Private Practice Tip: Pleased people are taking me up on my offer; You can use any of the content from my website or blog freely as long as you include my name and website, or I would be pleased to write original articles on your behalf for you to use at your discretion. The benefit of content is that it improves your search engine optimization (SEO) and it makes your website more attractive and "sticky" to your visitors. By offering visitors content that serves their needs, you increase the likelihood of referrals. Private Practice Tip: In the workshop I delivered on Friday, helping peacemakers build their practice, I kept reinforcing how we need to reflect on our use of language to then use language accessible to the client we seek to serve. So often our websites are steeped in professional jargon and we believe it is a shared language everyone understands. Truth is many folks don't understand the specialized language of the professional. As such, to meet client needs, we must use words, concepts and metaphors they can relate to. How to know if it is working? Just ask your client and adjust accordingly on their feedback provided. Private Practice Tip: Growing Your Practice in Family Law, Peacemaking and Clinical Counseling? Having met with a number of individuals, it is interesting to see how personal life experiences can either contribute to or detract from a successful practice. I had put the word out that I can help people build their practice. I thought the concentration would be only towards helping them differentiate their practice from others, determine the services they loved to deliver, market those services through key strategies and then turn referrals into clients. Turns out that while all that is necessary, for some folks there are hidden issues interfering with success. Those issues may include one’s management style; one’s view of oneself; one’s own anxieties or fears. In meeting privately, we have explored one’s own upbringing and its influence on building a successful practice. Sometimes the road to success is not the external issues, but the internal ones. Want to advance your practice? I would be pleased to be of service. We can look at those external factors, internal factors and even both. Private Practice Tip: I went around the group twice. The first time asking what they do and the second time asking what they would love to do.  Their answers didn't match up. No one was doing what they loved to do. We discussed changing that. When asked how I find the time to do all that I do, I explained, "I love all that I do." To be successful is more than making money, it is to earn a living where you don't feel like you are working. Private Practice Tip: I remember when I opened my private practice. I was in with both feet having quit my job. I was also in with full naivety. I thought that that by hanging out my shingle and sending out 75 letters of introduction to doctors, the referrals would pour in. They didn't. A year later and with a failing practice I lamented to a friend. The friend explained that no one refers to an unknown entity. The referral sources I sought would have to see that I didn't have 5 eyes or 6 ears. The light went on and from that day forth, I concerned myself with how to meet, get in front of, or otherwise make myself known to potential referral influencers and/or the general public. I also learned that the language I used to represent myself and what I did wasn't a common language, but professional jargon. If you weren't part of the profession, the jargon meant little. Retooling what and how I presented my service and myself and getting in front of others blew my practice open. The secret is, this is not work that someone can do for you. This you have to do for yourself. Private PracticeTip: Are you a Collaborative Lawyer still thinking about or talking about the paradigm shift that many thinks is important to being a true Collaborative professional? I say fahgettaboudit. Instead, learn about the many ways you can utilize collaborative and other peacemaking processes in your legal practice. As you learn and implement those processes, the paradigm shift takes care of itself. And yes, you can still litigate if you want to. Here's what to do: Next litigation files that comes in, instead of sending out the first letter preparing to set out your views and position, pick up the phone and call the opposing lawyer with an invitation to a 4-way meeting. Discuss the situation and ask about people's interests. Use the Collaborative skills you learned without calling this Collaborative Law.  Just act as if it is. This is how you learn the power of this process and get to practice your skills. As for the paradigm shift, it will take care of itself. Private Practice Tip: Intake is such an important process. Part of that includes the initial phone call, who answers and what is discussed. I wonder how well the receptionist can convey the values and processes of the service provider? That is where the gate opens first... Private Practice Tip: Can you name your influencers by person or profession? Influencers are the people who you want to know about you. They are the people who are most likely to appreciate what you do and act as referrals sources, recommending your service to the people they see. If you do not have influencers, people who see the same people you want to see and if you do not form relationships with them, you are missing out on a valuable source of repeating referrals. Ask yourself, who might also see the same people you want to see and then you need to figure out a strategy to turn them into referral sources. One way to turn them into referral sources is by providing good service to their clients who they send to you. After all, your work with their clients is a reflection on them. So, make your referral sources look good in the eyes of the clients they send you. Private Practice Tip: Want to extend your exposure on Linked In? Don't just "like" someone's post, leave a real footprint by leaving a comment. The comment can simply validate the content of the post or advance the conversation with an example of your own or by raising a related issue. Want to take it a step further? Then "share" the post with your own comment as an intro to the post. Positive comments tend to reflect better on persons over negative or critical comments, which is not to say you can't give different or complimentary points of view, just do so nicely, civilly. Everything you say or do not only reflects on the other, but on yourself. Get the most out of Linked In's marvelous marketing capacity. Join or facilitate a conversation.  To get noticed, be noticeable - nicely. Private Practice Tip: Intake? According to an online dictionary:  the place or opening at which a fluid is taken into a channel, pipe, etc. Think about it, the place where your clients enter, how easy is it for them to move through your channel?  