a one-time thing. I said, “well, I really enjoy this and this feels like more of my passion so I’m make a conscious shift to start pairing back to therapy practice and I mean, it took several month but i made that decision fairly quickly; I just took a while to implement it.
Perry: And so what did that look like as you were getting all of these referrals from CSU, did you rely solely and do you still rely CSU as primary referral source or once you started focusing exclusively on psychological evaluations, did you start pursuing other marketing endeavors that will help support your business in this new direction.
Jeremy: Yeah, things have shifted over the years with CSU. They do still send us a fair number of referrals but I wouldn’t say that they are a primary source at point. What I found is that the more evaluations I did, I really started to hone in more on working with kids and adolescents and so a referral sources for evals have really shifted to pediatrician offices, schools and just word of mouth, you know parents that have evaluated here will tell other parents and it kind makes the rounds in the community so yeah, things have definitely shifted.
Perry: And do how did you make those end roads to create those strong referral networks with the pediatricians and schools in the Fort Collins area?
Jeremy: Yeah, Couple things, so I went to grad school here and I had a done a fair amount in Grad school going out to schools just in my assistant ships through the program so I had some contacts there . I also, my wife, like we mentioned is a therapist here in town and she knew several folks from her program who were school counselors so got in touch with them as time went on and kept up the lines of communication but what really opened the door to the pediatricians offices for me was I ended up evaluating two or three kids from this particular practice, a large pediatric protractor in town and the pediatricians got a hold of those evaluation reports and they actually reached out to me and said can you come down and just do lunch meet and greet and tell us more about what you’re doing and that was probably four or five years, yeah, I’m going down there now at least once a year ever since to just keep those connections going and you know, give them resources here and there and that kind of thing.
Perry: So the quality of your work was really stood out and was apparent to them so they wanted to further that relationship with you, is that accurate?
Jeremy: I think so, yeah, that was my understanding, and they loved the work we were doing.
Perry: Have you initiated any other marketing strategies that would sort of replicate that with reaching out to other pediatricians’ offices trying to buy them lunch to get them to know you and send you a referrals or two so you can show them just how phenomenal the quality of work is?
Jeremy: Yeah, I think have gone at maybe through the back door a little bit , I didn’t do the traditional buy them lunch , send the referral materials that kind of thing.
Perry: The back door methods are the best ones’ that’s what we want to hear about for sure.
Jeremy: Well, okay, here’s the secret, no, it’s not a secret. So our kids obviously go to see a pediatrician and that person was apart of that particular practice has several offices around town and once when I was nearer, I just happen to notice, this is a true story, there was a silver line on the counter of the exam room and it said mental health referrals, so I kind of peaked and realized that really didn’t have any real referrals for evaluation so when the pediatrician came back into the room, I was like,”hey, I noticed and kind of took the conversation from there, try not to be pushy of course but that ended up, now that practice group sends us a lot of referrals, so that was really cool.”
Perry: Jeremy, there was a really great quote that really exemplifies what we’re talking about here and I’m looking it up right now , luck is what happens when preparation meet opportunity, I think really exemplifies a lot of what you’ve been relaying here, you prepared. You got an education, you started to learning more about business. You had a diverse sort of general practices, you’re trying to get your feet wet in private practice and build a business and then CSU started sending you more referrals and you pivoted and you adjusted to that and here, you’re talking about how you were in your children’s pediatrician office and you notice that they don’t have any mental health referrals and so taking that brave step to chat with them and be like hey, you know, here’s what we do. You should try referring to us and we’ll show you the quality of our work so you’ve been presented with these opportunities over the course of your private practice and you’ve maximize the ROI out of them and built a successful business because of it. Congratulations, that’s so awesome to hear and I love learning about the back door channels, just learning the journey of an entrepreneur and what it feels like and chatting with you. It’s my favorite part of doing these interviews so congrats Jeremy, it’s so great to see that.
