How to Build a Sustainable, Mission-Driven Therapy Business with Kelley Stevens

Kelley Stevens (00:00):

I remember sitting one night with one of my friends who's a psychiatrist, and I always will say she kidnapped me, but she didn't. But we were sitting outside Von's grocery store and she was like, you need to listen to me for a second. I see that you're suffering. I know you're in there, but the way you're living is not sustainable. If you want to have a family one day, if you want to do these things that you say you want to do, this is not going to work. I was working six days a week and I loved it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, it wasn't that I was so burnt out, I just didn't do much else besides work.

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Michael Fulwiler (00:32):

This is Heard Business School where we sit down with private practice owners and industry experts to learn about the business of therapy together. I'm your host, Michael Fulwiler. This week I'm joined by The Private Practice Pro Kelley Stevens. Kelley is a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Santa Barbara. After spending years working at a group practice, she transitioned into private practice and now helps other therapists grow their own sustainable businesses. In our conversation, she shares her experience navigating the complexities of building a private practice and how she used her background in marketing to grow her own business. She shares practical advice for therapists on getting referrals, setting the right fees, and building relationships that support long-term success. I'm excited for you to hear Kelley's story and insights. Enjoy. Kelley Stevens, welcome to the show.

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Kelley Stevens (01:28):

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

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Michael Fulwiler (01:31):

I didn't even try to do that. Why has it taken you so long to come on the podcast?

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Kelley Stevens (01:37):

I have ADHD. No, I'm kidding. No, but actually that might be the real reason. So I am terrible at scheduling. I feel like I prioritize my clients and then I prioritize the therapists in my programs and then I have, because so much of our work as therapists is one-to-one, I have a hard time sitting down for one-to-one and I'm a mom. I have a hard time to schedule meetings, so people will send me the link and then I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do it, and then I forget, and then one of my kids gets sick and then that's the short answer to a long question.

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Michael Fulwiler (02:10):

It's going to be worth the wait. We're glad that you're here. You're such a wealth of knowledge. I've learned so much from you. People probably recognize you from Instagram by this point, but people may not know your story and your background, so I'm excited to dig into that. I was doing a little bit of research and I saw that you went to undergrad in Minnesota. Is that true?

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Kelley Stevens (02:32):

I did.

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Michael Fulwiler (02:33):

How did you end up there?

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Kelley Stevens (02:34):

I love that we're calling it research.

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Michael Fulwiler (02:37):

I stalked your LinkedIn and yeah, I saw.

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Kelley Stevens (02:40):

Yes, I know. Okay. First of all, the feeling is mutual. I feel like whenever we chat, I learn so much from you. I feel like we love talking shop about helping therapists really build sustainable mission-driven businesses for themselves. So it's really cool, but okay, Minnesota, so my dad is from Minnesota. My mom is from Vietnam. My dad's from Minnesota. My great great grandmother graduated in the class of 1902 from, I went to a school called Carleton, which is small liberal arts college in Minnesota, and my great-great grandmother was in one of the first classes. She played the banjo, and so I went there. I don't think I went there because of her, but that was kind of what put it on my radar. I was visiting family and I went and then my husband went there, my brother-in-law went there, my sister-in-law. So we're like a big Carleton College family from a small liberal art college in Minnesota.

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Michael Fulwiler (03:33):

I love that. But did you grow up in California?

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Kelley Stevens (03:36):

Yeah, so I live in Santa Barbara.

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Michael Fulwiler (03:37):

So your dad family there, Barbara?

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Kelley Stevens (03:38):

Yeah, my dad just had family there. I live in Santa Barbara now and I grew up in Santa Barbara, so I went to Minnesota for four years and froze my ass off and came back, decided back, and I went to grad school at Pepperdine.

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Michael Fulwiler (03:49):

Four years was enough. So you ended up at Pepperdine for your master's and at that point did you know marriage and family therapy was what you wanted to do?

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Kelley Stevens (03:58):

It was kind of a mix. So I really agonized about going to doctorate programs or not, and I do some content on that and I have a YouTube video on that because I think that that's one of the very first decisions that therapists we have to make is what path you're going to go down in terms of your licensing, whether it's be social work or marriage and family therapy or a doctorate. So I really agonized over it and then ultimately a wide number of just factors led into that with student loans and career. And my husband is a psychiatrist and was also applying to medical school at the same time as I was applying to undergrad. So it was a shit show. I mean the process of applying to grad school and trying to be in the same place and it was a nightmare. And ultimately we didn't even end up at the same place, so we ended up on totally different sides of the country. Yeah.

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Michael Fulwiler (04:46):

What did you do after grad school? Did you work at an agency?

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Kelley Stevens (04:49):

So interestingly enough, okay, so I went to graduate school at Pepperdine in LA and then I lived for the majority of my young adult career in Los Angeles. I worked at first during practicum at a hospital-based setting. So I worked with adults with severe and persistent mental illness in a partial hospitalization program, which is what I originally thought I was going to do. And then in the middle of the two years of my therapy master's program, I had a professor that owned a partial hospitalization program, outpatient program for teens as well as a big group practice that was attached to that. And so I worked there. When I graduated, I worked a little bit in between through grad school and what do you call it, post-grad school, pre-licensure time. I used to own a wedding photography business, and so I convinced the professor to let me take the photos of their staff at this group practice. I was like, oh, I'll do these photos for free for you guys if you talk to me. And then I ended up convincing him to give me a job. So then I ended up working there after graduation.