To be successful at intake, clients have to feel the vibe you wish to represent your service.  By that very first contact, which these day may be by phone, email, text, message, or social media comment post, you need to establish rapport and they have to feel your vibe. If you don't, someone else will. If you haven't considered at least all those channels of entry, again, someone else will. Do you have processes in place for managing intake from various entry points? Do you even utilize those various entry points? To build a successful practice these days, you not only have to consider these issues, but who represents the face of your service at intake and how the person representing your service does so. Entry points and rapport - 2 crucial considerations when it comes to intake and converting interest into clients. Private Practice Tip: Let's say you are a family law lawyer or mental health professional who works with court involved parents. You want to pivot your practice towards peacemaking, meaning, you no longer want to go to court. You have had training in Collaborative Law or mediation. You are worried that if you make the change, then you may lose income. This is a common scenario for many professionals working with separated parents. The pivot takes a re-branding of your practice and you have to get the word out there to potential referral sources as well as directly to the public. That re-branding and communication requires a thoughtful review of your professional assets and service offerings. You will need to convey what you do in everyday language and not professional jargon. As you learn to convey what you do in everyday language, you become more accessible to potential clients. You need to learn to speak the language they understand. As you convey your new service offerings in everyday language, you can better pivot your practice and start doing what you enjoy to do. Private Practice Tip: Whether you are a therapist, collaborative lawyer, financial professional or mediator, you don't really "sell" your business. If you do, potential clients may see you as self-serving. Rather than selling your service, think in terms of attracting potential clients. You attract potential clients by speaking their language, helping them to understand how your role may meet their needs and offering them something of service seeking nothing in return. To be attractive, you must already meet a need with the information you provide. This process begins with your website, blog or other social media. Private Practice Tip: People argue as to whether to include one's fees on their website. On the one hand without posting the fee your rate remains anonymous from your competition and it requires the potential client to give you a call. On the other hand, most clinicians offer service within a similar range and don't worry about clients shopping by price. They also don't want to frustrate potential clients by having to call several service providers asking, "How much?" Regardless of posting your fee though, more important is how you present yourself and your service. Do that well and the fee is less consequential. Me? My fee is posted. So is considerable content about my services and approach in easy to understand language. Private Practice Tip: Question:  Knowing your funnel... makes sense, but how does one find out the formula for their unique business? Answer:  In many instances, trial and error. You can also ask other about their experience. Take social media, it is not enough to have a Facebook page. You must learn to convert "likes" into followers. You need to read about that and practice to develop some skills around it. Once I broke 4,000 followers, I began getting referrals more regularly. It took a few years to develop that outcome though. Marketing is a slow build. Advertising can get some immediate results, but is expensive in the long run. So, you use different strategies depending on short and long term objectives. Private Practice Tip: Are you a mental health professional? Are you already screening for domestic violence and power imbalances if you are seeing couples? How about screening for risks to yourself as the practitioner. Complaints to licensing bodies are rising. Here are a few questions you can consider before accepting that referral; Have you ever met with another counselor? If so, how many? What was your experience(s) like? Have you ever had cause to make a complaint about any of your past service providers? Depending on the answer, you just may want to reconsider taking that referral! Private Practice Tip: Do you know about the funnel? It's an old marketing concept. It's about how many calls you need to make to generate how many leads to result in how many sales. This is just as applicable to recruiting new clients. When you are working on marketing your practice, it is important to keep in mind the funnel. For instance, you need to discover how many followers you need on social media to generate referrals. Without knowing your funnel, it is easy to get discouraged. Once you figure your funnel out, then you can consider how to refine it to make it more efficient. For instance, I have learned that posts on certain topics gain more likes than other topics. I have also learned that more likes translate into a greater likelihood of referrals. Hence, I post on those topics more often than other topics.  However, I may want to take my practice in a new direction, so then I may post on a topic that while generating less referrals, is more likely to move my practice in the desired direction. The power of social media is not only the reach, but the statistics and knowing how to use even the simplest of them. So, know your funnel to avoid discouragement and then learn to tweak what you put into your funnel to improve efficiency and what comes out the bottom. Private Practice Tip: You may know what you do, and you may be familiar with your own professional jargon describing what you do, but how about your potential clients? The key to conveying what you do to potential clients lies in you speaking their language, not relying on them understanding yours. Sure, I'm a social worker, but if I tell that to most folks, they think I facilitate welfare when I don't. I am actually a clinical social worker and most non-clinicians don't know what that is either. So, here's how I describe what I do: "I help people to get along and I help people to feel better about themselves." With that, most people understand. This increases the likelihood of referrals. How will you describe what you do so that others may understand? Private Practice Tip: If you are a therapist heading into private practice, it is just as important to consider which referrals are inappropriate for your service as those that are appropriate. Not only must our clients have good boundaries but so must we. Know who you are, what you do and to whom you may be helpful. People only refer to people they have