From Cost to Value: Unveiling the True Worth of Coaching in Private Practice – with Frances Harvey
Investing in your practice and career shouldn’t be limited to your professional development. It’s just as important to invest in your development as a practice owner and business owner.
So in this episode, Jo is joined by Frances Harvey who is a Master Certified Professional Coach and the Founder and Owner of My Solution Services. With over 17 years of experience in the mental health field, Frances brings her considerable experience to helping allied health professionals see their own life potential and move forward.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Jo and Frances discuss the value that a coach can bring to your practice and career as well as how to manage your overwhelm by determining your top 3 priorities and releasing the rest.
You can find out more about Frances at mysolutionservices.com.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com
Transcript
Jo:
Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. I am your host, Jo Muirhead, with another informative, probably a bit slappy-in-the-facey type of episode today because my guest is a fellow coach and business owner, and both of us are known for being straight shooters, telling it how it is and holding people accountable. So look out if you wanna know how coaches talk to each other. <Laugh>. So I’ve asked Frances Harvey to come and talk to us today about her experience as a coach in the private practice community. And I’ve done it quite deliberately because coaching is a thing and we’ve got good coaches and we’ve got not so good coaches, and we’ve got coaches with terrible reputations, and we’ve got coaching that might have a terrible reputation. And then we’ve got really poorly defined expectations of coaching. And then we’ve got other people who are doing something that’s not really coaching, but calling themselves coaches. So I thought it was important to start having conversations with people who coach, who use genuine coaching techniques and skills who’ve studied it, who are actually deliberate in what they do. So welcome to my conversation with Frances today. Frances, give us a little bit of a background about who you are, what you do, and how you got to be on this podcast today.
Frances:
Oh, cool. Okay. so I am Frances J Harvey. And who I am real quickly is oh gosh. I’m fun. I’m full of life. I’m intense. I tend to overachieve. Jo’s laughing ’cause she knows all of this. I’m married almost 40 years in April. I have two grown boys. I have a granddaughter that is eight and she’s brilliant. Yeah, she’s eight. We have two dogs at home and we love to travel. My granddaughter’s in Germany, so we do travel quite a bit. I love the beach. It’s my happy place. And in terms of my work, I have been running and helping people set up and manage businesses for 30 plus years. I’ve been a certified coach for 11 years. Master certified coach. I have been the CEO and founder of My Solution Services for 10 years. Been in mental health industry for 17, going on 18 years. And I absolutely, what I love, I love working with clinicians and professionals. I love being able to, as Jo said, speak straightforward and have the accountability, but the seeing the growth and hard work that they do is so rewarding. It’s really fun. And I got here because I’ve known Jo for since 2016. And we met because somebody said, you’ve gotta meet Jo. And I’m like, okay. And the first time we ever spoke, it was a two hour conversation. And by the time I was done talking to her, I knew that she was my coach. And so she was my business coach for four years, and I would not be where I am without Jo your head today.
Jo:
That was a completely unexpected and unscripted. And if you’re watching on the video, you’ll see that I’m a little bit stuck for words. Thank you, Frances. It’s been an honour to see you grow and develop. And I think from this conversation, I’m hoping people listening can start to see that people who are coaches have the genuine desire to see their client’s flourish. And it’s not about look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. It’s about look at them. Look at them. How can I make you look good? How can I make you look better? And I used to say to people all the time, like, you doing what you do makes me look really good because, and people would go, why is that because I’m so bad at it? And I’m like, no, that’s comparison. It’s because your success is actually what feeds my soul. And that’s why I do what I do. Because as you know, and, and you’ve talked, neither of us can help all the people. We can’t sit in front of 7 million people and get them the support they need. Right. So one of the things you do brilliantly is help people with operationalising their businesses so they’re left to do the therapy or the treatment or get paid.
Frances:
What a concept!
Jo:
So My Solution Services offers a range of things. There’s multiple things you’re doing there. So a lot of people would just think it’s answering telephones. And I get pretty cranky when I see that because it’s like, seriously, you have no clue. <Laugh> Frances, so tell us what My Solution Services can provide. What do you do for health businesses or private practices?