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Michael Fulwiler (05:56):

That's funny. And then what happened after that? I know you had a few stops before you ended up in private practice.

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Kelley Stevens (06:03):

Oh my gosh. It was the journey. So I worked for that group for actually almost five years. It was a while. I think people assumed that I went straight through, but I didn't. So they were amazing. They've since sold and a lot of other things, but at the biggest that they were had about 20 or so therapists in the group and then partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient. I started out by working in the programs, working with teens, and for most of us who work with teens, they come in the afternoon. And then I was also doing photos for weddings. And I've always had kind of an entrepreneurial side if anyone who's been a therapist knows that you have to find a way to make money outside of doing therapy when you're in grad school. So I sold greeting cards and I had a tutoring business and all this random stuff to make money on the side. And so my boss at the group practice basically said, look, we know you do a lot of marketing. They'll tell my parents own businesses too. Would you do our marketing, learn how to do our marketing for our practice? And at the time I met with my mentor and I was like, I don't really want to do this. I want to be a therapist.

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(07:18):

And she was like, no, you should absolutely do this because if you want to have your own practice one day you're going to have to learn how to get clients. And so what better way to learn how to get clients just for you as a therapist than to try to get clients for 20 therapists? And so that began beginning of a really wonderful four year journey of starting out, just following my boss around. And there were a few owners of the practice and learning how to meet with doctors and meet with treatment centers and things. And then as they grew, which they grew and grew and grew, and this was the beginning of Obamacare and insurance coming in, and we're also in Los Angeles and near Malibu where there's like 60 residential treatment centers. So it was like, I don't want to say hot time, but a hot time in the therapy industry, whatever that may be.

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Michael Fulwiler (08:06):

The market was hot.

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Kelley Stevens (08:07):

Yeah, the market was hot, a lot of insurance money, a lot of venture capital coming in and programs were growing really quickly and selling really quickly, which was interesting to be a therapist and watching all of this happen. And so I learned a ton of what I thought felt really good for therapist marketing themselves, and I learned a lot about what didn't feel really good too, and just big companies coming in and big groups buying up treatment centers and that sort of thing. And so I did that for four years. I would go from nine to two, I would do their marketing, and then from three to 8:30 at night, I would see my own clients within the practice. And I saw teens and still do. And it was a nice balance until I had kids and got married and then I realized I was working too much. But in my early twenties it was great. It was a really great balance and I learned a lot. And then eventually when I got married and realized that I needed to have a life outside of work, I did open my own practice finally. It took a while. I liked working for a group for a long time.

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Michael Fulwiler (09:10):

Definitely. We talk a lot on this show about how most therapists don't go to business school or have an NBA, it's why the show is called Heard Business School, but it sounds like you almost had that business education that you were able to work in this marketing director capacity. I'm curious, are there things that you learned at that time, whether from something going well or not going well that has translated into the work that you do now, helping therapists grow their practices and curious what are some of those specific learnings?

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Kelley Stevens (09:42):

I would say the biggest thing that I learned during those early, early years and was really from watching other therapists within the group, my bosses, people who had been in community and the community, I was in Los Angeles for a decade and looking at the ways they communicated what they did, but more than that, how they built a web of providers within the community who they, one thing I really learned was that even in big cities, I lived in Los Angeles, therapy communities are smaller than we think. And so typically there are anywhere between 10 and a hundred depending on where you live, therapists in any community that are seeing the majority of those referrals that are actively in full-time practice and they know each other and they have known each other and worked on very, very, very challenging cases together. And we forget that therapists work collaboratively a lot, especially when you work with higher acuity clients.

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(10:41):

And so a huge part of what I did was communication between those providers. And so really building long-term relationships with them. And I think what my bosses at the time at that job did really well was build long-term professional relationships. And it's something that I've seen as Instagram has come in and a lot of our industry has changed that people sometimes forget that at the end of the day, if you have three or four really good referral sources, they can fill your solo private practice. You don't have to be doing 300 things. But I think now we think that sometimes that was for sure probably the best part, I think.

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Michael Fulwiler (11:18):

That makes sense. I think there's so much out there on social media and Instagram where it's like this hack to fill your practice and it's really about relationships in the long term. And something I love about your content is you provide scripts for literally, if you're going to call a doctor's office, here's what you say. Absolutely. If you're going to send an email to another therapist, here's what you say. If you're going to meet a therapist for coffee, say this. And it's so practical and I think it's really helpful.

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Kelley Stevens (11:45):

Totally. And those things are important. I mean, there are little things that, I'll give you an example. So one thing I always say, a lot of my referrals for my own practice come from pediatricians. I work with kids, so, or teens, kids, A lot of times we'll say, I'm Kelley, I have an office right down the street from so-and-so where I live, I live in Santa Barbara now. It almost always is right down the street because most of the offices for medical or one area, but there are little phrases that we use that signify, I'm not just some stranger coming in, I'm really here in your community and I want to help the kids that we work together with, that our kids go to school in the same schools, whatever. But those little phrases in the scripts that we do or the things that we say matter, and I think those are the things that get lost when therapists learn how to market their practices from marketing people as opposed to other providers who they're learning from.

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Michael Fulwiler (12:40):

Not me, other marketing people.

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Kelley Stevens (12:42):

I don't mean you. I mean like if they sign up for, I dunno, I don't want to...like a Mel Robbins or like a...

