6 Ways Media Interviews Will Help Your Practice

Are you hesitant to respond to media interviews? Performance anxiety, lack of training, or placing little value on media interviews as a strategy for practice building may be among your reasons for shying away. You may have heard that interviews don't bring in an immediate influx of new referrals. I have been actively seeking media interviews on a regular basis for the past five years and I've never had a huge increase in new referrals as a result. However, I have seen many long-term benefits of doing media interviews, that have built my practice over time. Here are 6 ways conventional media interviews have helped grow my private-pay practice.

1) Increasing awareness of your practice and services

“If you build it, they will come” doesn’t necessarily apply to opening a private practice. Most private practitioners initially struggle to get clients in the door of their practice because few people are aware of their business. Media interviews increase the exposure of your practice and allow you to get in front of more potential clients. Continued exposure makes it more likely that potential clients will remember your name and will eventually call you if they need help.

2) Opportunity for community service and education

Media interviews provide volunteer opportunities to educate your community, increase awareness about issues that matter to you and to them. In addition to making a living doing something I love, I want to make a difference for as many people as possible and media interviews allow me to make a positive impact for people well beyond the therapy office.

3) Engender public trust and increase credibility

Television stations, radio stations, newspapers, and websites spend a lot of time connecting with their readers and viewers and building their “brand”. When you are featured in the media you get to borrow their credibility and trust as they put you in front of their audience. Regular media appearances have allowed a large number of people to hear my therapeutic philosophy, and get a feel for my approach, and see me as a resource.

4) Helps transition you from provider to "expert"

Regular media appearances help position you us as more than a potential counseling or coaching provider. Interviews allow the general public to view you as an “expert” in your field or specialty area. The role of expert adds value to you and your services and makes it more likely that clients will pay out of pocket for your services.

5) Provides potential multiple income streams

Surprisingly, some media appearances have transitioned into additional income streams. I’ve been invited to be a regular contributor on television or a paid blogger. What could be better for your practice than getting paid to educate the public and create awareness of your practice?

6) Helps provide fresh consistent content for website, blog, and social media

Media interviews help provide new content for your practice website and provides helpful resources to your social media followers. Sharing video of on-camera interviews and links to print or web interviews extend your reach beyond your location driving more traffic to your website. More traffic to your practice website means more clients for you (assuming they like what the see on your website).

So, what are you waiting for? The next time you receive an email from a news or radio producer asking for your expertise, consider saying, "yes!"

The Difference Between Hiring Therapists As 1099 vs. W-2 (part 1)

Should you hire additional therapists for your practice as 1099 or W-2 employees? I'll walk you through the decision process in this blog series so you can make an informed decision.

If your private practice is thriving and you are considering hiring additional therapists, one of the major questions is how to structure the employment relationship. Should you hire additional therapists as a 1099 contractor or W-2 employee?

In my private practice consulting experience and based on recent discussions in my Private Practice Toolbox Group it seems that most private practice therapists favor hiring therapists as 1099 contractors. When I ask why I often hear something like, "I hire 1099's because then I'm not responsible to pay the therapists employment taxes and it provides some cushion against legal responsibility for the acts of therapists providing contract services." While these statements are true, there is a lot more to consider when structuring the employment relationship and misclassification can be a costly mistake.

So what what's the difference between hiring a 1099 and W-2?

An 1099 independent contractor is a tax-related and legal term referring to an individual who contracts his or her services out to other businesses. An independent contractor is considered self-employed and is not considered an "employee" of the practice. The 1099 workers pays all of their own income tax in addition to self-employment taxes.

"Independent contractors do the work where, when and how they choose. Nobody tells them what order to do the job in, what hours to work, or when they can take off, " says Employment Attorney, Donna Ballman, author of How To Stand Up For Yourself Without Getting Fired.

A W-2 employee is an official employee of a company, or a private practice, whose taxes are withheld from and whose earnings are reported to the IRS at the year-end via a W-4.  The practice owner participates in paying the employees state and Federal taxes and has the ability to control how, where, and when the work is performed by the employee.

Michigan attorney Donald A DeLong says that control is the key issue. "If you control when the therapist works, where he/she works, how and when he/she gets paid, you require that he/she use your equipment, etc., then that worker is a (W-2) employee."

As I've researched this topic it is clear that there are no easy answers and a lot of grey areas. I hope to share some helpful information and resources over the next several posts to help you make the best choice when it comes to hiring.

The costs of inaccurately classifying employees

Inaccurately classifying workers can be very costly to an employer warns Vincent Porter, CPA of Porter & Company CPAs in Arlington Tx. Porter shares these words of caution with employers.

The IRS can conduct an audit of a business that is paying employees on a 1099 and hit them with back payroll taxes that can be very costly to a business not in compliance. This is a big issue we face almost daily with clients. They should understand that if they were to be audited by their State Unemployment agency or IRS they could face severe penalties for improperly classifying employees as contractors. Not only could they face unpaid employment taxes they could face heavy penalties.

In my next post in this series I'll tell you about my employment tax audit experience a few years ago!