Frances:
I will tell you this is one of the first things Jo did for me, and she’s not solicited this, but one of the first things she did for me when we started working together there was she helped me to see and stand apart from just a typical VA. That’s not what we are. Literally we’re online business management, practice management strategies systems. We help clinicians with daily operations and tasks of the business side of therapy. So it’s way more than just answering phones. And because we specialise in mental health, when I first started doing this I was probably really one of the first out there online to do this specifically for mental health clinicians. And that comes from my background of being a director for eight years at an agency here in Southern California. And what I realised was clinicians need support, but they need support the way it works for their practice and not just a cookie cutter support. And so I really stand apart from a lot of the other support groups out there, or VAs or whatever you wanna call ’em, to try the best I can to customise our services to each individual clinician and practice. So yes, we do phones and scheduling intakes, but that’s what our intake coordinators specialise in. They’re not VAs, they’re intake coordinators. And I have to say that several times at a consultation for the clinician to get that into their head. They’re specifically trained with the course I wrote that that is what they do. They focus on getting the intakes and the scheduling handled so their revenue can increase because that’s a lifeline to their practice. If that’s all they’re doing and they don’t have any side gigs or they’re not speaking, or they’re not coaching or they’re not writing books. They see the ones calling, the ones seeking, that’s the revenue at that moment for them. And so we want to focus on that so we can grow so that they can do the other things that they want to do eventually, whether it’s writing, creating courses or whatever. So Jo helped me to say, no, you guys are practice management. I always try to help people understand the difference between a VA and an online business manager or a practice manager is a VA will do those tasks for you. And some of them are amazing and they do so well, but you have to teach them, you’ve got to train them, you’ve got to tell them what to do. You have to think for them. What we do is we can come along and say, Hey, have you thought about doing this in your practice? Because we’re getting calls on a regular basis for this kind of service that we don’t see you having. And we could fill you up really quickly or your team if you hired somebody that specialised in whatever it is. So not only are they trained specifically, but we’re going to also speak into their practice about how they could grow to what they do. So yeah, we do the phones and scheduling. I write with them. I help them in blocking. We do training for EHRs. We do integration of forms for EHRs. We do a lot of admin work. We’re just whatever I can do that I know that we can do is what we do. So our tagline is one solution, multiple services coming out of My Solution Services. So yeah.
Jo:
Yeah. And I think I heard you speak at a conference once and the way you delivered it really hit home to me and, and helped me go this is, this is how we’ve gotta help other health professionals understand this. You tell this story from the stage. You were in a therapy session and it was your therapy session. You had paid to be in that session with that therapist and there was stuff going on in your world, right? And you needed help. And you could see that the therapist was not paying attention. You could see that they had zoned out and they had gone somewhere else and you felt like you were being duped. You felt like you were an imposition. You started to talk about should I even be here today? And because of the stuff you were going through, you kind of jumped into it, do I need to take care of this other person sitting in front of me? Now, I’m not exaggerating because I’ve heard Frances speak about this. And then what you did is you went back to your business and you looked at it and you went, how many health professionals are sitting in their practices worrying about their phones and how many calls they’ve gotta respond to at the end of session? How many of them are worrying about where their money’s coming from next week? How many of them are not paying attention to the person sitting in front of them because of all of these non-therapy things getting in the way? And when I heard you say that, and though I remember the audience, it was about a hundred people in the room. It fell silent because you called everyone out going, oh crap I have been that person. Now we’re not here to shame anybody, but what we’re saying is I’m a health professional. I’m a clinician. I have been guilty of sitting in front of a client going, oh crap, I’ve got that many phone calls to make at the end of the day. And then returning to the conversation going, oh my God, look at their face. I wonder what they’ve just told me that I’ve got no recollection about. And then you try and fudge your way through. I just put myself out there like, okay, it doesn’t happen every session. And so I’m passionate about My Solution Services and, you know, you won’t get it right a hundred percent of the time. And you know, we’ll have people that’ll turn up to this and go, I’m not complaining about this, that, and the other thing, because I have people turning up to my own emails telling me how much they don’t like my services.
Frances:
Right.