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Michael Fulwiler (12:51):

Not to name names.

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Kelley Stevens (12:52):

Not to name. Mel Robbins has a million. We can cut out...

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Michael Fulwiler (12:57):

She's never going to hear this yet.

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Kelley Stevens (12:58):

If Mel Robbins listens to this part, we have arrived. But I mean, when we're talking about marketing therapy, how you do, we're talking about a very different thing than somebody selling Coca-Cola, for example. And so I think that makes a difference.

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Michael Fulwiler (13:14):

I want to talk about this transition into private practice, something that you talk a lot. Can you tell me what that experience was like and how you did it?

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Kelley Stevens (13:22):

Yeah, so sometimes I tell people don't do what I did, do what I say. Because at the time when I opened, pitched my practice, so it was like 2015, 2016, so this was before Instagram really was a thing for a therapist or anything like that. I was actually, I at a good spot in the group I worked in. I was making really pretty good money at the time. I was making about 140,000 a year working for someone else, which is good as a W2. And I really loved the coworkers I worked with. I loved the cases I worked on. It wasn't like I was totally so miserable, but I was getting feedback from the people in my life. Feedback is a nice way of putting it that I was working too much and I lived in LA. I had bought a condo, it's like 500 square feet and the postage stamp size, but my mortgage was 3,500 a month or something for a tiny condo.

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(14:19):

This was a while ago. It would be way more than that now. This is a decade ago. And in order to earn what I needed to earn to pay my student loans, to pay my condo and we're not talking living high, whatever, I needed to be earning a good living and I was giving a percentage of my income to the group, and even though I was making good money, I was giving a percentage. So in order to make that amount of money, I was seeing 30 clients a week, and I was also doing marketing and of course my personality type. I was involved in other random projects like Mental Health Collective for this and all these other things. And my relationships really suffered my relationship with my now husband, my relationships with my friends. And I remember sitting one night with one of my friends who's a psychiatrist, and I always will say she kidnapped me, but she didn't.

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(15:05):

But we were sitting outside Von's grocery store and she was like, you need to listen to me for a second. I see that you're suffering. I know you're in there, but the way you're living is not sustainable. If you want to have a family one day, if you want to do these things that you say you want to do, this is not going to work. I was working six days a week and I loved it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, it wasn't that I was so burnt out, I just didn't do much else besides work. And she was right. And so I still didn't listen for another six months and my relationship continued to suffer. My husband, we went to therapy, I got the same message a lot of times my parents, I still didn't listen. And then finally I did. That's the nice way of saying it.

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(15:48):

And so then all in one very quick transition, I was lucky because at that point I did have an established practice of people who I was seeing and my bosses who I'd worked with for five years could not have been more supportive. And that way was really lucky. They were like, of course you should take your clients. Of course. And I opened an office, which to this day I'm like, oh, I opt an office two blocks away from the practice I was in. I joined a group, we rented office space. There were eight of us, but we weren't one business. And so that was amazing. And then I stayed there for another two and a half years in that office. And then my husband is, as I said, a psychiatrist. And so he was doing residency at the time, and then the pandemic happened. There were all sorts of other things that happened and we moved to Santa Barbara, and then I eventually closed that office and then went fully virtual during the pandemic. And then I never went back to being in office, and I still am like, oh, I should really go back to being in office. And then I'm like, no.

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(16:48):

So maybe one day I'll go back to being in office, but it's so nice not being in office.

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Michael Fulwiler (16:53):

I mean even just financially, we do this financial state of private practice report every year and every year. The biggest expense that therapists have is office rent.

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Kelley Stevens (17:03):

Absolutely. At the end, this is a full-time practice. So 25 appointments a week about, I was paying 2200 a month for my LA office and another 1200 a month for my Westlake Village office. I was dividing my time. I had one sublet, which kind of offset some of that, but not much. And it was still worth it in many ways. But I mean, I'm saving $3,500 a month now. You have to remember I'm in Southern California where rent is high. That's just a part of it. And our fees are high too because of that. And sometimes when I post that on Instagram or repeat something, people flip out, they're really not happy with that.

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Michael Fulwiler (17:41):

Right. Yeah. I was going to ask about fee. So how did you decide what your fee was going to be and was that difficult?

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Kelley Stevens (17:49):

When I first started, the group that I was in set my fee and they were pretty clear on because we were a group, we did provide sliding scale spots, but we didn't vary our fees too much because, and even in the office that I was in when we had eight providers, but we weren't one business, we were careful not to undercut each other's feet. And part of that is because when you work on cases together, if one person's a family therapist and one person's the teenager's therapist or something, and there's a huge discrepancy that can be problematic for the client for a lot of things. So we tend to just set our fees pretty similarly. So I've always had that in a way, and now that I don't have to do it in that way, I'd like to say that I do what I tell people in my programs to do, which is back into the number, here's my financial goal for the year, here's how many clients I want to see. I try to do that, but sometimes also I look at the market around me and I say, am I significantly higher or lower than people around me?

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Michael Fulwiler (18:50):

And because you generate income from other sources, right? You're not necessarily dependent on that income from your therapy practice, so you can charge less if you wanted.