Jeremy: Thanks, yeah. Absolutely.
Perry: So Jeremy, you mentioned you have five other clinicians. Tell us about the work that they do in your practice.
Jeremy: Yeah, so we have grown significantly just even though over the last year we focused primarily on testing and evaluation, like I said for several years and let’s see so I have another two psychologist focus on the adult and she primarily does adult evaluation for ADHD, learning disorders things like that. She carries a therapy case load of adult clients. I have another pediatric psychologist who also does child evaluations, kind like I do. We have a licensed clinical social worker who specialize in therapy with adolescence and kids and young adults and then also, I have two grad students who are doing there assistant-ships here in the practice, you know to fulfill requirements for their graduate programs so they do a lot of test administrations for us and also do some report writing and things like that.
Perry: So you guys are covering all your bases there, it seems like, a really diverse practice and someone comes in you’re able to inter-refer and sort of a credit in terms of building on top of each other, is that accurate.
Jeremy: Yeah, that’s the idea. It took me a long time to get there actually for reasons have been about referring within our practice, I’m just one of them, you know majorly more cross-knitting of goal lines or anything like that but I found the people and our clients really appreciate that and they like to be able to stay in house if possible and if it’s an appropriate fit so it’s been great, it’s been great to see the counseling side really take off.
Perry: Well, I think we’ve really veered in all sorts of direction here and I love when our conversations get off our standard script because it’s so much just having a free willing conversation but I would like to get into some of what we find is really helpful in terms of our scripting get back to that a little bit here. So we touched on alot of what we typically asked but one thing we haven’t spoken about is pricing, can you share with our audience what your current session rate is to see clients or I guess, your evaluation rate and what your journey to that rate has been like?
Jeremy: Yeah, I guess they are two parts to that. The session rate, I’m at 130$ right now for 15-55 minutes session. If someone were to come in for just a one-off appointment, that’s pretty consistent with most of our clinicians. I did with therapy, I started with at 90$, I think I went to a 100$ after a year, maybe a 110$ after another year and the jump to 130$ probably four or five years ago so I’ve been there for a while. With the evaluation , it’s a little bit different, we do build alot insure so I establishes a different parting for the folks who pay out of pocket, that’s a large fee for out of pocket for an evaluation so I do what basically what amounts to a 20% percent cash-pay discount. That fee is a 2000$ dollars for a full psychological evaluation.
Perry: Fantastic and you’ve spoken a lot about various marketing intuitives , what is it that you feel is the single bet marketing move you’ve made for your practice and why do you feel like it work so well for you?
Jeremy: You know, I talked about the reports earlier, I think that has been a great marketing tool for me over the years with the testing but aside from that, just being in this community which is a relatively small community I think, just building relationships has been the best, if you call it a marketing move that I have done. I think that has just been really important over the years is just reaching out to new folks, reconnecting with folks I have talked with in the past and maintaining pretty regular contact with people. I also go to our community networking events fairly often that happen about once a quarter so I always try to get there doing talks in the community, that sort of thing.
Perry: What type of community networking events are you referring to?
Jeremy: Yeah, so our community mental health agency puts on these quarterly therapist networking and training events so there will be a topic that someone will give a talk that they often do for a half hour or a hour of networking over the course of that event so I always go, take cards, talk to people about what am doing ; what our practice is up to , asking what their needs are , that kind of things and its nice , it’s awesome , I love taking to people and maintaining those relationships.
Perry: Man, Jeremy, you’re like 45 to a 1 hr north of us here, we’re in Boulder, Jeremy is up in Fort Collins, I need to send Brighter Vision. I gotta come to one of these community networking events and meets some of the mental health professionals up there so these are just…..
Jeremy: That would be great.
Perry: Yeah. I would love to. I can only get to this once we get of our call here, so these are vents put on by the Fort Collins community center or…..
Jeremy: Yeah, it’s our community middle health agency, their name Summetstone.
