Rob Reinhardt | Your Private Practice Contingency Plan | TPOT 127
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Release Date: 05/04/2020
Private Practice Money Mistakes That Could Be Costing You | Margo Masri | TPOT 444
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Your private practice may look profitable on paper, but does the money actually feel available? In this episode, Gordon talks with Margo Masri, founder of Heartfelt CFO and Tax Services, about the financial decisions that can quietly create cash flow problems for private practice owners. They explore the risks of over-hiring, ignoring taxes, taking on office space too soon, and trying to grow without fully understanding the costs involved. Margo also shares why practice owners need to know what they personally need to live on, build financial systems that can grow with the business, and...
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The Neurodivergent Therapist’s Guide to Private Practice | Martin Altman | TPOT 443
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Have you ever wondered how much easier private practice could feel if you stopped fighting the way your brain works? In this episode, I’m talking with Martin Altman, LPC, about his experience as a therapist with ADHD and how understanding his own neurodivergence helped him find a niche that genuinely fit. We get into the strengths and challenges that can come with ADHD, how Martin stays present with clients, and why building the right systems can make private practice feel a whole lot more sustainable. Martin also shares a really helpful perspective on emotional hijacking and why distraction...
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The Emotional Weight of Private Practice | Lindsay Benson | TPOT 442
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Therapists are great at taking care of everyone else, but we are not always so good at noticing what the work is doing to us. In this episode, I’m talking with Lindsay Benson about the hidden toll private practice can take on our nervous systems. We get into therapist burnout, the stress that builds up from sitting with difficult stories all day, and the small practices that can help us reset between sessions. Lindsay also shares her experience moving from insurance to private pay, offering therapy intensives, and building a practice that feels more sustainable. This is a great conversation...
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The Mindset Shifts That Make Private Practice Feel More Sustainable | Tyana Tavakol | TPOT 441
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
What if the biggest thing holding your private practice back isn't your marketing strategy but your mindset? In this episode, I'm joined by Tyana Tavakol to talk about the beliefs that shape the way we build our practices. We explore scarcity versus abundance, the value of finding your niche, and why trying to appeal to everyone often keeps you from connecting with the clients who need you most. We also dive into building an online practice, creating meaningful professional relationships, and learning to trust your own expertise instead of comparing yourself to everyone else. If you've ever...
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Private Practice Stress: What’s Filling Your Bucket? | Kristin Oja | TPOT 440
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Are you burning out in private practice without realizing it? In this episode of The Practice of Therapy Podcast, Gordon talks with Kristin Oja, DNP, founder of STAT Wellness, about optimizing stress resilience and preventing burnout. Kristin shares a functional medicine perspective on why burnout is not always caused by work alone. Often, it is the buildup of stressors outside of work, including sleep, caffeine, exercise, relationships, technology, self-talk, and lack of recovery. Kristin explains the idea of the “stress bucket” and how even good things, like exercise, intermittent...
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How AI Search Is Changing Private Practice Marketing | Natalie Moore | TPOT 439
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Is SEO dead, or is it just changing? In this episode, I’m joined again by Natalie Moore, a licensed marriage and family therapist and SEO coach for therapists in private practice. Natalie breaks down the difference between SEO and AIO, or artificial intelligence optimization, and explains why therapists don’t need to panic about AI search replacing traditional SEO. We talk about how private practice owners can make their websites easier to find on Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI search tools. Natalie shares why specialty pages, Google Business Profiles, clear niche messaging, and...
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How to Protect Your Private Practice From the Unexpected | Jeanine Rousso | TPOT 438
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
What happens when the therapist is the one who needs support? In this episode, I’m talking about the very real challenges therapists face when life disrupts their ability to work. Private practice can offer freedom and flexibility, but it can also leave clinicians vulnerable when illness, grief, natural disasters, burnout, or unexpected emergencies come up. We’ll look at why therapists need a safety net, how financial stress impacts clinicians, and what it means to prepare your practice for the unexpected. From emergency grants and burnout prevention to referral networks and professional...