Jo:
But Frances is committed to finding solutions for you, not that work for someone else. And I think that’s one of the things that sets you apart. You don’t need 20 hours of this or seven hours of that, or because this is all we offer and say, well, you need somebody obviously to manage your schedule. You now need somebody who can help you manage your money. You now need somebody who can help you get verified on insurance panels. We don’t necessarily do that, but we can help you. We now need somebody to help you with your blogging. Yeah. And then Frances goes, right, so let’s make this happen. Have I got that right Frances?
Frances:
<Laugh>, you dog on close. Yeah. <laugh>
Jo:
Are you doing insurance verifications now?
Frances:
We actually are doing just that. We don’t do billing.
Jo:
Okay. That’s a new service people! <laugh>.
Frances:
We do verification but not billing. I will farm that out till the day I die, <laugh>. Sorry.
Jo:
But how important is it then? Like, you know that about yourself. You know what you will not do. Cause you coach as well. Like, you’ve got My Solution Services, which offers this great range of support, but then you also coach the owner of the business to help them become a business owner. And how often does that conversation need to happen around? What won’t you do?
Frances:
Actually quite a bit. And I’ll tell you in the beginning, you know, when you’re trying to build a business, it’s not easy, but see that sign right above me, it says release.
Jo:
Release.
Frances:
There’s a story behind that. It’s something that I’ve learned over the years is if you don’t do it, don’t just say, oh yeah, I could do it or learn it because you’re not gonna do it. Well, it’s not your strength. We have to work in our strengths and what we’re called to work in. So I find the more I release and open my hands and go, you know what? We don’t do that, but let me help you find somebody who does. Kind of like when clinicians will say that about the client that isn’t a good fit for them. You know, I don’t do that, but let me help you find somebody who does, or let me give you some referrals for somebody who does. And I find that when I do that, it opens up the door for those to come that need to work with me for what I do. So it happens a lot. It comes up a lot. The question of billing will always be there for us. We always, always, always get that. And I don’t have a problem saying, no, we don’t do billing. But here’s what we do and here’s what I can give you in terms of going out and looking. So holding onto things doesn’t work.
Jo:
And you did try it. And I think it’s so important to know what we won’t do. And that’s not always easy for somebody who’s just starting out. Right. Especially when they’re terrified that they’re not going to get any clients.
Frances:
Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Jo:
All right. So is there kind of a point in a person’s journey, a clinician’s journey where you start going, hang on a minute, we need to stop. Take a time out. We need to start thinking about what you are not going to be offering. Can you think of some examples of clients that you’ve worked with around this issue?
Frances:
Yeah. I think more so than specifically that would be that either when they’re starting out in the practice, maybe they’re coming from a group practice and they’re starting their own private practice, or they could be coming right out of grad school. They wanna grab onto everything and try to do everything. And a lot of times they try to do it and just make decisions on the whim without getting all of the facts first of, of how is this gonna intertwine? Because one of the things I do in the coaching room is say is, okay, you have all this on your plate, this is what you do. But before we do anything, we need to figure out what your priority is. So it’s kind of like the reverse of what you’re asking. It’s like, let’s eliminate what isn’t important. Maybe it’s on the back burner, maybe it’s not completely gone, but it goes on the back burner. You know, some come to me so overwhelmed or literally in tears. I can’t tell you how many tissues I could have given over zoom if I could. But they’ll have 20 things on their plate that they say, I need this and this and this. Okay. Stop. We got ’em all it down. Now let’s narrow this down to the top five or top three. I usually go with three ’cause it’s a lot less overwhelming. Now, that we have that three, let’s take those and let’s prioritise from the top to the bottom. 1, 2, 3. Okay, now what’s the number one important thing that you need to do next? Jo always said to me, what do you need to do next?
So I think that is for me, that’s the way I help them to understand what doesn’t work for them and what they shouldn’t be doing in their practice. Or, you know, do you really want to just take every client that comes your way because they’re a living person breathing and they’ve got a pocketbook? No, you don’t. So don’t even think about that. So let’s narrow down what is your area that you need to really focus on and that you shine in and that you are the best, your skillset, so on and so forth. So I think prioritising all of what’s on their plate, narrowing it down to three, prioritising the three will help them to go, okay, I don’t need to be doing that. I should not be doing that. There’s some things they should be doing that could ’cause only they could do it. And then there’s all those other things they should not be doing.