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Kelley Stevens (19:00):

Yeah, if I wanted to, I could. The first few years of starting private practice pro, I really, really tried to actually not live off of the income at all of my private practice pro business. And actually to this day I try not to as well. So that we've been able to give a lot more resources away. We've been able to grow a lot more quickly because we're not constantly pulling money from that company. And so being in my private practice has always allowed me to do that a lot more. But yeah, it definitely, the fee is I have 250 a session for therapy, which is pretty standard where I am. I would say, if anything, it's actually based on, again, I live in Santa Barbara, California. It's a affluent area that's actually lower in my area, but I also see kids who come in regularly and who need to come in regularly. So in terms of a weekly appointment usually makes sense for them.

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Michael Fulwiler (19:52):

Have you ever taken insurance?

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Kelley Stevens (19:54):

I have not.

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Michael Fulwiler (19:55):

Or do you take insurance?

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Kelley Stevens (19:56):

I don't take it. I do work with out of network billing, I work with Mentaya a lot and that can be really helpful, but I have never taken insurance. And I think partially, depending on where you get trained makes a huge difference. And so the practices that I worked in never took it, and so I don't take it. But funny enough, my husband who's a psychiatrist takes, he works for somebody else. He's not in private practice. I don't think he ever wants to be in private practice. And he takes everything, Medicare, everything, and he's always like, I can't believe you. We have this conversation a lot over dinner. But yeah, I don't take it.

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Michael Fulwiler (20:30):

When did you start The Private Practice Pro and how did that start?

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Kelley Stevens (20:34):

I started it in 2020. I had a baby week two of lockdown, and what was going to be a very short maternity leave, or not short, but a few months, if you think about back in early early, we were scared. And so I went from having a childcare plan to nothing because my husband works in managed care, so he had to go back to work and he actually had to go back to work very quickly because of the pandemic. And so I was home. I took a longer maternity leave for my practice and I was getting a lot of calls from friends who were therapists who were totally panicked about COVID and going fully virtual and realizing that they had to find different ways to market their practice. And at that time as well, I was doing some consulting work for treatment centers in the same thing where I'd build out their marketing plan and train their marketing team and then leave.

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(21:31):

It'd be like a free month contract. So I was on all these calls and I could do those calls asynchronous. It wasn't as, it was easy for me to do even if I had a baby. And so the only childcare I had was my high-school-aged neighbor. So she was home from school because it was COVID. And we were in this, we were next door neighbors and we were kind of in this COVID bubble and she was 16 years old and she'd come over and she'd hold the baby and I would do these calls and she was in my COVID bubble and she was like, why don't you film this for Instagram? And I was like, no, dude, no, I wasn't even really a social media person that consumed it. And she's like, no, no, no, no, I'll help you. And to this day, Claire just actually went off to be in full-time school and I'm so proud of her, but I wouldn't have done it if she hadn't told me to do it.

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(22:22):

And she taught me how to make a reel and she taught me how to do all that. So essentially I had been doing the things that I teach on Private Practice privately. I'd had one-on-one coaching clients who are therapists and that sort of thing, but I didn't turn it into a whole therapist platform until 2020. And then once we did, it was wild time to be doing it and we grew really quickly and I hired people to help me and that sort of thing. But it was definitely my high school baby sta that helped me the most. The people who were on my team now are going to be like, what do you need? We help you every day. But Claire, I'm telling you, she was the one.

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Michael Fulwiler (23:02):

Well, yeah, I think I was going back in our DMs and I was trying to remember how we first met and connected. And I don't know if it was on Twitter, on Instagram, but it was probably in the beginning or towards the beginning. I remember when we first met, yeah, I think you had 10,000, 20,000 followers. Now you're at 120.

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Kelley Stevens (23:19):

Well, when we first met, I was asking you a lot of advice. You had a big following on Twitter, you had a big email newsletter following and you worked for the Gottmans, which in therapy world is working for Shaquille O'Neal or I don't know what the equivalent is.

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Michael Fulwiler (23:36):

That's a funny comparison.

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Kelley Stevens (23:36):

In our industry. Yeah, maybe not. I don't know a chef. I also am not a basketball person, so he is the most famous basketball person I could think of. But my husband would probably be like, oh my God, Kelley, I can't believe you said that. But I remember being awestruck, being like, oh my God, Michael worked for the Gottman's. Like holy crap. Yeah. So I think it was around then, I don't know, maybe in 2020. I can't really remember when we met, but I think we sent a lot of messages and things.

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Michael Fulwiler (24:04):

Yeah, no, definitely. And was the plan to build this into a business and offer courses or were you kind of just creating content and posting videos and just having fun and kind of seeing where things went?

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Kelley Stevens (24:16):

I'd give it a yes-no. So I am not typically the type of person who does things without some level of intention behind them just because I value my time. I've learned to value my time with my family and not work so much. But I saw in 2020 I was stuck at home and I saw a lot of mommy bloggers doing making courses, and I remember calling my friend who also does this work, she has a mom, a page for moms and saying, we had a conversation where we were like, how hard could it be? How hard could it be to create a course? And we both were like, could it be that art? Five years later it's good. I didn't know then what I know now. And so I got some really good advice early on, I think that I was talking to a marketing consultant who does a lot of the big mommy brands, and I called him and I said, well, do you want to do my online course?

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(25:15):

And he was like, give me $40,000. And I was like, well, I don't have $40,000 though. And he was like, okay, well why don't you call me when you have 5,000 followers? And I had no followers. And I was like, cool, I'll do that. And so then, I dunno, five months, six months later, I called him and I was like, okay, I have 5,000 followers. And he was like, oh, I didn't actually think you would do it. He is like, I'll be honest with you, I really would not put out a course until you have at least 10,000 followers. So why don't you call me back when you have 10,000 followers? And I was like, you got to be shitty.