Perry: Yeah, great if other people are looking to network and surely build their relationships, I’m sure you can find local community mental health agencies in your area that are putting on networking events, any recommendations and advice you could go about finding them in your neighborhood?
Jeremy: Let me see, nothing magical, I would just probably look them up on the internet and most community health agencies have multiple offices and their fairly a large organizations so there would likely be something there on the website about some training events or talks that they might be putting on.
Perry: So Jeremy, you went to school to become a therapist and psychologist not to get your MBA but along the way, you opened your private practice, what’s the one thing that you wished that you would’ve learned in school about starting your own business?
Jeremy: The one thing.
Perry: You could say a few things that’s totally fine.
Jeremy: Yeah, we had a professional development class in grad school, it was sort of this funny thing where the guy who taught it was very charismatic, good looking, like wealthy professor like having this cash pay private practice on the side and what that really turned into is basically a tutorial on real estate investing which is kind of what he had done which is great but I which we had talked all about…
Perry: A little different….
Jeremy: It’s a little different, it’s a little different. I wished we had known a little bit more about just the ins and out of insurance that has been really big for me and my private practice as I had to figure out a lot of the outs. Also, I think just getting I think the general message that private practice is doable or encourage just to have that mindset cause I really kind of stumbled into out of grad school kind of necessity and I just wish there was maybe more encouragement that like yeah. This is something you will do.
Perry: You know we hear that all the time from people private practice isn’t spoken enough; spoken about enough in grad school, it’s never communicated as an option and you’re not given the trainings and education necessary to launch a private practice and thankfully theirs so many great resources out on the internet these days that help people and educate then on starting a private practice. You know, we have this podcast, there’s the thepracticetheprcatice podcast, there’s Zynnyme one hour trainings, there’ so many great webinars, there’s all this fantastic information that has come about in the last three to four years or so and really helped educate mental health professionals on how to start and grow a private practice and Jeremy you’re doing something really interesting as well in this with the testing psychologist. Would you mind elaborating a little more about what you’re doing to educate people in our field and help them build thriving businesses?
Jeremy: Yeah, sure. Over the summer I got to talking with Joe Sanok over at thepracticeofthepractice, I was really interested in how to grow our practice but also how to maybe develop more of a consulting branch of my services and what we settled on is this venture that we call the testing psychologist so it’s a consulting service that I am running now that really helps psychologist and other mental health professionals build practices around psychological testing or assessment, so we have a website with lots of resources and articles, blog post and also , like you mentioned in the intro, host the ‘Testing Psychologist’ podcast where we talk about the business of testing, I’ve interviewed a few folks and we talk about various aspects of testing private practice.
Perry: Fantastic and to everyone listening here, we will have links to all to Jeremy’s private practice website and all the testing psychologist, the podcast and all the great resources that have been mentioned on the show today over brightervision.com/session58. Alright, Jeremy now were going to move into the final part of the interview and what I really love about this is we call it brighter insights and what we do is that we distilled down your advice and your guidance into little soundbites and quick answers so that our audience can use this to help motivate and inspire them in growing their own private practice. Are you ready?
Jeremy: Yes, let’s do it.
Perry: What or whom inspired you to become a mental health professional?
Jeremy: Well, I think like many of us my family initially, I grew with a mother with MS and kind of learned to be a helper very early in my life so there was definitely that, but if I’m being totally honest it was just a healthy dose of probably teenage narcissism that got me into this field where I went to see a psychiatrist in high school after making some poor decisions that some us do and I was just sitting in the room, it was not a good connection with this person and I just remembered thinking that I can do this so much better and that was a big factor going into psychology for better or for worse.
Perry: That’s fascinating. I love that answer. What is it that you do to clear your head and get a fresh start in your day?