Zach Klein via Compfight

5 Steps To Resigning From Insurance Panels

One of the most common questions that private practice therapists ask me is "How do I get off of insurance panels?" This question just came up today in my Private Practice Toolbox Facebook Group so I thought it would be a great topic for a blog post. In previous posts I've written about why I broke up with managed care (part 1) & (part 2), but this post will focus on how to do it.

The thought of letting go of the comfort of being on insurance panels can create a lot of anxiety for private practice therapists. After all, if we don't have clients, we don't get paid. Find comfort in knowing this equation. You only need about half the number of clients in a self-pay practice to make the same income (or more) than you made in an insurance based practice. Once I realized this fact, I felt a lot more comfortable resigning from insurance panels. Let's do the math...

Insurance:

Say you are seeing 20 managed care clients per week and you are reimbursed an average of $70 per client.

20 clients x $70 session = $1,400

20 clients x $70 session x 4 weeks = $5,600 per month

(then subtract your time or money spent in billing and paperwork)

Fee-for-service:

2o clients x $125 = $2500/wk

20 clients x $125 session x 4 weeks = $10,000 per month

10 clients x $125 session x 4 weeks = $5,000 per month

(with NO extra paperwork, NO delay in payment, NO denied claims, NO required diagnosis...)

So often we focus on number of clients instead of the quality of clients and the amount collected per client.

5 Steps To Resigning From Health Insurance Panels

1) Rank the insurance companies

Make a list of insurance panels and rank them from your most favorite to least favorite based on:

• reimbursement rates
• paper work requirements
• how quickly you're paid
• number of clients you see from each panel
• the type of clients generally referred
• your general feeling working with each panel

2) Resign in waves starting with your least favorite

Generally, I recommend to my consulting clients to resign in waves over the course of a year. Resign first from the panels with the lowest ranking - the ones that pay the least and are the most difficult to work with.

3) Check your contract for resignation requirements

Review your contract to check on the resignation process that you agreed to. Look at the time frame required. Do you need to give them 30, 60, or 90 days notice? Do you need to send in a written letter?

4) Beef up your web presence

As part of your plan to resign from insurance panels, it critical to invest in creating other referral sources. The most important being your web presence. Google is my #1 referral source. The majority of our clients who come to my clinic Wasatch Family Therapy find us online. The benefit of clients finding you online is that they've already read about you, your services, and your philosophy on your website and have chosen to contact you. This increases the likelihood that they will be willing to pay your full fee.

• Website - If you don't have a website, make that a top priority. If you have a website, make sure it's effective. Here are some common website mistakes and how to fix them.
• Blog - If you don't have a blog on your site, add one and start blogging weekly.
• Therapist finder sites - join PsychologyToday.com, GoodTherapy.org, and your professional organization's "find a therapist" site to help potential clients find you.

5) Know the benefits of self-pay and be prepared to educate clients

There are benefits to the client for paying out of pocket, instead of going through their insurance company, that they may not be aware of. As you make the transition away from managed care to a fee-for-service practice it's important to familiarize yourself with these benefits so you can educate your clients. A few of those benefits are: control over which provider you choose to work with, the course of treatment decided on by client and therapist instead of insurance company, and no diagnosis requirement.

Here's an example of how a provider educates her patients on the benefits of self-pay. Utah Psychiatrist Kelli Hyland, MD my colleague and consultation client, shares her philosophy in this blog post "Why Self-pay?"

(c) Can Stock Photo

5 Tips From My Trip To Guest Post Heaven

How my guest blog post landed a feature spot on Yahoo! front page and 5 things that you can learn from my experience.

Last week I received an email from Anne Krueger, the Editorial Director at Sharecare, letting me know that my Sharecare guest post Empathy: The Secret Sauce To A Happy Marriage was being featured on Yahoo front page in the #1 slot!

By the end of last week my article was featured again on Yahoo! front page as "Popular This Week." As of today, the article has had 6.8K Facebook shares and 468 retweets on Twitter. Yes, I am basking in the glow of guest post heaven.

So, how did this happen? Last Dec. Sharecare (an interactive social media health Q & A platform founded by Dr. Oz, WebMD's founder Jeff Arnold, and Discovery Communications) named me the #1 online influencer making a difference for depression online. They determine the online influencers by calculating influence "including disease-area relevance and online syndication, presence and reach" throughout the past year and "across multiple online channels, including Twitter, blogs, forums, mainstream news and video." (Sharecare)

At the time I was blogging regularly on JulieHanks.com, WasatchFamilyTherapy.com, PsychCentral.com, also contributing to local NBC affiliate KSL.com, regularly going news interviews, and actively sharing content on several social media platforms.

After being named the top depression influencer I got acquainted with some of the folks at Sharecare, including their always delightful and witty Sharecare editorial director Anne Kreuger. I asked Anne if I could start submitting guest blog posts on mental health and relationship topics that might helpful to their readers. Anne has generously published several of my articles on Sharecare's main blog, one of which ended up on Yahoo last week.

What can you learn from my accidental trip to guest blog heaven? Here are 5 things I did right that landed me on Yahoo! front page last week -- my guest blog heaven.