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(25:47):

I still everything I could do to get 5,000. Let's fast forward. I'm at a hundred something now. But at the time, to me, 5,000 seemed like astronomical amount of people. So then I did that, I got to 10,000 and that was really good advice not to put out, nothing was for sale, everything was for free prior to 10,000. And it gave me so much insight into not creating things that were for me because I think a lot of times when when any content creators put things out, we put the cart in front of the horse, we create products before we create a following, and then these products don't actually reflect what are the people we need. And so I started filming my first course and actually when I was filming it, the company I was filming with, I hit 10,000 that week and we popped a bottle of champagne and we were so excited the week I filmed the course and we were doing it.

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(26:42):

And then I'll tell you, I filmed the whole course, we launched it and about three months later I was like, I have to refill the whole entire thing. I was like, it's just like it's good, but it could be better. And so I went back and I refiled the entire thing and then we've actually refiled it again just about a year ago. And we constantly are adding to things and things change, but you learn so much by doing that. You end up, you think like, oh, I created this product, it's never going to change. But a good course, I will often tell people, wait, wait until they have some people in it and see and then refilm and refilm, and you want a course that's been taught more than once just in school.

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Michael Fulwiler (27:23):

I feel like the bar too is pretty low in terms of production quality. You can make pretty good quality content now just on your computer.

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Kelley Stevens (27:32):

Yeah, we're doing it right now.

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Michael Fulwiler (27:33):

Bloom videos. Yeah, exactly. Where you don't have to go to a studio and if you're going to sell a really high-end premium offering, then yeah, the expectation is a certain level of quality, but it's easy enough to put something together, especially as just something that you're testing to see if there's interest in.

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Kelley Stevens (27:53):

Oh, absolutely. And at this point we filmed, or I've filmed, I dunno, four courses about now, and we've filmed each of those multiple times. The first time I ever filmed, I did it in three days. I filmed the whole course, I sat down and just did it with a team, and we filmed a beautiful, beautiful video a year, couple years down the road. I filmed another course when I was really pregnant and I was at home and it took me about a year to film the whole thing. It was my marketing course that I filmed again and it's dense, it's like hours of material and slides and whatever. And I filmed that one from home. And it's interesting how much, even just in the last few years filming coursework has evolved and you get better at it too. You get better at being on video and you get less self-conscious and you get better at saying things in a way that makes it really easy for people to understand and that sort of thing.

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Michael Fulwiler (28:44):

I've seen you post it When you started your practice, there was like one course that was available. It was like $2,000.

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Kelley Stevens (28:50):

Laura Long was the first, I think. I mean, who was I think was out there. I didn't actually take her course. A lot of friends who had wonderful experiences and I was lucky. I had worked in this role where I was doing a lot of that anyway, but there was nothing. And now there's obviously so many resources, which is awesome. But at the time when I was in grad school, no one, I remember meeting with my accountant and having no idea what to say at all. I didn't know what an S escort was. I knew nothing at that point in 2013, there was no Heard who was helping therapists specifically in getting really specific about what tax write-offs therapist can take and the type of business therapists have. There was none of that. We didn't have that. And now there are so many resources that are tailored specifically to therapists that didn't exist back then.

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Michael Fulwiler (29:41):

Definitely. I'm curious, the therapists who take your courses, who follow you on Instagram, what are some of the most common questions that therapists have or the topics that just continue to come up?

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Kelley Stevens (29:54):

Well, obviously one of them is taxes. And I'm not just saying that because we're on Heard Business School, although that's fun.

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Michael Fulwiler (30:01):

This is not sponsored. Yeah.

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Kelley Stevens (30:02):

Yeah. This is a non-sponsored post, but it's true. I was literally just texting a friend who's thinking about becoming a therapist, and she was like, but how do I learn how to pay taxes? And I was like, okay, see, she's not even a therapist yet. So obviously that's one of just like the business setup side, what sort of business entity they should become. We filmed a great video with Andrew from Heard about this and the nuts and bolts logistics of opening a practice are obviously one of them. And then the second biggest question is always, okay, I have it all set up now. How do I get clients? People will be like, I did all the things except for I don't have any clients. And it's like a rude awakening sometimes for people because we assume that if we build it, they will come. But unfortunately in therapy world, it doesn't look that way.

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Michael Fulwiler (30:48):

Being a therapist is about helping people, not crunching numbers, but when you're running your own practice, managing finances can feel like a full-time job one you never trained for. That's where Heard comes in. Heard is the financial management platform built just for therapists. No more cobbling together spreadsheets, DIY software or expensive accountants. With Heard, you get bookkeeping, tax support and financial insights all in one easy to use platform. Heard was started by an accountant and a software engineer who understand the challenges you face as a business owner. Our mission: to make it incredibly easy for therapists to manage their practice as a business, build wealth and stay focused on what matters most, their clients. Join thousands of therapists who trust Heard with their finances. Schedule a free consultation today at joinheard.com/consult.

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(31:45):

And what is your best advice there? You talk about building relationships, referrals for folks who are kind of just getting started, what do you feel like is the best way to get clients in 2025?