already met. People need to see that you don’t have 4 eyes and 6 ears. Given that people are sending you their clients, friends or family, they have to have confidence in your service as your service will be a reflection on them. If you are invisible, your business won't grow. Uncomfortable you say? Well, STRETCH and look for multiple opportunities through multiple strategies! No one will nurture the growth of your practice more than yourself! One of the secrets to expanding your counseling or legal practice lies in screening all requests for service. You want to make sure the request for service matches your skill set and that you might meet the needs and expectations of the prospective client. If the request or expectations are not within your skill set or service, then tell the prospective client directly and refer on. Your credibility is built on your integrity of service and promoting your colleagues as appropriate. Be remembered for your integrity. Private Practice Tip: Do you have a TOS? TOS stands for Terms of Service. It is an agreement wherein you specify important policies with regard to how you conduct business.  Policies could include: confidentiality, duty to report, attendance, cancellation, payment, court involvement, termination, etc. Think of the TOS as the ground-rules by which you conduct your business. The TOS holds you and your client accountable to service expectations and both you and the client should sign the document. Typically, a TOS in a counseling practice ranges from one to two pages. While most service providers usually hand their TOS to the client to read and sign, I recommend reading it aloud to the client. That is the only way you know they have actually reviewed the document and had an opportunity to clarify any points they may not have understood. I have had clients actually thank me for taking the time to read mine out loud, indicating that their prior experience was to feel rushed to review and sign the document they hadn't digested in order to commence their session. Your TOS forms part of a good informed consent process.  Private Practice Tip: Many therapists are wedded to their approach to therapy. They may have studied their approach for years and so are reasonably invested in it. Here's the thing though: Every approach to therapy is based on nothing more than a theory of human behavior. No one theory speaks to all human behavior. Hence multiple theories and therapies abound. Rather than being married to a theory or approach, be wedded to helping the person. If you listen and concentrate on the person, then you may find the theory and therapy that best matches their needs or situation. All approaches have utility yet not all approaches can be utilized in all situations. Be an open and flexible therapist. Consider modalities other than your own. Don't fit the person to the theory or therapy, fit the theory or therapy to the person. Serve the person and be known for meeting their needs above your own approach. Refer when someone else or another approach may be better suited. This practice tip helps build trust and confidence in your service.

Build a Better Practice!

Private Practice Tip: Pleased people are taking me up on my offer; You can use any of the content from my website or blog freely as long as you include my name and website, or I would be pleased to write original articles on your behalf for you to use at your discretion. The benefit of content is that it improves your search engine optimization (SEO) and it makes your website more attractive and "sticky" to your visitors. By offering visitors content that serves their needs, you increase the likelihood of referrals. Private Practice Tip: In the workshop I delivered on Friday, helping peacemakers build their practice, I kept reinforcing how we need to reflect on our use of language to then use language accessible to the client we seek to serve. So often our websites are steeped in professional jargon and we believe it is a shared language everyone understands. Truth is many folks don't understand the specialized language of the professional. As such, to meet client needs, we must use words, concepts and metaphors they can relate to. How to know if it is working? Just ask your client and adjust accordingly on their feedback provided. Private Practice Tip: Growing Your Practice in Family Law, Peacemaking and Clinical Counseling? Having met with a number of individuals, it is interesting to see how personal life experiences can either contribute to or detract from a successful practice. I had put the word out that I can help people build their practice. I thought the concentration would be only towards helping them differentiate their practice from others, determine the services they loved to deliver, market those services through key strategies and then turn referrals into clients. Turns out that while all that is necessary, for some folks there are hidden issues interfering with success. Those issues may include one’s management style; one’s view of oneself; one’s own anxieties or fears. In meeting privately, we have explored one’s own upbringing and its influence on building a successful practice. Sometimes the road to success is not the external issues, but the internal ones. Want to advance your practice? I would be pleased to be of service. We can look at those external factors, internal factors and even both. Private Practice Tip: I went around the group twice. The first time asking what they do and the second time asking what they would love to do.  Their answers didn't match up. No one was doing what they loved to do. We discussed changing that. When asked how I find the time to do all that I do, I explained, "I love all that I do." To be successful is more than making money, it is to earn a living where you don't feel like you are working. Private Practice Tip: I remember when I opened my private practice. I was in with both feet having quit my job. I was also in with full naivety. I thought that that by hanging out my shingle and sending out 75 letters of introduction to doctors, the referrals would pour in. They didn't. A year later and with a failing practice I lamented to a friend. The friend explained that no one refers to an unknown entity. The referral sources I sought would have to see that I didn't have 5 eyes or 6 ears. The light went on and from that day forth, I concerned myself with how to meet, get in front of, or otherwise make myself known to potential referral influencers and/or the general public. I also learned that the language I used to represent myself and what I did wasn't a common language, but professional jargon. If you weren't part of the profession, the jargon meant little. Retooling what and how I presented my service and myself and getting in front of others blew my practice open. The secret is, this is not work that someone can do for you. This you have to do for yourself.

Build a Better Practice!