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Building a Private Practice Right Out of Grad School | Jarrod Hoffman | TPOT 437
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Can you really build a successful private practice right out of grad school? In this episode of The Practice of Therapy Podcast, I talk with Jarrod Hoffman about building a private practice right out of grad school and the lessons he has learned in those early years of practice ownership. Jarrod shares his experience of stepping into private practice, navigating pricing, working through imposter syndrome, and learning how to communicate the value of the work he does. We also talk about why niching matters, how our own stories often shape the clients we feel called to serve, and why private...
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What I’d Do Differently If I Started Private Practice Today | TPOT 436
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
When I started my private practice nearly 20 years ago, there were not nearly as many resources available for therapists as there are today. I learned a lot by trial and error, and looking back, there are definitely some things I would do differently. In this episode, I’m sharing what I wish I had known when I first started private practice. One of the biggest lessons I learned is that I made things more complicated than they needed to be. From keeping paper records to waiting too long to outsource, I can see now how simpler systems would have made a big difference early on. I talk about the...
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From Imposter Syndrome to Confident Private Practice Owner | Bianca Hughes | TPOT 435
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Are you charging enough in private practice, or does guilt keep getting in the way? In this episode, Gordon is joined by Bianca Hughes, LPC, therapist, speaker, mentor, and founder of Authentically BU and the Soulful Clinician Collective. Bianca shares how she moved from hospital work into private practice and the mindset shifts that helped her build a career that feels aligned, sustainable, and authentic. Gordon and Bianca talk about money mindset, imposter syndrome, marketing, confidence, and why therapists need to see themselves as both clinicians and business owners. Bianca also shares why...
info_outlineIn this episode, Rob Reinhardt from Tame Your Practice joins Gordon to talk about the importance of having a contingency plan in private practice. First, Rob explains the difference between a contingency plan and a professional will. Plus, he reveals the first things you will need to do when thinking about your contingency plan, including considering who will be on your emergency response team. Rob highly recommends having another mental health professional on your team, rather than a family member. Later, Rob speaks about all the things you will need to inform your emergency response team about. If you need more assistance with your plan, get Rob’s book Private Practice Preparedness: The Health Care Professional’s Guide to Closing a Practice Due to Retirement, Death, or Disability (use code WF44M for 15% off the ebook).
Meet Rob Reinhardt
Rob Reinhardt, LPCS, M.Ed., NCC has his own successful counseling practice and is CEO of Tame Your Practice. Known for his expertise in reviewing and recommending EHRs for therapists, Rob previously worked in Information Technology for over ten years and has lived around technology his entire life.
Contingency Plans for Private Practice
Mental health professionals usually don’t have a contingency plan. If something happens to a private practice owner, what is the spouse going to do? The owner is in charge of helping all of these people get informed about the situation. Plus, there are all of the records to deal with. There’s all of this business to take care of. If there were no plans, an attorney would have to help them through it.
It’s not just what happens when you die; there could be lots of reasons that you need a contingency plan. For instance, you need a plan in case you decide to retire or in case you find some fantastic job opportunities that you can’t turn down. What if your family decides to move across state lines? That would change everything. You might have to take an extended leave of absence to care for an ill family member. There’s any number of reasons that draw you away from your practice and require you to have this plan in place.
Well, there are not many resources out there for private practice owners to create the plan. And that’s when Rob decided to sit down and write Private Practice Preparedness: The Health Care Professional’s Guide to Closing a Practice Due to Retirement, Death, or Disability with Nancy Wheeler. They talk about how to make the plan and provide some templates that you can fill in your information and have that plan.
Professional Wills
Many people talk about a professional will in this context. The reason Rob doesn’t say professional will a lot, and instead, he talks about a contingency plan is because the professional will tends to be focused on if you die. Plus, it also tends to be focused on the business aspects of private practice. Some people do incorporate other things into the professional will, but not everything will be covered. For instance, what if somebody needs to get into your G Suite? What if somebody needs to get into your EHR? These are the kinds of details that often aren’t included in something like a professional will. So, make sure you’re covering all these things that someone would need to address if someone else has to care of business. There are so many things that you do that are connected to your practice that are in your head. However, you never really bothered to write down or explain it to anybody else.