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Kelley Stevens (31:58):

It's a really good question, and I hesitate to give one specific answer because what I have found, we have, I dunno, 3000 therapists in our programs now and we ask people what is working for you? And all over the country, we've had therapists in other countries take the courses, what's actually working and what I have found to be the through line for them is figuring out what they are willing to do consistently. So it might be that they're willing to network with doctor's offices. It might be that they're working on their search engine optimization or that they're creating content for Instagram. But the biggest mistake that I see people making is trying one thing and then trying another thing and then trying another thing and never doing it consistently. And so I think most of the methods that whether it's me or anyone else teaches are going to require consistent long-term effort and whichever one of those, if you hate social media, then don't do it if you don't consume social media.

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(32:55):

I have a great friend who was like, I'm going to build a following. She was so committed to building her own following, but she doesn't consume any social media herself. She hates it. And so I'm like, you're never going to do this in the longterm because you don't like it, but if you love putting on equine workshops once a quarter for all the therapists in your community and you're passionate about it and you're doing it and you're bringing people together, well, you're going to get more clients that way. So I think it's spending time thinking about learning what resources are available to you, learning what you could do, and then picking one and doing it consistently.

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Michael Fulwiler (33:31):

I love that answer. I don't know if I've ever thought about it that way. I tell therapists all the time when they ask me about how to start a newsletter, how to grow a newsletter, what I tell 'em is don't start a newsletter unless you're willing to write a newsletter for five years. Don't start an Instagram unless you're going to do it for five years. This is an investment. It's going to take time. It's about showing up consistently. And I think people always look for the shortcuts and the hacks, especially with marketing, but maybe I'll get some clients, but it's not sustain.

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Kelley Stevens (34:05):

Yeah, it's like how I've been telling you you should have a Substack.

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Michael Fulwiler (34:07):

Right. We're going to talk about that in a moment. Before we move on, I have a few tactical questions I'm just interested to get your take on. So what is maternity leave? So I've seen this something you post about, we chatted about this. What advice do you have for therapists who are planning at some point in the future or it's like coming up how to take maternity leave, how as a private practice owner, I don't have paid time off, so how do I navigate that?

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Kelley Stevens (34:35):

Okay, so I love talking about maternity leave as somebody who's done it twice and then also just helps other people. And I actually put together a whole guide about it that we were going to charge for that gives how to find somebody to cover your practice, how long to take off, how to save for maternity leave, how to promote your practice, what to say to your referral sources, all of it. We were going to charge for it. And then I was like, we can't charge for this. I needed this for free. So we give it away for free. So I'll just give you the link and you can put it in the show notes or whatever and we'll just give it to anyone who's listening because there's a lot of little things like how do you have somebody cover your practice and how do you have those conversations with clients that it's okay if they end up staying with that person.

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(35:16):

And how long do you decide that you're going to be off? Because how long you're off. Let's say you're only off for four weeks, that's really different than being off for six months. And what are the expectations around clients coming back to you or not and how do you have those conversations? And so we map all that up. I would say there's two factors to consider here. There's the financial aspect and really the sooner you can sit down and actually look at the numbers of your business, the better. And I think it's really hard when you're just starting out in private practice and you hit that stride and you have clients and then you're like, oh my God, I might lose a lot of these clients. And I will say, with all the different moms I've worked with, and I think at this point it's a lot because I don't know, I'm in this phase where everyone I know is having kids or has kids.

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(36:06):

I will say the resilience of moms of seeing the way after maternity leave, they rebuild their practices has been amazing. I haven't had anyone who has gone on maternity leave and then couldn't figure out a way to have their practice work for them again if the same, if not way better. Motherhood made them more efficient, more clear on who they were serving, more, all those things. But the fear going into it is real. The fear of I've built this thing and I'm so proud of it and I'm so scared to lose it. I could cry thinking about it. So the sooner you can get into just the brass tacks of what is my rent? What do I need to be covering in my expenses? How much money can I put aside right now to help cover that? How much can I not? Am I in a state where I might qualify for some paid family leave? Am I not? All of those questions you have to face, and that's my biggest piece of advice is the sooner you could do that, the better.

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Michael Fulwiler (37:05):

And if you have an accountant or a financial planner, CPA, it's a great conversation to have. Like, hey, I'm planning to take some time off. How much money do I need to have set aside and how long can I go without income with my bills that I have and all those?

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Kelley Stevens (37:20):

Absolutely. And can you take a loss, can you not? How long? All of that is so important.

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Michael Fulwiler (37:26):

We talked a little bit about referrals. A question a lot of therapists ask me is, how do I get referrals specifically from doctors? And I know this is something that you talk about a lot, so I'm curious what your best advice is for therapists who are trying to get referrals from doctors or physicians.

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Kelley Stevens (37:44):

I would say my best advice, and we teach a whole module on this, so it's hard to boil down into one little thing, but I would say that my best advice is that it's a numbers game. A lot of doctors, you're going to call them and they're never going to call you back or you're never going to get a meeting more so than anything. And it's not personal. They're really busy. As somebody who's married to one, I know that he's terrible at calling people back. I think especially if they take insurance, they're booked in, booked and booked. And so if you call 10 doctor's offices to get meetings, I'm going to assume that you're going to get two meetings out of those 10, and you have to be willing to get some rejection so that you can build a long-term relationship with the doctor. And I think the best way to do that is to have cases with them.