Jo:
Absolutely. And there’s this fear that comes up around, I won’t have any money. Or that like, the whole scarcity thing turns up. And in the beginning, don’t turn clients away if you need to put food on the table. We’re not saying that. Please listen with discernment and wisdom. But what we are saying is you don’t have to be all things to all people. Right? But sometimes you don’t know what you don’t want until you spend some time talking to somebody like Frances. Because I bet you’ve had people turn up in your room going, I wanna be this type of therapist with this type of therapy practice, and I want you to help me get you there. And you go, sure. And then, you know, three sessions in, you’re like, do you really want this? Because you’re not behaving like you do.
Frances:
Yeah.
Jo:
I know my listeners really love hearing a long history because we’ve got so much marketing garbage in our wall these days that tells you everything is instant. Tomorrow you’re gonna have a million dollar practice if you just do these seven things. If you just do this one thing on Instagram, you’re gonna become the next big influencer. You and I have been around long enough to know that that’s garbage. So can you give us a bit of a trajectory of a client, like somebody who came to see you and what they were like when they first came and what they might be like now?
Frances:
Sure. I actually have two quick stories. My top favourites. I have a coaching client that I’ve been seeing for, I believe it’s actually seven years now. And when they first came to me they were not even licensed. They were pre-licensed or intern associate, whatever you wanna call ’em. But they knew that they wanted to build a practice and then eventually a group practice. But they weren’t sure how to do it. And they were coming off another full-time position that they have to wean off of as well. So they did know how to do that. So we started working together and when he got licensed, he was able to go down to a part-time position with the other job that he had. So he is kind of walking down, you know? He eventually was able to let go and then go into private practice full time. So he’s now into private practice full time. He is a solo clinician, but he knows that he wants to build a group practice. So he does his private solo for a little bit, probably about maybe six to nine months. And then he is like, okay, I’m ready to hire somebody. So we walked through that too, because there’s a strategy behind that folks. Don’t just jump in and do it. Please don’t jump on to do it. And fast forward today, he has a staff of over 20 clinicians. He has an admin team. He is probably nearing maybe a 2 million mark today in his practice. And he continues to grow and he worked his butt off. I mean, he did the hard work as we’re going through it. And I said, you gotta do this, you gotta do that. All through that he also went through and got his doctorate in education. He got married, had a baby. Now he is got two babies. And I sit sometimes and I go, whoa. You know, that is really amazing. And he did the hard work. And so when he came, he was like, this is what I wanna do, but I’m clueless. I have no idea how to get there. And one of the things that we laugh about all the time is when we get on a call and I’ll go what’s new? He’ll go, oh, I don’t wanna tell you because he knows what I’m gonna say. I’m gonna push him. I helped him up his fees and did that several times but he’s willing to do the work.
Jo:
But he’s also willing to invest in a relationship. This is a seven year relationship you’ve just said. And I think this is an important point because so many people think that to get those types of results, to go from a part-time practice of pre-license to $2 million a year revenue, 20 responsible for 20 other employees. Although I obviously don’t need coaching, I just need to get stuck in and do it, but he’s obviously kind of gone, ah, no, I am gonna invest in making sure I am doing this the right way. Would that be correct, Frances? ’cause How many times have we had people come along and go, I just want a coaching session. I just need one coaching session. And you, you send them a pre coaching session questionnaire and basically they want 18 months worth of coaching done in one session.
Frances:
<Laugh>. Yeah. Or how long is it gonna take me to do this? You know I get that over and over and over when they wanna start hiring and building a good practice. And I’m like, okay, well tell me what’s on your mind. What do you think? When do you see this happening? And they’re like, oh, like, next month. And I’m like, and have you done this? Well, no. Have you done this? No. What have you done? Nothing. Okay. Let’s backpedal a little bit regard <laugh>. It takes some time.
Jo:
Well, do you want this to be successful or would you like to make all the mistakes all the other people have made?
Frances:
Exactly. I’ll tell you this though. I have learned that I won’t work with anybody unless they spend a minimum of three months with me. And I will tell them, I will not take your money. I won’t. I can’t because there’s no integrity that, ’cause I know you’re not gonna get anywhere and then you’re gonna be off ’cause you didn’t get anywhere and you spent this money, so I’m not gonna do it.
