Joe Sanok | Thursday Is The New Friday | TPOT 198
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Release Date: 10/04/2021
Beyond the Diagnosis: The Stories That Shape Our Clients | Dr. Travis Heath | TPOT 454
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
What do we miss when a diagnosis becomes the whole story? Dr. Travis Heath joins Gordon Brewer to explore how narrative therapy helps us understand the stories clients tell about themselves—and the stories their families, communities, and culture tell about them. Together, they discuss how labels can both offer clarity and limit understanding, why slowing down matters in therapy, and how curiosity can open up new possibilities. Travis also shares ways therapists can reflect on their sessions, question familiar assumptions, and move beyond simply listing a client’s strengths to hearing the...
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What Growing a Group Practice Really Takes | Whitney Owens | TPOT 453
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Growing a private practice takes more than adding clients and hiring therapists. It also means learning to delegate, trust your team, and let go of doing everything yourself. In this episode, Gordon Brewer welcomes back Whitney Owens, founder of Water’s Edge Counseling and Wise Practice Consulting. Whitney shares her journey from solo therapist to group practice owner, including the challenges of building a leadership team, navigating staff turnover, and creating systems that support growth. Gordon and Whitney explore how confidence develops through experience, why clear values matter in...
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How Therapists Can Practice What We Preach About Mindfulness | Debi Trent Brown | TPOT 452
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Therapists spend a lot of time encouraging clients to slow down, practice mindfulness, and become more aware of what they need—but practicing those same things in our own lives can be much harder. In this episode, Gordon talks with Debi Trent Brown about mindfulness beyond meditation, the importance of creating small moments of joy, and what it means to live more authentically. They explore how the “rules” we pick up from family, culture, and society can quietly shape our choices, why pausing before we respond can help us better understand ourselves, and how consistency—not...
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How to Make More Impact Without Adding More Clients | James Marland | TPOT 451
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
What happens when being “successful” in private practice starts to look a lot like burnout? In this episode, Gordon talks with James Marland about the three traps that can keep therapists stuck in one-on-one work: the clock trap, calendar trap, and couch trap. They unpack why being fully booked isn’t always the same as being free, and how tying your income, time, and impact entirely to client hours can eventually become exhausting. James also shares practical ways therapists can begin thinking beyond traditional one-on-one work through workshops, courses, trainings, and other resources...
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Supporting Postpartum Moms Through Private Practice | Hannah Short | TPOT 450
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that the work we feel most drawn to often has some connection to our own experiences. That doesn’t mean our story becomes the center of the therapy room, but it can absolutely shape the populations we care about, the problems we notice, and the kind of practice we want to build. In this episode, I talk with Hannah Short about how her own experiences with eating disorder recovery and postpartum helped shape her clinical niche. We also get into thoughtful self-disclosure, creating a practice where clients feel genuinely understood, moving from...
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Branding Your Private Practice: How to Stand Out and Get Found | Ritu Riedweg | TPOT 449
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
When therapists think about branding, it’s easy to immediately think about logos, fonts, colors, and websites. But your brand is so much more than what your practice looks like online. It is also the feeling people get when they encounter you, the story they associate with you, and ultimately, whether they feel like they can trust you. In this episode of The Practice of Therapy Podcast, I had the pleasure of talking with Ritu Riedweg about personal branding, marketing, and what therapists can do to make their practices easier to find and easier to connect with. Ritu brings an interesting...
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Working With High-Risk Teens in Private Practice | Katie K. May | TPOT 448
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Working with high-risk teens can feel overwhelming, especially when self-harm, suicidal thoughts, emotional dysregulation, or repeated hospitalizations are part of the picture. So how can therapists provide both compassion and structure without letting fear drive the treatment? In this episode, Gordon talks with Katie K. May about working effectively with high-risk teens and their families. Katie shares why validation matters, how therapists can provide strong clinical leadership, and why caregiver involvement is such an important part of the process. They also discuss proactive safety...
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Why Rapport Matters More Than Ever in Private Practice | Nora Anger | TPOT 447
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
Building rapport isn’t just about helping clients feel comfortable. It can play a major role in whether they trust you, open up, and keep coming back. In this episode, I sit down with Nora Anger, LPC, to talk about building stronger therapeutic relationships in private practice. We discuss what clients really want from their therapists, common reasons they leave therapy, thoughtful self-disclosure, creating safety and trust, and how to balance compassion with challenging clients when they need it. Resources Mentioned In This Episode Meet Nora Anger Nora Anger, MS, LPC, is a...
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Is Your Private Practice Too Dependent on You? | TaVona Denise | TPOT 446
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
What happens to your private practice when you step away? In this episode, Gordon talks with TaVona Denise about what her Private Practice Vitality Report revealed about owner dependency, burnout, delegation, and the systems that keep a practice running. They explore why hiring more staff doesn’t always create more freedom, how to tell if your practice still depends too heavily on you, and the simple 30-day question that can uncover exactly where your systems need work. If you want to build a practice that can grow without requiring you to be involved in every decision, this conversation is...