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(38:32):

And so if you already have clients who see psychiatrists or internists and you say to them, hey, would you be willing for me to collaborate on your care? I'm happy to just call and give your doctor an update. Now obviously you have to do it where it's clinically relevant for your clients. That can be an amazing way to start working with doctors. And I've found that for the doctors who refer to my practice, it ends up my goal is always to make their life easier. Because as much as I want to think that my caseload is challenging or whatever, more than likely they're seeing a lot more patients than I am. And so I'll say to them, what's the best way for me to give you an update? Do you want an email? A lot of times they work in HIPAA compliant systems, so I'm like, do you want to add me to your best notes?

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(39:18):

Do you want to add me to your whatever? What can I do to give you the updates that you need in the easiest way possible for you? I think part of that comes from living with a doctor who I will say has never sent me a single client ever once in our whole relationship on purpose. Obviously not he hates me, but because we refuse to work together. But I will notice therapists calling doctors, not just my husband, and actually he's loves when therapists call, but our friends and other things. And you have to realize they're talking to you between clients. Maybe they have five minutes. The quicker you can make the update and just say, hey, here are three symptoms I'm noticing. Here are this, here are that. That can make a huge difference in the ease of them working with you.

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Michael Fulwiler (40:03):

What about dropping off donuts or bagels? Is that something that works?

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Kelley Stevens (40:09):

It definitely works. This is probably the reason I didn't bring it up, is every single time I talk about this on Instagram, I get people being like, this is bribing doctors, this is whatever. And I'm like, dude, obviously you have to look up the laws of the state that you're licensed in. You have to call your licensing, whatever. But I will tell you, I get the license magazine in California and in the back it gets all of the license, what do you call it? Violations. I have never seen a license violation that says, brought a Trader Joe's orchid to a doctor's office. License revoked. So you do without what you will, but...

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Michael Fulwiler (40:47):

This is not legal advice.

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Kelley Stevens (40:48):

Yeah, this is not legal advice. Call your lawyer. But if you were bringing a doctor, like a diamond tennis bracelet, okay, maybe we're in a problem. But if you're dropping off donuts, so you have to remember a lot of these doctor's offices, they have drug reps coming in that are bringing in lunch, and there are ways drug reps get around a lot of the different rules and whatever. And so a lot of doctor's offices have that time set aside once a week or twice a week where they have people coming in anyway. And so you can call the receptionist, try not to get the doctor on the phone. The receptionist is really the gatekeeper of most doctor's offices and say, I'd love to bring in lunch for the office. It doesn't have to be super fancy, but also remember they have drug companies coming in and bringing lunch.

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(41:30):

That probably is fancy, but that can be a great way of doing it. And I know for me, I will bring a doctor's office lunch and then at the holidays I'll drop off donuts. And then in the spring one year we dropped off popsicles at these doctor's offices, which was not a very good idea. They melted. So it would not suggest that. But there's all sorts of different little things that I feel like I do to try to keep myself at top of mind for different, and then after a while, I have a couple of pediatricians in LA that still will send me referrals, and I'm like, I have not lived in LA for five years. I think once the doctor has working with a provider that they just know takes really good care of their clients, then it's a repeat. The hard part is the initiation part.

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Michael Fulwiler (42:16):

So you built The Private Practice Pro on Instagram to 120,000 followers. What does the rest of the ecosystem look like? Where are you kind of investing and focusing on in the business?

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Kelley Stevens (42:29):

Where's the fun part? I mean, the Instagram's the fun part, but really the fun part for us and for me is within all of our programs. So we have two main courses, one to help therapists launch and one to help therapists fill their practices. And then we have all sorts of other resources too with paperwork, and we have some other very fun things coming. Not to tease it, but we're going to tease it. The other day, my son said something to me and she's only five, and he was like, this is what we call foreshadowing, but mainly because I'm not done filming it.

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Michael Fulwiler (43:02):

Could be a year.

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Kelley Stevens (43:03):

Yeah, it could be a year. No, not this time. My God, that was crazy. And then I do some coaching for therapists and one-on-one, which has been really fun. It's always fun to meet with therapists and look at their websites and look at their marketing and try to help them really build something that works for them. So I would say I spend, it's a constant balance between seeing clients, working with therapists one-on-one, and then working in our programs. And I'm lucky now that I have an amazing team who works with me, and that's been really nice too, to be able to have people who have different skill sets helping too. Besides just me.

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Michael Fulwiler (43:38):

I know you're on YouTube and wanting to build that. We've talked a little bit about LinkedIn. I know you're looking at Substack. You also had a podcast at one point, but decided to pivot away from that. Why did you make that decision?

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Kelley Stevens (43:55):

Oh, that's a great question, Michael. How do you spend time recording all of these episodes? It's tiring. Aren't you tired?

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Michael Fulwiler (44:04):

Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of fun. I really enjoy the conversation, but it is a lot more time, I think, than people listen to an episode, realize the work that goes into the prep and the research, and then the post-production.

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Kelley Stevens (44:16):

And the editing and the show notes and the, okay. Short answer to the long question, I am on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. I've got 14 followers on Substack.

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Michael Fulwiler (44:29):

All right, follow. Is it The Private Practice Pro on Substack?

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Kelley Stevens (44:32):

Follow me on Substack. But actually Substack has been really fun. I've been trying to convince Michael to do it, and I've really been careful not to be completely reliant on Meta, on Facebook, essentially. So I think that when it comes to the type of businesses we are versus a practice, it can be very easy to be kind of dependent on one platform. So I try not to do that. So it's been really fun to learn how to record YouTube videos and that sort of thing. I did have a podcast and I did 48 episodes or something, but to be honest with you, it was a lot of work. And so I have two little kids. I have a five-year-old and a almost 2-year-old and synchronous time where I'm trying to meet with somebody else's schedule that's not a client is hard for me because it basically means I'm not able to see clients.