Jo:
And then you feel resentful and then you start blaming that coaching doesn’t work. But really what you’re saying is, I don’t believe in me.
Frances:
Yes.
Jo:
So that’s what coaches can see when you go, when you withdraw, and you give us all the reasons under the sun like, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to do this. Like, you don’t believe in yourself. Let us help you believe in yourself. Like <laugh>
Frances:
So the second personIt was almost the opposite. We’ve been together for a year now. But when she came to me, she literally, I’m like, I am not lying. She was doing about 60 plus clinical hours a week.
Jo:
No.
Frances:
For a week. Yes. She works seven days a week. 10 hours a day.
Jo:
Oh honey, I wanna give her a big hug, say thank you. But no.
Frances:
Yeah, she literally admitted to me. It’s gross. And I was like, that’s a perfect scenario. Thank you for acknowledging that. She’s a wife. She’s a mum of three kids, you know, so the money was there for her. It’s not a problem. But I gotta do something ’cause she’s maybe 25 years younger than I am. But I said, you cannot keep this up. It’s gonna kill you. Or you’re just gonna walk away ’cause you’re completely burned out. So the first thing we did was we closed her calendar to any new clients, period. I don’t care what. No new clients. Then we started to say, okay, she knew she wanted to bring somebody in so she could start handing clients over to clinicians. Okay, this is what we gotta do to get you ready to hire.
So we did that. She hired. She was able to offload a good chunk of her clients. She was able to take weekends off of her calendar. She didn’t work anymore. She was able to eventually, this is all done steps. She was able to stop at five o’clock. So her kids really do have a mom. And now she’s taking four or five days off here with her husband to go to a trip. She’s done that three or four times this year, and she’s already planning trips for next year. And so the flip side of having such a huge caseload and money, but needing to shift it because it was not realistic.
Jo:
It’s not sustainable. It’s just not sustainable. And then we lose another experienced, passionate health professional who’s probably gonna end up with a horrible health outcome and a dysfunctional family. And that’s not what we signed up for. That’s absolutely not what health professionals signed up for. That is not why we went to health professional school. We did not go to health professional school so we could do a job that made us sick.
Frances:
I kept hearing Jo’s voice in my head almost in every session. <Laugh>, get her outta here, get her off of the schedule. Because The Entrepreneurial Clinician book and the burnout that you focus so hard on to help clinicians, it is just like, oh gosh, you can’t, we need you so badly, so badly. Mental health, you know, and any kind of occupational health or therapist, it’s not going away. It’s increasing the need.
Jo:
AI is not gonna take our jobs people, it’s just not the reason why AI is trying to get into this space is because AI cannot deliver best practice. Might be able to deliver baseline practice. It can’t deliver best practice. Anyhoo, what are the three biggest issues people come to you with?
Frances:
I’m gonna just bullet them off. Overwhelm because they’re trying to do it all on their own. And fear of releasing. And getting support. And not doing it when they should. The very first time, if most people that come to me are six to nine months behind schedule.
Jo:
Wow.
Frances:
And then if they want, I gotta have it right now. And it’s like hello. You know, we have full loads just like you do. And then the third thing is probably they come from bad experiences working with other support systems that they just really shouldn’t be doing it because it is just a nightmare sometimes the stories I hear, and it really breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because clinicians need support and they should not have to deal with terror stories like that of having such bad experiences. I think you told me when we first met you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to find the right person.
Jo:
Yep. I did. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to find the right person. <Laugh> that was not the coach where I vomited every morning for seven days because I was in an intensive and I was so distressed by what was gonna happen that day that that was not that person. So I think one of the big, and I wanna bring this up even though I know we are gonna go a little bit later here, is one of the things that I’ve noticed that you have to talk about a lot is people go, I need this support. I can’t handle this on my own. My life’s a mess. I’m running out of my own internal resources. Like I’ve got no resilience left in my self care’s pot. I’m sick of seeing clients, I’m vicariously traumatised. You don’t come to us saying that, by the way, people, that’s what we can hear and we can see is going on, by the way. And then you have a discussion about, well, for us to support you, to enable you to get you to where you wanna go, you have to invest. And that means paying money. And then all of a sudden people go, oh my God, you charge.