Jeremy: I’m 100% percent a runner, that’s by self-care, above and beyond anything else so yeah, love to go on a good run in the morning if I can. If I can’t go in the morning, what I will end up doing is that I get up early, make coffee in the dark, enjoy like a nice quiet drive to my office, listen to a podcast and if I’m feeling a really particularly sluggish, I’ll put on some really loud rap music, I love rap music and get myself pumped up to do some work but running is always the activity of choice.
Perry: What’s a quote you’ve hold near and dear, something that’s help formulate your perspective on life or has inspired or motivated you?
Jeremy: So I have to say that I’m not a quote person. I don’t remember song lyrics or movie lines or things like that so this was hard for me. I looked a couple quotes and it looks like they’re both from Thomas Edison as far as we can tell, one of them is as cure for worrying, hard work is better than whiskey and the other is vision without execution is hallucination. I think that I heard that the first time on here actually.
Perry: Both are some great quotes.
Jeremy: Yes, I just like that they both get to the idea that you have action rather than sit around. That’s pretty important.
Perry: I agree, I love it. What are some tools you’ve used to leverage the power of technology in your private practice so that technology is no longer a hurdle but instead an assets for you?
Jeremy: I think like most folks I thought the EHR system was great but specifically for us what has been super helpful is we got business version of google drive with business associate agreement and a really awesome scanner to help us go paperless, doing all the testing that we do, those file end up being an inch or inch and a half thick and those add-up really fast, so yeah, digital records.
Perry: Which EHR system do you use?
Jeremy: Therapy notes.
Perry: Therapy notes. Great. Love them. They do such great work there. They have a fantastic product. If you could recommend one book to our audience, what would that book be?
Jeremy: I don’t read too many books these days. I have kids. I’m super tired, I don’t have a ton of time to read.
Perry: I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Jeremy: Yes, so what I will say though is that I listen to a lot of podcast and the big one that I listen to the James Altucher Show and if I read any books, they’re often ones that he has recommended so he talks alot with folk too or at what he calls peak performance in their field , what he calls an astronaut, might be an Hollywood producer, might be an author plus there’s often really good information that comes from it and really good ideas and great book suggestions too.
Perry: Fantastic, Jeremy. Last question here. If you move to a new city tomorrow, you don’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?
Jeremy: First and foremost, I will find a nice trail and go for a good long run to get settled. After that, I would find a coffee shop, set up a website, a simple website and then I’ll probably get on the internet and look on some of the Facebook groups that I’m apart of some of the professional groups and just see are there any connections in that town from other therapist that I might know and start to set up meetings with people, building relationships is huge so I would pursue and just try to get started that way.
Perry: Absolutely, relationships in any industry are so important and Jeremy you’ve done such a great job at building these relationships and building a great practice to stem from them. Jeremy, any parting advice for our listeners?
Jeremy: Let me see, just that I think private practice is not only doable but incredible fun and super-dynamic, you can take it nearly any direction you want to and for me it’s been very fulfilling.
Perry: Awesome, Jeremy thank you so much for being on the show today. For everybody listening, you can re-listen to this episode and find all the great resources mentioned by Jeremy over at this week’s show notes at brightervison.com/session58. Jeremy, thank you so much for being so generous with time expertise and your knowledge. I know that I speak for our entire audience when we say we greatly appreciate the advice you’ve provided and the therapist experience you have shared. Thanks again.
Jeremy: Thanks Perry.
Perry: Thank you so much for tuning in today, if you have a question for us email it to us at [email protected] and of course, we’re here to help you with the website. If you’re a mental health professional and need a website to track your ideal client and speak to them and speak to them, reach out to us. Brighter Vision has built over 1000 websites for mental health professional and we build another 70 every single month for just 59$ dollars a month, you’ll get a website that’s as unique as your practices, unlimited tech support and we’ll do your SEO so people a 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.
meaghan fl says
I Really enjoyed listening to Dr. Jeremy’s journey and tips for growing a private practice. Very helpful. Thank you !
#meaghanflennerlmhc #megcanhelp