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(45:25):

So the more one-on-one appointments I have with therapists, with whatever or podcasting, the less I'm able to see clients. And that was, I had to get clear within myself about whether I was really ready to not see clients anymore. And the answer is no, because that's what keeps me grounded in the work that we do. So I made the decision to no longer have my podcast, but what we did do is we took the interviews from the podcast and then the future interviews, and we put them within our programs. And so the exciting thing that we have coming is actually that. So we have a membership coming soon, and then within the membership there'll be a live component where guest experts will be able to come in and give webinars and that sort of thing, which will be essentially like a podcast episode, but instead it'll just be within our own community rather than out on the internet everywhere, which felt to me more aligned with my values.

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Michael Fulwiler (46:20):

Amazing. Do you know when that is going to be available? Are you able to say?

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Kelley Stevens (46:25):

Yeah, so okay, it's done. We've built it. But what people don't tell you about building a membership or any of these things is when I look at building membership. So basically the membership is going to include all of my programs. So anyone who joins will be able to get access to every single course, everything that we offer, plus two live calls a month with me where they can ask any questions they want, plus some guest expert, all sorts of different things. But one thing that I really make sure to do as a mom is that I back stock a little bit of it. So in case my kids get sick or in case something happens, I'm not one month out, I'm about six months out. So currently we're about four months in backlogs of content. So the goal was really to launch it by June. I'm looking up at my calendar like, oh my God, June's in four weeks. So...

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Michael Fulwiler (47:15):

It's May as we're recording this. This will probably come out in July.

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Kelley Stevens (47:19):

Yeah, so maybe it'll be out by the time this episode launches. And I'm always hesitant to give an exact day. I used to always give an exact day of launches, and then, I dunno. I had a couple launches where I was like, just kidding. I'm pregnant, but I'm not. Don't worry. Not this time. I don't know. I'm not a big launch person. I guess. I like everything in my ecosystem. You can get whenever you need it. I think people need resources when they need them, and I am not somebody who's like three days only you get this thing. So it'll be here soon.

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Michael Fulwiler (47:55):

Kelley, we could talk for hours. I'm going to keep us on time here, but I do have.

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Kelley Stevens (47:59):

We're never good at that.

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Michael Fulwiler (48:00):

I know. I know. I'm going to have a few rapid fire questions here for you to wrap us up. How does that sound?

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Kelley Stevens (48:09):

I love a rapid fire round. All my favorite podcasts are have a rapid fire round.

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Michael Fulwiler (48:14):

These are researched, so...

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Kelley Stevens (48:16):

Oh gosh.

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Michael Fulwiler (48:17):

First question. Is it unethical for therapists to charge $250 a session?

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Kelley Stevens (48:22):

No. That's what I charge.

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Michael Fulwiler (48:25):

Great. Easy. What's one thing you wish someone told you your first year in private practice?

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Kelley Stevens (48:30):

Don't work too much. Take your time. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

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Michael Fulwiler (48:36):

What's one thing you would do differently if you started your practice today?

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Kelley Stevens (48:39):

I would make absolutely sure. I think I did this, but I would make sure that I was in an office of other therapists. I would never, ever, ever have a one-off solo office. It's built in community. It's built in less solo. It's built in referrals. It's everything. I'd have an office with 16 other people. I mean offices, not just one.

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Michael Fulwiler (49:01):

What's the biggest mistake therapists make on their Psychology Today profiles?

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Kelley Stevens (49:06):

Having a terrible photo. You got to show someone that because you're listening to this podcast and I don't know you personally, go look at your photo if it is blurry. I've seen so many where people are dressed in a way that's like, you don't need to be showing too much. Go look at your photo, show it to your grandma and ask her, does this look like someone you would want to talk to? Not like, do you look like a model? Do you look like somebody who you want to sit down and have a conversation with?

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Michael Fulwiler (49:37):

Show your photo to your grandma?

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Kelley Stevens (49:39):

Yeah.

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Michael Fulwiler (49:40):

You heard that here.

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Kelley Stevens (49:40):

That's what I should have said. I'm not good at rapid fire. I feel like you should have known this.

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Michael Fulwiler (49:46):

Oh, finally, what's one thing you want therapists to take away from this conversation?

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Kelley Stevens (49:52):

Well, this is not sponsored. I just want to say it's absolutely worth it to hire professional health when it comes to your finances. Do not go and do what a lot of therapists I know do, which is try to DIY their taxes. Why don't try to skimp on your taxes? It's not a good idea.

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Michael Fulwiler (50:12):

You heard it here. Kelley, thank you so much. You're always welcome to come back on the show. Let's not wait two seasons next time. For folks who want to connect with you, who are interested in your programs, where can they find you?

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Kelley Stevens (50:26):

All the things. If you type in The Private Practice Pro, whether you're on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or Substack, you can find me there or at theprivatepracticepro.com, but I'm always happy to help.

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Michael Fulwiler (50:39):

Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of Heard Business School, brought to you by Heard, the financial management platform for therapists. To get the class notes for this week's episode, go to joinheard.com/podcast. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll see you in the next class.