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The Systems Your Private Practice Needs to Run Smoothly | Lisa Permar | TPOT 445
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer
A private practice can look successful on the outside and still feel exhausting behind the scenes. Clients are showing up, revenue is coming in, and everything appears to be working, but the owner may still be answering every question, fixing every exception, following up on loose ends, and carrying far too much of the practice in their own head. In this episode, Gordon talks with Lisa Permar about the small, repeated friction points that quietly drain a practice owner’s time, attention, and energy. They explore how everyday tasks around intake, scheduling, billing, documentation, and team...
info_outlineHave you ever thought about where the seven-day week comes from? In this episode, Joe talks about his brand new book, Thursday Is The New Friday. The seven-day week was created four thousand years ago, and the forty-hour workweek was built in 1926. We are the post-pandemic generation that gets to say, do we want to do work the way we used to, or are we going to create something new? Tune in as we chat about productivity, slowing down, and the importance of outsourcing.
Meet Joe Sanok
Joe Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is the person behind the #1podcast for therapists, The Practice of the Practice. Joe has helped hundreds of private practice owners in growing and scaling their private practices. Joe has also been a mentor and coach for Gordon in his journey and inspired him to start The Practice of Therapy.
Joe says, “In 2012 I launched Practice of the Practice to blog about what I was learning about business, marketing, and private practice. Since then, my income has gone up over 2,000%. In the beginning, I was making around $1000 per month. In 2015, I grossed over $200k! In fact, every month I post exactly what I made and how I made it. It’s important to me, because we don’t usually talk about money and how to make it in an ethical way. I want to increase your influence and your income!”
Where Did The Seven-Day Workweek Come From?
Where did the seven-day workweek come from? How do we understand just this concept of time to begin? A year makes sense: it's when the earth goes around the sun. Also, a day makes sense: it's how long it takes the world to spin. However, the seven-day workweek doesn't make sense. When the Babylonians over 4,000 years ago looked up in the sky, they saw seven essential things: the sun, the moon, earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. With that, they said we should have a seven-day week. The Romans had a ten-day week, and the Egyptians had an eight-day week. We think that this seven-day week is just how it is. Well, we could have had a five-day week and had seventy-three of them in a year.
The Industrialists Gave Us A Forty-Hour Workweek
Fast forward to the 1900s; the average person was working ten to fourteen hours a day, six to seven days a week. There were protests around this – people wanted a forty-hour workweek. There was a national lockdown because they were scared that these protests and the uprising would spread. In 1926, Henry Ford said he would start the forty-hour workweek. Henry Ford wanted to sell more cars, and he knew people were not going to buy a car to get to work faster. However, if they had a weekend and wanted to visit their friends and family quickly, they would buy a car. The industrialists gave us this model of how to view the world.
It's Time To Slow Down To Get More Done
The research shows that when we slow down, when we're not maxed out and stressed out, that's actually when our productivity and our creativity go up. When we slow down correctly, we truly can do better work. You shouldn't check your email after your kids are in bed; maybe you shouldn't work as hard on a Friday, perhaps you should rein in some of those hard and soft boundaries. When you are ready to kill it, how do you do that? We can use neuroscience to inform the way that you work so you get more done. Gordon is a fan of using the Full Focus Planner. It forces Gordon to slow down, think about things, and process stuff in a different way. Most of us are on our phones all day. With the paper planner, we can focus more on what we are doing.
Stop Getting Distracted From What Means The Most
Whenever you are distracted from your business for one minute, that's one minute less you will get to spend with your friends and family. If you spend half an hour roaming the internet, that's half an hour you could be playing with your children. When you do things that distract you, you are really stealing time from the people you love the most. Often, when we get distracted, it's a lack of planning. If your day is sketched out, then you won't have time for distractions. Think about what is the highest use of your time. Make sure that you blackout time to get done what you need to get done.
The Importance of Outsourcing In Private Practice
Thursday is the new Friday which means you are giving yourself less time to do the same tasks. If you have 20 tasks in a week, and you give yourself 20% less time, most likely, you're going to drop the ball on some things. That gives you some critical data of what's essential. You're not going to do the fifteen least necessary tasks. Instead, you're going to do the fifteen most important tasks. It's time to outsource the things that you can! There are those things that are not a great use of your time that you hate doing that still need to be done. Find a virtual assistant who can take things off of your plate.
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!
Joe’s Resources
Practice of the Practice
Thursday is the New Friday: How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want
Killin'It Camp
Joe Sanok | How To "Kill-it" In Private Practice | TPOT 041
Joe Sanok | How To Level-Up and Grow Your Practice | TPOT 011
Resources
Use the promo code "GORDON" to get 2 months of Therapy Notes free.
Blueprint Health: First month free with promo code TPOTPODCAST
Using Google Workspace As A Practice Platform Course
Get Your Copy of The Full Focus Planner
Join the Google Workspace for Therapists Users Group
Follow @PracticeofTherapy on Instagram
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 wherever you listen to it. Follow us on Twitter @therapistlearn, and Pinterest, “Like” us on Facebook.