Starting Your Contingency Plan
Get Rob’s book, Private Practice Preparedness: The Health Care Professional’s Guide to Closing a Practice Due to Retirement, Death, or Disability, and go through it. Rob would step back and make a list of all these things that he does. Including all of the things that he doesn’t even really think about. They’re second nature to him. Think about what are all the things that you do, and if you weren’t there, who would do them? As you are making a list, think about doing these things, how are you doing them, and what are you doing them with?
In other words, what tools are you using? Are you using G suite a lot? Some people have electronic health records, and they have bank accounts for their business. So, make a list of what are all the tools that you use, and how do you access those tools? Then, it can get even more detailed. So one example is electronic health records. We’re talking about protected health information here. It may not just be enough that somebody has your login and password information. You may want to have them set up in that EHR as a confirmed user. And in fact, some of the electronic health record systems have that as part of their programs.
Rob advocates firmly using two-factor authentication. So that means you’re not just entering a username and password, but you’re often entering a code that you either receive via text or through an authentication app. It’s an extra layer of security to be sure that if someone gets your username and password, they can’t impersonate you and get into this sensitive data.
Plus, who is your emergency response team? That’s the terminology Rob uses in his book. How is your emergency response team going to get that authentication data? The key is that you identify these workflows, how do you access the information, what information do you use, and how do you make sure that your emergency response team knows all of this? When Rob says an emergency response team, that could be a team of one, it could be a team of 10. It depends on your practice and what your needs are and so forth. So a solo practitioner may only have a team of one or two people to back them up.
Emergency Response Team
You want to identify your emergency response team, whether that’s an individual or a group of people, and you want to make sure you talk to them, and you set an agreement and give them everything they need to know. So, at a moment’s notice, they can jump in and take over. Many people do mutual agreements. They will be your backup, and you will be their backup. Get that established so that they know that they’re the backup; it should never be a surprise. Plus, they should know where to find the information if they need to jump in and take care of business.
Also, make sure they are a mental health professional. Some people want it to be their family members. Especially when you’re talking about a professional will, it may be fine and well, but it’s essential to consider having a knowledgeable mental health professional take care of business. They have the clinical knowledge; they have the experience of things like HIPAA and ethics that a family member is not likely to have. They’re going to step in and know what’s essential and how to take care of the records. That’s a crucial facet of deciding who’s going to be on your response team.
Another reason why it’s crucial to have a mental health clinician involved in this emergency response team because they may be providing some counseling as they help transition people to a new care provider. What does this emergency response team need to do? Apart from your day to day routine activities, how are they going to communicate this to clients? It’s essential to have already identified some clinicians that would be a good fit for the particular clients that you work with. Make sure those clinicians are aware that they are a part of your transition plan. Those clinicians need to know how to contact your clients, what to tell them, and the list of providers to make them aware of.
Being transparent… Some of the resources below use affiliate links which simply means we receive a commission if you purchase using the links, at no extra cost to you. Thanks for using the links!
Rob’s Resources
Creating Income From Products in Private Practice
Electronic Health Records in Private Practice
“Tame Your Practice”
Therapy Tech with Rob & Roy
Describe Cards
Other Resources
LastPass
Join the G-Suite for Therapists Users Group
Money Matters in Private Practice | The Course
G Suite for Therapists | The E-Course
Session Note Helper
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Meet Gordon Brewer, MEd, LMFT
Gordon is the person behind The Practice of Therapy Podcast & Blog. He is also President and Founder of Kingsport Counseling Associates, PLLC. He is a therapist, consultant, business mentor, trainer, and writer. PLEASE Subscribe to The Practice of Therapy Podcast on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. Follow us on Twitter @therapistlearn and Pinterest “Like” us on Facebook