And I’m being quite deliberate in that because it happens to anyone who runs a practice management company, anyone who runs a VA company of any integrity and any coach, you start having that conversation about money. And you’ve already got people saying, this is the most important thing in the world to me, until the money conversation.
Frances:
Until the money conversation.
Jo:
And then we start to work out what we really need to be helping people with. Right? So how do you help people understand that paying for practice management will release them to earn an income? Because all people see is money going out of their bank account. They don’t understand the flow that’s gonna come in. How do you help people see that?
Frances:
I break it down. I don’t know if you ever watched the Big Bang Theory. So there’s a really cute scene with Sheldon and Leonard’s mum. They’re both super ridiculously intellectual and they’re having this conversation about something and Sheldon asks her, do you wanna do the math? And she looks at him she said, I think I really do wanna do the math <laugh>. And so I do the math literally is what I do. Because what happens is they’ll come to me and they’ll say, oh my God, everything you said is so amazing, this is perfect, blah, blah. And then the money conversation. So if I break it down and I show them they gotta not only look at the actual numbers and dollar signs, they have to look at the value of number one, what is the service offering them?
And especially in our phone packages, we have a feature in that package that offers them that most don’t, and yet they are paying for that entire amount or that entire feature. But it looks way bigger. So what I do is I literally will take that and I’ll say, okay, so let’s break it down. The bottom line is I help them to see that the package that I’m quoting them literally now becomes less than minimum wage per hour that they have assistance or coverage. So they can go out and hire somebody at minimum wage full time to sit in their office. They’re gonna have to train them, they’re gonna have to oversee them, they’re gonna have to pay employment taxes and all the crap that goes along with having somebody as an employee.
And they’re gonna pay them more money than what they would pay us for the service that we’re already trained. We know mental health, you don’t have to manage them. You don’t have to pay the payroll taxes. You’re gonna get a complete result because I’ve been in mental health for almost 18 years, so I know how to do this, and I break it down into the numbers and I show them. So I’ll say, so in essence, instead of paying, you know $40 an hour for somebody for 10 hours a month, you’re paying, you know, $3.72 cents per hour for full-time coverage. And some of ’em immediately get it, Jo. It’s just like an aha moment. And then some of them cannot get past the actual number that they’re looking at or the value of what goes along with that number and what is it gonna do for their practice? You could pay somebody $1,600 a month at minimum wage, $10 an hour, but are they converting your calls? Is your revenue going up? So doing the math and breaking it down is what I see helps as long as that person is literally ready to spend the money and get the results that they need.
Jo:
Yeah. And my response, is what’s the price you’re willing to pay to have your weekends back? What’s that worth to you? What’s it worth to you to have your weekends back? You can’t monetarily quantify that, right? What would it be worth for you to not have that knot in your stomach anymore? That feels like anxiety every time you’ve gotta do a new intake form. You can’t put a dollar value on that, but it’s so getting people used to spending ’cause there’s this perception that you leave an agency because you’ve been hired out at say, a hundred dollars an hour and you decide to go into private practice ’cause you want that a hundred dollars all to yourself. That’s a lie. It’s myth, it’s wrong. It’s not sustainable. We’ve just called you out. Right? Then it’s not yours. Number one, you’re gonna pay tax on it. Number two, you’ve gotta keep your licence. Number three, you’re gonna have to pay for your EHR. Like stop believing the lie
So Frances, one of the things that I admire about you is when you see enough questions, usually in Facebook communities enough questions about the same thing, and you go, right, there’s obviously not enough people getting the answers that they need or the responses they need. So Frances goes and creates it. So she created this amazing thing called the Directory of Directories. So instead of you having to spend an enormous amount of time working out which directories you need to be on, you can buy Frances’s Directory of the Directories. So essentially it lists all of them with hyperlinks. And this thing is a work of art. How much does that thing cost at the moment?
Frances:
$49.99. And there’s 160 listings in there.
Jo:
Yeah. So let’s take your $49.99, your 160 listings, and you choose five and you make your money back within two weeks. Like, to me, that’s a no-brainer. Why waste your time asking which directories are you on? Which ones have you had the best return on investment on people? Wrong question. So if you’re in the USA and you’re a mental health professional in private practice, you just need this resource. Just take on a new client and go do it. Again, take with wisdom and humour that that was intended, alright?