Tip #1 Publish killer content on your own website

Create great content on your own website to prove to "big shots" that you can deliver a good guest post for their readers. Post new content at least once a week on your own blog about your specialty areas and topics of interest to your ideal clients.

Tips #2 Tweet, post, like, & share every day

Share your blog content and other relevant articles on multiple social media channels to build your social media following and reputation as an expert. I share my articles, Q&A's, and website links daily on Twitter, Facebook profile, Facebook pages, Youtube, iTunes podcast, Pinterest, Google+, StumbleUpon, Ning, and LinkedIn.

I've learned that social media sharing is more than just broadcasting information into cyberspace. It's about having meaningful conversations online. I ask questions, respond, and genuinely care about making a difference for good in their lives of anyone who follows me online. Follower engagement (comments, shares, retweets) was a big factor in getting recognized by Sharecare. It still blows my mind.

Tip #3 Create win-win relationships

Consider how you can provide value to the site that you're pitching to, not just how they can provide exposure for you and your practice. Do your research on the website's readership before you pitch a guest post so you can provide something worthwhile to their readers. Nurture those relationships as you would other important professional relationships through an occasional email, tweet or phone call.

Tip #4 Pitch BIG

When you pitch a guest blog post to another site make sure they are A LOT bigger than your own website. Target high traffic sites and appeal to your ideal clients, particularly in your geographic area. You can find out how the site ranks by searching Alexa.com. Remember, that on Alexa a lower score mean a higher traffic and the more desirable it will be to guest post there. You provide excellent content for them and they provide you with additional visibility and visits to your practice website.

Tip #5 Promote the heck out of your guest post

When you land a guest blog on a big website share it everywhere -- social media, newsletters, websites, email, and press releases. By directing more traffic to the site that publishes your guest post you demonstrate your value and your influence. This increases the likelihood that you will able to continue to guest posting for them, which helps drive traffic to your website.

Tip #5 Think long term growth

Did being featured on Yahoo front page directly impact my practice last week? No. We haven't had thousands of phone call for new clients this week at Wasatch Family Therapy. Though this blog post had thousands, maybe millions of hits, it hasn't, and won't translate immediately into growth of my practice. What it does do is add credibility to me as an expert, add more value to my article, and demonstrate that my guest blogs appeals to a wide audience. All of those things are valuable exposure that will help open up additional opportunities over time.

Now, here's what I did wrong. There's NO LINK to my website on the Yahoo article. When this article posted on Sharecare it was accompanied by my author bio which linked to my websites. So, from now on I'm going to request a link at the end of each guest blog article in the text area, and not in a separate author bio. I guess something had to bring me back to earth.

(c) Can Stock Photo

Pros And Cons Of Group Practice (part 1)

A common private practice question is whether a therapist should join a group practice or venture out on their own as a solo practitioner. The answer is different for everyone depending on your strengths, goals, personality, financial needs, and many other factors.

There are also other options in between solo and group practice, like sharing an office space with other practitioners while maintaining your own practice. "There are numerous ways of forming a group practice including cost/office sharing, partnership, and employment as associates under a licensed provider," according to Kansas Psychologist Wes Crenshaw PhD, ABPP of Family Psychological Services, LLC.

To help make your decision easier, here are some of the benefits and drawbacks of joining a private practice group.

Benefits Of Joining A Group Practice

1) Established business systems

If you're considering joining an established practice, a huge benefit is that they already have office systems in place to support the practice. Michigan therapist Jacquelyn J. Tobey, MA, LLP of  Sollars and Associates says, “I have benefited from joining a group because many of the business practices such as marketing and billing are already established.”

2) Shared expenses and responsibilities

Sharing the costs of operating a business can be appealing. Therapists often underestimate the financial requirements when starting a private practice. Sharing operating costs, office space, equipment, marketing, and administrative expenses are just some of the benefits that North Carolina counselor Erika Myers, LPC enjoys about group practice.

Tobey has learned what it takes to run a business by first joining a group practice. She likens a group practice to renting a furnished room in a house that is already built, whereas private solo practice is more like  designing and building the house on your own. I think that is an excellent analogy.

3) Consultation and camaraderie

Meyers enjoys having colleagues to consult with on difficult cases as well as the camaraderie inherent in interacting regularly with colleagues. "The work we do can be isolating, so having fellow professionals around can help you have more social contacts beyond the professional consultation," Meyers says.

Melissa J Templeton, MA, LPC, LMFT compares working in a group setting to a good relationship. “Like a good marriage, it is the ‘fit’ of the various personalities that determines whether the cohabitation is going to work and work well,” shares Templeton.

4) Referral sources

Illinois counselor Melanie Dillon, LCPC, at Center For Wellness, Inc values the internal referrals generated within her multidisciplinary practice.

My business partners are both chiropractors. One provides acupuncture/Chinese medicine and the other chiropractic care/sports medicine. We have also employed a massage therapist. This way we have created a system that supports internal referrals. The other benefit is that all expenses are now shared, and that my income is no longer dependent on how many clients I see, but on the group as a whole.

Now that you have a feel for the benefits of joining a private practice group, check back later this week for part 2 - the drawbacks of group practice.

(c) Can Stock Photo From your experience, what are the benefits of joining a private practice group?