So you’ve now designed a new product for people because you’ve watched all the conversations about where to get a chair. What does my room need to look like? How do I find a consultant who can consult on this? How so what is this new thing that you have created that’s gonna make everybody’s life easier
Frances:
So for probably about five to six years I’ve been listening in the Facebook groups and early on it occurred to me, I was seeing these questions over and over and over, same thing. And it’s in the therapist groups, so it’s all clinicians, and it dogged on me. Wow. There’s something to this. And so I started saving that information So when I was still working with Jo in the mastermind group it started coming up and with the help of Jo and a couple other ladies we realised that this was a hot tool commodity. And so long story short it has resources of everything you could imagine from chairs, as Jo said, to podcasts, to coaches, to EHRs, to on and on and on and on.
We’re already on volume two because we had to stop somewhere to get this ready to go out in public thousands of stuff. There’s books, there’s education and courses. There’s CEU places, just everything that clinicians constantly are looking for. And the beauty of it is that it is not me. It’s not my information, or it’s not something I just went out on the internet and grabbed. This is all what I call clinician to clinician. So it’s coming out probably into the year called Therapist Headquarters. And we are calling it THQ for short. And this is a membership site. We actually are gonna be opening it up even to students because prepared is good, right? Probably one Starbucks will help students pay for it.
For everybody else, it’s gonna be maybe a couple Starbucks a month that maybe it’s curated, it links directly to everything that is needed. It’s a one-stop shop of clinicians pouring in their knowledge years and years and years of their knowledge of everything for other clinicians of what they’re using. So there’ll be your own little space in their dashboard for you to do it exactly the way you want and keep things filed. And it’s everything that you’re going to need to find in one click, you log on and it’s there. No more looking here. God, did I save that? Where did I see that? Those kinds of things. Hours and hours and hours and hours worth of researching and finding things. And if you find something, how do you know what’s good or work, how do you know that book is gonna be good for your client? Because another clinician said, this is what I used, it was perfect. So believe them.
Jo:
We are looking for opportunities to trust one another. We are looking for opportunities to collaborate with one another. We miss community. If there’s anything the pandemic showed us was how much we miss community. This is not a directory, this is not a tool like a download. It’s actually a community of people who wanna resource each other. And it’s not just one thing. It’s not just the supervision. It is not just how to create forms in your ER. That’s all of it. And people don’t, they don’t pay to be a part of this, right? So I can’t actually say, Hey, feature me, I’ll pay you a gazillion dollars. You’re like, no, that’s not how this works. This is based on recommendations only. This is not somewhere where you’re getting people to pay you money to feature them in this thing. It’s purely driven by recommendation.
Frances:
Yeah. I mean, at some point, people may wanna sponsor and that’s great and super we’ll do it because here’s the thing, this is what my heart’s desire is that this membership site will do, is I want to help so many more clinicians in what MSS does and because it’s going to be an umbrella underneath My Solution Services. I’ll be able to, especially for those clinicians starting out, and they really are tight on money, I could now offer them lower packages that we just can’t do right now. So with the revenue from coming in from the membership, it will allow us to give back to the community by lowering some of our rates for services that we offer. So it’s a win-win circle all the way around
Jo:
<Laugh>. Wow. Frances, thank you so much for being a part of this podcast and for waiting for me. <Laugh> waiting for me to be available now when we get to meet each other in real life again. And we’re actually in a cafe again. What am I ordering for you?
Frances:
Oh God. What would you be ordering for me? Yeah. You mean like drink wise?
Jo:
Yeah. If I were to order you a coffee, what would I be ordering?
Frances:
A coffee? Oh, you know, my newest love is the iced chai latte.
Jo:
Iced chai latte. Okay. I’ve got two people to get chai lattes for. That’s okay. I can put you on a separate table from the coffee drinkers. All good. <Laugh>. Okay, well.
Frances:
So you know me in the espresso thing, it’s a little bit sorry too much for me. Yeah.
Jo:
So thank you so much for being a part of the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. I look forward to bringing you another episode very soon. Until then, go be your awesome self.
Published on:
january 2, 2024
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